It Takes a Village…
Village of clay huts by the students in my after school clay class
to forgive my kiln over-firing debacle from last Monday – the kids took it well. It may have helped that I promised to make them each a special “I’m sorry” cup to make amends. It was a good learning moment for them – firing a kiln is still a mystery for them – how hot is 1800ºF anyway? They don’t quite understand the whole concept of turning wet clay into permanent fired pottery since all they see is that I take their creations home with me and bring them back fired like magic! The repairs to fix some of the over firing issues with Jean’s jewelry box didn’t work. Jean took it well and I’m ready to try again. But, that will be a job for another day….
Meanwhile, I spent all day reading lazily on the sofa – the newspaper, back issues of magazines, books and yes, even a bit of internet reading. We have three lap tops in our home and all of them are starting to show their age. I’ve been reading up on other operating systems and have decided to install Ubuntu, a FREE Linux open source operating system on one of the oldest computers, and will delete Windows XP completely. If it doesn’t work, then no big deal – but if it does, it will extend the life of our computers and hopefully make them faster.
Open source software and hardware is a really cool turn of advents. Now, it’s nothing new – Linux is released under GNU or General Public License since 1994. GNU is an interesting business model – people are able to modify and even benefit financially from someone else’s intellectual work as long as attribution is defined. Wired Magazine (one of my new faves) touches on open source in quite a few issues. Companies that are closed and proprietary, like Microsoft, have quite a market share and frankly are afraid of open source because it is a threat to their long term viability. Reading about companies, such as Arduino, an Italian group that manufactures open source electronics platforms for a variety of uses. Pretty cool, don’t you think?
Anyway, it’s a little more work on my part to do the research and homework to install a Linux based system – after all Windows has @ 88% of market share. On the other hand, there are a number of free software applications that can replace everything that I currently have installed on my computer such as Open Office (replaces Microsoft Office Suite), Gimp (Photoshop), Archimedes (AutoCad) – along with a slew of any other kind of free software programming anyone could ever need. I was reading about how many open source contributers consider their efforts to be good old fashioned community barn raising. I like to think of my humble little pottery blog in the same light – I share what I learn, good bad and down right ugly because I enjoy learning from others in the field and I love receiving emails from folks who try making some of the techniques I have posted, including improvements or alternatives.
So, thanks for humoring me and for continuing to read & comment on my blog! 
~Cynthia
