Brian Jepson’s Weblog

Joey deVilla has been riffing on Paul Graham’s recent essay, How to Be Silicon Valley. In his most recent post on this, he mentions Providence:

I had an interesting conversation last weekend with a guy who lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Providence used to be a bit of hellhole of a town where they practically rolled up the sidewalks at night, which was a good thing — at night, you were likely to get mugged. He told me that the revitalization of Providence is largely credited to “Buddy” Cianci, the (ahem) colourful mayor, who turned the town around and made it both safe and a destination, largely by making it more business-friendly. This is the one aspect of Jane Jacobs’ theories that arts grads and Socialist “Worker” readers always miss: what’s good for businesses large and small is often good for the city and its people.

From Geeklife: Songs in the Key of Pope:

Cardinals took a vote and ack ack ack ack
Cardinals shot some smoke ack ack ack ack
Like this ack ack ack ack
Like this ack ack ack ack

All the papers mourn John Pauly
All the radios shout his name
…

Not exactly what I expected Anyhow, it’s a great song, even if it is under 30 seconds in some manifestations.

I’ve been organizing a Town Hall-style event for Providence Geeks. It goes down next week: Wednesday June 21 at AS220, from 5pm to 6pm. Representatives of the RI-WINS project will be on hand to brief people on this effort, and will be taking questions from the public. It’s open to the public, so come on down and find out what’s going to be happening in a 5GHz channel near you!

Liza Daly: “If you are a COBOL fan, you will love this language, and if you are not, the main thing you should know is that Inform 7 does not suck. It can do real work in a novel way.”

We’ve just posted the announcement for the next Providence Geek Dinner. Head on over to the Providence Geeks weblog for all the details.