"Open Source" to Drugs and Alcohol

[Chief B-Day Bill and I before
the tipi ceremonies]

First the K's and C's...

The Drug - Kalumet

If you translate the words on the polish Wikipedia page, you will see that a kalumet is what many people refer to as a peace pipe.  The English page translates this word to calumet with a C.  Traditionally, smoking this ceremonial pipe sealed a covenant or treaty.  A common material for calumet pipe bowls is red pipestone (catlinite).  If you search the internet you may even find a pipe stem made by an Apache (Native American group).

[Making Engineering version
of "Rocket Fuel"]

The Alcohol - Karaf

If you translate the words on the dutch Wikipedia page, you will see that a karaf changes to the word Carafe with a C (and an e), which is a decorative bottle.  If you then hit the English link on the left hand side of the page the word changes to decanter, a container used for the decantation of liquid such as wine.  A decanter is used to keep the sediment from a liquid such as wine in the bottom of the the container instead of in your drink.  Unlike the "Rocket Fuel" container pictured to the left, there were many things floating in those drinks.  I'm not sure if there is any real distinction between a carafe and a decanter, but whenever I see something in Stokes labeled with either, they look the same to me.

Before you start thinking I have an interesting life filled with Kalumet's and Karaf's, I'll tell you what this post is really about now.

I signed up for Nabble and gave a PMC (Project Management Committee) from the ASF (Apache Software Foundation) my non-binding +1 vote for the acceptance of Kamulet to join the Apache Incubator.  And no, Apache isn't a native at this point, it consists of many open source projects like Kalumet, which is no longer a physical pipe...kept in a incubator?  Voting lead me to a senior architect of Talend and before I knew it, I was listed as a Initial Committer for the Apache Incubator project, Kalumet.  If this post is starting to sound Greek (Polish or Dutch) to you, see how the ASF works.  Shortly after I faxed along the ICLA (Individual Contributor License Agreement), my name showed up on the ASF Committers Index.  A day or so later Apache's secretary emailed me to let me know they acknowledged the receipt of my ICLA, which was filed in the ASF records.
For those of you who have wondered what the beginning of an open source project looks like, these are some baby steps I've taken:

• Installed a JDK (Standard Edition Java Development Kit) the SE (Standard Edition).  To read more on what a JDK is, see Wikipedia's JDK page.
• Installed Maven - According to their site, "Apache Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool".  More information is listed on their what is Maven page.
• Setup JAVA_HOME, MVN_HOME, and PATH environment variables.  For those of you who do not know, MVN stands for Maven.
• Installed TortoiseSVN - A Windows Apache Subversion client that integrates itself into windows explorer and is used for source control.  You can "checkout" files in a project (such as an Apache project) into a windows folder using this tool.  In my case, the first project I checked out was Karaf, just to see what an Apache project would look like. According to Apache's site Karaf "is a small OSGi based runtime which provides a lightweight container onto which various components and applications can be deployed"
• Installed Pidgeon - I was invited to join the Kalumet community channel (catchy).  So I installed this universal chat client that (more importantly) supports the IRC chat network.  It is located on a server called irc.codehaus.org on the #Kalumet channel.

Other then that I am catching up on buzz words that are mentioned around this post like many of you are probably doing right now after reading this post.

I'd like to thank a Karaf PMC member for bringing this opportunity to me :)

---

[Waiting at MUN for the movie to
start. Image by Jamie Goodyear]

In other Geek news, if you haven't heard of PHD Comics (where PHD stands for Piled Higher and Deeper) I recommend you see the comics.  This month, MUN had a showing of The PHD Movie.  I enjoyed the fact that the characters actually looked like the drawn characters.  Read more about the movie experience from I Code by the Sea.  But for fans who missed it I'd like to add that you already saw the punch lines, as the movie was essentially the first part of the comics.  If you'd like your campus to show the movie,  find out how.

This is me, take it or leave it NL.