In August of 2007, Jeff Atwood wrote an article about Thirteen Blog Clichés. While there is some irony in the sense that one thing that he said he hated was blogging about blogging, and that’s what that article is, it generally contains some pretty useful information. I’ve tried to follow some of those pieces of advice in the design of my new weblog software. Thus, you won’t find the calendar widget anywhere – no one used it and I didn’t blog enough to have it up there. You’ll also find that I don’t blog about my daily life anymore. Number 3 on the list, however, struck a chord with me. So here’s a bit of info about me and contact information for folks looking to find me.
My name is Patrick Wagstrom and I’m a graduate student in Engineering and Public Policy and Computation, Organizations, and Society at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. I should be finishing my Ph.D. real soon now. You may be able to find some ore information about what I do on my academic page – but I’d guess that’s out of date right now.. The best way to get ahold of me, is, and most likely always be email – patrick@wagstrom.net. Look, I’m even brave enough to put my email address in plain text. You can also reach me on Google Talk at patrick@wagstrom.net.
I don’t use and have no intentions of using services like Jaiku, Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, or whatever the fancy thing of the week is. I’ve got some actual work to do, and in my view most of those are just substitutes to make people think that they’re doing real work. Also, the privacy implications of those services are astounding. Seriously, watch out for your privacy when using those services – or rather your complete loss of privacy.
I’m passionate about open source and developing technology that connects multiple disparite pieces of technology and communities. In particular, I’m really interested in social software and online communities, which is rather ironic given how I shy away from many communities. I’m an active supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, periodically contribute to the GNOME Project, and frequently give talks about digital rights management, online communities, and the future of technology.
This weblog runs a piece of software called PostStreet. It’s a fairly simple python based blogging system that I wrote during a self-imposed 24 Hour Weblog Challenge. Most of the logic and design was done over the course of a 24 hour period, or which only about 12 were actually working on the system.