elliot winard

Wappalyzer – Install Wappalyzer.

Inspired by Scott’s list of 10 good things from 2010 and refreshed from a week & a half off from work, here’s my list of 13 good things from 2010 - 3 rock ‘n roll, 2 non-profit, 6 technology, 2 general ones.

1. Recess – My new band!  Mary, Kate and Elliot play rock ‘n roll.  4 shows in 2010. Lots more coming in 2011.
2. The Whores, The Pioneers of Seduction, Clinical Trials, Crazy Pills – One of the great things about playing gigs again is the fact that I get to see so much AWESOME local music!  Based on the music from these local 3-piece outfits, rock ‘n roll is alive and well in Brooklyn!
3. Mojo’s night at The Trash Bar – Free PBR from 8-9, great local bands, awesome bartenders, close to the train.
4. Lexington Readers Club.  The LRC doesn’t have a web site yet.  Patrice Covino put together a monthly program where professionals and artists spend an hour a month reading with third-graders,
5. DonorsChoose.  DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that connects public school teachers with people who want to help.  They call it citizen philanthropy.  Yeah, this isn’t totally new for 2010 but they were one of Oprah’s favorite things of 2010.
6. The Monkeysphere Project – Why do you trust the web sites and servers you connect to, the people that you communicate with?   The Monkeysphere and the OpenGPG web-of-trust add add a layer of authenticity to online connections.
7. DebConf 2010. This year DebConf was up at Columbia University in NYC. DebConf is an international gathering of free software advocacy, free software in design & government and the Debian operating system.
8. DropBox. This online backup service allows you to “sync your files online and across your computers automatically”.
9. Ruby on Rails.  I’ve never been a fan of “web development” but the test-driven-development approach and conventions/best-practices that are part of a standard Ruby on Rails projects almost force good coding practices.  Sure beats the head-ache of dealing with other people’s sloppy undocumented code.  Yeah, I still like Django/Python and Perl but the Ruby ecosystem is really sweet.
10. Arduino and open-source hardware.  At the TechCrunch hack-a-thon we stayed up all night and built a “welcome mat” that greets you when you get home, asks about places that you’ve been and people that you may have talked to.
11. Git source-control management.  Also not new for 2010 but git is a pleasure to work with.  Thank goodness I can use git as a front-end to the Subversion repo that we use at work.
12. Samuel the amazing cat.  Yeah, he’s a little crazy but he means well.
13. Babies.  What can I say?  I like hanging out with my sister’s and friends’ kids.  They call me Uncle Elliot.