Dougma (dŭg·mə) n.

Well no bears this time, and no pictures yet either. We had a fun time at our annual first camping of the year, and Sarah had a blast. The weather was perfect. Everything went great. Josh was a great big brother showing Sarah the ropes and introducing her to everyone. One of the highlights was playing tag with Josh, his friend Quit and my friends Matt and Deidra.

But for some reason I just did not relax. I didn’t get to spend as much time with friends or just vegging on the beach as I wanted, and I really have no one to blame but myself. Part of the problem is that I just could not shut my brain off. Last year I got a notebook, and it ended up being my ‘PyCon’ notebook. This year, I just didn’t seem to have time, oddly enough. Code freeze at work was Friday and that, I am sure, didn’t help. The official fork will most likely be this upcoming Friday.

I have had no time to work on any of my python projects, and it is driving me crazy. There are so many fantastic things happening with django-survey, and Pinax is picking up steam, I need to put the old PyCon ’08 stuff into archival mode, and start up ’09. There is some very very interesting stuff going on with the DFW Python group that I want to help out on as well. There are so many fantastic things being worked on right now by incredible people, and I feel a down right claustrophobic not being able to do anything myself. I only been able to attend one Boston Python Meetup so far this year!

It looks like I will be in Montanna the first week of July this year (my anual pre-PyCon-Tech kickoff-kickoff). Barring any project ‘issues‘ I hope to get my act together then (with respect to PyCon software for 2009). If there are any pythonistas in the Missoula area, please send me an e-mail! For now I guess I should get back to unpacking the car.

Andy Updegrove has just posted about The Hague Decloration. I received a phone call about it this morning, and I believe it is one of the most important declarations on human rights to come along in quite some time. Please go read up on this. It may at first appear that technology and the standards those technologies are based on are a very meta-level aspect to human rights as apposed to the men in the night. Recent issues with Google, Yahoo, and Cuba, and South Africa have shown us otherwise. Please read Andy’s post en toto.

When one thinks of international human rights, one thinks of The Hague – home of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and the situs of an increasing number of Tribunals chartered to redress the assaults on human dignity that inexcusably continue to plague this planet.  It is therefore appropriate that The Hague has been chosen to witness yet another pronouncement in defense of human rights.  That pronouncement has been titled The Hague Declaration by the new international group, called the Digital Standards Organization (“Digistan,” for short), that crafted it.  In this blog entry, I’ll talk about what the Declaration is all about, and what it is intended to achieve.

The basic premise is that as more and more of our basic freedoms (speech, assembly, interaction with government, and so on) move from the real to the virtual world, care must be taken to ensure that our ability to exercise these freedoms is not inadvertently eroded or lost.  And on the opportunity side, the Internet and the Web provide incredible and unique ways to bring the benefits heretofore enjoyed only in developed countries to those struggling for equality of opportunity in emerging countries.

– Andy Updegrove (Consortium Info Blog) ‘Introducing The Hague Declaration‘