I just took a few minutes to copy the photos from my time in Cuba over to Flickr.

I spent three weeks in and around Havana while studying abroad after my junior year in college during the summer of 1998.

The scans have long been available at PlayaGirón, but in the recent spirit of freer relationships between the two nations, I figured I’d follow suit and open them up to a broader audience and to tag them, making it easier for folks to find them.

I’ll probably also post the scans of the Cuban stamps that I collected sometime soon.

My sister Mona recently published her first book, “Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide,” just in time for International Women’s Day.

And it seems to be out of stock on Amazon already :)

Cat, my parents, and our family friend Mikey Ward took a trip to The Coop at Harvard for her book signing last week and posted a few of the pics on Flickr.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t record her entire talk on video which is a shame because Mona summarized the book concisely for a general audience.

While the book focuses on the various tactics and strategies that parties and legislatures have followed to achieve better representation for women, I think the end goal is what’s most important:

“A society that is without the voice and vision of a woman is not less feminine. It is less human.” – Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland

So, give it a read… it’s just over 200 pages and has great reviews. While you’re at it, buy a few copies for your friends and relatives too!

Well, the important thing is that I didn’t lose money by trading in my truck for a Prius, and that there are other incentives for developing alternative fuel sources.

I saw this interesting entry in my Web server logs today. It looks like the folks at the Department of Homeland Security may have some time on their hands to share their iTunes libraries among coworkers.

While it’s nice to see they have the spare hardware and bandwidth to set up an enjoyable working environment at the bureau, I worry about the threat posed by a malicious audio file introduced to their internal network.

Lets have a look at something United States Secretary of Homeland Security Michael B. Chertoff said last week, on the occasion National Cyber Security Awareness month:

Question: I just want to ask you what DHS has done to protect the information that the private sector is supplying to DHS through online systems. I am asking this because I am interested in the information that high-risk chemical facilities have submitted to you through your online system and how do we know that that information is secure.

Secretary Chertoff: Generally, we do pay a lot of attention to securing our own systems. I am happy to say a grade that government — I hate it when they grade you, I figured I was done with this in elementary school. It is worse in Washington because people that grade you are often — it is like the parent of your competitor. We do get graded on our security systems and I do think a few years ago we were getting a low grade, two years ago we got a D, last year we got a B+, this year our internal security systems are going to be better than last year’s.

I think we are getting our own house in order, but in a larger sense by reducing the number of entry points to the domains and by putting in a more robust set of protections for detections and prevention, that is going to protect our data.

Of course, this all assumes that the rogue Googler was intending to find instructions on how to set up a system at work, as opposed to doing some personal research for his network at home, but it raises questions nonetheless.

Oh well, at least according to my logs they have their own secure build of Internet Explorer 6…

“Mr Obama’s Internet strategy was at the heart of his plan to win the Democratic nomination, according to expert Phil Noble, who tracks trends in relation to the Internet and politics.”

Well, not exactly this week. I gathered a few links from the end of January that I figured would have some blogworthiness to them.

Instead of dedicating a whole post to each, here they are with a bit of commentary.

First up, because it’s my sister’s first appearance on TV, are Mona‘s remarks to local news in St. Louis on what the female demographic means to this year’s presidential campaigns. While it is a Fox affiliate, congrats are still in order. :)

Yossi Leon announced that Zend Studio for Eclipse was tantalizing close to release. We heard a few more details at NYPHP about its launch. The Zend page carries the official announcement.

If you’re wondering exactly how the new Zend Studio for Eclipse differs from the Eclipse PDT (PHP Development Tools), this chart breaks it all down.

Jon Udell backs up my “.htm is dogsqueeze” argument in his much more eloquent .NET-specific rant, .aspx considered harmful.

I caught a glance of this article on naming the Triborough Bridge for Robert F. Kennedy in the New York Times.

I too am a little weary of the Kennedy badge on so many public buildings, but have an alternate suggestion… Rename the bridge for John F. Kennedy, and rechristen his namesake disaster of an airport for someone worthy of its reputation for mismanagement, George W. Bush.

And finally, though it pains me greatly to see Tom Brady’s name on a Web site I lovingly crafted for all that is good, there is an interesting press release on how IBM and the NFL have gone about making all those random stats available to announcers in real time.

That about wraps it up. Enjoy the weekend, I know I will.

Salsa has long been viewed as the sound of Cuba. With the international success of the Afro-Cuban All Stars and the documentary/album Buena Vista Social Club, this genre has further overshadowed the other major movement in Cuban music: Nueva trova, which is a form of folk driven by political themes.

Silvio Rodríguez is probably the most famous of the nueva trova movement, and there were a few artists outside of Cuba that embraced the sound. “Playa Girón” by Silvio Rodríguez and “Hemos Dicho Basta” by Daniel Viglietti from Uruguay are good examples of this style.

I haven’t listened to those songs in a while, but I stumbled across a new tune from The Nightwatchman called “The Road I Must Travel.” It instantly reminded me how much I enjoyed this genre. After hearing the song on the radio, I dug into the “group” and discovered that it is none other than the solo work of Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave fame.

It’s nice to see folk brought back to its roots and away from the insipid variant which has come to dominate the coffeehouse radio circuit.

The blogosphere was aflutter last week after a slew of nasty comments and death threats were leveled at one of my favorite authors, Kathy Sierra of Head First fame, by one or more anonymous posters on her blog and in other high-profile forums.

Kathy’s reaction to the punks (and the owner’s of the sites themselves) was covered on Slashdot and even hit the BBC. CNN was slated to air a segment on it this morning.

The incident spurred a call for a “Blogger’s Code of Conduct,” and Tim O’Reilly has led the way with a first draft on his blog. Mostly common sense I suppose, but still a good start and cause for reflection when posting or replying to blogs.

In any case, I hope to see Kathy back and writing soon. Readers like myself owe much to her ability to help us understand complex software development concepts through humor, and to drive the point home by involving beer consumption as the logical end goal of any proper sample application.