Hi everyone. On the tail of my hourly comic, I started drawing a bit more. It’s not amazing but I am confident that in five years I might become a decent picture-drawer. Bonus: guess what font I used for the main text!
In an attempt to get myself to write, I am going to purge whatever writing thoughts are floating about, no matter how old they are, and barfing them up for this blag-thing.
“Hi ma’am! The beets are on sale – 75 cents a pound!” Ben points to the sign cheerfully, then pins on a small nametag reading “Ug8″. The businessman’s wife widens her eyes defiantly at Ug8 the Imp and storms off, muttering horrible things that, in passing, do not sound like English words or phrases at all.
Luz is a cool music visualization program that is currently only operational on Linux. I have finally figured out the steps to run the display app (luz_performer.rb) using MacPorts. This guide is a work in progress.
You will need to install XCode 3.1, otherwise the tiff library complains and I haven’t found a way to get past that.
Install ImageMagick via MacPorts. I’ve tried to compile from source and it never seems to work right. Install the rmagick gem afterwards.
Then install libsdl +universal if you’re running an Intel-based Mac. It will default to PPC. Go ahead and install libsdl_mixer, libsdl_image, etc. Also install the rubysdl gem.
Next, you will want to download rcairo and install from source – there is a patch that fixes the “Flag option -o has already been seen!” error you will get if you try to install from the normal gem repository.
sudo port install ImageMagick libsdl +universal libsdl_mixer libsdl_image cairo
sudo gem install rmagick rubysdl
After all that is finished, you can download Luz… except you will get a crazy error due to an SDL / Cocoa leak.
Download and untar sdlboot. If it doesn’t work the first time, run the Makefile and it might magically work. I put main_hook into luz/trunk/ and ran the following command from the sdlboot directory:
./sdlboot ruby -r rubygems ../../luz_performer.rb path to performance
If you have problems or questions, leave a comment.
I was musing over Twitter about why radical communities never talk about being educated in math and science. These are fields covered in privilege and hierarchy, but by taking a radical approach to the teaching and learning of science and math, we can reclaim this important knowledge. Numbers are very important in our daily lives – checking our finances, cooking our food, finding how far we have to travel, making things – and by not acknowledging the existence of math in our lives, it becomes a scary beast. There is the obvious patriarchal math problem – what happens when girls are in a classroom with guys and forced to compete mathmatically? Disaster. Plus, math is taught by rote memorization without actually considering the theory and application. It’s a surefire recipe for disaster. That is not to say that we should make patronizing attempts to integrate math into, say, sewing, but instead create a deeper understanding of what the history and principles of each concept are.
Take for example the discipline of algebra. The fact that it comes to us from the Arabic world is often glossed over, but this could actually be part of an important history and culture lesson. Most people forget that math and science do not exist in a void – the people that create the theories in math and science are part of a certain culture, most often from the dominant culture. Educators must take time to understand the barrier that is created when dominant culture is imposed as “the right way”. After all, science changed radically with the advent of relativity. This is not meant to say that basics shouldn’t be taught – they should be handled with a certain amount of perspective.
Another problem I foresee is that if we do not push all children to explore all disciplines of knowledge, the safety and security of our world is at risk. It is true that companies don’t build things like they used to – when an bad architech designs a bad building and the construction crew uses bad materials and exploited workers, it’s no wonder we have ugly and unsafe buildings. A building is only as good as the sum of its parts. There are radical activists working hard to make sure the construction crew isn’t exploited or the materials are safe and not exploiting nature. But where are the activists teaching the young girl who builds houses instead of playing house? It is one thing to tell privileged men, “Go educate yourself.” That is their responsibility. But young minds need someone to help them to grow intellectually. We need radical teachers who aren’t afraid of math and science who want to have a whole generation of kids who not only see a utopian vision, but are actively constructing it.
YAY! Mindy has been adopted… but not by me. I don’t feel too bad because at least Mindy is going to a good home. However, I am using the funds for a kitten I’m adopting. The kitten was born recently and isn’t ready to go home yet, but I’ll be able to afford to take it to the vet for its kitty shots and eventually spayed/neutered. (Recommendations for a vet in NE Portland would be appreciated.)
I’m also thinking about cat names… and cat food. I was told by a clerk at a local pet supply shop that animals that are put down are taken to a rendering facility to be used in pet food. That isn’t very healthy for cats, as many cats are put down when they are ill. When my cat Roger died, my uncle and I suspected she had some kind of cancerous growth. Imagine if your cat was eating my cat filled with cancer – it seems like a scenario for mad cow disease!
I knew that humans had a rough time with the food supply in the US, constantly being fed things like high fructose corn syrup and overprocessed wheat, but I didn’t realize that cats and dogs are affected by this too. Dogs can be fed a more omnivorous diet, but cats are carnivores. By eating a diet of bad meat and wheat, it’s any wonder our cats are healthy at all. It might explain why so many cats are overweight – they’re consuming a lot of empty calories. Unfortunately the “good” cat food is often expensive, but I’ve heard that you can feed cats on a budget by buying leftover meat from the butcher and grinding it up with bone.
I hope to learn more about the dietary habits of my cat friends. I’ll post updates with information on the blog (whenever I remember).
I attended BarCamp Portland this year in a more participatory role. Considering the resent Rails chauvinist debacle, I thought it was a perfect time to talk about women in tech, as well as the Econix project and PDX Hackerspace. I gave an impromptu 4th session about food and veganism (even though I am not currently vegan).
My three sessions were juggled around a lot on Friday during the planning session. Something I noticed about the unconference board-planning aspect is that it is most useful for people who have already attended an unconference, and people who are willing to be in aggressive leadership roles. The assumption is that a herd is going to race to the board and trample others in order to get their topic on the board, but I noticed this backfired as people were slightly more thoughtful about topics but also more reserved and less self-confident to actually put their ideas out without prior approval. The atmosphere was tinged with nervousness, as many people there tend to be wallflowers. It was a bit surreal. I did my best to get other people participating without being overbearing, though I’m not sure the format in this iteration is the best. It makes me wonder if there can’t be a less confrontational version of this, or if we can create friendly negotiation from the confrontations.
I supervised this session with Di-Ann from Platial. She has started a map-based local bartering system with her neighbors called Urban Traders. This session made me realize that people in Portland want to feel connected to each other in a tangible way but are still experimenting to find the best way to both encourage a real local economy and a sense of community. I took notes and did a reasonably good job.
On Friday I wanted to make sure this panel was created and wasn’t sure who would step up to host it, so I went ahead and hosted it. I figured it would be similar to last year’s that took place in the lobby, where a bunch of women sat around and talked about their experiences. The session kept moving around and by the time I got to eat lunch, someone told me I was hosting it in the forum. I was rather shocked that people were showing up in large numbers but was unable to be stressed or nervous about it. I simply told people what I had been thinking about on the way to BarCamp that Saturday, and remembered words of encouragement from my grandma. Since the panel, people have come up to me quite a bit to talk about their experiences and thoughts. I appreciate it a lot, though I am still eager to use the energy to create a positive experience for young women of color. Young women are not encouraged enough to explore their technological desires, or even be allowed to like science and math. The same patriarchy is too involved in the internet, and the internet cannot evolve without people who think differently forging new paths with their ideas.
I’m involved in the creation of a space for people in the community to hack together. So far the project is very male-centric, but we are looking to create it as a co-op. I am still working on formulating most of the details. It is an experiment in creating a new business, which is new for me. Hopefully the hackerspace can be a place where young women can come and hack together.
This panel was not as exciting. By this time, I was completely mentally exhausted and managed to hijack the session into a talk about veganism. I’m now much more commited to becoming vegan than before, and it was a nice way to recenter myself. Plus, I met some really cool people.
