sudo /usr/bin/xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

2. Under Preferences > Diff, set the merge tool to ‘Other’, the merge command to

opendiff 

and the arguments to

$LOCAL $REMOTE -merge $MERGED

3. ???
4. Profit!

The construction process was pretty arduous. I isolated the piece into its elements, which were the two tin cans and a central Arduino that would switch between the two. After reading two electronics books partway and building a dud of an intercom circuit, I went back to the source of the problem by heeding Jason from Dorkbot’s advice – build an amplifier.

I started with a bare circuitboard, an LM386, and the datasheet. I tried a few of the circuit suggestions in the datasheet and even accidentally built a radio for an hour. I did run into a strange problem in which I found out the AW5K relay’s datasheet was inconsistent with how the relay actually worked, so once I flipped some wires around it was fine. I added a button to switch the relay manually since I didn’t have the tin cans ready. The gain was crazy and causing my cheap speakers to have a high-pitched beep tone, so I replaced the single resistor with a 10k potentiometer (the kind of knobs you find on volume switches).

Next was constructing the can. I used a Dorkboard connected to the insides of a Wii Nunchuck that I took apart. I tried using Todbot’s code, but since there was no position data and the code was a mess, I scrapped it for a thrice-adapted header file. I simply read the position from the can and had the Dorkboard set the outgoing pins high or low based to show that it was ready to talk and to listen, and have the Arduino between the two cans decide which one gets to talk or listen.

The middle part was the hardest. I used CAT5 (networking) cable to carry the power and signal on each can to the central Arduino, which was also connected to the breadboard and was carrying 5 volts of power to the whole circuit. The relay was then connected to a Darlington transistor and then wired into the Arduino. I’m still uncertain of the approach in logic I took, but you can see the code for yourself.

I am considering reworking the hardware and software after I take it out of the gallery, and finishing my original USB tin can idea as well. Overall, I am satisfied with the end result, and proud that I taught myself basic electronics in two months.

I’m co-teaching the Induction this year, showing people how to construct their own Dorkboard. If you are interested in making lights blink, pigs fly or other assorted electrical craziness and live in Portland, come on down!
RSVP at Tempus Dictum. Some of the proceeds go to feeding you pizza for lunch.

“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.

You will need to install XCode 3.1, otherwise the tiff library complains and I haven’t found a way to get past that.

Step 1

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.

Step 2:

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.

All those commands:

sudo port install ImageMagick libsdl +universal libsdl_mixer libsdl_image cairo
sudo gem install rmagick rubysdl

Step 3

You will need to install Bazaar to download Luz from the repository. There are installers on the website, or you can type sudo port install bzr in the Terminal.

Step 4

Download Luz by typing:
bzr co --lightweight lp:~ian-mcintosh/luz/trunk luz
DO NOT follow the installation instructions on the website — those are for a computer running Linux.

Step 5

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.

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.

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.

Econix and Local Bartering (notes)

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.

Women + Tech == Yay! (notes)

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.

PDX Hackerspace (notes)

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.

Food (notes)

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.

“Helvetica” frequently mentioned how powerful fonts are when creating an experience for the onlooker. I made the next logical step and decided to see what happened when I replaced Chican@-related posters with variations of Helvetica to see what the effect would be. The original is on the left, the variation is on the right, and the images link to the source.

The first image was taking a basic flier to see what the effect was. The original font used creates a more urgent need, whereas Helvetica makes the poster blend into the background. Source: justseeds.org

The second image was interesting as I was substituting a serif font for Helvetica. It completely destroys the effect of an strong, earthy woman. Source: Digindad Rebelde

The third flier looses all punch when substituted with Helvetica. Since it is also using a serif font, it looks inappropriate. Admittedly, my edit job on this picture could have been better. Source: Digindad Rebelde

The final picture, an iconic poster for the UFW, has been stripped of its meaning completely when using Helvetica Neue Condensed Bold. The perfect symmetry of the hand-drawn letters and the (somewhat sexist) way that the word “grapes” and the grape juice is implicating rape is very powerful. The substitution destroys the picture completely. Source: Xavier Montes

(Edit. I forgot to draw a conclusion.)
The next logical step is that when Helvetica is constantly in our environment, the lack of cultural cues is disturbing. Our culture has been slowly whitewashed by the starkness of Helvetica. It is everywhere, keeping us from expressing our insides.

The most recent event comes from the Golden Gate Ruby Conference. I did not attend, but merely heard about it through a mailing list, which pointed me to a blog post by attendee Sarah Allen. I can only judge through the slides online, which made my stomach turn. I wrote about my initial reaction on the mailing list. Now that I have seen all the slides and read most of the comments on Allen’s blog post, I can determine two things. One is that the slideshow itself is difficult to follow and contains very little useful information. With all the pictures, it makes the case for why Rubyists should use CouchDB very weak. I am actually interested in CouchDB, but it’s a difficult presentation to wade through.

The bigger issue is the actual pictures. It is one thing to have photographs of women in a slideshow, but many of the pictures depicted sexual acts where women were merely sexual objects for men to lust over. The appropriateness of having mildly graphic pictures in a conference is debatable, but the content of the acts were objectionable. None of the pictures depicted women being strong and sexy, and all were very heteronormative.

The fact that Matt Aimonetti doesn’t understand why his slideshow was sexist is indicative of a deeper problem within the tech community. I ran into the same problem at Ignite Portland 5 with Pete Grillo’s presentation that irked me because of his overuse of female sexuality to talk about making omelets. There is a creepy factor when men appropriate women’s sexuality.

At the same time, I don’t think these presentations should be screened. Censorship will not change people’s minds or make them explore themselves. In fact, by letting these things out in the open, we in the tech community should use this as a point of discussion and perhaps even chastising. It is difficult for men to examine their own privilege because it manifests itself in complicated ways. Men also have to be willing to listen critically to what others are saying. I suspect the recent incident has confused some people, like DHH thinking it is the explicit imagery or “R rated” content that bothers people. It’s the fact that women are not being given agency in their own community. There are plenty of women, myself included, that are a bit baudy in nature, but we are allowed to own our personality. The images do not reflect strong women – they are reflections of men’s desires and insecurities.

A more pro-active approach is for the tech community to actively seek out tech women for conferences or to work on open source projects. A topic that has come up many times in WoC blogs is the pressure put on women to change others’ attitudes about sexism, putting the onus squarely on the subjugated party. What should be happening is that women are continually reached out to or encouraged to start their own projects. Unless the balance of communication is ironed out, women programmers should not be expected to constantly seek out the tech community.

Fellow Rubyist Audrey Eschright is also hoping the community will sort itself out, even though her and I both face marginalisation. The Ruby community has a strange level of machismo that makes it difficult for me to keep engaged with the language or to even pair program with others. I do feel the same uneasy feeling when I go to some tech events. I often feel like the recipient of too much heterosexual male attention. It’s nice to know that people find me attractive, but after a while the creepy factor tends to multiply. I find that formerly identifying as FTM has helped me, and my ambiguously male name has given me a little more leverage when meeting for jobs (until they call me on the phone, when they are greeted by a squeaky-voiced girl).

I realize that feminism, for many people, is a dirty word. However, there has to be some kind of feminist-hacktivist mentality that spreads to others in order for everyone to be on an even plane. We can’t just ignore the problem and hope it goes away – we’re techies, it’s a problem that we can solve if we try.

All in all, I think my experiment in crowdsourced dating was quite fun, even if it wasn’t a “real” date by normal standards. I hope to do this again sometime, as I enjoy spending quality time with the people I’m getting to know in Portland.

My dream seemed bizarre at first until I got off my makeshift bed and stared at my bike, now in working order from its visit to the mechanic. The other day I watched Obama on the Tonight Show and was disturbed by his mention of cars: (transcript from New York Times)

And right now cars, for example, we know that typically you need about 14 million cars for this population –- and right now only 9 million are being sold every year. So at some point those inventories are going to run down and people are going to start buying cars again.

[...] It’s spectacular what is being down now with plug-in hybrids, where not only are you getting the hybrid technology, but now you can plug it in at home in your garage. And potentially we could see cars getting 150 miles to a gallon of gas.

And when you get home you could potentially sell the energy in your car back into the grid, back to your utility and get money.

So we’re going to be investing billions of dollars in research and development around these technologies. [...] That’s a whole new level of technology. That’s what’s going to create the auto industry of the future. That’s where we’re going to win back manufacturing. But right now we’re behind.

These batteries are being made in Japan –- just like wind power is being made in Europe. We need to bring that here, and that’s part of what my budget and part of what our Recovery Act is all about.

I intend to address this point by point. Americans don’t need 14 million cars. Because the structure of most roads since the 1950s has been concentrated on creating driveable towns (as opposed to walkable towns) and connecting towns via highways (commuting), the need is one that has been imposed on us. By living in a society where goods are tailored to the car (such as fast food and heavy economy-sized containers), Americans are further shackled into a car lifestyle. Car mobility is both infinite, as a car driver has freedom of the road, and shackled, because the driver is stuck in a metal box.

When exactly are people going to buy new cars? Many houses have been foreclosed on. People are losing their jobs or their salaries are shrinking, and the actual value of money is slowly being deprecated by the printing of more money. I don’t foresee the crisis getting better, and at this time, biking and walking are better uses of money. I leave out public transportation on purpose – I am lucky to live in Portland, OR, where the public transportation is relatively good but they are facing cutbacks. Other cities have worse public transportation.

Obama’s statements about hybrid cars are very strange, as the technology for efficient electric vehicles already exists, but was strangled to death in the state of California as a combined effort by the state, Big Oil, and GM. GM previously crippled the train-based city transit system in Los Angeles in the 1940s by buying out the rail companies and ripped out the tracks for highways, and the efficient train systems were replaced by gasoline-powered busses. I also don’t like the idea of an auto industry of the future. Americans are well known for their innovative spirit – why do we not have fantastic alternative transportation methods, or adapting our old urban areas to be walkable and neighborhood-friendly?

The answer is complicated. I suspect there are many distinct elements at play, not all necessarily working in concert with each other, but often times achieving similar goals. Smaller, less aggressive companies benefit from aligning themselves with large multinationals. However, the end result is quite clear to see – pandemic obesity and Type II diabetes, air pollution, unsustainable neighborhoods, a disconnect from the origins of our food, and a strange feeling of unhappiness (road rage) that settles into people’s hearts on the road.

The solution to our car problem is not easy, but communities can work together to build a new infrastructure to make it easy for people to rely on non-vehicular transportation. I have talked to people who are often scared of being on a bike because of traffic. Admittedly it still scares me sometimes, but it is a risk I take. I am much safer cycling than I am behind the wheel of a car – I am a horrible driver and find it easy to get distracted when the only motions I need to make are wheel-turning and pedal-pressing. It’s easy to ignore the smell of the environment, the sounds of conversation, birds chirping, and flowers blooming when you’re hurtling along at 40mph. I am not as fast as that, but I pay more attention to the road when I can actually put my feet on the ground. I am healthier and more physically fit now than I have been, barring exposure to new allergens in Oregon. Regular physical exercise helps to keep blood sugar levels in check, and using a bike or walking produces zero emissions.

Perhaps the strangest aspect that I have run into is the unhappiness of drivers on the road. It seems when people lock themselves into their self-contained metal boxes, they become very angry and impatient and don’t smile at others, even on beautiful days. I understand that everyone has a bad day, but when I encounter other cyclists I smile and wave. I can sing out loud and I can even say hi to pedestrians. It’s easier to have a nice day when you are forced to interact with people. It makes you aware of the world. When I stop at an intersection I can look at the grass and weeds growing, notice the sunset and the cute yards around me. When it rains I enjoy it because I feel like I am part of the rainy atmosphere. And the smells! It makes me more aware of good smells like flowers and food, and aware of the gross sewage smell that occasionally pervades the streets. The roadkill is more of a bother, and sometimes I yell at the cats and squirrels and people to watch out for me. I am part of the city ebb and flow of humans, albeit going slightly faster, something a car could never replace.