Self Portraits

Two related items today:

First: Jordi Mallach has gently helped me to the conclusion that I need a hackergotchi. I took a number of pictures with myself with a digital camera and have narrowed it down to a final four that I think are sufficiently embarassing to represent myself to the world. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Second: It struck me that the guy in Candidate Two in my hackergotchi contest looked a whole lot like a major candidate in another major election going on at the moment.

I showed these to Dafydd Harries who made a visual comparison (below) to illustrate the nearly confusing degree similarity.

/copyrighteous/images/mako-kerry.png

In the great tradition of free knowledge and the culture of derivative works, Micah Anderson has already sent me this remix.

Joe Wenderoth’s “Letters to Wendy’s”

I’ve recently picked up Letters to Wendy’s for what must be the third of fourth time. When I first found this book, I ordered it from one of the libraries in my college’s library system. When I went to the pick up the book, the person behind the counter was reading it. She’d liked it so much she had put in a recall for it — before I’d even picked it up! The library’s somewhat bizarre "the second person has precedence" system cut my checkout time down to two weeks and nearly forced a recall war between the two of us. It’s that good.

Letters to Wendy’s is written by Joe Wenderoth and is published by Verse Press (a small press publisher out of Northampton, Massachusetts). It’s pitched as a collection of prose poetry written on Wendy’s [1] comment cards: one-a-day for a little more than a year.

The pieces are often descriptions and reflections on Wenderoth’s experiences dining at Wendy’s. Here’s one example:

November 15, 1996

A beautiful women with a Biggie. Nothing else — just a Biggie. She sat alone; she seemed like she was waiting for someone. What lucky soul could make a beautiful woman with a Biggie wait? Who has that kind of power? What person would a beautiful woman with a Biggie find attractive? Only one answer made sense to me: another beautiful woman with a Biggie.

Another good example in the same vein is this:

February 3, 1997

I tried to order a Biggie coffee today. It couldn’t be done. I felt sort of childish asking, like my request betrayed my ignorance in the matter. Ironically, nothing could be further from the truth; I know — believe me I do — how wrong it is to have a coffee of that size (I know too that I would never have gone through with it). It’s sort of scary, but the truth is: I don’t know why I asked.

Other pieces are more reflections on life that span the gamit from profound to bizarre to mundane to obscene — and any combinations of the above. These reflections tend to be prompted by or refelecting on Wendy’s in some way. A good example would be:

May 20, 1997

I’d like to have my muscles removed. Resume the inanimate. Wendy’s allows me to extract myself from the retarded narcissism of animal thrivings. I sit still in a warm booth and get thought. All movement wants, in the end is stillness. The animate is just the failure of movement to get what it wants — one sleeping body. The road to heaven is paved with meat: the road to meat is not paved at all.

My personal favorites are the ones that are actually suggestions. Some of his suggestions I like more than others. Perhaps my favorite suggestion is this one:

December 26, 1996

A sort of hell-garden would be useful. Often, after a meal, I feel inclined to lay myself out in the elements, as though dead, to be picked apart by birds and dogs. It is surprisingly difficult to find a suitable space. The garden I have in mind would be a simple concrete square right off the dining room, and would offer several boulders which one could drape oneself over and feel properly exposed.

Since I read this two years ago, I’ve found myself gorged with food and wishing for a hell-garden on several occasions.

Many of the pieces are quite raunchy and many make me laugh out loud. Most can communicate to the endeavoring readers one more than one level. Of course, there’s no reason to read more into it than you want. The book is off-the-wall and a lot of fun. I recommend it highly. You can grab it, in a number of forms at the links below.

[1] For those who are fortunate enough to be out of the loop, Wendy’s is a fast food restaurant not unlike McDonald’s. As far as I can tell, they’re famous for square hamburgers and their somewhat ridiculously named Biggie® drinks and fries and a thick drink they serve called a Frosty.

What me? Produced?

On the airplane today, I listened to a radio description of Stuck in the Suburbs, a Disney made-for-TV movie where the major conflict involves a bunch of teen fans stumbling across a misplaced Palm Pilot and uncovering a sinister cover-up in which their boy-band style idol is unoriginal and just a product by the music industry.

I can only assume that Disney — owner of at least two record companies — is aware of the fact that in the real world, boy-band style idols are unoriginal and just a product of the music industry.

By my analysis, this is an example of the music industry using fiction to convince its consumers that the fact that music is an industry is fiction.

Kinky.

Don’t Copy that ©

For years, I’d heard stories about an artist in Rome’s Trastevere district who painted large images of copyright symbols. [1] In addition to what sounded like very interesting art, this seemed to me like a great opportunity.

My thinking went like this:

  • Granted: This artist has a copyright in her paintings of copyright symbols.
  • Granted: If someone were to become inspired by this artist and to, without permission, produce paintings that were not substantially different, these derivative works would be copyright violations.
  • This artist could (successfully!) sue someone for reproducing her reproductions of copyright symbols.
  • That someone, needed to be me.

In addition to sounding like a lot of fun, I would be helping the copyright system get one step closer to a total implosion and raise some awareness in the process. The entire situation would be ridiculous enough that it could trigger news stories. These stories would, explicitly or implicitly, reflect and bring attention to the concept of the copyrightability of ideas and concepts that, commonsensically for most non-copyright-lawyers, should not be copyrightable.

My original plan was simple enough:

  1. Start selling copies of the artist’s copyright symbols.
  2. Get sued.

The problems of course are that that selling paintings seems like a whole lot of work and getting sued kind of sucks.

As I thought about it, I realized that neither of these things was really essential to the plan or the goals; I merely needed to make it appear that the two things were happening:

All I really needed was a website and a press release and permission and participation from the artist.

The final bit was the only tricky party but seeing that this woman was painting copyright symbols and selling them, I figured that chances were good that she had either a good critique of copyright, a good sense of humor, or both.

To make the long story short, I met with the artist in Rome, proposed the idea to her. She liked the idea but wasn’t comfortable following through with it for a number of reasons I had to respect. Many of her other paintings are about media and information — usually about how there is too much. She simply doesn’t see value in using media or IP against itself in this way. We have the same goals but different ideas of tactics.

I still like the idea and would jump at another opportunity although I suspect publishing it here will do something to reduce its effectiveness.

[1] She paints other things as well, many of which I quite like, although it was the copyright symbols that really interested me as far as this story goes.

Every Morning is a Good Morning

I speak Amharic, the major language of Ethiopia. In Amharic, the word for morning is “ጧት” (pronounced twat with the first “t” hard). If you want to say something happens repeatedly, you just say the period of time it occurs in twice. For example: “day” is ቃን (qan) so “every day” would be “ቃን ቃን” (qan qan).

I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation in Amharic about any event occuring ever morning that did not make me blush.

Mundane actions like eating breakfast or brushing ones teeth seem different when you reflect on the fact that you are doing them “ጧት ጧት.”

Putting the “Crazy” in “Crazy Balloon”

I know I’m not the first person to suggest that many classic video games employ extremely annoying and aggravating music to break players’ concentration and make the games more difficult. Other games use music that encourages you to play faster or better.

Crazy Balloon deserves special recognition. The CB designers chose a soundtrack that was sparse, but unusually effective. As far as I can tell, there is only one sound in CB It is triggered when you pop your balloon and it is the closest audio approximation of having a long pin pressed into one’s temple that I’ve ever had the discomfort of witnessing.

I find that having heard this sound several times, I actually play better to avoid hearing it again. Playing a game well makes the experience more enjoyable and repeat playing more likely. This fatal flaw in this logic lies in the fact that the best way not to hear the sound is to not play at all. I suspect this is what most people do.

Crazy Balloon is supported by MAME.

Maximum Recursion Depth Exceeded

I think it’s cliche and unnecessary to mention the ridiculousness of the new film, Alien Versus Predator: a movie based on a video game which is turn based on two movies. I do so only to remind people of a less high profile instance of movie/video recursion released nearly a decade ago:

Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game

SFTMTG was, of course, based on the Jean-Claude film Street Fighter based, of course, on the Street Fighter video game series by Capcom. Luckily, the game designers of SFTMTG were careful to block any further recursion by designing SFTMTG to be so unbelievably bad that no-one, no-where, would ever consider basing a movie on it.

See for yourself. The ROM is supported by MAME.

Graham Seaman’s “The Two Economies”

Last week, I met Graham Seaman while in London and we talked about Oekonux, Hipatia, and lots of ideas about extending principles of Free Software beyond the IP sphere. I finally got around to reading the transcript of Graham Seaman’s talk from last year’s Oekonux conference — of which I’d heard a lot of hype.

The talk covers a lot of ground but, in large part, it is a response to a number of the conversations within Oekonux about the production of material goods under models of free software in major society-changing sort of way. My personal interest (of course) is in the production of non-software knowledge based products but I still find the question interesting.

Like a lot of work in Oekonux, Graham’s piece looks into the future — way into the future. It not only looks at Free Software’s effect on the economics of a particular industry — say, the recording industry — but at major changes to the way that our world’s economic system works. These sorts of questions are intriguing — and certainly fun to think about — but I think they tend to focus so much on some much on the major points that they ignore some of the steps along the way that will shape the way that the everything works.

Personally, I tend to prefer focusing on the more immediate questions like "how do we go from the current situation of highly proprietized production of, say, fiction to free production of fiction." That said, I think this talk is of the best treatments and I think Graham’s analysis goes into depth about the way that Free Software actually works. I think it includes observation, analysis, and critique in a way that — if nothing else — can teach us a good deal about the nature of Free Software production.

So Graham’s talk is all about how the world could be reshaped by the principles of sharing and cooperation that are in a germ form in Free Software. HE first goes through two proposed alternatives (I assume from the Oekonux list before I joined it) and talks about what he thinks can work, what he likes and why. He covers:

  • The idea of using "fabbers" or all purpose production machines.
  • The idea that material goods will become so cheap and easy to produce that nobody really cares about them and all the important issues in society will be about producing immaterial goods.

Graham thought that the idea of fabbers was more science fiction than anything else — and I tend to agree. I’ve read a couple papers that are all about the philosophical and economic consequences of a world when fabbers and nanotechnology turn material goods into information and I, like Graham, just find it implausible. I think Graham does a pretty good job of deflating this idea.

In terms of the second proposal, Graham found the idea believable in a very long-term (hundreds of years) sort of way but still found it unpleasant. He ties that sort of change to mass-poverty, migration and worse and doesn’t feel comfortable going down this path.

Graham’s talk is about a third social solution based on some serious observation of Free Software practice and some deep thinking about the way that the economy of the future will look. Graham says:

It’s becoming increasingly hard for the old system to produce software products. There are many products – especially ones that require cooperation of some kind, that require some kind of sharing, even commercially, that simply can’t be produced under commercial constraints.

Basically, Graham describes a system where Free Software is created and fostered by a system that will undose itself. I’m not totally convinced of his conclusions but I definitely think there is something there.

Even if you have no interest in his conclusions or discussion of the way that Free Software can or will reshape the world. As just one example, Graham talks a connection he saw between Free Software and the business cycle:

Free software is not totally independent of the business cycle. I thought it might be. I went to Freshmeat and got all the stats for Freshmeat of the projects that were added over the life of Freshmeat, to see whether it reflected the current downturn in the economy and in IT and commercial IT in particular, hoping that it would show a line like that. But it didn’t … Now this is very odd for me, because the FLOSS survey said unemployment plays no part in free software. Basically, people in free software don’t get out of work; and my guess, especially for people I’ve noticed, is that people who are out of work treat it as temporary. And the first thing they do is to put more time into writing free software anyway. But it appears that that’s not the case, that free software is still, somehow, dependent on the business cycle.

It’s not totally clear to me — or to Graham — whether or not his data is representative. I think the issue deserves a good hard look.

There’s a lot of good stuff in the article. It’s definitely worth checking out in the Oekonux archives:

atdot.cc

I went ahead and registered both slash.cc and atdot.cc.

The email addresses have been going like hotcakes. I gave my friend Alan Toner at@atdoct.cc. My friend J has jj@atdot.cc. As for me, I’m a little less fortunately named; I’m just mako@atdot.cc.

On the more palindromic side of things:

I’m happy to give these email addresses out so please feel free to suggest the domain to folks; if you think they would enjoy an email address, be sure to keep me in the loop — just CC dotdot@atdot.cc.

Eating Out in London

Eating out in London is expensive. It’s a lot like being very hungry and then getting mugged in a way that leave you no longer hungry.

Scandinavian Blue

At University, I was involved in a volunteer project to redecorate one of the student areas on campus. We wanted to use vibrant colors and wanted to paint one wall purple. The school put its foot down: No Purple.

We managed to find a color called Scandinavian Blue that was, unambiguously, purple. We presented them with purple colored sample chip with Scandinavian blue written on it and they happily.

I like the idea of a paint company that sells many colors under the names of many other colors. A red could be deep sunset violet. A yellow could be sunshine red, a green could be forest orange.

Why the *%?#! did you do that?

I do a lot of things that other people have a hard time understanding the motivation behind. For the record, I think there are three major reasons that motivate me to do things that are otherwise confusing or not apparent to people:

  • I had never done the action in question before.
  • I wanted to be able to be able to (honestly) say that I’d done the action in question.
  • I thought it might get me into a local newspapers’ "I Saw You" classified ads sections.

Vowel Poetry

I like my friend’s Louai’s name a lot. It dawned on me that perhaps this had something to do with the high concentration of vowels in his name. To test the theory, I set out to write poetry with lots of vowels.

Processing an English word list is relatively easy although picking the most appropriate processing strategy proved more challenging.

At first I set out to get words with a high concentration ratio of vowels to consonants. Unfortunately, this tends to privilege shorter words with less letters overall where it is easier to score a high ratio—words like “a” or “are.”. Out of curiosity, I also experimented with words with a high “number of consonants subtracted from number of values” number which gave me a other nice vowel-heavy words—how about a poem set in Ouagadougou?

I don’t claim the words I received were the best words possible but I thought the poetry was quite nice sounding with the high emphasis on vowels (for the sake of simplicity, I included ‘y’ as a vowel).

My first poem was a political poem:

courageously initiate equality: audacious idea
evacuate Europeanization
uneasy euphoria

nay

reinitialize, reevaluate
    obituary
zealously enjoy your opiate
obey

Because too much seriously is just unhealthy, I wrote a rather raunchy sex poem to balance things out:

eyeful: your beauteous aureole, buoyancy
initiate
cautiously auto in your avenue
aerosolize joyous mayonnaise
oily opaque ooze
epilogue: goates inadequate

You can download the perl scripts I used to get the words here:

Use the code as you wish but please send me patches or improvements.

First Post!

Under pressure from a number of people and this crazy “planet” craze that seem so important to my Canonical Non-Nomical employeer and co-workers, I’ve decided to break down and create a web log.

I’ll keep this under wraps for some time to see if it’s something I can stick to. I’ll write about my interests. I suspect that this will center mostly around issues of Free Software, books, art, internationalization, and issues of intellectual property and copyright.

Terrorize Your Friends Drinking Game

Here’s my idea for a drinking game:

Everyone takes a (highly alcoholic) drink of their choice or lines up shots and finds a TV with cable news. Pick a US News Channel (FOX News is particularly good). Now every time one of the talking heads mentions “terror,” “terrorist,” “terrorize” or “terrorism,” everyone takes a drink. Adding a qualifier like “potential” or “suspected” as in “suspected terrorist activity” is a 2x magnifier. Inventing new types of terrorism like “information terrorism” or “commercial terrorism” to terror-ize concepts that have previously never been thought of us “terrorism” is a 3x magnifier.

I’m confident it’s not a unique idea. Suggestions and modifications are welcome.


Originally posted as a diary entry on Kuro5hin. Although Kuro5hin is now defunct, an archived copy of the post includes a series of comments from the Kuro5hin community.