Reading

Free Software Conference

On Friday and Saturday it’s time for FSCONS which is a conferences where the goal is to allow:

Top notch programmers, hackers, lawyers, and government representatives will speak to idealistic programmers, hackers, lawyers, companies and ordinary computer users. Spreading the buzz for Free Software in the region and keeping people informed about what is happening are just the very obvious goals.

The speakers at the conference promise to make this an event to remember, not to mention the many visitors who will be attending. The conference is a good mix between hard-core programmers and the activists. In particular I am looking forward to meeting and listening to presenters from organisations like EFF, Wikimedia Sweden, Google & Skolelinux.

Posted on by mklang

Blog Readability Test

This post was edited since it contained a spam application

Here is a cute little application that measures the readability of a blog. My blog made it to post grad level. I am part of the Resistance Studies network and the blog over there is Genius level – but it is obviously the other contributors who lift the blog above postgrad level 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Book, bug crusher & hat or why ebooks fail

Ok, so I have already written about my lack of enthusiasm in the newest ebook reader. That’s putting it mildly. But when I read Steven Poole’s 14 point list about what the ebook  of the future must be able to do in order to beat the book I laughed out loud – so since it is Friday I thought that we all needed a laugh at Amazon’s expense…

So the ebook of the future:

1 It will have an inexhaustible source of energy and never need recharging.

2 It will have resolution as good as print. (No, Amazon, really as good as print.)

3 It will be able to survive coffee and wine spills, days of intense sunlight, dropping in the ocean, light charring, and falling completely into two or more pieces, while still remaining perfectly readable afterwards.

4 It will allow me to scribble notes and/or doodles in the margins, with my choice of mechanical pencil or fine Muji fibre-tip pen (black). (Note, typing in the margins with a crappy thumb keyboard is not an acceptable alternative.)

5 It will allow me to riffle through it and thus get a quick, intuitive look at the book’s argumentative or narrative structure.

6 It will allow me to tear off the corner of a page to write down my phone number (or someone else’s).

7 It will display to other people in coffee shops and on public transport the title of what I am reading, so as to advertise my erudition or quirky sense of humour.

8 It will be physically handsome, not drop-dead fugly. (Note to Amazon: for pity’s sake, next time, head-hunt people from Sony or Apple.)

9 Indeed, the books on it will still be designed, by typesetters and graphic artists, so as to feed our aesthetic pleasure.

10 I will still be able to lend or give books to friends, or swap books in and out of the honour library of much-read novels in a Mediterranean seaside bar.

11 I will be able to use the ebook as a reliable flat surface for rolling cigarettes or other leaf-based refreshments, without worrying about debris shorting the motherboard.

12 When I receive the updated edition of the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, I will be able to press the previous edition into service as a stand for the left-hand music speaker on my desk.

13 The ebook will function, morever, as both bug-crusher and discretionary hat. Placed on my face, it will make a soft roof against the sun on the beach.

14 I will still be able to hurl a fatuous tome such as Jeff Gomez’s Print Is Dead across the room without thereby destroying my ability to read any other books.

Posted on by mklang

Senseless security

Bruce Schneier has an excellent blog, Schneier on Security, where he often lists examples of pointless security but today his list of senseless anti-terror actions was both funny and scary:

The “War on the Unexpected is being fought everywhere.

In Australia:

Bouncers kicked a Melbourne man out of a Cairns pub after paranoid patrons complained that he was reading a book called The Unknown Terrorist.

At the U.S. border with Canada:

A Canadian firetruck responding with lights and sirens to a weekend fire in Rouses Point, New York, was stopped at the U.S. border for about eight minutes, U.S. border officials said Tuesday.[…]

The Canadian firefighters “were asked for IDs,” Trombley said. “I believe they even ran the license plate on the truck to make sure it was legal.”

In the UK:

A man who had gone into a diabetic coma on a bus in Leeds was shot twice with a Taser gun by police who feared he may have been a security threat.

In Maine:

A powdered substance that led to a baggage claim being shut down for nearly six hours at the Portland International Jetport was a mixture of flour and sugar, airport officials said Thursday.

Fear is winning. Refuse to be terrorized, people.

Posted on by mklang

Bad Internet, Good Internet

Andres over at Technollama is reading “The Cult of the Amateur”, by Andrew Keen, the Internet critic. I have been avoiding commenting on this book and on the author. Lots of other have been there already. Actually I will probably eventually get around to reading the book. Anyway, Andres notes that Keen has a bone to pick with the web and provides this Keen quotation which I could help but comment upon:

“When I look at today’s Internet, I mostly see cultural and ethical chaos. I see the eruption of rampant intellectual property theft, extreme pornography, sexual promiscuity, plagiarism, gambling, contempt for order, intellectual inanity, crime, a culture of anonymity, hatred toward authority, incessant spam, and a trash heap of user-generated-content. I see a chaotic humans arrangement with few, if any, formal social pacts.”

Well of course. I agree totally with Keen. Thats the beauty of the Internet – you get what you look for. Keen went looking for garbage and appears shocked when he found it. Big deal. I can do the same in any city in the world from Bombay to Boston from Seoul to Stockholm. What he then does is attempts to explain the world from the empirical garbage he picks up. This is not a reflection of the Internet but only an expression of Keen’s Internet related interests.

Posted on by mklang

Experiences of a semi-nomadic lifestyle

By accepting my new position at Lund’s university I knew I was also accepting a great deal of travel. Before actually beginning the plan was that I would spend 2-3 days a week in Lund, two days in Göteborg, where I maintain a small part of my previous work. Most weekends would be spent in Norway with my girlfriend.

The plan naturally required living in Lund. This turned out to be rather difficult since Lund is a university town (small population – loads of students). Despite this I managed to find a flat with a flatmate. It’s a rather expensive university accommodation – but on the bright side it is in the center of town.

All this was easy enough to plan and predict.

Then came the surprises. Since I spend so little time in any one place:

Buying food for longer periods almost does not work. So I end up eating out a lot more. This is expensive, unhealthy and rather dull in the long run.

There is no point in ordering a morning paper in the letterbox so reading a newspaper becomes a luxury.

The gym is becoming a thing of the past. Running is the activity of choice. However carting around running gear (in particular the shoes) quickly fills any small carrier bag.

Any book, cd, dvd (whatever) you need or want will always be somewhere else.

Travel requires two things organization and patience, the former before and the latter during. Frequent travel requires much more of the same. Missing the bus to work is annoying missing the train is F##cking annoying & embarrassing. I have missed two in the last months.

Since I have always liked words of advice like “Keep your powder dry”, “go west, young man”, and plastics is the future (or something similar in the film The Graduate) here is some advice for others – based upon what I have learned.

– Never take the window seat on trains. In winter the heating is on this side, in summer the heat and light is annoying and if the train is crowded leaving the seat is difficult.
– Extra underwear must be kept at all locations.
– Duplicate (or triplicate) necessities. Shaving kit, after shave, aspirin, running shoes, notebooks, teas, etc etc.
– Make sure you have a bag with all your technical kit. Do not unpack this bag. Keep it close to you at all times. Clean underwear is nothing compared to a mobile with an empty battery.

    Once you start planning and organising things tend to work themselves out rather nicely… Until the next ugly surprise…

    Posted on by mklang

    Students and Technology

    Remember Michael Wesch? He created the excellent video The Machine is Us/ing Us about web2.0. Its message: The Machine is us was very nicely argued. Prof Wesch is back again with another video, A Vision of Students Today, about the student life today. Mainly (but not only) about the relationship between teaching and technology.

    The students surveyed themselves and this resulted in the following statements – but don’t stop here – the film is very much worth watching both for its message and presentation. Here are some of the statements which arise from the survey:

    • I complete 49% of readings assigned to me
    • I will read 8 books this year, 2300 web pages & 1281 facebook profiles
    • I facebook through most of my classes

    The film contains two important quotes – the first my McLuhan (1967)

    Today’s child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects and schedules.

    and the second from 1841 when Josiah F. Bumstead said about the inventor of the blackboard:

    The inventor of the system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind.

    Don’t make the mistake of interpreting Wesch as a luddite. It is very important to be able to criticize technology. The amazing thing is that we are allowed to criticize cars without being accused of luddism but if you are critical towards IT you stand accused of wanting to return to the stone age.

    Wesch is making an important point that teaching should be more relevant and less dependent upon technology. Simply adding technology, or supplying it to students, does not improve teaching, learning or education.

    Prof Wesch Digital Ethnography Blog

    Oh, and while you are there check out their Information R/evolution video.

    Posted on by mklang

    C'mon, catch-up!

    This is not a moan about information overload (or frazzing) but it is scary how many email messages, blog posts, voicemail, facebook messages (etc, etc & etc) are created each day. Usually reading and reacting to messages as and when they appear is an excellent tactic. But going offline for extended periods means that the pile of  (what? data, information, communication, interaction, knowledge or just plain crap) is almost overwhelming.

    Today was spent traveling and doing hamster work (running round the wheel without getting anywhere). Replying to email, voice messages and tonight, the main event, scanning through my favorite blogs. Too many posts. So much stuff I want to comment on. The problem is when the pile of work has grown this much my main impulse is to ignore it.

    But then again there is a masochistic desire to push through the pile of work and get to the other side… Or at least to blog 🙂

    Posted on by mklang

    London, Dublin

    The recent lack of posts in the blog are not a sign of disinterest but more a question of lack of proper access to blogging technology. In the last few days I have been in London and Dublin. London is one of my favourite cities in the world and I try to be there on a regular basis. This trip was a very brief visit and no real time to visit my friends who live there. So if you are reading this post please forgive me and I will be back.

    Besides the usual stuff I managed to go running on Hamstead Heath which was a great early morning experience. Naturally I also managed to do a bit of street art spotting and I came across this one near Oxford circus showing the pointlessness of CCTV.

    cctv.jpg

    I also think I spotted some Banksy from the taxi out but I could not be sure so it could be copies. Dublin is a great city and I have found lots of interesting stuff but I will have to write more later…

    Posted on by mklang

    Information overload is passé

    It used to be called information overload but after reading Jonny’s latest post on the Industrial IT Group blog I have been educated, updated you might even say, that the current term is actually frazzing.*

    Frazzing, short for frantic multitasking, refers to a form of mental channel switching caused by all the distractions we face today: cell phones, sms, e-mails, and loads of web interactions. We should be warned, or so they tell us, about the danger of new technology and the ways in which they disrupt our working life.

    Jonny, you make an interesting observation that a CEO of a tech firm, quoted as saying,

    “There’s plenty of technology. There’s way too much technology, in our opinion, and certainly too much complexity in technology.”

    may in fact be a closet luddite. The argument is – that if people don’t get, or cannot handle, the technology you are secretly against it. Of course the underlying argument is that the luddite’s are wrong and technology is good. You continue:

    Yes, when people are trying to get more done by doing several things at once, it often means that they are able to do nothing particularly well. Technology that is supposed to make us more productive by keeping us connected may only enhance this problem. Then again, technology may be something else than a productivity tool? If people are bored at work and editing their Facebook profile all day, maybe the problem isn’t Facebook?

    Despite the fact that I recently posted a diatribe on web 2.0 in general and Facebook in particular I agree with you. The problem is not the technology but rather our ability to interact and control it (do not interpret this as a slippery slope – the same argument cannot be used for Cocaine).

    The technology is useful and the way in which we interact it defines the way in which we are capable of handling technology without frazzing. But I still have a question: Why aren’t you on Facebook? Your argument would have been more potent if he were there…

    So Jonny, choosing to handle technology by not using it…. isn’t that a bit…. well…. you know…. Luddite?

    —

    * the problem of information overload or frazzing is old and established. In 1984 Jacob Palme wrote an article entitled: “You have 134 unread mail! Do you want to read them now?” In Computer-Based Message Services, H. T. Smith (Ed.), IFIP Proceedings, Elsevier North-Holland, New York.

    Posted on by mklang