Truman-Esque
My day in photos:
I brought my friend Kim a sampling of my favorite breakfast teas.
I enjoyed playing with her kitten for a while…
Then headed to the pet store to get cat food for MY cats.
I saw some ferrets that looked dead, but I promise, they were still breathing.
Actually, I know you don’t care. My being stuck in traffic is of no interest to anyone unless it provides useful information, say about a badly designed intersection. I am writing this from my cell phone, to illustrate a point.
It seems like every form of new media has gone through a phase of self absorbtion, where the primary thing it was used for was self description, rather than self expression. In its infancy, the web was made up of government pages and countless personal websites saying “this is who I am!” Twitter has been accused of being a format that encourages drivel, “at the store,” “in the can,” and while there is still some of that around, it is now finding a unique niche for microblogging in the communication age. I don’t Twitter that I’m having dinner, but I might send out a twitpic of a beautifully presented plate or a restaraunt’s funky lights.
Mobile blogging could emerge as “this is what I’m doing now, how bout now?” The inane use however does not mean that mobile blogging doesn’t have real uses, like quick thoughts about a craft or cooking project at a friend’s house or photos on the scene of a breaking event.
I use mobile blogging when I’m travling too far or often to sit down and write a real post. News bloggers can use mobile blogging to give more instantaneous reports than a computer allows, because even a laptop requires setup and space to think. Meanwhile the mobile journalist has the room for more in depth reactions then you’ll find in 140 characters.
Mech Tree
I know, it’s been weeks since I’ve posted, and now I’m just giving you another drawing, but this is all I’ve had time for lately!
The most recent Sugar Frosted Goodness was “sketch” and I was excited because I figured even when I’m busy I can find time to do a sketch. I was mostly wrong, the category was last week’s, but I figured I might as well finish it anyway.
*I’ve been interested lately in steamer-punk art and sculpture. I realize I’m coming a bit late to the trend, but I’m completely intruiged by the combination of industrial elements and victorian ornament. I’ve been wanting to do some kind of drawing in the style, but the elements of steamer-punk; archetectural and mechanical, are exactly the kinds of things I don’t have experience drawing. 
I’m far more comfortable drawing people and organic objects, so I figured instead of leaping straight in, I’d take a lesson from Mattias and steampunk up something I was more comfortable with. (If you haven’t seen Mattias’s Baroque Star Wars I highly recommend it, particularly the Death Star.) I’ve done this before on a small scale with a metal lobster (not to be mistaken for a rock lobster), but a tree was a much larger undertaking.
It took for freaking ever, possibly nullifying the time benefit of doing a “sketch.” Most tedious were the “leaves” which were inspired by Solio portable chargers, which are sort of flower or leaf shaped, and being solar chargers, do in fact serve the same purpose as leaves.
For some reason I wanted the roots to include wheels, and they are therefor obviously not rooted at all. Matt insists that the wheels make it a car, and he’s probably right, but I don’t see why it can’t be a tree as well. Now that I’ve got it on the computer I can see that I’ve left a few areas unfinished (trailing wire, needs extra wheels, etc.) so maybe I’ll post the final version once I finish.
The visual charm of steamer-punk for me is that it has aspects of both design and art. Steamer-punk drawings remind me of the da Vinci sketches of crazy flying bicycles. At some point I’d like to start making show type art (as opposed to illustrative art) which exploits that design visual. It probably won’t be steamer-punk, but playing with that style is a nice way to stretch my skills, and also much more satisfying than other kinds of practice, like say, still lifes. Bleagh.
*Click on main image for larger version.
Until Further Notice
Duh, I’m an idiot. Sketches that I meant to attach at the end of previous post will be added sometime tomorrow instead. Maybe I’ll even fix a few of the typos.
Smoocon Wrap Up
Last weekend I went to a hacker convention in Washington DC. I am not a hacker.
When I first met Matt he described his job as: “computer ninja.” He does everything from hacking wireless systems to physically breaking into buildings, and he does it legally, for money! He goes to hacker conventions a few times a year, often I’ll tag along because even though I only understand about a quarter of what they’re talking about, the people are interesting and the more theoretical talks are fascinating. Last year when he went to Shmoocon I went along for the ride, but didn’t got to the convention. The hotel is in a super safe part of DC and there’s a ton to do in the city by myself. Last year I meant to walk down to Dupont Circle and be all touristy, but mostly ended up hanging out at the zoo. I love zoos.
The talks last year sounded interesting enough that I wished I’d been able to attend some of them, and this year, Matt ended up giving one of the talks, so hacker or not, going to Shmoocon was a must. Shmoo tickets are generally a little pricey, not to mention close to impossible to get, to justify buying one for someone who won’t really understand what’s going on (aka: me). Fortunately Matt had already purchased his ticket when he found out he was speaking, so when he got his comp for speaking, we had an extra.
I talk about being a technical idiot, but the truth is I generally understand enough to at least keep my head above water. I’m not a hacker, but I am a weirdo, so I fit in pretty well. The keynote was given by an academic named Matt Blaze (not to be confused with my husband, Matt Neely), talking about what a horrible idea wire tapping is. Specificly, he pointed out that the ethical issues were completely irrelevant because the technical problems were so horrendous that something horrible is (and has) bound to happen. The talk pointed out several specific issues that I’d never considered, all of which go along with my usual conception of a disjointed, bullheaded government. I think that’s not a reflection on any particular administration, it’s just bureaucracy. He’s a good speaker and it was an encouraging way to start the day.
That evening Matt (my Matt), as part of Security Justice (a local security podcast) was part of a joint podcast with several other security podcasters. It was interesting to watch the process but I think it could have gone better. There were about fifty spectators or so, and we were repeatedly told, at the beginning, to keep silent, or we’d ruin the podcast. So we watched in silence (more or less) to recording that we unfortunately couldn’t hear. There were no speakers set up, or anyway way for us to have a decent idea what was going on. Although the podcasters were all speaking into microphones for the recording, we could hear only their normal, un-amplified voices. Often or not, that wasn’t enough. They gave out prizes throughout, and while I suppose that was cool for the people who got prizes, it sort of distracted from the actual podcast. Lastly, I think since they were recording in front of an audience, it would have been nice if they’d had some way for the audience to participate in the discussion (what little we could hear of it), beyond clowning for prizes. It was still interesting, and I think the actual podcast should be decent, I just thought there was a lot of room for improvement.
Matt gave his talk at ten the next morning. He ROCKED. I’m honestly not just saying that because he’s my husband, his talk was great, even though I’ve heard most of it in bits and pieces before.
The talk was on using radio equipment to break into a client site. He talked about hearing guard information and tapping into headsets to hear valuable information. I think this is pretty cool: he’s using what most people consider antiquated equipment. Radios are popular among computer geeks because they’re geeks, not because most of them actually consider them useful. He also had some awesome stories of times he’d actually used these techniques, which made it that much better. Because radios are pretty much ignored however, Matt presented a fairly new direction of attack. Considering the packed room and positive feedback he’s getting, I think I’m not the only one who was impressed.
After Matt’s talk I went to a martial arts demo in the hallway. It’s stretching parameters to make this fit in a hacker convention, but I think it qualifies simply by being “cool.” I found the demo interesting, not half because 70 percent of the attendants had some kind of experience with martial arts already. It was entertaining to listen to the conversations after of: “no, you should do it this way,” and “why did you do this? doesn’t this work better?” I myself have done several years of martial arts, but am by no means an expert, so I mostly kept my mouth shut (a rarity I assure you) and watched the show.
I avoided what seemed to be the super technical hacking talks. I could care less about new hacking tools, and I wouldn’t understand the more defensive geared talks. Instead I went to a talk on “Hacking the Genome.” The speaker was good, I enjoyed the first half of the talk immensely. I liked the idea of comparing gene biology to cryptography, a juxtaposition that ought to be obvious I suppose, but I’d never considered it. About halfway through the talk got to be a bit too technical for me, but I had enough to think about to keep myself entertained.
There was a great talk given by lawyer Tyler Pitchford on the laws surrounding the 4th amendment (he also talked briefly about the 5th amendment). This was right up my alley: my iphone has the constitution app installed, and before that I carried around a pocket constitution. I get very annoyed when people talk about their “constitutional right” to do things that aren’t actually in the constitution, so I keep it handy so I can make them look stupid (because I’m that kind of person).
This talk was all about when and what police can search on your computer. He used case studies to show different examples. The one I remember best is: the police are searching for a robber in your neighborhood and ask for permission to search your apartment. You give it, and while they’re searching they notice a file on your screen called: “My illegal hacking files.” The open the file, discover that it’s only porn, but on searching the rest of your computer, find several scary illegal hacker files on other parts of your computer. As I understood it, anything in the initial file would be admissible in court because it was in “plain sight” while the files found under further searching would not, because they were not covered in the scope of permission you granted them. Lots of stuff like that, a discussion on whether passwords are protected by the fifth amendment, and a heavy concentration on border laws.
The last talk of the day, and my favorite (aside from Matt) wasn’t hacker related at all. It was “Storming the Ivy Tower,” by Sandy Clark (or “Mouse”). This talk was all about how hackers can use their skills (both technical and social engineering) to get into school (undergrad or grad). The only criticism I have is that I think Mouse may have misjudged her audience– I may be mistaken but I don’t think there were many high schoolers in the audience, and she spent about twenty minutes talking about how to get into college from high school. I still found it interesting since I’ll have kids someday, and, since academia moves at a glacial pace (I should know) I doubt much will have changed in twenty years in terms of admissions. Nobody else seemed to be bored by it, so I don’t think it’s a big deal.
The rest of the talk was probably more relevant to Matt than me. It was all about how to convert real life experience to academic credit, how to change hacker, convention style talks and papers (like Matt gives) into peer reviewed academic papers, how to find the right program, etc. It was geared specifically at people looking into computer science degrees, but much of it could easily have applied to other areas. She included her own academic history which was interesting and encouraging.
Aside from all the talks, Shmoocon is mainly an excuse for hackers to get together and go wild in their geeky, low alcohol tolerance, ways. Matt actually wore a kilt (from Utilikilt in Seattle) the whole weekend, which made it easy for people to pick him out. And yes, he was wearing it “regimental style.”
Shmoocon is fun and relaxing, even for me, not knowing much about hacking. I did skip the second day of talks, not understanding any of the titles I guessed I wouldn’t understand the content either, so I got my National Zoo fix. I even managed to make it back in time for closing remarks, which included lots of “Shmooballs” thrown at the speakers, prizes (I snagged a book, the Manga Guide to Statistics???) and general silliness. It was a good weekend.
Road to Hackers
I finished the rewrites on my novel at around 11 last night. I’m sure I’ll have more work to do once my thesis advisors are done with the manuscript, but for now, I feel like it’s a book I would pay to read. Right now is not the best time to look for a publishing contract, but I’m optimistic. I’ll be defending sometime in March.
Currently on my way to Shmoocon, a hacker convention in DC. Matt is giving a talk tomorrow on atracking a business (legally) using radios. Won’t be posting until I get home because all the nearby wireless networks will likely be hacked, just waiting for suckers.
Five Favorite Free Iphone Apps (so far)
I’ve had my iphone for a week now, and so far I’ve managed not to spend any money on apps. I did have a heart stopping moment when I got a “bill” for my “purchases” but it turns out that itunes sends you a tally of all your downloads even if they’re free. This doesn’t seem to be true for podcasts, so I’m not sure why they do it for apps. Anyway.
1. My favorite discovery, even though so far I haven’t used it much, is Stanza. Stanza essentially turns my iphone into a slightly smaller (but still perfectly readable) Kindle. I can download tons of free post-copyright books (and a few that I’m not sure why they’re free) from various sites and, if I feel the need, I can go into Fictionwise and buy more popular/recent stuff. I don’t see this replacing books for me because I love books, (and anyone who loves books doesn’t need an explanation here) but it’s good to know that the next time I’m stuck at an airport without a book, I can sit down and find something with Stanza. Also? My iphone was cheaper than a Kindle. Naner naner naner!
2. Next is the iChing. I should warn you this is a bit silly, but fun. Someone digitized the I Ching, which is, as far as I can tell, a Chinese version of Tarot. It uses either coins or yarrow stalks or both (not entirely clear) to sort of clarify a question. As with Tarot, it can be used as a form of divination, or simply as a way to organize the user’s mind. I did a shot in the dark search for this after reading Man in the High Castle and was happily surprised to find something. Lest I offend anyone, I want to clarify here, I use the word silly not in reference to the Chinese text, but to the electronic, super-simplified version.
3. One of my pet peeves is when people talk about their “constitutional right” to multitudes of things that are not in fact constitutionally protected. For this reason, I actually carry a pocket constitution at all times (I’m not kidding). Now, I have the Constitution app on my iphone, and I no longer need to do that. Though I have to wonder if an iphone might carry less authority than even a miniature version of a paper constitution.
4. Knowhow (lite) is the only game that makes my list, though I have several other free games on my iphone that I play often. This is essentially an electronic version of the game Rush Hour. It’s got some issues, it’s not as sensitive say as Marble Mash, but it’s a good tricky game that I haven’t seen mentioned much. Other games of note: Mazefinger, Topple, Trace and the afore mentioned Marble Mash. I also enjoy Dots Free, mainly for nostalgic reasons.
5. Of these top five, Public Radio is probably the app I’ve used most so far. One of my reservations about buying an iphone was that I didn’t want to have to pay a hundred dollars (or whatever ridiculous amount they’re charging these days) to add a radio tuner to my music player. I welcome with open arms the flight of the much lighter weight mp3s over CDs, but I miss being able to tune into 90.3 when I’m in the middle of a good story. I didn’t know about Public Radio when I bought my iphone, but it pretty much satisfied one of my largest concerns.
So that’s it for now. I’m sure I’ll have more favorites in the future but if you’ve got an iphone, be sure to check out these at least. After all, they’re free, so what’s the harm? Note: I accept no responsibility for any opposing effects new iphone apps may have contrary to the ADHD box.
*Photo from Flickr user Powerbooktrance.
$100 Laptop Plug
And speaking of laptops…
Actually, it’s $200, and for those of us in rich countries it’s $400. I’m talking of course, about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Get one, Give one deal.
I did a whole analytical post on the design of these tiny laptops last year, so I won’t repeat myself with full details. About their design I will simply say that they are cute, green (in color, not sure about eco) and look like they were made by fisher-price (they’re not). Judging by their appearance they should be pretty durable, a necessity for computers designed for children in any country.
The philosophy behind this computer is that the best way to educate kids in developing countries is to give them super intuitive computers and let them teach themselves. The software is designed to help kids learn as they go, with simple graphics and interface. I believe the operating system is open source, so as the kids grow, learning to program along the way, they can change it to suit their needs. To me, that sounds like a good deal for kids of this country as well.
I haven’t had a chance to play with one, but I ran into a guy in the Chicago train station who had one. He wasn’t at all tecky, and claimed that it was very easy to use and understand (which it would have to be). Basically, these are machines that are meant to be teachers. Learning is mostly self directed, but with ample opportunities for cooperation using the kid friendly graphic network.
As I understand it they aren’t particularly powerful. Since the purpose isn’t to run high quality graphics or store lots of data, it doesn’t need to be. For $400 dollars you can buy a laptop that is much more powerful than this one, but I’m pretty sure you can’t buy a computer that is more suited to a child’s needs for any amount. It was just as cute in person as it is in pictures, but one thing to note for any adults that might want to use them: the keyboards are TINY.
I’m mentioning this deal is because last year, they stopped it immediately after Christmas, with no guarantee that they would bring it back. That meant that while you still had the option of donating a OLPC laptop to a kid in a developing country, you can’t actually get one. With any luck they will bring it back next year, but the guy who runs the program doesn’t seem to like doing that, so who knows? Not sure what he has against people in developed countries having the OLPC computers. I think people who come up with wonderful ideas are not always the best people to sell them.
If I had the cash to spare, I’d buy one just to play with it. I’d like to learn to program, and I figure something that is designed to teach children to program might help me as well. If you are looking for a way to start a child with computers, the OLPC laptop seems like the best choice. I’m pretty sure it’s at least a better investment than an Xbox or a PS3, but that could just be my Nintendo bias sneaking out.
*Photos from OLPC Photostream on Flickr and OLPC website. Linked to source.