I’ve been a busy bee over the last couple of weeks in my spare time.  The result of my work was uploaded just a few minutes ago and I hope you’ll like it.

After a long hiatus for various reasons, the web browser based SitQuietly meditation timer has received an update.  This new version removes the dependency on Adobe Flash, replacing that code with HTML 5 sound code instead.  I added a short section on meditation, with basic instructions and the site also sports a new format and has a few fixed bugs.

I’ve tested it in Firefox, Chromium, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari and Konqueror.  I also know it renders fine on IOS and Android but the sound is not yet working on those platforms.  I have a handle on what needs to be done, but I had no way of finishing the work before my deadline of 1st Jan.

Anyway, you can find it here, please let me know what you think!

The Occupy protests are spreading.  This is in spite of quite a bit of silence in much of the mainstream media, who only covered them when ultimately forced to.  I should except Russia Today and Al Jazeera from the above statement, their coverage has been very good.  I’ll chat about my views on the protest movement another time, but something else has caught my attention.

The protest camp in New York made it into the IT media earlier this week.  This was in the form of an article covering their IT infrastructure, which I must give praise where it’s due, seems very nicely put together given the circumstances.  The sentence that caught me is in the above article, it’s a quote from a protester referring to the disappearance of a laptop during a police raid,  and I’ll quote it below.

“We’d love to get an Apple, because a lot of the software we’re used to is on the Mac,” one said. “Linux machines are always nice, given Linux is having the same revolutionary effect on the industry as we are on society, but even Windows machines would be a help.”

The above is quite accurate, GNU/Linux is having a revolutionary effect.  But the thought struck me a little later that this isn’t the entire story, is it?  GNU/Linux is a great system, a colleague of mine was at a presentation given by a Microsoft employee where the MS guy went through the Windows Server 2008 kernel and the Linux kernel.  After 1 hour 45 minutes, the conclusion was that they’re much of a muchness, he had to admit that the Linux kernel is every bit as good as the Microsoft offering.  Of course, with tools like openQA from the openSuSE team, the future is looking even brighter.

So the software is great, we know that, but revolutionary?  I submit that it isn’t by itself revolutionary.  You can get the code to BSD Unix, but that doesn’t really seem revolutionary in the way that is implied above, so what do I mean?  Enter stage left, the GNU General Public License, or GPL for short.

My understanding of things is this.  The BSD code can be referred to as “Open Source”, which means you get access to the source code and can play with it as you see fit to do so. However, you’re not required to give your changes back.  This means that BSD code has found it’s way into both Windows and the MacOS, but they are not required to return any improvements they made on other people’s hard work to the community.

The Linux kernel is under the GPL, which comes with a string attached.  If you modify the program and distribute it, then you have to make the modified source available so that others in the community can do the same.  For this reason, GPL’ed code is known as “Free Software“, it is not “Open Source”.  For a background to how the GPL came to be invented, I recommend “Free As In Freedom” a biography of the founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard M Stallman.

I’ve come to believe that the General Public license, and the associated “Four Freedoms” (see the “Free Software” link above), have been the thing that allowed the revolution to happen.  Think about it, a license that says high quality software and the improvements to said software are all available freely to everyone.  Individuals, communities and corporations alike.  We can study it, improve it, redistribute it, but not lock it away.

Now that’s revolutionary!

Well, this is a nice surprise. Today, the KDE Community is 15 years old.

The KDE community has created an advanced desktop environment for the Linux and BSD operating systems.  Personally, I’ve used it on and off for some years and am now more settled on it as my desktop of choice as an OpenSuSE user. There is often a question mark over the staying power of Free Software projects and that perception is often used to attack these projects. This milestone for the KDE community shows this question mark for the inaccuracy that it is.

All that remains is for me to offer my own congratulations to the KDE community, here’s to at least another 15 years!

I checked Slashdot earlier today and found that Richard M Stallman is under fire for comments regarding Steve Jobs.  The exact comment is posted below and a short Google will provide enough commentary via a variety of websites and comment section flame wars to keep you reading for quite some time.  I’ve italicised the controversial section.

“Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.” Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.”

Click here for the original

Let me be frank, I value my freedom and as such I run Linux as my main desktop O/S.  I can see where RMS is coming from with regards to the whole “computer as a jail” idea, it harks back to the bad old days when when parts of the internet were walled off and proprietary, for example Compuserve.  I have not bought an Apple device for some years, after buying MacOS X for my blueberry iBook and then quickly  having support dropped by just about everyone, when 10.1 arrived.  This left me facing a bill of over £100 to carry on using the machine, even though I was already a paying customer and the software wasn’t technically out of support!  I seethed, then installed Yellow Dog Linux, gave Apple two fingers, and never looked back.

I should disclose that I have an iPhone but only as my company provides and requires it, their standard is Apple phones and that’s it, my own mobile is an Android device.  So what do I see?  To my eyes, iTunes is well designed, iTunesU certainly seems interesting, but the content is available elsewhere on the open Internet.  Also, while Apple are accused of restrictive DRM, I can play my iTunes purchases on OpenSuSE Linux with no problems.  I am however looking for an alternative to Amazon / iTunes.

Anyway, back on topic.  While I can empathise with where RMS stands, I see his comments as badly timed and frankly, there was no need to say it like that.  Though I will observe that in his next two sentences RMS does separate the man from his legacy, or as the Christians say “love the sinner, hate the sin”.

Steve Jobs went too early, it wasn’t a nice way to go (is there one?) and at this moment in time our thoughts should be with his family and friends.  A civil discussion of his legacy as regards our freedom can wait for another day.  I’ll air my own views in due course, but not yet.

Well, I do need to post more often than monthly don’t I?  It’s been a busy few weeks and mental energy has been slowly flowing back after a few changes.  Hopefully this will mean more to say on my part and also bring forward some planned changes to my SitQuietly software.

I was thinking of commenting on the unfolding situation in Greece, the Greek parliament is in emergency session tonight and the stakes are high. But there is nothing to add, nothing further to say.  Sometimes all you can do is watch silently, I’ve said everything I have to say on this.

I want to go a different way tonight, a way that cleaves (I hope) nearer to the middle path.  A lot has been said about energy in the last couple of years.  The oncoming peak in our civilisation’s available net energy supply (also known as “Peak Oil”) has been playing in the background of the current clutch of crises like a pianist in a dingy backstreet bar.  The common scenario seems to be that we return to a pre-industrial existence, almost like the wild west but with a little electricity and a few lightbulbs along the way.  Set against this is the hope that some sort of “Star Trek” style technology will save us and let us carry on as before.  To be frank, I think both viewpoints are a little overplayed.  So I’ll stick my neck out and say what I see, everyone else seems to be doing it, so I’ll jump in as the water seems to be fine.  This is a general flavour of the direction my thoughts are running in.

So, what do I see?  Change for sure, we can’t go on as we are, that much is certain.  But I see a different future, industrial society and high technology are still here, but they look very different.  I see technology being more expensive, scarcer, and not disposable any more. We will have to repair, to mend and make do more.  More things will be done manually, private cars will be scarcer, cities walkable and public transport will be forced to improve.

Industry will still be here.  We will still be able to smelt metals, produce solar cells and silicon chips.  We have the beginnings already, solar furnaces can produce solar cells and silicon chips of superior quality to our current ones[1].  Part of the changes I see is the migration of these sort of industries to hot equatorial countries to take better advantage of the stronger sun.

Of course, energy will be an issue and energy efficiency will be the name of the game. As I said above, the power use of labour saving devices will be a no-no so we will return to doing a fair few things by hand.  No tumble drier or dishwasher, and the electric mixer will likely be replaced  by a hand whisk!  Newer technologies are emerging that allow power to be drawn from our movements, there are wearable solar cells, kinetic chargers and hand or foot cranked chargers for devices[2,3,4]; this could be a lot more common.  In addition, we will make more use of walking and cycling.  The huge supplies of fossil fuels that power our cars and planes will not be anything like as available, and the alternatives don’t have anything like the juice to fit the bill; at least not until we eventually get fusion online.  I’m not holding my breath for that one, in case you hadn’t guessed.  I can see the biodiesels and power dense liquid fuels being used in construction machinery and other applications that need that sort of horsepower.  Our power needs will be met by a diverse range of technologies; solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear and no doubt others.  Let me be clear, there is no single magic bullet, how you are powered will likely depend very much on where you are and what you are doing.

Raw materials will likely be recycled, or mined from landfill [5].  Given that our cars and many aircraft will be largely redundant by this time, recycling them will free up a significant amount of raw materials.  I do have more to say on this subject, but am out of time for now.  I’ll try not to leave it so long next time!

References

[1] – The Bright Future of Solar Powered Factories.

[2] – Engineers Create First Motion Powered Nano Device.

[3] – 15 cellphone chargers that harness kinetic energy for a clean recharge.

[4] – Freeplay Energy. See FreeCharge 12v and Clamp Charger, but all products are good examples.

[5] – Landfill mining (Wikipedia).

I don’t slide over to the geek side of things too often, it’s something that I must do more often.

I came across a great post over on usability post the other day. The gist of the post is that as user interfaces get friendlier,  they eventually rob the user of the knowledge needed to actually do the job.  This can actually result in worse performance than when using the system without assistance.

The post itself contains more detailed information, including cited research so I highly recommend it if usability is your thing.  It resonated with me because I just started such an experiment myself with Linux recently. I switched the desktop environment on my Debian laptop over to the Openbox Window Manager,  which is very lightweight and much faster.

I’ve been finding that kicking away the crutches that Ubuntu and the GNOME environment provide has its benefits.  In line with the research cited in the post I am finding that forcing myself to do things without having my hand held gives a much better understanding of the system and a greater confidence when using it.

Most of this is stuff I already knew how to do, and I’m refreshing old ground, it’s good as it lets me relearn and bring a newer understanding to the things than the last time I covered them.

I can see the point of the usability features, don’t misunderstand me.  But it seems to me that for a more technical user, the crutches are in fact a hindrance.

I’ve been watching the Wikileaks releases with some interest.  They seem to largely prove that the people who run this planet are every bit as human as we thought they were.  There are few (if any) great leaders and there seems to be a lot of underhand dealing going on.  Not much of this is really a surprise.

The fallout around the documents is far more instructive than the content of the documents themselves.  We are seeing how little regard anyone in power has for any notion of freedom of speech, or for any idea that they should be accountable to their people for anything.  I understand that there are situations in which things have to be kept quiet, but there seems to be a little rebalancing needed here.

Part of the fallout has been regarding the Amazon EC2 Cloud, and this is of interest to me as a self confessed geek.  You see, I’ve never completely trusted the idea of the cloud.  While many people seemed to think it was the best thing since sliced bread, I counted myself among those who looked on with a degree of reservation.  As you may know Wikileaks moved it’s service to the EC2 cloud to help it to stay online.  According to the news coverage, Amazon promptly dropped the service to Wikileaks after receiving phone calls from certain US senators.  This, of course, raises serious questions regarding freedom of speech; questions that are quite rightly being pursued.  But it also confirms my fears about this ‘wonderful’ idea of cloud computing.

You see, I have to make the point that your access to the services and data on the cloud (your data, by the way) is only there on the sufferance of the service provider.  At which point it’s no longer really your data, and no longer your server (it never was).  This means that you’d better have access to local copies of the data and local facilities.

Of course, the above is equally true of any failure in the hosting service or your internet connection.  Let’s face it, if you need to maintain local copies of the servers and data in order to keep things running, then the argument for cloud computing doesn’t hold.  This is part of my reservation about Facebook, it’s a walled garden and I have no easy way of exporting my data out of there.  If my account is closed, or inaccessible then it really becomes Facebook’s data, not mine.  So, by extension any intellectual property I have with a cloud company is no longer in my control?  That’s worrying.

I suppose the cloud doesn’t have such a silver lining after all.

I’m not too sure about the title of this one, but I really can’t think of a better one.

On Sunday evening, I was at a Buddhist Dharma talk at the Kannoji Sim in Second Life.  The speaker was a Zen monk, and our subject was virtual worlds and the Sangha.  It’s an interesting subject and it allows me to touch on something that I have been saying privately for some time.  I really do believe that Second Life has a great deal to offer people who want to reach out and investigate things before approaching them in the physical world.

Attending a virtual Buddhist meeting, as I did, is a perfect example.  I’ve been attending these meetings for some time now and have participated in more than one such group in Second Life, I have to say it has been a rewarding experience.  These groups give you a way to easily connect with like minded individuals from across the globe and can lead towards taking the steps toward such groups in the real world.

It could be said that you can do this via forums and IRC, but I believe that the extra capabilities of the Second Life platform add a great deal to this experience and strengthen it beyond the other mediums.  The talk was given using voice, and at one point over 20 avatars were present, in addition to text chat and a voice connection the speaker could have used slides on an inworld board or could have used inworld video if required.

I have seen the use of inworld slides and video and they are every bit as effective as in the real world, the 3d world of Second Life adds something to their use that I don’t get from Youtube, Flickr or other software.

It does sometimes seem, what with one issue or another, that Second Life isn’t worth the effort or is going downhill.  I beg to differ, Second Life allows these things to be done comparatively safely and with minimal cost and effort.  For those of us who are housebound, or simply without enough time to make a real world trip, I think that groups like this in Second Life do plenty of good and make Second Life and other such systems (e.g. OpenSim) well worth the time and effort.

Some nights it’s good to take a night out to break up your schedule, I do it deliberately and randomly to shake up my routine.  I tend to be busy on evenings after work and tonight should have been Tai Chi night, but I took a rest night.

So, I was planning to hack on a little Python code.  I’m dusting down my SitQuietly Linux desktop meditation timer and eyeing Canonical’s Launchpad system.  It’ll be good, I have plans and I’m going to peck away at them till they’re done.  But earlier today, I discovered Tumblr and signed up from my phone.

So, my programming time vanished in a haze of unexpected social networking, hmm, not so good.  Or was it?  I realised that I could fight it, or I could use my Tai Chi, but mentally.  I turned mentally and merged my energies, my momentum, with the flow of events, and rolled with it.

So, I’ve done blog comments, set up Tumblr to feed from this site (hello if you’re reading this on Tumblr) and realised I could type the whole shebang up and make a short blog post out of it.

Cheeky, but it seems to have worked out.  Gotta love that Wu Wei….

One of the big demons facing us is the threat of “Peak Oil”.  Of course, this would be better stated as “Peak Net Energy”.  Put simply it means that our society will require more energy to run then we can get from our increasingly stretched reserves.

There are arguments to and fro on this, but some very serious people and organisations on both sides of the Atlantic are starting to take it very seriously.   My view is that it’s not all doom and gloom and predications of our collective demise are somewhat over egged.

There are number of new techs coming forward, refinements are being made in wave power and further to this newer designs of wind turbine are ever more interesting.  There is even a prototype for a high altitude kite generator which is seemingly quite promising.  Only this month, a team of scientists unveiled a method of using carbon nano tubes to greatly increase the effectiveness of solar cells.

Of course all of this is great, but the fly in the ointment is transport, we simply can’t build enough electric cars for everyone, though I do think that some such vehicles (e.g. light goods) are going to be present.  I believe that the solution to this comes back to walkable cities and effective metro and intercity rail systems, designing cities for the non commercial motor car simply won’t do anymore, the age of the personal car is entering it’s twilight years.  Some cities here in the UK are starting to get it, I hope this is the beginning of a trend and that we can keep the momentum going.