Well, it’s the end of an academic year, and I’m thinking about these “links.” Should I continue them? Should I keep on with certain categories of them? I’m not sure. I think I’m going to take a break from them for the summer, and have a think about what’s really important to digital culture. I’m not sure that “security” really is, nor “copyright / patent” either. I’ll have a think about it – and see whether I can resist flagging those particular categories of link as important. Meanwhile, if there’s anything which is important that you think I’m missing, please do let me know.
Author: David T. Macknet
Transi(to)ry
Today is our last day in Cambusbarron, quiet village of sheep, mill buildings, and wind. At the moment, we’re supposed to be cleaning, packing up the last bits, etc., instead, we’re checking email and blogging as we don’t quite know whether we’ll be able to have reliable internet for the next few weeks.
As you may know, UKBA – the UK Border Agency – has had our passports since before February, and had made no progress on returning them to us. We’ve been advised by the University to cancel our visa extensions in order to travel. Apparently this won’t cause us any trouble in returning to the UK for visits, because they are at fault – after personnel cuts, they’re just too overwhelmed with the visa for the Olympics (and some some MAJOR technical difficulties – all is not well in UKBA Paradise). A lack of visa is also the case for our erstwhile Elijah for the May 26 performance of Mendelssohn’s beloved oratorio: he’s stuck in Brazil, and has been waiting for weeks, so our maestro has had to frantically locate someone else – which is a real shame, because Mr. de Souza, who sang Belshazzar’s Feast with us last year, has a stunning voice.
After withdrawing our visa application, we expect to receive our passports within the next three weeks, and to travel at the beginning of June, first to Iceland, to spend a few days in Reykjavik, then home to California for a long-overdue long visit – all this, if the passports arrive in time for such leisure. After California, we’re off to Puerto Rico – we don’t know where, exactly, yet. We’ll certainly let you all know when we figure it out, though. This is the result of D. continuing a relationship with his boss here in the UK and beginning a relationship with universities in PR. We’ll keep you posted…
85 boxes / items shipped out this past Friday, on their way to our new home. All that remains to us is 4 suitcases, several computer bags, cameras, and D’s violin. We’re really hoping that it’s not that cold in Iceland, as we recently realized that between us we have a cardigan and two jackets… by the way, yes, there are gusts of wind in the tornado range, and it’s pouring. Why, yes, thank you, we DO feel intelligent sans coats…!
Believe it or not, we have a concert this evening!! Our last time singing choral classics, then we’ll pick up our suitcases and change addresses for – hopefully – only three weeks.
And now, to close down the network here, prepare for the concert, throw the last few food items into a laundry basket, and walk away yet again. Six moves in the last five years… oy. We are not home yet…
Thank you for coming along for the ride.
-D & T
Links
Another slug of links for you. I must say that I’m disappointed that more people haven’t spoken out against CISPA, and that it’s drawn much less attention than SOPA and PIPA did. I wonder: has the public just become apathetic? It’s the same bill, pretty much, only worse in some ways than SOPA / PIPA, in that this is outsourcing the censorship.
May 1, In Retrospect
 |
 |
It’s been awhile since we’ve done one of our “in retrospect” posts. Actually, it’s been a long while since D. has devoted much attention to doing posts of any sort other than “links” posts for classmates, and we’ve determined that … well, that’s about enough of that. So.
The two photos to the left may or may not have been taken on May 1, but were at least scanned into the photo scanner on May 1, which is close enough. They’re photos from one of our favorite places: Palm Desert. No, not Palm Springs (that derided mecca of matching pastel track suits and golf widows), but of the desert proper. Palm Desert is fantastic because it’s a really small town, stuck way out in the middle of nowhere, and it has a series of hot springs with pools. We love to swim, and are particularly enamored of being able to swim in varying temperatures of mineral water. We have happy memories of this place … including the memory of renting a hotel room which was absolutely saturated with cigarette smoke, and which we fumigated with some absolutely horrible incense (nag champa) in an effort to combat the stench. T. will claim that D. just can’t relax and take a vacation, so awakened them at 3 in the morning to drive back to the Bay Area. This is a lie. It was all about the stench. Truly.
 |
 |
 |
 |
When we first arrived in Glasgow, we discovered Kelvingrove Museum. It’s the second-most-visited museum in all of the United Kingdom, and we really understand why: it’s a fabulous place. Some (*cough*, Mrs. B. *cough*) say that it’s not organized properly, but we’ve found that it’s an enjoyable place to visit, particularly on a rainy day, or on a Sunday when there are organ concerts. We’ve spent many happy hours at Kelvingrove. It encourages you to linger and investigate, to explore and try to understand the past. It has bits which are obviously for children, and is mostly a teaser for history: it says, “there was all of this stuff going on, please continue to investigate.”
The museum used to belong to one guy (Lord Kelvin) and was his town home. It’s very hard to fathom something so immense just being somebody’s house for occasional use, particularly when you consider what’s packed into it today. Its collections far exceed what’s on display, as is the case with so many museums, but if you’re good (and have a silver tongue) you just might manage to work your way behind the scenes and see some of the things which seldom make it to the public eye. It’s not just a museum, is the point: it’s someplace which collects rare items so that they’ll be preserved for further study.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Adjacent to the museum is Kelvingrove Park. We particularly enjoyed wandering through it when we lived in Glasgow, as it’s a great example of an urban park. Fountains, ponds, ducks, roses, and the floral gardens make it memorable for most. Additionally, fabulous views of the University, and a quiet space in the midst of all of the chaos which is Glasgow were what made it a haven for us. Also, the random cat.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Of course, around Glasgow there are any number of interesting (and odd) things to see. 19th century iron cobblers’ forms? Yep. Just hanging out on the side of the road somewhere. Randomly-painted doors? But of course! Antique, blown-glass windows? Certainly! Glasgow is such a hodge-podge of the historic and the modern. We’re glad to be out of the noise, and away from the students (if we never hear someone singing at 2 a.m. again, we’ll be quite happy), but we truly enjoyed “Glesga” while we were there. Glasgow has so much, bodged in randomly amongst the detritus. You just have to really get in there and look to see.
If you ask anyone from around here what they think of Glasgow, they’ll either love it or they’ll hate it, and that love or hate depends upon whether you love it or hate it: everyone seems to have this love/hate relationship with “the filthy city.” It’s huge, it’s a conglomerate of a bunch of neighborhoods, each of which has its own character and history, and it’s truly its own place. Only if you’ve lived there would you be able to truly understand what Glasgow means, which is to say that Glasgow is an unique experience. Neither entirely good, nor entirely bad, Glasgow has been… an experience.
As we prepare to leave this island, we’re looking backward, remembering how we got here, and who we were back then. We’re wondering what it is that we want out of life. We’ve lived in so many places, now, and have found things we love about them all. What is it we’re seeking? As others ask the question we realize that we don’t really know. The next adventure? Just to prove to ourselves that we aren’t going to be so busy working that we forget to live? Just to escape responsibility, in the form of children? ☺ Does anyone, ever, really know what they want out of where they’re going, unless they take the time to stop… and ask themselves?
In the interim of answering some of life’s deeper questions, we have a short-term plan: we’ll be living in Kilsyth, the town that introduced curling to Scotland (what a claim to fame!) for a few weeks, and will stay there until our passports finally make their way back from the UK Borders Agency (they told us this morning FOURTEEN WEEKS. They had better be exaggerating. If we have to miss niecelet’s graduation…). At that point, we’ll pin down our plane tickets and will return to California for a break of several weeks. We’re still awaiting a job offer from the company based in the Dutch Antilles (and will update you as we know details), but fully expect them to come back with something which means we’ll presently find ourselves on yet another island – this one much more like Arizona, but surrounded by the blue Caribbean. The vast majority of our belongings will eventually make their way to California and go into storage until we send for them, and we’ll be living out of 4 suitcases for the foreseeable future.
Life remains undefined, at this moment. The past holds countless gems which we treasure. We can now put them away, knowing that the future will hold even more.
-D & T
Links
Not much commentary this week – just a bunch of links. Enjoy them.
PhD, Complete!
Well, folks, the PhD is officially complete. I’ve filled out the form to graduate in absentia at the end of this month, and they’ll be sending “the parchment” along sometime in May. This marks the end of a long and truly strange journey, and is hopefully certainly the last degree I’ll ever receive.
Who knows where we’ll end up next? We certainly do not, but we’re investigating all manner of things. When we arrive, we’ll let you know.
If you’d like to read the product of 4 years of work, it’s available from the University Library at theses.gla.ac.uk/3286 and is also at hobbitsabroad.com/MacknetThesis.pdf.
-D
Links
You know, it occurs to me that I’ve never really said what these “Links” are for, nor how I gather them. I’ll leave the “what they’re for” for a moment, and tell you the “how” of putting these lists together.
Basically, these links represent about a week of me reading an assortment of content from about 150 different RSS feeds to which I’ve subscribed using Google Reader (yes, I know, now Google knows what I read, but it’s the tool for which I’ve optimized this process). While in Reader (using FireFox, with GreaseMonkey installed, running Google Reader Absolutely Customizable), I can quickly navigate through posts, reading either a blurb or the full article, depending upon what the feed author has decided to publish. As I read, I can mark items as “starred,” to come back to later and examine more closely to determine whether they belong on the Links post.
Once I’m satisfied with the list of starred items, I have a .php script which consumes the RSS feed generated by my starred items, putting them into a standard format (basically, the HTML code for what’s below, yet without categories). I take that generated HTML, dump it into Excel where it falls into a series of columns with the title of the piece all by itself (thanks, .php script for making this part so much easier). I then sort by title & go through categorizing each link into what I think is its dominant category, sometimes pulling a link & copying it into two categories. I then sort by category and reverse date order, write a few Excel formulae to put on each section’s header, copy the code out into Notepad++ where I run a series of formatting replacements so that things lay out in a way which is easier to navigate than HTML all run together.
It’s at this point that I’m ready to add some commentary. All told, each Links post probably represents about 20 hours of reading and culling, probably about an hour of massaging content into their categories (which requires some re-reading to figure out why I thought the item was significant) and into an easily-editable format, and another hour or so adding commentary (if I’m not feeling lazy by this point).
Now, back to the “why” of doing this, as it’s certainly not something which is without effort, nor is it a trivial exercise. I do these posts because I believe the issues examined or linked to are significant to our lives, both digital and physical. I examine these issues because they are significant, and tend to be overlooked by most media, or are only touched upon lightly when they are examined at all.
As Bill pointed out to me last week, there is quite a lot of tension between some of these issues – for example, the tension between censorship on the one hand, and cyber-bullying on the other. There is tension between the right to privacy and the public’s right to know, or between freedom of expression and security. These tensions and how they are resolved are, to me, important issues, in particular because we interact so thoroughly through the medium of networked communications.
So, yet another batch of links for you all. Enjoy! And do feel free to check out the archives, particularly if you’re receiving these via email, as all of these are archived at http://hobbitsabroad.com/?cat=36
Links
I realize I’ve been considering censorship from the wrong end: I’ve been thinking of censorship as the act of either a government or a large corporation to suppress speech of individuals. Censorship, however, operates on a much smaller level than that as well – it operates at the organizational level, where “the boss” silences expression which is not in line with the norms of the group. This was within an email exchange, wherein they told me they were “shocked” that I’d post recordings of our choir performances when I’d been told that the musician’s union prohibited such recordings (they record the performances themselves – I’ve seen them do so – but apparently it’s against the rules for anyone else to do so). We’ll not go into how 1) there IS no content posted by me at this moment, nor 2) the fact that search engines cache all sorts of things – those are mere details, and aren’t really what’s made me consider this as censorship operating on a micro scale, as opposed to that imposed by governments or media companies.
We tend to think about censorship in very broad strokes, but it’s far more ubiquitous than we realize. It’s an issue of power, and control, and authority. It’s about silencing those who are not just the minority voices, but about silencing those who have less power within whatever perceived power structure that is in place. It’s about maintaining the status quo, really. It’s social control at its most crass and medieval.
There are intersections, in this case, with copyright … which I’m not going to examine right now. I’m still angry about the idea that I’m being subjected to censorship – that my voice can be threatened by someone. I do not give in to this type of thing as there is NO LEGAL BASIS FOR SUPPRESSING MY VOICE (or my recordings). But the social creature says to give in to the voice of authority, and that there is an implicit threat in being told to do something by someone who has set themself up as someone “in charge.” That threat – that exercise of control – is what censorship is about. It’s not just about the silencing of voices – that’s just the end result. It is exercising control over other beings whom one imagines to be somehow inferior, and that is why I resist it so furiously.
Refrigerator Chaos
OK, so it’s probably not every refrigerator in Scotland which freezes things if you put them in the wrong place, but it’s every fridge we’ve ever had in this country.
In the US, we got used to the idea that refrigerators kept things at a particular temperature, as dictated by this thing called a thermostat. In the UK, though, with the models of fridge we’ve had, we set a number … which controls the flow of cold air out of the freezer into the fridge. This results in an entirely new relationship with food, really: if the fridge is full, everything freezes solid; if it’s relatively empty, things spoil.
Most of the time we just … well, curse about it. This time, I was cursing aloud, because 1) that root-beer cost a fortune in terms of a simple can of soda, and 2) it was a special treat. Curse You Refrigerator Manufacturers! Enough said.
-D
Links
A bunch of links for you again this week. I’ve just put the finishing touches on my corrections, so here’s fingers crossed that they’ll go through and that’s me, PhD after the name. 🙂