Personal Notes

There's a lot being written of the present economic crisis. Frankly, if it weren't for Alex Rollin and his Facebook updates (he hasn't blogged on his site), I wouldn't have thought as much about it. It seems surreal, especially from my own context.

After getting the turbo gaskets replaced on the Mazda B2500 Turbodiesel, I ended up visiting an Uncle who - true to form - was watching the BBC because he has a tendency to know when to turn on Aunt Beeb. He and I sat there and watched the $700 million bailout bill pushed by George W. Bush fail, and he asked me what I thought. I basically said that I didn't know what to think. The word 'socialist' kept getting used in conjunction with the bill, and I honestly don't think that the Bill itself was socialist as much as it was a Third World answer to a First World problem. My gut told me that the response to the bill, demonstrated by the vote which turned it away (228 nay, 205 yeah as I recall), was a democratic surge of socialism itself. 'The meek shall inherit the earth', but who wants a blue marble so deeply in debt?

The tongues of Aunt Beeb's analysts danced across the screen, discussing why the bill failed. They spread their net and found a few folk who had a few interesting things to say. One man said that (paraphrased), 'everyone wanted the bill but no one wanted to vote for it'. In essence, everyone wanted to get rid of this debt but no one wanted to bail out the people who created the problem in the first place.

Update (14 Sep 2008): I mentioned my own experience on the DRM to Steve Rothery on Facebook. He pointed out that you can get it from MusicGlue.com.

From a press release on Marillion.com that I found through Steven Rothery's notes on Facebook, it seems that Marillion is trying a new approach to getting their music out there which thumbs it's nose at existing systems of distribution.

Peer to Peer. Or P2P.

Marillion is my favorite band due to their evolving style, their lyrics, and did I mention their evolving style? Over the years, I have maintained as many albums as possible - at times having to hunt them down prior to the creation of Marillion.com. From there, despite my geography, I can download albums in MP3 format which I willingly pay for.

To me, it is important that they survive - and this is geared toward their survival, as Steve shared in one of his notes:

The band debated and agonized the best way to do this for quite a while. The reasons we chose this path are

1 File sharing is a fact of life as are dwindling cd sales (see http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ for some insights into how the industry is changing and why the major labels are in such decline)

After some communication about my concerns related to the Caribbean Internet Forum, an error on their website was made apparent - people within Trinidad and Tobago do not require a bank draft to register; they may pay with a regular cheque/check. And cash at the door is not ruled out - but they do wish to have people registered beforehand so that they know how many to expect.

So I registered, and they'll be correcting the error on the website today, I am told. I also suggested taking credit card payments, which I am told will go to the organizing committee for the next time around. While it has become apparent that Trinbagonians have a better chance of attending without the inconvenience of going to a bank and assuring a bank draft is done, I cannot imagine that the inconvenience I saw being any less for people outside of Trinidad and Tobago.

It looks to be a good forum in the making. You can read about it here, but the thrust of it seems to be mobile and wireless access - something which bodes well in the Caribbean due to the small geographic nature of islands.

If you're going to be there, drop me a note below.

After about 2 months without broadband, I got wired up again yesterday. It took 5 weeks through TSTT to get their broadband package. It wasn't particularly easy to do, and so in the interim I found other things to fill my time. Things like planting corn, dealing with land issues and... basically doing things that I needed little or no bandwidth to do.

Yesterday, when I got the modem and brought it home, I didn't connect it right away. Standing outside of myself, it surprised me that I was somewhat slow to connect the modem - a few years ago I would have immediately started surfing the net, downloading things and otherwise utilizing the bandwidth. But not this time. This time I read a few articles out of the Harvard Business Review, did some writing on a project I'm working on... only after a few hours did I bother. And when I did get online, what did I do?

Well, I fired up Second Life, or course, to find out that I needed to download an update. No surprise. I logged in and... stood around, said hello to a few people, and... logged out. It isn't that there isn't stuff going on in Second Life - I'm sure that there is - it had simply become a lower priority than getting back to some reading - offline.

So now I'm back online, getting my cyber-life in order and trying to do what used to be the opposite: fitting my life with the internet instead of vice versa. Granted, until recently my main income was off of the web (and it may soon be again), but now I'm not sure exactly what's going on with myself. It's as though the Internet isn't such a big deal anymore - perhaps it was my extended absence, perhaps it's because I've got other things in my life, or perhaps it's because my Life caught up with my plans.

Either way, I'm back. And I'm not sure exactly what that means - but what it does mean is some more regular writing on this site and others. And I'll let you in on a secret: I'm smiling more.

As I wrote before, the Candle4Tibet event is this evening. If you can't make it to an event, light a candle at home.

From my original post:

We know the origin of this suffering (Dukkha).

We know the origin of this suffering (Samudaya).

We know that this suffering must cease (Nirodha).

We know that the time has come.

And we are willing to walk the path to assure that the suffering does cease (Mārga).

While protests within Tibet have been marred by violence which is easy to condemn, that violence has brought once more the plight of Tibetans to the focus - and while there is empathy for such protests, the sympathy is for freedom - and what those that protested felt was necessary to get their freedom... and ultimately, the price some paid to demonstrate what they are up against.

Stand. Be heard. Light a candle. Be seen. Let your elected representatives know what you stand for - and therefore what they should. If you're in Trinidad and Tobago, click the banner, note on your calendar and most importantly - be there.

There is a global Candle4Tibet event being held globally on Thursday, 7 August 2008. 516,085 people have joined as of right now, and over the next 10 days that number should increase.

It's a peaceful protest for people who are not permitted their culture, their language and who are tortured and even killed for doing so. This isn't about China.

This is about Tibet.

From the official site:

August 7th 2008 is the day before the opening ceremony of The Olympic Games in Beijing. On this day we aim to create the world's greatest LIGHT PROTEST, when at least 100 million people from all over the world will light a candle and say YES to freedom in Tibet!

All you are asked to do is to light a simple candle
on August 7th at 9 pm in your own time zone.

Light the Candle at your home, workplace or in a public place. Put the candle in your Window, or on your desk, or anywhere else where other people will see it and hopefully do the same.

Our light protest will be seen by billions on TV screens all over the world on the day the Beijing Olympics open. We are not against the Olymipcs or anything else for that matter, we stand for Freedom. Period.

On the following day we will issue letters to every head of state in the world to tell him exactly how many people from his country wish Tibet to be free. We will also demand that each one of them will act for the freedom of Tibet.

We will also issue letters to the general secretary of UN, the government in Beijing and to other global organizations with data on global participation.

Here in Trinidad and Tobago, there is a local event in support of the Candle4Tibet light protest which I will be attending. Babita Dubay is organizing it, and while final permission has not been given by the powers-that-be in Couva, the event will tentatively be held on the field in front of the Couva South MP office, opposite the Couva medical center. I have no doubt that the politicians will try to make this their event, but it is not about politicians: It is about freedom to express one's self, and the fact that the world should not stand by and allow the freedom of others to be trod upon simply to assure better economics and international relations. The UN Declaration of Human Rights does not tolerate this... but we do by the same people we elect. It is time to remove the illusion that others are responsible - we are responsible.

While doing some mundane tasks on KnowProSE.com, I came across an advertisement for Wikidot.com that offered a free wiki as well as the ability to use one's own GoogleAds. Of course, I didn't click the ad. I typed it in manually so that the powers that be at Google don't think I'm clicking my own ads: I don't!

So I went over to Wikidot.com and registered http://knowprose.wikidot.com/start at no cost; thus the KnowProSE.com Wiki is up and functioning at this time. Wikidot seems to be at least 2 years old, but it's new to me. Why? Because I must live under a rock.

First Impressions

The pros are most certainly there - it's free and you can generate revenue; from what I read up to 80% of the Google Adsense revenue. The Wiki syntax is standard, the interface works quite well for editing in Seamonkey (Firefox's big brother) and I was off and rolling with a standard theme within less than 10 minutes from actually registering. That certainly doesn't suck.

I've run into a few annoyances so far. The first annoyance is that when I edit a page, I have to cancel out of editing it a second time for some reason before I can switch pages. That sucks, and is something I hope that they fix. The other annoyance was partly because of my own rusty Wiki syntax knowledge: I spent about 20 minutes trying to edit the menu at the top of the page, searching the forums for the answer and so forth. The answer, really, was to edit it from using the base url plus nav:top. So to get to that part, you have to manually go to the url (using example):

http://example.wikidot.com/nav:top

Simple enough if you know what to look for.

Plans

Unbeknown to anyone other than people in the real world, I'm in the middle of a move to a new place. Actually, I'm at the tail end of the middle of the move - the first night spent in the new digs was uneventful aside from the cramping of my legs at night - up and down stairs all day and no longer being 16 does have an effect, in case you were wondering. Still, the majority of the work is done in the actual moving and the unpacking continues.

Why did I move? Well, I had intended to move onto the land, but my timetable for leaving the old place was artificially advanced by someone who likes to exert control - so rather than fight, as my late father and his late sibling would have expected of me, I simply rolled with the punch. Let it be known that the water surrounding me is typically thicker than any corpuscle laden fluid known to traverse a network for the purposes of nutrition and excretion.

All people who are close to me need to know at this point is that I am smiling, and that I will write of the details at a later date - perhaps not here, but on a book I've been working on. Everything is connected.

I must note that, for the most part, I do not miss the Internet as much as I would have expected with all the turns in events of my life recently. It isn't that I think you are no longer special, dear reader, but that my priorities are shifted - at least temporarily. And all that I observe are fodder for more writing. Such characters, such circumstances. I may actually be able to break out of non-fiction writing...