Automation

Since I began exploring agriculture within Trinidad and Tobago, I've spent a lot of time out - literally - in the field. In fact, the picture to the left shows a bit of success I'm having with corn (which is really not that hard of a crop). I've heard what other farmers have to say about Trinidad and Tobago's NavDemCo, and I tend to agree. I've wasted time trying to get information from the Ministry of Agriculture - even having someone hand deliver letters to key areas within the Ministry of Agriculture for me. To make matters more interesting, I've had to deal with some odd interpretations of ownership, like in this example, while waiting for surveyors to finish their work - for months - so that I can get the capital to move forward.

This is not an easy project, and the first part of this sentence is a massive understatement.

A local colloquialism is, "Spinning Top in Mud". This has described my experience in trying to get information and access to resources in Trinidad and Tobago with the only exception being related to aquaculture, where a reader sent me some information that I am waiting to follow up on (related to capital, among other things). In the interim, I'm clearing land and planting all manner of things... and learning a lot along the way. { Read more }

It's no secret that I'm administrating a fair amount of land these days - and part of that job is assuring that basic amenities are made available. Due to the fact that a lot of people have been getting connections without landowner permission in the past (which is the tail end of simply building a house without permission), Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) has put in place measures to assure that this does not happen - thus assuring that they are not liable for damages and property loss.

But it's a half measure, and can be considered as effective as no measure at all.

I'll explain. As a landowner, tenants ask me to get permission to get the electrical connection - mainly because present policy forces them to do so, I think, but so be it - the policy only protects me from honest people encroaching on my lands. Honest people typically aren't the issue. That said, here's what is supposed to happen for someone to get connected on tenanted land (ignoring any previous permissions): { Read more }

1. The house is inspected by a licensed electrician.
2. The inspection certificate is made up and given to the tenant.
3. The landowner then fills out a letter with the deed number and their identification number, as well as the identification number of the tenant, and where the house is situated.
4. The letter, with copy of deed and copy of landowner's identification as well as the insurance certificate, is then passed along to the head office and T&TEC facilitates electrical connection.

I remember the era before the spreadsheet, and I was fortunate enough to see Visicalc become the first 'killer app'. It transformed the way people did things, so much so that nowadays spreadsheets have become so mundane that you can pay for powerful spreadsheet software in software bundles - or get them at no cost in open source bundles. Offices use spreadsheets every day for things that were not possible before Visicalc; the computerized spreadsheet allowed people to do so much more automatically that it had a large part to play in personal computer adoption in businesses. In essence, it changed the world.

When I first revisited Kirix Strata in the context of Benford's Law, I was within a rut of thinking that had to do more with what I needed to do (cross referencing land tenancy records against receipts and introducing GIS) than anything else. That focus lead me toward Kirix Strata, and a lot of communication with Ken Kaczmarek and Aaron Williams of Kirix. I downloaded the 30 day trial version of Kirix Strata and started tossing my data at it. Ken and Aaron insisted that they do a webcast with me, and being in my rut of thinking I simply decided to entertain them. After all, how could it hurt? { Read more }

I've been playing with a concept off and on, but have been too busy paying bills to move ahead with it. TechCrunch's 'We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet' comes close, but isn't exactly what I want. What I want is actually something that I play with off and on, and would be based off of a lightweight Linux distribution that would be in the background - only to be seen if someone actually wants to. As Torvalds said, the operating system shouldn't matter to the user. I tend to agree.

My plan, which has been delayed for years, is to take the muscle of FireFox's big and more worthwhile brother, SeaMonkey, combine it with a solid Content Management System such as Drupal, OpenOffice.org or Google Docs (likely both) - and let it fly from there. So what do we have then? We have my old dream: Getting away from all the desktop nonsense and getting to what I want. All of this would be able to run on desktop machines, laptops and tablets - and perhaps in the future, mobile phones (using the .mob CSS).

What features would it have? Seamonkey gives it this: { Read more }

• Tabbed browser with the Mozilla engine - the same one that the unruly mob uses in Firefox and insists is better than Internet Explorer.
• Integrated email with address book capability - something you could get with Thunderbird, but if it is integrated already, what do you need Thunderbird for?
• IRC client built in - Chatzilla.
• HTML editor for what would be 'skinning', as well as mundane HTML editing.

When Andy Oram posted 'The Behavior Gap: Three Persistent Problems for Internet Technologies', he touched on a few things that I haven't been able to get out of my head through my fingers for some time, and I'm glad that he did write it since it gave me a little more focus on what is a very complicated issue¹. It seems to me that, while approximately 80% of the world has to get online in any meaningful way, we 20% (as of 2008) have hit a glass ceiling.

We 20% have learned that technology can help us. Some of us have even figured out that technology can hinder us, though this requires surviving the geekteens - a technology maturity level that can strike at any point in someone's life. More technology doesn't necessarily mean better, as most mature geeks know and as Steve Talbott wrote of in 'Devices of the Soul'.

We have limitations, and we can take a few different approaches. We have the pessimist way (overly critical), the optimist way (buy my Web 2.0 Shag Rug) and the realist way. I fall into the latter category.

Andy's article points at three major problems:

• We don't know how to handle many-to-many connections.
• We don't know what will happen next in time.
• It's hard to split tasks between systems.

Many Too Many & It's hard to split tasks between systems

Andy writes:

...But the YouTube phenomenon and Web 2.0 assume a many-to-many model. We just don't have efficient techniques for to handling that model, particularly for streaming media. It requires ad-hoc channels that can be erected quickly between people who don't have a pre-existing relationship. Packet switching has taken us amazingly far toward solutions, but current user activity is showing up its limitations.

It's worth noting that many-to-many models are hard for other computer technologies to handle, too. Relational databases offer one-to-many and one-to-one relationships, but have to cobble them together to fake a many-to-many relationship.

The many-to-many model doesn't scale in social terms either. It can be applied metaphorically to real life, where we're used to one-to-many relationships (with centralized government and business institutions) as well as one-to-one relationships. We build up many-to-many relationships in our schools, churches, and neighborhoods, but we don't really treat them as such because we rarely try to manage all the complex interrelationships in these institutions...

I completely agree, and will try to add some value here: Our tools reflect ourselves and technology is no different. In many-to-many relationships, our tools reflect our constraints in being human: We humans do not handle many-to-many very well. We have a tendency to create a focal point or bridge and allow things to filter through that way because we only have so many brain cells to work on a problem at any given time. While some may have more or less ability to handle problems at any given time, we have to cater for the majority. The majority would be something statisticians and economists would happily call the center of the curve. The average, mundane human being who simply wants to make the best use of technology in their own context, be it staying in touch with friends or using the Internet as a looking glass for everything that they want to know. { Read more }

One of my latest projects relates to what my father left for me - approximately 93 acres of land in Dow Village, Trinidad. Of those 93 acres, 47.355 acres are completely unused - and with the global food prices on the rise with less and less food available, one thing I have been considering is getting into farming. Imagine that. While everyone is getting out of agriculture, I'm considering diving into agriculture. As such, I've been doing some of my own research on the ground and on the web. I could simply turn around and sell it - there are people interested in buying - but then, there is the matter of what is best in the long term. With food prices going up, the long term gives me an intuitive feel for farming not only being more profitable in the long term but also better for the planet as a whole. It is a daunting proposition, not to be taken lightly by any stretch.

At present, many tenants on adjoining parcels of land are farming short term crops - lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers and other crops. I've been told that the soil is high in the clay used for porcelain as well, but I am leery to go digging up land to export pieces of porcelain - especially with the Toruba River running through a part of the land.

The Local Research

The first stop for researching Agriculture in Trinidad and Tobago should be the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Marine Resources. The site seems incomplete, but a list of incentives is available on the site and would facilitate some investment in equipment and development of the land for agricultural purposes¹. Given that today's Trinidad Express points out that Trinidad's notable acreage of agricultural lands in the Caroni area is depleted and needs a lot of treatment, it would seem that usage for land for agriculture is of importance to the country.

As luck would have it, I already have my farmer's license - and I bumped into a former student of mine who actually works with the Ministry of Agriculture and who is pointing me to the right places on the ground to get information that I need to explore the topic properly on the viability of this land use.

Another acquaintance pointed out to me yesterday that labor would be a problem. Sure, I could handle a few acres by myself, but we're not talking about a few acres. With labor as it is in Trinidad and Tobago, it would be difficult to find dependable people to help with a lot of these things. On the flip side, I do have a tendency to use technology to my advantage for automating many things - but there are only so many things to be automated. Further, problems of praedial larceny (theft) are an issue - but not just theft of crops. There is also the theft of equipment, as this article in today's Trinidad Express demonstrates. Some farmers are considering formal protest. In fact, from this article: { Read more }

When Hassan Voyeau shared this link on some email lists, I read it and chuckled. From the original article:

...Ira Winkler, a penetration-testing consultant, says he and a team of other experts took a day to set up attack tools they needed then launched their attack, which paired social engineering with corrupting browsers on a power company's desktops. By the end of a full day of the attack, they had taken over several machines, giving the team the ability to hack into the control network overseeing power production and distribution.

Winkler says he and his team were hired by the power company, which he would not name, to test the security of its network and the power grid it oversees. He would not say when the test was done, but referred to the timeframe as "now." The company called off the test after the team took over the machines.

"We had to shut down within hours," Winkler says, "because it was working too well. We more than proved that they were royally screwed."... { Read more }

From Cubans win OK to buy cellphones (cash only):

HAVANA -- Cuba said Friday that it would allow all Cubans to buy and use cellphones, the latest step by new President Raul Castro to improve access to consumer goods.

Cuba has the lowest rate of cellphone use in Latin America. The service had been restricted to foreigners and government officials and employees...

Aside from the fact that Reuters doesn't seem to realize that Cuba is an island in the Caribbean (really!), this is a pretty cool article about an issue that I didn't know existed.

Remember that UNCTAD report? The one that said cellphones were making a lot of progress? Well, it seems Cuba has stepped into the development arena as far as that goes. I didn't realize it was a problem in Cuba; my acquaintances in Cuba never really said anything about it. Why would they?

Computers. DVDs. You mean, it took Fidel Castro's stepping down for this to happen? What else is going on in there?