Friday, January 14, 2022

Twitch, Discord, and Bark Eater Studios

This is mostly a launch announcement. I've been collaborating with some folks on Discord and Twitch to do what we love doing,:c help people, including ourselves, stream and get paid to do it. My effort is at https://www.twitch.tv/barkeaterj, where my bio is something like:

"A healthy dose of DIY (tech, gardening, music, braining, & more) with a bit of news, politics, spirituality, & general stream-of-consciousness, from an over-50 veteran, dichotomy destroyer & enby living in the Adirondack State Park in NY, bringing you the construction of a safe space for creators. "

I'll be streaming a lot of what I do, not just talk about stuff other people said. There'll be guests, too! Some may be over amateur radio! But the idea is to get things done while sharing and learning, and contributions are greatly appreciated.  Being able to hire another set of hands to actually build stuff would be great, even if it is only a few hours a week. The amount of sweat equity available is amazing!

Alas this is winter, certainly not the time to build much anything more complicated than a fire. So this is when we figure out how to play with Twitch, how to connect with other with it and discord, how to stream, and how to make it part of building what is happening here. 

If you are interested in any aspect of streaming on twitch or youtube, let me know and we'll go from there!

Aloha!

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Community Wireless Networks

(from the Draft pile)

Senator Lieberman's proposed "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, S.3480" http://is.gd/cUM8E is basically a government controlled internet "kill switch". Granted, it may not shut off the entire internet, but anything critical enough to be "at risk" shouldn't be accessible via the public internet as we know it. I would think that large internet-based corporations will have enough pull (and security savvy) to keep their business models running. With "Net Neutrality" also being an issue, its about time that us technically savvy geeks start roughing-out a decentralized substitute.

Decentralization seems to be the most resilient way to do most things, including commerce, energy, food, and governance. The internet seems to be the greatest distraction since TV, and it can really shine as an enabler of decentralization. Any useful internet-based decentralization effort needs to happen on a decentralized internet.

The ability to support HD video isn't nearly as important as the services I've outlined in my "Community in a Box" wiki at http://www.openideaproject.org/Projects/OIPeople/CommunityInaBox and such things as the Mesh Potato project at http://www.villagetelco.org/2008/06/the-origin-of-the-mesh-potato/.

There are probably enough older, flashable wifi routers around to start building-out basic community networks. Add some cantennas http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html recycled solar panels or home-made wind turbines, and gel cell batteries (or potatoes http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/06/20/22907/potato-battery/) Such units could be placed just about anywhere, small-ish UPSs could even be used if nodes are located at locations with access to AC power.

A collaborative, Commercial Free wifi mesh network could connect people, their objects, and their skills, with others that are interested in them.

Friday, January 22, 2016

Maker Space for the Mind

A question recently came to me. What am I Training and Developing myself for?

Moments, later, it came to me, and left me stunned. This is a brief brain dump.

Resonance of Occurring
Measuring brain patterns - I propose that by measuring prominent occurrings (WOBA trigger?), thoughts that trigger other thoughts, for example, a spectrum will be revealed. Resonant ones. Like color spectrum, sound spectrum, each are resonant to each other.

What "occurring" is present for someone to "get it"?  How would things need to be present for everyone to "get it", "grok", "on the same wavelength"? Where do harmonics show up that stop us?

I am creating a Makerspace for the Mind. Collaborative, open, distributed brain activity measurement and analysis. Open Hardware and Software for exploration of the human mind/brain and Self.

I'll have my "Wave Book" notes available soon. To summarize, What is the relationship of sound, color, emotion, and thought? What can this knowing accomplish in the world?

Who will partner with me? Who is up to holding me responsible? Who will hold us responsible?

When do we want it? Now Real Soon!

Sunday, January 1, 2012

2012 Project #1 - CWeST

I suppose this is an announcement of my intention to construct a "Continuous Wave Serial Terminal". WTF, you ask? Well, I just got an arduino for Christmas, so I'd like for this to be my first real project besides making LEDs flash or a serial line level converter. I've been pondering applications for http://hsmm-mesh.org/, and mentioned in passing this idea as a bit of a joke. [will find reference]

The background: A good portion of the amateur radio community believes that the morse code requirements for obtaining a ham radio license should not have been dropped. Anything Internet-related is held in disdain, as it isn't usually 100% RF, so things like Echolink and the recently hamsexy D-Star aren't really amateur radio.

To this, I say "Fnord!" and announce the intention to develop CWeST: a CW Serial Terminal, an arduino-based serial terminal for use with your straight or iambic key. It will feature audio output as well as a small LCD text display and several function/macro keys.

"Great," you may ask, "but what use is a serial terminal that uses a CW key for input?" Well, combined with a HSMM-Mesh node, connected through it's onboard serial port, you'll get access to a linux console for maintenance purposes as well as the ability to run applications.

The lack of communication applications for HSMM-Mesh not requiring another PC to do the heavy lifting (and power consumption) limits the practicality of the mesh by not providing applications native to and provided by the mesh hardware. Having a way to communicate through the mesh without needing much more than the mesh node itself.

In addition, the CWeST hardware itself could be used to operate other digital modes via CW, such as RTTY, PSK, tradional amateur packet, and even D-Star! Thumb your nose at teenagers on cell phones and try instant messaging or even sending SMS messages to cell phones via your paddle!

Since deciding to take this project on within the past couple days, I have found a good chunk of the arduino-based infrastructure at http://silveiraneto.net/2009/02/28/morse-code-translator-with-arduino/. That thread mentions "the other way around", so hopefully this project will be little more than gluing everything together and modifying some arduino sketches. 

UPDATE: http://code.google.com/p/morse-endecoder/ seems to be a robust 2-way solution, so I'll probably be using that, a display solution like http://liudr.wordpress.com/gadget/phi-panel/, and maybe build a ps/2 keyboard adapter or use http://dangerousprototypes.com/2011/11/24/gkos-keyboard-for-arduino/ for version 2 (cuz I'm not a fist, so building version 1 will require me to relearn CW) to make it a more generic serial terminal.

Anyone interested in this project should contact me, whether to help development of the hardware or software, or just interested in using such a beast. IRC provides a great back-channel, is already "CW-friendly", and has been supported on mesh nodes already, so #hamradio on irc.freenode.net may be a good place to spam ;)

Happy New Year and 73 de KC2SDS

Friday, May 14, 2010

Hooked on Cymatics

A link provided via twitter by @openworld, Evan Grant's TED talk "Making sound visible through cymatics" as seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjV1gjBMbQ really inspired me today. It was like finding one of the pieces of the puzzle that is my personal Unified Field Theory, v0.04, http://www.openideaproject.org/Projects/OIPeople/WaveBook

Visualize, if you will, 3 dimensional representations of the 2d techniques shown in the video. In other words, there exists extra dimensionality (at least 3d) to everything shown in the video, it's just that we can't see it displayed very well on a vibrating sheet of metal displayed onto a 2d lcd display. I propose that such harmonic interactions occur on all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, so the display you are visualizing needs to have something of a spectrometry dimension about it. Multi-pass/band tuner? Some amateur radios (usually only HF rigs) have "bandscope" displays to see where activity is in a given band. A classic spectrometer is used with light, and spectrum analyzers are used in the audio world. When the trippy high-order harmonics are created, interesting things start happening, like a Tuvan singer turning a growl into a high-pitched whistle.

Except for a ripple on a pond, wake behind a boat, rumble strip in a road, weather feature/pattern, or some other mechanical process, most of us don't seem to recognize (be aware of?) the harmonics and rhythms happening they are a part of and are reacting to, again, whether we know it or not. Affects exist as harmonic creations/aspects of others.

A Mythbusters episode, the one mentioned at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%27s_oscillator, as well as the biblical Jericho perhaps, reminded me that a little resonance can go a long way. Imagine, what does the electromagnetic result of everyone's hearts beating... sing? Alien civilizations (or a deity, perhaps) listening to our broadcasts may be more interested in our biological vital signs than the original radio broadcast of "The Lone Ranger".

Perhaps humans are such a holographic display, as well as what is being displayed, for themselves and others (ie. performance). An affect of our existence?

Could we affect an earthquake by all of us humming one tone, peace with Bb major? Are Wall St. Bankers singing songs in D# minor? Stay tuned!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Anathem Hangover

I've been on a Neil Stephenson kick, and just finished his _Anathem_. I started with _Snow Crash_ then read _Cryptonomicon_, and found that I just couldn't get enough. Anathem was the most thought provoking, and prompted me to get some of it down here.

The idea of guilds have always interested me. John Michael Greer very recently blogged about the past and future of guilds at http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-relocalization-worked.html. In Anathem, Maths combine guilds with religious orders, and are segregated groups of scientists, mathematics, philosophers, and thinkers. Secular society goes on it's own business, isolated for the most part for generations, from the Maths. The maths have ways of sharing their knowledge, and an order of Fraas and Surrs (male and female Avout) exists to know what is already known so others don't waste their time thinking they have stumbled upon a new thought.

The internet is full of knowledge that just doesn't get much attention, at least not in relationship to youtube, facebook, and blogs like this. Neal Stephenson mentions in one of the videos at his site, http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem/videos.htm, that the world now has access to esoteric knowledge that just wasn't available in the past. Most folks just aren't interested, and others are simply distracted, so the knowledge contained in such works just haven't made it into the mindscape of today's society.

The internet is also full of groups of people working on esoteric projects, but are strangely disconnected from each other enough to make duplicated efforts the norm, if not fostering competition where cooperation would be much more productive. Virtual, decentralized "maths" are within the capabilities of the internet, and are threatening to be developed (http://www.espians.com/plexnet.html). One can only hope, as such an organized group could accomplish great things and help create a more sustainable, cooperative, civil world society from the bottom up.

Anathem brought other things to my mind.

Quantum mechanics and metaphysics play a large role in the novel (see http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem/acknow.htm) as does music. Those themes brought my own research notes at http://www.openideaproject.org/Projects/OIPeople/WaveBook to mind, and was honestly the thing that prompted me to make this blog entry.

At one point in the novel, the main character was awakened by another Fraa's singing, and I immediately knew that the sound was comparable to Tibetan/Tuvan overtone singing. This was confirmed by listening to "Thousander Chant" at http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem/music.htm, a testament to the fact that music played an important role in the novel.

Such music, and sound, in relationship to my "Wave Book" notes and the novel's Hemn Space (see Stephenson's Acknowledgments page, link above) brought to my mind the possibility that events in one "configuration space" could effect another through Gödel's “I conjecture that some physical organ is necessary to make the handling of abstract impressions (as opposed to sense impressions) possible...Such a sensory organ must be closely related to the neural center for language.”

It is my thought that such impressions come to us through the mind/body as a whole, acting as a complex matrix of multiphase "antennas" able to detect resonant components of various causal activities. Not so much as a "shot heard around the world" but the resonant components of thoughts, emotions, synaptic firings in reaction to the audible "shot", philosophical reactions to the initial act of monumental events like the start of the American Revolution. I propose that such an impression wouldn't be a thought, feeling, picture, or smell but a wave (quantum effect, impulse, packet, ripple in "The Force") that resonates something with us that triggers such things in a sympathetic, harmonic way. I would make sense that such resonance would need to, as Gödel phrased it, "be closely related to the neural center for language" and that there would need to be some universal commonalities between such resonants and their cognitive manifestations.

Of course we only have those resources available to us on Earth to experiment with, but baseline measurements could be made of the various sensory inputs I mention in my "Wave Book" notes. It would seem to me that such commonalities found would only be harmonically related to whatever it is that could influence different configuration spaces, but sound findings would be an interesting start.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Not the Change We had in Mind, Pass the Ammo

Disclosure: I'm an Air Force Veteran, gun owner, and amateur radio operator.

I've overheard conversations on the local 2 meter repeater the past few days that disturb me a bit. Several folks were complaining about the lack of ammunition available at such places as Walmart, and rack it up to the government undermining the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. That is, own all the guns you want, but good luck getting ammo for them.

Gun owners usually hold a disdain for the Democratic party, accusing them of being anti-gun and anti- Second Amendment. It seems to me that the skin color, political affiliation, and liberal agenda of our current President is a little more than the majority of the NRA crowd can handle rationally. Oh, New York State is known for its less-than-kind view toward firearm ownership, but I'd rack that up to the influence NYC has on State politics.

I'll bet the ammunition shortage is mostly due to the gun owners themselves. The paranoid right-wingers stocking up for the Revelation festivities are partially to blame themselves. Okay, I'll be nice and say the true patriots are tired of the recent government intrusion in and controls on the lives of law-abiding citizens. Their own greed and paranoia is helping to create the runs on ammo. The OTHER gun owners are probably the biggest issue, for several reasons.

Who are these mysterious gun owners? Paramilitary police forces are becoming quite the thing, with increases in federal funding for the past decade or so for police forces in the name of Homeland Security. These police groups need to keep their proficiency with rifles using ammo popular with both the military and patriotic firearm owners, the AR-15 using 5.56 ammo. Imagine the ammo usage by both the police and their paramilitary brethren, having to maintain their proficiency on a regular basis.

So the patriotic gun owners believe that the Second Amendment is civil society's protection from an overzealous government. With paramilitary police forces having tools once reserved for the military, the common ammo usage can be nothing less than staggering. I feel for the folks wanting to buy 5.56 for their rifles and 9mm for their handguns. Why shotgun and .22 long rifle ammunition prices have gone up is probably part inflation, part hunting season, part redirected popularity, and part hoarding.

All of that leads me to bigger issues. This “pick-your-poison” attitude that results in a need for personal firearms is very shortsighted and results in a kind of tragic social destabilization. Those depending on using their firearms for hunting after a collapse of food distribution and the general economy may make it the first month before wildlife is decimated due to over-hunting and hoarding. Those depending on the use of their firearms to protest and potentially take over radical governments will face disproportionate lethal force. Those looking to have some protection while looting their suburban neighbors will be met with equal force -- or no force at all. All result in Americans killing Americans and "terrorists" taking pride in a job well done.

Many folks believe that their only option in dealing with an objectionable government that objectionable voters elected using objectionable polling methods is physical force. That is the power they have seen used on TV, have experienced as a veteran of a foreign war, or as a victim of urban violence. Most Americans have never experienced the terror of living in a society so dysfunctional that personal firearms are the only real, if tenuous , insurance policy. It is the power that our forefathers historically used when it was "necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another". It's in our blood, even if said forefathers looked at standing armies with disdain.

President Obama advertised "Change", and has even stated that everyone needs to do their part, but really hasn't offered any tangible suggestions on what sort of things would be useful for us to do. He really can't, not because he's not intelligent enough to know, but because he is intelligent enough to know that advising such options would infuriate, to put it lightly, those REALLY in control. At least George W. Bush advised people to "go buy stuff" on September 12th.

As we wait for the future to be decided for us by legislative decree, we forget the true power we hold. That power is inconvenient to living "The American Way of Life", incompatible with "The American Dream". Why would we want to live like Europeans, or Africans, or Latin Americans, for God's sake? It's our God given right to live like we do. And our God given responsibility to deal with the consequences.

Pardon me while I digress for a moment. Many Americans feel that a public-option in health care reform is a must. Others are afraid of "socialized medicine". Those that play the socialism card barely mention Social Security and Medicaid, but would they send their aging parents off to or invest in "Sam's House", "Enron (or AIG) Acres", retirement villages? They never seem to mention other "socialized" bits of American life, such as the Interstate Highway System, or the number one taxpayer supported institution, after Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare, The Department of Defense.

While in basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas, one of the first things we were told by our Drill Instructors was that "The military is not a democracy." In fact, military personnel sign away many of their Constitutional rights for the duration (if not more) of their service to the democracy they are serving to defend. Of course, young impressionable recruits usually need the direction of their superiors to successfully comply with their duties as assigned, and it would be unwise to promote debate.

Those who want to cut social programs should be careful what they wish for.

But back to the matter at hand.

What is this mysterious, forgotten power that we still possess? How can Americans put themselves back to work? How can they end their dependence on foreign energy? Well, it won't be easy, but using deadly force will only make the situation worse. If you profess to being a Christian, start living like it.

Americans need to stop looking for top-down solutions and use, if you will excuse the term for Americans living north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Yankee Ingenuity. Home-grown, grass-roots, community-based solutions are needed.

  1. Purchase Power
    • Break the Chain - buy local products from local merchants
    • Eat Local - in-season produce, farmer's markets, local restaurateurs, be aware of "food miles"
    • Keep DOWN with the Jones' - share what you have, respect your neighbors and their stuff, create a (non-storage) business out of your garage
    • Renew/Reuse/Recycle - there is no "away" to throw things, give unwanted items to charity, find local "fixers", create new business finding new uses for old stuff, maintain durable goods
    • Barter - learn how to fix things, provide useful services, and meet people in your community
    • Burn your credit report - get out of the debt mentality, cut your credit (cards) in half
    • Refrain from buying plastic - built to break, made from and shipped by foreign oil
    • Quality, not quantity - buy good quality the first time and avoid the need to replace things due to shoddy materials and manufacturing processes, insist on durable & repairable goods, have broken items repaired by local businesses
    • Live (and spend) within your means - are you defined by your "stuff"?
  2. Invest in Communities
    • micro-finance - help local entrepreneurs provide the goods and services you need
    • support local businesses - put local people to work for local people
    • support local craftspeople - you can afford custom-made everything!
    • support local services - doctors used to make house calls, shoes were repaired
    • create transportation options - carpool, deliveries, bicycle-friendly roads
    • community currencies - recession-proof your community, bail-out your community
Remember the Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Quit trying to take advantage of and screwing each other over. What goes around comes around. Common sense isn't so common these days. Make lemonade. Fear breeds insecurity. Grow a pair, for America.