News, Plans, etc

News

I hope all of my American readers had a happy 4th of July. It was my cat’s 10th birthday, but she’s in California, so I didn’t bake her a cake or anything. Actually, I’m alarmed by what sort of cake a cat would like. yuck.

Here in The Hague, I went to an expat BBQ. We grilled a bunch of expats . . .. ahem. It was fun. there was a guy there with a dog also from California, but from LA. She and Xena had the north-south rivalry thing going on. Anyway, the other dog was clearly a California mutt as it was half pitbull. It’s the law that 90% of mixbreed dogs in CA are half pitbull. He said to keep it quiet because they’re outlawed in the Netherlands, but further research on wikipedia seems to indicate that this is not the case. Anyway, anti-breed laws are stupid. I started talking about how pitbulls are nice to people, and are only risky around other dogs. Nicole says that was rude. She drug me out to the grill to make tofu kabobs.
It would have been Xena’s happiest July 4th ever, as there were no fireowrks, except for two things. There was some sort of incident between the two dogs and the LA one bit through Xena’s ear. It’s just a little hole, but Xena was way freaked out. The other owner and the host pulled the dogs apart, something I tried to prevent. Folks, never stick your hands between fighting dogs! The host, Kendra, is from Alaska and says she has experience breaking up fighting dogs and knows how to do it without getting hurt. Anyway, it was probably for the best because Xena had already submit, but the other dog wasn’t backing off. Which is why pitbulls are dangerous for other dogs – once they get started in a fight, they don’t stop at the point most other dogs would stop. Most dogs just fight to establish dominance. Anyway, after being separated, the other dog reverted to being cute and friendly, but Xena was freaked. I felt kind of bad for the owner. He was really embarassed. It sucks when you beloved pet, who is almost human in your eyes, reveals their animal nature. Like barfing in a restaurant – which Xena did recently.
Then we got home and there was an incredible thunder storm. Way cooler than any fireworks. Xena tried to hide under the bed. Bad day for her. Yesterday, she barely wanted to leave the house, which was fair enough as she’s been awake and scared most of the night. Poor dog.

Plans

I go soon to Linz for my gig. Tickets are quite a bit more than I expected. Why are trains more expensive in the summer? They don’t cost more to run. I’ll get back around the second half of July. Then I want to bike along the coast of the Netherlands and then inland towards a small town in Friesland. Nick will probably participate. Then I will come back and meet up with Kendra and we will bike to Copenhagen, leaving around August 1st. That should take about 2 weeks. Then I get to worry a lot about moving.
Biking with clips is awesome. I feel like I have way more control over the bike and could go way faster. Also, popping in and out gets easy very quickly. when I first started on a still bike in front of my house, I thought it would be really hard, but suddenly, like a clip, it just clicked.
I tried to buy a bluetooth PDA keyboard from a shop in Rotterdam, but they’d sold out earlier in the day. However, I was able to use my GPS setup to navigate. Maemo Mapper tip: after you load the route into the program, quit it and restart. This will save the route in non-volitaile memory and if you (software) crash on the way, you won’t have to sorta head in the right direction while hoping to run into an open wifi network.
Also, I really love it when folks name their network linksys and leave it wide open. Seriously, it’s great. I kind of want to rename my network to linksys. This si the closest thing to an open citizen’s anarchist wifi net that we can reasonably hope for. So let’s all do it! Unlock your networks! Rename them to linksys! Encrypt all your data going over the wifi! If you leave your own network open, then you don’t need to feel guilty about borrowing anybody else’s connectivity. I leave mine open for that reason. But I’m not renaming it right now, because I’m not sure how to configure my remote-controlled-only media server to connect to a new network, nor even if it’s a good idea to let it potentially connect to the wrong one. So everybody except for me should rename their network, and we should leave them open. That is all.

Avoiding Highways with Maemo Mapper

Ok, so let’s say you have a nifty N800 and the killer-app Maemo Mapper. You can use it to download routes (aka: driving directions). But, as you’re on a bike, you’re not so keen to take the A4 or 280 to get where you’re going. Fear not, you can download routes while avoiding highways!

Go to the menu in the Mapper. Select route and then select download. A dialog box opens. At the top of the dialog box, there is a textfield which has a URL in it. Most likely, the URL there points to gnuite.com. At the end of the URL is some CGI stuff, like &blah=%s . Scroll to the very end of the url and append the following text to it: 

&avoid_highways=on

Then, you can download routes to your heart’s content, all of them highway free. If you change your mind about highway avoidance, just remove the added text.
The Mapper application saves your settings, so if you want to stay highway free forever, you will not need to modify this again – with all the usual exceptions to such a statement.

Howto: Podcasting

What is it?

‘Podcasting’ refers to a sort of audio blogging. The podcaster posts a piece of audio to the internet and subscribers automagically download it via itunes or another client program. It’s a good way for people to keep up with your audio output.

How do I subscribe in iTunes?

For Safari/iTunes users, this is really easy. Click on the RSS icon in the podcast you want (this is on the right hand side of the URL address field). Safari goes into feed reading mode. On the right hand side, there’s a link that says “subscribe in iTunes.” Click that and you’re good.

If you use another browser, find the URL of the feed and copy it. Open iTunes. Go to the advanced menu. Select subscribe to podcast. Paste in the URL. Hit ok. You’re done.

How do I prepare the audio for my own podcast?

Usually, people post MP3s. You can record audio with software called Audacity. This is very handy software, which can also be used for normalization. (This means making the recording as loud as possible – a good thing or it will sounds really quiet in a playlist.) It is also possible to use Audacity as an MP3 converter. iTuens and other software can also be used for that. I convert audio to be 160 kbps stereo. If you are just recording your voice talking, it possible to a much lower quality conversion and still be totally understandable.

How can I host my own podcast?

If you have your own server, you can ask your sysadmin for WordPress. This is blogging software, which is easy to install. It requires SQL. Your sysadmin or hosting company can help you with that. There are many templates that you can use to change the way it looks. I host my entire professional website with wordpress.

  1. Upload your MP3 to your website. It doesn’t matter where exactly you put it. It can be on a free site like Geocities or on your own server, or wherever. Let’s say you put it in a directory called ‘mp3s’, under your web directory ‘public_html.’
  2. Using your webbrowser, log into the wordpress dashboard and click to write a new post.
  3. In the body of the post, include a link to your mp3: <a href=”mp3s/new_mp3″>My new MP3</a>
  4. say whatever else you want to say
  5. click to publish

That’s it.

How can I have somebody else host my podcast?

You can sign up for a free blog at http://wordpress.com. Do everything just as above, but your dashboard is at their site instead of yours. Or, you can pay to have them host your mp3s for you.

How do I get my podcast listed in the Apple Store so it shows up when people click on “podcast directory” in itunes?

You need to have a store account, which usually requires you to submit a credit card. There are ways around this, for example, by joining the developer network. Launch iTunes. Click on the podcast section. Click on the podcast directory. Scroll down. There’s a link that says “submit a podcast.”

Find out more

I swear, this is all really, really easy. Leave questions in the comments.

Gigs!

I’ve mentioned that I’m playing soon in Austria (12 July in Lintz). The information is here. Note that the concert is open to anybody at all who wants to attend, whether they are participating in the rest of the conference or not.

I think playing at hacker / open source meetings is a good idea. I’m looking into using Perl to talk to the SC server, just so I can submit a proposal to a Perl conference. Of course, I spent some time as a professional perl scripter and I once wrote a web server in it for fun. My first-ever SuperCollider project had quite a bit of perl in it, as SC3 was really very alpha at the time. so it’s not just a cynical ploy to get to play at a geeky gathering.
Also, leftist political conferences are a good fit. I’ve got American political music, for sure. I keep thinking about doing more of it, but my ability to manipulate non-English text is lower. I think I will do such a piece for the /etc conference, as I recorded a friend of mine speaking in French about feminism. (Do you want to be in the piece? Send me a recording, in any format, of yourself, speaking in any language, answering the question: “Are you a feminist? Why or why not?”) Anyway, there’s certainly plenty of American material to work with, alas.
So if you, dear reader, are doing some sort of conference about open source or hacking or programming languages or leftist organizing or any related field, you should drop me a line. Depending on the location, I may be able to cover my own travel expenses. I have no technical needs, aside from electricity and a sound system. If the venue is café-sized and/or in Holland, I can even provide my own sound system.
Hm, if only I had a few pieces in Esperanto . . ..

Threats and Bombs and Whatnot

Three exploding cars in two days? what’s going on in the UK? Maybe knighting Rushdie was a bit more politically charged than they guessed it would be. (English speakers worldwide are always totally aware of the sensibilities of other cultures and how things might rankle them. As is France Soir)

London is like 2 hours by train from Birmingham. By contrast, Amsterdam is 40 minutes from where I live now and I still couldn’t manage to drag myself there this evening.
However, more worrisome are the threats and bombs placed by the US Supreme Court. Ok, so they’re metaphorical. But they have a much longer reach. Anti-trust laws? Who needs them? Yeah, I don’t see the court acting on corporate abuses any time soon. curses. That with campaign finance, which is closely linked, are probably the two most pressing issues in the US. Which will remain unaddressed or, indeed, worsen for the foreseeable future.
The court ran out of toilet paper in their official WC, but fortunately, the constitution was close by. Earl Warren is turning in his grave. I would rather him as the Chief Justice again, even if it was only feasable as a brain-eating zombie. “mmmmmurrrrrr ….. braaaaaiiiiins! riiights of accused! uuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrg!” Then he eats one of the court clerks. It’s sub-optimal, but at least he’ll have the right to appeal when he gets brought up on brain-eating charges.
We have maybe the worst president ever and the worst court in at least 80 years and that is a terrible combination. As congress makes feeble, timid attempts to rein in the Bush administration, the courts will undoubtedly end up involved. As we’re in the midst of a constitutional crisis, the Supreme Court will undoubtedly get involved. And side with monarchy. The congress can become decorational. sometimes required to rubber stamp things to add a seeming legitimacy. (Oh, wait, that’s their role now (gosh, I miss ‘gridlock’))
I want to know What In Hell is going on in the US? A town in the south is trying black kids for attempted murder after they shoved a racist white kid shortly after nooses were hung from a tree in warning? Have they fallen through a 50 year wormhole? There’s a best selling book called The South Was Right and it’s about the civil war?! The south explicitly said in their statements of sucession that they were splitting to preserve slavery. Slavery was right?? One of the republican front runners has a white supremacist high up in his campaign staff?
Let’s be clear here. All of the horrible stories of racism coming out of the US are also, often, blatantly sexist. People notice and comment on the racism. The sexism largely goes unnoticed. I bring this up to note that racism and sexism are very strongly linked, although racism is often more blunt and more violent, the two walk hand in hand as twins. White twin brothers.
Sometimes people ask me when I’m coming home again. I want to know where my home went. Dude, where’s my country? Even the Onion has gone right, “joking” this week that Moore’s new film lacks objective, balanced journalism. Muckracking may not be “balanced,” but that usually reflects a certain lack of ‘balance’ in the facts.
I’m not coming home until the majority of people are not even momentarily willing to consider that a system of chattel slavery was “right.” And acknowledge that people have a right to health care. One of the questions that used to bother me was, “how do you tell when it’s time to leave?” We all know the myth of the frog in slowly heating water, not knowing when to jump out. Well, the frog will jump out. The risk isn’t passively being cooked. The risk is waiting to jump out until after somebody puts the lid on the pan. Things that should invoke panic are: overturning of Miranda (protecting the rights of accused), overturning of Brown (ended school segregation) or overturning Lawrence and Garner v. Texas (the recent decision that struck down sodomy laws). If any of those go, make a run for the border.

Flanders Montage

This short film begins with a scene near the border where the bike route goes through a lovely National Park. There is a frog croaking on the audio track. I heard many frogs croaking and some of them sounded nice. This one was clever though, since he would only croak when there were other loud sounds a fade out when it was quiet. It made hir hard to record, but probably also more difficult for predators to find. The next two bits are the red light district in Antwerp. Everybody knows that prostitution is legal in The Netherlands, but it seems like most Americans are unaware that it’s legal in several other countries too, including law-heavy Belgium. Then comes audio from a carilon concert in Mechelen. The carilon there is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the very large number of bells. They were put to good use doing renditions of sappy pop songs. Can you name the tunes from the short fragments? Post your guesses in the comments. Finally, the last bit is pitch black and much longer than the rest.
I posted earlier about the horror movie campsite. I described the slugs everywhere, the mossy, moldy abandoned caravas, the very strange owner wanting to know if Xena was a good gaurd dog and the screams of animal life all night long.
Let me assure you that lying in a tent in the total blackness, it sounded much, much louder than it does on this recording. Maybe the spookiness doesn’t come across in this segment, but the audio is the best quality of the whole trip.
I’m disproportionately proud of these little videos. Feel free to remix them under an attribution-only liscence.

Holland Montage

The first bit is of a rural area near to Den Haag. The next is a windmill on a river. I could go look up where, but I’m lazy. The next windmills are around Rotterdam sort of near the area where all the tourists go, as there is a very high concertration of windmills. I got lost and arrived at a lower concentration of windmills, alas. Still nice though. Some of the noise you hear is the windmill actually working to move water around the canals! Then is an outdoor shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It’s in the south, near the Belgian border. There are Catholics in the South part of the country. Then, Xena runs around near the shrine while Nicole sneezes. All that long grass isn’t so good for her allergies. Finally, I stayed in a campground next to a bunch of sheep. The kept baa-ing at each other. But when I went out to video them, they were scared of Xena and made no sound. I succedded only in alarming the entire flock. The farmer yelled something at me. I asked for a translation, but he declined to provide one.
I made this montage by dragging the short films to iMovie and then exporting them as Quicktime.
Next up: sights and sounds of Flanders.

My phone takes videos

I used to think it was funny. Who would want to make movies with their phone? That’s before I realized I was carrying an audio recorder in my pocket all the time! Aha! So when Nicole and I were standing in the Grote Kerk in Breda, which has a fantastically long reverb, I asked her to clap.
Most of my other short films are of windmills. I don’t know if anybody would watch them if I posted them one at a time, so I might try a windmill montage. Will the excitement never cease??!!

Rated

Online Dating

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

  • pissed (3x)
  • torture (2x)
  • queer (1x)

Ok, maybe “pissed” is a (sorta) bad word. And I can see how political discussions involving American application of torture in prisons (at home and abroad. Let’s not forget that prison rape is so tolerated that it’s practically officially sanctioned.) might alarm small children. And everybody else too, I hope. But “queer”? My very self is inappropriate for kids?
I thought this was the 21st century, but, um, yeah. Maybe the perl script thought I was using it as a pejorative term.
Speaking of queerness . . .. Well, somebody was speaking to me of queerness last night. She wanted to talk about gender theory, but was really drunk, as was I. This could have been amusing, but then she wanted to switch clothes with me. At which point it got more stressful. She got a cisgender guy to put on her clothes. Hilarity ensued. I mean, he was kind of funny being all hairy-chested in that frilly shirt. But on the other hand. I mean. Is it automatically funny if somebody is cross dressing? Cuz, yeah, I do it every day.
And many folks wonder why I do it. Is it some sort of political statement? Is it the result of a theoretical position? Do I do it because I am brave and strong?
Let’s be clear: I am neither brave nor strong. If I were brave and strong, my sense of self would be able to withstand any choice of clothing. That it cannot speaks to fragility. I dress the way I do because of an internal imperative. I don’t know why, but I know it’s not negotiable. If I were brave or strong or theoretical or political, switching into frilly clothes on a lark would be nothing more than a lark. The suggestion would not make me want to flee.
And what about other baggage? Pip of Great Expectations writes:

Are there white middle-class butches? If so, where are they? I found Judith/Jack Halberstam’s book, Female Masculinities, particularly disappointing in this regard. It seems that J/J identifies as butch (??). But although she shows how butch history has been ignored by middle-class feminism, she doesn’t admit that being an academic means that working-class butch history doesn’t simply belong to her. She doesn’t use this opportunity to share her own experience of butchness, and instead uses the (often extremely personal) stories of others to illustrate this story. It’s this kind of behaviour that allows white middle class men/women/butches to claim a rich history and identity, while hiding our privilege over others of the same gender (just like white women using pictures of black mothers to symbolise the fertility or spirituality of all women).

I don’t know about claiming the word “butch.” I mean, butch women all have way more gravitas than me. And I’m really scrawny, which is a strike against it. Also, women who are actually, indisputably butch intimidate me no end. But all that aside, what Pip is talking about here is female-bodied masculinity, which is something I think I can claim.
The class baggage surrounding it has been on the periphery of my vision. When I wrote my post about how to cross dress, I stated, “You have two goals when it comes to clothing: 1. Pass, 2. Avoid getting treated like dirt . . .. Therefore, you want to convey not only masculinity, but also . . . social status. Simply put: life is easier if you look rich . . .. Therefore, you want to avoid dressing in a sloppy manner. It will drop your status . . ..” In those ellipses, I was talking about ageism. On the rare occasions that I pass for male, I’m read as a teen boy, which has drawbacks. But when I don’t pass, I’m also treated as a low status person (followed around stores by security, that sort of thing) if I’m dressed in an overly casual fashion. I knew that dressing as a businessman tended to help, but I didn’t quite make the class connection there that Pip does.
Obviously, gender expression and class are not as linked in their incidence as Pip suggests, or I wouldn’t exist. But if people are subconsciously making the connection in their minds, this explains why folks think I’m a thug. Because they’re homophobic, transphobic, classist asshats.
(Be nice to me, or I’ll call you names on my blog.)
Anyway, I think real lesson here is that I shouldn’t try to talk about gender theory when I’m drunk. Or maybe ever. It’s ok when I or people in my general position theorize about my life, but when people from outside do it, well, that’s different. For me, it’s my life, which makes the stakes somewhat different than a casual person who wonders about the meanings of gender statements. I’m not making a statement, I’m just trying to get through my day.