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Crypto is good

offline blogging: austria

I am in Vienna. I met many Wieners when I was in Linz and am staying with a woman I met named Marty. Many people who went to the conference in Linz flew in through Vienna, so last night, we had a small party. Several members of the vegetable orchestra were present. This legendary group’s shows include making instruments out of vegetables and then playing them. One of the folks last night apparently has a technique where she can get a zucchini to sound exactly like a tuba. They used to follow up the performances with stew made from the instruments, but this was time consuming and also kind of gross, so now they pre-cook their stew with other vegetables.
Last night was some of the most fun that I’ve ever had. We were artists and geeks and sex workers and Europeans and Americans and all feminist / progressive. Austria has its political problems, certainly, but the indie scene is great. We were hanging out at the queer center. There was spray paint on the outside wall that said "gender queer." It made me feel very happy. I really like that term.
The last day that the con was going in Linz was unbearably hot. There were my last minute workshops. A quick intro to svn, how to podcast, etc, but it was all so hot, the entire building emptied out and migrated to the bank of the Danube. I was not the only one who went skinny dipping in the (brown) Danube. After painting myself in thick coat of spf 50 sunblock. The current was swift. The water was freezing! So much fun.
Alas, my whole experience made me feel pangs for my youth. Ah, to be in a place where women work together and trans-masculinity is validated, and where my body is not a cultural artifact, but just the space that I inhabit, without expectations written across the shape of my chest.
Linz was home to some important historical figures. Bruckner used to play the organ in the town’s cathedral. Some of you will recall that Bruckner wrote for the wagner tuba and thus is important in its history. Also from linz was Adolph Hitler. He went to a real schule near the haupt schule where we slept. One of the people in my room attempted to determine whether he attended the school that we slept at. Since he was an art student and this was the arts magnet, it was a possibility. Anyway, she failed to find out. Maybe i slept in hitler’s homeroom?
I think that I am now involved in the european feminist forum. We are going to set up a wiki (or drupal) which has a bunch of howtos for activists and non-profits. Leftists simply should not be giving their institutional funds to microsoft. If they’re in to people power, they should use free software. Also many outside the first world don’t have the luxury to buy buggy bloatware because it costs too much. Our documents will hopefully be useful to folks worldwide. What do orgs use computers for? Their website, email, spreadsheets, documents, making posters and officy stuff like that. These kinds of applicstions work very well under ubuntu and don’t require much computer power. Old computers can be turned into powerful tools for activists.
We need a parallel structure. Anti-capitalists cannot depend on for-profit enterprise to solve their problems. This is a clear use for self-help and anarchism! Amyway, I’ll set something up when i get home and then make an announcement and then go away again. The intended audience is computer novice activists, so part of the issue is trust. It’s ok to link to other howtos, but its essential to gain their trust. They’re often suspicious of new technology and wary of geeks, so even if this project is redundant, the feminist perspective will help.

In Linz

I’m in Linz and darn tired. Wrote some music on the train. I’m doing almost all new stuff, but re-using the second half of my first supercollider piece. The piece is kind of klutz and doesn’t work well in stereo, except for the second half, which is cool on it’s own. I got a new joystick two days ago. It was really great when I first plugged it in. 0-255 for real. 10 bits. 4 channels of analog stick action. woot. But it’s become flaky. Sometimes the range of the sticks is cut in half. Sometimes the buttons have different IDs. It’s making me a little nervous. I thought I was buying a name-brand joystick, but the name is actually just similar to what I thought I was buying. Oh well. Maybe I’ll get a third soon and in the mean time, I’ve got a bit of a challenge. Usually unplugging it and replugging it works. Or I could put my awesome joystick brain in it.

In other news, if you plug a Dell laptop into a step-down voltage converter, it fucks up the screen in MS windows. (wtf?)
MY clothes are mildewy. meh, I say. Also, I feel a bit weird about being in a women’s event, even if the sponsoring group is called “gender changer.” Hello, I am twice the gender changer that you are.
Overheard this morning: “somebody was playing the digeridu at 10 o’clock last night!” la la la.
The conference fees include food and lodging, which make it a really good deal, although I was kind of surprised not to be comped in, given that I thought they were going to pay me. We’re staying in a haupt schule. This is a kind of elementary school. They have very thin matresses on the floors of the classrooms.
“Haupt” means half. It’s a half-school. In Germany, and apparently also in Austria, they have really extreme tracking. College bound kids go to something called Gymnasium. At the end, they take a test. If they pass it, the can go to a university. If they don’t pass it, the have they still have their high school diploma, equivalent to those who graduated from a real schule. They just get a diploma and don’t have to take a test. Finally, there exists haupt schules. In high school, these kids go to school part time and spend the other half of their time apprenticing to be things like florists or auto mechanics. If you were going to try to figure out what was the most valuable part of every kind of schooling, the big test result is the payoff for the gynasium. The diploma for those in real schule. The apprenticeship for those in haupt shule.
The one that we’re at is an elementary school. The tracking starts very early. Transferring from one track to another is virtually impossible. Unless you go to gynasium and pass the big test, there is no way that you will ever go to a university in your country. The American in me rebells to this. But the same sort of tracking also exists in American schools and is more subtle and probably, therefore, more evil. Also, we track kids straight to jail rather than in to apprentice programs, so we suck worse.
Interestingly, the school is an arts magnet. The kids must go on to art academy. I always wondered about the liberal arts value (or lack therof) of conservatories. This seems to confirm my suspicions. Also, I’ve seen the alphabet posted in all the classrooms, but not a single math-related thing. Maybe it’s all on a different floor.

Are You a feminist? Why or why not?

Video from the 4th of July shot with my camera. The audio from this will shortly be munched into a piece of music. You too can participate. Make your voice heard! I am not looking for any particular answer. However, I am looking for language diversity. So send me your answer in your favorite language: English, Esperanto, Spanish, Japanese, Klingon, etc. I’m especially looking for German, since the piece is going to premier in Austria.
Email me your answer in audio or video (with sound). Any format is ok. I will thank you in the program notes and give you a copy of the piece. Cell phone movies/recordings are ok, the internal mic on your computer, whatever. Send files to celesteh AT gmail DOT com.
This movie little clip is under a Creative Commons Attribution-only Liscence, btw. Video wants to be free.

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.