Practice

i decided to break a pattern here and added an audio song instead. fact is i’ve been less time online looking for videos and instead been mostly listening to random songs, so this is one on the uillean pipes, with several traditional songs which i think will be relevant for discussion

in the aftermath of the recent panic about censorship, driven by the big media companies wanting to filter all internet traffic to spot infringement, i feel that not everything is said every time. most arguments are passionate defenses of the ideas of commons (like the traditional song you just heard, which is anyone’s), or the defense of personal privacy as a fundamental right. while i agree with both concerns, the point i’ve been trying to get across is somewhat different

i’ve argued before that any idea of something out of nothing is preposterous, and with it, originality must be recontextualized. nothing is entirely new because everything is made of something that already existed. this works for art, ideas, languages, etc. while we might praise a poet for their highly original work, we certainly do not praise them for using words and ideas that we are capable of understanding. in order for an idea to be transmitted, the receiver needs a compatible set of symbols. in this case, the poet would write using most of the words they got from their cultural baggage. in that sense, all work is incremental, and the idea of “owning” a particular rearrangement of these cultural symbols is highly questionable

but this type of argument has been put forward enough times that i feel it would add nothing to the debate. on the other hand, the big free culture revolution seems to be completely ignored, hence my post on copyleft and copyright

first, a little background on what copyleft is and where it comes from. back when the first personal computers were built in garages by hobbyists, software was just something you’d write to make things work. but companies were also writing code and protecting it as intellectual property using the old copyright laws

soon the near-immateriality of software combined with the lossless copying that computers allowed meant that if you gave your own written software to someone and they changed it, passed it along or sold it, they would be breaching copyright laws

to prevent this from happening, licenses emerged that allowed you to use copyright as a way that would allow for this same incremental change. these licenses play a trick on copyright law, by using copyright law against itself, in a way, hacking laws against themselves. one of my favorites, the gnu gpl, solves this problem by saying: if you copyright this, you are breaching copyright (obviously with much more legalese). it also says that if you copy and change it, you cannot copyright it either. this is basically using copyright against itself, to prevent, in this case, software from being closed up in corporate intellectual property silos

this might seem too specific, but i’ll give a copyleft example that affects us much more. if you scroll down on wikipedia, you’ll find a license statement that says cc-by-sa, a creative commons license, a type of copyleft. what it says about documents is basically what i said above about software. but while coding was restricted to a few people with the skills, reading and writing about any topic you might know something about is not. the strongest point going for wikipedia is that it is free, not in the sense that you don’t pay to use it, but in the sense that you can download it, print it, use it in schools, for personal use and even write a spin off of it

this is the true power of copyleft, the fact that copyright is used as a way to guarantee that in the future, this information and the rights to modify it remain unchanged. i personally believe this is one of the biggest intellectual revolutions in history

copyleft has since expanded, thanks to the initiative of creative commons to simplify the license selection, that brought easy legalese to the average joe. and since then all kinds of artists have been publishing copylefted art. this means that you can copy and change (depending on the terms) the work provided without fears of infringement

now how is this relevant for the current issues regarding copyright and censorship?

i go under fire many times when i say that i don’t care about new laws protecting media companies and filtering personal transmissions. this might seem like i am on the media companies’ side, well, because i am! if an artist has the objectively ridiculous idea that they are entitled to copyrighting whatever work they have produced then they should enjoy that right. and use whichever means to protect it. and if they even go as far as giving their work to a bunch of talentless greedy suits so be it! the right to be an idiot or a sucker means we live in a healthy, pluralist society. it’s wrong to ban copyrighting in my opinion for the same reasons i believe banning extremist political media or religious media is wrong. provided a solid, critical citizenship, these issues become little more than sunday newspaper fait divers

the key issue here is that any artist (or engineer, writer, scientist, etc) that deliberately chooses to make his work protected for motives of fame or fortune should not be supported in the first place on an ethical basis. i don’t care if people get arrested for ripping beyonce or the latest commercial video game. if they are consuming and being brainwashed by that mind numbing shit, then they should be locked away. this will expose the truth behind the coolness and glitter of mass media: a bunch of blood sucking vampires playing with sexy puppets and a society based entirely on vampirizing creativity to feed the suited bourgeoisie

it strikes me as incredibly offensive for the idea of commons that freedom of speech is thrown around in conversations only when we can’t download another stereotype inducing blockbuster from hollywood. never mind wikileaks, never mind media censorship by governments. someone takes my arrested development away and riots ensue! like the london riots, the brainwashing of the masses by media corporations has succeeded in creating in us desire not to improve ourselves and learn, but to indulge in the shallow and barren fruits of mass media culture

so how does copyleft complement this picture? copyleft is the ethical way of producing cultural goods. there are licenses to suit every need, but mainly, the access and mashup rights allow for a speedier dissemination and improvement of things. copyleft artists understand the need for media and intellectual commons, and while the struggle against so called “censorship” to prevent copyright theft might seem like an important cause, we should see this as an opportunity to expand global awareness of the free culture revolution. lets cherish wikipedia, linux, open source hardware and all these new ideas for an open, free culture future

a yes to fighting for an open culture rooted in civilizational commons, a most definite no to using the very same laws that protect these commons to justify one’s own lust for mass consumerism

ironically, though i try to post traditional music (which is public domain for the most part), some of the media on this page is in a “gray area”. but in essence, folk music evolves thanks to the efforts of hundreds of unspoken musicians improving on an existing pool of cultural commons. maybe the answer to these media problems has been around longer than we think

a nice mix of pipes and brazilian music

the real title for this post should be “why i don’t give a fuck about SOPA, and why the american internet must come to an end” but it was too long.

if you follow any mainstream website like wikipedia, reddit, facebook, etc, you may have noticed a generalized panic around something called SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. basically, some politicians in the united states want to change the internet context in a way that makes it very hard for website owners to accept user generated content. just go through the wikipedia article if you want to look more into it. explaining it is not the main focus of this post

just to contextualize, and help whoever doesn’t know how the internet works, i’ll do a short run-down about how things work, how they evolved, and why SOPA is basically irrelevant unless you’re living in the united states.

the internet is a collection of tubes connections arranged all over the world, connecting millions of computers. in order to know where something is, the internet we use (mostly, since i’m simplifying) uses a thing called TCP/IP, which is basically a little envelope with an address on it. that address is the IP address, which a huge number (2³² addresses for the current version). since people aren’t good at memorizing big numbers, someone came up with DNS (Domain Name Service), which is basically a phone book with names (like google.com) and equivalent addresses (in this case, 74.125.237.147 for example). if you click that link you will still be taken to the google page.

it all works because at some point everyone agreed to use the same phonebook, the one provided by ICANN. here’s the catch: for .com, .net or .org, it is ICANN that controls the server (the directory with the addresses). now, ICANN is a non-profit corporation in the united states, which means it is governed by united states laws.

thanks to the nutty laws the united states have, the FBI and other entities can seize those top level domain names because the .com, .net, etc are united states domains anyway. here’s the catch though: if you use a domain from another country, e.g., .au, .pt, etc, the entities that assign and maintain the addresses are local to the respective country. this means that if your website is hosted in your country with your domain, you have nothing to worry about

these laws, if anything, will contribute to show that the internet as is is overly dominated by united states corporations and policies. facebook, twitter, google, etc, are all united states companies. but what if they were to be taken down by the new laws? what would happen? absolutely nothing. every other website that doesn’t run on an united states server would continue operating as usual.

recently we saw the power of this when the united states seized the domain names for wikileaks. they merely moved to a swiss domain name (from wikileaks.org to wikileaks.ch).

the software, the pages, content, etc, can be moved around the globe thanks to the distributed nature of the internet. the connections are owned by private companies, but these companies so far have kept from filtering any traffic, which means that it’s still possible, when faced with idiotic national laws like the ones in the united states, to move somewhere else.

this website however, has a .com domain, which means its address is under the united states jurisdiction. i might change that soon. let me just say i’m not happy about the way due process has been ignored in most of the recent cases, such as megaupload. my server is also in the united states, so moving all my stuff would be pricey, but worth it if these human rights issues remain unresolved

it is frequently flaunted by talking heads how the united states constitution is so unique in protecting fundamental rights. well, it most certainly isn’t the only one doing that, and this argument is usually one of pure ignorance. if facebook or twitter were to move to portugal for example, they would not only enjoy a better constitution without lobbying laws, but also be forced to comply with labor laws. if anything, tech companies love the united states because it allows them to make their own rules, their own labor laws, and their own censorship standards. in any civilized country, this would not fly.

this is why i don’t give a fuck about what the united states does or doesn’t in terms of their own internal policies. they are the worst example to follow.

i urge any netizen to look up their local internet and copyright laws and stay informed. during the next couple of years, we will see a deluge of changes in internet laws inspired by the united states debacle. it is essential that national policies aren’t drawn up out of united states fanboyism, but according to their people’s will and constitutions. and to do this, all we have to do is ignore the noise coming from the united states and beat to our own drum

cool portuguese tunes played by foreign people. our gaita is getting popular. today we’re doing a small diy segment again

me and T first prototyped a solar pouch almost a year ago. we designed it because one of the issues with solar chargers by themselves is that you have to carry them along side your electronics. putting them in bags is common, but expensive, so we designed a pouch with a panel and a charging cable.

since the first test, i designed an improved version of it using a 6V panel that is a single piece, versus the other diy segment i did previously that used 1V cells. with this 6V panel and a diode, i made a trickle charger for the cellphone. basically, if there’s enough sun, it charges the phone. if you put the phone inside the pouch, it charges it and also it protects it. it’s handy and feels more organic than having a separate unit. the jack for the charger on this model is on the side, which makes it kind of ridiculous to use. i guess i could mod the phone, but instead i’m willing to bend the jack a little.

feel free to copy this design, it is under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. if you want to sell them let me know and we’ll work something out. here’s how to do it:

materials

• 6V solar panel with less than 3W (in this case, 2W) so it doesn’t burn your electronics equipment (see what the power of your cellphone charger is and choose a panel below that power)
• diode (any diode works, a shottky would be better, but i had a lot of regular ones). one advantage is that on a 6V polarization the diode should be at about 0.7V, which in turn makes the whole thing output 5.3 ~ 5V for the cellphone
• a jack for your phone. i cut mine from an old charger. make sure it works (this was the second one i used, the first one didn’t work)
• fabric, velcro and glue for the pouch. be creative. bland black pouches are so passé
• soldering iron, multimeter, solder and whatever you enjoy to have around when you do electronics

instructions

• sew a pouch that has about the same size as the panel. make sure it swells enough to stick to the panel even when the electronics are in it
• solder the diode to the panel (to the plus terminal, make sure it is polarized correctly so that current flows only to the cellphone)
• test the panel in direct sun. if it doesn’t work now, start again
• solder the other end of the diode to the cable and jack (check the plus and minus with a multimeter)
• test the panel on the jack terminals. if it doesn’t work now, start again
• glue the pouch to the panel using whatever glue you may have. put something inside the pouch so that you don’t glue the pouch to itself
• test it under the sun and happy charging!

results

it works! that’s it. this is an easy (and less extreme) way of doing a self-powered device. be creative! stick panels on everything!

demo video. i wasn’t drunk, i was filming with one hand, so i couldn’t plug the jack. the main thing is there: it charged!

i found this panel on some online store. just look for 6V panels and you’ll find some. these weren’t that cheap but they are sturdy and give enough juice to charge the cellphone in about 3 hours. also, on a lithium battery, you don’t want to charge all the time. but it’s definitely handy to have around. thanks for reading!

some more local and modern pipes, dazkarieh

in sync with all the studies i published, CS has finally become a for-profit organization. as some other organizations have done, they started as a pseudo-non-profit (they never got the status approved) and with it, accepted donations and volunteer work to make the website grow. thanks to all that volunteer work, the website grew to a staggering 3,000,000+. once it got too big to fail, they sold it off and now it’s owned bycompanies such as ebay to investment groups that have in their funded website list organizations like twitter and are owned by, among others, the people behind ebay. while this is a big blow to volunteers, since i never volunteered more than my own couch, i don’t feel as bad as many do right now.

but that’s not really what i’m writing about today. today i’m writing my eulogy to my own participation on CS. i might still use it, but i certainly won’t use it the same way.

CS changed my life more than any other online community i’ve been a part of. not because it is very good as an online community, but because it promotes offline connections. this allowed me to meet almost 1000 amazing people from all over the world, allowed be to grow and test my own political ideologies, and most importantly, establish a network of friendships all over the globe. let me make it very clear: CS has made my life incredibly better in many different ways, and i’d be a fool to get angry because they decided to go a different ideological route than they did at the beginning.

what CS does is priceless in terms of breaking cultural boundaries in a select group of the traveling population. in practice, a couch is not commonly given to the poor, the needy or the oppressed. i ran the tests, see GDP data. the people that use CS are the people that don’t need to use CS. but that’s what makes them special. these are travelers that (still) believe traveling is more than a tour guide and a hotel, and no matter how naive, superficial or materialistic they might be, these core values create a very idealistic community.

it was there that i got the support and like-mindedness to advance my ideas for community building, and most importantly, understood how diverse we are and how important it is to listen to each other.

so seeing CS go for-profit (even if they call it “B”, it’s still for-profit), is both its coming of age and mine. since i started, i have been on permanent state of deepening my own understanding of how things work between common people. what i found, that can be seen in all the studies i’ve done all these years, has not only surprised me but given me a stronger basis for when i say people are generally good, trusting and above all, creative and empathetic. i have gathered evidence that demonstrates that age, race, gender or nationality are irrelevant, and that what still matters is the real human moments created and the setting they are created in. it matters more if you are tired and need a bed, hungry and need food, or lonely and need a hug, than whether you are rich or poor, black or white, man or woman or other.

i have also learned one of the biggest lessons of my life. though this wasn’t through CS, it was thanks to CS that i met the amazing people that helped me achieve it. i learned that the homeless, the weak, the junkies, petty thieves and low-lives that surround us are not hopelessly trapped, not invalids and certainly not lazy, no matter how the capitalist individualist mindset tries to push that through propaganda. i have seen hiv positive people with their eyes lit about the future as they worked for a common goal even though their lives had been dramatically shortened, i have seen junkies reduce their drug use for the simple fact that they were fed and happy. above all, i have see that social justice and a meaningful existence are the most powerful tools one can have to change the world around us. empathy and compassion but also bravery and relentlessness to exert them.

but it was also through these experiments and experiences that i learned that new ideas are necessary. i grew frustrated with the middle class european activists that i would meet, that seemed to be more focused on hypothetical situations and impossible practical options than getting their hands dirty. and above all, the overwhelming majority of humans that though having their hearts in the right place, feel they can’t do more, powerless to do more, and hopeless for the future.

i can say that certainly there is little hope, but hope is for those who don’t know what the consequences of their actions are. we are only hopeful and faithful if we don’t know what will come of our doings. i have no hope and no faith on my own future now because i understand what works and what doesn’t, and above all, have finally detached myself from the veiled need for survival.

i grew frustrated, as time went by, of how many people were telling me they wanted to change the world. of how many were telling me others were wrong and they were right. but when asked a concrete ideal for our present, there was none. this is the value crisis we live in, and this is where i focus my ideological work now.

none of this would have been possible without CS and the wonderful people i met through it. but CS itself was an organization i had a high moral respect for. what they were doing, though naive, was sending a message to the world that borders and property weren’t realities, but man-made fictions. what CS confirms now is that the idealistic, when naive, are quickly capitalized by the unscrupulous elite. CS has gone from the wonderful idealistic and incompetent group of people that just wanted to meet foreigners and do parties with all of them, to a serious business venture. this, therefore, makes it incompatible with the way i see things should be done. either one is for profit openly, as airbnb for example, or one is for other goals, like servas. what CS did was a bait and switch: get volunteers, raise enough social capital, and once you’re big enough, sell and go for profit with all the work done by the volunteers. the only thing wrong here is the fact that there was a clear claim they were non-profit when it wasn’t true. i certainly don’t appreciate being lied to or deceived, so now i will provide alternatives to whoever seeks equivalent systems.

i wouldn’t say CS owes me anything or that i owe CS anything. for the years i worked with it, it was more of a mutual reciprocity exchange. now that my experiences will be sold, i feel that trust has been broken and will move on.

here’s my list. i recommend anyone who hosts on CS and wants to leave to maintain their profile and write to people to request to them through other networks. that way, one can transition people from CS to other networks, to stop the deception.

website	description
bewelcome.org	similar to CS in values, but not for profit (yet)
workaway.info	work exchange (people work for your couch)
helpx.net	people work for your farm or place in exchange for food and lodging
wwoof.org	people work for your farm for food and lodging
airbnb.com	people PAY to use your couch or house
warmshowers.org	similar to CS but for cyclists
globalfreeloaders.com	like CS, not very big
servas.org	one of the oldest hospitality networks
tripping.com	like CS, for profit company
hospitalityclub.org	another one of the oldest hospitality networks

if i missed any let me know! and above all, thank you for everything CS, but we have grown apart and it’s time to move on

(sorry fellow english language readers, this topic is somewhat local so it’s in portuguese)

o exemplo musical de hoje demonstra a digitação cromática. foi a primeira vez que vi usado numa música, apesar de ser principalmente para um bend tipo blue note.

já tinha escrito sobre os fabricantes da minha gaita. recentemente almocei com eles (e muitos outros gaiteiros) e confirmei com o Vitor: o ponteiro transmontano deles é cromático. decidi anotar todas as notas que consigo dar. como é normal, é preciso algum trabalho de palheta e nem todas as notas estarão perfeitas, mas aqui está a digitação que encontrei:

fiquei surpreendido por se conseguir fazer cruzado no Si grave (com o mindinho), é um cruzado que nunca tinha visto antes! no diagrama não transpus a escala, deixei com as notas reais (uma oitava abaixo), ainda que possa ser escrito noutro menor qualquer. o próximo passo é descobrir qual a digitação para a escala de Si bemol maior (só tem o Si bemol e o Mi bemol). Considerando que a sensível está subida meio tom, não dá para usar o “truque” de afinar o ronco uma nota abaixo e tocar em mixolídio, subindo a 7ª, portanto será necessário fazer os cruzados.