eric.openflows

A sad day.

Tuli Kupferberg passed away this afternoon. If you don't know who Tuli is, go to youtube or google and search for him or The Fugs. He was an amazing artist, poet and activist. (ok, I'll save you some time, here are links to some fun Fugs tunes, Kill For Peace | Morning Morning | Nothing )

He told me that they wanted to call the band the Fucks, but no record label would allow that in 1964, so they went for the Fugs instead. I had the opportunity to get to know him a little, while helping out with production work on his last book, a collection of his cartoons called Teach Yourself Fucking (the cover was an alteration of some old self-education book Teach Yourself Banking). I think that my life is somehow better as a result.

He was so excited that he was finally able to use the word Fuck in the title of something. His energy and playful spirit were really inspiring. He taught by example that activists and revolutionaries don't have to be angry all the time -- being silly is just as important.

Via a facebook friend, I found out today that there's an oil additive that is sold under the name Sea Foam. Seriously, Sea Foam! Since we're busy dumping millions of gallons of oil into the seas, why not put some ocean in your tank?

I really want to meet the marketing genius that thought this one up. This product has been sold for decades, and no one has ever stopped to think "hmmm, maybe we're giving the wrong message here?"

Maybe they can use this image in their next marketing campaign: (not sure who to credit for this image of oil washing up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, if anyone knows please fill me in image via the Surfrider Foundation)

Location

I'll be leading a two day Drupal training on July 7th and 14th thanks to the folks at the Metropolitian New York Library Council. Here's the description from their Summer 2010 catalog: Drupal has fast become one of the most popular, stable, and internationally-supported open source Content Management Systems for websites small and large.

Through four discrete modules delivered over two days, participants will receive training on the fundamental concepts, terminology, and skills needed to install, configure, and maintain a simple website using Drupal.

NOTE: Participants are not expected to have a foundation in PHP or database work. All work will be done via the Drupal administrative interface; no writing of PHP code will be necessary, although some code snippets will be discussed, explained and used as part of the exercises. This workshop is intended for those with some familiarity with Drupal, but no previous site creation or management is presumed.

By the end of this program, participants will:

• Install an instance of Drupal for experimentation and further learning
• Develop a basic understanding of Drupal concepts and terminology, permissions, users, and role settings
• Learn how to set up and configure a Drupal website with contributed modules
• Use Drupal’s administrative interface to create and manipulate “content types,”
• Display content in customized ways using the “views” module
• Automate simple tasks using the “Rules” module
• Learn how to evaluate existing Drupal modules when deciding what to use for specific tasks in the future

In a reaction to Google's wardriving, I'm thinking of setting up a website to facilitate a mass swap-meet for people to exchange their wi-fi routers.

Google stepped a bit over the line (again) this week. This time, it was focused around a new effort to make it easier to geo-locate a web browser's location.

As they've been driving around in those cute cars taking images for the google maps Street View tool, they have also been mapping the identifying information of every available 802.11 wireless access point (wi-fi) and storing that information along with longitude and latitude information. I'm not sure how I feel about the image street views has of me walking down Central Park West after a meeting, but the idea that they have locative information on my wireless access point definitely upsets me.

Having been helping the folks at Open Greenmap with technology planning and development, I understand the desire to map this information. Most cellular devices (phones, iPhones, androids, etc.) are able to report their GPS coordinates when they request data from a web server. This allows for a site like Opengreenmap.org to give a mobile devices information on interesting places in proximity to where the user is at that time (that's a hypothetical, opengreenmap.org will be able to do this soon). This is not possible for people using laptops (or desktops) connected to the net via a wired network or a wifi access point. Someone looking for interesting green locations from a coffee shop has to go through a few more steps to search the maps.

By now, I'm sure you are all aware of the storm of criticism and concern about privacy that has come about in response to the badly thought out addition of Community Pages at Facebook.

Like many others, I've deleted a lot of information from my profile. I did not want to link my profile to these pages that are accessible to anyone on facebook, and in some cases anyone on the internet. After my initial freakout, I have calmed down a bit. It seems that by limiting my participation in facebook as a whole, I can keep a certain level of privacy.

One friend told me a story of a musician friend of hers who has been impacted by this new feature in a rather negative way. Her fan page is now overshadowed by the community page that has her name. Where she once had a place for her fans that she could moderate, most people now end up at the fully un-moderated aggregation of posts that mention her that is the facebook community page. They have essentially replaced a well defined relatively safe space with a free for all with content that would never have been allowed on her fan page.

Another problem is the text on the top of every community page. It assumes and implies that anyone who's liked the page or had their status update automatically posted to it have "a passion" for the topic.

A lot of the iPad ads around the neighborhood are being amended by someone with a big marker. I have to admit that ads with all that white space are really asking for it.
I missed getting a photo of the one that said iFad, but I managed to remember that my phone has a camera on it so I was able to get a bad photo of iPad Thai

I've really been meaning to start posting more, but keep finding other things that seem more important.

However, I've made a commitment to myself to write at least two posts a week for the next couple months.

Now, I can't decide what to write about so I decided to start slow with something silly instead of highly political or technical.

I got a funny email yesterday. Someone in Canada searched the words hotels.com confirmations back on bookings using google. That led them to my two year old rant about hotels.com. Somehow they decided to click the "Get in Touch" link at the top of the page and use the contact form to make the following request of me:

I booked on line with Hotels.com and have Not received a confirmation of my booking. This is a booking for only the Roosevelt Hotel and cannot be changed because of my meetings scheduled with clients in your hotel. Must have a confirmation back today. No other Hotel will be suitable, Thank you for your prompt assistance on this matter.

Well, Mr. Pederson, I wish you luck but as I'm sure you figured out: I have nothing to do with your reservation or hotels.com.

This past Saturday was the 7th NYC Drupal Camp, and apparently something I said started a little bit of a twit-storm.

As part of the introduction to the event, I was asked to give a quick introduction to Open Source/Free Software. I've given similar presentations at many of the past camps and other conferences, and it was a busy week so I did not really prepare as well as I should have so I improvised a bit more than I usually do.

I pulled out one of my earlier presentations and gave the fastest possible history of the GPL, Free Software and the relationship between the copyleft nature of the GPL sofware license and the community-centric development process of a tool like Drupal.

I'm wondering why there has not been any real discussion in the press or information distribution by activist organizations about New York State Ballot Proposition 2. The wording of the proposition seems very different from the actual change to the State Constitution that will be enacted if the proposition passes. Is this about allowing prisoners to volunteer at nonprofit organizations or is this about allowing prisons to force inmates to do unpaid labor?

The past week has been very difficult. After a long struggle to provide care for her at home, we admitted my mother to a psychiatric hospital. Sadly, it's the only care option we have that does not require winning the lottery.

Even with what we thought was good insurance and medicare, the sad reality is that the options we would prefer are all beyond what my parents, my brothers and I could afford. There is still a good chance that providing for her care long-term will bankrupt my parents despite their once reasonable retirement savings, pension and social security.

According to recent estimates, 2.4 to 4.5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer's disease. [1]

Alzheimer's is the seventh-leading cause of death in the US. [2]

Neither Medicare nor private insurance covers the type of long-term care that people with Alzheimer's need [3]

While there is no movement in private insurance to add care and services for Alzheimer's dementia patients, in 2001 political pressure forced an increase to the list of services that are available via medicare. [4]

While this still does not provide coverage for the things that most experts feel are the most effective, at least it's a start.

When care decisions can be made by doctors and government bureaucrats, there is the potential to apply pressure to force changes that benefit patients. With those decisions in the hands of accountants concerned with profit and shareholders, care continues to be limited. It seems that the only times for-profit health insurance expands what is covered it's because elected officials have passed laws to force them to do so.

I wish there were fewer accountants and more bureaucrats between my parents and their healthcare.

1: http://www.nia.nih.gov/Alzheimers/Publications/adfact.htm

2: http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_facts_figures.asp

3: Chronic illness By Ilene Morof Lubkin, Pamala D. Larsen page 481

4: http://www.alzinfo.org/alzheimers-treatment-overview.asp