Why Free Software

I am going to quote directly from the GNU site on this :

Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program’s users have the four essential freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

This was taken from here

GNU/Linux is the Operating System.  Linus Torvalds in 1990 (or there abouts) creates the kernel Linux that would be used as one of the kernals for the GNU Operating System.  There are many flavours of GNU/Linux out there, and not all of them adhere to the philosophy of free software, on the GNU web-site they list the distro’s that do.  But, it’s a good step in the right direction for anyone to ditch the main OS and move towards the open source / free software OS.

I have recently been exploring different distro’s – using Sun’s Virtual Box to run different virtual machines so I can try them out before I decide to make a permanent change.  My current trial is that of gNewSense – I’ll make a report on this version as soon as I have had a proper play.  It’s based on Debian (which is great), but sticks more truly to the GNU philosophy.

This post has become somewhat of a ramble, and really all I wanted to do was get peoples interest in the Free Software concept and philosophy.

Let’s take a control back of our machines!

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I’ve been aware of Wiring for  a good few years now, and have been watching it develop.  It’s a sister project to Processing – so the language is very similar, the difference being Wiring is designed to allow you to create programs that run off of a electronic board, and micro-controller.

Here is a quote from the site

Wiring is an open source programming environment and electronics i/o board for exploring the electronic arts, tangible media, teaching and learning computer programming and prototyping with electronics. It illustrates the concept of programming with electronics and the physical realm of hardware control which are necessary to explore physical interaction design and tangible media aspects.

A friend of mine was selling some wiring boards, and on an impulse I bought one.  The next step was for me to try and  get it working on Linux – and I have to say Hernando Barragán (the guy behind wiring) was a star and helped no end – so that I could get it working on my distro of Linux.

I’ve had an interest in tangible computing for a long time, but never really done anything practical.  So I am looking forward to a new hobby!  The only thing that is holding me back is what I want to do first with it! – so any ideas then please feel free to comment.  I was toying with the idea of creating some sort of novel device for interfacing sound exploration.  At present I am not sure – I’ll be exploring the language, and what it can and can’t do before I come to any firm conclusions on what I want to “create”.  You never know it might just be a system that uses various sensors to keep track of conditions in my green house!  That’s the great thing about it all, I can now start to explore using sensors and other devices to get information from the real world and feed it back into the machine.

I’ll post any developments as and when!

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The design was produced by Kerb designer Will Weaver and the game concept came out of the head of Kerb strategist Carl Hodler. There are still a few tweaks to be made: some re-working of some of the interface elements, extra work laying out the instructions (and re-writing them too) and a little bit of colour correction. We are also going to implement a global high score table with the next Wordagon release – and we will possibly then start to charge for the app.

With absolutely no promotion apart from Kerb employees spreading the word, Wordagon has managed over 900 downloads with a user rating of 4+ (as of Febuary 2010).

Some screenshots:

From the itunes store description: (please excuse the excessive use of exclamation marks!)

Wordagon is a game of high pressure and mental agility. Battle against time and space… and by space, we mean words!

With each letter tile having a value, the bigger the word, the more points you score! The longer it takes it to find a word and submit it, the closer you get to falling foul of the onslaught of new letters taking their place.

Before you get trapped beneath an alphabet avalanche, you need to find words and remove them, but as you progress through the levels, the words you must come up with keep getting longer!

• Key features:
• Bonus tiles for letters
• Bonus tiles for words
• 5 levels of difficulty
• Highscore table to allow you to challenge yourself or your friends

Get it for free from the itunes store here

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Be sure to check his flickr page to see more strips & illustration work (be sure to check out his strip Barry, the life and times of… )

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http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/05/52512

There hasn’t been a great deal of scientific exploration with regards to how contrails (especially persistent ones) might cause changes in weather systems, one thing that is clear is that these persistent trails do cause cloud formation.

Since the mid 90’s there has been growing popularity with regards to contrails in the “conspiracy” world – so much so that now they have been dubbed – Chemtrails.   Speculation on what chemtrails are is rife, from them being chemicals agents used by governments for mind control and the spreading of a virus.

Personally I am more concerned with the nature of commercial air traffic and the increasing effects this might have on weather systems.  The more people travel by air, the more persistent trails will occur in the sky, and the more cloud formation will occur and have a knock on effect with regards to weather systems, along with an effect on localised climate.

I recall when I was growing up that there were a lot less contrails in the sky.  There is a video the BBC have produced that illustrate the number of commercial flights over the UK – it’s quite incredible:

Flight Paths over Britian

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The main purpose of this post is to provide a link to an interesting, and easy to follow explanation of how Money is created (out of thin air) in our current economic system.

http://moneymyths.org.uk/

Above is  a link to a series of videos (all are transcribed for those – like me – who still prefer to read, than sit and be a passive conduit) – that explain in simple terms how money is created, and how essentially banks (private organisations, who’s sole purpose is for profiteering) generate money using the fractional reserve banking system.

Reginald McKenna, Chairman of the Board of the Midland Bank, and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: “I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that banks can and do create money…And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people”.

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Booth Museum, Brighton

Booth Museum, Brighton

Booth Museum, Brighton

Booth Museum, Brighton

Eric Gill, a onetime Brighton resident, used to visit the museum when he was a child. Here is an exert from the biography ‘Eric Gill’ by Fiona MacCarthy:

There were many opportunities in Brighton for Ruskinian self-improvement. Just around the corner from the Gill’s, in Dyke road, stood the Booth Bird Museum (known in the Gill household as the birds’ museum, since the children imagined it belonging to the hundreds of stuffed birds displayed within it, Warbles and Buzzards and Bitterns).

The Booth museum was and still is an extraordinary monument to Victorian enthusiasm, the urge to collect and collate. Edward Booth, who formed the collection, was a wealthy man whose preoccupation with birds approached mania: he once kept a train under steam in Brighton station for a week waiting to rush him to the highlands as soon as his gillies had informed him that the white-tailed eagles were nesting.

(I had no idea what a ‘gillie’ was so I looked it up – here’s the definition from dictionary.com: ‘a male attendant or personal servant to a Highland chieftain.’)

I recently found out from the Brighton Prestonville blog the sad news that the opening hours were being reduced because of cuts in public spending, a situation that would be hard to revert. You can read more about the situation and find out how to help here.

Photography: Owen Priestley

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To keep my talk manageable I have decided to talk about the development of typographic design in relation to the birth and growth of Modernism, starting from the early 1900’s and up to the present day.

Details about were and when my talk is happening can be found here.

Find out about Flash Brighton here

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/novartis-launches-40bn-alcon-buyout-1857965.html

A key European Union body is considering an investigation into the role of drug companies in the World Health Organisation’s swine flu campaign. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace) has had a request to hold an emergency debate this month on the “influence” of pharmaceutical groups on the WHO’s efforts to inform governments on the dangers of an H1N1 pandemic.

The WHO’s “false pandemic” flu campaign is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,” claimed Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, chairman of the PACE Health Committee. A number of drugs companies have made hundreds of millions of pounds after governments across the globe submitted orders for millions of doses of specialist vaccine and treatments. The number of swine flu deaths is dramatically lower than initial predictions had forecast.

It was so out in the open regarding the UK Governments plans to regarding the tonic they planned for the pharmaceutical companies – a blog post was made here – http://www.20three.com/2009/08/swine-flu/

This isn’t conspiracy theory, this is just shows how the big pharmas have power within the political system.  It’s purely consumerism and capitalism gone crazy.  Which makes you wonder exactly what other elements of consumerism and marketing are the big pharmas involved in?  They don’t want people well, they require people to consume their products!

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Here is the graphic I produced:

Here are some of the original designs I ripped off used as reference.

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