Public reading – clubbing it

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Nearly a year ago I went to a small presses event at the Starlight which was excellent. Last night there was another evening of readings. It’s the kind of clubbing I like – book clubbing. The event was well organised and reasonably well attended (okay, I’m not sure why there weren’t people lined up outside banging on the doors trying to get in, but whatever, maybe reading books is an exclusive club thing). This year the presses were Coach House Books, ECW Press, and House of Anansi. Fab local bookstore Words Worth Books was also there in force. And there were also free cupcakes.

There were also 6 authors/poets reading; two sets of three with an intermission so that we could refresh our glasses at the bar or perhaps nab another cupcake. Did I mention the cupcakes? Each author read for between 5 to 10 minutes, so the whole thing wound up by shortly after 9, which is probably fine for a Monday night. I would have been just as happy (no, actually much happier) if each author had been given an hour or more, though I can see the logistics don’t really work if you do that.

The six readers were: Gary Barwin, Dorothy Ellen Palmer, Natalee Caple, George Murray, Sheila Heti. Evie Christie was also advertised but seemed to have transformed (without mention) into Cordelia Strube, which was a delightful surprise.

All of the authors were excellent (even if I didn’t get to hear each of them for an hour). Cordelia Strube was at last year’s event so I won’t single her out for special praise other than to say that I have read Lemon and it is indeed a very good read. Everyone else was new to me. I especially liked Dorothy Ellen Palmer’s When Fenelon Falls, and Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? But I heard others near me enthusing about Natalee Caple’s poems from her The Semiconducting Dictionary.

The only downside is that I’ll probably have to wait another year to go clubbing again.

Project Camelia and Drumbeat

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For a while now I’ve been hearing murmurs about a Mozilla Foundation effort entitled Drumbeat. I don’t fully grok what Drumbeat is or will be. It’s something about the open web, or keeping the web open, or telling people that the web is open or ought to be, and mostly it seems to be very open about what it is or isn’t to the point of openly inviting others to come along and help it be even more of what it is, i.e. open. So, clearly I haven’t got it yet. I’m not ready for the 3 floor elevator pitch. That’s one reason I want to head over to FSOSS 2010. Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, is going to be there speaking about Drumbeat. Mark will clear up my confusion in a trice, I’m sure. He’s good at that sort of thing.

Not that I haven’t been exploring the Drumbeat site myself (you should too!). In fact, a new project has shown up there, Camelia, which might be worth a look-see. The project page has a very useful 73 second video from Ross Gardler, the project lead, making his own elevator pitch about Camelia. There is also a 12 minute video for those of you who would like to take the lift to the top. In a nutshell, Camelia is about educating about the open web and enabling individuals to get involved with the hope of minimizing duplication between open web projects and maximising collaboration between same.

Frankly, once I saw that Ross was involved that pretty much sold me. What does Ross know about the open web? What doesn’t he know. He lives it. Go ahead and Google him (because you would anyway).  Then go back and watch his videos explaining what he, and those who join him, hope to achieve with the Camelia project. And finally, once you are convinced, take the half minute or so more to register on the Drumbeat site and vote for the project (yes, it’s important – it affects the likelihood of accruing seed funding from the Mozilla foundation).

Or better yet, just go get involved.

Maverick Meerkat Installed

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Today I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu: 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. I burned both a cd and a dvd (for good measure) of the .iso file. Then I lugged an aging desktop that is not currently using Ubuntu (yes, it uses the “other” operating system!) downstairs and set it up in the kitchen so that I could plug it directly in to my router. You really want a wired connection to the Internet when you go to install Ubuntu. In fact, the new install screens specifically check for this and then give you the possibility of downloading additional software during the installation.

The installation was clean and smooth. I had a slight hiccup initially in getting my PC to boot from the install disc, but once I realized that I was being dim (hey, 6 months between installs and I forget things) everything proceeded in due order. I continued reading a book whilst the computer did what it had to do.

A clean install, however, was not what I was worried about. I’ve done lots of clean installs of Ubuntu over the years. Rather I was concerned about my sadly proprietary usb wireless adapter (a D-Link DWA-130). That was an inexpensive adapter I purchased some time ago when this non-wireless-card desktop moved out of reach of my router. It worked fine in the “other” operating system. But I knew from testing an Ubuntu release on cd a while back that this adapter does not work out of the box with Ubuntu. I would need to sort that out if I was going to be able to use this machine with this wireless adapter up in my office. That, or I would have to go purchase another adapter, checking first this time that I was getting something that was more ecumenical with respect to operating systems. (But oh, I hate to waste money like that!)

First I confirmed that in fact my wireless adpater does not work out of the box with Ubuntu 10.10. Second I did what any good computer hobbyist would do – I turned to Google. A quick search using “ubuntu usb wireless adapter” brought me to Ubuntu’s Docs on Wireless Cards. An excellent start. I took the advice at the top of the page and fired up a terminal window and typed: lsusb. That confirmed two things for me: 1) Ubuntu was in fact seeing my wireless adapter, and 2) the chipset my adapter was using (essential later for downloading the correct driver).

I learned that in order to use this wireless adapter, the best route would be to download the correct driver from the manufacturer, then install Ndiswrapper and Ndisgtk (a helpful interface for those who prefer to visit the command line and not necessarily live there). Where did I get the information on how to do this? From the Ubuntu Docs on Ndiswrapper, of course.

It helps to follow the instructions carefully. Don’t rush things. You will need to revisit the command line at points. For example, I needed to add a line to blacklist.conf in modprobe and that was easily handled via vi. A short bit of testing revealed that my wireless adapter was now working correctly. And this post is evidence of same.

I am looking forward to exploring more of the Maverick Meerkat now that I have an Ubuntu desktop in my office again.

Game on!

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The bookend shouts of, “CAR!,” followed at a decent interval by, “GAME ON!,” are almost too typically Canadian to need much explanation. Readers of this blog may have noticed that I have been largely out of the FOSS discussion for about a year. Or, as you might say, a decent interval. I feel like it is time for me to get back in the mix and thereby announce same with the traditional Canadian shout of, “GAME ON!”

Getting back in the FOSS swing of things isn’t so hard, really. I have not in fact been away, just quiet. Fortunately my re-emergence coincides with a couple of useful events almost in my back yard: DrupalCamp Toronto 2010 and FSOSS 2010.

I’ve been to a couple of FSOSS (Free Software and Open Source Symposium) meetings in the past. They are usually very well organised with a great selection of workshops and keynotes that cover a wide spectrum of issues and projects in the FOSS world. This year’s FSOSS looks just as impressive.

DrupalCamp is something different for me. I’ve started playing with (i.e. learning) Drupal on a couple of my websites recently. I had heard lots of good things about Drupal for years of course but this is the first time that I’ve started using it for real. I’m on a bit of a learning curve there but so far it is making sense. When I spotted DrupalCamp being mentioned on my local LUG list (well, I didn’t say I’d become a monk or anything!) I thought it would be worth investigating. So I’m heading up or over or down to Toronto for one day of the two-day Drupal Camp (although that day does include a keynote by Dries Buytaert so it should be interesting!). Time to learn a bit more about the Drupal community and see if there might be a place for me there.

If you are attending either DrupalCamp Toronto or FSOSS, do say hi. (I’ll be the short, quiet guy at the back of the room.)

It’s good to be back.

Research

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Some novels just seem like dumping grounds for an author’s recent “research” projects. Paragraphs, even whole pages, show up that do little more than report on some phenomenon, concept, historical object or event, etc. This never impresses me. I haven’t chosen to read a novel in order to become “informed” (dread word) on a subject. There are other, more or less reputable, sources for (fact checked) information. A novel might glancingly touch on subjects that I might then go on to explore elsewhere, a spur if you will to my own “research”. But it won’t be a substitute for real information, so why masquerade as such?

Of course, it does help to get your facts right. Paris is in France (unless you are talking about Paris, Ontario). The War of 1812 occurred roughly in 1812, I think. A cedar is a coniferous tree. All these are true propositions, so far as I know. Any one of them might show up in a novel. But their appearance in the novel does nothing to either confirm their truth or confer any special status upon them. One might just as well have read that Paris is in Luxembourg.

When I see large swathes of research surfacing in a novel, I always wonder if the novelist could not have imagined a better history, a more relevant account. Something genuinely relevant to her characters or their situation.

One exception to this observation/speculation occurs to me. At the moment I am reading a “hard” science fiction novel set in the near-future or possible-present. Here the author includes, again, a considerable amount of “research”. But the research seems directly relevant to the plot and the characters in the novel. Perhaps this is not surprising since the plots and character actions of hard science fiction novels usually turn on exploring the implications of scientific advances. What would life on a space station be like? What if artificial intelligence became a reality? How do social structures of ant colonies compare or contrast with human social organisation? Here I both enjoy the paragraphs and pages of research but positively expect it of the author.