You can see her laying down markings in pencil. The marks are slightly bigger than the blocks we’ll be using. After she marks them, she uses a syringe to lay out drops of water along the lines. You can see in the photo that the water is beading. She fixes that by scoring over the lines so the water can absorb. After that, she can tear.

Once the paper is torn up she tosses them into a flat tupperware container that’s filled with water. Note that this paper actually has cotton in it, it’s not entirely wood pulp like printer paper. You soak it to get the sizing out, which is a starchy glue thing that keeps it stiff. Warm water works best for this. With that out you can use less force in order to press the paper and leave the indent, also known as the “kiss” of the block. The water also resists the oil so you get a cleaner print.

The extender looks like runny caulk

Now, she mixes the paint. Some tips: You don’t need printer’s ink, and you don’t need to use paint thinner or mineral spirits to clean up. In fact paint thinner or mineral spirits in the kitchen is a bad idea unless you want to be poisoned to death. We’re using oil based paint with an extender. It’s cheap. To clean up we’re using tough-on-grease palmolive. It’s also cheap. Also note that we’re using a dye based paint, not powder in an oil suspension. You can’t mix the two.  After that we’re using corn oil as a cheap alternative to printer’s medium. You might notice that cheap is a theme here. Mix and scrape and tweak to get the desired viscosity. Once that’s done it’s time to ink.

The next segments I’ve conveniently got available in video form! Apologies for the shakycam and poor framing. They were taken on impulse using my point and shoot camera. If we do another workshop we’ll bring a real video camera.

Lucite roller used to ink the mandelbrot block

It’s best to use a roller than can go over the entire block at once and take as much time as you need for this part. Alex takes her time here, explaining that a lucite roller works, or you can use a rubber one. She explains that attention to detail is probably the most important part. You will get some ink splatter away from the raised edges. Leave that for a photocopier-like effect. She thinks that’s cool, like an underground zine. Sponge it off if you want it to look perfect. Not for Alex, though. If she wants perfect she uses a laser printer. It looks like this is where you get creative and can decide things like if you want to ink the edges of the block so that you get a border when you’re pressing down with the barren.

Finally, we’re ready to do the actual pressing. Alex takes some paper out of the soak tank and blots it from both sides with a towel. She leaves it damp. She lays the paper on the inked block, then takes her time and presses it with the barren several times with even of a pressure. Watch the end of the first video for a better explanation of what to do.

Alex demonstrates this in the first video using a laser etched wood block. The second part we do the same thing but using a laser etched acrylic block. The last video explains cleanup.

Cleanup without the solvents involves a lot of scraping. Alex would first scrape off most of the ink onto tin foil if she wants to use it later, but this time she uses newsprint since it’s going to be thrown out. Eventually she just can’t scrape off any more and she’s left with a fine film. She pours on some corn oil. This dilutes the oil paint and lets her spread it around again. She can polishes it off using crumpled newsprint. After that, she uses grease busting dish soap to clean the remnants off.

All of this is very cheap to do. The tube of extender cost $45 and is the most expensive part. The barren was ten to fifteen dollars at any art store. The lucite roller was about twenty dollars. The tube we used here is still more than a third full and it’s been used for seven years. The oil pant you can find on sales for cheap. The spreaders come in three and six packs from hardware stores and cost only a couple bucks. Best of all, this all can be done in a kitchen, just like the video shows.

Whew. And that’s the end of the liveblog attempt. Take a look at Owen’s photo set on flickr and my gallery below. I have photos for the first few steps which Owen missed, and he’s got photos that I couldn’t take while I was recording video.

I learned about AVRs in my Computer Organization course, CSC 258. It’s one of my favourites because we had a great instructor, Corey Manders. I won’t be able to forget the first day of class. He admitted that he already set the course grading scheme and couldn’t change the weighting of labs, but he still wanted us to do nine labs instead of the three or four our course usually contains. I’m glad we voted yes. He also pulled some strings to get us, the lowly computer science students, access to an engineering lab with FPGA development boards and awesome oscilloscopes. We wound up doing three labs in TTL gates, three labs in FPGAs, and three labs in AVRs. We also had an assignment in gate logic and another AVR coding.

I wound up coding a simple game, a security system, sophisticated blinkie and interrupt triggered serial communication; all in assembler on AVRs. It was good prep for working in C on my own later. I only dabbled in it. The summer after CSC 258 I decided that I wanted to get my AVR on the internet. There were plans out there that required you to build your own board using an ethernet controller with an SPI interface, but you had to load in your own TCP stack which took up most of your RAM. Maybe I could have a second AVR just for ethernet? There was another expensive box that I handle sockets for me, and maybe I could use wireless over SDIO, or any number of ideas that required circuit building skills that I didn’t have. Eventually I twisted my programming cable in the wrong way, the solder broke, and I forgot all about it.

Fast forward to last Friday. I had volunteered to staff the desk at Hacklab.to to keep it open until 4am for Nuit Blanche. I wanted something to do so I hit Creatron to buy some LEDs, capacitors and transistors to make blinkies. Right below the glass on the checkout counter was an array of gadgetry from Arduino and Sparkfun. Temptation was too much this time. I broke down and bought the Arduino kit with an ethernet shield.

The Arduino itself was $31.75. It hurt to pay that much for what I knew contained a microcontroller that was, at most, worth two dollars. The premium I paid was for the board which contained a USB to serial adapter, software to program using it, several LEDs and a button. Pretty paltry for a development board, but it’s there. Okay, there’s one more thing that they add that makes the premium worth it: The headers for the shields. These shields mean I can skip all the work of building in extensions like ethernet support, or bluetooth, or any number of complicated addons. The ethernet shield cost $67, which stung a bit, but I knew that the ethernet controller on the board alone was probably worth $50. Plus, I wouldn’t be capable of building the thing myself.

On the same Friday night I got I’ve managed to write a very basic IRC bot that can maintain a connection and listen to commands. It differs from the other IRC bots out there because it reads line by line, not character by character, then tokenizes the string. Right now I have a very simple branching table which is good enough.

My plans are to first merge it with the hacklab.to toilet code so that we can revive the IRC bot. Previously it would connect, spit a message, and then disconnect. It got a little spammy. My version will maintain the connection and spit out a message and include rate limiting.

For the curious, here’s the blocking readclrf() function that I wrote, as well as the code that keeps the simple bot going. In its present form I think it’ll eventually crash, I need to properly allocate and free the memory when tokenizing. Readclrf() should be fine though.

[cc lang="cpp"]void loop()
{
if (client.available()) {
char c[256];
readcrlf(c, 256);
//Serial.println(c); // debug

// tokenize the string, enter FSM
// maybe generate an interrupt on PING?
int i = 0;
char *msg_tok = strtok(c, ” “);
char *msg_toks[6]; // TODO: allocate this properly later
while (msg_tok != NULL) {
strcpy(msg_toks[i], msg_tok);
if (++i >= 6) {
break; // :nick!user@host #channel :command arg1 arg2
}
msg_tok = strtok(NULL, ” “);
}

if (!strcmp(msg_toks[0],”PING”)) {
// it’s a ping, PONG IT BACK
client.print(“PONG “);
client.println(msg_toks[1]);
Serial.print(“Ping? Pong! “);
Serial.println(msg_toks[1]);
}

// Command loop checks all tokens
for (int j; j < 6; j++) {
if (!strcmp(msg_toks[j], “:quit”)) {
client.println(“QUIT”); // add verification
}
// add port reading and setting commands here
}
}

if (!client.connected()) {
Serial.println();
Serial.println(“disconnecting.”);

client.stop();
for(;;)
;
}
}

int readcrlf(char *buf, int max)
{
memset(buf, 0, max);
int b;
int i = 0;

while (client.connected()) {
b = client.read();

if (b == -1)
continue;

if (i >= max) {
break;
}

if (b == ‘\n’)
continue;

if ((b == ‘\r’) || (b == 0)) {
break;
}

buf[i] = b;

i++;
}

return i;
}[/cc]

The Abika case has already shown that the Privacy Commission has the jurisdiction to hear complaints on foreign companies. Whether or not they can do anything about it is another matter. In this case Facebook isn’t entirely foreign since they have at least one Canadian office in Toronto. As shown in Wu and Goldsmith’s Who Controls the Internet, influence can be exerted on them. I’m not sure the specifics of what the Privacy Commission can do and whether it’ll be enough to make Facebook change course remains to be seen.

Most of the issues have been sorted out. The last big ones are explained by Michael Geist, with the particularly nasty ones being third party applications and data collection of non-users. I’m not going to close my account but I’m going to be as careful with third party applications as I ever was.

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There are two people who come to mind when I think of this conversation. The first is the person who I responded to, who explained how her students prefer print to online sources. I raised up my hand and explained that print as a medium isn’t what’s attractive to students so much as the editing and review that goes into it before a textbook makes it to print. That’s where I dropped the line that got all eyes in the room pointed to me:

“I haven’t bought a textbook in two years.”

Right now printed books dominate in that regard but we’re seeing textbooks written from the ground up to be Creative Commons licensed though still going through the same peer review and editing processes. We’ve also got books that are written for print under traditional copyrights but also released for free online (as was the case with my CSC 310 textbook, my CSC108 and 148 textbooks, and others). I’m lucky in that computer science seems to have a wealth of free textbooks, much more than any other field.

I’m beginning to see a trend.

Professors are picking texts that are freely available, or building readers out of papers from open journals, or annotating and redistributing texts that allow them to. This isn’t because professors dislike publishers or authors. It might be because it’s the only way they can reduce costs for students and there’s a lot of really good, free content out there. It might be because it’s easier to make course readers out of chapters than muck with licensing groups. It might be because the professor can edit and improve. In my security course we used free online texts that the professor annotated and distributed rather than giving a separate slip of paper with notes. This is the sort of freedom that Flat World Knowledge, Bookriff and SymText offer.

Is print really better?

I don’t know what the reasoning is because I haven’t talked to these professors but I do challenge the notion that print is better. Every higher education student, with rare exception, carries a laptop with them. From the student viewpoint I would much rather download four free textbooks per semester instead of buying eight hundred dollars of paper. It’s far easier on my back, and my wallet. I can do a full text search if the index is poor. There are hyperlinks which make following up a source so much easier and more likely. My fellow students are happy to read on their laptops, but I bought a two hundred dollar epaper reader so I can read on it while coding on my laptop. I realize I’m an outlier right now yet I’m not convinced that I will be in five years when these readers come down in price, add colour and connectivity.

Readers of online textbook are just as likely to read everything as use for reference

The next person I’m reminded of is a University of Toronto member (a librarian I assume) who explained how we have roughly 630,000 full texts available online. As a student I know she’s talking about our Books 24×7 subscription. I don’t recall the total number of readers but I do remember that the number of people who skimmed certain pages versus the number of people who read page by page to be roughly equal. I qualify that as tentative support of the observed trend and would like to see more numbers.

Things are changing in higher education textbooks. You can’t rely on print books being bought over another source simply because they’re print. You can’t rely on electronic copies being used to sell paper copies in all demographics. Makers of print textbooks need to recognize that they have a huge advantage right now in terms of reliability but they can’t afford to sit on their laurels while their competition improves. Some demographics won’t consider print an advantage and in a few cases it’s a disadvantage. To serve these people will take some out of the book thinking and I think I helped give an early wake up call to bookcampTO.

What I’m saying is this:

• There are professors out there who want to add their own touch to books.
• Look into freemium business models. Your competition might already be there.
• Releasing free online copies of your book won’t always translate into print sales.

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My favourite story is how Jon Postel took over the internet by asking eight maintainers of root DNS servers to stop listening to Network Solutions and instead listen to to his own. He was shortly told to revert the changes and that any similar attempts would result in him being charged. Why did he do it? Was it a simple test, as the official story goes, or was it a way of showing that the US government did not have sole power? Perhaps a protest of the Network Solutions monopoly? Unfortunately he passed on nine months later so we’ll never know.

The short of the book is that every country has some control through pressuring intermediaries within its control. It may be local ISPs, or local subsidiaries. France was able to impose its law on Yahoo by threatening a subsidiary in France. The US DOJ was able to seize domains of sites it couldn’t control because the registrar was located within the US. It’s the same way that multinationals can be threatened by countries they’re located in, and if you don’t have a multinational presence you don’t need to worry. (Note that having your registrar in a country other than your own can count as multinational presence!)

Kieren McCarthy has a fantastic, detailed review. He as a domain expert he explains the strengths and adds a piece about ICANN. What I’d like to add is a context to an offhand comment within the book about Landslide being a purveyor of child pornography. Landslide was instead a payment processor and I believe that they were taken advantage of by fraudsters and are themselves victims. The website Operation Ore Exposed tells the story from Landslide’s point of view.

The book gives a clear view of the complex power structure that governs the internet and proves that cyberspace is dead. What ought to be the next big question? My guess is “who owns your data?”

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Update May 30th 2009: I gave my general impressions of the hackintosh after a couple months of use, including performance and compatability. The verdict is it’s comparable to a late model G4.

Update April 8th 2009: Once you have OS X installed on your netbook you’ll want to learn how to lessen its hard drive footprint. Once I deleted printer drivers I don’t need, the hibernate image, and with the help of Monolingual and Xslimmer I’m now running with 5gb free after installing the Macheist 3 bundle and a bunch of my favourite apps.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is presently the most compatible with Leopard out of all the netbooks. For twenty dollars you can upgrade it to 2 GB of RAM which makes it a very capable machine. As of this writing, everything but hibernate and external displays work perfectly after installing with a retail disk image. (There’s a workaround for the external monitor issue.) I managed to get a developer seed image of Apple OS X 10.5.2 running on my Dell Mini 9 and successfully updated it to 10.5.6. The folks at MyDellMini have some very helpful guides up. The one that I used was the DellEFI method.

The guide explains how to create a Chameleon bootdisk under Windows using syslinux. It also explains how to turn an OS X install disc into a bootable USB mass drive drive suitable for install, since it tends to be much faster and less error prone than installing from an external DVD.

What it leaves out is how to make the developer seed DMG bootable. I found out that I could do this using the demo version of Transmac. First you need to decompress the DMG. You do that by opening it by going to File and then Open Image. Find the developer DMG and it’ll ask you to decompress it. Click yes, and save it to a new filename. Next you right click on the drive you want to wipe, click Format Disk, then select Format Disk from Image. Pull up the uncompressed DMG and it’ll make a bootable image just like Disk Utility.

After that, follow the instructions in the MyDellMini guide.

Mac OSX 10.5.6 running on a Dell Mini 9

Unfortunately the Hibernate function won’t work. When you try to restore from hibernate it gives you an error and cold boots. Sleep works just fine on shutting the netbook. Once 10.5.6 is installed wireless and bluetooth work. I hear that the integrated webcam works too, but I don’t have one to test.

You might have noticed by now that the Dell Mini 9 doesn’t have F11 or F12 keys. Try Fn+Z for F11 and Fn+X for F12. If those don’t work you’ll need to install the A04 BIOS.

Once you’ve got all that set up you’ll want to start saving space. The worst offender is print drivers, which easily take up 2 GB of space. Deleting folders of manufacturer’s I don’t use from under /Library/Printers saved me a ton of space, and running Monolingual to remove PPC code and a bunch of languages saved me another 500 MB. At $13 US, Xslimmer is a good buy, especially since most applications you download are multilingual Universal binaries. Xslimmer can trim this out without worrying about getting your settings wrong on Monolingual just once.

Once all that’s through check out Macheist 3! Just for visiting their website you get a free copy of EventBox. I’m happy to get World of Goo, WireTap Studio and hopefully BoinxTV and Espresso for $37.

My Leopard-running netbook is quickly replacing my ThinkPad as my primary mobile computer.

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The library software I’ve downloaded to keep track of my growing ebook collection is called Calibre. I haven’t messed with it very much but it has an iTunes-like coverflow view, a web front end, an iPhone app and considerable conversion features.

As for converting my favourite sources, it’s not strictly necessary in the case of Project Gutenberg books  since they can easily be read as TXT files on the eSlick. If you want chapter bookmarks and pretty formatting then I suggest GutenMark combined with HTMLDOC.

CHM files are easy to convert on Linux, but a bit of a pain to convert on Windows depending on how the CHM decompiles. I’ve written a short guide on how to convert CHM to PDF while preserving hyperlinks.

Journals are straightforward, they’re just unencrypted PDF files usually.

I’ve already written about unwrapping DRM from Adobe Digital Editions books.

This is also a good opportunity to announce the new guides section of the website, linked to on the top menu. There isn’t much there right now but it’ll grow.

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