You Can't Make Mistakes

Back in the Saddle

Sorry for the recent hiatus in posting. I have been a bit lazy and let-lagged this week. 10 in the evening in Kalamazoo feels like what I have been calling 5 in the morning for the past year. It has been as rough transition, but getting better every day. The best part about this, as I sit and write at 7:50am on a Saturday, is that my increasingly late wake up time in Cairo is nice and early here. I have reclaimed the best part of the day, and I usually have it all to myself.

It’s good to be back… at least for a while.

I suppose that this is why I left in the first place, after all. I could have stayed here in the States and written my thesis. I would have had access to a great many more resources—the university library, easy access to the internet, face time with professors, and much more—but I would have likely been bored stiff, trudged on, written, worked some shitty part-time job: you get the picture.

Had I stayed here for the last year, I would not be writing now about how much I enjoy the air, the trees, the cool 10°C mornings, Taco Bell, Miller Lite, American Chinese food, walking barefoot in the grass: so many things. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate these things before, it is just that I didn’t appreciate them that much. I won’t gush or wax poetic about the joy of mundane things, but I will say that living in a place where everything is difficult makes me appreciate living in a place where everything is easy.

It also makes cake out of those things which before seemed difficult: as in “piece of.”

Regardless of all of that, I am having a blast. It is also stunning to take note of the things that I have learned in the past year. For instance: I went to seen Iron Man last weekend. It was great. I love comic-book movies, I love movie theaters. I didn’t go to the cinema nearly enough while in Cairo. Something to think about for the future. The best part of the film, though, was not the popcorn and bucket of soda that I was endowed with upon stepping into the joint, but that the film had loads of Arabic in it: and I understood every word. Obviously, it wasn’t very sophisticated dialog—certainly no more than the dialog in the primary language of the film—but I got it. I didn’t even notice at first: then I realized that I wasn’t looking at the subtitles when I laughed at some little quip or joke. Suffice it to say that I was very pleased with myself.

Same thing when I noticed what an easy time I was having understanding Ayad—dear friend and former roommate—when he showed up late one night before leaving for Saudi Arabia for the summer. We could always talk before, but it is certainly easier now.

I continue to reflect thus as I sit here and wait for the installer to finish on my new low-energy, headless Linux server. A year ago, I didn’t know what a headless server was. In the past year in learning how to use Linux on my laptop for data analysis, I accidentally learned loads about how it works and how to use it. So, now, rather than just having a slab running Windows crap factory, I have a laptop running a scalable set of software which is tailored to my needs. I was particularly pleased when Jeff asked me to put Ubuntu on his laptop to replace the Windows Vista that it shipped with. It went from being a relatively slow, unresponsive, one-year-old system to being a blindingly fast, extensible, little mobile monster. He was/is very pleased by the improvement. He is still gushing about it, in fact.

But, to think, a year ago I attempted an install of Ubuntu on my old laptop—I have since upgraded in a very serious way—and ended up with a command-line laptop for a month. That was cool and all, but it must be noted that it is very difficult to browse the internet using the command-line terminal. Kind of fun though.

Incidentally, I just converted that laptop back into a command-line laptop, just for kicks.

All in all, though, this year was a complete success: I learned a great deal. Had I stayed home, I might not have. Or, I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself nearly as much while doing it.

Anyone else learn anything this year?

We ask all the wrong questions

I read these two articles this week:

The Future of Space Games

The Physics of Zero-G Whipped Cream

I realize that when presented in this manner, the two articles seem a little bit more tawdry than they were probably intended.

Or are they?

My question after reading these, and following up with a bit more research, is this:

“Has anyone—or, more appropriately, “Have any two (or more)—ever had sex in space?

If you tell me that you haven’t wondered this, or even at least thought about it for a second, then you are lying to me. You can’t tell me that you can think about what it would be like to float through 0-gravity attached to a makeshift medicine ball of your own design without thinking: I wonder if it would be difficult to stay engaged while copulating at 0-G’s.

Or maybe that is just what I think about when people start talking about “games” aboard the International Space Station and “whipped cream in space.”

Come on people. Lighten up. We went through the whole “space toilet: everybody poops” scenario about 15 years ago. I think that it is high time that we discuss the realities of performing “the deed” while floating, unencumbered through the void.

And, if none of the ISS crew nor any Soyuz or space shuttle crew from the USA was ever done it, I will eat my words. But, if this is the case, then we have a whole new—and really fascinating—set of experiments to carry out, don’t we?

New news on an old front

So I may have mentioned previously that I still have no internet in my apartment in Cairo. Some of you may remember that it took me three months to get internet in Alexandria. That was terrible, and I thought that nothing else could be more terrible than that.

Oh was I wrong.

I have now been living in Cairo since the beginning of January. A few days after arriving, as I was settling in, I went to seek a DSL connection in the apartment, having finally gotten all of the documentation that I needed from the landlady. Everything was so smooth, and they said it would be about two weeks.

Fast forward three months. It is now almost April, and we are still waiting. I come to the BCA in the afternoon/evening to check my e-mail and call home on Skype. It is a great place, but I can’t sit around here in my pajamas all day and work online, can I? It’s just not as comfortable as being at home and getting work done.

The list of problems which as brought us to the present is as follows:

1. There was already a DSL with a different company from the previous tenant
2. To have a new DSL installed I needed a cancellation code from the previous company
3. There was a huge overdue balance on the account at the previous company, which they wanted to hold me responsible for
4. The landlady refused to deal with the problem in any timely manner, because she didn’t want to pay the bill, and couldn’t be bothered to go to the company until I became apoplectic over it
5. I accidentally insulted the landlady by telling her that I felt like I had been lied to
6. She stopped speaking to me
7. When we finally got the cancellation code, with a great deal of help from our simsar, Samah, the new company lost the information
8. When we tried to give them the code again, they wanted dates and things—which was not part of the original request
9. The company then told us that it would take approximately 3 weeks after that

And here we are today, three-ish weeks after the last broken promise. Stacey called a week an a half ago and was informed—by an employee, live on the other end of the phone—that they were not working that day because it was the Prophet’s birthday, and that we should call back after the weekend. We spent hours trying to figure out the logic of having someone present at an office to “not work” and answer the phones to inform customers of their inactivity.

Stace called back after the weekend, and was informed that now there was a problem with the main monopoly phone company’s equipment at our switching station, and that we would have to wait another 9 days.

We were both speechless. Stunned silent.

These new nine days come ripe in a few days, and we have heard nothing. There is, however, the possibility that someone has been trying to deliver equipment—a sure sign of readiness of connectivity—because I have heard the doorbell ring a couple of times in the past two days and was unable to get to it fast enough: the first time I was sleeping and the second time I was in the shower, and either way, I felt that it would be inappropriate to run to answer the door naked. This would have made for an uncomfortable Egypt moment.

Regardless, there is a reason for my telling this story. I intend, once the situation has been resolved, to do a major upgrade on the site and the blog, as well as reinstate the gallery and podcast. I have been working on a few podcast episodes, and I have a metric ton of photos to share. I just need to wait a few more days, hopefully.

Inshallah.

30 percent more effective!

You, gentle readers, may have noticed a few changes round the joint of late. I have been using my time since acquiring an internet connection in my apartment to make some changes and upgrades to the blog that I have been salivating over for some time. Now they are almost done. My hope is that these features will make it easier for me to relate my experiences back to you in a more meaningful way.

First, I have added a glossary. Now, when I write words that I don’t think that are common, everyday words, I can define them. That definition shows up in a little box when you place your mouse over the word. So, if you see a word that you don’t know, like AUC or alhamdulillah, you will be able to just put your mouse over it and: Blammo! The word is defined for you, inshallah. You may also click on the “Glossary” button at the right for a full listing of all defined terms. If you click the words in the text, you will be taken to a definition page.

You just tried all those things, didn’t you? Helw, isn’t it?

I have also been making some changes to the general layout and look and feel of the blog. You probably won’t notice these things very much. They are little.

I have added a response function to the comments. I can now post response comments to your comments and they will be sent to you via e-mail. So, this means that you should all take this opportunity to leave me a comment. Mostly you should leave me comments because it feeds my sense of good-will knowing that there are so many people out there interested in the minutiae of my life.

I have added a cache function to the site so that now the pages will load more quickly. If you get an error message, simply refresh the page. It probably means that I am working on the site as you were trying to access it.

Podcast Pilot

Last, and absolutely in no way least, I have added support for audio and video in posts. This gives me the ability to create a podcast and have it syndicated through the blog. Keep your eyes open on iTunes for it. In the mean time, you can listen right here.

[display_podcast]

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-336efdbcf2a28a9a5ce8a251dd4d43fe}

The music at the beginning is a sample from Joe Sibol’s song “Dance with the Pharaoh.” You can listen to other of Joe’s work at PodSafe Audio.

The rest of the music in this podcast is from a concert by a Nubian folk band which I recorded in October 2007 while attending their concert in Alexandria.

Well, that is all for now. I hope that you all enjoy the new toys and stay tuned for more audio and video and other things as well.

I have given up on ever using the internet in my home again.

Well, I know that this has been a recurring theme, but I still don’t have an internet connection in my apartment. After two months of waiting with one company I had to cancel the contract, as you may remember. Now, I have waited for another month with the second company because there was a hold-up involving a cancellation code from the first company not working.

Finally, I had the cancellation codes, everything was in order, I physically went to their offices to check on the status. They told me that they would be calling me early last week.

No call.

I called this Wednesday and was told that, “Oh yes. There is problem in the exchange in Sidi Geber.” This was the same thing that the first internet company told me two months ago. I went from zero to wild-eyed-lunatic in 4 seconds and began berating the human on the other end of the phone. He, of course, told me that the problem was not something that they could have forseen. I told him that I had had the same problem months before and he replied that he didn’t know anything about that because that is a different company, blah, blah.

I hung up totally demoralized. I have never been so frustrated in all my life. Then—perfect timing—my roommate got home and wanted to talk about the internet problem. I explained it to him, and also told him that we couldn’t talk about it anymore or I would have a stroke. This did nothing to deter him. We had to talk about it. He suggested that we move. I couldn’t deal with it and had to meet some folks for coffee, so I readied myself for the outside world and left.

I was going to a coffee joint right around the corner from my apartment. I began the short walk across the district and as I was walking past one of the many little gardens in Mustafa Kemal, a dog burst out of a hedge and started running toward me. I ran across the street because I fear dogs here. There is no telling if they have rabies or whatever. This did not deter the dog, it followed. I continued running, it followed, and was closing. I knew that I couldn’t outrun it, so I stopped and grabbed the first things that I saw, a half of a brick and a piece of 2×4 and chucked them at him. The 2×4 missed a bit. The brick hit him and he went down with yelp and then skulked off.

I felt terrible, even though he was chasing me and was probably all diseased. I hated that I hurt him. He wasn’t debilitated or anything, but clearly hurt.

I got to the coffee shop, visibly shaken, and explained what had happened to my friends. One of them is an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) coach, and he suggested that I let him fiddle around with my brain later that evening and he would try to remove the anxiety that I have about dealing with the internet problems.

I was desperate at that point and on the verge of developing a terrible Xanax problem because I have been taking it to stave off my burgeoning general anxiety disorder, so I agreed. We went back to his house and I let him open up my skull and poke around with my cognitive associations.

In about two hours he managed to rid me of the internet anxiety completely. After the first round, he asked me how I felt about having to deal with them and I just laughed my ass off. Whenever anyone says the word “internet” to me now I can’t control myself from smiling or even laughing out loud. It’s brilliant. Worked like a charm.

Also, since being here, I have developed a bad habit of watching terrible crime drama shows like CSI and Law and Order. So, I asked Mamoon to turn my desire to watch shit TV into a desire to get work, writing, and studying done.

This also worked like a charm. I can’t even look at a television now. If I even turn the TV on now, I can look at it for about five minutes before I get too antsy and have to turn it off and begin typing or reading or doing my homework. It is brilliant. However, the other night it turned on me.

We went to dinner and then coffee and afterward grabbed a cab. Some of the cabbies here have installed DVD players in their cabs to entertain their fares. This was one such cab, and the DVD screen was installed where the sun visor for the passenger side would have been. This was ridiculously uncomfortable for me. It was like having someone shove a television directly into my brain. Horrible. It made me very nervous, and I was pretty fitful for the next few hours while I studied furiously when I got home.

So, in the end, everything has worked out. I feel great, and am terribly motivated, even though I had to undergo the equivalent of psychological brain surgery. It works. I recommend it most highly.

In the meant time, Egypt hasn’t changed. It’s still the same. This is another lesson. I can’t change Egypt and Egypt can’t change me, but I can certainly change myself and become more adaptable. By hook or by crook, I suppose.

White Perfect

My lack of internet at home has caused two things to happen: 1. I get a lot of reading done. 2. I watch a lot of crap TV. One of the terrible things that I have noticed while watching the crap TV is a recurring theme in commercial advertisement: ads utilize very fair-skinned people here. This trend is highlighted by ads for a product by l’Oreal called “White Perfect.”

These ads indicate that this product is intended to get rid of freckles and dark spots using a technology called “melanin blocker.” This technology will help with that pesky skin pigment that we all have so much trouble with. As a side effect, if everyone uses it long enough, we will all be white! No more racial discrimination.

Oh yeah. That won’t work.

These ads wouldn’t have disturbed me on their own, but the other day, when viewing an Egyptian friend’s wedding photos, I noticed that the bride had been air-brushed to be nearly chalk-white. The effect was unsettling at best.

I decided to do some further observation and instead of running away when I saw a wedding party leaving one of the 10,000 wedding reception halls in Alexandria, I approached attempting to get a better look at the brides. In nine cases out of ten, the bride’s makeup was done in such a way that she looked considerably fairer than she should have. It was as though the make-up artists had attempted to match her skin to the dress.

It strikes me as particularly strange, this trend, because brides in the United States seem to begin tanning and toning nearly half a year before their weddings in order to stand in stark contrast to those glowing white gowns. Not to mention the booming tanning salons that can be found around every University campus with no shortage of emaciated, brown-skinned, blond girls stumbling out of them with their giant sunglasses and designer handbags.

What is the deal? Is it a “grass-is-greener” phenomenon? Do people the world over define beauty as “exotic” and then define “exotic” as “something that doesn’t look like what is lying about on this side of the ocean?” Why can’t everyone accept that beauty has nothing to do with how light or dark your skin may happen to be?

I suppose that the products that make people whiter are no different that the products that we have in the US that make people darker. All of the fake-and-bake stuff, tanning oils, bronzers, accelerants. These all have the same fundamental goal: to make people look differently than they do. I can’t help but find this upsetting, though, when there are people attempting to be whiter. Maybe I have just been conditioned to feel this way because I was raised in the United States where this trend is generally associated with some sort of internalized racism or debilitating self-loathing. I certainly do not believe that there is any less self-loathing happening here, but I also don’t think that there is any awareness of it here, whereas there might be in the United States.

Any thoughts?

The third-world internet saga continues.

After one full month of attempting to connect my apartment in Alex to the outside world via the internet, I languish in utter defeat. It is not that I have given up so much as that I have been met at every possible turn with stonewalling and prevarication on the part of customer service, sales, and tech employees at various internet service providers.

I finally canceled the contract with the first company and arranged for a connection with another company. This doesn’t mean anything in reality, however, until the actual day of connection, which will likely occur after Ramadan has concluded. It is very difficult here, during Ramadan, to get very much accomplished because the entire country is on limited functionality for a month. Practically every business, public and private institution, bank, etc. keeps considerably shortened hours during this month to the point that rarely can a full day’s work be accomplished.

Keep in mind that I am not being critical without some level of understanding. I have a pretty deep academic understanding of the theology behind Ramadan at this point and myself am fasting right now. It is not that I am unsympathetic to the cause. I just wonder if the status quo system here for coping with this particular practice is really the best it can be.

***As an aside, sort of, as I was writing this post, the internet in the cafe crashed and it is now Saturday, whereas I began writing on Tuesday.***

Who knows? I certainly don’t. It is just interesting to observe what is going on in this place. Ramadan is now over. I am getting reports of things returning to normal. So some things are about to get easier.

I have a bunch of things that I need to post that I haven’t had the time/opportunity to do so. I will be getting around to that this week.

Until then, Cheers. Eid Mubarak.

A few months ago, I was sitting on a delayed plane in Albuquerque reading the Economist magazine to pass the time. It happened to be the quarterly technology feature issue, so there was some decent stuff about recycling technologies and holographic data storage. I flipped the page and lo and behold, there was an article about a South African programmer named Mark Shuttleworth and his Linux-distribution-brainchild, Ubuntu.

This was the first that I had ever heard of Ubuntu Linux. I had been dabbling with Fedora Core—another Linux “flavor” or distribution. I really knew nothing about Linux beyond that it was open source, free—in most situations—and pretty difficult to use. I also knew that Linux came along with a great deal of ideology, having developed in a community-based, collaborative, project-oriented way. I had been using all sorts of open source software on my Windows system—stuff like OpenOffice.org, Firefox, etc.—but I had not really delved into open source OS or anything.

As I read this article though, I really began to identify with the cause. This guy, Mark Shuttleworth, and the company that he set up to develop Ubuntu were dedicated to making highly-functional and user-friendly operating systems which are also free and open source. In the article, the word ubuntu is identified as a Zulu and Xhosa word which means “universal bond of sharing between humans.”¹ The idea behind the development of this particular distribution of Linux is to focus less on the ideology of open source software development and focus more on usability. Shuttleworth wanted to create something for people everywhere, and that could be developed by people everywhere.²

Then, recently, I had the good fortune of being invited to attend a talk by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Western Michigan University. In his talk, he discussed ubuntu at length. Not the open source operating system, but the concept. It was the basis of his discussion of why people should work together rather than against each other. He describe ubuntu in two ways: first, by saying that “the humanity in me is the humanity in you,” explaining that there is not humanity without other humans. We are only fully human when we are fully engaged in the community of humans around us. He later described ubuntu as “the art of being human.”

Tutu talked endlessly about forgiveness and its importance for bridging gaps between people, countries, places and in creating peace where there has only been war and violence. It struck me as he was talking that he and Shuttleworth had more in common than their country of birth and their choice of buzzwords. They both seek to empower people by encouraging them to embrace their community, whether local or global. In the development of Ubuntu, software developers from all over the world use technologies which allow them to collaborate virtually. In Tutu’s own efforts over the past 40 years, he has encouraged people from vastly different places and cultures to communicate with one another in order to understand each other. This understanding, he believes, will eventually lead to collaboration, which will lead to a sense of joint or group ownership of the world. Perhaps stewardship would be more apt even that ownership. If we get to know and understand each other a little better, we will be more apt to take care of our brothers and sisters, fathers and grandmothers the world over. It would be like living in an open-source world—if I can extend that as a metaphor to this idea. It is this shared care-taking that will save the humanity from destroy ourselves and the world we live in.

Not so strangely, this sentiment is coming not from a gain-focused, monetary-profit-maximizing worldview, but a non-profit, shared-benefit worldview in which more than money is considered when evaluating what it profitable and what is not. It is my hope that we will all start listening to these folks and—better than listening—help them in our everyday behaviors, actions, and interactions. It is only then that the words of visionaries will actually benefit the world. Until then, it feels as though they fall on lots and lots of deaf ears attached to people only waiting for their turn to talk.

———

¹ “Bringing Free Software Down to Earth.” The Economist v 383, no 8532. June 9th-15th, 2007. Permalink to the article.

² Since that time I have been using this operating system on both of my computers. The learning curve was a little steep at first but after a while I got the hang of it. The biggest part of the curve is in learning about how the Linux file system works and why, figuring out how to download and install software. Also, it takes a bit of doing to figure out what the software and file-type cognates are so that I could do cross-platform work. Since installing the OS, I have not gone back. I haven’t booted back into Windows to use familiar software opting instead to use the cognates found in the Linux universe. It has been fantastic. I love the way that it works. I love that it is less resource-intensive for my systems, so that I can use valuable memory and processor speed to do actual work, rather than just running the GUI, like with the newest versions of windows. It’s been great. I suggest trying it out at www.ubuntu.com.

Again, for those of you who actually read this, of which there are five, I apologize for my recent month-long hiatus. I have been a bit busy, though not gainfully, necessarily.

Recently my dear friend, John Tobey, and I decided to start a design firm. We will be conducting business primarily on the internet as we will be in wildly disparate locations very soon. Tobey does graphic design and sound engineering and is a prodigy when it comes to both of them. His work is superb. I do graphic design and web design, though I will make no claims as to my own proficiency specifically, I think that I do a decent job of them. You can find our online faces at johnmedia.net. I think that we will at least have a very good time working for ourselves, and possibly even make some money at it.

———-

My laptop ate itself—mostly my doing—a few weeks ago. I had attempted to do a clean install of the OS and my optical drive failed in the process, successfully murdering my laptop, leaving it with an unformatted disk and only a BIOS. I managed to get a Linux kernel and a bootloader on with a network boot and had little success after that. Then my dad found a new optical drive for me and I was able to reload the Windows install that was on it. After that I partitioned up the disk and placed an Ubuntu Linux install on a second partition, which I am actually using right now.

It is brilliant. It runs better than the windows—it is less resource intensive—and it has effectively allowed me to use Ubuntu—which I have grown to really enjoy using on my desktop—anywhere I want. It is like turning my five-years-old Sony notebook into a totally different machine. I suggest trying it, but it is not without obstacles an pitfalls. Installing Linux—especially in a dual-boot environment—is not the easiest thing in the world. However, after a little reading, I think that anyone would be able to do it.

If you are interested in learning about Ubuntu, I would suggest visiting their website: www.ubuntu.com. There was a recent article about Ubuntu in The Economist Magazine which is worth reading. This article is what got me interested in Ubuntu in the first place. I had been playing around with Fedora Core, but didn’t really like it.

Ubuntu ended up being immensely more usable and intuitive, though not without a need for little tricks and tweaks to get everything up and running. Specifically, Ubuntu still has an issue with wireless networking. I tried several cards with different chipsets before settling on a Linksys 802.11g card with a Broadcom chipset. With the bcm43xx-fwcutter package, it is pretty easy to install Broadcom-based wireless cards by extracting the firmware from freely-available drivers.

If you are interested in having an Ubuntu laptop, I would suggest trying it first from the live CD, and then if you like it, have someone help you install it so that you don’t accidentally delete the Windows install from your notebook. I haven used my Windows since I have had Ubuntu, but it is nice, when in transition, to have the option.

Perhaps John Media will also perform Linux installs on people’s computers for them. I could do that. Though, not from September until next April, as I will be in Egypt. I imagine that having someone ship their laptop to Egypt to install a different OS would be more of a pain-in-the-ass than it is worth.

———-

That brings me to my next trick. I am getting ready to move to Egypt for nine months. This should be interesting. I will be studying Arabic at Alexandria University while writing my master’s thesis. I will also be doing a bit of design work via the internet. Thankfully, they have fast internet in Egypt, otherwise I would be SOL. Much of my research data is housed online, and, though I have it backed up and will be taking it with me, it is nice to know that I will be able to get the data again if I need it.

I will also still maintain this site while away. I will use it as a way to communicate en masse with friends and family. I figure that it will be easier than sending mass-mails and that kind of thing. It would also be entirely impossible for me to e-mail and write and call everyone I know. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a jerk, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. This site is pretty neat. You can e-mail me from it. You can sign up for e-mail subscriptions to the blog, if you would rather have the posts e-mailed to you. You will be able to view my CV and portfolio, and, when I have to time to start working on this, you will be able to read sections of my thesis and other papers that I have written. Not to mention, I am attempting to place pictures on the site right now. That will be neat.

It is like a portal to… me. I feel like it will make it easier for me to deal with sending applications and papers and whatever else if my CV and information is all available at a central location. We’ll see how it works.