Ronald Stewart presenting at the next SGVLUG

Ronald Stewart, Creative Director of the Trinity Audio Group will be speaking at the next San Gabriel Valley Linux User Group. He will be presenting the yet-to-be-released InDaMixx appliance. A full-featured, hand-held recording studio built on Linux (a customized version of 64Studio, to be more specific).

I met Ron at SCALE 6 & am excited to be working with him on the InDaMixx project. I´m doubly-excited because having this type of talk might be just what the Linux ProAudio SIG (special interest group) needs to get kick-started. I´ve heard zero traffic on that list since I joined a while back.

Hmm, thinking I should just take the lead & start drumming up support to get the Linux Audio group going...

Heading over to Barcamp LA

Barcamp LA starts later this morning! I can´t wait to attend as it´ll be my first one.

I was hoping to attend the 2012 Conference as it´s only a 1-day event & there´s NOTHING like this that´s ever gone down. I´m hoping to drop by regardless & soak up some knowledge...

Having to decide between two very revolutionary conferences is a nice problem to have. :)

Black History Month Ends on a GREAT note!

I was listening to Beneath the Surface on KPFK today & host Jerry Quickley was getting all emotional as he played large excerpts of Malcolm X speeches. Also listened earlier & heard Cynthia McKinney! Talk about some great, inspirational people who aren´t afraid of telling the truth!

Heck, this whole year started off great on KPFK! This comes as no surprise if you´ve ever listened but if you haven´t switch your dial off of all the commercial nonsense & listen to an independent voice. Talk about RED_PILLS!! OMG, KPFK doles out nothing but...

I might not have time to help out on WINE

With all the goings-ons & the two projects I´ve just realized I need to jump on, I might not have time to help out on the Wine project. Well, I´ll be throwing bug reports at it but I was hoping to get more involved.

I heard about WINE a couple years back when I used to (have time to) play WoW & heard someone had found a way to play it on a Linux box (WoW was only released with Windows & Mac OS X install clients). I tested it out & sure enough, it was definitely playable. Ever since then, I´d occasionally throw something new at it & see if I could finally get fully off the evil empire (tm).

I then met Dan Kegel at a Linux Installfest event. Months later, he gave a talk to SGV LUG on Wine & Zumastor (another pretty sweet project). That´s when I found out he was heavily involved in those projects (as well as leading the Picasa for Linux project). We talked at length at SCALE 6 & I was really excited....then BAM!

Once free time arises, I´ll definitely be helping out more on this wonderful project! :)

SCALE 6X- Rockin' OSS Conference

Wow! What a great event! I can´t believe it took me this long to finally attend one. Boy have I missed out. The speakers were great, the topics terrific & there were lots of friendly people around.

Friday
I spent the majority of my time hopping back & forth between the Open Source Software in Education (OSSIE) & the Women in Open Source (WIOS) tracks. Both had interesting presentations & informative dialogue between presenters & audience. My favorite was Angela Byron´s talk on Drupal. I heard about Drupal a year ago but have just recently been evaluating CMS solutions & Drupal was my clear winner so it was a nice coincidence to hear Angela´s talk. I also attended some really cool Birds of a Feather (BoF), especially the WINE one as I´m looking forward to contributing a bit more than just using the product. ;)

Saturday
The OSSIE & WIOS tracks were no more but there was still lots of great presentations being given. My favorite was the talk by Zak Greant. I was so blown away by how progressive-minded his talk was that I approached him & we talked at length about how open source can be used as a tool to effect positive societal change. More on what that spawned later. The Haiku presentation by Bruno was also great. Another great project I´d love to contribute to (if time permits). The reception was nice & many folks won really nice gifts. Grats. :)

Sunday
The final day started with a great keynote by Stormy Peters. I´d seen her presentation on Friday so I knew it would be well worth it. The first 2 presentations I visited were about legalities in open source. Karen Sandler and Robert Scott did a really nice job explaining what are, usually, very convoluted issues. I really wanted to visit the Creative Commons presentation but I´ve known about CC for a long time & am currently charting the ways that I´m going to release my music projects using this tool (again, a topic for another day). I chose the sysadmin presentation over my friend´s Distributed MySQL presentation (I know he forgives me, hehe).

A wonderful conference that was worth every penny. I´m booking early again next year! :)

MLK Speech

I heard a great speech this morning given originally in 1968 in front of UC Berkeley's Sprowl Hall. It would be MLK's final speech in California & sounded like it was still relevant today, 40 years later. I was driving to my job & had goosebumps the throughout the WHOLE speech. We were blessed to have people like Dr. King, but they were taken too, too early from us.

From the Vault Radio was the source of the speech (I think that´s part of the Pacifica Archives). So when you go to KPFK, look up the archives for this day & download everything during the morning commute hours, You´ll be glad you did.

We still need you, Dr. King! Thank you, Pacifica, FTV & KPFK for dedicating resources to preserving such wonderful free speech!

What is a "Techivist?"

Techie-activist(a). Considered myself a techie ever since 1993 when, after spending $1500 cash on my 1st PC, my buddy J helped me figure out the inner-workings of computers. I was taking ´em apart & building custom ¨rigs¨ pretty soon after.

Activist(a) stems more from volunteering over the years & not actually doing the hard work that community-based, grass roots organizers do on a daily basis. Now, those people put in some WORK & I have mad respect & admiration for all those great folks. I´ve just been a coach to 8-12 year-olds (basketball, soccer & baseball/softball), mentored in the LA Public Library´s Adult Literacy Program & contributed to several other programs & open-source projects. I´ve done but a minor speck of what so many other folks have done to give back.

The thing is, I know lots of folks that fit this description (or some hybrid, thereof). I´ve got some ideas in the works. Stay tuned...

Darnitt, I missed the October22nd march!

Boy, I was really looking forward to the march, rally & vigil against police brutality but I've been working every day & October 22nd was no different. I was there in spirit, however. I'll just have to show my support by attending the monthly "Fightin' Words" open mic nights more often (been to 1 & it was awesome!). The October 22nd Coalition is a grass roots organization which attempts to make October 22nd a National Day of Protest against injustices enacted by some members of law enforcement (not all, we all know there are MANY good peace officers who are trying to help their communities but a few rogue cops give that 99% majority a bad name).

A bit about this movement:
The October 22nd Coalition is a national network of people from all walks of life who want to see an end to police brutality. The coalition began in 1995 as a response to the hundreds of police brutality cases throughout the county. Since then, activists, friends, and family members of victims have held annual marches and community events to expose cases of police violence throughout the nation. The coalition is also an advocate of youth issues, and is outspoken about the many repressive laws and tactics used to criminalize youth in this country. Join us as we organize and fight against police brutality and the criminalization of a generation.

Contributing to OpenOffice also

Figured since I´d come clean about contributing to Songbird, that I should also mention the other project I´m contributing my rusty QA skillz to. I mentioned OpenOffice.org (aka OOo) almost a couple months back.

OpenOffice rocks the socks off of M$ Office for MANY reasons. There´s versions for ALL operating systems, includes all the same types of programs as Office &, probably best of all, you can save any file you work on as its Office counterpart (in case you´re, say, sending a resume to a company that uses M$). Oh, by the way, it´s FREE too!!!

Contributing to songbird

So like i mentioned a month ago, been using songbird forever. Been lovin´ it but found a few bugs so I´ve been contributing to the Songbird dev. community by putting my old QA skillz to use! ;)

Take a look (& listen), it´s a great product!

Songbird Media Player

So I've been using the Songbird player for almost a year now & it's about high-time I evangelized about how dope it really is. It's FREE Open-source software (FOSS), has tons of features & the community's awesome!

Songbird™ is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins (feathers). Like Firefox®, it is built from Mozilla®, cross-platform and open source. Cross-platform means it's available for Windows, Mac & Linux. It's available in 45+ languages & sports 64-bit support. It's developer-friendly as there are over 30 community-authored add-ons & on-staff developers are very friendly in helping you around. It supports iPod & USB devices & you can play tracks from the iTunes store or Yahoo Unlimited services.

Prior to Songbird, I used to use Winamp & while it was great, Songbird is truly the end-all, be-all music application. Not only that, but their logos are seriously sweet! Give it a try, you might find yourself not needing anything else, EVER again!

One Laptop Per Child

I heard about the One Laptop Per Child project in February of 2006 (when OLPC had just opened their headquarters in Massachusetts). All I could think of was "wow, why didn't anyone think of this before?" Needless to say, it was going to be a tremendous undertaking- producing laptops for $100 apiece for the SOLE purpose of handing them out to kids in emerging countries (to start) so that they could have a fighting chance of competing on a worldwide level with more fortunate kids their age (who probably take things like this for granted). The idea behind it is that no kids should be "left behind" by the ever-increasing digital divide- an idea I've championed & kicked around in my brain in terms of what I can do here in L.A. (I actually had a great idea for a non-profit which addresses this same issue for inner-city kids back in 1996 but I've yet to be able to act on it...patience, there's still time & that project of mine can still come to fruition). It's really not very different from the FOSS (free open-source software) movement in that its basic tenet is that access to software shouldn't be determined by age, race, class, gender or socioeconomic status. OLPC just takes it one step further in that its goal is to give a laptop to EVERY child in the world. As you can see from the link above, there's lots of partners that have now gotten involved & the software which powers it is free & open-source & uses open-document formats (ODF) which is also something I'm a huge proponent of.

I've actually had some email correspondence with a couple people that are part of the project in those last 16 months in order to see what I could do to provide my help & expertise. Initially, they wanted people to talk to corporations & educational institutions so I spread the word in my own little way (to other techies, educators, etc. I know). Now that the organization is fully up & running (kids in rural areas who are given these laptops can connect to the world through broadband access which, to me, posed a significant, initial obstacle for getting the project off the ground), I feel like I can be more of a help. It should be noted that these aren't for commercial sale here in the U.S. but OLPC is planning on offering it in the near future.

It's about time I wrote about it in an effort to reach even more people & now that the infrastructure's fully operational, I think the time is right to raise more awareness. So please visit the OLPC website, take a look around & see what you can do- whether you donate money or your time, it's a wonderful program created by great visionaries who are revolutionizing computing as we know it. Now this is a "no child left behind" idea that's REALLY working.

Immigration movement

I was at the pro-immigrant rally today here in downtown L.A. It was nowhere near as large as the one I participated in last year but there were still plenty of people (I heard something like 3-5k) out supporting this human rights issue. It was very peaceful which was great considering there was a group of about 200 anti-immigrant supporters there as well. It got a little heated at times as people exchanged insults but it never went past that. Like last year, all kinds of people came- families, non-minorities & youth- which was also nice to see.

I'm completely befuddled by the folks who are anti-immigrants. Their "beef" is that immigrants come here to take jobs, usurp social services (public education, healthcare, etc.) & do not want to assimilate into American culture (ie. learn the language). These folks have obviously been fed mass media's b.s. & are simply ignorant (for not doing any research on their own, at least). I'll explain why.

UCLA published the findings of a study a few years back which stated that immigrants contribute more than $20 billion (going off memory, but pretty sure that's correct) to the economy than they receive in return- due to not being eligible for certain services or not even applying due to fear of deportation (I lost that link when I reformatted my hard drive over a year ago but as soon as I locate it, I'll edit this post).

Immigrants do attempt to assimilate into American culture by learning the language, thinking otherwise is ludicrous! You try learning a completely foreign language (that uses totally different tongue muscles) when you're an adult & see how you do, it's not easy (why parents are advised to teach their children as many foreign languages as possible @ an early age, it's easier to learn the younger you are- it's a proven gerontological fact). I lived near a middle school about 10 years ago close to Hollywood & every day around 6-7pm, traffic was insane due to the amount of adult latinos (some koreans too) going to night school to learn english.

The #1 issue I hear anti-immigrants clamoring about is immigrants coming here to take jobs. First of all, if anything, immigrants here are victimized by employers who have poor working conditions, don't pay adequately & just, generally, abuse the system & their employees. Second of all, many times it's these immigrants who are doing menial jobs that noone else wants- being a cook at a fast food restaurant, working in agriculture or working in other service professions like low-paid healthcare, childcare & house cleaning. The thing that gets me riled up the most, however, is how you have TONS of American corporations moving their bases of operations (ie. Halliburton) or completely off-shoring large segments of their business outside of the U.S. I've worked in Technology for 10+ years & it's become common practice. Pay close attention next time you call Dell, Compaq/HP or your local cable company for tech support- that's not an American helping you out, it's usually someone from India. But we never hear about this in the media & I don't hear the American public holding these multi-billion dollar corporations accountable for the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs stateside.

It's this ignorance perpetrated by the mass media that's keeping our population misinformed. Daresay, I even call it divisive. That's what saddened me the most today- seeing faces of color on the anti-immigrant side. Has it been so long that they've forgotten that at one time, in the past, they were treated & viewed in the same, inhumane way?