Surveillance Steaks

Are you a meat popsicle? I recently saw an old quote from Mr Franklin:

Those willing to give up liberty for security deserve niether and will lose both.                                                                     B. Franklin

It was completely out of any context at that moment, but it reminded me of a recent study on tracking people through their “smart” phone usage, and in particular, just how little information was needed to do it – unfortunately, I can’t re-find the particular article, but there are many more out there. There are also plenty on tracking different devices themselves – whether it be family or foe – do you really think that it is OK to track your children with their iphone (or whatever)?. Ah, and if you are lucky enough to be in some schools in the US, then they will also try and track your movements using RFIDs – not just at school! .. and then, there is the “rise of the drones”, a headline too beautiful to lose, whereby all this lovely war-tech will be brought home to make the people safe… if you couple this with the very advanced facial recognition that already exists, even outside of the “military”, it is not looking to good for liberty.

When it comes to phone/internet tracking, the problem with our brave new world, as many have pointed out, is that if you are not paying for a service, you are not the customer – you are the product! Perhaps the question should then be – Are you selling yourself too cheaply? As it turns out, it is a buyers market. “We” the people have very little power individually, hence we are forced to accept whatever the “service” providers “give” us. As for the Drone invasion, the only option that we have there is to get out on the streets and say NO, because once they are there, they are never going away. If you don’t think it will happen, remember, this is just an airborne extension of surveillance cameras that are already everywhere and look how well that’s working out.

Whenever I start thinking about this I keep getting this image of meat-popsicles wandering around in some sort of bizarre extension of Farmville (no, I don’t really know what that means either, but I can imagine), while people track their every move, their every thought or desire, who’s shopping where and for what and which meat-popsicles are talking together and perhaps planning the next revolution to bring down our evil overlords … or to go to the beach/football/theatre/dinner…

I am not going to start (just yet) a discussion on the impact on society that this is having, or will have, but it does raise some interesting questions. There is plenty one can do to minimise this problem, but it requires effort and awareness. Look around at what you can do, and THINK about what you do, because if you don’t, you can be sure that someone else is!

Some people are trying to argue that this is a necessary “evil”/inconvenience but that overall it is, or at least will be … I am not so convinced and it would appear that Ben Franklin wouldn’t be either.

So, do you feel more secure? What are you going to do about it?

The Unwitting Recipient of an Epiphany

After a few minutes of deep internal reflection about myself and my place in the universe, I was the unwitting recipient of an epiphany. At least I think that was what it was. It occurred to me that this whole blog thing is not going so well.  For one thing, apart from the squirrels, there was a distinct lack of a thematic in the Cave.  The Paradigm Changing Waffles post brought me back to question the motivation of my Space/Time/Money trichotomy. For sure, these concepts are so fundamental that I can put anything in one or more of these boxes… but why would I want to?

It could be argued that I have a tendency to over-think things. I have a good life – I shouldn’t really complain about anything. However, I am also of a certain age, where I am starting to wonder what I am going to do with the rest of my life … which is already much longer than I already had planned (planned is probably too strong a word for it). Historically, I have repeatedly proven to myself that if I decide to do something then it usually gets done. My problem comes from not having the slightest clue what I want to do. Hence I have been trying to valorise everything. However, we can really simplify the crux of the problem.

• Space: I live in a modern cave (an apartment, for the uninitiated) with several people. This means that the opportunity to make a lot of noise, or leave a huge mess lying around for weeks, is not really an option – perhaps it is just me but most things that interest me are loud and messy.
• Time: I work long and largely unpredictable hours, plus, I travel, often at quite short notice.  This makes it hard to take up a hobby or sport because you never know from one week to the next whether you will be back next week, month or year.
• Money: I am not hungry, which, for me, means that I have enough. If I stop work for a couple of weeks though, this would rapidly change. Apart from the general insecurity, this  means that I can’t just decide to take a few months off “to get my head together”.

So, where does that leave me? My epiphany – I like to think. Actually, that is not my epiphany. My epiphany was that this is OK. The problem with this is that recently I had become absorbed in computers in the search of interesting things. This is time consuming and not necessarily productive. It is great to be inspired by what one finds on the internet, or in the real world for that matter, but one must also learn to step back. My initial response to this was to hate the technology. Hating the tech was just an excuse for hating myself for not being able to take control of my own life.

In response to all of this I have decided to revisit writing!

This actually satisfies all of criteria and constraints:

• Space: I can sit anywhere with a computer and write and I can think about writing anywhere as well!
• Time: OK, I still have erratic time constraints, but when I have time and can be thinking about new projects and stories or just doing research on new subjects – there is no deadline (unless I decide I need more pressure in my life…).
• Money: This will cost me approximately zero as I already have everything that I need! Also, on the flip-side, I am not looking to make money – although I would not say no either!

It would seem like the perfect solution … now if only I could remember how to write!

The Done List

Productivity is apparently what we are all after. There are a constantly growing number of applications/software/stuff to help us be more productive. You can even pay people large amounts of money to spend days explaining to you how to be more productive. I don’t know about you, but I often feel that I spend so much time organising my time that in reality I am less productive!

Recently, I started to make “Done” lists. It is perhaps not so obvious how this could help me to organise getting things done. In fact, it sounds like another excellent way of wasting time. So how does it help?

I have a great many things to do and the majority of these are small things. OK, they may contribute to bigger things over time, but on a day by day, or week by week, basis, they are not really important. Nonetheless, take up time. As such, when the end of the week rolls around and I want to look back on what I have achieved it can easily seem like I have wasted my time.

The “Done” list now helps me justify, at least to myself, what I have been doing. This also has the flow on effect that the normal “To Do” lists are better structured as I look to transfer this to the Done list. It also pushes me to spend that little extra time to actually finish something as opposed to just preparing to do something, or doing my 1 hour on project A etc. Apart from the satisfaction of seeing a solid list of tasks achieved at the end of the week it has, I believe, actually improved my productivity.

Paradigm Changing Waffles

Been doing a little bit of house cleaning, both mentally and blogally … yes, despite what the spell check thinks, that is a word. Recently, in the Cave, I hadn’t so much as wandered off the subject as changed films … several times. As such a few articles are missing from the Cave – if my prose was really to die for, PM me and I’ll send you a signed copy.

Now, if we can just focus for a while, then we’ll be just fine. Probably. Mostly … at least on some Tuesdays.

So let us remind ourselves of what we were doing. If we go back to the beginning of this little adventure we set out with the grand, heroic paradigm changing ideals of waffling on about:

1. We live in modern cities with all the modern technology that comes with it and yet we have lost one of the most basic of basics – Space
2. The modern technology and all the liberty that it brings is also largely responsible for robbing us of another fundamentally import aspect of our daily lives – Time.
3. Finally, in all the excitement, we also forgot the most insidious aspect of modern life and why we are all suffering from the first two points – Money.

Now, let’s see how long this lasts! Help!!!!

Squirrels in the Cave!

The Maker Apartment – A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place.

If one is ever going to make anything, then having some tools, and more importantly, being able to find them will be essential. What is left of my tools have been scattered around the apartment in various nooks and crannies or shoved down in the basement – you can always guarantee that no matter how many times you go down to the basement to get some tools you’ll need to go back one more time to get something you forgot.

This dilema was the motivation for building the following tool trolley. This was my solution to combine all of the bits and pieces on to one transportable, via the elevator, toolkit. Ok there is still a trip to the basement, but only one trip!

The build is quite simple. I took a standard flat trolley and using some 10mm threadbar and some 18mm (cheap) pine, added an extra shelf. This gives a little more storage space then just stacking everything on the base. The threadbar means that the height is adjustable – I still need to work on using the bottom shelf efficiently but this is already a huge improvement. Total cost was around 50$/CHF/£/Euros and a couple of hours work (including shopping for the bits).

While I was at it, I thought I needed a little bit more thinking space as well. For this I just took the other half of the shelf I used for the trolley. So that it didn’t dominate too much and literally get in my face while I am working I put a bit of a curve on this – easier said than done. I have very few wood tools and had to cut half a dozen straight lines to approximate my curve before attacking it with some files and sandpaper … Clearly the next project should involve some type of work bench and possibly even a vice to hold everything that I want to attack!

So … Just thought I’d share a little bit of simplicity in getting things done. Now, any suggestions for a workbench that disappears when you don’t need it?

The Maker Apartment

This is the first in a series of posts on a subject that is very much on my mind and at the heart of what the Modern Cave Dweller wants to discuss.

In the modern world we are finding ourselves more and more often living in apartments. In most cases this comes at the cost of a works space. I grew up with access to a workshop where one could do metal and woodwork, painting, electronics, anything that one could put their mind to, providing they could find the material. Now, I do not even have a spare room – I have a balcony that is too small to swing a cat and only usable when the weather is fine, alternatively, there is the living room, although the rest of the household may not consider the use of the coffee table as a bench, appropriate.

Hackerspaces and various community, shared, spaces and tool libraries,  are a brilliant idea but I have two more constraints: I don’t want to play around with electronics, knitting … things that don’t take up much room, and I don’t have the time to go to regular, organised, meetings. What I want is an industrial space in my apartment where I can tinker, when I have the time. I have seen photos of people who have rebuilt motorcycles in their apartments (the photo here being a less than flattering example), people with wood or metal lathes… I recall my father baking enamel paint in the oven at home.  I expect that the secret will be in making sure that the rest of the house doesn’t look out of place when something is being built.

So this is where I am looking for your input. How are you dealing with making in your apartment? Have you seen something exceptionally cool that needs to be seen to be believed?