Archive - Mar 2013
March 30th
#pcwm Notes on Bitcoin
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/30/2013 - 22:08At PodCamp WesternMass, one of the sessions I attended was led by Joe Cascio about Bitcoin. "Bitcoin is a digital currency, a protocol, and a software…"
I've kicked around Bitcoin in the past, but never really jumped in. This time, I figured it was a good time to explore it in more detail. At least as I understand it from Joe, Bitcoins are an alternative digital currency. It is shared over an encrypted peer to peer network, and the coins are stored in a wallet, as opposed to an account somewhere.
There are pros and cons to this. If you lose your wallet, you lose whatever was in it. On the other hand, if it were an account somewhere online, and the server that had the account goes away, you'd lose your money that way. Joe talked about the Cyprus banks as an example of the second type of risk. You can store your Bitcoin wallet somewhere so that it acts more like an account if that's what you're interested in.
I installed Bitcoin on my Android phone. If anyone wants to put some money in that wallet, an address is bitcoin:1PNepVfV6wmnpUDAz3oLMQmCuJ7cP44fiQ. I also installed Bitcoin on my Mac. An address for that wallet is bitcoin:1ACM16Gntx4ekgwB2LvL3NokT2wKvaT5fB.
Joe did go into a little bit of detail about Bitcoin mining, or how new Bitcoins get added into the economy. However, that didn't have a lot of practical value, at least to me. I doubt I'll ever have the computation power to mine Bitcoins.
So, the other way of getting Bitcoins is to buy or earn them. Joe recommended a site, Coinbase. I set up an account there. They are particularly focused on buying and selling Bitcoins, particularly based on bank transfers. Joe noted that in setting things up, they can transfer and and from whatever account you've linked, so he recommends being cautious, such as linking it to a small account that you don't use for much of anything else. I set up an account there, but I haven't linked a bank account to it. So, essentially, right now it is a hosted wallet with a bitcoin address bitcoin:1MKhWL7xPiMZgLTC6zaQzC6MhPq72WK6gu
I was particularly interested in connecting bitcoins to other virtual currencies. Virwox, or Virtual World Exchange, allows you to trade between Second Life, Open Metaverse currency, and Avination, which appears to be another Second Life like virtual world. You can also deposit money from various bank accounts in different currencies.
The downside is that primary currency seems to be the Linden Dollar, and you have to pay exchange rates to get in and out of Linden dollars. So, if you want Bitcoins from US Dollars, you deposit US dollars, use them to buy Linden Dollars, and then use the Linden Dollars to buy Bitcoins; two sets of commission charges.
When you set it up for Bitcoins, it also becomes a hosted wallet. My Virwox hosted wallet has this address, bitcoin:13wtvg7P97voZTcjFn8sKs62E5P3NhZQKQ. They charge a transaction fee of .01BTC to transfer bitcoins out of Virwox to other accounts. My sense is that they are probably good if you are making money in Second Life and want to transfer it to Bitcoins, but even with that, their transaction fees seem a bit much.
Currently, 1 Bitcoin is worth about $92. However, you can do things at small fractions of a Bitcoin. Often transactions are in milliBitcoins or microBitcoins. A milliBitcoin is currently worth about nine cents, and a microBitcoin is currently worth nine thousandths of a cent.
With this microcurrency aspects there are lots of other things that can be done. People are offering milli or microBitcoins for people to visit sites online, and perhaps take some action on the site. skude.se is a site that links to other sites where people can earn small amounts of Bitcoins this way.
For example, there is an affiliate site that if people click on, I'll get a microBitcoin for each link, up to 100 per day. That works out to unto nine tenths of a cent a day. Probably not enough to bother with, but, every little bit can help.
I'm kicking around other ideas that I hope to do with Bitcoins, but right now, I'm waiting for my wallets to synchronize so I can start experimenting moving cash around.
March 29th
Podcamp WesternMass
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 03/29/2013 - 08:58Podcamp WesternMass is tomorrow and I've been following some of the discussions about ideas for different sessions. There has been a bit of talk about '101' sessions, introductions to various aspects of social media. I always worry about these sort of sessions, where there is an information based power imbalance; the person leading the session having lots of information, and many of the other participants mostly having questions. I know these sessions are important, but I prefer dialogues between equals, so I haven't stepped up to facilitate a session like this. If I did, I'd probably want to talk about broad based strategy issues. What is your goal or mission? What is your message? What is your audience? Perhaps a little bit of a discussion about metrics and all of it leading back to the ideas of intent and impact.
Intent and Impact are issues that I'm particularly focused on these days. What is your intent when you follow someone on social media? When you retweet them? When you post something of your own? What is your intent when you post or share a political comment or a cute picture? How does this fit into group dynamics and parallel processes between groups? How does it relate to Zeitgeist? I wonder how much other people are thinking about this or are interested in talking about this?
I'm also especially interested in some of the more geeky discussions. My good friend Joe Cascio is going to be talking about Bitcoin. I hope this will be a lively discussion, perhaps tying in other issues like alternative non-dollar based currencies, micropayments, point systems and other rewards, etc. I wonder if anyone else there is playing with Raspberry Pi. I could talk a little bit about that, but it probably wouldn't be a great discussion unless a few other geeky people gathered and we shared ideas and brainstormed about what could be done with Raspberry Pi.
Staying on the geeky thread, I'm interested in augmented reality. I was accepted into ProjectGlass, which means I may be getting a pair of Google Glasses soon. What will I be able to do with these? What else is out there for augmented reality? What else is out there for immersive glasses?
One of the things people talk a lot about with Google Glass is taking pictures and videos. We've seen Instagram take off. What else is happening or coming in digital photography and videography? Anyone playing with Vine? What about creating your own Instagram like filters with Photoshop or Gimp? Are their other video tools people should be looking at?
Here, I'm especially interested in mobile, and I wonder what else is coming in Mobile. What are some cool things people are doing with mobile that I'm missing? Are there tools to encourage creativity? Audio, pictures, video production and editing tools? HDR? Panoramas? 3D photography? New ways of looking at creativity? Anyone playing with SuperColider on Android? (I haven't had a lot of luck with it yet). How about Creatorverse? Ingress?
This gets me to what I think was the most valuable session for me from Podcamp last year. I think it was supposed to be about Evernote. I like Evernote. I'm kicking around Google Keep. I've used Onenote in the past, and I'm wondering if there are things that I can be doing with Onenote at work. I've also been interested in mobile audio note taking. "Note to self" spoken into the cellphone to launch an app that does speech to text note taking. Maybe there will be some discussion about these apps at Podcamp WesternMass.
However, only a couple people showed up at the Evernote session, so we sat around sharing ideas. I learned a lot about Evernote that day, and especially ideas about using IFTTT with Evernote. If you haven't checked out "If This Then That" ifttt.com and your a serious social media person, then you're really missing something.
I guess that gets to what I like best about Podcamps, going to sessions where you discover something unexpected, maybe even as the session goes off topic, and everyone gets engaged in the discussion. Because after all, engagement is a key goal in social media and it should be in Podcamp as well.
So, are you interested in any of these topics? Are there other topics your interested in? Let's build the discussion and momentum going into Podcamp WesternMass.
March 27th
Creatorverse
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 20:05I've been pretty swamped with life recently and haven't had as much time to play with technology as I would like. Being a geek, playing with technology is an important form of relaxation. On top of that, I'm very interested in constructivist forms of education.
My daughter, Fiona, loves playing games on her smartphone, and I've been trying to find good geeky, constructivist oriented games, and yesterday, I found one, by happenstance.
Every day, Amazon Appstore gives away certain premium apps for free. Mostly, they are games that I'm not all that interested in, but in some cases, they are pretty interesting. Yesterday, the app was Creatorverse. The title kind of caught my eye. The image for the app looked interesting, but what really caught my attention was that it was by Linden Labs. That's right, the folks who brought you Second Life have an app for Android phones. That was enough to get me to download it.
The interface wasn't intuitive and it took a little while for me to get going. Put simply, Creatorverse allows you to create images where the rules of physics applies to the objects. So far, I've only played with gravity. I create balls which fall, and bounce depending on their density. I've created slows that the balls can roll down. It is fun. Relaxing for a geek, and Fiona, who has been playing a lot of mindcraft recently found it interesting.
I'm glad I downloaded it. As I play with it more, I will figure out how I can share some of my creations. Until then, I'm going to try and catch up on my rest, and maybe relax a little, from time to time, playing with Creatorverse.
March 26th
RIP Alan Jobe
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 20:14The other day, I saw a bunch of headlines about the death of Boris Berezovsky. I guess he was some important Russian who fled to England, and I mourn his death the way I mourn the death of any person. To quote John Donne,
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
I looked through the local obituaries to see if there was a recent death around here with which I could compare Berezovsky's death; the death of an important person to those close to him, to those involved in mankind, but stripped of all the intrigue of a Russian Oligarch. Each obituary seemed both too close and too distant at the same time.
There is enough going on in my life right now, so I didn't write anything. Then, I found out that my boss' wife's grandfather died on Saturday. It was not unexpected. He had been in hospice. The family had gathered around him during his final hours, unlike Berezovsky who appears to have died alone. The wake is today and the funeral tomorrow, but I couldn't juggle the schedule to be there.
So now, it is evening. Kim is off at an event. Fiona is working on homework, and I am checking in on my connections on social media.
On Alan Jobe's Facebook timeline, I see a message,
Alan passed away 3/25/13 of a stroke at 7:50 PST.
I know he told me a lot how he loved having so many friends on here.
Alan and I have been friends for a long time. We were friends on Facebook, Twitter, Empire Avenue, EntreCard, and I suspect several other places. We had a lot of friends in common, mostly people who explored EntreCard and Empire Avenue. Yet, I never met Alan face to face, just as I haven't met many of our mutual friends face to face.
On the 21st, Alan put up a blog post, Gay As Hell or Where’d My Audience Go?. He reflected on how he has had more interaction at other times, and how things like 'mission inflation on Empire Avenue' may have affected his traffic. Several people stopped to write saying they were still there, still reading, but not interacting as much for one reason or another. Others stopped to write about what was going on with Empire Avenue.
So, I pause to say yet another goodbye. I'm too late for him to have read my comments while he was still alive, but I hope these words will mean something to the members of my online community that were friends with Alan.
I continue to keep my connections with Alan on all the social media sites where we were connected. It is the right thing to do.
March 24th
In My Own Little Corner, Redux
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 03/24/2013 - 09:11It is chilly this morning, sitting on the deck of the Cape House. The sun is out, but has not crept around to the porch. The wind has died down a little bit, but it is still a March wind. The leaves rustle, and a collection of birds sing. A week or so ago, I wrote about the song "In My Own Little Corner" in the musical Cinderella by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Like in the music, the theme comes back around, not like an earworm, but a gentle reminder.
My memories of the television production of this musical are that the first time this theme is introduced, Cinderella is sitting in her own little corner, finding a moments respite from the constant demands placed on her. There is something special about flights of fancy, but they can be hollow.
Last night people gathered around various media devices. The kids were watching the Kids Choice Awards on a laptop in one room and the adults were watching Diving with the Stars in another room. I sat with them briefly to be social, but much of what is broadcast these days seems more like bread and circuses, than even flights of fancy.
I returned to my little corner and thought of the redux of "In My Own Little Corner". Instead of being the diversionary flight of fancy from when the theme is first introduced, the second time Cinderella sings it is mournful. Her flight of fancy of going to the ball has crashed. She is home, alone.
This occurs right before the Fairy Godmother appears. We all know the story and what is about to happen next, but for the character of Cinderella, at that moment, all that is known is disappointment.
It feels a bit like Holy Week. Today is Palm Sunday, The Sunday of The Passion. We start off the service celebrating the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Yet as we remember the week, the crowds turn against Jesus, shouting, "Crucify him!". Judas betrays Jesus, and Peter denies him three times. We all know how the story goes, but like Cinderella, Peter and the disciples don't know what comes next and it must be agonizing.
I am caught up in dramas and turmoils of my own right now. It is of a much smaller scale than the trip to Golgotha. I don't know what will happen later this week, and it is frightening. Will the Fairy Godmother appear and make things better? Will there be a crucifixion or resurrection? What about many of my friends that are suffering through all of this together with me?
Next week is Easter. Already flowers are popping up amidst the snow on the Cape. There may be another storm or two yet to pass, but it will be getting better.
