Blogs

I can't stop buying books. I really need to but just haven't been able to manage it. I forgot to bring my library card to Auckland and Parsons Books was having a sale so I couldn't resist. last time I bought a book there it cost $150 - this time I bought 4 books for less than $150 so, at least I'm getting better value for money now. I'll probably be hit with excess baggage costs though...

Nam June Paik: Global Groove 2004
- this is a great collection of Nam June Paik's works and writings and includes some letters to John Cage.

did I mention that Brisbane's new GOMA - Gallery of Modern Art, has one of his video pieces "TV Cello" on display.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliak_com/tags/namjunepaik/

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Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud

- I haven't started this one properly yet, but it looks like it'll be an interesting essay. it's based on a collection of editorial entries from "Documents sur l'Art" magazine that were first published in 1992.

amazon.com book page

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"How to look at a painting" by Justin Paton

- Justin Paton is speaking at the upcoming Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, and he's a NZ author so I thought I'd give it a try. I haven't started it yet though.

amazon.com page

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Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice) by Geert Lovink
- I've read many of Geert Lovink's writings on various maillists and website publications such as Sarai Reader so I thought I'd take a read of his book on Internet Culture.

amazon.com book page

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The Bone People by Keri Hume
- this wasn't from Parsons but I bought it last time I left Auckland and read most on the plane back to Sydney then finished it whilst I was there. amazing characters - they haunt you for a while afterwards. I still think of them now and then. a really simple story, about the lives of a couple of families in NZ. Keri Hume won the Booker Prize for this book in the early 90s and since I tend to enjoy reading Booker Prize winning books I thought I'd try an earlier one as I've mostly only read more recent winning titles. well worth the read!

amazon.com book page (though my copy has a different cover image so is probably a different edition)

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this one's a magazine, but it was priced like a book and has been capturing my attention as much as a book, so..

Archis VOLUME magazine - Issue 2006 # 4
- it's an architecture magazine but includes articles about projects & urban issues from around the world as well as upcoming conferences and calls for works / request for comments about certain global issues.

http://www.archis.org/

http://www.c-lab.columbia.edu/

amazon page

when I finished my work project in Delhi last year, I was taken out for lunch by some of the people I worked with. the lunch was really nice, we went to Gurgaon, to a Chinese restuarant. part of the conversation as we were leaving was about how places in Delhi were being rebuilt.

I'm back in Auckland again for work, and have been catching up on emails over the Easter weekend break. A couple of emails to the Sarai reader list have led me to read about workers in Gurgaon (an industrial city with many call centres near Delhi) and watch videos from Indian women in villages producing their own video magazines.

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The first email was a blog post by Shivam Vij called "Who is a Bairagi?" asking questions about OBC (other backward classes) in India and do people there really know who these people are and how they live. The post was from a journalist who sometimes writes for Tehelka (the people's paper). The National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) has lists of names / castes for people classified as OBC. The Delhi list can be found here and full list for Indian regions found here. There's even a Questionnaire for consideration of requests for Inclusion and complaints of Under-Inclusion of backward classes in Central list - criteria such as Social, Economic and Educational.

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Another email to sarai reader list highlighted a new law resource in India - Between Law and Justice: A Law and Society Reader, a DVD database with (so far) over 400 articles on topics such as :

1. Legal histories
Colonial
Postcolonial
2. Constitutional promises and perils
3. Siting struggles: human rights and social justice
4. Roti, kapadda aur makaan: law, livelihood and development
5. Supreme, yet fallible
6. Crime and punishment
7. Access to justice
8. Citizens/denizens
9. Edge of desire: law, gender and sexuality
10. In a minority
11. Green justice
12. Media law & free speech
13. Governance
14. Life of law amidst globalisation
15. Legal education
16. Interdisciplinary challenges
17. International law

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Another email was a promo for a new documentary :

"INDIA UNTOUCHED - Stories of a People Apart" is a new documentary directed by Stalin K. and produced by Drishti. Drishti is a a collective of film & documentary makers in India.

Video Volunteers is part of the Creative Visions foundation and aims to setup Community Video Units and train local Community Video Producers to produce video magazines based on local issues which are screened monthly in 25 villages reaching more than 10000 people in these communities. Members of the communities speak about what matters to them and the CVU allows them to have a voice which is then shared with other members of the community.

http://videovolunteers.org/
http://videovolunteers.org/videogallery.php - to view the videos

India's Frontline magazine has a story about Video Volunteers.

http://videovolunteers.org/video_change.php
[quote]
The impact of social change media

Video empowers the poor with leadership and critical thinking skills and makes them partners in the development process. Even non-literates can learn to make videos in a matter of months. Here are some success stories from NGOs around the world:

* Bangladesh: Village women submitted video testimonies of the domestic abuse they have suffered and avoided intimidation in the village court.
* India: Rickshaw drivers made articulate video pleas that convinced local banks to give them loans for the first time.
* Mexico: Merely the site of a camera and fear of being caught caused police to withdraw from an illegal raid in Chiapas.
* Nigeria: A cholera outbreak was less severe in villages where a video on clean water was shown.
* Egypt: A group of women abandoned the practice of genital mutilation when they heard the call for change from community members' video interviews.
[/quote]

Other related organisations helping to teach people video making skills in India are :

Barefoot Workshops, a not-for-profit media and music based educational organization where adults and youth are taught video, photography, music, and art as a way to document their surroundings, make change in the world, and most importantly, make change within themselves.

Velugu is the largest poverty project in the state working in over 860 mandals in 22 districts and aims to reach 29 lakhs (1 lakh = 100 000) of the poorest of rural poor. Velugu enhances the poor's capacities to manage their resources and helps access public services. SERP's uniqueness is in the blend of professionals and trained activists working at the grassroots. SERP has committed professionals, Community Coordinators who are working with the poor communities. It also creates the necessary critical mass by building the social capital through facilitating the identification of community activists and trains them as barefoot professionals, as paravets, botanists, social activists etc. This cadre of rural development professionals are managed by the mandal federations.

Creative Visions - The Creative Visions Foundation was inspired by the life of Dan Eldon -- artist, adventurer and activist - who was killed in 1993 while covering the conflict in Somalia as a photojournalist for Reuters News Agency. He was 22. Founded by his family and friends, CVF is a publicly supported 501 (c) (3) organization that supports "creative activists" like Dan -- social entrepreneurs who use media, technology and the arts to create awareness of environmental, social or humanitarian issues -- and inspire positive change.

do u know if there's a NZ postcode, gps co-ord list available? drupal does some nice location things with gps co-ords and it might be possible to add the google maps to the venue/artists locations if u're wanting something like that?

the location module does it now for US postcodes, but I haven't seen a similar NZ based list. it'd be easy enough to create the data in correct format if such information exists and is freely available.

I think the post codes in NZ would have to pick a general co-ord as of course they cover a wide area.. eg pick a centre point or edge point. I saw the NZ posts maps of post codes, I guess we could always overlay them over a map with co-ords and make a rough list if need be. perhaps start with a couple of the larger cities if that's where most people are centralised?

similarly I'm looking for an Australian list also. I can get the postcodes, but don't have the gps co-ords

update: UK, Australia & NZ seems to be unsupported in google maps and yahoo maps so this probably won't work...

FreeLinking is a module that might work for Stephen's point (in feb minutes):

o Nice to have: create direct links to DB entry points in content
o [[artist/Birchville+Cat+Motel]]
[ [ artist/Birchville+Cat+Motel ] ]

http://drupal.org/project/freelinking

"The freelinking.module for Drupal implements a filter for input formats, creating links to existing content or links to new content creation via automatic linking of CamelCase words or words with double-square-bracket delimiters. It can be used 'wiki style' to provide links between content or easy creation of new linked content. It does not implement a 'wiki' type of content; this can be done with the flexinode module or using another core content type like blog or story."

there's drupal 4.7 & 5 versions.

here's an example of drupal 4.7 on my main site.

http://www.aliak.com/freelinking

I'm using it's default settings at the moment.

- it added a menu (which you could remove/change if u prefer)
- it's gone away and found some CamelCase words that are in the content on my site (I'm assuming after a cron run on the site)
- some terms list 'create this content' - if u click this it will create a blog entry for the term. though it didn't seem to go an add all the existing articles that use the term into the content. (it's probably better for new content so would be better suited to AF site)

- the PixelPress term says 'view this content' - this one does take you to the existing article. this article has been modified and includes the filter. PixelPress is written multiple times in the article and each one links back to the freelinking list of terms.

- so you could probably modify the section it's linking to to goto artists/TermName rather than freelinkingTermName. (or wherever u wanted it to goto).

I'll try this out and see how the module works & test on drupal 5 also (it's a new site - http://www.aliakprojects.com - I've only been trying views and cck there so far) http://www.aliakprojects.com/artists/list is a basic example

some links for drupal features and module development.

CVS
http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/ has an example/browsable view of the drupal code & contributor code CVS system.

themes

http://themegarden.org/drupal50/ has some drupal 5 themes, though it seems the themegarden has recently been closed.

http://drupal.org/project/Themes has some screen shots of themes.

artists sites & groups

http://groups.drupal.org/art-music - this replaces the http://www.drupalart.org/ site.

CCK - Content Construction Kit

http://groups.drupal.org/content-construction-kit-cck - group for Content Construction Kit (CCK). this is the new system to replace flexinodes and allows you to create different fields.

http://drupal.org/node/101723 = Content Construction Kit handbook

http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/88 - lists the different field types for CCK

Views

http://drupal.org/project/views - there's also a system called Views which are like database user views and allow different collections of information to be collected and then displayed once integrated into the theme. from this page:
"This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It has four modes, plus a special mode, and provides an impressive amount of functionality from these modes."

http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/views

theming CCK fields

theming individual CCK fields - http://drupal.org/node/62466

theming CCK & views to create a scheduling grid (good examples of how to customise which could be applied to other CCK node types) : http://groups.drupal.org/node/2647

http://oif.eafarris.com/cck_theming_in_drupal_4_7 - this is the site of the creator of freelinks module. he's using CCK on his site and shows an example of how he made and themed a custom version of weblinks module in CCK

tutorials & documentation

http://groups.drupal.org - for general info on different sections of drupal project

drupal video tutorials and screencasts -
http://drupal.org/node/124318

support @ bryght.com - http://support.bryght.com/

http://drupal.org/handbooks

writing your own drupal modules

http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo = a group for writing your own drupal modules with some lessons/tutorials

http://drupal.org/contribute/development has some ways people can help with drupal development

http://docs.drupaldojo.org/getting-started-with-drupal-development - there's a coding lesson coming up on 11th march. & they're working on a "Getting Started with Drupal Development" handbook

http://drupaldojo.com/lessons/ - has some of the lessons

http://drupal.org/node/508 - module developers guide

http://drupal.org/node/17914 - how to build drupal 4.7 modules

http://drupal.org/node/82920 - building drupal 5 modules

http://drupal.org/node/318 - drupal coding standards

http://api.drupal.org/ - drupal api's

http://drupal.org/node/49768 - drupal object reference

http://api.drupal.org/api/HEAD - examples from drupal head

knitting patterns have a certain mathematical quality to them. knitting is basically a binary system - knit & purl stitches. so it's possible to knit binary sequences, letters eg convert the letters to ascii hex, then binary - some people knit their names as signatures in their work.

people knit in fibonacci sequences and end up with patterns and colours / stripes that somehow seem natural, just as the fibonacci sequences showing up so much in nature.

so I'm keeping a list of some patterns and urls for sites on logical / mathematical knitting.

:::

there's also the crocheting - such as the hyperbolic plane crocheted recently by Daina Taimina as a way to describe it physically. I need to practice crocheting though, so will stick to knitting for a while