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blog entry

today's drive from Auckland to Bethell's Beach

today's drive from Auckland to Shelley Beach, South Head, and my favourite, Bethells Beach, then back through the Waitakere ranges. 13/05/2007, Auckland, New Zealand

gps / kmz tracks from google earth attached

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call centres, video magazines & more from India

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.

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mathematical knitting

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.

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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

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Drupal needs your help!

The popular CMS Drupal is revamping their module management system for the next version. Future features include upgrade notifications for modules and better issue tracking through a versioning system. They need 3500$ to support developers involved in the process and they're asking for donations. Support Open Source today!read more | digg story

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testing google maps - gps track posting

testing google maps map posting


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1000 lights of Dignity - protest to support the dalits

There's so many crazy things in the papers here in Delhi, and then there's so many that don't make the papers or are buried so deeply that people probably don't find them. Luckily I came across the independent paper Tehelka whilst staying in the other hotel on my last trip. The articles in this paper were heart wrenching. Most of the time I kept thinking, what year is this? how can these things be happening in this day and age. Here's an example - this notice arrived via the sarai reader list (www.sarai.net)

[quote]
National Association For Social Action (NASAindia) in collaboration with National Conference of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR) is organising a protest programme and will pay tribute by lighiting 1000 lights of Dignity to demand justice for the Bhotmange Family and for entire dalit community. i am inviting you in the said programme. please be there to raise the voice of justice and light a candle in favor of justice. there will be more than 5000 activists from all over india will be there.

10th Nov 2006 at 7:00 pm in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi.
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For more details on Khairlanji issue please go through following web site.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main22.asp?filename=Ne111106Dalits_like.asp

google bombing - playing the search engine game

today it's time for the Americans to vote, and I hope they turn out to the polls in droves, if not for themselves but for the other countries who are affected by decisions made in US politics.

as it's that time of year, there's been a few articles floating round the maillists. one which caught my eye was on google bombing, or link bombing as it's also known. the article in the New York Times called Gaming the Search Engine, in a Political Season describes google bombing as :

[quote]
"A GOOGLE bomb — which some Web gurus have suggested is perhaps better called a link bomb, in that it affects most search engines — has typically been thought of as something between a prank and a form of protest. The idea is to select a certain search term or phrase ("borrowed time," for example), and then try to force a certain Web site (say, the Pentagon's official Donald H. Rumsfeld profile) to appear at or near the top of a search engine's results whenever that term is queried."
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The article goes on to mention that google bombs have been compared to Greenpeace's founder Bob Hunter's "media mindbombs" by Clifford Tatum, in a paper published in the online journal First Monday (www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_10/).

I guess time will tell if these techniques are effective - from what the article says they're definitely changing the search engine results. But I suspect the key to the campaign is finding the best search phrase to use. Personally I don't think I'd search google for "borrowed time" - I can imagine this being used in a viral email though like the ones in the past where people say type this phrase and hit I feel lucky into google. Perhaps this is a case of preaching to the converted though which is often the problem with activist and social protest issues.

Let's just hope the spammers don't get onto it as well. Hopefully there are algorithms to prevent this in the search engines, though I wouldn't be surprised if this were one of the SEO tools for spam sites!

crowdfunding

sull posted on the videoblogging maillist about crowdfunding, which is a concept becoming more popular with the rise of social sites etc on the interweb. it's an interesting concept and I'd like to try it with some Australian arts/music projects to try raise money for them to complete their projects. the havemoneywillvlog project has been successful in raising money for people to work on various videoblogging projects ranging from a documentary / series, an artistic experiment with travel organised by the contributors, a research project on sustainability, a documentation of issues on immigration and it's social impacts from a selection of people's pov, and most recently raising funds to help convert 8mm films to video to give them a new lease of life.

since upgrading to drupal 4.7, I'll be testing the chipin and ecommerce modules to see if they are of use.

it would be great to be able to help people realise their projects. I think it could also help them to practice making grant funding applications to larger organisations and government bodies. anyway, it couldn't hurt to try. if the people make pledges to support the project, then only pay for them once the full amount of money is raised then it's less risk for them. I've pledged and donated money in this way. $10 a month (or less if I decide to skip a project) is not much for me to pay - it's less than the cost of a cd and is another way to help support a project when you can't attend in person. I figure I've spent more than that on less important things, so it's one way to help give back to the community! also, as these days I don't make it to events I'd like to in person, this could be another way of supporting them without being there.

I wonder if others think this way also. it's hard to convince people to spend their hard earned cash. just as it's hard to get people to come along to gigs. an interesting experiment nonetheless. hopefully some of the projects would be able to offer something extra, an incentive if you will, to the financial contributors. drupal groups modules might be useful for this..

I was thinking of using these systems to help raise money for people to work on projects - small budget amounts. maybe to do a promo cd or put on a gig or get a small book published or attend a conference & report on it etc. the donators would be given credit in the project and maybe get special previews on how the project is going. I could put the documentation on my site.

the project would get to practice applying for grants, so would need to be professional about it, have a definite timeline to work towards, and there would have to be a final outcome they could report on and document so people who donated knew their money went towards something real and was not just lost.

the system could also be used to raise money for charities, or if you can't decide on a charity, then think of the artist as your target for giving.

anyway, here's some sites useful for research about this or showing examples of currently working systems :

http://havemoneywillvlog.com/ = funding site for videoblog projects

http://crowdfunding.com/ = research blog on crowdfunding

http://www.sellaband.com/ = raise $50000 towards funding your band / your fav band's promo/album costs

http://fundavlog.com/ = pay per view / raise money for vlogs

http://fundable.org/ = raise money for any projects, payment site

http://chipin.com/ = raise money for any projects, payment site

http://www.netribution.co.uk/2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id... = article on crowdfunding for independent films

http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2006/09/19/a_swarm_of_ange.html = a UK film being made via donations

nomadology

I've been reading the Nomadology book and blog posts lately. it's an interesting concept. I've found myself travelling more in the last few years but I'm not sure that my mode of travel could be classed as nomadic.

eg from Encyclopedia Britannica - searching on nomad / nomadism
http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9373574

[quote]
"Way of life of peoples who do not live continually in the same place but move cyclically or periodically."

"It is based on temporary centres whose stability depends on the available food supply and the technology for exploiting it. A hunting and gathering society is a type of nomadic group. Pastoral nomads, who depend on domestic livestock, migrate in an established territory to find pasture for their animals. Tinker or trader nomads, such as the Roma (Gypsies; see Rom) and the Irish and Scottish Travellers, are associated with a larger society but maintain their mobile way of life. Nomadism declined in the 20th century as urban centres expanded and governments sought to regulate or eliminate it."
[/quote]

or nomadism on wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomadism

[quote]
"Communities of nomadic people move from place to place, rather than settling down in one location. Many cultures have been traditionally nomadic, but nomadic behaviour is increasingly rare in industrialised countries. There are three kinds of nomads, hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads, and peripatetic nomads. Nomadic hunter-gatherers have by far the longest-lived subsistence method in human history, following seasonally available wild plants and game. Pastoralists raise herds and move with them so as not to deplete pasture beyond recovery in any one area. Peripatetic nomads are more common in industrialised nations travelling from place to place offering a trade wherever they go."
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currently I'm a cross between Perpetual Traveller, expat or perhaps even a touch technomad. for the moment I have given up the sedentary lifestyle. living in different place whilst on work projects gives you a great opportunity to see how other people live and to realise how little you actually need to be happy and to live a good life yourself. it definitely makes you appreciate the life we lead in Australia.

there's a whole other world out there and some people are taking advantage of it. in doing a couple of quick html hops whilst googling nomadism, I came across microship.com the website of Steven Roberts who left suburbia behind to travel in teched up vehicles such as Winnebiko and BEHEMOTH. Now he's decking out a catamaran to do some more leisurely and comfortable sailing. but wow! what an adventure. his site mentions he's had help from numerous people on places to stay and go. there'd be a few books worth of stories to tell!

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