MOVED!

Athough it's still extremely rough and incomplete on several pages, let me say that I'm proud to announce my new blog over at: http://www.lastguyonearth.lostsignalweb.com/

Thanks to Sean Brackeen for helping me out!

Soon Enough: Moving to a New Blog Host!

To make good on my promise, I intend to move to hosting my own blog, with my own domain name relatively soon. I'm going with a Wordpress blog, but hosted by myself. It is Free Software, and has vastly superior capabilities to editors such as Blogger.

I will also find a way to organize all my OGG videos and have them on a specialized page on it soon enough, too.

Now...coming up with money for a decent host and a good domain name...hmmm.

Sean Rants: The Importance of GNU/HURD (New Version)

Been using TheoraSea and Blip.tv. Nice stuff.

A New Refactoring for Me.

Last summer, many people who read my blog noticed that I went on a 30-day challenge to live in a command-line-only environment for 30 days straight.

It's weird to see roughly a year go by. I've learned so much about how computers work, from the inside of a kernel to the lowest levels of a system's firmware. I've been all over operating system land, and I'm finally settling down for ONE system.

GNU, with a Linux kernel.

Specifically, I'm working on making my laptop and desktop to be fully compatible with gNewSense. Currently I have Ubuntu Jaunty on this for compatibility's sake. I have been doing extensive work on prepping for all Free-Software/Free-Software-compatable apps and web services.

Basically, what I've done/am doing in a nutshell.

1.) Got rid of Twitter.
No more twittering. Instead, it's identi.ca, a Free Software microblogging service.

2.) Getting rid of YouTube.
I've moved all my videos over to Blip.tv here and here. I am also working on submiting them to TheoraSea. The logic is that these videos are in the OGG Theora format, which is Free Software. OGG is compatible with many platforms, and is quite powerful nowadays. No flash is required, although it can play in flash if you go directly to Blip.tv

I plan on cancelling my YouTube in a couple days.

3.) Getting rid of AIM/MSN/Yahoo
I've switched to the Free Software/Open Standard protocol known as XMPP (also referred to informally as Jabber). The "Big Three" of Instant Messengers are constantly buggy across messenging clients, and I have numerous amounts of friends that I'll never talk to again anyways. So, might as well just move onto Jabber and have some techie friends on that! (lastguyonearth@jabber.org, if you're up for chattering)

4.) Bye Myspace, Facebook
This will be the most difficult step, as I actually talk to people I care about on here. However, I figure if I help them make Jabber accounts and give them addresses to one another, we can talk just like we have on AIM. That would at least get rid of problems.

5.) Switch to gNewSense
Although I currently have only about 5 proprietary packages remaining on my Ubuntu install, and have the Linux-libre kernel that I can switch to at any time, my wireless card is incompatible. So, I'll be shopping around for an Atheros card with a Free driver/firmware. For what it's worth, the Free Nvidia driver (nouveau) isn't half bad. As driver development progresses, my laptop will be capable of running with 3D graphics acceleration again. It will be a nice day.

6.) Get coreboot.
This is an extra step. It may be a long, long time before I even get it. Coreboot is a Free Software replacement for BIOS. It's simple, beautiful, and Free. If it could get ported to whatever motherboard this laptop uses, I can flash the firmware and get everything working properly!

7.) Plymouth
Eventually, I want to re-master gNewSense with several technologies that I consider to be superior. Plymouth has a lovely graphical bootloader for a system, and gNewSense could definitely use a visual update all around. I will be dedicating myself to creating a beautiful re-spin of gNewSense for myself and friends. I'll even contribute back whatever changes I made to the gNewSense progress to help out.

It Has to Happen.

You can get me on Miro and Blip.tv, now. All the new videos on my new channel will be in the OGG Theora video codec, a royalty-free video codec that can be implemented on any operating system, and most mobile devices if you know how.

I'm doing this for a lot of reasons, those reasons being:

1) YouTube does not offer an independant film person full control of their own videos.
2) YouTube does not allow anyone to legally download videos, even if those videos are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
3) YouTube only offers everything with a proprietary Flash Player.
4) OGG videos are much higher quality than Flash Video. (Not to mention, better internet streaming)
5)I'm working on removing my dependency on Proprietary Social Networks and web services. Not proprietary in the sense that a site does not provide full source code, but proprietary in the sense that something repeatedly violates user rights and treats everyone like a criminal.

So, without further adue, I've been already working on my plans.

Today, I got rid of my Twitter account. Instead, I am now on Identi.ca

By the end of this week, I plan on removing my YouTube account.

In two weeks, I hope to get rid of AIM, MSN, and Yahoo. My current Jabber/XMPP account is: lastguyonearth@jabber.org. You'll need a Jabber-compatible client such as Pidgin.

Within a few months, I'll hopefully have enough money to swap out my computer hardware for completely Free Software parts, and gNewSense will be going on this machine.

LOL!

So I was bored today, and decided to spam a Mike Huckabee testimonial on Facebook. I started voicing my own opinions on the matter, and now everyone is talking about it in this little line of meaningless comments.

People:


-I am NOT a theist. Don't bother trying to convert me.

-Someone linked you to this blog. Obviously their "Good Christian Morals" told them to do this, but spamming/flaming me over my own personal beliefs actually goes against Christ's own teachings of, oh, I dunno, "Turning the other cheek."

-I am some variation of Bisexual. I say this because I like dating people who are either female or transgendered. Get over it. I am neither technically straight or gay in my own eyes. Big deal.

-It's NONE of your business how I live my life or what I believe in. That's your own decision. Stop worrying about me, stop praying for me. Worry for and pray about the REAL problems of the world, such as the fact that there's STILL a massive starvation problem in the Eastern hemisphere.

Now, onto important news:


-My best friend Zach moved into my house recently. He was kicked out of his abusive parents' home, and I took him in. He's currently recovering from various emotional stress problems, but we're gonna be okay!

-I got my laptop! It's not really all that fast or super-powerful, but it FLIES with Linux on it.

-I have a cat now! I named it Chthulu, but mom doesn't entirely approve of the name.

-I'm designing a music player for Google Android. I'll put up some mockups when I'm done.

-I might be dating a new chick soon. No idea who, no idea entirely what side of the gender fence she's sitting on. I don't care. I love Love.

-I tried to write some poetry recently. Darker stuff than my last CC Poetry Book, Under an Iron Tree.

Help Me Win a Video Contest!

This is my video entry for a contest by the Sanyo Camera corporation. The contest stipulates the following rules:

-Explain why you should be given the prize.
-Do it in fifteen seconds or less.



The prize: $10,000 and a Sanyo Xacti HD Camcorder.


I used Kubuntu Linux and the KDEnlive video editor to create the entire short clip. In my opinion, it looks great.

Part of the idea behind the presentation of this video was to overlay the things that truly interest me over the mundane, everyday things we do. After all, creativity resides everywhere, in everything. There is often so much potential in a human being, but many times that person lacks the resources to build upon all of their ideas, hopes and dreams. With a bit of a cash prize and a better camera, I could really begin to lay out the things that truly interest me much better than I am now.

In order to vote for my entry, go to the following link here.

That first video that plays ought to be awfully familiar, now isn't it?

You DO have to register to vote on the site. It's free, so it should be easy enough.

To vote, just click on the green button of the playing video, which is mine. Be quick about it, as it's only 15 seconds long after all!

Please vote me up on my video once every day. Tell your friends, get your co-workers involved. Tell your grandma. I think winning this would open up a whole world of good things.