Hoy por primera vez, y gracias a @Mejias3D (Jorge Mejías), he podido probar una impresora 3D. Jorge me ha dado un tour muy detallado de cómo funciona el software y cada componente del hardware. He aprendido y disftutado mucho de ver cómo él ha ido resolviendo todas las dificultades que se le presentaban, y cómo ha ido mejorando la calidad de las piezas fabricadas. Todo un reto que requiere de paciencia y de mucho ingenio.

Es curioso (y probablemente difícil de imaginar) que varias piezas de la impresora fueron impresas por si misma, por ejemplo el sistema de ventilación, que el propio Jorge ha diseñado en su computadora.

3D Trinity (así ha sido bautizada) está en constante evolución y puede seguirse en @3DTrinity. Si estás en Mallorca y necesitas que alguien desarrolle piezas de plástico resistente a medida (por ejemplo piezas de repuesto, prototipos o pequeñas esculturas) ya sabes a quién llamar! :)

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Most people would never sign a contract without reading it first. At least that's what they think. But they do not realize this happens millions of times every day.

I think we got used to it when installing computer programs. We just clicked next, next, next, whatever. But now, with online services, things are different. We still click next without reading, but we are now signing contracts that affect the future of our creations and our lives. Our blog posts, our private e-mails, our family photos, drawings, songs, etc.

The following text comes from a comment at HN: "The terms of the license you grant Instagram is about as broad as it gets, and reaches substantially further than just about any reputable photo sharing service out there. For example, Flickr and 500px's TOS gives them license only as long as you hold the account and the image hasn't been deleted. Deleting your account or the photos themselves is revocation of their usage rights. Instagram is bound by no such rules.". Which seems to imply that if you delete your Instagram photos or your account, the company still has permission to use your photos. Did you know that? And this is with the old TOS, not with the new one that generated so many protests. How does this fit Europan laws, I wonder, where we have the right to ask companies to delete our data.

The TOS (Terms of Service) we sign are often hard to understand. But we can easily use a search engine and find what other people are saying about that contract before signing it. For example, you can search for "TOS Facebook" and find people who study carefully each sentence and how they affect you. 

I think we really should start paying more attention to this. We should stop and consider carefully if we really want to blindly follow others and create an account with that shiny new app.

tos-dr.info is a promising project that analyzes the terms of service in different sites. It will probably help you decide which companies do you trust in the online world.

(original CC photo by Jana Mills, edited with Gimp)

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2012 is almost over and I find myself again in Berlin, the streets covered with dirty melting snow and abandoned TVs. It's been already two weeks since I spoke at Online Educa about the experience of creating Fun Programming. Yesterday I received my 4th donation and it made me very happy :)

After two years of pause, I recently started again contributing to eMOCHA, the open source mHealth app which we demoed in Uganda during summer 2009.  And eMOCHA is the reason I visited Baltimore in October: I presented the latest version of the program that will be used in a research about pregnant women suffering domestic violence.

It looks like trips make certain things happen: my visit to Kampala three years ago made me start this blog. A trip to Barcelona in 2001 made me buy my first digital camera. After two years without a camera, I just got a new one right before my visit to the States. Interesting.

During the time I was out of the project my colleagues kept working on it, and it's now used in different projects in several countries across Asia, Africa and America.

What else is new? These are some of the news that called my attention during the last weeks:

Freedom, privacy and Internet:

• The government is profiling you: a guy who worked for the government developed systems to spy on people and now talks about it. He is asked "Where do you see this going in 5 or 10 years? I see it becoming a totalitarian state. An imperial president (a dictator). Unless we do something." and "It doesn't matter if you say 'bomb' or not. Everything is stored now". Interview.
• Texan schoolgirl expelled for refusing to wear RFID tag (H). RFID is a chip that can be read from a certain distance. Students in that school were told to wear those chips, so they can be tracked by school staff.
• Syrian Internet Is Off The Air (H).
• Tor exit node operator raided in Austria (H). Tor is a program used to browse the net anonymously. It's used to avoid censorship and avoid getting in trouble in totalitarian countries. Some people volunteer their computers to make the Tor system work. Sometimes those volunteers are arrested because someone else used Tor for something illegal.
• You’re not anonymous. I know your name, email, and company (H). It's now possible for a company to know private data of the person who visited their website, even the person did not register. Just by looking.
• In India, senior police officers must review offences before arresting people because of what they have said online (H).
• B&N: purchased Ebooks only yours until your credit card expires (H).
• In UK, Twitter, Facebook rants land some in jail (H).
• Google Apps Disabled My Domain (H). The danger of storing your data online.
• EU Resists ‘extreme’ US lobbying as data privacy war brews.

Software

• OpenPhoto: free open source project that aims to free your photos from closed online platforms.
• The meteoric ascent of the patent troll and the devastating consequences for innovation. Patent trolls are companies that buy patents to sue others to make money, without actually using those patents to make anything.

Energy

• GravityLight: lighting for developing countries.
• ELF: efficient personal electric vehicle powered by you and the sun.

Life

• Why time is not running out (H).

Interesting

• The word "hacker".
• Bitcoin-Central.net is now licensed to operate as a bank in Europe (H). Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Digital money, not controlled by governments or banks. Now there is a company in Europe that will make it easy to do wire transfers and use credit cards with Bitcoins.
• Why white tigers should go extinct. Apparently white tigers would not survive in nature. They have defects. Zoos make them reproduce because they attract customers.
• The travel guide. Post by John McAfee, who has been hiding from police while sharing online James Bond-like stories.

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A frequent and beautiful lack of human made sounds.

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This is the first time I share news on this format on my blog. Almost every day I read something I find interesting, but I rarely let others know about it. I'm going to try writing a post like this once a week for those who just read popular newspapers. Links behind the headline point to a discussion about the article.

Freedom, privacy and Internet:

• Google's campaign for a free and open internet (HN).
• The "Kill the Gays" bill is back in Uganda. Act now.
• Saudi Arabia implements electronic tracking system for women (HN).
• Police Raid 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl, Confiscate Winnie The Pooh Laptop (HN).
• Man Arrested At Airport for Unusual Watch (HN).
• Man suspected of wearing 'bomb' watch at Oakland airport released, no charges filed (HN).
• Senate bill rewrite lets feds read your e-mail without warrants (HN).
• Hacker Faces Jail for Accessing Public URLs That Revealed AT&T iPad User Emails, With Possible Chilling Effects for Online Freedom (HN).
• Internet censorship in Russia: Lurk no more (HN).
• 21-year-old girl held for Facebook post questioning Mumbai's 'Bal Thackeray shutdown'.

Programming:

• What Programmers Want Is Less Stupid And More Programming (HN).

Art:

• Silk — Interactive generative art (HN). online drawing program
• TimeScapes time lapse movie. video

Interesting:

• Ten Finger Touch Screen Keyboard (HN). app
• The Future of Energy & Transport (86 minute presentation by Elon Musk). video

Learn:

• Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People (HN). pdf useful

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I sit on a bus. Sunset in Baltimore. I hear an older man with white hair talk to a younger girl reading on a Kindle. I tune my ear. It's hard to hear, but I think he's mentioning he wants to own his books, and does not want anyone to be able to delete them remotely. Funny, because this morning I read an article about this woman in Norway. Amazon closed her account and she lost all her books. I want to tell the man about this article. He looks a bit like a crazy scientist. His back is curved. He gets out right before I do, and he walks fast. So fast I have trouble walking to his side. When I'm next to him, he starts talking about a guy that was running without a t-shirt. I mention the Kindle. And we talk. One kilometer of words about government, corporations and 1984 exchanged with a stranger. I must now cross the street. He continues walking and talking without saying goodbye, lost in his thoughts. Who was he?

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I ask myself why isn't it closer to the scientific method? The debate could include experiments and analysis. Imagine running a simulation where one can adjust the number of provinces and visualize the alternative futures to choose the best one. Instead of that we get a couple of politicians on TV talking loud to each other and saying how terrible the opponent's idea is. It doesn't sound like 2012 at all.

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Shot from a boat somewhere between Vietnam and Cambodia.

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On a beautiful place, special by what it contains and what it lacks.

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Pero no solo eso: si usas la aplicación de F en tu móvil parece que el programa cambia las direcciones de contacto de todas las personas que usan F. Así que otra vez sin avisar, de pronto se cambian todos tus contactos en tu teléfono y en los teléfonos de los que te conocen, y ahora todos apuntan a F. Un robo de información a gran escala. Si no te fijas, cuando intentas enviar un correo a alguien ya no llega al destinatario sino a F. Igual envías información personal o confidencial sobre tu empresa, sobre salud, contraseñas, etc. y sin darte cuenta tú o tus conocidos la están enviando a una dirección que no era la que esperaban, y que igual no llega al destinatario.

Algunos se darán cuenta, pero millones de usuarios no lo harán. Cambiar libretas de direcciones sin avisar se parece más al comportamiento de un virus informático que al de una empresa. Una jugada muy sucia. Como F no puede ver lo que se envía la gente por correo, se apropia de todos los correos y arreglado.

¿Qué puedes hacer?

Lo primero es deshacer el cambio de F y cambiar tu correo predeterminado: clic en tu nombre, acerca de, editar información de contacto, elige mostrar en la linea de tiempo tu verdadero correo, y oculta el de facebook.com.

Sobre la aplicación para móviles? No lo se aún. En mi Android la tengo desactivada desde hace medio año. No se puede desinstalar a no ser que instales una versión especial de Android (Cyanogen Mod, por ejemplo). Pero sí puedes quitar la cuenta de F de Accounts & sync settings, que es lo que hice yo. Eso implica que para poder acceder a F en el móvil hay que usar el navegador, y la web se ve horrible.

Si vas a usarlo a pesar de todo, sugiero simplemente usarlo menos. Diversificar. Llama, usa whatsapp, diaspora, viber, e-mails, skype, sms, tu blog, twitter, un Posterous privado, google+, etc. En tu navegador puedes usar un plugin para que fb no observe todo lo que haces en la web.

Más info en Cnet y Hacker News.

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See the full gallery on Posterous

The images represent three one-minute segments of this trip, recorded with a video camera from one of the front seats. The video was split into frames using avconv and then merged using Processing with a program I just wrote. The sound is based on an idea I had last night and it's generated by a 50 line SuperCollider program. Uploading from moving vehicle was part of the challenge :)

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Sixteen kilometers away from this tree there is a shop. The closest shop. That's were I went to get some water. There is a hose outside the shop. I used it to fill my 5 liter bottle.

Half of the ride was on dirt road, the other half is asphalt. There were a few steep hills I couldn't ride up. Even pushing the bike up was hard, because the little stones made my shoes skid. When I walked up those hills I wore a rain coat with a hood. Not because of the rain, but to keep mosquitoes away from my skin. After climbing those hills came big descents. I recorded some on video.

Part of the ride was sunny, and part had light rain. Most of it is surrounded by trees and lakes.

I saw few cars and one woman pushing a trolley on the road. I saw a boot, a cigarette box, a white cup and a dead yellow bird.  I saw two trucks carrying trees. I often see piles of horizontal trees. It annoys me.

I had dinner and a sauna. Now it's time to listen to the sound of the rain from my bed. A bed in a little house in the forest, far away from you.

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One day before my flight to London I got a bit worried: the guy who was supposed to be my first host was not answering my messages. So I had to post a last minute request and ask many people on CouchSurfing. I got lucky and an nice young guy from Lithuania offered me his place near Crystal Palace.

This was the first time I did only couch surfing. No hotels. And it's my favorite trip so far. I really enjoyed it. I stayed in four different neighborhoods. My second host, a good friend from Berlin, lives in Hackney. Then a software developer living in Shacklewell with an Italian sound engineer and a Japanese couch surfer, and finally another Londoner from Brixton who has had a local radio program for a long time. I'm very thankful to them because they are part of what made this a great trip.

Not only did I do couch surfing, but I also flew for the first time with that cheap company that people use just because it's cheap. They don't fly from Helsinki, so I took a bus, then a train and another bus to get to Turku. I think that must be one of the smallest airports I've seen. The terminal was just awesome. It looked like an abandoned building with a layer of paint :) I wonder what people arriving from London, a city with 14 million people, think about this terminal :)

I don't know how it would be like to live in London. Being there for an interesting event while couch surfing is a different experience from waking up every morning in this large city and going to work. It's a very busy place. I took trains, tubes (metros) and buses every day. At busy times the bus would skip my stop, and the tube would be so full that I had to wait for the next one, which arrived a few seconds later. At times I had to cue to get out of the station, which I don't enjoy. It was a continuous stream of people walking in underground corridors. It's an expensive place too. But my first impression there was great. Coming from a frozen Finland, it was all so green and full of blossoming trees! The sky was blue during the first week. It almost felt like summer. I found people quite open and friendly. Easy talking to strangers. There are many beautiful green parks, and houses with small design gardens displaying flowers and stone patterns. The center of the city is too full of people and tourists, but the areas where I stayed were very peaceful and with hardly any traffic.

The main excuse for visiting London was the SuperCollider Symposium, a week full of workshops, conferences and performances. I was one of the few lucky persons who received a free ticket to this event full of artists and sound researchers. I learned much, had fun and talked to dozens of like-minded people. You can see here some photos from the event. 

I've been trying to remember how I got into SuperCollider and I think it was probably Fredrik who mentioned it after one of his performances. I'm still learning and I decided that starting next Monday I will be uploading a new piece of work using SuperCollider every day for 30 days. Yo from Paris, who I met during the symposium, will also take part on this "one month challenge". I wonder about what kind of sounds will we produce during this time.

Now, if you got a minute to spare, it's a good time to sign here to protect our privacy. It's crazy how often they are trying to pass these silly laws. I lost the count already.

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