A Grooveshark list of my favourite Halifamous music. I’ve highlighted most of these in previous posts, but I wanted to put them all together for an expat friend.

A few days ago, I bumped into a very interesting, well written piece on the Tinkerer’s Sunset. The focus of the article is about how locked down Apple products have become and how that stifles those who would tinker with this technology and help to create some of the cool things that arise when people are free to tinker.

I certainly agree that most major companies have taken a lock-down approach to pretty much everything and tinkering in the area of computing has changed. What I don’t agree with is that this represents a tinkerer’s sunset.

The emergence of websites like Make, Instructables and Hack A Day show that the tinkering spirit is alive and well, it’s simply shifting gears.

The Arduino has emerged as a successor to the Altair 8800. For old-school people who hacked with the Altair and its immediate successors, their form of tinkering is dying off. The reason though is that people generally accept that computers now do the things that we want them to do. That’s no true of everyone by any stretch, but many of us are satisfied with computers as a tool we use to accomplish our work. The Arduino has opened the world of physical computing the way the Altair opened up the world of traditional computing. Physical computing is where a lot of us are tinkering.

For those hardcore computing people, there are still many outlets, mostly in the world of Linux. It’s all open so you can tinker to your heart’s content. The fact that Apple and a few other companies are closing their curtains and hiding everything from the public should come as no surprise. They’ve all been building towards this for a long time. The key for the old-school tinkerers who have lost their favourite platform is to do what tinkerers do best. Adapt.

I, like many in “the rest of the world” really hoped that the election of Barak Obama could salvage a country in shambles. But here’s the problem. Politicians are politicians.

In last night’s state of the Union Obama said:

That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why – for the first time in history – my Administration posts our White House visitors online. And that’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.

Just one problem. He has roughly twelve such individuals in policy making positions. Here’s some more details on it from Polifact, a pretty neutral source.

Breaking a campaign trail promise isn’t that big a deal. It’s unfortunately an understanding between voters and politicians that they can really only be held to about 50% of what they say while they’re campaigning. But to stand there during the state of the union and lie to everyone in the US and the rest of the world is a whole other thing. I mean especially where anyone with an internet connection and half a brain can go find out that you’re lying through you’re teeth…

The world had hoped for better for the US, but it looks like they have exactly what they used to have. Politicians that are bought and paid for by the companies that run the country. From the bottom all the way to the very top.

By the American Museum of Natural History.

That is all.

Harper’s Magazine has laid what should be a massive bomb to all who read. Turns out that the US has tortured detainees to death.

This story should be huge news. It should be plastered across every US newspaper and every news channel, but it’s not.

Why?

They don’t care.

It’s just that simple. The US government has convinced its people over the past many years that it’s ok to torture people if they’re terrorists. Then it’s just a hop skip and a jump to convince them that all the people you’ve captured are terrorists and you can not just get away with murder, you can torture those poor souls all the way to the end. With greater than 50% of US citizens being ok with torture and over 50% of US citizens being ok with giving up civil liberties to “make them safer”, this story will never make it past the increasingly small group of Americans who actually know how to read. This story won’t be on VH1, won’t be on Oprah and won’t get a mention at the Superbowl. Even if it would, they would simply change the channel because they’re just not interested.

The United States has become a more frightening place to me than North Korea and Iran combined. All due to apathy. The people who live in America haven’t asked their leaders to go and torture people to death, but by not even raising an eyebrow when they find out that it’s happened, they may as well have asked in writing with their signature at the bottom.

So in the “parts for your robot” game, there are a handful of names that you’ll come across. After another company suffered a meltdown, I went looking for other places where I might find some of the stuff I need. Solarbotics is most famous for their small low voltage gear motors that you’ll find for sale all over the place. I popped by their site to see what else they might have and that’s when I found out that they’re Canadian! That means no border crossing for my orders. Crossing the US border isn’t that bad when going through USPS, but it always takes extra long for whatever reason. By ordering from a Calgary company I can have things arrive by Canada Post with no particular obstacles. That’s pretty sweet. I’m building an order right now.

One of their more unique products is the Adrweeny which is really cool if you’re looking to build something small and space is at a premium.

I usually like to support local business, but it’s pretty difficult to buy parts locally here in Halifax so I’m always ordering stuff in. It’s great to see that I can at least order from a Canadian store.