Smári McCarthy`s blagoblag on Yaxic.org

I’ve not been blagging a whole lot for the last couple of weeks. Sorry. Everything has been rather hectic. I’ve got plenty to rant about though, perhaps I’ll start catching up during this week.

I just got back to Reykjavík from a road trip around Iceland, wherein I visited my friend Alli for his 40th birthday in Egilsstaðir and dropped by Akureyri and visited my sister there briefly. It was fun to finally see the east coast of Iceland - it had long been a bit of a weak point in my otherwise glorious travels.

But okay. Later on today I’m going to Vestmannaeyjar, and it looks like I’ll be back in Reykjavík for the weekend. The following two or three weeks I’m probably going to be tossed about a bit, organizing the Fab Lab in Vestmannaeyjar, doing some job training somewhere, and trying to mix in as much madness as I can, generally.

There is some pressure on me to visit a small town near Aberdeen, Scotland, in May, but so far I’m not very hopeful I can make it. I’d love to go and am working on it. That, and a few other items that are vague possibilities, make up this dream schedule:

• April: Back and forth between Vestmannaeyjar and Reykjavík
• May: Setting up the Fab Lab and the Innovation Center in Vestmannaeyjar, getting it into production mode.
• End of May: 5 day trip to Aberdeen, Scotland. (RT11 Euromeeting 2008)
• End of June: 2 week trip encompassing: Oslo, Tromsø, Longyearbyen (Svalbard), Lyngseidet (for Kokompe Kode Kamp 2008), Kilpisjärvi, Oulu, Tampere, Hämeenlinna, Helsinki.
• 3. July: Goslokahátíð, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland
• 5-9. July: Reykjavík for Eben Moglen’s visit
• Rest of July: A Fab Lab event in Vestmannaeyjar.
• 1 weekend of August: Vestmannaeyjar, Þjóðhátíð 2008
• October: San Francisco (?) for Open Sustainability Network Conference 2008.
• January 2009: Pune, India, for 5th International Fab Lab Conference and Symposium on Digital Fabrication.
• March 2009: Manchester, England, for Oeconux conference.

In between doing these things I’m hoping I’ll have time to do a lot of interesting work, both relating to Fab Labs in general, specifically the Kokompe and Callooh projects and getting the Vestmannaeyjar lab up - hopefully another one in Ísafjörður or Reykjavík too - and finishing my novel The Dream Machine (which has been lying very close to completion way too long and just needs a couple of evenings of power writing to finish up the bulk of it) as well as rewriting and fixing The Digital Fabrication Primer (as well as finding a new name for it!)…

The good thing about being in Vestmannaeyjar is there’s not an awful lot to do besides work and enjoy nature. Since the weather hasn’t been very good I’ve just been hobbled up at the office fairly late every evening, or catching up on my knitting or other creative projects, as well as doing some work on trying to decompose the time series describing  trends in the north Atlantic puffin population in Vestmannaeyjar into component waveforms that can then further be analyzed to infer the major causes for population fluctuation… it’s fun to do biological mathematics every now and then, but don’t expect any Nature articles from me! Perhaps as the weather gets better I’ll have an increasingly stable platform for cool innovative stuff, and I hope a lot of inspired people will come and visit me.

The TSA, an organization designed to maintain security in transportation - an organization that has been the greatest threat to the security of individuals attempting to travel to, from or through the United States for the last few years, has started a blog. Their tagline reads: “Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part.”

While I applaud their support of the theories of evolution I think they’re still on the wrong side of the fence, and I’m not the only one if their blog post replies are any standard worth noting. This blog is a step in the right direction, but they’re still barking up the wrong Bush on most accounts when it comes to international security.

[Speaking of which, if you’re in Reykjavík, I recommend Alyson Baile’s course on international security at the University of Iceland, Wednesdays at 13:20, Oddi room 201]

Terrorists do evolve. Their techniques change to suit the purposes. But terrorism is related to ideology. One of the best ways to reduce terrorism is to stop imposing conflicting ideologies - freedom isn’t reserved for people with the right mindset.

Threats do evolve. But anybody can make threats, and anybody can follow through on them. Not just terrorists. I can threaten to eat one of my nephews. I probably won’t do it. But I could. Is that reason enough to knock my teeth out and deny me access to knives?

Security must stay ahead. I totally agree. But security cannot and must not be pushed ahead at the expense of personal freedoms. If you’re using restrictions to apply security, you’re doing it wrong. (This likewise to people who do computer security: blocking ports doesn’t increase security - you only need one open port to get in. However, educating your users might get you a long way).

We do play a part. Security isn’t the TSA’s problem. It’s everbody’s problem. And if everybody thinks clearly, acts rationally, and works together, we can fulfill TSA’s mandate several thousand orders of magnitude better, at no cost, and without touching on people’s freedom to travel.

On my arrival in New York last August I had to stand in line for the better part of an hour before being fingerprinted. This was the height of the unpleasantness I had to endure, and am fairly glad of that, because after reading several accounts of people being strip-searched, illegally imprisoned and even tasered to death, I expected the worst coming to somebody such as myself who has the damned insolence to openly criticize this kind of behavior.  I will be going to New York again later this month, and I very much hope I’ll be treated fairly.

I have a strong tendency to seek out places on the fringes of human society. Perhaps this fascination with the extemes of human existence stems from having migrated from England - the most plain of all possible places - to Iceland - a fairly exciting place by several measures, complete with volcanoes, earthquakes, winter darkness, summer light and so on. But much as the adrenaline junkie seeks out higher places to jump from and the heroine addict wants ever bigger doses of his favorite chemical, I want more starkness. More loneliness. More extremes.

One place that has long struck my fancy as a great place to live is Longyearbyen in Svalbard. With a population of roughly 2000, Svalbard is low tax, low temperature colony of Norway sitting roughly 78° north. With primary occupations being coal mining and more recently higher education and research, Svalbard appeals to me for all the wrong reasons.

McMurdo station on Antarctica sounds like a great place to spend a summer. Packed with 1200 scientificly minded people, with an entire continent almost to themselves. Fairly romantic.

But not as romantic as the Russian town of Dikson in Krasnoyarsk Krai. Slap in the middle of the Siberian permafrost, Dikson is one of the most isolated human settlements in the world. Population: 800.

Moving south again, Bouvet island is another cold Norwegian exclave. With population zero, it is a “popular” (if inaccessible) vacation spot for amateur radio operators, eager to be on the air with the 3Y call sign prefix.

Somewhat north you might possibly come across Tristan da Cunha, a British archipelago. The capital, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, was evacuated in 1961 during a volcanic eruption. Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is considered the most remote human settlement on earth, being over 2400 km from the nearest human settlement on St. Helena. One of the other islands in the archipelago is called Inaccessible Island. Sounds decent enough.

Another island with an odd name is Disappointment Island, which can be found far south of New Zealand. Nobody lives there, so it falls outside my definition: I want to be on the fringes of human civilization, not completely outside of it.

Several places in central asia fascinate me, some more inhabited than others. The city of Wulumuqi is neither remote nor small, but it’s location is so far out of the way for the average European that I honestly found it astonishing that there was a city there at all.

Some of the rural regions of Kazakhstan are interesting, and likewise much of Borneo and New Guinea. The outskirts of Petropavlovsk seem like a wonderful place to be, at a similar latitude to Copenhagen although in a much colder region of the world.

Malawi is one of my favourites, although it can hardly be called sparsely populated. This brings me to think that perhaps it isn’t rurality I’m going for. Perhaps it’s … something else. Perhaps it’s something different. Perhaps it’s just a break from the easy life - it’s just.

I’m starting to think Reykjavík brings out all the worst in me. As much as I love this town, it is here that my mind wanders the most, it is here that I do the least good. Here I tend to oversleep regularly; I’m frequently late to wherever I’m going, the work I do isn’t as good as that which I do elsewhere. I eat unhealthier food, I drink more alcohol, I grow more deceitful and more arrogant. More lazy. More self-absorbed. My speech patterns even change.

Perhaps it’s just a change of pace I need. I’ve always considered myself a city person, but maybe that’s just a lie I’ve started to believe.

The International Space Station is about as rural as it’s going to get. Two decades from now it might be possible to elope to a moon base. Perhaps I could go to the Himalayas. Tibet. Join a monastery. I could go to Peru, or Lapland. Become a nomad. Azerbaijan. Congo. New Zealand.

But until then, I’m here. I’m in Reykjavík. Better make the most of it.

Over on the Dohop blog there’s an article about airlines and whether they show the full price upfront, including taxes and fees. I think this is very important. There is a tendency within the transportation industry, regardless of the mode, to hide both extra fees, taxes and even potential discounts behind a wall of obfuscation, intended either to outwardly improve how their prices look to potential clients or to trick clients out of using discounts that while advertised are not assumed as default during purchase.

Liberation of software, hardware, culture and spectrum is only the first step - liberating transportation is equally important, and I believe that technological solutions like Google Maps driving directions and the Dohop flight planner will help push forth the same kind of freedom in these industries. It’s something worth thinking about.

I thought I’d point out the dohop Ticker Generator Wizard, a smart tool that allows you to set up RSS feeds or boxes in HTML to monitor your favorite flight destinations. For people who like to travel as much as I, it’s a great way of finding out where the hottest deals are.

The iframe version looks like this (I chose to go from Keflavík or Reykjavík, Iceland to anywhere, with results sorted so that I get most miles for the money):