Stop TPP

tl;dr: Yesterday in the State of the Union Address, the President called for a fast track for trade agreements like the TPP. This is something that, if I had been better informed by my government and my media, I would have been opposing since day one. Here’s the link I want to spread around..

I hate discussing politics as a general rule, but this is important. The TPP (similar to its predecessors SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA) is marketed in a very limited way to the public as “protecting creator’s rights” and “cracking down on copyright infringement and piracy.”

As a content creator, free software supporter, musician and consumer, I will say this: As it is today, the TPP was conceived in secret, negotiated in secret, and something those in power are trying to keep a secret as best as possible from the general public. A fast track will allow them to do this, and the current TPP will do nothing but hinder the creative process and progress of musicians, programmers, consumers and artists, internationally, for the conceivable future.

Yesterday, through services already in existence and completely in line with the law, I was able to enjoy musical, artistic, and written content from Europe, Asia, and other parts of the Americas. The content creators (those who would have it, anyway) all received compensation from me in the form of micro-donations or through simple e-commerce.

The TPP would prevent me from being able to do this, and would prevent the creators from making this possible. Furthermore, any service like (bandcamp or soundcloud, youtube or newgrounds) that helped people to do this kind of independent publishing would be subject to incredible amounts of scrutiny and ultimately would be forced to undergo immense change or close their doors entirely.

And I haven’t even touched on how difficult developing for a Free/Libre and Open Source Software OS like GNU/Linux would be.

Simply, the TPP will destroy the delicate balance that makes the Internet and its culture so great. Remember when Videos on the Internet didn’t have ads at the beginning? Remember when Facebook didn’t insert targeted ads and suggestions between Your friends’ posts? Remember when Youtube didn’t constantly ask You to use Your real name?

Remember when You could download an Ebook, Image, Video or Song without DRM, and play or read it wherever and whenever You wanted?

Remember when new artists or musicians or programmers didn’t have to jump through legal hoops just to publish their own content… or to enjoy other’s contributions?

I do not want to be a part of a sinking ship. Please voice Your opinion by following the link below, and stand up against the TPP.

Stop the TPP

Time for me to get back to work. Comments are always appreciated,

• Christopher

[Captain's Log] January 2014 - My New Writing Process

tl;dr: When I write a post, it starts as a kramdown file on my phone, moves to dropbox, is compiled on one of my other computers, sanity checked afterwards for content and layout, and then posted.

It has been quite some time since I have posted on here. I have decided in the interim on a few changes, the most noticable to You all is the delay at which I will be posting: This post was written on the 26th of December, not the 7th of January.

But the most noticable change to me has been the remarkable change to my writing process. I now have a multistepped chain that nearly all of my blogs will eventually be using. I am using this post mostly to codify the process, for when it eventually breaks down and I need something to remind me about how I am supposed to be doing this.

First of all, it starts on my phone. I recently have come into the possession of a bluetooth keyboard, which allows me to type quickly and accurately on my Android Phone (a Samsung Galaxy III Mini). I use a free application called Markdrop to organize the text files and upload them to Dropbox.

This moves the finished files downstream to my computers, all of which run some version of Slackware GNU/Linux. Kramdown, being a parser written entirely in Ruby, doesn’t really need Linux in order to work… but I do.

I then check them for sanity: try all of the links, make sure the image link (which uses Imgur, by the way) is displaying correctly, do some quick spelling and grammar checks.

After this, it is a simple matter of copying the html5 code from the text file to the Blogger dashboard, adding the labels, and sharing the post so people can see it.

This process lets me blog from whereever I am, and (hopefully) will result in a semi-regular update schedule. I no longer need to spend a full hour in front of the computer in order to produce a post: now, I only need my phone and a few free minutes here and there.

Let’s see how this works.

Time for me to get back to work. Comments are always appreciated,

• Christopher