Getting Smarter

    I finally got a Google Nest Mini S.  At Php2,030.00, it's a cheap ticket to the home automation/digital assistant world. At that price point-- and since I got 24/7 WIFI anyway, it was a cinch. Four years ago I checked out Amazon's Echo Dot but held off. I think the technology at that time has not matured enough yet.  I also checked out the Xiaomi's Mi Home-- which is now compatible with Apple's HomeKit, but I don't trust Chinese tech enough to jump in. I chose Google for it's search engine which, IMHO, makes its digital assistant more "intelligent" if not more "informed". Setting up the Nest Mini is patchy at best. The ios version of Google Home looks and feels like a Microsoft circa 80s software. But, beyond that annoyance the Nest Mini delivers.

    A few days after I got the Nest Mini, I got the Xiaomi Mi Box S to upgrade my outdated TV to a "smart" TV. As with the Nest Mini I don’t really need the Mi box because I could watch Netflix (and YouTube) via my Sony PS4.  But, for P2,669.00 it’s cheap. I figure it would be a faster alternative since the PS4 takes ages to load up and turn off. I wasn’t expecting much for that price but the Mi box hardware is decent and it works.  When I ordered, I wasn’t sure if the Mi box will work with the Nest mini— the information I’m getting in the internet is, at best, vague, but it did, though it’s mostly a hit and miss. Sometimes the Mi box turns on when I “Hey Google” the Nest, sometimes there’s a wait of two minutes or so before the Mi box fires up and sometimes nothing happens or the Mi box is “unavailable”. Using the Mi box remote to turn on the Mi box is more reliable, but the built-in Google Assistant is likewise a hit and miss. I’m okay with that. You get what you pay for and that’s as far I’m willing to spend for this thing and so it is what it is.

    From here I’m looking at a way to voice command my room lights. Maybe I’ll go with Chinese rip-offs of Google Assistant compatible outlets or maybe I’ll try and explore the Xiaomi system. I haven’t decided yet. For now I’m exploring what the Mi box could offer. It’s just a game… nothing serious.

The Devil is in the Details

    You've lied, cheated, stolen, and been a dick and an asshole all your life. When you die, you will be condemned to the fires of Hell. Well, at least that's what we have been told growing up.

    But, think about it for a minute. If you've been bad will you be punished and made to suffer in Hell? By the devil? I don't think so. If you've been bad then that would be, I think, "good" from the devil's point of view.  It would seem that the punishment is NOT being allowed to go to Heaven-- and that's it. God slams Heaven's Gate in your face. And since there's apparently no other place to go-- you go to Hell. But, whatever happens to you in Hell would be up to whoever is in charge there:-- the devil. 

   The Bible depicts the devil as God's "equal". Well, equal in the sense that they are always portrayed talking with each other like diplomats in a summit meeting. In the Book of Job, we are told how God and the devil-- picture them talking over coffee in Starbucks, played craps with the life of a decent man. God agreeing with and giving the devil a free hand to do whatever he wants to do with Job, short of killing him, to test the man's faith. I could not begin to imagine how God and the devil sets up a meeting. All I know is that the Bible tells us that they do meet. Are these talks deliberate and on a regular basis or do they just randomly run into each other. The Bible says that after the failed coup in Heaven, a place was carved out of eternity to contain coup leader and now ex-angel Lucifer-- the devil, and his cohorts. The Bible only mentions these two places. And since there are only two places (-- to be accurate there is one other place: purgatory. We are told that purgatory is a temporary holding area for sinners who may be considered for admission to Heaven), there must be a common border. Picture God and the devil walking up to the border-- maybe not unlike the DMZ dividing South and North Korea, and having a tête-à-tête at arm's length. Or, maybe they meet up on Earth. One thing is certain though, there is no mention in the Bible of God visiting the devil or the devil having a day tour of Heaven (though it is mentioned in the Bible that the devil gave Jesus, the Son of God, a guided tour of Hell after the latter died on the Cross). It could reasonable be concluded, therefore, that neither of the two could pop out at will on the other's realm. It would seem that neither have control beyond their turf. Thus, God runs pretty much everything in Heaven (and apparently on Earth too since it's His creation). But, for all intents and purposes Hell is run by the Devil.

   So, if you've been good all your life, the big pearly gates opens and there is this bright light. Yippie whoopee doo. You're finally home in Heaven where you will spend an eternity basking in God's eternal and unconditional love. Yeah hey. It would be like visiting your grandparent's house on a damp Christmas day as a kid. Yippie yah yeah. Boring? What do you expect? It's not like that God is going to say: hey kiddo, see that hot babe with big boobies, she's yours. Nope, that's not going to happen. Eternal bliss. Like standing on the moon. Alone. Forever.

   And if you've been a bad boy?

   I'm not sure. Everything we know about the devil is from the Bible, now that's God's book. The devil hasn't put out a book yet. It would seem that the devil has taken the high road by not bothering to respond at all (then again, he might have a hard time getting published either). The thing is if you've really been bad the Devil would have no reason to not like you. You're one of his boys. Why would he make you suffer?

   What could be in Hell then?

   Well, if we take out everyone that shouldn't be in Heaven:-- Rock n' Roll!  

My Watercolor Field Box

I bought a Winsor & Newton Professional Water Colour Field Box (the only and perhaps the last) at the National Bookstore. I bought it for Php4,200.00. Pricey for a 12-color watercolor set enclosed in a kitschy blue plastic case that's just a bit taller than a pack of 100's cigarettes. Definitely not for the serious watercolorist. But for one who only dabbles in watercolor and wants a self-contained go box for a quick watercolor sketch-- and, if you are like me, is a sucker for Gundam-like gimmicky gadget, then the Winsor & Newton Field Box is it. To be honest, I really bought it for the box.

Opening the curious little box is like unraveling an origami. There are three mixing pans-- one doubles as a water bottle and the other two are actually flaps that folds over to cover the twelve Artist Grade watercolor half pans. The top of the box is a water pot. There's a compartment for a small piece of sponge (if you prefer, you could take out the sponge and fit in two more half pans into the space) and a small brush-- a round size 0. But for all its design gimmickry, the field box is primarily a watercolor field box that works. It takes nothing to prepare: slip it into your pocket, grab a pencil and some paper and you are good to go for some discreet en plein air urban watercolor sketch.

I should say though that while the little flat white plastic bottle cum mixing pan in the field box holds enough water for a quick sketch, I usually bring more than I need-- in a small 8.5 oz. Rubbermaid plastic juice box or in a 5 oz. stainless steel hip flash with a captured top (--which I use to carry my special brew of lambanog!).  The first works well because it has a spout and you can control the flow of water with a squeeze while the second is contoured to match the curve of a hip or thigh for comfort and discretion (-- which served me well in the not too distant past for taking a swig in inappropriate situations!). I like using them both.

Also, while the included small brush works I prefer to use my own brush-- a da Vinci Maestro Series 1503 Kolinsky Red Sable Travel Brush size 5 Round. The brush is made in Germany using hair from the male winter tails of the sable “mustela sibirica”, living in the basins of the Siberian rivers Amur and Tobol. There is another brush maker-- Escoda in Barcelona, Spain, that makes brushes of equal quality (the Reserva - Kolinsky-tajmyr sable travel brush), but their brushes are even harder to come by here. The Escoda travel brush is still on my wish list and I'm sure I'll get one of those soon-- and yes, and two other sizes from da Vinci!

For paper, I now use the 5.5x3.5 inch Moleskin "Watercolor Album" (book constructed and paper sourced in China and of late is having quality consistency issues; I may not buy another moleskin); I also use the 5x8 inch Pentalic 100-percent Cotton Watercolor Journal (paper made in the Netherlands; book constructed in China; the paper has a musty smell which gets worse when it gets wet; long drying time). Recently, I bought all the Royal Langnickel Essentials 5x7 inch 190 GSM watercolor paper that Fully Booked was selling (also made in China). These papers could all be rubberbanded onto the field box.

I use a stainless steel Pilot mini mechanical pencil to do an initial sketch or outline. I have been actually using the 0.5mm 2B Pilot mechanical pencil since my college days (my handwriting is microscopic!). It's the smallest and thinnest mechanical pencil you can find (the original is only 4 inches tall). I like it because you could clip it into your shirt pocket or the neck of your T-shirt and forget about it until you need a pencil. I also had the mini fountain pen version (the set includes a mini ball pen, too). I have since lost the fountain pen and the pencil. Pilot seems to have stopped producing the mini fountain pen (maybe they still have it at the Cosmos Bazaar in Binondo?), but you can still get the mini mechanical pencil though now a bit taller than the previous version (almost 4.5 inches). I'm still looking for a replacement for the mini fountain pen. For now I use the 0.1mm "Artline Drawing System" drawing pen.

I'm getting close to my grail-watercolor set-up: a compact all-in set-up that I could hold in one hand and slip into a pocket.

Update:

Pilot Birdies are still available in Cosmos Bazaar!

The Fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper

    As a child we have all been told of the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. It tells the story of a grasshopper that has spent the warm months singing while the ant worked to store up food for the rainy days. When the rains came, the grasshopper finds itself hungry and begs the ant for food. The grasshopper is rebuked for its idleness and told to suffer the consequence of its improvidence. We were told that the fable gives us an ambivalent moral lesson about the virtues of hard work and planning for our future.

    If you ask me, I think the story is half done. If you grew up and live all your life in the Philippines, as I do, where floods brought about by torrential rains, storm surges, high tides, tidal waves and tsunamis is an in-your-face experience every year without fail you'd come to expect that when "rain" is mentioned in a story it will definitely be followed by a harrowing or hilarious "flood" story. And failing that a "rain" story seems incomplete without the "flood" part. And thus, I submit that when the rains came in the story, the ant's colony could have been flooded and as a result the ant drowned. As for the stored food, in all likelihood it would have been washed away and ended up as flotsam in the rising floodwaters-- easy picking for the hungry grasshopper.

    There is no moral lesson to be learned here. If there is anything at all to be learned it is that there are two kinds of people:-- grasshoppers and ants.

    Ants are the hard-working people who work all their life in the hope that the future would be better. Grasshoppers, on the other hand, are people to whom good things come without much effort on their part.

    Though I'm eternally gratefull for the things that have come my way I can't say that I got them with ease. I've fought and worked hard for every bit of scrap I have and so if indeed there are but two kinds of people-- then I'm probably an ant.

    Oh, one last thing since ants are scavengers the stockfile of food in the story could be-- dead grasshoppers!

    Think about that for a moment.

Reading Ulysses with Marilyn Monroe

    Damn it. I've done it! I've scaled the Everest of literary snobbery-- and survived. I've read James Joyce's Ulysses (First Vintage Books Edition, June 1986; which follows exactly the line divisions of the critical & synoptic edition of Garland Publishing, New York, June 1984).

    It's silly but what actually led me to read the book was an Eve Arnold's photograph: "Marilyn on Long Island (New York) Reading James Joyce's Ulysses" (1955, Magnum Photos, Inc. New York, U.S.A; see above). It was (I think) a magazine cut out pasted on the bare wall of the passageway leading to the bathroom of our two-storey apartment in Cubao, Quezon City (--it was already there when we moved in). Thus it may be said that it was juvenile voyeurism that led me into reading Joyce's Ulysses. I was twelve years old then.
 
     I would be in my 20s when I had my first encounter with Joyce's book. It was in a pile of pre-owned (probably stolen) books being clandestinely peddled in a back alley in Sta. Cruz, Manila. I immediately recognized it from the photograph. After handing over a few pesos for it, I opened the book to browse it (the vender wouldn't allow me to even open the book-- which was wrapped in plastic, until I've paid for it) and quickly realized I was in way over my head. The book is peppered with text I can't even pronounce much less understand (-- there are fragments of French, German, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Scandinavian and perhaps other languages I did not recognize). I tried to exchange it for another book but the toothless vender menancingly pointed to his "No Return No Exchange" sign.

   After realizing that the book is not an easy read I wondered if Marilyn Monroe was really reading it or was it just a prop. Upon reaching home I looked at the photograph again and noticed that Marilyn Monroe was on the last few pages of the book. I leafed through the pages of my copy. Ms. Monroe was apparently reading from the final episode of the book-- Molly  Bloom's soliloquy (which I later found out was reviled by the censorious as that "dirty book's" most "dirty part"). I was intrigued. But to get to the "dirty" part I have to wade through the entire book. It was much too dense for me. I gave up.

    Two decades would pass before I picked up the book again-- no, not the copy I bought, but a digital copy. Ulysses, perhaps more than any novel, was made for the digital age. Why you ask? Well, I have to read three other books to read this one book! To carry three extra books to be able to begin to understand a book seems too taxing intellectually if not physically. But, something that could be accomplished with an iPad.

    Ulysses has a reputation for density and inscrutability that makes me suspect that many who claimed to have read the book is at worst lying or at best didn't understood what the book is all about. I've tried several times in the past to read the book in its entirety but soon encounter texts that daunts me; frustrated, I give up. I have resorted to episodic rather than consecutive reading and could claim, at that point, that I have managed to read only three of the eighteen episodes (or chapters, Joyce didn't say)-- "Telemachus", "Nestor" and "Calypso"-- which introduced Leopold Bloom, the book's hero. I skipped "Proteus" which came before "Calypso" (The original text did not include episode titles, Joyce simply numbered them consecutively; the titles originate from the Gilbert schemata; Stuart Gilbert claims that Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in the latter's correspondences to him). In "Telemachus" and "Nestor", Joyce's meager use of punctuation makes it difficult to distinguish between third-person narrative, interior monologue, and dialogue. In "Proteus", the difficulty is not on how to distinguish the narrator's (Stephen Dedalus) monologue from everything else, but more on how to follow the twists and turns of that monologue itself. Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique, structuring and experimental prose— full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, make the narrative quite hard to follow. I soon found out that I would encounter the same literary roadblocks when I picked up the book again, but I wasn't giving up this time.

   Two schools of thought exist about one’s first reading of Ulysses: some staunchly advise reading it cold without recourse to outside materials, and others recommend reading it in parallel with all the guidebooks one could tolerate-- I myself managed to move forward by the second approach for the simple reason that my education and life experiences did not equip me with the tools to decipher Ulysses.

   The good news it that there is a glut of guidebooks, summaries and annotations out there in the world wide web that could be easily procured extra-legally. The bad news is that these guidebooks could get in the way of your reading. Or worst you could end up poring over the never-ending details provided by the guidebooks, lose your way in the labyrith and totally forget about the book you're suppose to be reading in the first place. I stuck with those that came highly recommended and I settled on three:-- Harry Blamire's (1) The new Bloomsday Book, A Guide Through Ulysses, 3rd Ed. The New Bloomsday Book is a sort of Ulysses-for-Dummies book that summarizes each episode in easy to comprehend language.

   I also have Stuart Gilbert's (2) James Joyce's Ulysses, the most famous of the guidebooks. Be warned though that critics have described Gilbert's contribution as a dour book that managed to suck all the fun out of Joyce's work. And my go-to guidebook, (3) Don Gifford’s indispensable compendium of Ulyssian knowledge, Ulysses Annotated, Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses, 2nd Ed. It's a must-have for a first time reader, who-- like me, has no reference point to the world where the characters in the book live in and has a limited literary background. It's a quick reference of Joycean words and phrases. Gifford clarifies passages which otherwise would almost certainly remain hopelessly opaque to first-time readers. As bonus, Gifford provides maps of the action traced through the Dublin streets!

    I didn't just read Joyce's Ulysses, I also listened to an audio-book. I was actually reading along as I listened. Honestly, it was the only way I could go over the really incomprehensible Latin words that Joyce had put in his novel. I also listened to Joseph Campbell's "Wings of Art" lecture series on Ulysses (along with Joyce's "Portrait of a Young Man as an Artist" and "Finnegans Wake"). And to top it all off, I watched the 1967 British-American film adaptation of the novel. The film was obviously a low budget stab at an "unfilmable" book but it served me well because I had a glimpse of Dublin (though Ulysses was set in 1940, the film portrayed the city as it was in the 1960s). The infamous Molly Bloom soliloquy takes up almost a quarter of the running time of the film and perhaps as an admission of defeat, all that the film maker could muster was a voice over of the whole thing.

    It took me thirty years to read Ulysses the first time. I'll read it again but I would like to see a digital edition of the book with links to annotations, maps, summaries and commentary-- and perhaps even with an accompanying audio book that could be played as a read-along companion for the literary challenged, in a single "book". Maybe they could throw in the film adaptation as well to make for a total experience.

    In 2018, I finally got hold of a hard copy-- an actual book, of Ulysses.  The text is still unwieldy, still indecipherable.

Arduino is not just a bar in Italy

   We are in the midst of the resurgence of open-source hardware and it's paving the way for a return of build-it-yourself electronics. At the forefront is the Arduino, a credit-size micro controller described by its makers as "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software". It basically means you can use an Arduino as a tool to accomplish DIY projects where someone else has done all the hard work. All you have to do is follow the directions to get it done. 
 
    While I consider myself as a tinkerer it took me sometime to get into the Arduino. For one, I have no idea where to start. The Arduino Uno R3 itself costs only about Php1,400.00 so getting one is not really a major life changing decision. But getting the rest of the electronic components that you'll need in a project would be a dicey propositon at best especially for somebody like me who have no experience creating wiring circuits. The best way to start, I think, is to get a kit. And so I went for the original Arduino Starter Kit.

   The kit includes, among others, jumper wires, LEDs, an 16x2 LCD, a few potentiometers, a handful of push buttons, an array of resistors, temp/tilt sensors, transistors, a breadboard and of course a genuine Arduino Uno Rev.3 board. The kit even provides a laser cut wooden base for the Uno (I have since enshrined my first Arduino Uno in a cool acrylic case from Seeed Studio). It also comes with a well written and informative Arduino Projects Book. You could probably get all the components in Raon for perhaps a third of the price and top it off with a Chinese Arduino Uno knock-off (then download a pirated digital copy of the book), but nothing beats having an original-- which has a small map of Italy  and the words "Made in Italy" on it.

   Almost a year on, I have procured three more boards-- all Chinese knock-offs, bought a bunch of jumper wires on-line and have since made several trips to Raon to replenish my stock of electronic components. I have since created a digital clock (using an RTC module), an array of lights to simulate KITT's Larsen lights (if you don't get it, you are clueless about the 80s!), a matrix of LEDs, a morse code key. 

  Arduino offered an affordable way to explore physical programing (though programming isn't really required to get started because you could simply piggy back off open source projects, tweak it and claim it as your own).

(N.B. The name Arduino comes from a bar in Ivrea, where the founders of the project used to hang around. The bar, in turn, was named after Arduin of Ivrea, who was king of Italy from 1002 to 1014.)
   

A Nifty Little Hacking Machine

   

Two months on, my Raspberry Pi 2 Model B (about Php1,600.00) is proving to be a tinkerer's delight. Being an ARM CPU-based "computer", it is capable of running a variety of distros optimized for the RPi2 hardware. Like most noobs, I opted for the Raspbian Debian "Wheezy", which I've managed to break and un-break several times in a sort of getting-to-know-you way. Getting the Wheezy from the Raspberry Pi Website into my RPi2 involves quite a few things: formatting a compatible SD card ("SDFormatter" is recommended) and burning the Wheezy image into it (I prefer the "Apple Pi Baker"), booting up and configuring the RPi2 proved to be quite an involved process. Looking for software to do the formatting and image burning by itself was quite a tedious process because I have to find and test each one to find out what works on my MacBook circa 2007. And as I am wont to do, I went through the install/configure/install process several times just for the sheer pleasure (or pain) of it. And picking up bits and pieces of tech voodoo along the way.

    On its first boot I plugged the RPi2 to an Ethernet, an old Apple aluminum keyboard and a 40-inch Sony flat screen TV and watched the gobbledygook scroll up the screen. Truly boring stuff-- much like watching paint dry, so in the meanwhile I pinged (using "Fing" on my iPhone) my router and zeroed in on the RPi2's IP address. With that info I moseyed over to my trusty old MacBook and SSHed to the RPi which surprisingly just worked without further configuration. I unplugged the TV and the keyboard and proceeded with the rest of the update/upgrade/configuration headless.

   Going all out portable on the RPi2 I dug up my Edimax nano WiFi adapter (Php650.00) and a power bank with a 5V/2A output a friend gave me (I used it as a back-up power for my MacBook). To my surprise the Edimax is plug and play and the power bank supplied ample power.

    Last week, I got a 2.8TFT capacitive touch screen (Php2,300.00) and got it to work on the RPi2 with a kernel patch. Though the touch screen works fine for finger input, it's more for show than for practical use. I intend to get a mini keyboard later on (Rii mini keyboard-- about Php850.00). In the meantime, I'll be using my full Apple keyboard-- which needless to state, is an anti-thesis to the concept of portability.

    With the prospect of a cheap portable throw-away hacking machine all it needs now is some decent hacking tools. And so I installed the Kali-Linux. I imagine myself sitting in Starbucks and wardriving the unwary tech-savvy posers-- something I used to do in the early days of WiFi before things got complicated and posers became somewhat smarter.

    Installing Kali Linux was a breeze. Getting the 2.8 TFT screen to work took some time to figure out (--basically using a kernel patch) but what really got me stuck was getting the RPi2 into the air-- I just could not make the Edimax nano WiFi adapter (EW-7811Un) to work (which, by the way, is plug-and-play in Wheezy). I knew and have confirmed that Kali Linux recognizes the Edimax with a "root@kali:~# dmesg". Running "root@kali:~# lsusb" likewise shows the same thing. But after trying all the work-arounds to make it work, it was a no go.

    After much head scratching and googling, I stumbled upon the information that since kernel version 3.0 of Kali, a driver (rtl8192cu)-- which supports the RTL8188CUS chipset of the EW-7811Un, is buried deep within the Kali distro. But, unlike in Wheezy, Kali doesn't auto-load the driver upon boot up. I should say that it was just plain stupid of me to try to make the WiFi adapter to work without first checking if a driver for it had been loaded in the first place. There's a lesson to be learned here but who cares if you're having so much fun-- as in life, the problem with being on the wrong side of the street is that it's so much fun.

    A "root@kali:~# find/ -name **8192** -print" showed that indeed there is such a module. Obviously, it wasn't loaded by default. Thus, I loaded it manually:-- "root@kali:~# mod probe 8192cu". A "root@kali:~# lsmod" confirmed that it is now loaded. A "root@kali:~# ifconfig wlan0" show that the Edimax is up and running. I opted the easy way out and invoked the built-in graphical WiFi manager of Kali to configure it.

    I had some success using this nifty little WiFi penetrating machine to hack into my MacBook wireless connection. Yesterday, I  took the RPi2 for a test war drive. It's my idea of a lazy Sunday morning-- sitting in a coffee shop that offers WiFi, sipping latte while scooping up data from the wireless packets in the air (this morning I used airodump-ng). As I sit there totally engrossed with mischief some friends happened to come by. It didn't take them long to figure out that I'm up to no good but when they saw the RPi2 it scared them probably realizing how an attacker could wreck havoc with a simple pen-testing machine (less than Php5,000.00) that could easily be carried around or stowed in a table drawer or hidden in a suspended ceiling to eavesdrop on an office network.