I attended the Canadian Internet Forum's founding meeting.

Many of the well known Canadian Internet scholars were at this the first meeting of the Canadian Internet Forum (hash tag (#CIRAif). It was sponsored by the Canadian Internet Registry Authority. I spoke of the plain political stances represented in the issues that were coming out of this forum. Each statement of an issue or concern by Canadians could be matched by planks in our major political parties platforms.

I also spoke of the disconnect between high tech firms claiming that there is a labour shortage and the number of unemployed persons who know programming or have taken at least one course in computer programming in school. I also meantioned that I was teaching someone at work to program and he was doing a fine job in his middle age. Proving hopefully what I was saying about this labour market disconnect.

I also citicized the idea of pushing for school reform as outsiders to the educational system. I tend to think that Internet literacy is not too different from classical literacy, as in the end these are all reading and writing skills. Making the digital world out as a different skill set is a false strawman argument.

Motivation to learn was also questioned when I spoke outside the meeting room over coffee with another person who had commented on education and her access to university lectures online. She really believed that all classrooms should be online and that if one missed a class one should be able to attend via the web. I told her to read The University of Google.

The book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It was recommended.

I mentioned in introducing my self as I began to make my comments that, I am a volunteer with Computers for Communities and another ITC community group that Computers for Commmunities recently partnered with, iSisters also made some comments at the fcrum.

Continuing to read about Australian hackers on an Amazon Kindle

I read the second chapter now in

Dreyfus, Suelette. Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier Kindle 1st ed. (No location: Digital Download: Amazon, 2010).

This chapter covered the Bulletin Board System BBS where the author claims Australian hackers came together. Also this chapter covers various activities of these early hackers before laws were made against hacking.

I have been reading a book about the Australian computer underground.

I want to focus studies as there is just so much out there to read. I went back to an old focal point of computer crime. I read the first chapter in

Dreyfus, Suelette. Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier Kindle 1st ed. (No location: Digital Download: Amazon, 2010).

This chapter covered the case of a worm in Digital Equipment Computers used by NASA and other US government computers. Suelette claims this was the second worm in existance and also claims it was made by an Australian hacker and further that this hacker has never been identified. The politics of the music group Midnight Oil is covered, as it is claimed their politics of environmentalism is also involved in all this hacking from Australia.

I am still reading in privacy studies and surveillance.

These studies I am doing are unrelated to my work in my nine to five job. They are related to my continuing knowledge of intellectual terrain. I am also reading John Stuart Mill on Auguste Comte to solidify my sociological thinkers/theory foundational knowledge.

I am reading in the area of law, criminology and privacy this past month.

Here are the books I am reading in law, privacy, surveillance and crime:

Zureik, et al. Surveillance, Privacy and the Globalization of Personal Information (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010).

Monihan, Torin. Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity (NA: Rutgers University Press, 2010).

McGuire, Michael. Hypercrime: The New Geometry of Harm (New York: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007).

I am also reading some of the chapters of this new computer ethics book:

Floridi, Luciano ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010).

I investigated doing a Ph.D at Curtin University in Australia.

I exchanged some e-mails with an Internet studies faculty member at Curtin university in Australia. The cost is very high as a foreign student though 25,000 dollars a year in tuition.

I am reading slowly these days because of full time work. I am studying community informatics

I have been limited, in the books I can borrow at the university of Ottawa, as I am now an alumni and no longer a student. This is a good thing because I had gotten into a habit of borrowing tens of books and not reading these books. Also carrying all these books was a heavy load. I am cut down now to only being able to borrow 15 books.

I am borrowing a book on music and the brain, as my only university library music book out on loan. I did buy one book, I started to read at the university and returned. The book is about bass playing and it is written and published by Bass Player magazine. I read this magazine and even had a subscription to this magazine in the early and middle 1990s. I did manage to perform a few shows in the very early 1990's in punk, folk and world music genres.

Otherwise, I am focusing on community informatics studies and in particular studies of informatics in the developing world. I have been reading about the concept of technological dualism which is a thesis about R&D in the developing world being less funded and less in tune with third world needs. This thesis also ties in with the digital divide and the income gap. Wage disparity, medical research disparity, needs fulfillment disparity, these all are mentioned in the study I am reading by the scholar Jeffrey James in his book Information Technology and Development.

Continuing to study French

I must learn possessive pronouns in all their variety as well as descriptions of objects using adjectives and also locations of objects as my final test in my fall French course. This is more intense than a university course as it runs 2.5 hours five days in two weeks. A university course would only be 2 days in two weeks.

Lily Pond music typesetting software.

I have been using the open source program Lily Pond to write music. I am writing mostly small pieces or practice pieces I discover on the bass and guitar. Generally these are simply scales and various patterns on scales.

Beginners books on bass and guitar.

I have been reading a number of Complete Idiot's Guides and For Dummies books for bass playing and guitar playing.

I did not in fact travel to Sweden.

In the end I could not find enough time off work to attend the conference in Sweden. There is also a socialization in gaming conference this weekend in Montreal I could not attend. I am thinking of attending an International Statistics conference in Dublin next summer. This Dublin conference though is out of my price range. I would need to save for a few years to attend something like this and right now I am trying to pay down debit not save money so much.

I passed my first French test.

I was able to pass my first French test. I did well enough with the oral parts of the test and nearly passed the written part. My oral marks pulled me up high enough to pass the over all test.

I am learning French at work

I am learning French at work and am not doing enough home work. I will try to practice for a few hours now. I will use a computer to record myself with Audacity software.

I am studying the PLENK2010 course.

This course about personal learning environments is sponsered by the National Research Council it is a massive online open course with over a thousand students. Here is the web page http://connect.downes.ca/index.html

Saving my school RefWorks file

I will no longer have access to RefWorks in a few days. I have made a back up RefWorks file but have not been able yet to export my RefWorks references into another format.

The books I borrowed recently from the school library.

Here are the books I borrowed recently from the school library. I used Librarything.com and SAS enterprise Guide to partially automate making this list of books. You will note I did not get the place of publication. Amazon.com does not list place of publication and that is the source for most of these citations.

Deitche, Scott M. Green Collar Jobs: Environmental Careers for the 21st Century (Praeger, 2010).

Hayward, Susan. Nikita: French Film Guide (I. B. Tauris, 2010).

Garner, Roberta. The Joy of Stats: A Short Guide to Introductory Statistics in the Social Sciences, Second Edition (UTP Higher Education, 2010).

James, Jeffrey. Bridging the Global Digital Divide ( Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003).

Taylor, James R. (Renwick) The Computerization of Work: A Communication Perspective (Sage Publications, 2000).

Roy, Sumit. Globalisation, ICT and Developing Nations: Challenges in the Information Age ( Sage Publications, 2005).

Gentzoglanis, Anastassios. Regulation and the Evolution of the Global Telecommunications Industry (Edward Elgar Pub, 2010).

Akerlof, George A. Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being (Princeton University Press, 2010).

Abeles, Harold F. Critical Issues in Music Education: Contemporary Theory and Practice (USA: Oxford University Press, 2009).

The Warwick Org Theory Network. Understanding Corporate Life (Sage Publications, 2009).

Cox, Andrew. The Right Tools for the Job: Selecting and Implementing the Most Appropriate Management Tools for Specific Business Purposes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Cramsie, Patrick. The Story of Graphic Design: From the Invention of Writing to the Birth of Digital Design (Abrams, 2010).

I think my trip is going to happen. I will be able to travel to the Internet Research 11 conference in Gothenburg Sweden in about six weeks.

I have been planning trips to conferences the last few years. One conference the American Sociology Association I did manage to attend on a scholarship, although I only attended a section's graduate student session. I am planning on attending the Association of Internet Researcher's conference in Sweden this fall. This conference is called Internet Research 11 and the hash tag is #IR11. So far I have afforded to pay a student registration fee and saved up over half the money for the airfare to Sweden. It looks like I will, in fact, be able to afford to go to this conference.

The term poor bashing has not really caught on in academia

When I searched Sage journals today, using the Sage Journal's web site and a free access account, I found only one article that used the term "poor bashing". This article is by Canadian scholars suggesting the term did not move out of Canada.

Here is the citation:

Colleen Reid and Allison Tom. "Poor Women's Discourses of Legitimacy, Poverty, and Health" Gender & Society June 2006 20: 402-421.

Planning on attending an Internet research conference in Sweden.

I have been planning on attending an Internet research conference in Sweden later this year. I have paid the registration fee now. I have to find the money for the plane fare now.

Reading about Swedish town ecologists.

I did a search for computers and sustainability and one reference that came up was a book on city planning. I scanned the edited book's list of papers and choose one to read. Here is the citation:

Dovlén, Sylvia. Conditions for the Integration of Ecological Knowledge in Land-Use Planning - the Local Government Ecologist Perspective in Thornley, Andy and Rydin Yvonne. Planning in a Global Era (Hampshire, England:, Ashgate, 2002) 211-227.