Okay: if you are not familiar with the bill (pdf) (wiki) currently pending before the Ugandan Parliament, turn around and learn about it — then come back. The bill was introduced in 2009-September, and is scheduled to be voted on by 2010-March-01. It will, among other things, criminalize gay and lesbian sex between consenting adults — under pain of death. Humans to fail to “report” LGBT persons within twenty four standard hours of discovery will face a prison sentence of no less than three years.

…

Yeah. To say that human rights are going to be violated under this bill is an understatement. We know what happened after the events of 1994-April-06 — over five hundred thousand humans died, probably more than a million. While I’m not going to suggest–not yet, anyways–that such a tragedy will be repeated if this bill passes, I am confident that Bad Things will happen.

So. What are we gonna do about it? Several of us throughout the Elmhurst College community are talking about ways we can raise awareness of the bill before it passes… If enough people know, if enough people are aware of the existence of the bill, if enough people get up and call or write their American Congress-critter and demand the American Congress and the POTUS do more than issue a statement of opposition. As a side note, I do applaud the five Republican–!–Congress-critters who have expressed their anger to President Museveni. That’s five down, five hundred thirty remaining. This whole fight is not just about gay rights or gay equality — it’s about human rights, human equality.  This battle won’t be won by a bunch of American queers coming out and demanding that something be done — it’ll only be won when all the humans of all flavors and orientations come out in opposition to the bill. We can’t do it alone…

• The first approach we are going to take is contacting the Ugandan Consulate and asking if they would send someone to come to Elmhurst College and speak about the bill. This is unlikely to succeed, but nobody can say we didn’t try.
• The second approach involves networking with the various college campuses across the United States, and organizing a general information campaign. Once we give people information about the bill and its effects on humans, people will hopefully be willing to get up and call their Congress Critters and order them todo something. Teresa Doyle and myself will be doing something along these lines in 2010-week five, with booth in the Frick Centre: exposing the issue while trying to bring attention to the third approach.
• The third approach involves a well-known and sometimes frowned upon tactic: public humiliation. If some sort of rally along the lines of the National Equality March were to be held with the express purpose of gaining the attention of the press and publicly shaming the Ugandan Parliament into withdrawing the bill, we might have a shot at success. Where this rally would take place is a mystery: Millennium Park? the College Mall? We don’t know. What we do know is that the Parliament resumes its legislative session on 2010-February-15…any rally would take place before that.

On 2010-January-04, an short piece appeared on page A16 of the New York Times highlighting the issue; I think everyone should read it, and click to view a bigger-yet-still-resized-version…

If you have ideas for helping us, or bringing attention to the issue, please share them with me: my contact information is in the About page.

Well well: it’s been a busy day, with no signs of stopping. The meeting with Teresa Doyle–not related to the Governor to the North–was very productive…our conspiracy is now being hatched… I’ll post something to Reddit later this evening to gather input from the wider community.

To make things possibly better, I received a phone call from the Jaboc Meister for Senate campaign this morning regarding my application…I’ll call them back and gather more information before making a decision.

See you in the world.

We were having a gay old time in the #LGBTReddit IRC chat…

One of my new years resolutions is to begin learning German, and be able to engage in a brief conversation by the end of the year. What have we learned thus far? Not much, but it’s a start:

1. I like this: ich mag das
2. A water please: wasser, bitteh

One of the things I have always struggled with is finding an optical solution for getting things done. I’ve tried so many technologies, so many services, so many ways of organizing and categorizing my thoughts and notes; and most of these attempts have ended in failure for one reason or another. Despite this–or perhaps because of it–I’m going to try something new for 2010 J-Term, see if we can’t make it work. In theory it’s quite simple:

1. Read the text(s) in question, and underline the parts that are new to you.
2. Manually write them down in a physical notebook; and use this notebook for personal reflection.
3. Review your notes at the end of each calendar week, and write a new summary on the computer. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, it’s that simple: let’s see if we can make it work.

One of the things I go through quite often is books: I love them. If I had a nook and the ability to turn my books into PDF files, I would do so in a heartbeat. Alas, I have not yet been made queen of the universe and must continue to deal with physical hardcopies. This post is a list of all the books I own as of 2010-January-05. I’ll revisit this on 2011-January-05 and see how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same. All the titles are linked, either to Amazon or Google Books or Wikipedia or Stanford. There is no order, they just come and go as they like. Books marked with an ⁂ are school books.

1. a history of japanese literature
2. cymbeline
3. the catcher in the rye
4. the church and the homosexual
5. freeing the natural voice
6. urgings of the heart ⁂
7. the invisible partners ⁂
8. the norse myths
9. the complete roman drama
10. look me in the eye
11. how europe underdeveloped africa
12. stonewall
13. coming out
14. an introduction to the bible ⁂
15. the westminster guide to the books of the bible ⁂
16. the origins of christian morality
17. the oxford book of prayer
18. testament
19. watchman
20. v for vendetta
21. graceland
22. becoming abigail
23. why orewell matters
24. the wars of watergate
25. existentialism
26. saint ignatius of loyola, personal writings
27. the assualt on reason
28. defiant desire
29. when things fall apart
30. time on two crosses: the collected writings of bayard rustin
31. mwerhari musings
32. the african experience: an introduction
33. the harper collins study bible, new revised standard version ⁂
34. the sagas of icelanders
35. rabble-rouser for peace
36. a jesuit off broadway
37. byzantium: the empire of new rome
38. taking a chance on god
39. beowulf
40. audition
41. quills and other plays
42. out plays: landmark lgbt plays of the twentieth century
43. of kennedys & kings: making sense of the sixties
44. under african skies: modern african stories
45. bayard rustin: troubles i’ve seen
46. homosexuality and civilization
47. still acting gay
48. christianity, social tolerance and homosexuality
49. robert kennedy
50. robert kennedy and his times
51. the mayor of castro street
52. the jesuits
53. on the hill
54. the ultimate hitchhiker’s guide
55. daughters of miriam ⁂
56. women in the new testament ⁂
57. helpmates, harlots & heroes ⁂
58. ancient rhetorics for contemporary students ⁂
59. critical situations ⁂

I’m creating this list so that I can go back to it on 2011-January-01 and see how much, or how little, my connection to technology has changed.

Hardware

• one iPod Touch 2G
• one Sony iPod dock / speaker system, Modle number ICFC1IPMK2
• one Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ28
• one Logitech Z4 speaker system
• one ASUS eee 1000HD netbook
• one Motorola RAZR, three years old and still going strong
• one custom built PC, rapidly aging:
  • Athlon X2 3800+
  • 1GB DDR RAM
  • 7600 GT KO
• three external hard drives with roughly one thousand sixty one gigabytes spread between them
• two desktop monitors, a Dell 2005 FPW and an Acer H213H

Media

• ~640GB of television and film rips, spread over two hard drives
• ~17GB of music
• ~3.5GB of photos
• 21 Wii games

Software

• The netbook uses a custom nlited version of Windows XP; the desktop rotates between Windows 7 SP0-AMD64 and Kubuntu 9.10 AMD64.
• Your primary Web Browser is Google Chrome, version number 4.0.266.0. Opera 10.50 is receiving some attention, but is not yet enough to dethrone Chrome.
• VLC, Launchy, Notepad++, LyX, Foobar, μtorrent, Q-Dir and Chrome are the most frequently used Windows apps.
• Dolphin, Inkscape, Chrome, LyX, Juk and Kate are the most frequently used KDE apps.

Now then, a few words on New Years Resolutions: I’m doing them. My resolution for 2009 was to start using Google Reader for everything, and that idea proved wildly successful. I’d like to continue the trend. As such, here are my resolutions for 2010 — if the god/s will it, all of them will be successful.

1. New year = new passwords for all.
2. Update WordPress at least once a week.
3. Participate in and complete NaNoWriMo.
4. Complete the 100 pushups / 200 situps challenge.
5. Begin learning a new language, either German or Hindustani.
6. Take at least one photo a day, and write at least 100 words about the photo in question.
7. By 2010-March, make it so that people saying “Could you speak up please?” are the exception rather than the rule.

See you in the world.

A few months ago, one of my fellow performers in The King & I asked me to give an overview of the applications I use, and explain the jailbreaking process. Weeks and weeks have past since this was requested of me, and now that the theatre season is finally over, I can grant his request. This is for you Ray.

In order to jailbreak an iPod (in this instance, an 8GB 2nd Generation Touch) you must have, among other things: a working knowledge of the bittorrent protocol (wiki), a passing familiarity with torrent applications (wiki), knowledge about what exactly it is you are doing (wiki), access to a firmware dump (click), and a spare half hour or so. I’m performing these operations on a custom Windows XP SP2 build. The process will vary to a degree with OS X and *nix machines.

//.Disclaimer: I am not responsibile for human stupidity. Perform this and other operations at your own risk.//

Now, onto the process:

1. Identify your current firmware version (Settings > General > About > version). Once armed with that, consult the Lords of Kobal (click) and download a raw dump of said firmware.
2. When that is completed, use the all-powerful Bittorrent protocol and download redsn0w (click). When the download is complete, read the readme.txt that accompanies it.
3. Read, read, keep reading! Turn off your iPod Touch, backup everything that you want to save (contacts, bookmarks, todo lists, game saves, blah blah blah…), and turn the device off completely. Not sleep mode: off. Launch redsn0w from the top level and follow the instructions — make sure you only install Cydia, not Icy.
4. The process will eventually complete, and cydia.app will be installed. You now have access to the black market.

Part two — an overview of what apps and hacks I am using — will come later.

So. I’ve discovered an application called Zen Jar (iTunes), in which you release random messages to the world, and other people receive them. The person on the receiving end can respond, et cetra….

I had this delightful conversation with a person from Missouri:

It’s nice to talk to the world.