Be the signal

Internet blackout to protest Australian Internet filtering

December 15, 2009 – 19:11

Please, black out your website and online profile images in protest against the Australian Government’s Internet Filtering policy.

Why?

It may seem cheesy to turn your website or avatar black for an online protest, but it can form a part of a good online and offline campaign, particularly for Internet-related protests.

Many of my friends in New Zealand turned their websites and online profile images black to protest a proposed “guilt upon accusation” copyright law (Section 92A), providing massive online “Internet Blackout” support to the Creative Freedom campaign. I, and plenty of others around the world, also participated.

The most important bit: New Zealand media took notice, bringing a level of awareness to an Internet / copyright / online rights issue that would otherwise never have materialised. Ultimately, the new government chose to review the entire bill, and while the issue is still being fought, at least one battle was won… and now, there are more people informed about the issue to fight ACTA.

Now it’s Australia’s turn. Our current (otherwise pretty bloody sensible) government has adopted a terrible policy of mandatory Internet filtering, which Australians have been fighting against for many, many months. A technical report about the feasibility of the filter has just been released, which (on first glance) appears to validate the policy against technical challenges, and the government has announced that it is pursuing the policy to legislation.

Now, I’m not suggesting that turning stuff black will have a direct impact on government policy… However, I am suggesting that we can use broad-based online protest to increase awareness of the problem, and help those attempting to fight the good fight offline.

If Sunrise (a breakfast news show in Australia) or other news outlets note that “Australians are turning out the lights in protest against the government’s Internet filter”, that’s awareness value we’d never be able to raise by, say, marching in the streets. If it causes Tony Jones or Leigh Sales to ask a government minister why Australians are so upset about this policy, that’s incredibly worthy opinion-leader influence… and very likely cringe-worthy interview fodder.

So yes, blacking out your websites and online profile images alone would be tilting at windmills. But as an online component of a complete No Clean Feed campaign… very useful.

For my readers who are not in Australia… consider how this western, English-speaking democratic country might be the thin end of the wedge — that’s why I supported my New Zealand friends against S92A. Please participate, and support Australians in their embarrassment about this terrible Internet policy!

Remember: This is only useful as part of a broader campaign to raise awareness of the issue and pressure politicians to put a stop to this filter. Go to the EFA’s No Clean Feed site for all kinds of other things you can do. The best thing? Write in your own words by snail mail, call by telephone or meet with your local MP.

#nocleanfeed

How?

The easy Twitter option:

Use Twibbon to put a #nocleanfeed blackout layer on your avatar.

More creative options… You could start with some handy templates I have made:

With layers: PSD for Photoshop · XCF for GIMP

Modifying your avatar, if you’re au fait with Photoshop or The GIMP:

Download the PSD for Photoshop or XCF for The GIMP
Copy your existing avatar into a new layer
Move that layer between the #nocleanfeed and Background layers
Desaturate the coloured avatar layer (so it’s just black and white)
Set that layer to between 30% and 50% transparent
Flatten the image (combine all the layers)
Save it as a PNG or JPEG, ready to use on Twitter, Facebook, or… wherever

On Twitter:

Download the blank image or modify one of the templates above
Make sure you’re logged in at twitter.com
Click “Settings” in the menu at the top right of the page
Click “Picture” in the links under your current avatar
Click “Choose File” and select your blacked out avatar
Click “Save” and you’re done.

On Facebook:

Download the blank image or modify one of the templates above
Make sure you’re logged in at www.facebook.com
Click your name, next to “Settings” in the menu at the top right of the page
Move your mouse over your current avatar and click “Change Picture”
Click “Upload a Picture” in the drop-down menu
Click “Choose File” and select your blacked out avatar
Wait for your photo to upload, and you’re done

On Gravatar (for blogs and lots of other websites):

Download the blank image or modify one of the templates above
Make sure you’re logged in at gravatar.com
Click on “add a new image” beneath your list of registered emails
Choose “My computer’s hard drive”
Click “Choose File” and select your blacked out avatar
Click “Next”
If your image is already square (like the templates), just click “Crop and Finish!”
Add a rating… probably G
Now select the email addresses you want to use this avatar with
Click “Use for selected addresses” and you’re done

By Jeff Waugh | Posted in General | Tagged Australia, censorship, democracy, Internet, internet filtering, Kevin Rudd, nocleanfeed, protest, Stephen Conroy | Comments (8)

No(uveau), Mum…

December 12, 2009 – 15:29

Dave Airlie, His Mum and... Linus?!

Ah, the life and times of a kernel hacker…

By Jeff Waugh | Posted in General | Tagged Dave Airlie, FLOSS, linus torvalds, Linux, nouveau | Comments (1)

links for 2009-11-16

November 16, 2009 – 19:01

Drupal, [WordPress] or Django? A Guide for Decision Makers

"Drupal represents a middle ground between framework and CMS that we’ve chosen not to take. Drupal is far more capable than a CMS like WordPress, but also much less flexible than a pure framework [like Django]." — Great post which reflects my current attitude towards WordPress, Drupal and Django/Rails.

(tags: django drupal wordpress php cms web opensource)

By Jeff Waugh | Posted in del.icio.us | Comments (2)

links for 2009-11-12

November 12, 2009 – 20:37

Ajax Autocomplete for jQuery

"Ajax Autocomplete for jQuery allows you to easily create autocomplete/autosuggest boxes for text input fields." — But this one is genuinely sweet.

(tags: jquery jquery-autocomplete ajax autocomplete javascript web)

By Jeff Waugh | Posted in del.icio.us | Comments (0)

WotD: Trollumnist

November 5, 2009 – 16:48

It used to be that to get your own column in a broadsheet, you needed to add some value. Expertise, skill in interpreting social and political developments, or a distinguished history as a journalist were rewarded with a bit more space in the paper. There, you could spin out a longer-form piece analysing burning issues in a little more depth, or you could even act as an advocate for things that weren’t on the public’s radar.

As the newspaper business model heads south, though, we’ve been subjected to the rise of what we might christen the “trollumnist” — the writer who simply “trolls” in a multichannel, multimedia environment.

— “If I Make You Angry Enough, Maybe You’ll Keep Reading” by Jason Wilson in New Matilda

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to the opinion pages of flailing newspaper websites or soap opera US cable television opinion shows… consider the newer, online, journalism-lite outfits which employ trollumnists to crank up page views and ad impressions.

It’s a terrifying media strategy: Find a niche — perhaps even an entire community, with all the politics and tragedy, highs and lows that entails — choose some regular targets for fæces-flinging, troll the living fuck out of them, and reap the blood money reward.

I’m sure my friends in various tech and politics communities will find this word instantly useful. A wonderful addition to the vocabulary for those fighting the good fight against fear, uncertainty, doubt, lies and bile.

By Jeff Waugh | Posted in Word of the Day | Tagged glenn beck, media, miranda devine, newspapers, roy schestowitz, rush limbaugh, sam varghese, trollumnist, vexnews | Comments (6)

Sexism, metaphor, whimsy and caprice

October 7, 2009 – 17:17

It’s difficult to recall the last time I laughed out loud when reading an Ubuntu changelog entry. Please direct any questions or comments you may have to the Department of Metaphor.

hunspell-en-us (20070829-2ubuntu4) karmic; urgency=low

  * debian/extrawords.txt: added "misandry" and "misandrist" (LP: #436145)

 -- Mackenzie Morgan   Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:38:32 -0400

By Jeff Waugh | Posted in Asides | Tagged karmic, misandrist, misandry, spelling, Ubuntu | Comments (13)

QotD: John Lennon

September 10, 2009 – 22:00

No. No musicals. I loathe musicals. I never did have a plan for doing one. My cousin made me sit through some fucking musical twice. I just hate them. They bore me stiff. I think they’re just horrible. Even Hair. And they’re always lousy music.

— John Lennon, from The Lost Interviews by Ray Connolly

By Jeff Waugh | Posted in Quote of the Day | Tagged beatles, interview, john lennon, music, musicals, ray connolly | Comments (6)

QotD: Guy Rundle

July 23, 2009 – 14:01

The whole thing shows that if you have a basic contempt for the idea of government — that you wanted it to be small enough to “get it in the bathtub and drown it” — then it will come back at with you with failure that threatens the very basis of orderly life itself. California’s getting a lesson in that.

— Guy Rundle in Crikey: What’s happened to the once great state of California?

By Jeff Waugh | Posted in Quote of the Day | Tagged Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, conservatism, Crikey, government, guy rundle, USA | Comments (4)

Watching nginx upstreams with collectd

July 22, 2009 – 21:22

Already happy with nginx in front of Apache for a number of sites, I decided it was time to start testing nginx/fastcgi on my personal server (the serial crash test dummy of my web operations). The only problem: I have yet to find a sensible method of grabbing useful runtime information from the PHP fastcgi process itself, and if you can’t sensibly watch it, you can’t sensibly deploy it.

So for now, instead of watching the PHP fastcgi process directly, I’m tracking its performance and usage from nginx’s perspective. You can log all kinds of data about upstream performance with nginx:

log_format upstream '$remote_addr - - [$time_local] "$request" $status '
    'upstream $upstream_response_time request $request_time '
    '[for $host via $upstream_addr]';

Then we log to a central upstream.log file from every location block which includes a fastcgi_pass parameter. For example:

location ~ \.php$ {
    include  fastcgi_params;
    access_log  /var/log/nginx/upstream.log  upstream;
    fastcgi_pass  fcgi_php;
    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $wordpress_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}

Now we know how many requests the PHP fastcgi process is handling, and how quickly it’s doing so. collectd’s tail plugin can watch this log file…

<Plugin tail>
  <File "/var/log/nginx/upstream.log">
  Instance "nginx"
    <Match>
      Regex ".*"
      DSType "CounterInc"
      Type counter
      Instance "requests"
    </Match>
    <Match>
      Regex " upstream ([0-9.]*) "
      DSType GaugeAverage
      Type delay
      Instance "upstream"
    </Match>
  </File>
</Plugin>

… and turn it into something readable. First, the number of requests per second (which I only started watching at 14:30 this afternoon), then the delay for each request:

nginx Upstream Requests

nginx Upstream Response

(Relatively boring statistics here, as it’s only monitoring the dynamic processing of my personal sites.)

Combining nginx’s flexible logging and collectd’s tail plugin makes it pretty easy to watch the usage and performance of whatever you’re running behind nginx, even if you can’t instrument the application itself.

… and thus far, I’m pretty happy with the performance, reliability and resource usage of nginx in front of PHP in fastcgi mode.