I will probably end up changing the hair to be more brownish in color. Hope to paint more during the week. C ya.

Blender 2.5 Sequence Editor Tutorial

Enjoy and C ya.

Petition and Summary of Story

A former college posted this on her facebook site along with her letter to the governor:

Dear Govenor John R. Kasich,

I am writing to you because I am outraged to discover how Kelley Williams-Bolar has been treated by both Ohio’s educational system and then by Ohio’s legal system. I feel that she (and… her father) have been treated unfairly and both deserve full pardons. An apology would probably be appropriate as well.

In short, I don’t feel that she has defrauded your educational system, I feel that she has exposed it.

I, too, feel that Ms. Williams-Bolar should be made an example, but probably not in the manner your judge was thinking. I am happy to see that she is demonstrating to the nation the monstrous conditions of both your educational system and your legal system.

I have faith that you are a govenor of good conscience and that you will find it in your heart to have compassion on the good intentions of this mother. With regards to the information I have read, I don’t feel that she is a felon to be “marked” for the duration of her life. I feel that she a resourceful and caring mother…and she is my hero.

It’s amazing because I’ve been reading people’s comments’ from several different articles about the situation, and they all seem to be uniformly horrified and angry. They all also seem to be asking the right kind of questions, which seem to have slipped the judges mind. Things like “What kind of condition is the school in that the mother would be motivated to take her kids to another district?”. Do a quick Google search for yourself and you will see the same kind of things poping up all over the place.

Many are asking that we all write to Govenor of Ohio, Kiash G abou this and that we sign a petition asking for her pardon. Following the actions of my former college, I have done just that. I also ask that others reading this take the 5-10 minutes out of their day to do the same. The more voices we have in expressing our frustration with the situation, the more likely we are to get a more appropriate resolutions.

Below are the links you will need to express yourself:

Petition To Sign

Send a letter to Governor of Ohio: John Kasich

Interview with Dr Boyce Watson

Please take the time to fill out the letter. Thank you.

Hello Governor John Kasich,

I am writing to you as a disappointed person who has just read about a sentencing of a convicted criminal in your state of Ohio. If you can please read the article here:

Link to Petition

This is about Kelly Williams-Bolar who was sentenced with 10 days in jail and 3 years of probation for having her children attend the wrong school? I could not believe it when I read the full article. Now I will state that the woman was guilty of falsely entering into the public record that her children lived in one school district when in fact they did not, however that does not mean that the sentence fit the crime.

Just to put things in perspective:

The state of Arizona has no tolerance policy for people driving under the influence. Having a personal friend who had to go through the process of being convicted of this crime, he got about the same type of sentence for his crime. Looking at the two activities of fraud vs driving under the influence I can see how a 10 day term in jail, with fines, and probation would be applicable in an activity like drunk driving, which could potentially put other people’s lives in jeopardy. However, lying on a public record about where your children live and then getting the same type of sentence as someone who is convicted of drunk driving? This is absolutely unjustified, uncalled for, and unacceptable by any means. There is no justification at all for this kind of sentence especially when one considers that Ms. Williams-Bolar does NOT have a criminal record. Judge Patricia Cosgrove was completely out of line for issuing this sentence and should have her professional credibility questioned. I hope that she along with your office begins to understand why this sentence is extreme and does not fit the crime.

I apologize for using such strong language but again this is unacceptable. Especially in a time when we see so many examples of convicted corporate criminals who have defrauded not only the government, but also the general public of millions of dollars. Yet we rarely see appropriate sentences being handed to them in response to their crimes.

I am asking, as are many others in the United States, that you fully pardon Kelly Williams-Bolar. I will also be asking that everyone I know to sign the petition on getting appropriate and fair action for Ms. Williams-Bolar. I will also be asking that they write a letter to your office expressing their opinions about the situation. I am positing the article of the story and the petition my blog, my Facebook, and emailing it to everyone in my address. I will be advocating the recipients of these notices do the same thing. As an elected official I hoping that you use the powers and ability given to you by the public to rectify this situation. Thank you for your time and efforts

Sincerely a concerned citizen,

Ronald A. Bravo

Thank you for your time.

Check out the links below:

LA Times – Gun Control

CNN – Political Language Proposed Legislation

The second link is the one that concerns me the most. As the first paragraph of the story reads:

“Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pennsylvania, said he will introduce legislation making it a federal crime for a person to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a Member of Congress or federal official.”

So essentially any language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence? My question is who gets to decide what is perceived as threatening and under what context? Because what I consider threatening may not be the same thing to the person standing next to me. People need to remember that before this incident putting targets on political opponents was not considered threatening. For example, as was posted on the Drudge Report site, “Obama: ‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun”.  This is not threatening language to me. However, taken out of context and placed in the mix of events from a few days ago, one would erroneously conclude that, yes it is inappropriate and threatening, and that “we all” need to tone down our rhetoric. Yet we see as Sarah Palin is harshly being criticized all over the net and on the news for having target signs on her site and talking about gun reloading. Even though in the past she’s mentioned being a proud gun owner as a way to connect to her constituents, usually Republican pro second amendment voters. I am by NO WAY a Palin supporter however, I do not think she is being treated properly and that much of what happened in Tucson Arizona is being taken out of context. Especially when being used to talk about things like proposing bills that make it a federal crime to use language perceived as threatening. I think to myself What is Freedom Speech again? And again I ask, who gets to decide what is perceived as threatening and under what context?

Now of course it is important to understand that just because a bill is proposed, does not mean that it will automatically be made into a law. However, I posted the two links above so that people can begin to look into the attempts by many individuals “on both sides of the political isle” to take this tragedy and further political aims. That’s wrong. So how do we navigate this sea of information, misinformation, good intent, and bad intent? Well, the first thing is to arm yourself with information and try to always remember CONTEXT. Try and keep things in perspective when some one says we should do this or that. Get out there and start using Google. Start using your reading skills and read through much of this stuff. If you don’t like reading then search youtube.com and find all the video postings that independent sources have made regarding this and several other issues.

Another unfortunate thing that is coming out of this incident is the implication that an individual that could be discussing the same types of ideas and subjects that were found on the shooter’s youtube page could make a person suspect to have violent outbursts. Personally thinking like that is slippery slope. Some of the topics that the shooter followed were real issues like the relationship between the Federal Reserve and the American financial system, and what is the meaning of a currency like the US dollar that is not backed by any kind of real asset? These and many more issues are real issues and topics being discussed and debated by level headed non-violent people on both sides of the isle. I just hope that people openly discussing these kinds of things do not get labeled as potential threats or become guilty by association. Especially when one considers this tragedy and it political themes in a context where political descent amongst the public is rising, as we see an erosion the middle class of the US, unemployment is on the rise, and we have complete financial lawlessness within our major banks and financial institutions. So under that context one can understand why people are frustrated and angry. And the anger and frustration of level headed people who have not resorted to violence should not be mixed in with an individual who has simply because they share the same views. If that was the case, I could say that all Republicans think invading countries and imposing Democracy is an effective foreign policy, yet many Republicans I debate with do not believe this at all.

I also hope that as people begin to think a little deeper as to the repercussions and potential for abuse that exists for much of the proposed legislation coming out. They say that history can be a pretty good teacher. The interesting thing is that we don’t have to go back more than 10 years to see how tragic events can be used to further people’s political aims, and how after everything is said and done, those political ambitions do little to serve the General Welfare of the public. Just to name a few:

Note: Many of the links I provide here are from Wikipedia. Now I know Wikipedia is NOT the most un-biased source of information in the world. However, it does usually provide a decent context under which people can begin to understand a topic. It becomes a starting point. From there readers can begin searching for additional information on their own regarding a topic so that they may form their own opinions.

The Patriot Act: A law passed after the events of September 11^th under the claim of protecting Americans from terrorism. Interesting enough this law is more about secretly arresting, monitoring, and detaining American citizens than it is about protecting them. So much so that there are several states, municipalities, and cities that have passes resolutions not to uphold the patriot act. See them for yourself here:

http://www.bordc.org/resolutions.php

Warrantless Wiretapping: This was the idea that in order to protect the public more efficiently, the authorities needed the ability to be able to monitor and record many of our communications without a warrant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy

The Suspension or Circumvention of “Posse Comitatus”: This was a law passed by Congress in 1878 limiting the powers of the Federal government to use military troops to police the general public. This issue has been brought up several times in the mainstream media as it has been circumvented and amended in the wake of the Katrina disaster. However, many are beginning to look at the changes to this with suspicion and doubt especially seeing how the military has behaved itself down in the Gulf area during both the Katrina and BP Oil spill disasters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

Operation Iraqi Freedom: This one becomes an interesting topic because we have essentially spent billions of dollars committing the US Military into first a war, then an occupation, over what the public was told was a required action in order to prevent the accumulation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and prevent another 9/11. After defeating his army and occupying the territory for about 8 years now, there have been no weapons found. The government has even come out publicly admitting that there were never WMDs in Iraq. How then do we justify our presence and continued spending on Military arms and infrastructure especially during a time of economic difficulty in the country? These are question we all as a public will eventually have to face and answer honestly, without using cliche words like “Freedom”, “Democracy”, and “Taking out the Bad Guy”. From a simple cost analysis stand point we are maintaining an occupation force the American public and government can no longer afford or maintain. So when do we end it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

These are just to name a few. The list could go on and on. The problem we face is that these situations tragic events keep happening, and when they do, political ambitions and aims are used to persuade the public to agree with a specific policy or law that in the long runs turns out to work against us. The first two links that I posted regarding gun control and limiting political free speech are waters that we need to tread very carefully. We should be free to express opinions on political discontent especially now as the country goes through a series of events it has never encountered in it’s history. Criticizing leadership is natural and should be welcome. If not, well then we might as well be living in Germany 1942.

C ya.

Well the Tree Planting event on April 25th was a huge success. Here are more pictures for all to see.

More Pictures

Thanks to Megyn Scott for sending me the images.

AZHS YouTube Channel

I should have posted this a while back but Arizona Homegrown Solutions now has it’s own YouTube Channel:

AZHS YouTube Channel

The goal will be to get more videos up there on sustainability and the groups progress in the valley as time goes on.

http://www.ronbravo.com/mytoolbox/source

IMPORTANT NOTE: I developed this software using the Mozilla Firefox Internet Browser because it complies with webstandards more than Internet Explorer and it has better development tools. This means some of the myToolBox features may not work in Internet Explorer. I am assuming that the tools should work fine in the Safari or Opera browsers as well, but since I have not tested this I cannot confirm it. I just know that Internet Explorer will probably not work. This does not mean Internet Explorer will never be supported it just means that it is currently a pain in the ass to work with and so I’m holding off doing anything with it.

Once you’re on the myToolbox site just click on one of the tool names and the tool should run. Below I give a little bit of a description about them.

Tabula Terra

This is a simple journal entry system to allow people to enter in different conditions for the day while they were in their garden. This is Jill’s idea so I will be working with her to try and flesh this out more. At the moment it is pretty much a clone of the functionality provided by the Seeds of Change Garden Planner. Ours is a little more sterile than theirs but I imagine as development moves on Tabula Terra will start to look a lot nicer.

Currently anyone can enter in a journal and mess around with it. Once user accounts get up and running we will be able to allow the journals to be organized more by an individual’s account. I also plan on allowing for charts to be generated so that we can get a visual representation of a lot of the data users will be putting in. I know that Jen has begun tracking her harvest at the end of the month and those are the kinds of things I’m hoping can get entered into the database(See Jen that’s the surprise I was talking to you about).

Some of the ideas Jill has thrown around are things like getting a nice database going of information on what people are planting, what their weather is like, and anything else related to growing food in our region. Hopefully in a year or so we will have enough data to compile and print for people to use. So there is a lot we can do with this.

Wiki Reader

This is a wiki application. Even though there is a ton of wiki software out there, many of them are pretty complicated. Most do not have the techno junk stripped out so that normal people can just jump right in and start creating documents. The few that I did like for easy of use required a subscription. No way. We need a free solution, and since I could not find what I think would be best for the group I’m hoping to create something that will. Now I will admit I have no idea how hard or easy creating wiki software is, but I figure we have some time before having a wiki up for AZHS is essential. In the meantime I will try and throw something together and see what comes out. Mostly though I’m using this as an excuse to practice my software development skills and gain a little more experience. So that in the future if AZHS does need some specific tool that does not exists I may be able to provide an option.

So that’s the myToolBox package in a nutshell. It’s all been license under the free, as in freedom not beer, license known as the GNU AGPL version 3. I’m also using several 3rd party souce code libraries to help take care of some of the heavy lifting in the development of this software. The big idea being that the source code stays open for any community to update, maintain, and modify how they see fit. Providing them with the freedom to do what they want with the software hence the phrase, free as freedom not beer. Of course the development community at the moment is only made up of one person, me, but I hope that will change in the future. So give it a spin and post back any feedback or suggestions you might have. As I said these tools are in very early stage so don’t expect much yet. Give it time and they will grow.

So another nice Citrus Glean hosted by Arizona Homegrown Solutions.

We were getting overwhelmed by the amount of children coming in and making seedballs. I’m just glad I’m not the only one who likes to play in dirts. Kids are cool. They were all so good at listening and really focused. We even had one girl who appeared who stayed for a few rounds of making seeds. Parents seemed to get a kick out of it to and enjoyed watching their children making a mess for a good cause. I’m surprised that some of them didn’t initially get that the balls are supposed to sprout life. Some would ask if a plant would grow or if you told them that “Hey, you may see a little plant in a few weeks…”, their eyes would light up with excitement and anticipation. It really seemed like they wanted to see this work. One little girl even thought that the bigger she made her ball the bigger the plant would be. Not quite the way it works but Jen said she could try it and see what would happen. Great stuff. This was the first public PPG event I’ve been to that was geared specifically towards children and I loved it. We need to do more like them.