Montagenik has a new follower!

Welcome new follower to montagenik! At the moment I am responding to people who dm'd and tweeted me - and to some email back up... I also need to revise my options P/L sheet as I had to return some profits yesterday when the market suffered a little down swing. (This actually necessitated an early exit from the mHealth summit for me - so I could manage a margin warning. It is not as bad as it seems, but some options moved into the money and some some of out of the money options had big swings in Mark to market P/L that affected my margin. I will live to trade another day. go over to my super secret finance blog to read more...


On to saving the world. Thursday and Friday was the mHealth summit. It was an incredible opportunity to speak with people working in all areas of mHealth, from tracking smokers in the US to developing telescopic additions to phone cameras for telemedicine. The big question is, is in the developing world how to pay for this


better answers to questions - these are some questions that people asked that I gave half baked answers to - here are better answers

1)Why dont you use google sms... RapidSMS (or other roll your own gateway solutions) let you work in any country with any local telecom. I dont think I could have used google sms in Malawi. For us deployment google sms might be ideal. In the us, I have worked with celltrust for developing an SMS service for product validation (eg are you really drinking evian, tropicana, popov vodka). This is a paid service. I think using google sms is a viable solution though. I have no idea how well the service works, so I cannot speak to it. However, it is nice to be able to have your own sms gateway for testing and that is what rapidsms and frontlinesms lets you do.


2) What IVR solutions have you used. I could not think of anything because I was super shot and in SMS mode, but here are some IVR solutions I have worked with (not tried google yet).
some examples
cloudvox
ribbit - you have to use actionscript/flash/flex and/or do some wack AJAX work around


3) can you make money with this stuff?
For mhealth surveillance in the developing world - No.
However I do think there is a market for mHealth surveillance in the developed world. Say for example I want to collect data on a variety of vitals

I have to go take dog to vet - must respond to other questions later

Montagenik goes to DC

As I was sitting outside Union station I gazed up at the symmetric of the neo-classical architecture of Union station (and really DC) - and I thought what an ambitious project the USA is. I hope it succeeds. In the blink of an eye I saw a sort of post apocalytptic DC with broken columns and sooty statues. But that was only in my minds eye, not in reality.

I made my way to the World Bank for drinks and mingling at the end of the mHealth policy sessions. Tomorrow is the NIH mHealth summit. I will be talking about some of the work that I did in Malawi. I am very excited to hear what other people are doing in the mobile health space. I just was speaking with someone about authenticating perscription drugs. He told me that 80% of drugs in Nigeria (or Lagos I forget) are counterfeit!!!! That is truly insane. Where is the inflection point, where can you do the most damage control. His company is working on a smart phone verification - similar to the Salta solution, Lian, Breu and I discussed a year and a half ago. However, his solution is a bit more elegant. Rather than a key solution, he just has a scratch off label with a secret code. Good idea!

When distributing bed nets in Nigeria (I think) there was a similar problem with supply chain management. Although, in this case, the problem is with missing bednets, not with counterfeit bednets. The solution is, that at each stage of the supply chain you log how many bednets you have. That way you can track where in the supply chain you are losing the most bed nets.

Now both of these, are social problem, or human problems, although we can use technology as a monitoring agent - to let us know when human processes go ary.

I was also recently reading up on microfinance. I am very interested in expanding mobile technology, and leveraging ecurrencies like mPesa, to set up microfinance, or microloan, operations, and using the social networking enabled by these technologies to build communities around collectives. Again, in my readings, the technology is not really a solution - it is an enabler, an extension of the senses. The technology is not a solution, rather we must get the correct processes in place to enable microfinance, and let technology extend our reach.

This may now sound like drivel. It is because I need to analyze my portfolio after today's apple and after hours fslr performance - ugh - I will be selling calls I think

Server Stuff

So I started migrating to rackspace. A server solution that uses cloud computing. The initial impetus was that I was disatisfied with the django and ruby solutions available for media temple (they are super expensive), and I cannot install various software packages that I want to use in my projects - like csound and pygame.

The potential for rackspace is huge. I get a server that I can install any software on for a minimum of 10 bucks a month. To put this in perspective, in order for me to run django on media temple I need to pay 20 bucks a month. AND I cant even install my own software or my own django server (for example if I want to use cherrypy or apache rather than their serving solution).

Mediatemple temple does let me have my own box for like 50-100 bucks a month -but I dont feel like forking over that sort of cash for a project that is not generating cashflow.

However, I did not realize that I would have to build EVERYTHING from scratch. This is very cool - but it means that it will take a bit longer than I anticipated to set everything up. And I am not a pro unix/web admin so - I really dont think I should be running anything but beta sites on this server (at first).

So... I will keep my media temple account - remove media temple django containers and move projects to media temple from rackspace as they leave beta. This means I will also do email hosting through mediatemple.

That is it!
This morning I am updating changprojects website, I am creating yet another blog - for chang projects - and I am waiting for my new changproject business cards to arrive - yippee

Overpopulation and Kant

The moral imperative - adopt a maxim and if you can universalize this maxim -then it becomes a moral imperative. Something like that.

This was a thought I had over the weekend while admiring the architecture of Mies and Rem at IIT in Chicago.

procreation and the environment

basically the earth is suffering from a depletion of resources, perhaps we are procreating too much...

if i make it a moral imperative not to have children - i adopt it and everyone else will adopt it - then humanity will cease to exists.
So obviously this is not ethical according to Kant.

but if i have children, and so everyone has children- then we will have overpopulation - again bad .

Number. So we need to include numbers. it is not an either/or question but an amount question. How many children is it ethical for one person to have according to Kant's moral imperative.

Perhaps every person who wants can procreate 1 person - to keep population constant - or reduce it a bit.

This is one of the reasons we need to empower women in developing countries - educated women engage in family planning -
then we wont have to resort to Kant

Some links for the day:
http://www.killerstartups.com/
http://www.gurufocus.com/
http://www.thevalve.org/

In the cloud

Here I am with working while my boys sleep - Lian and Otto. I am broadening my musical horizons by listening to insound radio.
I am enjoying some Volcano Choir - which I just googled and is apparently according to Pitchfork side project of Justin Vernon (Bon Iver). I like Bon Iver - saw him/it in concert a few months ago. However I do think that indie music needs more of a spectacle - perhaps dancing robots?

Lian just woke up (because he set his alarm and it went off) and he told me to shut down my music! I am allowed no fun!

Well - Lian told me to shut everything down just in time, because mysql just finished installing on my cloud server. I really am not a fan of mysql. I prefer sqllite or just flat files. Relational database (and databases in general) are overused.

I hope I remember the password I set for mysql daemon... that reminds me - I think I need to install cron!!!
I have decided to run my webservers using cherrypy because apache is bloated. I am in the midst of installing sendmail - and I am considering hosting my mail in the cloud as well!

There really needs to be a lamp install script - just as amazon has EC2 instances with different defaults. It is a massive pain to try and remember all the basic lamp apps I need. I just had to install make for goodness sakes.

This evening I had a lovely Tai Chi class, and reconnected with EM Cioran on the subway to and fro TC (as well as some TC buddies who gave me day trading tips - thanks Riz - I cant use them on Lian's account tho - he has forbidden me from trading bank stocks)

I am loving EM Cioran - the Temptation to Exist. He is expressing all these end of empire thoughts about Europe that people are now expressing about America. The funny thing is that he thought the Tartars would win the cold war - oops.

What I find most interesting, aside from a number of quotable tidbits, is his discussion of the impossibility of a westerner to adopt eastern philosophy. The philosophy of Zen, the void, inaction. That inaction in the west is different from inaction in the east. Why - I am not sure - I am still reading the book after all - however it has something to do with the western conception of thinking and action. That all thoughts must lead to an action. Westerners are held captive my phenomena. (I like that thought) It also has something to do with protocol and civilization and rarification. I will update you all more when I finish reading The temptation to exist.

i am back on theory - next up -rereading Foucault the archaeology of things. I need to get back to the nexus of philosophy and anthropology.

Has it really been two days since I blogged?

I started monday by making a list - I made a list on paper and hope to transfer it to the internet - Remember the Milk. I would love to then display my remember the milk to do lists on my blog. I wonder if I can create a list app using the remember the milk api. I think RTM is super powerful and could become the list equivalent of twitter. But are people not into top 10 lists anymore.

in the absence of api list linking I will reproduce for you below my list of things to do today:


move changprojects.com to rackspace cloud hosting
set up twitter account for changprojects

start blogging at quantitativebitch.blogspot.com - I am hoping this will be a record of my trading activity
set up twitter account for quantitativebitch

take dog on log walk - need a new book to read while I chill with dog at band shell - I have decided to put down Ka - although poetic and interesting- I think it suffers from no editing .

Check up on Malawi RapidSMS stuff
Pull in Claude's Rapidsms documentation - and make sure cron runs properly - on the rackserver

Set up prelim wesbsite for changprojects - (the notes are in the end of my temptation to exist book - i think)

Look at Margie's dvds for dance documentary

set up github for fiction/novel project

continue work on inventory tracking project

Meet with adam clark


figure out when I am going to Morningside heights and see Jess and her baby then

email followup with people I have not followed up with.

Now we get into things I will probably not do today:

move doeraetweet to rackspace and set up csound
move blacklisttweet and other tweet app to rackspace
finish the singularity song on csound - figure out why pd sucks so much
perhaps write rapidsms h1n1 vaccination app
finish interactive brokers options scanner
finish logging footage for Naomi,Alyssa,Joelle,Meredith Barcelona

The good news is I have at least finished one thing for today! blogging at montagenik!
Maybe I will read poetry when I walk the dog today

Chicago (sang musically like sinatra)

I am writing this in Argo Tea shop in downtown chicago - the loop. I do love Chicago. In many ways it is less oppressive than new york. I am not on my A game this morning. Too much wine from wine parings that Lian and I had at Alinea last night. The molecular gastronomy was divine - and was payed for by my amazon puts - thank you amazon for making money this quarter.

This morning I awoke to a rapidsms documentation email. The current documentation is crap and a place holder. Claude, a rapidsms developer, wrote his own documentation. I hope he merges it with the github master so that my script pulls it and publishes it on the website.

Sometimes my anti social nature makes me wonder why I want to work on collaborative software projects - but then when someone like Claude comes along and does something useful, you see why.

Paul and I may embark on yet another doc - this will make 3 in the hopper. This one is partially inspired by Margaret Beals, an improv dancer and New York Character. I think we should do a podcast called New York Characters. Paul also had a brilliant idea - but I cannot reveal it here - it is too brilliant. But it is somewhat analogous to Balzac's Human Comedy. Margaret is a fantastic lady and real character - I have been watching some of her old improv dance dvds. That is fun. I know nothing about dance, I am not very kinetic or physical - but I would love to learn more.