On the Unfair Distribution of Capital (by alaric)

Oh, dear God, I'm starting to sound like an early-twentieth-century economist with these post titles.

Right, anyway. One of the criticisms that's been levelled at Bitcoin is that the early miners, and speculators who rushed in and bought them cheaply, will end up filthy rich if it succeeds and a bitcoin reaches its potential value of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

Why should people who were lucky / foolish enough to rush in at the beginning be rewarded quite so handsomely, while children are starving in the slums of South London?

This is an interesting question indeed.

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Understanding Bitcoin Market Depth (by alaric)

A central part of the Bitcoin economy has been the formation of foreign currency exchange markets, where you can trade your bitcoins for US dollars, Euros, pounds Sterling, or many other currencies.

These things are important, because:

1. They let people transfer their money from the fiat economy into the Bitcoin economy, allowing it to grow.
2. They let people transfer their money out again, making Bitcoin a safer store of value; you're not stuck with it when you want to buy something that can't be bought with bitcoins.
3. They let us measure the "current value" of a bitcoin (to some approximation), thus making it easier to price things in bitcoins
4. They provide endless pretty graphs and statistics to look at.

However, one particular aspect of "the markets" that is commonly not understood is what is known as "market depth", so I'm going to give a quick introduction to how the markets work to lay the foundations, then dive into what the market depth is all about.

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Growing a Bitcoin Economy (by alaric)

Currently, there's lots of interest in Bitcoin as a speculative investment, driven by the meteoritic rise in its value this year.

However, to make Bitcoin actually do what it's capable of - working as an international Internet currency for free trade - we need to back that up with a vibrant economy in Bitcoin itself, rather than just trading it to and from ordinary currencies on exchanges.

This economy should be composed of many kinds of activity, all reinforcing each other and together making bitcoins more and more useful.

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Fooling Around With Poetry and What Not (by sarah)

April the 1st and the first thing that happened was Youtube suggested that they were closing down youtube as a five year competition was over to choose the best video in the world. I didn't watch very much of the video and quickly moved on.

Second thing to happen was I saw people lambasting others for pulling the 'I'm expecting/pregnant' joke on Facebook updates.

Third thing that happened was that I decided to hide until 12 when traditionally you stop the April Fool pranks otherwise they are said to back fire. Instead I have been preparing myself for more poetry madness!

NaPoWriMo 🙂

I am doing visual poetry books this time - 30 of them 🙂 And generally going to be spending 30 hrs this month on poetry (not that hard as I am going to be taking part in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival anyway!).

Anyway there will be more exercises and writing inspiration and how to on the WoPoWriMo site and here is the NaPoWriMo site for those interested.

A Style A Voice A Choice (by sarah)

Something I forgot to mention in my previous post about the Art Exhibition was that people were surprised at how much of it was mine with comments such as, 'I would never have thought those pieces were by the same artist' and 'wow that's a lot of variation in style.'

People who actually know me could pick out which ones weren't mine with the comment that there was something me about all my pictures. It was mainly the fractals that gave them a pause for thought with, 'They aren't yours are they?' No they were Alaric's - my husbands but I chose the selection and no they weren't digital renders of my 'fractal style drawings' though that mistake was understandable.

Again I am against the concept that you should choose one specific thing to be your style at least for a couple of years at a time. People expect artists to have phases what they don't seem to be able to cope with is someone who takes photos in the morning, draws in felt pen in the afternoon and knits in the evening and then does painting at the weekends or someone who thinks that mediums and styles are something to understand and learn to add to a tool box of skills.

I love mixing things up as well.

And it is not just with the visual arts or the crafting it is my writing as well. It is hard to know what to push sometimes with me writing novels, short stories, flash fiction, essays, articles, how to stuff and some for adults and some for kids and kids groups in different ages and some of it needs my art and some of it doesn't. And even within something like poetry I have several different types I write from political, to comedic to kids to sci-tech to gothic and abstract.

I love brining visuals and audio into these creations making them something multi media that I'm not sure there is a word for yet.

People who read alot of my stuff again say they can hear my voice in it all but many coming to it for the first time find it hard to connect me to such a lot of 'voices' and this makes it hard for them to recognise me.

Now people in the publishing and arts world and science for that matter have always told me I have to choice to get anything done. And I can see why but I am not like this because I haven't thought about the consequences - I made a choice and that was to be ME and me is a person who likes and is interested in a lot of stuff and who has found it all feeds off of everything else.

I get a new skill it may get a bit rusty but it is easy enough to polish it up again if I need it or want to mix it with something else I now have.

And because I do all of these things I find myself being asked to do lots of strange and lovely and exiting things. Stuff that I wouldn't have been ended up doing if I'd focused on one area.

In the last fortnight I have been described as someone who sits on the divide between art and science and who is a brilliant crafter and a teacher and I sing as well. Such glowing praise made me blush and hide behind my camera to take more photos. A poet and writer, an artist, a knitter and baker and a craft maker.

Then I had a moment when having had a lovely rejection, a not so lovely one and an acceptance with editing and one without of poems and someone I respect as poet tells me I am an Experimental Poet - and I thought YES! that's it isn't it?

My voice, my style is experimental that's my choice.

Now all I have to do is deal with the fact that not everybody is nice about achievement and some feel I am too prolific or a hack or any of a number of other things.