OffSetLab

When I got into drawing a few years ago I found that I had a serious discipline problem when doing stuff on my own. In a way, I still have it. Back then I tried to tackle it by enrolling a formal art school, thinking that giving money for it would force me to keep up the pace, and while it did just that for the duration, the momentum didn't exactly carry over beyond school, and the classes did not live up to my expectations as they relied too much on individual effort to emulate and not enough on transparently explaining the techniques.

I did a whole lot there, but kept feeling it was not enough, and, seeing as how I was a total beginner, I sucked and felt I wasn't progressing fast enough.

The works I did back then were posted here, on the old web, and I still have them on me. We mostly did charcoal techniques and I took photos every time.

Two years ago (has it been that much?) I started drawing (again) every day on paper. I brought those sketches with me here in Ireland and have since scanned them, although the quality is what it is and not all of them are presentable because of it. I don't have a scanner so I was at the mercy of the girl working at the photocopying service. I kept this up a couple of months, but life intervened, I suppose. Work obligations intensified, which ate up both my time and energy, and then I changed jobs and had to deal with that and moving to another country... and now I am here and trying again.

I bought myself a Wacom graphics tablet, a Cintiq model, to do art digitally (yet again), but getting back into it is slow. So I've decided that the time for half measures has passed and tasked myself with drawing or painting every single day. Vesna got me a small sketchbook for when I'm not near the PC using the tablet and I challenged myself with a daily sketch as well. My current software combination is GIMP and Corel Painter. I started to doodle two weeks ago so it tied in nicely. Since I'll probably have some insights along the way, I'll try to assemble them in tips for myself in the future when I forget (I will definitely forget), or for whomever finds them useful. In a way I intend to document the process of learning to do art. I'll be posting my discoveries here so you can expect that kind of articles as well.

I have an old DeviantArt account that has been collecting dust for some time now so I decided that I'll keep updating it and not just start over. On a side note, DeviantArt uses the oEmbed API and Vesna did her best to get the results to display here. I had to provide her with an updated JSON list of the latest artwork that I'm parsing on the server with a simple cron job. We have our fingers crossed that this time the drawing and painting will kick off. You can see it displayed here, but mostly on the DeviantArt profile.

The basic thing someone can do to contribute in this society is to donate from the resources at their disposal, be it money, goods or skills in your free time. This behaviour can easily be abstracted into three categories depending on the involvement: either you are not contributing voluntarily at all, you are contributing passively or you're contributing actively.

The first category is the path of least resistance because the society will ultimately force the individual to contribute in some manner. The most common way is through taxation and state required contributions, but that's not what I want this post to be about. I find the second category interesting as it allows people to easily take part without affecting their everyday lives. The third one involves a lot of dedication and can verge into activism.

Since I'm coming from a software background, I am familiar with the practice of writing code and releasing it as open source. It doesn't have to be a full-fledged application or a library. It can also be just a snippet of code someone might find useful. This is common to the software development culture and the Internet behaves like a catalyst of this phenomenon.

A particular type of active contribution to the society is called citizen science. It involves any non-professionals who are willing to make a contribution to science. The common areas in which one can participate in this way are those which require data accumulation or processing which is not automated or cannot yet be automated, such as taxonomy of things like galaxies, or monitoring and recording populations of wild animals, like birds for example, which is important for biodiversity. Zooniverse is an example of a collection of such projects, but they are not the only ones out there.

If you're a professional, consider publishing your work under open, permissive licenses like Creative Commons. They are expanding to science as well and even had a separate project for this called Science Commons.

Open access can also augment the progress of knowledge. I remember when I was a student, I wanted to read a paper on one particular signal-processing algorithm that no applications were using, but I had no money to buy access to it and so I've never learned it or tried to implement it. This limitation can be very frustrating.

On the other side of the same spectrum stands crowdsourcing, which allows users to participate in a project without investing the significant effort required to be a citizen scientist. A famous example of this is the reCAPTCHA robot checking. While performing optical character recognition to digitize books, machines run into words they cannot read. These words are assembled and presented to the user alongside a word that a machine can read (a control word) so as to verify whether the user is a web robot or not. As multiple users try to decipher the word, the most frequent answer is adopted as the solution in the digitization process. This method has expanded to annotating images and creating datasets for the natural language processing and similar areas.

Other examples of crowdsourcing use people or their technology in the role of a sensor. NOAA maintains CrowdMag applications that take the magnetic sensor data and GPS coordinates from smartphones. They use that data to approximate the Earth's magnetic field and correlate it with the data coming from the monitoring space satellites.

Big companies like Google can also use smartphone data to calculate the likelihood of traffic jams, the density of cars and people, the elevation of the terrain, the words people use and similar things to make their services (maps, keyboard input, spam filter, search) better. However, this type of collaboration raises concerns about how effective their privacy policies are. If they can connect particular data with a certain person, they can map habits, movement and social relations if they want, and we cannot know who can get access to that data. Poke this enough and you can find the dirty underbelly of data sharing.

Without going into too much detail, there are, of course, ways to avoid compromising one's privacy. One might use the TOR network to hide their internet traffic, use alternate DNS providers and abstain from social services like Facebook, or even go so far to use the alternatives like Diaspora. With a strong enough internet connection somewhere, you can also host a TOR node that is used in TOR traffic if you know what you're doing.

Depending on how powerful your computer is, you can also set it up for grid computing. The idea here is to use your CPU and GPU as a part of a big grid that executes meaningful calculations of various scientific data. BOINC project serves as a platform for this endeavour and your machine or smartphone can crunch numbers for it. You get the data from the Internet, perform calculations with it and return the results. The types of BOINC projects range from protein folding simulations, epidemics research to the famous SETI@home. You only need to set up BOINC once for it to be automated and select the projects you want your machine to participate in. Points are awarded for contributing if you need this to be somehow gamified.

A more traditional way to go about contributing would definitely be simply to donate money, for example through funding of International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and similar organizations. Even buying consumerist products can have the added benefit of trickling money down to those who require it. For example, you can buy digital goods like video games, eBooks and comic books from organizations like Humble Bundle and chose to give your money to charity as well.

Various funds exist to get the resources for a certain cause, but it is very important that one knows where they're giving their money. Ultimately, you can always give that spare coin in your pocket to a homeless person you pass by on the street and be certain that it will alleviate at least the tiniest bit of human suffering. Don't get me wrong, we should invest effort into addressing the issues underlying the homelessness and poverty, but until that happens it's good to know that we can at least make sure that somebody has a meal to eat and clothes to put on.

If you're healthy, you can also donate blood, platelets, bone marrow and even organs. The donated blood has a short shelf life and a steady supply has to be maintained, and as far as organs are concerned, you might want to apply for a donor card or at least make it clear to your closest of kin that you'd be willing to donate in case of untimely death. Short of dying and going all the way, you can donate a kidney to a relative in need and live.

Considering what little time we do have, we can give of it as well for a good cause by volunteering in various organizations or even organizing things independently. A food-not-bombs event is easily put in place, it sends a universally positive message and brings the neighbourhood together. You can also volunteer at clinics, schools, charities, homes and canteens for the homeless, animal shelters, or simply join a protest or sign a petition to make your support for a cause corporeal.

There are numerous things we can do to become more conscientious community members: learn a sign language, train for a fire-fighter, complete a first aid course, but you don't have to acquire new skills to help. Any kind of skill can be utilized for the betterment of the society. No matter if you're a software developer, a carpenter or a committed advocate of a cause, working from your backyard or involving yourself in institution-level efforts.

According to FAO, 1.3 billion tonnes of food is thrown away each year and recently France has passed a law that every supermarket has to donate the food that is about to expire instead of throwing it away. They're hoping for the EU to follow.

Change happens cumulatively as an emergent consequence of divergent efforts. A critical mass of people working independently towards a better society can nudge it the right direction, eliminate or at least alleviate the problems we are facing.

People commonly make mistakes with diet categories. For instance, vegetarians are often believed to eat fish which is not true at all. This happens because vegetarians usually say that they don't eat meat, but some people don't consider fish to be meat. It would be clearer to say that they don't eat animals. If we were to categorize people based on what they ate, we could fit them into the following crudish, definitely not-all encompassing list:

Omnivores

eat everything

Pesceterians

don't eat animals except seafood

Vegetarians

don't eat animals at all

Vegans

don't eat animals or animal products such as eggs, dairy and honey

I wouldn't go into specific categories such as what constitutes a fruitarian or ovo-vegetarian. I know what they are, but I've kept the list short on purpose. You can always research them on your own.

I think that it is commonplace almost everywhere in the world to think that it is all right to eat animals. Considering the predominance of the omnivore diet across the world, there would've been little chance that I'd be raised differently. I come from a country where people routinely raise pigs for slaughter every year. Come winter and the day of slaughter, as a child I'd wake up to the sounds of pigs screaming for their lives as they were dragged to be shot or knifed. The entire experience sure left it's mark on me. To this day I remember crying incessantly on those mornings. And then, by the afternoon of the same day, I was eating roasted meat and all seemed fine.

Talk about cognitive dissonance.

As early as kindergarten we are introduced to the idea that we should live in sync with our environment (albeit, IMHO, this is not stressed enough), that our actions should not harm others or cause destruction. We are taught to be compassionate, caring and empathetic, yet at the same time we look around us and pick up on cruelty - that there are exceptions in how we treat individuals of other species, race, sex, nationality, religion... the list goes on - and that the grown-ups do not behave the same way they tell us to behave.

It's mind boggling that we grow up sane exposed to this duality between what we are taught and what we observe. I guess that along the way some people just accept how things are and some struggle for change in themselves and around them.

After high school I went to the university in another city, away from my family. Since I was too lazy to cook I avoided buying meat because I feared it would go to waste. Sometimes I ate at the student canteen, but I've never had the habit of eating a lot so overhauling my eating habits to exclude meat did not seem like it would be overly complicated. I had always felt using animals was wrong and my personal ethics finally pushed me to make that one step forward. During the 2009 winter holidays I tried to eat vegetarian for two weeks. The New Year came around and embracing the lifestyle stuck as a new year's resolution, 2010 being a nice round number. I did not suffer any health-related issues but I did get checked out at some point. My health had actually improved, which was a surprise.

The transition made me aware of how uniform my diet had been and going vegetarian forced me to go beyond what I was usually eating. I had to explore other options and eat things that I had been passing by in the shops. I started eating more diverse meals and even gained some body mass, which is a good thing since I've always been skinny. I also found out that, in fact, I liked cooking.

So here I am.

Sometimes I get frustrated because of endless debates on whether vegetarian lifestyle is viable and justified. For me, and many others, it is a no-brainier and quite simple to pull off. Had I known this before, I would've switched sooner, rather than later. As my motivation was rooted in ethics and environmental concerns, I started to watch out what I was wearing too. It also came naturally to start looking for cruelty free clothes and other products. I started looking for ways to reduce my carbon footprint, to reduce waste... all of it is actually connected. The thing is, some of us do have a choice, but fail to make the right one. People have a visceral negative reaction to seeing animals inhumanely kept and slaughtered, and then they go out and grab a burger. Besides, even health ties into it, and nobody wants to be unhealthy.

Sure, just being animal friendly is not foolproof because sometimes product components may slip under my radar when I'm not careful, however, products that are cruelty free can often be identified either through an online list or a leaping bunny logo on the product itself. Humane Cosmetics Standard (HCS) and Humane Household Products Standard (HHPS) should ensure that the products were not tested on animals. You can also advocate that companies adhere to these standards.

Various food additives can also be identified. Leather belts, leather shoes and other things can be replaced with an alternatives that are not made from animals. Look for item descriptions or signs. Your country might label foods with a letter V or, in case of clothes, it is often required to list the materials used in the making of the item. You cannot make an informed decision if you are not informed enough.

It is difficult to do things in absolutes. Even though the noble goal is to eliminate it wholly, reducing cruelty comes a long way. I do as much as I can.

For the past few months it seems I've been in another dietary transition. I've limited my egg, honey and dairy intake only to weekends. I'm weighing my options on how to approach further change in my diet without impacting my health. On the surface it looks like there are few significant challenges, but it is easy to go vegan and fall into the trap of eating the same all the time (like pasta).

Vegetarianism and veganism are legit diets. It's not wrong or unhealthy to eat like that. Do not fall into the trap of people convincing you otherwise. As it's usually not something of their immediate interest, they will not have researched it to any extent and will casually toss around outdated and long ago debunked information. European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition can show you what health problems might arise from meat consumption. Humans are said to be omnivores but that merely means that we can survive on a meat diet, not that it is necessary for us.

We are impressed when new technology makes food production more efficient, but don't acknowledge it when technology enables us to be cruelty free? This does not follow. We can choose what to eat today. We can either synthesize or have plants provide what we need for sustenance and to top this, it can even be cheaper to be vegan.

All of these small things are profound in their impact. People around me, friends, family, pick up on what I do and, more often than not, act in accordance as well. Reducing meat intake, having a meat free day in a week and such. Having all of this in mind, YMMV. If you have any ideas for a different approach, do try them.

It is said that it is impossible to teach an old dog new tricks. Inertia creeps in and people are often reluctant to embrace new modes of doing things, even when it would actually simplify our lives and we would personally benefit from such changes. Bringing ethics into the equation is like to create obstacles in our day-to-day lives and things become less automatic. We like to think ourselves ethical, but how to conciliate that with how little effort we put into getting those ethics to affect our decisions.

Being an ethical consumer does not have to be a continuous slog through rules and checklists. Just being more mindful of what products and what manufacturers we patron goes a long way. It increases our level of control over our spending habits, our health and how we affect the environment. Making choices that are selfishly good for us, for instance, supporting organic food, often enough equals making more ethical choices.

Take shopping for example. Going out every day for necessities is logistically demanding and time consuming and taking your car to purchase a few items is not cost-effective, not to mention that it is not environmentally friendly. Online grocery shopping can amend this and most of the big grocery stores have implemented these services. Even if you go shopping weekly or monthly, the time and hassle you might save yourself this way may just be worth it.

How it works is that you create an online shopping cart once, save it and then modify it, if necessary, for future purchases. The initial order can be time consuming but subsequent orders are made that much faster. The services differ in quality and the price of delivery varies, but most have these basic features integrated and are reasonably affordable, if not even free in certain conditions.

It is not much different from shopping live, you still inspect groups of products to compare prices, check the discounts and wrangle your budget, but it is made more convenient by providing different filters, calculating your cost on the go and letting you skip the queue at the register. The stores will usually offer to deliver your order within a couple of days so they can economize by grouping the deliveries, but they will also offer to deliver yours the same day (for an increased price, of course) or simply prepare and box it for you to stop by and pick it up. Instead of ten people getting stuck in traffic driving to a store, a single store van can deliver ten orders in bulk and not get stuck since there are ten cars less on the road. Resources and nerves saved all around.

We tend to shop like this for heavy items so we don't have to carry things (not having a car means that it's difficult to taxi around with a box of squashes) and we often purchase items with long shelf life and a lot of them (flour and oil come to mind) so we don't have to shop like this frequently, but usually on a monthly basis. It also pays off with a free delivery over a certain overall total price.

Even though we've never had problems with the quality of our shopping items, you may prefer not to buy your produce sight unseen and take a walk to that local marketplace (walking is healthy, so say we all) for fresh bread, vegetables and fruit. Bring a textile bag with you, don't buy or take a plastic one on the spot. This way you won't be choking any sea animals once it inevitably ends up in one of the gyre islands and as most plastics are not biodegradable this is a cause of a host of issues.

If you enjoy a bread-heavy diet, consider buying a bread-baking appliance. Couple of years ago I bought one for my parents and they are satisfied with both the quality of bread and the savings. The cost and convenience can be calculated and offset against purchasing bread every day.

Depending on your location and available space, you can also grow some things at home, although this is an extensive topic for which there are many available resources online. The starting point is, of course, to see whether you have reasonable conditions for this.

• Do you have room for an actual garden, a balcony or just a window?
• Where do you live and where is the light coming from?
• Which side of the world is your window or balcony facing?
• What are the temperatures and the climate?
• What about shade?

We used to grow herbs in our previous apartment on the balcony and we always had something fresh to use in the kitchen. These were either items expensive to buy frequently or simply better fresh. Getting some flower pots (or improvising them), soil and seeds is easy enough and you can even use the organic waste that your household produces (like potato peels) to make compost and feed your plants.

Even without access to a south-facing balcony (good for Solanum genus) or a garden, you can rely on artificial lightning, which can be cheap. A friend grew tomatoes in her room. Conditions permitting, in the dark and damp places mushrooms can be grown. There are interesting, but more importantly, functional solutions out there, such as vertical planting on the windows.

I still have some plans with growing again once the opportunity arises. There are networks of farmers grouping together who are using technology to grow together. Concepts like guerrilla gardening and gardening software come to mind.

The three R's say to reduce, reuse and recycle. Landfill mining actually arose as a branch of business in the world. Currently there is more aluminium in some landfills than in the bauxite, the ore which aluminium comes from. We should be better than that. Ideally, we should not even create all of that garbage in the first place. The simple waste management hierarchy, that suggests what to do with products, works both on the household and state-level:

prevention

do not create waste at all and repair things

minimization

if you cannot avoid it, at least create the smallest amount of waste possible

reuse

reuse (remember the textile bags from this article) or re-purpose the products (you can even create a new textile bag from an old t-shirt)

recycling

recycle the materials, there is a finite amount of resources on the planet

energy recovery

this option is for materials that cannot be recycled but are mostly burned to create a certain amount of energy for the power plants

disposal

the least favourable option where the materials cannot be burned but need to be disposed (radioactive waste)

More often than not I find myself preoccupied with environmental and social concerns. I am not an activist but I acknowledge the fact that we do not live in a vacuum made out of our own self-interest.

We live in a constant state of negotiation with our environment and the influence it exerts over our lives. How we handle that negotiation influences our well-being in the short and long run.

Now, the setting in which I grew up in did little to foster awareness of such concerns - occasionally being warned not to litter was pretty much the extent of it. After all, my parents were born in the fifties and those were very different times.

In the past century, however, we have faced radical changes and taking care of the environment must be an integral part of our everyday lives if we want our civilization to exist tomorrow. We are in the middle of the sixth great extinction and global biodiversity outlook from 2010 states that not one of the countries has fully met any of the goals to preserve biodiversity. The Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years, and still we're destroying it.

Disregard for the environment is not a fixed trait of human behaviour. We are not immutable. We learn and adopt new habits all the time and taking steps to take care of the environment does not require a complete lifestyle reshuffle to fit this singular pursuit.

We need to shake off the present bias and take some responsibility for our actions. To paraphrase Chris Hadfield: as a civilization we can do a lot of damage, and it can be seen, but we can also do a lot of good. Even though we should have done it before, the least we can do is start now.

It seems impossible that an individual can make a meaningful contribution, but large-scale change is often enough an emergent property of a society. I'm doing my part as best as I can.

For instance, I'm reducing my carbon footprint. The Keeling curve explains that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has been rising steadily contributing to the greenhouse effect.

I don't have a driver's license. At first it was simply because I never had the money, but seeing how it hasn't posed such a significant inconvenience I have since decided to not become a driver. There are a lot of combustible fuel cars as is and there are alternatives around the corner like the battery powered Tesla cars and Google's foray into driverless cars. That said, owning a car is very expensive.

When I lived further away from work, I used to cycle. A number of cities have introduced bike renting services, which has increased the affordability and availability of this type of transport.

If available, public transportation is a good alternative as well, one which would be even more effective if the number of personal vehicles was lower.

Fortunately for me, today I can afford the simplest workaround of living close to work - it saves me time, keeps me in shape and it even saves me money in the long run.

While I know most of these things concern only the developed world, it's still better than nothing. Since the topic is extensive, I'll continue in the next post. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the channels in the footer.