Categories
Media Personal

New TV?

I asked on Twitter, but thought I’d ping the brains of all 3 of the people that read me here. I’m shortly in the market for a new TV, finally upgrading to HDTV after our 37″ Toshiba of a decade or so is losing it’s picture.

So: who’s bought an LCD HDTV in the last few months that they really like, and WHERE did you buy it? I’ve gotten two recommendations for the Vizio 42″ LCD, but so far I’ve only found it for sale at one place online, Target. Love to find it somewhere with free shipping…

So: What TV do you have that you love, and where did you procure it? Under $1000, please, and 40-42 inch or so LCD. 1080p preferred, but 720 acceptable if there’s a cost/savings analysis there that makes sense.

Categories
Brand_New_World Profile

Eliza Profile: Sixteen Months



IMG_0973
Originally uploaded by griffey

Favorite hobbies: Climbing, especially stairs. Dancing. Trying to jump. Basically, she’s learning lots of physical things right now. One of her favorite pastimes is wrestling with Daddy.

Favorite foods: Fish, sweet potatoes, bread, yogurt, cheese, tortillas (she calls them “tias”), freeze-dried fruits, toast with peanut butter.

Favorite toys: All her Elmos. Daddy’s Guitar Hero drum set. Mardi Gras doubloons and beads. Plastic eggs. Puzzles.

Favorite books: Her first Dolly Parton Imagination Library book, the Little Engine That Could. Hop on Pop. Birthday Monsters. Apple Farmer Annie. Carnival.

She’s basically becoming a toddler, and learning to assert herself. She will now ask for books by name, request specific bedtime friends (“Elmo! Elmo! No, Bunny!”), and foods. She can basically ask for anything inside the house at this point…she asks for things, and to do things (“Outside!” or “Up!” to go upstairs). She’s learning that she can effect the world with her voice, which is both awesome and scary as hell.

She’s also becoming far more cuddly. She will actively seek hugs, and insists on getting kisses in the morning when Daddy gets her up. The normal wake up kisses go something like “Blankie! *kiss* Baby! *kiss* Eliza! *kiss*”. We taught her that she can pat the dog and cats to show them love, and now she pats everything and everyone to show that she likes it: the phone, a book, Mommy…doesn’t matter. “Pat, pat, pat.”

Categories
Personal

Joss Whedon on Humanism

I felt exactly the way that Joss did during Obama’s Inauguration…it was a historic moment for the President of the United States to recognize the huge numbers of people in the country that are not religious.

Categories
Personal Technology

Gmail hack

Not sure how many people know about this gmail hack, but it’s come in handy for me recently, so I thought I’d throw it out. Suppose you have an account on a service like Twitter, but now need to sign up for a different username, or just want one account for business and one for personal use. Twitter (and other services) won’t let you use an email that is already in their system to sign up for a new account.

Here’s where the gmail hack comes in. Gmail has one feature and one bug that allows you go get around having to have a secondary email address. The first is that Gmail allows you to create an infinite number of + aliases for your gmail account, in the format:

griffey+TEXTHERE@gmail.com

You can use any text at all after the plus sign, and gmail will ignore it completely for the purposes of delivering the email to you, but WILL let you filter and search on it. So I could set up a second twitter account called fakegriffey, and give it the email address griffey+fakegriffey@gmail.com, and Twitter will let me, since that isnt in their database. Gmail will happily deliver it to my griffey@gmail account, and all is well.

The other hack is that Gmail completely ignores periods in any account name for delivering email. griffey is the same as gri.ffey is the same as griff.ey is the same as g.r.i.f.f.e.y. By giving Twitter some variation, you can get around their email limit and still keep your email organized.

Hope this is useful to anyone who didn’t know about it!

Categories
Digital Culture Media Music

Wisdom from Reznor

Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails, recently said this in a Wired interview:

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t think music should be free,” Reznor says. “But the climate is such that it’s impossible for me to change that, because the record labels have established a sense of mistrust. So everything we’ve tried to do has been from the point of view of, ‘What would I want if I were a fan? How would I want to be treated?’ Now let’s work back from that. Let’s find a way for that to make sense and monetize it.”

How’s that for a customer service mantra? Try that for your library: What would you want, if you were a patron? How would you want to be treated? Work back from that, find a way for that to make sense.

Categories
Books Legal Issues Library Issues Media Technology

Ebooks, copyright, and the University of Virginia

I’m in the middle of writing a book about Mobile Technologies and Libraries, and am researching libraries providing mobile-specific services of all sorts. I came across the University of Virginia’s Ebook Library, and decided to take a look at what they are offering. It’s a very old ebook collection, with the original Etext division starting in 1992. Here’s the part that made me scratch my head…it’s in their Access and Conditions of Use:

While many of these items are made publicly-accessible, they are not all public domain — the vast majority of the images, and a number of the texts, including all of those from the University of Virginia Special Collections Department, are copyrighted to the University of Virginia Library, for example, and a number of other texts are still copyrighted to their original print publishers and made available here with permission.

I have no qualms with the texts that are copyrighted by their original publishers, and that UVA got permission to use. My eyebrows raise at the bit about “including all those from the University of Virginia Special Collections Department, are copyrighted to the University of Virginia Library…”

Really?

I had my suspicions here…it’s not like the UVA Special Collections Department are writing books, right? After look around, I found this text: Po’ Sandy by Charles W. Chestnutt. Published in 1888 in the Atlantic Monthly in New York, it is clearly in the public domain in the United States. But there it is, in the front matter:

Copyright 1999, by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

Looking around just a bit, it looks like this shows up on all sorts of texts that UVA digitized. My favorite is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, completed in 1788 by Franklin but the particular version republished by UVA was published in 1909 by P. F. Collier & Son Company in New York. Also, without any doubt, in the Public Domain in the US. It also has the note:

Copyright 1999, by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

What gives UVA the right to claim copyright on these texts? They couldn’t have legally digitized them if they weren’t in the Public Domain at the time of their digitization, and changing the form of something doesn’t give you the right to claim a copyright, especially on the bits that make the work up. Even stranger, they aren’t just claiming copyright, but including a EULA!

By their use of these ebooks, texts and images, users agree to follow these conditions of use:

  • These ebooks, texts and images may not be used for any commercial purpose without permission from the Electronic Text Center.
  • These ebooks, texts and images may not be re-published in print or electronic form without permission from the Electronic Text Center. However, educators are welcome to print out items and hand them to their students.
  • Users are not permitted to download our ebooks, texts, and images in order to mount them on their own servers for public use or for use by a set of subscribers. Individuals and institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at UVa, subject to our conditions of use.

Really? Is UVA asserting rights here that they just do not have? Not permitted to republish? Only if there is a copyright concern…which I think that UVA is asserting incorrectly here. It’s possible that there is some piece of copyright law that they are leaning on for these claims, but on the face of it, this seems like over reaching. Can anyone explain to me how they could possible have legitimate copyright claims on things that they didn’t create and are beyond the time limit for copyright protection in the US?

Categories
Gaming

Master Feed for CiL2009

So I’ve tried to throw together a “master feed” for cil2009, which includes Twitter searches for both the and #cil009 hashtags, a flickr search for the tag cil2009, a Google Blog search for the same tag, and a Slideshare RSS for both the Computers in Libraries 2009 group and the overall tag. This should be a pretty good summary of the happenings, but if anyone notices something I forgot, leave it in the comments and I’ll add it to the Pipe.

The Pipe should be publicly available here, and this should be the RSS feed URL. My suggestion is to go to the Pipe page to find what you want, though, cause there’s a ton of ways you can get the info: as PHP, or even results by email or phone.

The below is an example of the embed for the Pipe. Hope this is useful for someone!

Categories
Personal Technology

TechSource Post: Saving Your Digital Life

Just put a new post up over at ALA TechSource: Saving Your Digital Life. Here’s a blurb:

I have, basically, three kinds of data that I’m worried about protecting in some way: working files, files that are important but replaceable, and files that I can’t afford to lose at all. Working files are just that: files that I’m currently working on for whatever reason. Might be a photo I’m editing, or a document, or an MP3 that I need to move to another computer…anything that requires action. Files that are important, but replaceable, are things that make my life easier if they are in digital form, mostly media. DVDs I’ve purchased and CDs I own have all been digitized, because I want to be able to watch them when I want and not when I remember to have a disk of plastic with me. I also want to be able to move them to my iPhone or other portable media player. If I lose the digital, it’s ok, because I can just re-digitize them, but I really, really don’t want to have to do that. And finally, there are the files that I just can’t lose for any reason. Things like tax returns, photos of my daughter, receipts, and other digital items that need to be safe even if there’s a natural disaster.

So how do I handle all of this? With one piece of hardware, a few pieces of software, and broadband.

Go read the whole thing if you’re interested in how I handle MY digital life.

Categories
Brand_New_World Profile

Eliza profile: fifteen months!

Favorite hobby: talking, talking, and more talking! She now says 2 and 3 word sentences on a regular basis. The funniest so far? When a program we were watching on the TiVo got to the end and stopped, she said “Daddy fix it”! If she can’t reach something she wants she now says “Mommy get it.” She’s becoming quite the bossy little thing. She can also name all of her daycare classmates and tells everyone (and everything, including her breakfast and the dog) “Morning!” when she wakes up.

Other favorite hobbies: Sitting. A relatively new skill, she tries to turn everything into a “seat” (another favorite word): her toy piano, a basket full of books, the stairs, anything. Also likes drawing and “writing,” putting stickers on paper, playing with Play Doh, taking things out of the refrigerator, organizing bottles of shampoo and lotion in the bathroom, dancing.

Favorite foods: #1 by far is her “wogurt” (yogurt), which she would eat five times a day if we let her. Also loves pumpkin butter on bread, any kind of cheese, pizza, sweet potatoes, and bananas. Has recently figured out how to dip foods, so she’s into ketchup and marinara sauce.

Favorite toys: Everything is a toy at this point. Loves her bubble machine from Uncle Kevin, sidewalk chalk, balls, stuffed Elmo’s (she inherited a bunch from mommy), and shape sorter.

Favorite books: Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop, which she can now request by name at bedtime and does so often. Also loves his Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? And still loves the Matthew Van Fleet books, especially Cats and Dogs.

Favorite media: We do let her watch TV, but only three shows: Yo Gabba Gabba (her favorite), Jack’s Big Music Show, and Sesame Street. She also still loves music, particularly Laurie Berkner and yes, the Elvis Costello phase continues.

She’s a fun little monkey with a great sense of humor. Life with Eliza is certainly never boring!

Categories
Personal Technology

Hack of the week: Dropbox

I’m really particular about the background images on my computers. I like dark, subdued backgrounds that don’t attract the eye. I do like pictures, but ones that highlight any icons easily and don’t strain my eyes trying to find what I’m looking for. As a result, I’ve spent years collecting images that I like, upgrading to higher and higher resolutions as my monitors got better and better. I’ve got tons of fractals, dark photos, and other such images that I just prefer to have as my desktops.

Oh, and a few pictures of Eliza, of course.

So previously, I’ve kept a copy of this “Wallpapers” folder at the root of whatever computer I’m using, and set the system to use that as images for the desktop. But then if I find a new image I like, I’ve got to remember to distribute it to my laptop, and my home desktop, and my work desktop…blah.

Dropbox

Enter: Dropbox. Now hopefully everyone knows how amazingly awesome dropbox is by now, but if you don’t, just click that link and sign up for it. Trust me. Dropbox creates a folder on each of your computers that you install it on, and a folder in the cloud, and keeps all of them in sync all the time. You get 2 gigs free, and can pay for extra space as you need it.

I just realized that I can now put a Wallpapers folder inside my Dropbox, and it will propagate to every machine. I can set my desktop pics to choose from that folder, and anytime I find a new one, it will automagically sync to all the others with no effort from me. So all my pics will be the same on all my machines, no matter which I find and add from. It’s a little thing, but it makes me happy.