Planet FreeCulture.org

Yeah, things happened and now it is a bunch of months later. I’ve had some thoughts kicking around that are finally starting to coalesce. Some of the thoughts are about all the “social media” that the kids are into these days, and some of them are about things that work and things that don’t.

It’s probably not one of my better qualities, but I’m usually pretty reactionary towards shiny new things. It’s a deep-seated suspicion of anything that gets very popular very quickly, combined with a grammarian’s mistrust of anything intentionally misspelled (flickr, tumblr, and so forth). This tendency is why I took so long to join flickr or facebook or basically anything else I currently use; it’s why I had a personal website for like eight years before I actually used actual software to power the posts instead of hand-coding each one in html like a crazy person (or a nerdy kid with a lot of free time). It’s also why, when I find something that works, that is not only new and shiny but also suited well to filling a need, I stick with it to the bitter end.

The bitter end for my old ipod probably should have been around when I graduated from college, at which point I had dropped it on too many tile floors to count. But it clung (still clings, as far as I know) to life. I had to reset it on three separate occasions, but the hard drive, despite the occasional ominous clicking, is still trucking away. The battery may only hold a charge for about 15 minutes at a time, but it was mine, dang it, and I wasn’t about to replace it with the next new thing that came along. Then I got an ipod touch for Christmas and I had to reconsider my love affair with this broken object that I’d fit more or less seamlessly into my daily routine for years. I was afraid that the new ipod, with its fancy color screen and wireless capability, would distract me from its primary task of holding and playing all of the music I want to hear. Sometimes it did; I played a few rounds of Katamari Damacy on it before it became unbeatably difficult for my uncoordinated self. But mostly it just works, and I recommend it to my friends and loved ones, even though I constantly try to conceal it on the el for fear that strangers will think I am one of those people who can’t loosen their grip on their iPhone.

The problem with scorning new things before I adopt them is that I’m constantly on the verge of becoming the thing I hated. While I certainly don’t hate iPhone users, I get frustrated with how ubiquitous the device is, and how reliant people can become on it. The same is true of Twitter: every time I came across an article about how it was the cool new thing that all the kids are doing these days, I became more determined not to be one of those people with their cool new shiny website. Certainly my propensity to be really prolix all the time and my burning hatred of text-message-speak contributed as well. (It is never okay to use “u” instead of “you.” Let’s all just agree on that and society’s decline will move just a little bit slower.)

Then, disaster: My dad joined Twitter. Moreover, my dad joined Twitter and started messaging my boyfriend. Obviously this could not stand unchecked, and it gave me a chance to see what the big deal was about, so I signed up.

I’m still not proud of it, but I like Twitter.

Sure, it’s not perfect, and there are a lot of obnoxious semi-literate people inexplicably using it to try to get laid, but that’s why I never look at the public timeline. Enough of my friends use it that if I post something like “What’s going on tonight?” there’s a good chance I’ll find something awesome to do. Because people I care about are checking it, it’s the new useful thing. Like everything else that ever gets any more personal about me than this site does, I keep it locked, but you can find me here. Suffice it to say I’ve updated there more often than I have here in the past few months.

The infrequency with which I find my way into the WordPress-updating corner of the internet has led me to consider that this might be a thing that’s outlived its use. I signed up for tumblr yesterday, and if I continue to like what I see over there, I’m going to make that my site-updating utility of choice here. Hopefully it’ll stick. Perhaps having something that lets you “follow” your friends all in one place instead of just passively linking to them will remind me who my audience is.

If you’re using tumblr or twitter or any other new things that you find useful, please comment and let me know where I can look at yours, and I’ll try it out for myself if I think it might fit. I’m trying to rein in my contrarian side: like all useful things, it’s nearing the end of its worthwhileness to me.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to call attention to the achievements of women in technology. Despite its stereotype as a field dominated by men, women have made significant contributions to the field of computing since its inception, back to Lovelace herself, the first computer programmer, having designed a program for Charles Babbage’s analytical engine. But given the underrepresentation, stereotypes, and other barriers which can inhibit women from working with technology, it’s important to give encouragement to women and girls who are interested in the field. A recent study suggests that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones, and so was born Ada Lovelace Day.

The initial idea was brilliant in its simplicity: get bloggers around the world to write about a female role model in technology. The pledge attracted 1,700 signatures, and more than 500 published posts have been recorded so far.

I’ve had the pleasure to meet and work with a number of outstanding women in technology and information policy, including the young women of Students for Free Culture (such as Elizabeth Stark and Karen Rustad); Laurie Taylor, now acting director of the University of Florida’s Digital Library Center; the remarkable women of SPARC, Heather Joseph and Jennifer McLennan; many others throughout the world of libraries and open access, including Prue Adler, Julia Blixrud, and Karla Hahn of ARL, Donna Okubo of PLoS, Heather Morrison, and others; Heather Ford, formerly of iCommons; and many others. Wendy Seltzer’s Chilling Effects Clearinghouse inspired me as a tool against Internet censorship and repression. Jessica Litman’s Digital Copyright was a constant companion when I studied the DMCA as an undergrad. I even read danah boyd’s and Dorothea Salo’s blogs.

But when I thought of someone to profile, one women stood out in my mind: Gigi Sohn. I think it’d be realistic to call Gigi one of the most important women in American tech policy. Gigi and Public Knowledge have been instrumental in many of the most important legal and political battles of the era, from the successful suit to overturn the broadcast flag to orphan works, Net neutrality, and more. Her hard-nosed approach gets results even as it wins admirers.

So, cheers to Gigi, and to the past, present, and future women of tech. Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Download the DJ Alazay - Omega y mambo violento vs Amarfis y la banda de atake, Mambo de Guerra 3 mixtape.

Mambo de guerra, merengue pa calle, cualquier se llamas, este es a super sick mixtape by DJ Alazay from Providence. (Upload inspired by rupture’s recent radio rips.)

I bought it at the Midtown Mall in Worcester last year. Someone needs to make that place a wikipedia page. The google results are depressing for such a cool spot!

Seriously, no one has yet reviewed the Midtown Dinette? (EDIT: Pie and Coffee reviewed the midtown diner in fine form two years ago!

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todomundo

An email from my mom got me thinking:

What if aliens abducted all the lawyers, so law school wasn’t an option anymore? What would I do instead?

Good question.

Well, I guess I’ll start with what I’m looking for in a career.

• I like project-based work where I’m working mostly independently.
• I like variety–working two part-time jobs, even when one of those was menial or not that fun, was nice because the contrast in working environments kept me from getting bored.
• I enjoy creative work: drawing, editing video, music, website updating… I also like research and writing. I don’t need to do these things all or even most of the time, but I’d like them to be a possible part of my work.
• I want to care about my work–it doesn’t need to be non-profit, but improving the world in some respect I find interesting is definitely something I’m looking for.
• I want to work in a small group setting–even if it’s part of a larger company.
• I want to have a near-peer or mentor-mentee relationship with my boss.
• I like working with geeks (broadly defined).
• I want to keep the “talking with people I don’t know” part of my job down to a minimum, if possible.
• I want to have a fast work computer with a monitor that doesn’t suck.
• I like the European dress code–blazer + jeans = awesome.
• I prefer having flexible hours and the ability to work from home sometimes.
• I’d rather bring a lunch from home than have it as a perk unless the options are healthy. I’m bad at not eating things.

Oh, and also:

• I’d like to make enough money to:
  • Travel (and potentially work abroad at some point)
  • Own a small but comfy house, with a greenhouse and a big garden
  • Be financially secure
  • Be financially independent and capable of being the breadwinner, whether or not I need to be

How many jobs fit these criteria? I have no dang clue. But probably not many. Web design fits most of them, but CSS bugs can be extremely frustrating (just ask Nelson)–I don’t know if I’d grow to enjoy the programming side of it. I could be a freelance web editor/videographer/cartoonist/etc like I was during the summer, but a.) I’d be broke and b.) I’d have a breakdown every couple days out of worry that I was going to be broke. Unless you’re retouching photos for teen magazines or at the very top of your game, it’s hard to make being an artist exclusively pay–and even when it does pay, it pays unreliably.

Non-managerial, slightly-technical positions in young tech companies could be interesting. I’ve spent some time drooling over the courses offered at UMich’s School of Information. Studying how information structures and flows work in the context of entrepreneurship and Internet culture sounds vaguely cool and probably in demand. I have no idea what these “information architects” or whatever actually do all day, though.

Working for a non-profit small enough that I could just be “the web/media person” and do whatever such work I knew how to do and delegate/contract the rest might be ideal. I guess that’s what my job at SPARC would’ve been if SPARC were big enough to have needed me full-time. But these kinds of relatively low-skill web editor positions REALLY don’t pay well.

Ever since I got into UW-Madison, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of becoming a law librarian. Their library school is very good and they have a dual-degree program with the law school. Law librarians are supposed to be very well paid (though I’ve yet to see statistics backing this up…the stats I’ve seen have them making little more than what I make now :/) with a less suicidal schedule than first-year associates at big law firms. I’d also probably get out of UW with little or no debt. But…I dunno. It’s true that academic law librarians sometimes also publish and teach–but those courses are usually in research and writing, not a particular subject material in the law, so I wouldn’t really consider that the same. Others probably wouldn’t either–librarians, unfortunately, don’t get no respect. I also worry that librarianship might be too…sedate…a job for me. I’ve never worked in a library and it’s just not a career I’ve ever considered. Well, we’ll see.

The career I’m most interested in at this point (and at which I’m aiming my law degree) is academia. It sounds like the perfect job: except for the time you’re in class, office hours, or meetings, professors’ work is completely flexible. You spend your time arguing over ideas with students and ridiculously smart people and publishing those arguments in journals. “Publish or perish” doesn’t scare me–I enjoy writing and already have a book or two I’d like to write, given the opportunity. Your ideas have the potential to change the world, and if other people don’t change the world quickly enough, you can participate in non-profits or other projects on the side to speed it up. You’re well-paid, and if you get tenure you have pretty good job security. If I want, I can add silly cartoons to my outlines and presentations (*coughRoddycough*) or publish my ideas in comic form (see: Hayek’s Road to Serfdom). I love those professor blazers with the patches on the elbows. What’s not to like?

Not much, says I. But it’s tough to get into–and even tougher if I don’t go the law school route. Then instead I’d need a Ph.D. Sure, Ph.D candidates are (hopefully) funded so they don’t have to go into debt for tuition, but you’re basically committing yourself to subsisting on ramen for seven years. I don’t even know if I *could* get into a funded Ph.D program–I’m a media studies major, not a scientist, and there aren’t that many Schools of Information out there. Do any of them even have Ph.Ds doing info policy work? Most of the ‘faculty interests’ I’ve seen are more on the theoretical or technical side…

Whereas from law school you need 1-2 years clerkship or firm experience (to become “seasoned”….really), 3+ published works (ideally, you get these done during law school or your clerkship, because you sure as heck won’t have time working at your average firm), and if that doesn’t do it maybe go for one of those fellowships/visiting professorships meant to help alumni break into legal teaching. While law schools like candidates with other graduate degrees, a JD from a prestigious school is all you need.

And, fundamentally, my main interest is in IP/techlaw and policy. My secondary academic interests (civil liberties, national security, international law, etc.) are also law-related. For the most part, law school seems like the best place to study these areas. I’m certainly willing to question law school, and I do believe it costs too much. I’d be interested in looking at other alternative careers. But if I can pay it (balancing prestige with scholarships), and it gets me to where I want to be…doesn’t seem too shabby.

The following text is from a bigger set of posts at Henry Jenkin’s blog titled Locating Fair Use in the Space Between Fandom and the Art World:

When YouTube Product Manager David King announced the beta release of “content identification” tools on the Google blog in 2007, he reminded readers that submitting copyright infringement claims would remain as easy as “the click of a mouse.” In the intervening year, the contributions of thousands upon thousands of users have been disabled on behalf of just a few industry stakeholders. When it comes to the application of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, a process that impacts citizens’ ability to own and author their media environment, how easy is too easy?

Fanvidders were among the first communities to respond to YouTube’s commitment to go “above and beyond” its legal obligations to copyright claimants. Faced with videos silenced and disabled for their transformative use of popular music, vidders like zcatz recorded glum farewell notes for their subscribers and set sail for friendlier sites like imeem and Vimeo.

Numerous other creative communities relying on YouTube’s video sharing service have faced a similar decision: should they weather the uncertainty of life at YouTube or retreat to a niche service in the hope that there is security in (relative) obscurity.

Pauliewanna demonstrating “Limelight” by Rush

Unlike the vidders, the Living Room Rock Gods (LRRG) have stuck with YouTube and channeled their frustration into the loose-knit resistance movement Tribute is not Theft. LRRG members like Pauliewanna recorded impassioned video blogs addressing the recording artists they idolize. They stress the role of learning and respect for intellectual property that pervades their community, confounding the stereotype of anti-copyright radicals flaunting the law.

Paulie, the drummer featured above speaks directly to Rush’s Neil Peart,

“We’re just trying to do what we love. [To] listen to your music, play it, share it with others, show them how it’s done, see how they do it, compare notes. [...] Our primary reason is to share with other drummers. We just want you [...] to know that this is happening.”

The Rock Gods’ experience reveals an imbalance in YouTube’s community support. While a handful of major stakeholders are provided special tools to automate identification and facilitate the pursuit of copyright infringement claims, the remaining majority of YouTube users are left confused and frustrated.

Kutiman - 01 - Mother of All Funk Chords

The diversity of material presented by YouTube’s users presents a thrilling challenge to conventional understandings of ownership, authorship, and originality. Unfortunately, YouTube’s existing architecture leaves little room for human intellect to confront and interrogate these delicious details. When I filed a counter-claim for one of my own disabled videos, I learned that YouTube no longer evaluates the accuracy of copyright claims made by its Content ID system:

“[S]ince the identification of the claimed content was automated, we are unable to accept your counter-notification at this time.”

In other words, YouTube’s current policy denies my opportunity to file a counter-claim (as described in S.512(g)(3) of the DMCA) and privileges the judgement of software over that of a human observer.

YouTube is wise to be proactive in defense of copyright. Antagonizing extent media industries does little to resolve persistent tensions in digital culture. But if its effort to please the handful of major stakeholders fails to consider the fair use rights of informal media practitioners, YouTube will sacrifice the vibrant creative communities that made it worth visiting in the first place.

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todomundo

(photo credit: thomashawk on flickr)

Over the next 1.5 weeks, i’m going to be backpacking around the east coast. I’ll be going to a couple conferences, meeting with some friends, checking out a couple museums, and walking a lot of city streets.

I have a google doc with my itinerary (mostly short notes now, will flesh out more later). If I’ll be in the same place as you and you want to meet up, give me a call or shoot me an email.

I’m going to be microblogging my adventures, as well as (macro?)blogging most days. I microblog on identica, and my identica feed gets cross-posted to my twitter account.

So follow along, won’t you?

Mozilla, ccLearn and P2PU just announced an Open Education six week online course where educators learn about open content licensing, open web technologies and open teaching methods. The course starts on 2 April, 2009!

Target Audience

• Educators looking for skills to help them with open teaching and learning.
• Should have some tech or content production skills already.
• Likely to come from areas like: new media, communications, design, comp studies.
• Have a project idea that they’d like to work on as part of the course.

Goals

• Help educators learn about open licensing, technology and teaching.
• Test and assess the online course method being developed by Mozilla Labs.
• Create awareness of Mozilla Education, ccLearn, and P2PU amongst educators.
• Gather design ideas for education.mozilla.org and other open learning projects.

Sign up today there are only 20 spots!

After horrible, thrashing hours of nightmare and insomnia before my trip back to Swarthmore, I suddenly found my depression cracked wide open. So do I seem to be getting at least some of my abilities back, being able to intuitively comprehend quantum again and remembering a little more than before. My mind feels as though it has just taken a giant crap, getting out all the nastiness in one night of torture.

Bryn Mawr contra on Friday. Don't have time to go, but probably will if it kills me.

Overslept this morning by over an hour. Tomorrow's gonna be bad. Makes me wonder if I should try to take the statmech midterm today instead. Let's see how I feel after lunch.

I try to avoid writing things that may make me sound stupid, but this post falls in that category.

Recently I was reading about efforts related to data sharing: technological infrastructure, curation, educating researchers, and the like. I was struck by the thought that most of the advocacy for data sharing boils down to an exhortation to stick it in a digital repository.

This seems a bit odd considering that much of what propels science is the pressure to publish (written) results (in journals, conferences, monographs, etc.). There is a hierarchy of venues in terms of prestige, which is in turn linked to research funding, promotion, public attention (media coverage, policy influence), etc.

Might the best way to get researchers to share data be to create a similar system for datasets? It might provide a compelling incentive.

Moreover, publishing might provide a compelling incentive to the related issue of data curation (making data understandable / usable to others, e.g. through formatting, annotation, etc.). Currently, much data doesn’t see much use outside the lab where it was generated, so researchers have little incentive to spend time “prettying it up” for others (who may find the way it was recorded to be inscrutable). Even if they are convinced to “share” their data by posting it online, it may seem quite a low priority to spend time making it useful to others. If there was pressure to publish the dataset, though, then researchers would have that incentive to make the data as intuitively useful to others as practicable, so reviewers could quickly identify the novelty of the data.

This doesn’t seem so outlandish to me. There are similar efforts to provide publication fora for materials which were not traditionally unpublished (we might say undersupplied), such as negative results and experimental techniques.

If you think of it in terms of a CV, the difference is between these lines:

• Created and shared large, valuable dataset which is highly regarded by peers
• Publication in J. Big Useful Datasets, impact factor X

It may be hard for a reviewer to quantify or validate the former; the latter demonstrates that the researcher’s contribution has already been validated and provides built-in metrics to quantify the contribution.

There are other ways to skin the same cat. One option would be to build alternative systems for conferring recognition (e.g. awards, metrics for contributions to shared datasets, etc.). The other approach is to make data sharing a more enforceable part of other scientific endeavors, e.g. mandatory as a condition of research funding, mandatory as a condition of publication (of written results) in a journal, etc. I think multiple approaches will yield the best result. It seems to me that creating “journals” (or some other name) for “publishing” datasets could be a useful way to spur participation.

Has this been done already? What are the drawbacks to this approach?

In 2000 the Manhattan law firm of what appear to be over aggressive IP attorneys representing Hasbro wrote Randy Cassingham a “cease and desist” letter for Get out of hell card he was selling. Eventually they had Randy add the source disclaimer to the above card and the matter appeared over. Fast forward 9 years:

The same law firm appears to have amnesia:

We recently became aware that you are offering for sale “Last Chance - Get Out of Hell Free” cards and stickers on your website at www.goofh.com that depict the famous MR. MONOPOLY® character and are obviously derived from the MONOPOLY® “Chance” card.

The MR. MONOPOLY® character is the copyrighted property of Hasbro, and also has source-identifying significance as a trademark. Your unauthorized copying of the MR. MONOPOLY® character constitutes copyright infringement … and also violates the federal trademark laws … by creating a likelihood of confusion with respect to Hasbro’s authorization or sponsorship of or association with your activities. Your unauthorized use of the MR. MONOPOLY® character is also likely to dilute its distinctive quality and hamper its ability to function as a source-identifying [trademark]….We therefore demand that you immediately cease and desist from any further use of the MR. MONOPOLY® character, remove the cards and stickers from your website, and provide us with a written assurance that in the future you will refrain from any further unauthorized use of the elements and characters of the MONOPOLY® property trading game.

To assist Hasbro in determining the harm that has been, [sic] we demand that you furnish us with information concerning the length of time that you have sold the infringing cards and stickers, the number of units that have been sold, and the total revenue you have received to date. We will then be in a position to discuss monetary compensation for your unauthorized use.

Here is a little on the history of Monopoly from Wikipedia:

The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1904, when a Quaker woman named Elizabeth (Lizzie) J. Magie Phillips created a game through which she hoped to be able to explain the single tax theory of Henry George (it was supposed to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies). Her game, The Landlord’s Game, was commercially published a few years later. Other interested game players redeveloped the game and some made their own sets. Lizzie herself patented a revised edition of the game in 1904, and similar games were published commercially. By the early 1930s, a board game named Monopoly was created much like the version of Monopoly sold by Parker Brothers and its parent companies throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st. The Parker Brothers’ version was created by Charles Darrow. Several people, mostly in the U.S. Midwest and near the U.S. East Coast, contributed to the game’s design and evolution. Read the full article

The strongest defense to an infringement claim here is a parody defense, which is part of fair use, followed by an estoppel defense. Estoppel basically stops a party form claiming or denying an argument on the grounds that is is unfair.  Given the previous stance by Hasbro that the disclaimer was enough this new demand is clearly unfair.

Does Hasbro and their lawyers have nothing better to do with there time…

Read the full story at This is True

My dad pointed out that Rachel Madow, in yet another follow-up to the AIG fiasco forgot to mention Mark Penn's involvement with the Clinton campaign. Dad said that the only way is to watch both liberal and conservative bias. I said the only way to get an honest report was by digging it up yourself.

I awaken these days wishing that I could sleep an extra hour. I hunger more frequently and vigorously just as I feel driven towards dieting and exercise. I constantly grapple with fatigue for my focus and memory. My legs cannot decide if they are sore. My mind bounces between terror and sloth. Darkness welcomes me to sleep, an offer I refuse. I can almost bring myself to the study of physics but cannot maintain it for long. Mom says I'm awfully quiet, seem depressed. I say burnout, depression, loneliness, fear.

I dare to dream and fear to dare. Mother says that happiness is about finding the the good in whatever life already is, and I know that, having chosen to forsake it in the pursuit of what I cannot say. A hundred bees buzzing around in a jar, and some of them are at the top, but bees in a jar they remain. Plato pulls a man from a cave, shows him the light of day and the world around - can he ever return to his old self? Believing that there exists something good, I will not stop until either I have found it or fate has chosen to obliterate this existence entirely.

I dream that you hug me from behind with hair still wet from the shower. You are not properly dressed, but you make no effort to shirk away - the need simply doesn't occur. This isn't really an attempt to seduce. This is not a sex scene but a reminder of our comfort and fearlessness. I note the softness and warmth of your body - it reminds me that you are human, but I do not think the usual, 'there is nothing romantic about the human body.'

I return to reality on the New York City subway, a recovering burnout with new socks and a copy of The Watchmen soon to enter my growing backpack. Mom and aunt say I keep getting thinner, and I rather like the way I look. I've been having some memory problems lately, probably related to the fatigue. My left foot has a fungus infection. I'm feeling bummed after the last conversation I had, but it's wearing off in favor of these dreams. I don't really believe that they are possible under current circumstances, but I am willing to alter myself and the universe.

Some time last week, I found myself forced to use an obnoxious scanner that emailed individual scans to me as PDFs. I had to re-enter my email address on the impossible touch-screen keyboard for each page, and when I was done I had 7 emails in my inbox.

I needed to re-assemble these 1-page PDFs into a 7-page one. A quick google search led me to this page. But I’ll spare you the unnecessary list of non-solutions (as well as the hentai Site Traffic Strip-O-Meter). The real gem on that page is this linux command:

gs -q -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=out.pdf in1.pdf in2.pdf in3.pdf

simply “cd” into the dir with all the pdfs that you want to string together, replace in1.pdf in2.pdf in3.pdf with the names of your pdf images, and voila! out.pdf is your new SuperPDF. The Eurasia of PDFs.

(This is the first time that I’ve posted a nerdy linuxey howto. This may or may not become a trend. But don’t get scared–the main focus of this blog will continue to be my crappy creations and stupid ideas.)

Been awhile since I drew comics; figured I should get back into the swing of things.

It’s based on a dream Nelson had a couple weeks ago. I thought the idea was adorable so I had to illustrate it.

Soon, soon I shall be free of the beast.  For well over a decade now I’ve been plagued by a demon I could not escape.  There was no respite–even the breaks between vicious bouts were but reminders of how badly I needed to be free.

And soon I shall have my chance.

Are they good books?  Yes.  Are they great books?  I don’t know — I just know that I must finish this, and that this year that may actually be possible.

1:50pm

Scrobbled a song on Last.fm. Peter Allen - She Loves to Hear Music

Originally published at Skyfaller.net. Please leave any comments there.

I don’t know how many times I’ve almost killed off this blog.  I’m not a good blogger.  I can accept that, that’s what RSS readers are for.  I don’t expect anybody to actually come back here and expect anything new.  I do want to make sure folks that stop by here know to check out Jordan&Jaime.  We’re blogging more family stuff over there, and right now, that’s pretty much the only thing going on in my life, so I’ll probably be posting there more.

I do end up posting a fair bit on twitter as well. If you happen to be on there, feel free to look me up. I tend to only authorize folks I at least somewhat know though, so at least take the trouble to send me an email first if you don’t know me already.

My apologies to everyone who is following me on Livejournal! I re-imported my entire Livejournal archive into my blog but I accidentally left my LJ cross-posting plugin turned on, so it got into an infinite loop where I would import a post, and then it would get cross-posted, and then imported again… This meant that duplicates of my old posts dominated everyone’s friends pages. I went back using Xjournal and manually deleted all of the duplicate posts from Livejournal, so everything should be back to normal.

The good news is that all of the old LJ comments have been imported with threading this time, thanks to the new Livejournal importer in the unstable “trunk” version of Wordpress Huge thanks to Beau for writing the importer, it worked perfectly.

Originally published at Skyfaller.net. Please leave any comments there.

Sometimes I have these anxieties where I have no hobbies, or no true hobbies. But I think the true thing is I have been in denial of my hobbies.

Write now I am writing this blog in the wonderful Textmate Blogging bundle. I do most of my writing in Textmate, from interview preparation to my book reviews. I don’t really have an excuse to open Word anymore, except when jobs place their postings up as .doc files. Built into the blogging bundle is the Markdown syntax and some other fun time saving tricks which makes writing HTML or CSS or anything else a lot faster. I also don’t use Word anymore for academic writing or my resume, having completed switched to the markup based LaTeX.

Over the weekend I purchased an old CDROM drive for $6.95 CDN to intall Xubuntu. People might have heard of Ubuntu. Xubuntu is a version packaged with a light-weight windowing system. I installed it on this old computer—actual the one I bought with me to my undergraduate degree. It is a Pentium III, and according to the bios only 1.0 GHz.

I hooked it up to my television and a keyboard for only 30 mins. After doing the initial install I’ve connected to it from my laptop through the terminal program SSH. I mostly use it to download things from the Internet and watch videos on the TV (thinks I can initiate from anywhere on the Internet).

A lot of this time off from my job search has been trying to realize what I actually enjoy doing.

Today I continued to work on designing my own Wordpress template from scratch, which should be ready very soon. And I just caught myself reading about Advanced SSH Techniques. I also have been working on designing a Content Management System for a non-profit organization.

Not that I necessarily want to be entirely technical in my work, but I think it is an important set of skills to have in my toolbox.

Heard recently that the Canadian National Film Board has opened up its archives.

There is not one Canadian child in the last 30 years who hasn’t seen this I think.

The domain 'findandreplace.org' is somehow still available for purchase --

So I just realized that I was in New York City on the day that the Eliot Spitzer scandal broke, and I was in Chicago on the day that our sleazy, sleazy governor was arrested. Considering this track record, I’d like to extend the following offer: fly me into your major metro area, I’ll hang out and chill for a few days, and your governor will be angrily ousted in a career-ending imbroglio! Then we can all have a good laugh. I am going to watch Jon Stewart make fun of Rod Blagojevich’s terrible, terrible hair some more now.

I did also want to mention that the site will probably go down for a bit sometime between now and Christmas as I change hosting providers, but I will return. Cheers!

It's a shame that Obama's delicious victory is alloyed by the bitter taste of not one, not two, but three propositions and amendments across the country to ban gay marriage. Whose fucked up idea was it to legislate the definition of a word? I am so pissed about this. Also, California's humane animal treatment proposition is silly. Guess I should have voted in California instead of Texas... our local propositions were boring.

One victory at a time, I guess. Obama, show us how it's done.

Hi everyone!

GO VOTE.

Thank you.

Although I continue to blog at Blurring Borders, I've also been doing some guest posts at Techdirt. If you don't already read Techdirt, I'd recommend subscribing.

Some recent posts:

• Should the Next President Use a Computer?
• Is There Any Good Reason to Pull the $1,000 iPhone App?
• Eight $1,000 App Buyers Later, and Apple Pulls It
• Is Privacy That Cuil?
• Newest Industry to Be Crowdsourced? Internet Censorship.
• GPS Data Used to Disprove Radar Gun in Speeding Trial
  

As you can tell, Copyrightings hasn't been receiving much attention recently. Instead, I've migrated to Blurring Borders which allows me to discuss a broader range of topics (though I still touch on Internet law). Head on over to check it out!

Whoa! I showed up on the Grooveshark blog --

-- and I was further informed that, in May, I was a featured image on Wikinews!

What a wild Web we weave :)

I feel like blogging more, lately.

I enjoy writing now and then, and would like a venue to do so -- one where I'll feel comfortable pointing people to, and hopefully one that can attract some readership, so I can have feedback.

I set up a WordPress install at gavinbaker.com over a year ago. I've never updated it from the SG campaign site. That's going to change, and relatively soon.

I don't want to break links to the existing URLs, and a part of me thinks I might even want an archive of that content, some day. But I also don't want to have to maintain an inactive WordPress install definitely: at best, it's an annoyance to maintain; at worst, it's a security risk and an invitation to spammers. So I'll be stripping WordPress out and leaving static copies of the pages in place.

I'll install a new instance of WordPress and get things set up the way I like it. Eventually, I'll start using it. Hopefully, I'll use it somewhat regularly -- posting at least a few times a month -- because I know that updates attract readers, and readers leave feedback.

I'll also stop posting here, both to encourage readers to move to gavinbaker.com and join the discussion there, and because I'm done with LiveJournal. I still have some fondness for LJ, but I want something more professional. (If I want the benefits of pseudonymity, I'll use a different account which is not attached to my public persona.) I imagine I have a few friends who would read posts here but wouldn't use RSS or check my site, and I'd be happy to import my RSS from gavinbaker.com, but IIRC you need a paid account or something to do that. (If anyone would like to volunteer to set up a feed account on LJ, please let me know.)

I'll probably continue to use LJ for reading others' blogs, commenting, and communities.

I'll also be making some other changes at gavinbaker.com (out with the old and in with the new), including switching my domain registrar (see ya, GoDaddy).

In addition, my email address will be changing within the next three months (most likely to something @gavinbaker.com). I'll also be going through a twelve-step program for Facebook (step 1: admit you have a problem), so if that's how you normally communicate with me, it's time to dust off the email client. (Yes Virginia, email does have other interfaces besides the Web.) I'll also be, let's say, cleaning up my accounts on random sites I briefly used (I'm looking at you, Friendster).

No, I will be getting a LinkedIn account.

I don't like Web services that won't let me do what I want with my data and that won't let me run the service myself (i.e. they don't give me the code). These proprietary walled gardens are not what I want the Web to be like. (And even if they have narrow windows through which they allow you to pass some data, they're still walls.) I want to start living Web 3.0; and those social networking sites are just a time suck, anyway.