|
|
|
August 4th, 2007
12:31 am - So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
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 :)
|
July 31st, 2007
01:00 am - Something new
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.
|
July 27th, 2007
01:53 am - A donation to the commons
My introduction to the public domain, as best I can remember, came courtesy of Project Gutenberg, the fabulous e-book project. I don't know how I first heard of PG, but I do have some memories. I remember, in high school, leaving my copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in my locker at school; I simply downloaded a copy from PG. It was a beautiful thing.
Moreover, in high school I started my first project to contribute to the commons (though I had no idea what "the commons" was, at that time) -- a student club to contribute texts to PG. I never recruited anyone beyond my friends to join the club, and they helped little; the club fizzled out after one book. I chose the name "Literary Preservation Society" because I hoped it meant the administration would leave us alone: it sounded highfalutin, not rebellious like I felt when thinking about (gasp!) posting books online for free. (I figured, with the public domain, we were legally in the clear, but I didn't want any trouble.) I remember my grandiose vision of a network of student clubs around the world, each donating a little of their time to help prepare books for everyone's benefit. These were terribly exciting thoughts for a high school student (Asheesh, feel free to add appropriate Everything2 allusions here) -- which was all the more disappointing when, as previously mentioned, it failed to gain any traction. Little did I know that what was not quite possible ~6 years ago would not only blossom as a field of endeavor since then, but would coincidentally be a movement in which I myself was deeply involved. (Think back ~6 years: Distributed Proofreaders hadn't opened its doors at PG; Wikipedia had just launched; Creative Commons hadn't released any licenses yet.)
As I mentioned, we did produce one ebook, #5825, The Courage of the Commonplace by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews. A rather unremarkable book, I think we chose it to be first because it was the shortest of the public domain books at our disposal (that had not already been added to PG). We had a little handful of eligible books, some from my mother's collection and some from a stack provided by our biology teacher from his. (I believe Courage was from the latter source.) Most of his such books ended up sitting in a bag somewhere while our club ignored them for a number of months; I remember doing some research to see which would be eligible for PG, but I can't recall what happened beyond that. I think we eventually gave him the books back, and the only one that ever got scanned was Courage. (In fairness, though, even Courage was never scanned: we typed the text in manually. As I said, this was before DP had opened officially for PG.)
Out of my mother's collection, there were at least a few eligible books that hadn't been added to PG. Eventually -- judging from the timestamp on the files, the summer after my freshman year of college -- I scanned one, a Spanish textbook, and added it to the site.
Tonight, through a series of events (which I'll blog about later), I ended up back at DP after a long absence. When I managed to get back into the site, I eventually found the Spanish textbook I scanned over two years ago. It's still in the formatting stages, but it's made progress and is en route to release. It was a pleasant surprise to find out what'd happened with the book, and that it's going somewhere. The project comments and the forum thread are both online (though login may be required to view them). I feel very gratified by this small "donation" to the commons: I found the book, submitted the copyright clearance request, scanned the pages, and found someone to whom I could hand the project off; without me, it's continued forward and will eventually bear fruit. Looking at the forum thread, people from around the world have worked on this book, which otherwise would sit completely unused on my bedroom shelf.
One other contribution I've made to PG (besides a few pages proofread here and there on DP) was the hardcopy of Zane Gray's The Day of the Beast. I don't remember where this book came from (maybe my mother, maybe that biology teacher, maybe some book store or garage sale where I picked it up on the cheap), but it wasn't in good condition when I got it. Rather than scan it on my time-consuming flatbed, I shipped it off to another DPer with a pagefeed scanner; the binding was cut off and the copy destroyed, but it lives on online, free to the world.
|
July 19th, 2007
02:33 am - awesome
And it's from 1956. Some people are just prescient.
Current Music: Hope Sandoval - Suzane
|
May 25th, 2007
12:08 pm - Finally
And the journey is finally, officially, verifiably, completed.
|
May 14th, 2007
09:05 am - A most peculiar dream
What's even odder is that all parts of the dream flowed together and were more or less internally consistent, unlike most weird dreams which only make sense because they're dreams, and fall apart when you wake up. Unfortunately, I forget some of the parts that made it make sense.
I was in Philadelphia, doing something FreeCulture.org-related. Roblimo was taking over hosting duties for FC.o, as well as for the new Heavy Metal Hall of Fame. There was a good deal of thought dedicated to founding halls of fame for genres of music and how they are funded. Then I called the hall of fame and hung up after someone answered. (The person who answered didn't originally have a British accent, but my dream amended this ex post facto.) After I hung up, the person called me back, and said, "Newberry, eh?," although I never knew this, because I never answered the phone. At the time, I thought it was odd that he called back, and that he knew where I was from, albeit incorrectly (Newberry is near Gainesville). (In retrospect, this made less sense, because I am not from Gainesville, either, and in fact my phone is from neither Gainesville's nor Newberry's area code.)
So then something happened, which made sense but I no longer remember, and I was in a parking lot. There were two cars of interest, but I only remember one. In this car, Jeanna Mastrodicasa was about to drive Cory Doctorow to the airport. They both treated me with that I've-met-you-once-but-don't-really-remember-you etiquette, which is to say cursorily, which disappointed me. I tried to explain something about how I either worked for FreeCulture.org or for the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame, but they didn't care. (OK, so that part isn't internally consistent, either.)
Uh, so then I went to go vote, because apparently now I lived in Philadelphia. So I went to the precinct, (driving - insert scenes of urban Protestant churches), which used paper ballots. The mayor, a woman who looked a bit like Pam Carpenter, approached me and asked what I thought about that fact (the paper ballots, not Pam Carpenter). This was a bit surprising to me, but not totally. I hadn't been expecting to be asked that question, but apparently the mayor had recognized me as a person with an opinion about it, and decided to ask me on the spot. I told her that I thought comparing the running of that day's elections to the previous e-voting elections in the city would be the only fair comparison. Originally, when I arrived at the precinct there were few other voters, but as I spoke with the mayor (who wasn't distracted by anything in particular, but didn't seem to be paying attention) and added all these qualifications to my original statement, more and more voters arrived, and I became aware that the changes I was recommending were more expensive and time-consuming than e-voting (as if these changes were singlehandedly causing the queue of voters to grow longer). I realized that, at some point, e-voting will always be faster or less expensive than paper ballots, and thus I would need to justify paper ballots not only as better or equivalent on those grounds, but also better on some security grounds. At this point I woke up, and marveled at how odd that dream was.
In retrospect, I think everyone in the dream whom I tried to speak with may have acted as if they had ADD because my brain had a very short attention span, as my body was busy breaking down alcohol and being uncomfortably warm because my fan was off. If so, however, it's only more remarkable how coherent the dream was overall.
|
May 12th, 2007
May 8th, 2007
06:11 pm - I graduated
Yes, it came as a surprise to me, too.
Current Location: home
|
May 6th, 2007
08:36 pm - Free bed! Free desk!
Update: Taken
Moving out and giving it all away! I want to give this away tomorrow - Monday, May 7.
Queen bed - includes frame, mattress, and box spring. Good condition. (The only problem is that I don't have the wheels for the frame. So when you put it down somewhere, it's not easy to move. That's not a big problem, because beds don't usually move too much, anyway.)
Desk - it's a basic desk, maybe 3 feet long by 1 foot deep by 3 feet tall (guesstimates). Wood laminate. There's a little cabinet. It's a little dinged up in places, but it works. Hey, it's free.
Come get it from my apartment in Point West (near University and 34th St.). First come, first served! Call Gavin at 407-929-5657.
Current Music: The Smittens - Party Time
|
April 28th, 2007
04:48 pm - 11 ways we should amend the Constitution
I would contend that American reverence for the Constitution has a nasty side effect: we revere it so much, we suffer an immense hesitation to change it, ever, for any reason. I think this oversized reluctance ends up warping our policy, because it is so difficult to amend the Constitution, we are forced to work within it even when it would be much more advantageous to update it.
I don't think we should take amending the Constitution lightly, but there's a reason why there is an amendment process: because it is sometimes necessary to amend. I fear this is something that Americans have forgot, and as a result, our laws end up weird because the framework is not very adequate for responding to the realities of the day.
So I wanted to toss out some ideas on ways we should amend the Constitution, and seek the opinion of friends and respected acquaintances. Take this as a starting point for discussion rather than an indication that I am a gung-ho believer in any of the following suggestions. In no particular order:
1. Enshrine the right to fair use of copyrighted material
2. Prohibit retroactive term extensions of intellectual property rights
3. Provide Congressional representation for the District of Columbia
4. Enshrine the right to information self-determination (i.e. the right to control the use of information created by and about you -- essentially a property right for personal information)
5. Eliminate the electoral college and establish a national popular vote for the Presidency/Vice Presidency
6. Abolish capital punishment (at any level of government)
7. Overturn Kelo to limit the use of eminent domain to public purposes (e.g. using language similar to the constitutional amendment in Florida: "Private property taken by eminent domain ... may not be conveyed to a natural person or private entity")
8. Establish that states have the right to secede from the union (either according to the laws of each state, or within conditions established by the federal government -- I'm not sure which); states have the right to reach agreements reconfiguring their borders with other states, within the boundaries of the United States; inhabited areas that are not part of states (with the exception of the Federal District) have the right to secede from the union, petition the federal government for statehood, or retain non-state status
9. Enshrine the principle of freedom of information (i.e. access to government documents), with exceptions similar to those in the Freedom of Information Act
10. Amend the interstate commerce clause to specify that Congress can regulate commerce as long as the activity regulated is performed in several states, and the regulation applies uniformly across all states (i.e. Congress cannot regulate an activity in only one state, or regulate it differently in one state than in another)
11. Reduce the age to serve in elected federal office (i.e. President/Vice President, House of Representatives, Senate) to the voting age (i.e. 18)
Looking forward to some interesting replies,
Gavin
Current Mood: hungry
|
|
|
