Archive for December, 2008

Four years ago we began a Christmas Postcard tradition.  The first one was the result of an after-dinner conversation.  We invested a good five minutes in it, but it still turned out OK.  In 2006 we went all out.  I had the idea of putting the pictures on the tree months before Christmas.  It was a good thing because it seemed like it took months to put the card together.

Last year we streamlined things a bit and went with a simple design which included a picture of our favorite ornament.  And this year is completely minimalist with only three pictures.  We did add the personal touch of signing the card.

Some postcard trivia:

1 – Brutus the Buckeye started appearing on each card in 2006.  Can you find him in the 2008 picture?
2 – Someone in the family has taken each picture except the Brutus on the 2006 card.
3 – Photoshop has never been used to create our postcard.  Instead I use a program called Xara (my favorite graphic editor).  We send a JPEG of the final version to Snapfish for printing.
4 – We all signed the 2008 card using a tablet computer, but Kayla was away at college.  She sent me an Adobe Illustrator file with her signature and I imported it into Xara.
5 – To make our card grammatically correct, we dropped the apostrophe in 2008.  We are plural and not possessive.

Seeing all the cards on one page, we have decided to make the 2009 card red.

http://www.adventconspiracy.org

It has been a couple of months since Taffy became a part of our family.  I created a post when we first got her and included her email address.

She hasn’t used that email yet (she’s still a pup and can barely read).  But no one on the Internet seems to have figured that out.  So far she has received more than 100 unsolicited email messages (about three a day).  Most of the messages are typical spam: pharmaceuticals, money making opportunities, Christmas gift ideas, etc.  She even has one from someone offering several million dollars if she can help transfer some money from Africa to the US.  I don’t think she is going to be able to help because another message says she is having problems with her bank account.

The old adage still holds true.  On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.  Especially if you have an email address.

At any rate, Taffy says “Merry Christmas!” to all of you.

Here’s an excellent presentation by Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He demonstrates a lot of excitement which he attributes to attitude.  No PowerPoint here.  He makes his point with some very simple drawings (more like scribbles) on two sheets of paper.

Take note of how he determines an “A” in his class.

Maybe the new president will bring some change to our copyright laws.  It seems the first step was taken today as CHANGE.GOV’s copyright designation was changed from “all rights reserved” to Creative Commons Attribution license.

It is a well known fact that Lawence Lessig is a supporter of Obama.  Maybe Lessig has some influence on the new President.

Works licensed under Creative Commons are more restricted than works in the public domain.  There is some debate as to whether everything on CHANGE.GOV is by definition already in the public domain.  By definition, works created by the federal government or agents of the federal government are automatically in the public domain.  Obama is not officially the President, but all his content is on a site using a dot GOV domain.  I tell my students that dot GOV web sites are federal government projects.  That makes them in the public domain.

I still think the Creative Commons designation is OK on the site.  There are areas of the site which seek input from the general public.  If someone who is not employed by the federal government were to post a significant creative work in a “comment” area, that post would be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Our copyright law definitely needs some change.  Since 1998, no copyright protected work has gone into the public domain.  We have ten more years before the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act expires.  Hopefully, CHANGE.GOV will do more than add a Creative Commons logo to the site.