Dougma (dŭg·mə) n.

Very busy, but stumbled across something which made me cry with joy (really).

I have noticed that one of my favorite groups of all time POE has been featured in a some commercials recently (Iron Chef and Ford)

Then I found this ‘hidden’ gem: http://www.repoezessed.com/movs/teaserfinal.mp4

Update 6 months later: http://realpoe.ning.com/

I will blog again someday…

I am planning on building a picnic table, and to build it with my son. I have been looking for plans for one that I like for quite some time. All have similar problems, in that they are too small, or I do not trust, or require lumber of dimensions which require building out of pressure treated materials¹. I was looking at some octagonal models, which are pretty nice, then the latest issue of Wood Magazine arrived with, a picnic table, made with dimensional lumber. It is huge, with a near 5′ square top, seats 8 large adults comfortably, is easy to build, and looks.. well look at it. The problem is, I live in the northeast US and there is a lack of wood suitable for outdoor furniture. Anyone have any suggestions?

The plan used KD grade western red cedar (not the smelly kind.) I have read quite a bit about this wood and was already planning on using it for any out door projects. It is naturally bug and rot resistant, lasts for ever, and is insanely easy to work with. I had seen quotes of $0.40 per board foot for the cheap stuff, and with a project like this needed 228 board feet, it just made sense. The thing I didn’t realize is that those prices were for upper state Washington, and British Columbia Canada. Around here in the north east, it is more like $9.00 a board foot (for select) which is the only grade I can seem to find. Online suppliers have prices around $7.50 a board foot before milling and shipping. Ouch. My $300 project just became a $2,000 project? I think not.

I have contacted some lumber suppliers in British Columbia directly where I can get select grade S4S heartwood for $1.50 a board foot, but shipping is the issue. So it’s time to try substitutes. Douglas Fir would be appropriate, but is also from the northwest. As such prices fluctuate greatly, and is generally hard to find in the northeast. Redwood, Teak and IPE are out of the question as they are insanely expensive everywhere. This means looking to the south. I have used Cypress and Sasparilla before, but Katrina seems to have driven up the prices of those if you can find them. Yellow pine is a standard, but is best of being ‘treated’ if you want it to last. Most pressure treated wood¹ is yellow pine, which is out of the question. I have a bead on some Sasparilla for around $3.00 a board foot, or $700 (still too much.) This drove me to looking at the engineered boards now so loved, which are (for the dimensions I need) $4.00 a board foot. WTF.

So what can I do? Does anyone out there know of a good material for outside furniture? One option is to go with the elcheapo untreated white pine of the northeast and use tons of sealant. Most of the picnic tables people build around here are made out of this. It is quite cheap, $99.00 cheap, but will not last. It is mostly sapwood, and the warping and cupping will cause problems after just a few years. This is why you can pick up a small one on th eside of the road for $150, it only contains $50 of wood. Furniture grade is $1.50 a board foot, which might be workable.

So what wood does the northeast have for outdoor projects? It’s all pressure treated pine. What the northeast has is the indoor furniture makers love, Oak. Tons of beautiful White and Red Oak. What I pay $2.00 a board foot for, FAS Select 4/4 quarter sawn Red Oak, Californians are paying $23. At least I have that.

I love anime. Not your normal anime. 99% of what hits the US and 99% of what ends up on US TV is utter crap. The exceptions are “Ghost in the Shell”, and some of the very old stuff from my childhood (Macross). I would say that 80% of what is shown on TV in even Japan is crap. So I become very excited when something great is announces or is comes out. The second season of “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya“ is one of those. It has quite the cult following.

I would not say that this is the best anime in the world, but it does hit all my buttons. There is a well trodden sub-genre in anime, the ’school life/romance’. Every season there are at least 5 shows in this sub-genre. The target audience is usually kids in middle school. The rare show will appeal to both girls and boys, most being part of a main genre like Bishōjo or the ever popular Harem *shiver*.  To be honest I dispise these shows. Now imagine if Spider Robinson [wikipedia] were asked to write a show in this sub-genre. What you would get is something very close to “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”.

If you are not familiar with the works of Spider Robinson, it is pulp-sci-fi unlike any other bodies of work. Most sci-fi centers around some technology or piece of science as the main character. Spider puts the people and characters as the center diving into the human aspects. Please take the time to check his work out, especially his “Callahan’s” series of work.

It is very hard to talk about Haruhi without spoilers, so here is the premise: “What if God were a teenage girl, and reality was what she wanted it to be, only she does not realize this.” That’s the best I can do to sum it up, and much better than the plot description on wikipedia. The shows are purposefully shown OUT OF ORDER. This isn’t some Firefly gaf, but done on purpose and adds to the enjoyability. It does not take its self seriously and behind the humor is more intelligent and thought provoking than you realize at first. I recommend first watching the episodes in their broadcast order (which is the official ordering of the episodes) and then if you feel like it watching it again in timeline order.

The style jumps around quite a bit exploring many of the classic and trite plot devices of it’s sub-genre in its own unique way. There is the classic ‘beach’ episode, the ’school festival’ which ALL shows of this genre MUST have at least one episode devoted to (but for once is not painful), and the classic ‘exchange/transfer student’. Seriously, you would think that every year, in every class across japan there is at least one transfer student who arrives mid semester. Almost all school life anime has at least one! Haruhi makes it enjoyable and new; quite the feat. Then there is the ‘rock band’ episode. It is by far the best out there. It is better than the anime shows which are about rock! (but that is for a different rant on K-ON! and BECK.) Seriously, check it out.

My one complaint would be that in one of the episodes the ‘fanservice‘ goes a bit to far. Normally it is only used for humor, and does so well.

The first season is available from netflix, and I do recommend it. Oh and Live-eviL has just released the first episode of season 2, can’t wait to watch it even if the raws are low quality (With luck Ken is not heading up this project…)

I have been thinking about blogging about this show for quite some time, never expecting that a second season would actually arrive. It had been rumored off and on for the past three years. When I saw this come across my RSS reader.. well it made my week.

UPDATE: Season 2 Episode 1 (A.K.A. Episode is fantastic, but seeing the first season first is a requirement. Starting with what will be the 8th episode in the end timeline is just par for the course, after all the first episode of the first season was actually a ’special’ post episode We kick things off with a little discussion of the theory of relativity, what is ‘normal’ common sense,  some fun time travel, and the starts of a discussion on differences between time travel between two continuums and the same continuum (which looks like it will be a key plot device).

The first episode of season one is actually a ‘video’ the characters make in the anime and is ’shown’ to classmates (but not you the viewer) in the last episode. This video is essentially the same story as the main show, but told as if it were produced as your standard magical-school-girl-in-school anime. Daring does not begin to cover it. For the second season its just as if you were dropped back into the shows universe with no 3 year break… it’s good to be home.

I should note that if you are a fan of ‘normal’ anime, this show most likely is not for you.

I should be asleep, but I accidentally came across this article calling Trademarks a hidden menace to Open Souce. At it’s heart I agree that Trademark law is not properly understood by the community at large and could be a major problem for some projects. Beyond that it’s is just a mess.

The start of this polite rant was that he is the author of a commercial Unbuntu book, and he made a website to support the book. He was clear in the use of the trademark ownership, but did not get permission first from Unbuntu. During conversations with Connonical it was mentioned that he might have taken liberties, but that was just in passing. Instead of asking for permission (which we would most likely have been given) he removed the logo and the trademark in all places except where nominal use could be applied (i.e. the book title) and writes a blog post calling for the abolishment of the use of Trademarks in Open Source.  To me this is Trademark law working perfectly well for Open Source. If you are doing something commercial, the owner of the mark wants the ability to aprove it to make sure its not malicious. They are taking as light a hand a possible in it’s use in allowing non-commercial use freely without the need for seeking aproval (NOTE: you have to use it.. no really, read on)

There are a number of mental failings in that posting. First and foremost is that it forgets the lesson that the GPL and Open Source are reliant on the copyright system (and I would argue that even if there was not copyright that I would want it if only FOR the GPL which enforces the principals of giving back.) The argument is not to have any trademarks at all (as no other option is provided anywhere.) He calls out trademarks as being the antithesis of Open Source. You could literally replace ‘Trademark’ with ‘Copyright’ in his end section (with one minor exception.) But we need copyright law for the GPL to work; its better than the Public Domain. Just as with Copyright, it is the application which should be addressed, not the tool it’s self. Any ’solution’ should use the trademark system to support Open Source.

What tends to happen is that open source companies have to walk a tightrope, and slightly strange rules on trademark get put in place. For example, Ubuntu is cool with community remixes using the trademark, but if you intend to make money from Ubuntu and want to include the word in your business title, you’re going to need permission. It’s not quite clear here how the former won’t dilute the Ubuntu brand, while the latter possibly will. The “protecting brand identity” argument falls apart almost immediately upon examination.

Um… then you do not have much experience in the real world. Would a company which called its self ‘The Unbuntu Corporation” and sell a product ‘Real Ubuntu’ based on a very old release or containing problems on purpose dilute the name? What about the ‘Python Corporation’? What about someone selling ‘Django 2.0′ (which turns out to be a fork based on 0.95). Would these things dilute those projects? I think they do. Allowing free use for non-commercialuse may have a risk of dilution, but as this is an Open Source project and crucial to the founding and flourishing of a community, more often than diluting, it helps build the brand. Those are the uses which you want to promote as being part of an Open Source community. These are real issues and real problems which we are facing today.

Here is the crux. If you choose not to use Trademark law to your benefit, others can use it as a weapon against you. If you do not actively protect your trademarks, you loose them, and you can be attacked. I actually am a little happy that there have been some recent issues with the use of the Python logo and trademark as it proved that they are important to have and protect.

The nature of Linux and open source in general is to encourage forking and splinter projects. That’s the basic freedom provided by the GNU Public License, and similar licenses. Some of the forks or splinter projects will be poor quality. Some will fail. But that’s just the way things work with Linux.

Ah, and here’s the rub. If a project forks into 2, or say 4 different projects, do all those projects have the same name? What if all the different linux distributions were just called ‘Linux’ without the qualifiers ‘RedHat’, ‘Fedora’, ‘Unbuntu’, etc. Branding is important. If you invent a better version of FireFox based off of the source code but with different options and behavior and code, then do you get to call it FireFox? Would you even want to? Would you want it to be confused with this ‘failed’ version? Wouldn’t you want to rebrand it to call it out as being better? Maybe IceWeasel? Yea I know I am going to get flamed. I agree that debacle was stupid. But I can understand how the problem came about and I do not see malice or ill intent as the author does:

Mozilla is even worse. If I create a new Linux distro, and include my own compiled Firefox binary, it’s unlikely I would be able to call the browser “Firefox”, or use the familiar fox logo, without getting permission from Mozilla. This could put me at a competitive disadvantage compared to other versions of Linux because my users would be using what appears to be unfamiliar software. It’s worth mentioning that Mozilla’s trademark rules also indicate they’re not terribly happy about the unofficial redistribution of their binaries, either, and would prefer it if they were the exclusive source.

But its not the same software, now is it? (well maybe not in this exact instance, but that is what the Trademark protection is supposed to be used for. To prevent a fork from being called the same ‘proper name’ as it is a fork.) Once again it is the use of Trademark law, just like copyright, that matters.

Is this how open source is supposed to work? Redistricted redistribution? Tight control on who can compile software and still be able to call it by its proper name?

Um.. yes and no. There is no restriction on the distrobution of the source code. Trademark has nothing to do with source code, it is just about the use of a word or words as an identifier. There is nothing stoping people from compiling software can calling it by its given name. It’s not about the ‘who’ but about the ‘what’; or at least it should be that way. If I compile firefox exactly like the Mozilla Foundataion does, then I can call it FireFox. If I change what could is compiled and packaged, I can not call that package ‘FireFox’. I do not agree with this decision myself, but I do understand the slippery slope they are trying to protect against.

So lets recap:

1. Trademark in and of it’s self is not the problem (the same way copyright is not), but how it’s applied.
2. If you do not use Trademark Law, it can and will be used against you (and can be usd to make you change your existing project from say ‘Phoenix’ to say ‘Firefox’ and pay fees for violation.)
3. Trademark law does not impact your ability to distrobute, change, fork or compile code.
4. Trademark law does impact what you can call something. It gives you the ability to say how a name can be used.
5. The improper use of Trademark Law could be a problem for Open Source, but the majority of the issues (and the one which started his rant) are actually good uses of Trademark Law for Open Source.
6. Preventing corporate and malicious use while promoting the non-corporate communities, and approved corporate use is good for Open Source.
7. Why not ASK if you can use the trademark on your website for your book promoting the project?

There is a part of me which would love to take about 20K and start to go all evil with respect to trademarks, taking Open Source names and preventing projects from calling themselves things. Forking projects and trademarking them for my own purpose and calling them the ‘REAL’ version. It is not about not Trademarking, but about comming up with good guidelines for its proper use in Open Source. It is a tight line one must walk, but walk it we must.

This year we tried something new to get feedback from attendees this year. After a talk you would put little plastic bingo chips into one of three buckets to vote. We also have a talk interest system on the schedule where we get a count on what talks people are selecting. I captured the data just before and after the conference along with other metrics. All this data I have compiled into a massive raw data dump on google docs. It’s a firehose of information, you have been warned. Check the second and third sheets for details on the data. I would like to boil this data down into something useful. More on that below.

History

It was started by a suggestion by Bruce Eckle a few days before the conference. He mentioned a system from another conference where attendees could put slips of colored paper into a basket at the end of the talk to indicate what they thought (red=bad, yellow=ok, green=good). Yarko suggested using marbles, and then Ted and I ordered had found and ordered 108 tubs of colored bingo chips (clearing out the supply). It was at this point that Yarko pointed out that 3 colored buckets and a scale would be simpler, faster, and much, much easier. It is taking me longer to type this than it took for all that to happen… In retrospect we moved a bit too fast on the idea.

Boiling it Down

There are a number of issues with the data. There were two occurances of ballat stuffing which are marked with comments on the spreadsheet. Ignoring those, and some cancellations. The biggest issue is that people vote with their feet at PyCon. If you dont like a talk, you go to a different talk. The IRC channel is filled with people more than willing to inform you of how the other talks are going. Some celebrity speakers can draw people from other talks. There is open space and plenty of other things to do. The raw data includes talk interest calculated before and after the conference from the schedule app. These correlate (@ about 97%) with actual attendance. How that works out is a post by its self as there are finer grained details.

I am thinking of finding corrilations within the data and then using that to compute weights to be used against the voting counts. Then using that to discount the green votes by the attendance and yellow and red votes. The end result will be quite noisy and most of the talks will fall within the delta error. Many of the talks will fall above the delta error and we can use those for determining which speakers to give invited talks and to influence the program commitee decisions next year. This information would also be valuable in conjunction with the online and printes survey information (to come later) for speakers.

If someone would like to help me with this I would be ever grateful. I love working on stuff like this but we need to start working on the 2010 stuff yesturday (actually some people have been working on PyCon 2010 Atlanta for months).

PyCon is less than a week away. Where has the time gone?

Registration

Online registration is closed. The full count is not determined yet (due to sponsor passes, financial aid, and a few minor issues) but attendance will be around 850, but could be as high as 900. We had 400 people in ‘06, 600 in ‘07, and bearly broke 1K in ‘08. With the dramatic downturn in the economy and corporations removing all travel and conference expenses, this is astounding! Initially we were planning on about 1200 (plan made back in April last year), and some believed halving that number would be a better estimate not long ago (well I made statements to that effect anyway).

The new registration system this year is fantastic (Granted anything would be better than last years mess). Massimo, Yarkot and Carl really out did them selves. A. M. K., Yarkot, Massimo, Carl, David, and Kurt have done an outstanding job managing all the issues and fielding attendee requests. Early on I was keeping track of issues which poped up on the reg list to make sure someone was taking care of them (but insanely thankful I was not doing it this year). I stopped after 3 weeks as I was just wasting my time. There were a few kinks here and there, but they were minor.

The Schedule

I never did a follow-up on the program committee work, mainly due to time and general program burnout. I think the schedule is fantastic. If you don’t like the way the talks are scheduled, you can blame me. I stole the job from the person whom was doing it and unilaterally put together the schedule you now see. It was a beast of a job. I tried to get the talks placed into tracks. A testing track, a core python track, etc. I also tried to make sure no two talks occuring at the same time would appeal to the same people. I also tried to balance the talk levels to ensure there was something for every level at a given time and that tracks progressed across the conference. That way you could go to a beginner talk on a subject on the morning and be ready for an intermediate talk on teh same subject in the evening or the next day. Against that backdrop there was also the requirement that anyone giving multiple talks would have those talks given on different days. Some speakers have 2 talks, none have more than that, and it is key to only give one core talk a day if you want the quality to be maintained. Also there was the problem of the talk lengths….. My first draft has some glaring errors in it which thankfully other noticed.

Last night I actually made it to the Boston Python Meetup. There 3 PyCon presentations were given and they were… encredible! I am sooo glad I was able to make it. At first I went because I wanted to see the talks so I could see other talks at Pycon during those times. I will be attending Jesse Noller’s talk again at PyCon. I know I will learn more by seeing it a second time, and I learned quite a bit seeing it the first time. The other two talks have already spawned some changes to plans at PyCon which I will hold off on mentioning until I hear back from people.

Audio Visual

I did not mention this is the volunteer post because I did not want it to get lost there. This year Carl has put together an absolutely insane proposal for AV. He has a dedicated staff for managing the AV complete with capture systems (to capture the raw feed going to the projectors), camera operators, a mixer, and an editor doing real-time production!!! If we wanted to put in some extra effort (and a fair amount of cash) we could broadcast live! I would not expect TED level quality, but the samples produced so far are on par with google talks.

Misc

We gave out a mamoth amount in financial aid (don’t have the number from Ted yet). Open Space use is booming. Sprints are picking up speed and people quite fast. It is going to be a very enjoyable PyCon this year!

Question

The PyCon Lab: Solve This! is most likely going to be held as an Open Space this year. How much interest do people have in this? It has not been properly advertised yet. I am not running it this year, but I will try to poke my head in.

Ok, I just put up a post on the PyCon blog asking for help, and I have to say I dropped the ball here. I could come up with a number of excuses, but the truth is I should have gotten out a call for volunteers months ago. So if you are going to PyCon please consider volunteering as a Session Runner. Below is a rambling laundry list of changes at PyCon this year. These come directly from feedback from previous year attendees, speakers and volunteers. We can not make it happen without more help. Wether that help be as part of the Session Staff or as part of the general Volunteer Mob, we need the community to step up to make it a much better experience for all.

Session Runners

We need Session Runners desperatly. The job is easy; much easier than being a Session Chair (which we also need). You volunteer for a set of 2-3 talks in a session, so it’s not for even a full day. You meet with presenters in the Green Room before thier talk. Help them test their laptop and get thier slides ready. Maybe you get a copy of the slides on a USB drive. You then go with them to the talk and help them hook the machine up if they need help. If there are people interested in an Open Space continuation from the previous talk, you help them get a room and get it posted on the board. If not, help the Session Chair move people out from the provious talk if needed. After that, you do whatever you want until 15min before the next talk. This means that you might miss the beginning or ending of a few talks, but beyond that you get to talk to cool presenters and keep things running smoothly.

The Perks

You get to have a cool radio with headset (either boom, or secret-service style). You get access to Green Room food (just the normal snacks but available durring non-break times). You get to meet and work with the speekers one-on-one. You get to help the conference run much more smoothly, allowing the talk time to be the talk, and not setup or breakdown. You get a ribbon for your badge (if you want it)! By helping out for one session, you are ensuring we have enough volunteers to cover the other sessions so that you are not having talk time wasted watching a presenter set up his laptop instead of presenting. That last one seems like reason enough to me.

A Green Room/OPS for PyCon

Here is the deal. In past years I have noticed a number of small problems which crop up at PyCon, each in and of themselves are not really a big deal. Together they amount to a fair amount of lost time and wasted effort. Much of that wasted effort is in trying to solve specific problems! This year I want to try an experiment to see if we can put in place a framework for dealing with problems in general. The number one way you can improve the ability to deal with a problem at a conference: communication. With that said I will still try to target some specific issues raised in the past.

Session Staff and many department heads will have radios with headsets. We will be able to communicate with key people very quickly and be able to get information out FAST. We could have prevented some rather public issues last year if we had this simple tool alone. These are not toys and we have a limited supply. They are public band FRS radios, so the world will hear us. I won’t bother with more ‘radio’ details here, but the point is between the radios and onside ‘general volunteer mob’ we should be able to get communication to and from key organizers solved.

The Green Room/OPS (behind the registration desk) will be a communication hub with white boards and a fixed radio. Session Chairs whom are stuck in a room will have a means of communicating and getting help at the push of a button. Knowledge of which speakers have arrived already and which are MIA will be known (without having to search stacks of badges). When a speaker, volunteer, or sponsor has a question, they will have a central place from which they can be directed to someone whom can answer thier question. We might not have the answer at OPS, but we will know who does. General attendee questions will be handled at the volunteer center next to registration, or at registration its self.

One of the main things I want to achieve with the Green Room is to give back to the speakers. Those who present at PyCon pay their own way, just like attendees, yet we historically have not treated them very well. These are people whom we are asking to come and present after a grueling review process. They often miss out on the break food. They have to bring their own equipment and set it up them selves (cutting into their presentation time). They are just expected to be where they are supposed to be with no real support or communication. On the other side the Session Chairs and organizers are also volunteers whom pay their own way. They have no clue where the speakers are, what problems are going to come up, and have little forewarning, if any, about special needs of presenters. In the end we have a mass of people at the podium after every talk, no clue if the next speaker is even in the building and the first 5min of every talk is watching the presenter hook up their laptop. In theatre, we call this a farce.

Massive Laundry List O Changes

See.. we do listen

• Public Volunteer Center (next to registration)
• Large board for people to post stuff (‘Hey Bob, we are at Uno’s!’)
• Tons more Lightning talk sessions (two a day!) all via signup sheet at the conference
• Financial Aid forms are dropped off in Volunteer Center (Ted will collect, make checks, and distribute at a set time each day in the green room. Exact details will be sent to those whom received aid via e-mail)
• Session Chairs are provided stop watches
• Session Chairs are provided largeish signs on sticks with 15, 10, 5, and STOP for clearly alerting speakers
• Session Staff are not all alone in a room, but can call on volunteers and will have help for the transitions
• Radios for Session Staff and Dept Heads (mine can make a duck call!)
• Speakers go to the Green Room after registration to check in and get a personalized handout
• Speakers go to the Green Room before talks to get prepped so they are ready to go immediatly when their talk starts
• Speakers and Session Staff are introduced to each other earlier whenever possible
• Printers, a duplicate projection setup, and display adapters in the Green Room will allow problems and talks to be prepped BEFORE the podium
• Speakers and Session Staff have access to snacks in the green room (nothing special, but just this small thing will have a huge impact)
• If presenters or attendees wish to have an Open Space followup, Session Runners will have do the leg work to get the room assigned. Session Runners and Chairs can help prompt people and even make announcements. The Open Space need not occur immediately
• Session Runners will have USB drives for getting the talk slides just before the talk, and get them up on the website for the presenters
• Session Runners and Chairs will be able to edit talk descriptions on the website for adding links and other information promised during Q&A
• Most transitions between talks are now 10min instead of 5! (This will make a huge difference in the talk transitions and overages which always occur)
• Badge Ribbons (for those who want them) The rainbow ‘VOLUNTEER’ ribbon is pretty…. shiny…. you know you want one… you know what you must do to get one…. precious….
• A brief orientation for speakers and session staff on Friday evening to get everyone on the same page. Then anyone whom can not make that session will have plenty of people who can fill them in!
• They key is to get as much information to as many people in a timely manner. If everyone is up to date on the information, then we can work together to solve the problems that arise instead of against each other due to lack of information and co-ordination.

There is a bunch more minor things as well which may or may not occur depending. The Idea is to see what works and what doesn’t, try to only do the things which work, and share that knowledge with everyone else. If something in the above list is causing more problems than helping, then we will stop doing it. Simple as that.

Right now (as I am typing this) Ned Batchelder is giving his “A Whirlwind Excursion through C Extensions” talk at the Boston Python Meetup. This is a talk which he will be giving at PyCon; a talk I argued for as part of the program committee (with full conflict of interest information given). It is scheduled against some other very good talks (I know, I did the schedule, mores the fool me). I did want to have a chance to see this talk before PyCon in the small atmosphere that is Beta House, and have a chance to give feedback and ask more questions than I ever will later on. I feel like I am failing here. The snow was just the last straw on top of an already insane schedule.

Besides, why travel 30min to see and help a friend when we can both travel half a continent in a few weeks and not talk to each other there!

So here is a public apology of sorts to Ned. I hope we can connect at PyCon and have a chance to chat for more than 5min.

With luck the video of the presentation will be put up on ustream soon like the James Tauber Pinax one was (James is 15min away from me, same story).

Sarah learned to walk by herself for the first time today by holding onto a toy stroller. Kim was lucky to have her camera on hand at the time. (How do you rotate video on OSX? YouTube doesn’t have this as an edit option?)

Figures I was sitting on the couch when I read this instead of at work, or in the computer room, or.. well anywhere else in the house. That meant I had a choice of grabbing highlights (which counts as a magazine…) and leave me reaching over and putting my hand on the book next to me (there is always a book within arms reach in my house.. just not always mine).

“I’m feeling right bad about this.”

From Death of a Dreamer by M.C. Beaton.

Meme from James Tauber, Greg Newman, Justin Lilly and Brian Rosner:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Just to drive the point home, this is a picture of the half wall behind the couch looking into the kitchen:

50 points to whom ever knows what 'orts' are... (no googling...)