Court Briefing/Pleading Template for Apple Pages (iWork)

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Here’s another Apple Pages template I created for my school work, this time for my Legal Writing class. This is a court briefing (or pleading) template, based (more or less) on the court standards for Washington State.

It must be stressed that I in no way guarantee that this template exactly satisfies the requirements of the court system of Washington or any other state, or the requirements of any class you might be taking. I have merely formatted it as best as I can, given the information I have available and my instructor’s requirements. I believe it should be fairly close, however, and it should be adaptable to full compliance for other jurisdictions with a minimum of work. I think.

Thanks to the excellent Typography for Lawyers website, which is an excellent resource not just for lawyers, but for anyone interested in improving the presentation of their work.

Feel free to download and use the template (198k .template file). Just download and (for easiest use) place in your ~LibraryApplication SupportPagesTemplatesMy Templates folder.

(I didn’t bother translating this to Microsoft Word format, as there are a number of similar templates for Word bundled with Word or already floating around the web, including some on Microsoft’s own website. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t include any legal templates with Pages, and I didn’t find many during my searches…so here we are.)

##Version History##

  • 2010.11.10: First upload.

Drama-Free Facebook

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Leave it to the kids to figure out how to make Facebook as safe, secure, and drama-free as possible.

From danah boyd | apophenia » Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook:

Mikalah uses Facebook but when she goes to log out, she deactivates her Facebook account. She knows that this doesn’t delete the account – that’s the point. She knows that when she logs back in, she’ll be able to reactivate the account and have all of her friend connections back. But when she’s not logged in, no one can post messages on her wall or send her messages privately or browse her content. But when she’s logged in, they can do all of that. And she can delete anything that she doesn’t like. Michael Ducker calls this practice “super-logoff” when he noticed a group of gay male adults doing the exact same thing.

[…]

Shamika doesn’t deactivate her Facebook profile but she does delete every wall message, status update, and Like shortly after it’s posted. She’ll post a status update and leave it there until she’s ready to post the next one or until she’s done with it. Then she’ll delete it from her profile. When she’s done reading a friend’s comment on her page, she’ll delete it. She’ll leave a Like up for a few days for her friends to see and then delete it. When I asked her why she was deleting this content, she looked at me incredulously and told me “too much drama.” Pushing further, she talked about how people were nosy and it was too easy to get into trouble for the things you wrote a while back that you couldn’t even remember posting let alone remember what it was all about. It was better to keep everything clean and in the moment. If it’s relevant now, it belongs on Facebook, but the old stuff is no longer relevant so it doesn’t belong on Facebook.

(via Waxy)

Interesting approaches, and I don’t think I would have thought of either. Well, I might have thought of the second, but I babble enough that it would be far too much trouble to bother with (and besides, the majority of what goes on Facebook also goes to Twitter and my blog, so there wouldn’t be much point).

RockMelt

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From First Look at RockMelt, a Browser Built For Facebook Freaks | Webmonkey | Wired.com:

We’ve seen browsers custom-built for the social web before, most notably Flock, which launched as a MySpaced-up version of Firefox. Mozilla experimented with Ubiquity, an in-browser tool for posting to different social sites and interacting with web services. There are a number of add-ons that can embed social networking dashboards into the browser for you. These tools have grown in popularity as we’ve struggled to manage the ever-increasing flow of links, media and bits shared by our online friends.

So, the idea isn’t original. And RockMelt doesn’t sport a complete re-invention of the browser interface, either. But it is very streamlined, and there are some key elements that people who live and breathe the social web will find intriguing.

(via Wired)

Interesting. I’ve signed up to get a look at it, since I’m pretty constantly on both Facebook and Twitter. I’m not entirely sure how often I’ll use it (do I really need a specialized social media browser?), but I’m at least interested in the idea.

HTML5 Audio Safari Extension

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From HTML5 Audio Safari Extension // ShaunInman.com:

HTML5 Audio Safari extension currently replaces the default Tumblr audio player (with or without Flash) and WordPress Audio Player (without Flash).

Comes in very handy when combined with John Gruber’s suggestions for running your Mac Flash-free.

(Also, and somewhat unrelated: I’ve finally gotten tired of the many errors the Delicious-to-weblog plugin was throwing, so I’m going to experiment with moving away from using Delicious as a link aggregator, and just post when I find something interesting. Old-school blogging. Imagine that!)

Links for November 1st through November 5th

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Sometime between November 1st and November 5th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • A Piece of Their Mind: "Adding to the conundrum, of course, are their linked brains, and the mysterious hints of what passes between them. The family regularly sees evidence of it. The way their heads are joined, they have markedly different fields of view. One child will look at a toy or a cup. The other can reach across and grab it, even though her own eyes couldn't possibly see its location. 'They share thoughts, too,' says Louise. 'Nobody will be saying anything,' adds Simms, 'and Tati will just pipe up and say, 'Stop that!' And she'll smack her sister.' While their verbal development is delayed, it continues to get better. Their sentences are two or three words at most so far, and their enunciation is at first difficult to understand. Both the family, and researchers, anxiously await the children's explanation for what they are experiencing."
  • ★ Going Flash-Free on Mac OS X, and How to Cheat When You Need It: "Last week I mentioned that, following Steven Frank’s lead, I’d completely disbled Flash Player on my Mac. But I have a cheat, for web pages with Flash content with no non-Flash workaround. I’m really happy with this setup, so I thought I’d document it here."
  • And We Shall Call This “Moff’s Law”: "When you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less — that not using one's capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated — you are not saying anything particularly intelligent. And unless you live on a parallel version of Earth where too many people are thinking too deeply and critically about the world around them and what's going on in their own heads, you're not helping anything; on the contrary, you're acting as an advocate for entropy."
  • 500 Internal Server Error: 500 Internal Server Error
  • To NSFW or Not to NSFW? (NSFW) – Roger Ebert’s Journal: "America has a historical Puritan streak, and is currently in the midst of another upheaval of zeal from radical religionists. They know what is bad for us. They would prefer to burn us at a metaphorical stake, but make do with bizarre imprecations about the dire consequences of our sin. Let me be clear: I am not speaking of sexual behavior that is obviously evil and deserves legal attention. But definitions differ. Much of their wrath is aimed at gays. I consider homosexuality an ancient, universal and irrefutable fact of human nature. Some radicals actually blamed it for 9/11. For them the ideal society must be Saudi Arabia's, which I consider pathologically sick."

George Takei Says You’re A Douchebag

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Just a bit of silliness here. A little selective editing of premium pieces of this YouTube video gives us this particularly choice piece of audio. Feel free to download and use as your favorite ringtone. ;)

Long Version (201KB .mp3): “Hello, I’m George Takei. You are…a douchebag. That’s right! A douchebag. You are always going to be a total douchebag. I can only suspect that you have some…shall I say…’issues’ to work out?”

Medium Version (106KB .mp3): “You are…a douchebag. That’s right! A douchebag. You are always going to be a total douchebag.”

Short Version (29KB .mp3): “You are…a douchebag.”

I couldn’t resist.

Links for October 21st through October 30th

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Sometime between October 21st and October 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Who Lives There – A Home in the Pyramid Atop Seattle’s Smith Tower: "TO get to the top of the world, Petra Franklin Lahaie ushers her two young daughters and their girly bikes through a set of heavy bronze doors, greets the 24-hour elevator operator in the Prussian blue uniform, rides up 35 stories past mostly vacant office suites, debarks next to an observation deck and Chinese-themed banquet room, passes through a portal marked 'private residence,' climbs two stories into a neo-gothic pyramid and enters a penthouse apartment."

APA 6th Edition Paper Template for Apple Pages (iWork)

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As I’ve been writing papers for my class assignments, I’ve been working on fine-tuning an APA 6th Edition template for Apple’s Pages. I based my template on a Microsoft Word template provided by Dr. Paul Rose of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

For Pages ’09 (v.4.0–4.3)

Feel free to download and use the template (314k .template file) for your own papers. Just download, decompress, and then (for easiest use), place in your ~Library/Application Support/iWork/Pages/Templates/My Templates folder.

For Pages ’13 (v.5.0+)

An initial cursory check seems to indicate that the template works just fine under Pages 5.0, so feel free to download and use the same template file. If anyone does note any problems with the template under Pages 5, please leave a comment here and I’ll look into making corrections.

The easiest way to add the template to Pages 5, according to Apple, is to open the template file, then click Add to Template Chooser.

For the more technically-inclined, Apple has changed where template files are stored. If you want to dig down to add or remove them manually, the new location is ~Library/Containers/com.apple.iWork.Pages/Data/Library/Application Support/User Templates. Note that com.apple.iWork.Pages is a package, not a directory; to continue along the path you’ll need to right-click on the package and choose the “Show Package Contents” item.

For Microsoft Word

I’ve also created versions of the template file for Microsoft Word in both .dotx (for Word 2007 or later) and .dot (for earlier versions of Word). Feel free to download both in one .zip file (35k .zip file) or individually (.dotx for Word 2007+ (36k) or .dot for Word 2003 (55k)).

For easiest use: On a PC, place the templates in your C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates folder; on a Mac, place the templates in your ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/My Templates folder.

Version History

  • 2010.10.28: First upload.
  • 2010.10.29: Corrected double-spacing of reference page, added appendix, table, and figure pages. Added Word versions.
  • 2010.11.9: Corrected third-, fourth-, and fifth-level headings to use standard sentence capitalization and to be paragraph-level headings.
  • 2010.11.29: Corrected first-level headings to be truly centered.
  • 2013.10.25: No change to the template; updated blog post to include Pages 5 information.

Back to the Boys Club

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Long-time readers will know of my concerns regarding Pixar’s long-running marginalization of women in their films (Is Pixar a “Boys Only” Club?, Rataphooey, Misogyn•E, More on Pixar (Or, Why I Suck at Soundbites), Pixar and Gender, and Things That Bugged Me About Up).

Even given all of that, I’ve been cautiously optimistic about Pixar’s next film, Brave, for some time now. It looked like Pixar was finally cracking the clubhouse door open. Not only is the main character a girl, but the film was being written and directed by Brenda Chapman — the first time a Pixar film has had a woman directing — and she had written the film with her daughter in mind. No guarantees, but all promising signs.

Unfortunately, the rumor mill of the past few days seems to be indicating that not only is Brenda Chapman no longer directing Brave, but she has left Pixar entirely.

Crazy rumors floating into our offices this afternoon from reliable sources. We hear that Brenda Chapman, the first woman director at Pixar, has left the studio and is no longer directing Brave (previously titled The Bear and the Bow). We hear that she was pushed aside from full directing a while back, and that story artist Mark Andrews (who also co-directed the Pixar short “One Man Band”) has taken over directorial duties.

Disturbing to hear, and I’m very curious as to what happened to prompt this move. Obviously, there are a number of possible reasons, many of which will likely have little to nothing to do with any real or perceived sexism. Also, it’s entirely possible that Pixar may still be able to release a good, quality film with a strong female lead character, and I certainly hope that they do, no matter who ends up directing Brave. That said, losing (dismissing? firing?) their first woman director doesn’t bode well for finally losing the “boys club” impression.

Links for October 8th through October 17th

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Sometime between October 8th and October 17th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Lens Culture: In Almost Every Picture # 7: "The chronological series begins in 1936, when a 16-year-old girl from Tilburg in Holland picks up a gun and shoots at the target in a shooting gallery. Every time she hits the target, it triggers the shutter of a camera and a portrait of the girl in firing pose is taken and given as a prize. And so a lifelong love affair with the shooting gallery begins. This series documents almost every year of the woman's life (there is a conspicuous pause from 1939 to 1945) up until present times. At the age of 88 Ria van Dijk still makes her pilgrimage to the Shooting Gallery."
  • Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back: "A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday."