Suckers

by

How absolutely mindblowingly perfect is this? A French yacht taking place in a round-the-world sailing race was attacked by a giant squid. The perfect part? The trophy they’re going for is the Jules Verne around-the-world sailing trophy.

“The squid was pulling really hard, so we put the boat about and when we came to a stop the tentacles let go. We saw it behind the boat – and it was enormous. I have been sailing for 40 years, and I have never seen the like,” he said.

Crew member Didier Ragault, who spotted the creature through a port-hole said \”the tentacles were as thick as my arm wearing an oil-skin, and I immediately thought of the damage it could do.

“When we saw it behind the boat it must have been seven, eight or nine metres long,” he said.

(Via G’day Cobbers)

Getting pissy…

by

Grrrrrr!

Would everyone mind too terribly switching over to web browsers that actually support CSS layout declarations properly? Mozilla, Netscape, Chimera, whatever.

I’m working on redesigning WudiVisions, my photoblog. I’ve got the basic concept for the main page right how I want it, save a little bit of tweaking on the fonts…

…as long as you’re viewing it in a browser that has some idea how to render things correctly, at least. Notably absent from this list is Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari — dammit, pretty much any browser that doesn’t use the Gecko layout engine.

Not sure where I want to go from here. I like the concept I’ve been working with, dammit, and don’t really want to have to find something else. So for the moment, I’m just going to stomp around, whine, bitch, and moan for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll feel better after a good tempertantrum.

Colors aren't my strongpoint

by

I’m experimenting with different colorschemes for the site. On the bright side, this is very easy to do — just a few changes in the CSS for the site and the whole thing changes.

On the downside, colors outside of black and white just aren’t my strong suit. ;) So this may go on for the next few days until I find something I settle on. Bear with me…

R.I.P. Public Domain

by

In one of the (many) stories I’ve been keeping an eye on but haven’t babbled much about, the Supreme Court has been deciding whether Congress overrode the Constitution in 1998 by extending copyrights to stay in effect until 70 years after the death of the creator — 95 years if the copyright is owned by a corporation.

Copyright was originally intended to give an author/creator a specific, finite amount of time to reap profits and rewards from a created work before it was released into the public domain. Originally set to 14 years, the active term has been extended bit by bit over the years. The primary mover behind the extension of copyright terms in recent years, including this most recent extention, has been Disney. Every time Mickey Mouse was in danger of entering the public domain, Disney challenged the copyright laws, and got the terms extended, allowing them to retain control over Mickey.

(Irony alert: This from a company who counts among their many hits “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Treasure Island,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White,” “Oliver and Company,” and many other works that they were able to create films from because the original works were in the public domain and not restricted by copyright any longer.)

Today’s Supreme Court ruling upheld this extention, however. Nothing that’s not already in the public domain is likely to get into the public domain anytime soon. Free-speech advocates are in mourning.

More information:

  • Lawrence Lessig (the lawyer challenging the case): With deep sadness: “The Supreme Court has rejected our challenge to the Sonny Bono Law.”
  • BoingBoing: Supreme Court rules against Eldred, Alexandria burns: “That’s the Supreme Court case that Larry Lessig argued to establish the principle that the continuous extension of copyright at the expense of the public domain is unconstitutional. This blog will be wearing a black arm-band for the next day in mourning for our shared cultural heritage, as the Library of Alexandria burns anew.”
  • AP: Supreme Court Keeps Copyright Protections: “The 7-2 ruling, while not unexpected, was a blow to Internet publishers and others who wanted to make old books available online and use the likenesses of a Mickey Mouse cartoon and other old creations without paying high royalties. Hundreds of thousands of books, movies and songs were close to being released into the public domain when Congress extended the copyright by 20 years in 1998.”
  • BoingBoing (in Feb 2002): What the copyright ruling really means: “The argument hinges on the constitutionality of the extensions to copyright. The framers originally established a ~~17-year~~ 14-year (thanks, Larry!) term of copyright, as part of the constitutional mandate to provide creators with “a limited monopoly” on their works. With the continual extension (11 times in the past 40 years) of copyright’s term, the monopoly is no longer “limited” in any real sense of the word (the present term of copyright is author’s life plus 70 years, or 95 years for works that belong to corporations).”
  • Slashdot: Disney Wins, Eldred (and everybody else) loses: “Did you see Treasure Planet [imdb.com]? Yeah, me neither, I heard it was horrible. But either way, Treasure Island was a book written by Robert Louis Stevenson [kirjasto.sci.fi] in 1883. 114 years from now, if my great-great grandchild wanted to write The Lion King in space (the only discernable difference between Treasure Island and Treasure Planet), Disney would NEVER give them the right to make it, and would sue the pants off them if they tried.” (From the discussion thread.)
  • Washington Post: Eldred vs. Ashcroft: A Primer: “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Congress has “wide leeway” to interpret copyright law as set out by the U.S. Constitution. Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer were the lone dissenters, saying that extending copyright terms repeatedly denies Americans “free access to the products of inventive and artistic genius.””

Yahoo's getting pushy again

by

Yahoo! wants to know who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going…

Yahoo is now using something called “Web Beacons” to track Yahoo Group users around the net and see what you’re doing — similar to cookies. Take a look at their updated privacy statement.

About half-way down the page, in the section “Outside the Yahoo! Network”, you’ll see a little “click here” link that will let you opt-out of their new method of snooping. You may want to do this. Once you have clicked that link, you are opted out.

Notice the “Success” message at the top of the next page. Be careful, because on that page there is a “Cancel Opt-out” button that, if clicked, will undo the opt-out.

Sneaky little devils!

I hardly use Yahoo! anymore ever since they started charging for remote e-mail access, but other people might want to keep this in mind. I don’t want someone tracking my movements online anymore than I’d want someone tracking my movements in the real world.

(Thanks to Wil for the heads up.)

Switch to MySQL

by

After struggling with things for a few hours tonight, I’ve managed to succesfully convert the database backend for MovableType to MySQL.

What does this mean? Well…good question. For you, the end-user, not much, though as MySQL is supposed to be a bit faster, posting comments might be a bit more responsive than it was before. For me as the author/administrator, it should mean a bit more speed when creating/editing entries, and a lot more options as far as what I can do on a design/implementation level.

At least, that’s the theory. If nothing else, according to one of the moderators of the MovableType Support Forums, “If you have the choice, pick mysql. :) A little faster, more stable, easy to browse the database….” Good enough for me!

Happy Places

by

Everybody’s got a ‘Happy Place’ of one sort or another. The mental refuge you keep for when nothing’s going right, or something you’re witnessing is just too disturbing for you to deal with at the moment. Back off, find your Happy Place, and relax until things have calmed down.

My friend Casey, for some reason, always reveled in doing what he could to destroy people’s Happy Places. Just one of his kicks, I suppose. For instance, one girl’s Happy Place involved playing with a lot of puppies. If I remember correctly, after discovering this, Casey went out and found a copy of the old novelty song “Dead Puppies Aren’t Much Fun” and gave it to her. She needed a new happy place after that.

He never could touch my happy place, though. See, I’ve always had a strong fascination with a lot of very “dark” things. One of my favorite authors is William S. Burroughs. One of my favorite visual artists is H. R. Giger. For many years, I had a fascination (obsession) with trent reznor of nine inch nails. Happy, sunshiney, cheerful stuff like that.

My Happy Place was an animated movie.

Script by William S. Burroughs.

Score by trent reznor.

Animation and art direction by H. R. Giger.

Directed by Terry Gilliam and/or David Fincher and/or Darren Aronofsky and/or David Cronenberg (either joinly, or each taking a different section of the film, or possibly a series of films…whatever).

Casey never did find a way to destroy that particular little Happy Place. He tried making me visualize slapping a “Smiley Face” in the middle of it, but I started having too much fun envisioning a “Smiley Face” as drawn by Giger, and Casey gave up.

My Happy Place was — and is — safe and unscathed.

(Loosely inspired by BlogFodder.)

BlogFodder

by

Here’s an interesting idea — BlogFodder, a daily e-mail with a short snippet of text intended to (hopefully) inspire musings, thoughts, and possibly future weblog posts. Meg’s likening it to the old school exercises where a class was given a single topic or title and ended up creating umpteen different stories seems right on target. Worth keeping an eye on, at least.