July 27, 2006
What is RDF?
Over at XML.com, Joshua Tauberer has updated a very useful article, "What is RDF."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:27 PM
My Son the Man
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 70
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
As a man I'll never gain the wisdom Sharon Olds expresses in this poem about motherhood, but one of the reasons poetry is essential is that it can take us so far into someone else's experience that we feel it's our own.
My Son the Man
Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider, the way Houdini would expand his body while people were putting him in chains. It seems no time since I would help him to put on his sleeper, guide his calves into the gold interior, zip him up and toss him up and catch his weight. I cannot imagine him no longer a child, and I know I must get ready, get over my fear of men now my son is going to be one. This was not what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson, snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains, and appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me the way Houdini studied a box to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.
"My Son the Man" from THE WELLSPRING by Sharon Olds. Copyright (c) 1996 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:16 PM
July 26, 2006
IDPF OCF 1.0 Updated
According to an email I received today:
An updated version of the Open eBook Publication Structure Container Format (OCF) 1.0 specification has been posted on the IDPF website. The updates to the specification were made based on IDPF member and public comments received to date during the current IDPF Member and Public Review. The review period will end on Friday, August 4th. The IDPF strongly encourages feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether IDPF members or not, for the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of IDPF work. Feedback on the draft specification can be provided here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:55 PM
Wikipedia
Well, on any given day, this could be true. Then again, maybe not.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:53 PM
July 25, 2006
Sony Breaks Its Silence
Sony has been very quiet about their new eBook reader since an initial spate of publicity. But just today I received an email with a few details (not many really). I am reproducing the email here.
I continue to be underwhelmed by their marketing efforts. I contacted their PR folks after the initial announcements last December, and again a month or two ago. Still no word from them.
=================================================================
PICK A NICE SPOT FOR YOUR LIBRARY.
=================================================================
Thank you for your patience and for requesting updates on the
Sony(R) Reader, coming this fall, in time for the holidays.
It holds about 80 electronic books, is as easy to carry as a slim paperback and thanks to electronic paper, just as easy to read. Just load it up with tons of great electronic books from CONNECT(TM) eBooks, and you'll never read the same way again.
Explore the portable reader here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
EASY READING
Breakthrough technology provides clarity that's almost paper- like. View from nearly any angle and adjust text size to your
preference.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PERFECTLY PORTABLE
It's lightweight, thin, and holds about 80 books. More with optional memory cards. So take your own mini-library wherever
you go.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
LONG BATTERY LIFE
The rechargeable battery allows you to turn up to 7,500
continuous pages on a single charge (when not providing audio).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
CONNECT EBOOKS
Designed with variety in mind, CONNECT eBooks will have over 10,000 titles online. You'll find many of the latest bestsellers and a deep catalog including more than 15 categories and over 100 subcategories. From mystery to history, sci-fi to self-help
and more, you're sure to find something to fit your taste.
- Sample titles that will be available at launch.
At Risk
by Patricia Cornwell from Putnam.
Number 9 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction best seller list.*
Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner from PerfectBound and Harper Collins.
Number 2 on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction best seller list.
The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown from Anchor and Random House.
Number 7 on the New York Times Paperback Fiction best seller list.
Digging to America
by Anne Tyler from Knopf Publishing.
Number 23 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction best seller list.
- Categories that will be available.
Biography
Business
Entertainment
Fiction and Literature
Games
Graphics
Health, Mind and Body
Mystery and Thrillers
Nature
Politics and Government
Resources and Reference
Self Help and Improvement
Science Fiction
Technology
Thrillers
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:22 PM
July 24, 2006
Makes Perfect Sense to Me
10 reasons you should never get a job
Steve Pavlina feels strongly that you are better off working for yourself than working for the man.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:19 PM
Ironing After Midnight
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 69
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
This marvelous poem by the California poet Marsha Truman Cooper perfectly captures the world of ironing, complete with its intimacy. At the end, doing a job to perfection, pressing the perfect edge, establishes a reassuring order to an otherwise mundane and slightly tawdry world.
Ironing After Midnight
Your mother called it
"doing the pressing,"
and you know now
how right she was.
There is something urgent here.
Not even the hiss
under each button
or the yellow business
ground in at the neck
can make one instant
of this work seem unimportant.
You've been taught
to turn the pocket corners
and pick out the dark lint
that collects there.
You're tempted to leave it,
but the old lessons
go deeper than habits.
Everyone else is asleep.
The odor of sweat rises
when you do
under the armpits,
the owner's particular smell
you can never quite wash out.
You'll stay up.
You'll have your way,
the final stroke
and sharpness
down the long sleeves,
a truly permanent edge.
Reprinted from "River Styx," No. 32, 1990, by permission of the author, whose most recent book is "Substantial Holdings," Pudding House Publications, 2002. Poem copyright (c) 1990 by Marsha Truman Cooper. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:56 PM
July 19, 2006
Power outlets turned off on Acela after circuits shorted
Oh, dear.
Apparently, there are problems with the AC outlets on Acela trains, so Amtrak has has turned them off.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:19 PM
July 17, 2006
eBooks Done Well
Andrew Pace, head of information technology for the North Carolina State University Libraries, likes what he sees from Springer's new eBook platform. You can check out SpringerLink for yourself here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:00 PM
Google Books Stupid Page of the Day
I subscribe to an RSS feed from Project Gutenberg, which tells me about titles that have been added to their library. One caught my eye today, Fairies and Folk Tales of Ireland, by William Henry Frost. Check out the Frontispiece art, which is just below the fold when you open the eBook. Now check out the same image on Google Books. Heck of a job, Google!
UPDATE: Goodness. What happened to this page? And this one? Those darned verso pages.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 7, 2006
Don't Look Back
Happy Birthday, Satchel Paige.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:46 PM
Family Reunion
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 67
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He's heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.
Family Reunion
My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill, until finally we joined him, making margaritas, cutting the fat off the bone.
When he saw how we drank, my sister
shredding the black labels into her glass while his remaining grandchildren dragged their thin bunk bed mattresses
first out to the lawn to play
then farther up the field to sleep next to her, I think it was then he changed, something in him died. He's gentler now,
quiet, losing weight though every night he eats the same ice cream he always ate only now he's not drinking, he doesn't fall asleep with the spoon in his hand,
he waits for my mother to come lie down with him.
Reprinted from "Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced," Alice James Books, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Catherine Barnett. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:32 PM
Amateur Hour at Google
The more I look at Google Books, the more dismayed I am. Check out the following book about Nathaniel Hawthorne, An Analytical Index to the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: With a Sketch of His Life. Start here, and then scroll back a page. Why don't they just throw up on the scanner and reproduce that instead?
And what to say about this page? And this one? Do the people at Harvard know their books are being manhandled like this?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
