February 24, 2007
How About James Thurber Sponsored by Eukanuba®?
New Yorker Cartoons Available As Animated, Ad-Supported Podcasts
The New Yorker‘s famous cartoons can now be viewed as an animated, ad-supported video podcast on iTunes through RingTales, an online animation syndicator. As part of the deal with the Conde Nast publication (through its cartoon licensing arm, The Cartoon Bank), Santa Monica-based RingTales has the exclusive license to animate and distribute the New Yorker library of over 70,000 cartoons. Podcast subscribers will receive three new animations of The New Yorker “RingTales” each week. In addition to iTunes, which had 14 episodes 20-second episodes available as of Friday morning, the downloads will be available on the magazine’s site, newyorker.com, in March...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:31 AM
February 22, 2007
The One I Think of Now
This week's offering from American Life in Poetry features Maine poet Wesley McNair.
American Life in Poetry: Column 100
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Here the Maine poet, Wesley McNair, offers us a vivid description of a man who has lived beyond himself. I'd guess you won't easily forget this sad old man in his apron with his tray of cheese.
The One I Think of Now
At the end of my stepfather's life
when his anger was gone,
and the saplings of his failed
nursery had grown into trees,
my newly feminist mother had him
in the kitchen to pay for all
those years he only did the carving.
"You know where that is,"
she would say as he looked
for a knife to cut the cheese
and a tray to serve it with,
his apron wide as a dress
above his workboots, confused
as a girl. He is the one I think of now,
lifting the tray for my family,
the guests, until at last he comes
to me. And I, no less confused,
look down from his hurt eyes as if
there were nothing between us
except an arrangement of cheese,
and not this bafflement, these
almost tender hands that once
swung hammers and drove machines
and insisted that I learn to be a man.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2002 by Wesley McNair, whose most recent book is "The Ghosts of You and Me," David R. Godine, 2006. Reprinted from "Fire: Poems," published by David R. Godine, 2002, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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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 1:37 PM
February 18, 2007
But How Does Dear Author Really Feel About It?
Adobe Labs Cooks Up Worst Ebook Reader in Ebook Reader History
Dear Adobe,
I have, often, derided the Adobe Acrobat format for ebooks. I have told people on this blog, in emails, on message boards, that this is my least favorite format and that you should only buy this format when there is NO OTHER OPTION. Buying an Adobe ebook, particularly one that requires authentication to read it, is akin to shaving your head when you are one of the most recognizable people in the world and, at one time, one of the most beautiful people in the world.
You’ve come out with a great new software called Adobe Digital Editions, for those people who love ebooks...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:24 AM
February 16, 2007
Brilliant
Hat tip to my Gilbane colleague Leonor Ciarlone.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:51 AM | TrackBack
New Water
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 99
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
My maternal grandparents got their drinking water from a well in the yard, and my disabled uncle carried it sloshing to the house, one bucket of hard red water early every morning. I couldn't resist sharing this lovely little poem by Minnesota poet, Sharon Chmielarz.
New Water
All those years--almost a hundred--
the farm had hard water.
Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange.
Sink and tub and toilet, too,
once they got running water.
And now, in less than a lifetime,
just by changing the well's location,
in the same yard, mind you,
the water's soft, clear, delicious to drink.
All those years to shake your head over.
Look how sweet life has become;
you can see it in the couple who live here,
their calmness as they sit at their table,
the beauty as they offer you new water to drink.
Reprinted by permission of Sharon Chmielarz, whose most recent collection of poems is "The Rhubarb King," Loonfeather Press, 2006. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sharon Chmielarz. 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 9:28 AM
February 14, 2007
WS-AreYouEvenStillReadingThis
Writing for IBM developerWorks, Elliotte Rusty Harold offers Ten Predictions for XML in 2007. I've always liked Elliotte's work. When SGML was giving way to XML, Elliotte wrote the first good book about XML, and he has gone on to write several more. His XML in a Nutshell is the book I always recommend to people looking for a solid overview and authoritative first reference, so his predictions mean something. He weighs in on a number of topics you would expect to hear about (XQuery, XForms, open document formats), and some that are less well known (the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP)). But the thing that really caught my eye was his skepticism about Web Services. The money quote: "Enterprises have absorbed as much Web services machinery as they're able to stomach. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and SOAP 1.2 are the end of the line. Many enterprises won't even get that far. WS-Choreography, WS-Transport, WS-Reliability, WS-Security, WS-Resource, WS-ServiceGroup, WS-BaseFaults, WS-Messaging, WS-KitchenSink, and WS-AreYouEvenStillReadingThis won't leave the station."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:47 AM
February 12, 2007
EMC Retrospect Extends Support for Microsoft Windows Vista
But maybe a week too late for me...
I was using the Retrospect software to back up my Windows XP notebook, which started to die an unceremonious death a week or so ago. So I ran out and bought a new machine, and found myself stuck with Microsoft Vista because 10 of the 11 notebooks at Best Buy were already running Vista. Then I discovered that my backups, faithfully created with the Retrospect software, had no way of getting to my new Vista machine, since Retrospect wasn't working on Vista. How delightful!
So how does a major hardware and software vendor like EMC not have software updated at the same time a new version of the dominant OS comes out? I have no idea. Will Retrospect restore the backups from my Windows XP machine onto my Windows Vista machine? I will let you know.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:26 PM
Hope Springs Eternal!
Or, if you leave now and keep driving 24 hours, you will reach someplace warm and sunny.
The truck that will carry Red Sox team equipment to spring training arrived outside of Fenway Park at 5:30 a.m. this morning (live photo above), and will depart for Fort Myers in an official ceremony at 1 p.m.
For fans who want to see it off, the truck will leave from the players parking lot entrance on Van Ness St., and will be followed in procession by Fenway Ambassadors, Red Sox staff, and Wally the Green Monster tossing gifts from a flat-bed truck.
Kevin Carson of Atlas moving in Holliston is supervising the loading process.
"I love it," said Carson. "Its like Groundhog Day for two reasons: Its the first rite of spring, when the moving truck arrives. And its the same every year, just like the movie."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:16 AM
February 10, 2007
Favorite Movies
One of the great things about having teenagers is you begin to get to share with them some of the cultural touchstones of your life--books, music, and movies. In truth, we are pretty far apart on the first two, especially music. They like hip hop, which I don't, except for an odd song or two. But we have found common ground in movies, especially since I have two boys. I have always loved gangster movies, including the obvious ones like The Godfather saga. But my favorite gangster movie, bar none, is the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, which I watched with my boys the other night. It had been a few years since I watched, and it was just as good as I remembered it.
UPDATE: Speaking of gangster movies, The Departed comes out on Tuesday.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:00 PM
February 9, 2007
Steve Jobs Speaks Out Against DRM for Music
But over at DRM Watch, Bill Rosenblatt is sure that Apple's latest "DRM strategy" is pure PR.
Speaking of DRM, there happens to be a very good book out there on the topic.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:43 PM
February 8, 2007
Kissing a Horse
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 98
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
A horse's head is big, and the closer you get to it, the bigger it gets. Here is the Idaho poet, Robert Wrigley, offering us a horse's head, up close, and covering a horse's character, too.
Kissing a Horse
Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings
we owned that year, it was Red--
skittish and prone to explode
even at fourteen years--who'd let me
hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain up the head to the eyes. He'd let me stroke his coarse chin whiskers and take his soft meaty underlip in my hands, press my man's carnivorous kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just so that I could smell the long way his breath had come from the rain and the sun, the lungs and the heart, from a world that meant no harm.
Reprinted from "Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems," published in 2006 by Penguin. Copyright (c) Robert Wrigley, 2006, and reprinted by permission of the author. 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 10:55 PM
February 4, 2007
Vista, Schmista
Too often, it seems, I find myself building a new system for myself, my small office, or for family use. Building one for the family is actually pretty easy. Windows, Office, and away we go. My office machine is a little trickier, as I have to account for things like Quickbooks, and that is difficult because somewhere along the line I put myself on this treadmill of having bought one full version followed by upgrades. So I end up installing the original software, then a couple of upgrades, and then I have to go to the Intuit Web site for a patch--blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Really, it should all be easier.
The toughest job is building a new system for myself. Windows, Office, Acrobat, my HTML editor, some XML tools, Firefox, my backup system, and then a bunch of small things that I have grown to use and like--incuding Google Desktop and the Onfolio tool (which unfortunately is now only part of the Windows Live toolbar--oy). Then there are all the settings--network accounts, email accounts, ftp accounts, RSS settings. The details drive me crazy, and I don't want to count the hours I have spent tinkering with the new machine I bought Thursday evening that is still not 100% "mine."
The new machine has Windows Vista, by the way. And while I have not done much exploring, Vista is, well, to be polite, underwhelming. I am sure someone with some knowledge could spell out some of the improvements, but it fails the "doh!" test. In other words, it still does poorly what it has always done poorly. It still takes forever for the system to boot and to shut down, and the performance seems, incredibly, worse than my two-year old Model T of a machine, despite the fact that the new machine has four times as much memory and a much, much faster chip. How is this possible?
I am sure that I can improve on the performance. (Well, I assume I can, if I spend some time looking at my power settings, and at what is launched during startup, and how big the paging file is, blah, blah, blah, blah.) But this is exactly my point. It shouldn't be so hard. We are 20-something years into the personal computer era; why do we still have to baby and tweak and cajole and troubleshoot these systems like they are a whole new invention?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:17 PM | TrackBack
February 3, 2007
XForms Tutorial
After lots of promises over the past few months, the new Orbeon Forms tutorial is finally available! You can read it online or get it with any recent builds of Orbeon Forms.
The tutorial specifically targets the upcoming Orbeon Forms 3.5, of which you can find nightly builds here. The tutorial covers:
Installing and configuring Orbeon Forms.
Understanding the simple XForms Hello application.
Building from scratch the Bookcast application, which allows you to keep track of the books you have read...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:28 PM
February 2, 2007
Someone Has a Birthday Today
If you have no idea, what the above text is about, click here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:29 AM
