June 20, 2004

What to do with small Compact Flash cards?

What do you do with those nearly useless CF cards that came with your first digital camera? I’m talking about cards in the 4, 8, and 16MB range. I did a quick, cursory search of Ask Slashdot and didn’t come up with anything.

Posted by pberry at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Laser Disc Blowout

The time has come to purge my aging laser disc collection in favor of CSS crippled DVDs. Boy, do I love lock-in! I’m sure glad the DVD-CCA is there to keep me honest. I’m giving first dibs to loyal readers and googlers, then it goes to eBay or the trash.

This is just a list with prices. If you want specifics about any disc(s) please drop me a note. Shipping will be extra and I will use whatever shipping you want. I can take PayPal payments.

  • Akira - The Criterion Collection $30
  • Erasure - Wild! $5
  • Evil Dead 2 - Dead By Dawn (limited edition blood red LD) $25
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade $7
  • Love and Rockets - The Haunted Fish Tank $5
  • Ministry - In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up (Live) $7
  • Ned’s Atomic Dustbin - Nothing Is Cool - Japanse LD $25
  • Opus n’ Bill in A Wish For Wings That Work $5
  • Pet Shop Boys - Discovery Live In Rio $25
  • Pet Shop Boys - Television - Japanese LD $20
  • Pet Shop Boys - Various $20
  • Pet Shop Boys - Videography $7
  • Pulp - F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.I.V.E. - Recorded Live at the Brixton Academy - Japanese LD $25
  • R.E.M. - Parallel $7
  • R.E.M. - Tourfilm $7
  • Raiders of the Lost Arc $7
  • Star Trek - First Contact $7
  • Star Trek TNG - The Borg Collective $30
  • Star Wars - The Definative Collection (THX Box set) $95
  • Strange Brew $7
  • They Might Be Giants - The Videos 1986-1989 $15
  • Tron - Exclusive Archive Collection box set $60

Posted by pberry at 04:50 PM | TrackBack (0)

June 18, 2004

DRM: Wrong for Content, Wrong for America

Wrong anywhere really. If you haven’t already read Cory Doctorow’s “OMFG I’m talking to MSFT about DRM” talk, you really should. There are enough “arrrr!” references to keep any pirate happy.

Read it and then if you aren’t an EFF member, join up so you can help Cory continue to do more talks like this.

“…standard interfaces that anyone can build for are what makes billionaires out of nerds.”

“Compared to anti-trust people, copyright lawmakers are pantywaists.”

“Because if you don’t do it, someone else will.”

Posted by pberry at 08:38 AM | TrackBack (0)

E-mail Bankruptcy Protection?

So Lessig declared e-mail bankruptcy, not from too much spam but from too much legitimate e-mail. I know a lot of people who get way too much legit e-mail. Hell, everyone on the EFF staff probably gets too much e-mail. But the problem is double-sided.

I know that these people have e-mail problems. Not only do they have e-mail problems, but they have time problems as well. Look at Lessig and Cory Doctorow’s schedules. They are everywhere talking to everyone about everything. But they are friends, coworkers or close acquaintances and I like communicating with them. But since they are friends, coworkers or close acquaintances I don’t want to burden them any more than they already are. Any kind of communication with these people will suck up at least a tiny bit of their valuable time. What is a person to do?

In the case of Cory, I hardly ever send him anything. I know he somehow finds time to read stuff I post here, and it feels really good knowing that he is willing to spend his precious time reading what I write. (I promise you that I don’t pimp my own posts to Cory to get them on boingboing, although it rocks when it happens!) But I feel bad that sometimes I steal his time. I have a theory, which I might expand on later, that Cory is a robot or perhaps a cyborg with a heart of gold. He consumes more information than anyone I know.

Now Lessig is a different beast, as he at least has assistants. A good friend of mine in Australia wanted to find a way to see if Larry could speak at an event in the Land Down Under™. He knew that I “knew” Larry, although I don’t know if ‘worked at EFF’ really counts as knowing Larry. (I did have the privilege to sit across the table from him and right next to Jim Griffin at an EFF dinner, which was a real treat!) Anyways, my friend knew that trying to contact Lessig was very hard if you weren’t in his ‘web of trust,’ and even then the chances of making contact weren’t 100%.

Fred von Lohmann, also an EFF staffer, who is buried under e-mail, voicemail, and Home Theater magazines is somebody I love talking to. I used to be able to steal his time by walking to his office, stand in his doorway and asking him about music, copyright, and the joy of Macintosh ownership. I loved that. I felt bad about stealing his time, but if he was really pressed for time he would shut his door and that would be the sign that there was no time for music chat. You can’t really shut your office door on your e-mail. The queue of e-mail would grow and grow and you would have the same problem once you opened your door again.

The problem I, and many other people, have is how do I maintain communication with people who are in different physical locations and are having their communication channels severely overloaded? How can my ability to communicate with them be protected from their bankruptcy? I don’t think this is a selfish request as I feel I’ve made it clear that I respect the fact that these people have a finite amount of time and a seemingly infinite amount of communication to deal with.

“But the vast majority were kind enough to simply remain silent.”

This modern world…

Posted by pberry at 08:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 17, 2004

9-11 Commission Links

The 9-11 Commission site has a few bad links. They know about them and are working on getting them corrected. For now here are the correct links to the latest files:

Posted by pberry at 08:53 AM | TrackBack (0)

June 16, 2004

Brand New Pixies Song and More

Folks, if you don’t like the Pixies you just don’t like rock n’ roll. iTunes Music Service has their first recording in thirteen years, Bam Thwok. I’m sure it’s on the P2P nets if you morally object to buying stuff from iTMS.

What does it sound like? It’s sounds like the Pixies. What’s comforting to me is that is does not sound like The Strokes, The Hives, The White Stripes or any of the other bands that have supposedly “saved” rock n’ roll. The Pixies could crush them all with their little toes.

That being said, Kim Deal does most of the vocals. So depending on how much you like Kim’s vocals, your milage may vary. I personally think it rocks, but then I like Trompe Le Monde so my judgment may not be as sound as others. Also there is now a Pixies DVD with just a ton of stuff. There is a live show, all the videos, and more. Damn, how did I miss that?

Posted by pberry at 07:40 AM | TrackBack (0)

June 15, 2004

Stories from Hawai`i: Part 1

I was showing my Hawai`i Best Of photos to my boss and we were talking about the story that goes along with each photo. So I decided to go ahead an put the story with the photo, as well as include some context photos that didn’t make the best-of cut. I’ll try and do at least one a day.

The photo above is taken on the south shore of Kauai at Port Allen Airport. We were there to take a powered hang glider flight. Think of a hang glider, but instead of a sling that only one person can fit in there is a frame that holds two seats and an engine with a prop. It’s sounds sketchier than it is.

Anyway, after filling out forms that said no matter how we died it wasn’t Birds in Paradise’s fault and nobody could sue them over our death, wrongful or not, Kat got into the flight suit and prepared for take off. It’s very simple, there are two seats in the rig. The passenger takes the back seat and the pilot takes the front seat. That’s it. Until you get off the ground of course.

hang-glider-150x143.jpgKat’s ride was going to be about an hour. We both forgot our books to read while we waited for the other, so all I had to occupy my time was my camera. The airport itself was not much of an airport. It was more of an airfield, with only a runway and a few makeshift buildings for the helicopters to land next to. I started to wander around looking for shots. I took a number of shots back into the mountains which turned out horrible. The clouds were coming in but it was also sunny in patches which wreaked havoc with my poor Canon S110.

Right past the airfield is a nice little beach. On my walk down there I took the artsy fence shot above. I really wanted to contrast the deep red soil against the sky. It was pretty early in the morning so the sky at the horizon was still a pale blue and not the dark blue I wished it had been. I framed the fence in to try and give some perspective and depth to the shot. It’s not perfect by any means, but I thought it was a good shot.

I was about halfway down the road to the beach when I noticed the rain clouds were coming in very fast. I headed back to the BiP HQ, which was just a tarp over a frame and a couple of plastic chairs. Right as I got back a short downpour hit. It’s Hawai`i, you just have to expect this with the weather there.

Kat came back not too long after that and I hopped in for my hour long flight. It was full of amazing views. Luckily there was a wing mounted camera. Unluckily for us now, I haven’t gotten the film developed yet. I’m sure some of those shots will make it into the Best Of section.

Posted by pberry at 10:26 PM