Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
Celebrate the 40th birthday of Rubik’s Cube with today’s Google Doodle
http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/19/rubiks-cube-40th-anniversary-google-doodle/
Somewhere in the black hole known as my storage room I probably have one or two Rubik’s Cubes. I even remember solving it when I was in middle school.
Business
http://www.lemodesittjr.com/2014/05/16/business/
I couldn’t sleep so I read the latest blog post at Modesitt’s site. Not helping me get back to sleep.
Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon
I solved the mystery of the missing robin’s nest once my husband woke up. I asked him if the nest was intact before he fell asleep. He replied that as far as he knew, the nest was there until the early morning hours. Once he was dressed, he walked out into the back yard and spotted the empty nest in the middle of the lower half of our yard. Quite a ways away from the upper patio and the back porch light. Here are some photos to give you an idea:
Gone.
Vanished.
Barely left a trace behind.
To say I was shocked this morning would be an understatement. Just last night Terry and I witnessed Mother Robin feeding her babies from the edge of her nest (see other posts for the actual nest since there’s little to no trace of it this morning above our porch light).
I’m worried now that Continue reading “Bye Bye Birdies”
Quotes/Excerpts:
What makes the dispute between Amazon and Hachette different is that Amazon’s tactics have no obvious consumer benefit, a key antitrust consideration.
The group “deplores any attempt by any party that would seek to injure and punish innocent authors — and their innocent readers — in order to pursue its position in a business dispute. We believe that such actions are analogous to hostage-taking to extort concessions, and are just as indefensible.” — Gail Hochman, president of the Association of Authors’ Representatives
What kind of entity in a competitive market would willfully drive customers into the arms of its competitors unless it believes it doesn’t really have any competitors? Can you imagine Best Buy refusing to deliver for a period of weeks what’s available from its competitors? But Amazon behaves as though they’re the only game in town. And increasingly they are. It’s a head-scratcher why anyone with regulatory authority would tolerate it. If this is not an example of untoward power, I don’t know what is. — Scott Turow, a Hachette author and former president of the Authors Guild and a lawyer.
As a reader, I enjoy low prices but I don’t want prices so low that the authors finally decide it’s not worth it and quit writing.
Open source advocates slam Mozilla for supporting DRM
http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/15/open-source-advocates-slam-mozilla-for-supporting-drm/
And my morning just keeps getting better and better. Mozilla, this is strike two.
Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon
The 6 things you need to know about today’s FCC proposal on net neutrality
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/05/16/6-things-need-know-todays-fcc-ruling-net-neutrality/
Time to write a letter to the FCC. See the last paragraph of the above article for address information.
This is not the news I wanted to wake up to today.
Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon
Yesterday I reported that my back porchlight housed a squatter. A robin’s nest rests atop it complete with Mother Robin and her eggs. Later in the evening, I checked the nest and the robin had flown off to find her own dinner.
I managed to get a blurry shot of the nest’s contents. I had to do this while standing on a chair, hiding inside the house and leaning out with just my smartphone hovering over the nest. I couldn’t see the screen and snapped a couple of photos to pick the best to show here.
This year for Mother’s Day my kids bought me a Fitbit Flex. I got it setup late last week and have gradually increased my walking, both at home during the evenings and at work over part of my lunch hour.
Monday I headed out of my building and eventually ended up along the banks of Brush Creek (sometimes referred to as Flush Creek), which flows east along the south side of the Country Club Plaza. As you can see from the photo above, I will most likely NOT be retracing my steps on this route in the near future.
Continue reading “Places to Avoid Walking During My Lunch Break”
Don Maitz, a renowned (and one of my favorite) fantasy and maritime artist, wrote an excellent article over at Art Pact. This paragraph especially caught my eye:
So that being said, most producers of a product want to see a fair profit for everyone involved in their production line. Things get dicey when the financial bottom line takes precedent over content and when a legal department does it’s job too well. In Ian Ballantine’s day, as many artists such as I remember, the company, be it a publishing house or gaming company, was answerable to the president who made ultimate decisions on the products they chose and how they were to be conceived and marketed. These self owned enterprises were able to go out on a limb to try something on their own. Today, such companies are owned by corporations that also own many other companies in the Entertainment industry and the person that makes the bulk of the important decisions is now the accountant, as the quarterly bottom line that is fed to the corporate board and stockholders sets the guidelines. Profit over content is something that publishers are struggling with and I believe is the core issue of why this website was established.
— Don Maitz, “On Fantasy Publishing, and Negotiating Contracts“, Art Pact (May 2014)
