Hit the Ground Running

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First day of the second semester tomorrow, and I will be hitting the ground running. I’m in the lab again, doing three things at once: writing up a brief one-page thesis proposal, preparing a first-semester portfolio for the midyear review on Tuesday, and finishing up the authoring of last semester’s interactive design class multimedia presentation.

That last one has been a major trial. The workstations in the MA Digital Lab at MICA all use Director 8, but the class’ files were copied to my workstation in 8.5.1 format, and the Director 8.5.1 installer is no longer available from Macromedia’s trial download section because they’ve removed it in favor of Director MX. Unfortunately, the MX version only works in OS X, but the workstations all use OS 9.

Next possibility: copy the class’ documents to my iBook so I can work on it there, where I’ve already installed the Director MX Trial app. Sure. It should be a snap to copy 2.7 GB of Director files and extra media onto 4 discs, if only the single CD-burner in the lab had not whacked out and coaster-ized* the two CD-RW’s I had left.

And I forgot my Firewire cable at home, so remote Target Disk Mode is not an option.

I’m now feeling rather cross.

* coaster-ized: An error in burning the CD partway through the writing process leaves you with an invalid CD-R/W which cannot be burned or erased anymore, and can now only be used as a coaster. And not even a good coaster, with that hole in the middle.

BSOD-TV

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Comcat Cable Channel 7, the Baltimore Community Service announcements channel, is showing a BSOD. It’s really funny.

Free Dmitry!

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Having read Harry Harrison’s interview about Soylent Green, it entered my head this morning to get a copy of his book “Make Room, Make Room,” on which the movie was based.

Book is available in E-book format only, says the Amazon product page, so I am required to get Adobe E-Book Reader. Okay, I say, I’ll download the E-Book and export it to a text file so I can read it in my Palm. First faulty assumption.

I purchase the text and go to the library download page. No E-Book reader for Mac OS X, it informs me. Okay, I say, I’ll get the OS 9 installer, and run it in Classic mode. Second faulty assumption.

Once installed, I try to run the E-Book Reader. It starts up Classic, as expected, but then returns an error: “Will not run in OS X.” Then promptly quits. Darn, I say, this isn’t working out, and it won’t let me download the text without the Reader. Maybe I should return this and get a refund. Third faulty assumption.

No returns or refunds on e-books, says Amazon’s return policy, so I’m stuck with this thing. More determined than ever to get it working, I start up Virtual PC and download the E-Book reader for Windows. It takes a while on dialup, but it finally installs, “certifies” (that gets me leery), and downloads the book.

And that, my friends, is when I discover the true nature of the E-Book Reader environment. There is no way to save or export the document to another format, and it will not allow me to copy text to the clipboard, effectively trapping the document within itself. Nor will it allow me to print. I am forced to read the entire text on screen, in the E-Book Reader, with no alternative offered for readability or portability. My desire to export the document to another format is not intended to break copyright law in any way, and it falls well under fair use, but the Reader’s copy-protection is hostile to any such will.

So, I’m poorer by $5.99 and an afternoon of struggling with this stupid E-Book Reader, and if I’d only done some simple research before jumping into the swamp, I could have avoided this whole mess. As it is, now I have a copy of Harry Harrison’s Make Room, Make Room! trapped in an Adobe application, waiting to be read on screen.

Congratulations, DMCA, you’ve just gained a new enemy. I am adding my voice to the cries of “Free Dmitry!” because I want to be able to legally read my E-Books in some format other than what Adobe restricts me to.

(As I read, maybe I should take screenshots of each page and save them to GIFs which I can OCR to a text file, just to be muleheaded about the whole thing. Within fair use law, of course.)

Jesus = Terrorist?

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“The Christian Church overwhelmingly — there are exceptions — who choose to call Mohammed a terrorist. They could call Jesus a terrorist too. I mean, he was pretty tough on money lenders a time or two.”

Yes, I suppose driving merchants and money changers (Not money lenders, mind you! My bible tells me he dined with tax collectors and money lenders.) out of a house of worship is as horrible and evil as hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings, eh? (Link via instapundit. Oh, and someone else said it first. And sang it, too.)

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

Does that sound like a terrorist to you?

Star Trek Song Lyrics

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Lest you think that Enterprise has the corniest theme song of any Star Trek series, remember that Alexander Courage’s theme for the original Star Trek also had lyrics, by Gene Roddenberry himself. Feel free to sing along:

“Beyond

The rim of the starlight

My love

Is wand’ring in star flight

I know he’ll find in star clustered reaches

Love, strange love a star woman teaches

“I know

His journey ends never

His Star Trek

Will go on forever

But tell him

While he wanders his starry sea

Remember

Remember me!”

Jupiter, No!

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BAD Jupiter! BAD, BAD gas giant!

For the second time in a week, humanity watched in fear and awe as a mysterious arm, estimated to be some 3 million light years across, once again appeared to part the black fabric of space, point an angry finger directly at Jupiter, and shout “No!”