how now brownpau
Here’s a time lapse video of me and my lovely wife assembling an IKEA LILLBERG loveseat generously gifted to us by her parents for our wedding.
Video is roughly 12 seconds long, 12 fps, covering about 1 hour and 30 minutes of time. Regrettably, as with previous time lapses, I have forgotten once again to lay in an audio track of the William Tell Overture.
It’s been a bad couple of days for private and public spaceflight. In bullet points:
One thing to be grateful for: none of these scandals or tragedies involved an actual spaceflight in progress. With the possible exception of the deadly Scaled Composites accident, all the bad news mostly rises from people behaving like idiots, and people will keep plugging onwards into space regardless.
Just spotted a blue heron wading in Rock Creek under the M St NW bridge between 26th and 27th, but this mobile photo is so blurry it’s probably not visible.
(RoCrHrn.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)
I pet-sat my neighbor’s parakeet again over the weekend, and got a few photos:
More here. He tried to eat the camera.
Okay, Twitter, this is just getting ridiculous:
Not content with single friend/follow notifications, Twitter spammers are removing and re-adding and following and un-following people so as to be able to send more notifications. Yes, yes, I know about the block feature, but that’s like the whack-a-mole routine of maintaining an IP deny blacklist on one’s own site — a reactive measure which just hides the spam from individual users’ notice, doing nothing to censure or discourage serial Twitter “followers.” I don’t want to turn off notifications or limit people’s ability to follow my Twitter stream; I just want to deincentivize disincentivize those who mass-add Twitter contacts for no reason other than to fill inboxes and follower lists with self-promotion. A block-list does not send them the message that such behavior is unacceptable.
Update: Twitter has updated their contacts system by merging the “friend” and “follow” functions, but this does not address the spam issue. Twitter is still not doing enough to deter this kind of behavior, and make it not pay off. Look at this flood of follow notifications from a link spammer using multiple Twitter accounts to push links to a dubious online toy store:
Pandora’s current favorite spot is on her scratching mat on the floor behind the video rocker. This is why she has not been on cam too much lately.
Russell has “tagged” me with the ubiquitous “Eight Random Facts/Habits” meme. Apparently the meme comes with a stipulation that you must copy and paste a set of rules regarding the transmission of this meme, to which I say, screw the rules! I’ll summarize them how I like! So give eight random facts or habits about yourself, link back to this post, and link to [at most] eight other people whom you would like to infect with this viral concept of transmissive self-revelation. Here are my random eight:
This tag needs to take a jump to Southeast Asia. I’m sending it to: Scrufus, Noelle, Angie, Trixia, Gail, Arnold, Keren, and Migs.
Two days ago I wrote a “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” parody in which I jokingly claimed to have an advance copy of the book, and proceeded to “spoil” the story by revealing an outlandish and badly written Scooby-Doo-like ending in which Voldemort is unmasked as Professor Flitwick, whose attempt to steal Harry Potter’s gold is foiled by “meddling kids.” It seemed an obvious enough parody, what with the additional “Jinkies,” “Zoinks,” and image of Velma Dinkley. As you might see from the comments, the humor may have been a bit too subtle for some. Even legal counsel at Scholastic Inc., the U.S. publishers of Harry Potter, was taken in, if this email I received from them is any indication:
From: Baender, Margo
To: Paulo Ordoveza
CC: Dev Chatillon, Mark Seidenfeld
Date: Jul 20, 2007 12:02 PM
Subject: FW: Notice of Infringement/Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Dear Sir/ Madam,
I, the undersigned, certify under penalty of perjury that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am authorized to act on behalf of J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books and owner of copyright rights therein, and Scholastic Inc., exclusive U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books, including without limitation the cover and all other art incorporated therein (collectively, the “IP Owner”). I have a good faith belief that the materials identified below are not authorized by the IP Owner, its agent, or the law and therefore infringe the IP Owner’s rights according to state and federal law. Please act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material or items claimed to be infringing.
I may be contacted at the below address/phone/email. Thank you in advance for your immediate attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Margo Baender
Counsel | Scholastic Inc. | 557 Broadway | NYC NY 10012
[contact info removed]
I had heard about Scholastic going mad over the book being shared in advance via the internet, but I certainly did not expect to be hit by their scattershot approach to suppressing the leak. Baender, Chatillon, and Seidenfeld seem to be running simple searches for spoilers and shooting off boilerplate “infringement notices” willy-nilly, without regard for actual content. Here is the reply I sent back:
Dear Ms. Baender,
I’d like to know if you took time to read the “infringing” piece in question before sending me the standard Scholastic/Harry Potter legal notice which is currently being strafed across the internet by Scholastic legal counsel. Here is the link again. Please read it very carefully, taking note of words and phrases such as “jinkies,” “zoinks,” and “meddling kids.”
I know you have little time as you are busy sending infringement notices to the rest of the internet as well, so to make it quick and easy for you, what I posted was a joke thinly disguised as spoilers; a deliberately badly-written Harry Potter/Scooby Doo “mashup” parodying both franchises, as well as fanfiction culture in general. This falls well within the definition of fair use.
I hope you will not mind too much that I am also forwarding this notice and my reply to Chilling Effects, Consumerist, and to my peers and editors at my workplace, [prestigious news magazine with a blogging policy]. I am retaining the material on my website at this time.
Sectumsempra,
Paulo Ordoveza
We’ll see what they say, if they reply at all. I must admit, this makes me rather less amenable to patronizing Scholastic Inc. with my business, whether for Harry Potter or for other paper publications. I’m mostly with Ms. Rowling on wanting to keep the book a surprise for its fans, but when a publisher’s lawyers send clueless “infringement notices” because they can’t tell the difference between Scooby-Doo and Sirius Black, well, that makes me feel like the book is being sold to me by Dementors rather than wizards.
More info: Notes on fair use as applied to parody, and other incidences of infringement notices received from Scholastic Inc.
Standard disclaimer, of course, the opinions presented here are my personal opinions and in no way reflect the opinions of [prestigious news magazine with a blogging policy]. I did copy some of my coworkers in my reply for their own amusement.
Update: Also on Chilling Effects.
