Category: Personal

Send-up of “Respect Copyright” PSAs

Logic and rational argument have had little effect in the copyright wars. Let’s hear it for scorn and ridicule!

Send-up of “Respect Copyright” PSAs. The CBC’s Rick Mercer has produced a screamingly funny, vicious parody of the copyright boo-hoo-poor-Hollywood ads that run in front of all the movies in Canada now.

WHO MAKES MOVIES?

You know, people go see a comedy or a fantasy or an action film and nine times out of ten they walk out of the theatre at they look at one another and they say “Wow, that was really bad.”

CHARLIE NESMAN MAKES BAD MOVIES

I make a lot of sequels. I’m the guy who makes part four and part five of movies where you haven’t heard of the first one. Someday I’d like to make a part two.

What kind of movie do I like? I like a movie about a monkey that gets special powers and then has to play a sport. That’s the kind of movie I like.

THE PIRACY ISSUE

I don’t know why anyone would ever steal a movie. Unless of course it’s to avoid this commercial which we now play in front of every single movie you could possibly go to, telling you you’re bad for stealing even though you just spent $11 to see some movie and instead you have to sit there and listen to me whine at you and accuse you of being a thief. Nevermind the $9 you just spent for $0.30 worth of popping corn.

MOVIES: THEY’RE NOT WORTH IT

You’re very bad people.

WATCH TELEVISION

Real Stream Link (Thanks, Ted!) [Boing Boing]

Jim Macdonald explains writing

I still have enough to worry about with improving my non-fiction writing skills. Nevertheless, this is a good read if you have any interest in understanding the craft of writing.

Jim Macdonald explains writing. Jim Macdonald, half of the Doyle-Macdonald writing team, has been presiding over a hundreds-posts-long running tutorial on how to write that is unbelievably good and sensible and right. If you want to write, go read this now.

Well, now, what to put in the opening?

We’re going to stick with the chess game metaphor for a while here. In the opening you’re trying to put yourself into a strong position for going into the midgame (where the exciting action and the exciting combinations occur), and you do this mostly by getting your pieces off the back rank as quickly as possible. The pieces are your major characters. Get them out there, and get them doing things.

Don’t neglect your pawns — your minor characters. You should cherish your minor characters. They’ll save your life. If you have a selection of minor characters you can pull them out to solve problems later in the book.

Now, what to put in that first chapter? (Recall that if your readers don’t finish the first chapter they’ll never get to chapter two.)

To answer the question of what goes into chapter one, I’m going to grab the first stanzas from a bunch of Anglo-Scots folk ballads. These were the popular songs of earlier times, cooked by the folk process so that only the important and memorable parts remain, they’re entertaining, and they tell stories.

Link (via Making Light) [Boing Boing Blog]

An April Fools Day Scrooge

Bah! Humbug!

What’s the April Fools Day equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge?

About the only good thing I have to say about the day is how quickly I was able to delete crap from my aggregator. I can’t say whether any of it was funny or clever because I deleted stuff as quickly as I recognized it.

More evidence that I’m a boring old fart.

Chicago Blogger Dinner

I was certainly out way past my bed time. I do have a handful of pictures to add to AKMA’s inventive approach to the visual record. More than anything else, they confirm why Charlotte is the one in charge of recording events for posterity in our family.

Earlier in the day Buzz and I spent a good part of the afternoon talking about knowledge work and knowledge management. Next company I start, I’m putting him in charge of business development and sales (no offense to Rick)

After a quick trip to Buzz’s hotel we headed off to Ben Pao to find Rick Klau and Eric Heels already at the bar. I’m pretty sure that expression on Rick’s face is my limited skills as a photographer, not an indication of how long he’d been at the bar.

Here’s Ernie in a classic dueling digicams shot during dinner.

And finally we have Eric, Barry Bayer, and Rick. Based on their expressions, I’m guessing Buzz was in the middle of one of his pitchs of ActiveWords vs. sliced bread 🙂 Or, AKMA was expounding on why the Da Vinci code isn’t his first choice for sound theological education.

Night Out.

I figured that everyone else would have filled megabytes of bandwidth with jolly pictures of boisterous, enthusiastic bloggers at Ben Pao yesterday evening. I figured that by the time I got around to blogging about it, everyone would already know. That s what It thought; but I was wrong again. Sure, John mentions it, but no full account of the conversational free-for-all has yet appeared.

So I was wrong about everyone else, and I m not the guy to supply what is lacking. I did arrive early, in time to spend fifteen minutes or so at the bar with Rick, Buzz, Jim, Erik, Barry Bayer, and John. Then at dinner, I sat in the same corner of the table almost the whole dinner, in between Jenny and Jim (with Jack on the yonder side of Jim).

I had a very helpful conversation with Jenny about my upcoming keynote at the Theology and Pedagogy in Cyberspace conference. I m working on an argument that the changing information environment leaves most theological teachers persistently losing ground to circumstances that obstruct or deflect their attempts to engage new technologies productively. (That reminds me that I owe my mother-in-law a post about why even small rural churches should have websites, and what they should do, but I won t get to that tonight. Sorry, Pat! I ll try tomorrow.)

Case in point: almost all scholars who now conduct theological research online learned the craft of research in a physical environment. I describe some of the research strategies I used as a seminarian, some of the cues I looked for when seeking reliable information. Very few of those strategies transfer effectively to online research. But now many of my students conduct a great proportion of their research online; how shall we help shape their research initiatives, and how shall we learn from them how we might better teach (and conduct our own research)?

I mentioned to Jenny my seeded-search idea (middle of the linked post), and she suggested some helpful follow-ups, and put RSS into my mind as another tool I might invoke in the discussion.

Then Buzz came over and cleared Jim McGee out of his chair, and we talked a long time about David, Doc, PopTech, ActiveWords, Central Florida, and Pentecostal theology. Then he cleared me out so he could talk with Jenny; I fell into conversations with Jack and Rick, mostly, the rest of the way. Rick wants me to read the new Greg Iles book, and I agreed to add it to my list (but I didn t tell Rick how long the list was).

Before Jim took Jack and me home, I had a chance to talk with Ernie, and even begin a polite argument about pseudonymity, before Jim dragged me home.

People were taking pictures and comparing Treos all through dinner; I m surprised that no photos have showed up online yet. I did manage to get copies of several shots that Jenny attempted with her (flash-less) Treo:

That s me, on the right, taking a bite of the delicious garlic tofu in that lower picture.

[AKMA s Random Thoughts]

Happy St. Patrick's Day

A suitable thought for St. Patrick’s Day:

May the most you wish for be the least you get.
May the best times you’ve ever had be the worst you will ever see.