RasterWeb!

Wow, Cam and Damien are trying to get on The Amazing Race… See Blogger Twins for more info:

We’ve been receiving a lot of email from people who think this is a silly idea and chastise us because they think we want to be famous by being on a reality TV show. Clearly, these people did not watch our video or read much of what we’ve written.

The primary reason for wanting to be on the show is to win the money, and the primary motivation for winning the money is so we can afford to build our mother a wheelchair-accessible house…

I’ve known Cam and Damien for years (online anyway) and they’ve been inspirational and helpful to me in many ways… And their reason for doing this is a damn good cause, so if you can, help draw attention to what they’re trying to do. Link to their site, tell your friends, whatever… Good luck guys!

(See Also: Cam’s post… Damien’s post…)

We’ve mentioned FireANT, a video aggregator. Now it’s got a new friend, I/ON:

The I/ON Internet Video Console fuses together leading technologies into one simple media player, connecting you directly to the video you want…

It’s got a few rough edges (it tends to quit a lot) but the feature set looks quite impressive. Grab it now if you’re interested in these things, or grab it at the next release if the word ‘beta’ makes you nervous…

I must officially declare this the Summer of Swim, because that’s what we tend to do the most of this summer… Swim.

The swimming includes rocks and sand, and building things, and floating, and weeds, and alternating beween lying on the raft and jumping off of the raft (and occasionally cleaning goose poop off of the raft. Yuck!)

Computers, wifi, code, formats and protocols play almost no part in the swim activity…

Anyway, we just wanted to let you know that you can attribute the general lack of activity here (and elsewhere) to the lure of the lake, the water calls, and we must answer…

swim swim swim swim swim swim swim swim!

If you’ve been reading this site for a long period of time now, you may have noticed that I often complain – I mean – bring light to, issues involving licenses, agreements, and terms of use/service… Fire up the License Investigator, here we go again!

The good news is, the issue I brought up has already been resolved! See this post at 43 Ideas/Things as well as this one to the yws-maps group.

In summary, I brought up a question, got some confusing information, tried to clarify the information, and now have even better information. It’s a win-win-win situation, baby!

I do understand how it can be difficult to lay out a terms of use/service agreement. You want to be open and sharing, but not so open you share yourself out of business… I think companies should take the time to re-evaluate their terms of use/service agreements now and again and see if they make sense to people who are not lawyers, and if they seem rational to the everyday (as well as very technical) user.

This event also highlights what can happen when companies take the time to have a dialog with their users/customers and actually respond quickly. Any company that just provides a feedback form that you’ll never get a reply to could learn a valuable lesson here.

Hmm, ah, yes… Seems I’ve been asked to write about books, which is so oddly appropriate that you don’t even know. Well, one person knows. On to the thingy:

On the shelf: Well, as far as an actual shelf, there is one at work, and it’s got maybe 20 books on it, all computer programming books and software manuals. Besides that there are boxes and boxes of books at home, probably over 100. If you count children’s books, then maybe over 200. If you count comic books, then maybe over 300. Or maybe I’m way off and it’s more like 100 total. (I don’t count ’em, I just move ’em every few years…)

Last purchase: I bought an empty notebook recently. Other than that, probably iMovie3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual, which I got used for less than 5 bucks.

Last 5 read:

1. An untitled art book I made many years ago. It consists of various collages done in a variety of media. Only one copy exists and it’s at my house.
2. An alphabet book I made many years ago. It consists of 26 pages, one for each letter of the English alphabet (or is it the Latin alphabet) combined with photos from a 1950’s textbook on driver’s education. Again, a one of a kind book.
3. I started reading Watchmen (again) last month…
4. Perl Cookbook
5. Various manuals for appliances, electronic devices, and othr things I own or use…

Ah! Also, someone read a book to me last week… A Really Super Book About Squirrels Does that count?