It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post.  For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service.  Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

Scarlett’s only 2-2.5 months old in these photos and the most striking things are how tiny she is and how much in awe she seems of the world around her. No mean feat considering how tiny she remains compared to her peers. But it definitely takes a lot more to astound her than it did a year ago.

It is a fact of life that things will be bootlegged. (commonly called pirated, but this is one area where I strongly agree with rms. Piracy is a horrible thing where people get kidnapped on the ocean and die. I have in-law relatives who have died from pirates. So I don’t find it cute to compare that with people who acquire things without paying for them) We usually think of digital items, but go to Chinatown in New York and you’ll see the same thing going on with physical objects. So what’s a company to do? My least favorite route is digital restrictions management (DRM) because it just makes things a real pain in the butt for legitimate users. (It also makes criminals of people who just want to rip their DVDs and BluRays to their laptops or media centers) My favorite tactic (which works best with games, but I’ve seen it with music and movies), is to mess with the person who didn’t pay for it. I’ve seen games that are extremely mean about it (mean being in the eye of the beholder since these people didn’t pay for the game) where they make it so that the final bad guy is unbeatable (after all those hours!). Others glitch out halfway through.  Game Dev Tycoon developer Greenheart Games was able to use the subject of their game (in which you’re a game developer - META!) to come up with a unique solution. On the same day the game came out, they started a torrent with a slightly modified version of the game. It works just like the paid version for a while.  Then you get this message from your developers:

[caption id=“attachment_6153” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] Firefox (aka Red Panda) busy Not Spying on You[/caption]

A 1 May Ars article and 30 April Wired article mention that a UK company known as Gamma International is selling spyware that pretends to be Mozilla Firefox. Both articles mention that repressive governments have used it to spy on dissidents, but it’s unclear from the article whether the company purposely sells to evil governments or whether it sells this to anybody, including foreign governments. The Wired article mentions that Gamma markets it to governments in general and so, if pressed, would probably say that it’s not meant to be used by evil governments - just people like the FBI trying to catch criminals. Either way, Mozilla has sued for trademark infringement. I applaud them for doing so. Governments may have both legitimate and illegitimate reasons for spying on computer communications, but I don’t think they should be abusing the good will of other companies to do it. Imagine if Gamma was selling Ford cars that were bugged. No one would want to buy a Ford car for fear it might be a bugged version. Come on, guys! Figure out a solution that doesn’t screw over the folks at Mozilla.

[caption id=“attachment_6143” align=“aligncenter” width=“449”] lil kids - CC licensed by jepoycamboy[/caption]

I titled this Part 1 because I am sure I’ll have to revisit this topic in the future. Scarlett is only 1 and she barely cares for television, much less Disney animated films. However, if you don’t think about the future, it has a way of surprising you and finding you unprepared. Of course, as a kid, I loved the Disney cartoons. It was only in the last ten years or so that I came across any articles critical of Disney and how it might be corrupting our daughters. There’s always going to be some degree of hate towards the creators of mass media because we are powerless against them. They’re able to use emotions and psychology to affect us (or those around us) and bypass our rational thinking. Try telling some kid back in the late 90s he can’t have a Power Rangers toy because it promotes violence. He doesn’t know or care about that. He just wants to have one of the rainbow of action figures to play with his friends. Mass media is everywhere and the only way to keep it from affecting your kids is to lock them in the basement - they’ll see it on TV, movies, radio or from friends, teachers, and family members.  And Hinds over at The Atlantic recounts how he was unable to keep his daughters from learning about the princesses, despite his best efforts. Interestingly enough, Hinds doesn’t really dwell much on why he’d want to do this to his daughters - it’s considered to be assumed knowledge - of COURSE people want to keep their kids away from Disney Princess Culture.  But why?

A bit of a news roundup for this week’s political post.

[caption id=“attachment_6120” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] Game of Thrones - coveted by Australians[/caption]

Apparently, illicit acquisition of the Game of Thrones is making things awkward for the United States Ambassador to Australia.  He’s asking Australians to please stop getting the show off the Internet. After all, the US is quick to put (or threaten to put) other countries like Spain onto their special list if they start grabbing TV shows off the net.  But Australia is an important ally so it’s embarrassing for them to be pushing the US’s buttons. Here’s where they could have done better by listening to something I’m constantly complaining about. See, according to the linked article, the issue is that for seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones it was not available until a few weeks after it had aired in the US.  There’s no reason for that. It’s not like the days before current technology where physical objects need to be ferried around the world.  It’s all digital - all parts of the world should be able to watch all programs at the same time. Because NOW that it’s available a few hours after it shows in the US, the people in Australia don’t care - they’re already used to getting it for free online. So - the whole cliche about the genie being put back in the bottle.

Every phase of life the children in your life go through presents different sets of challenges. For example, take a look at this photo of Scarlett’s first Easter:

[caption id=“attachment_6095” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] Scarlett’s First Easter[/caption]

She couldn’t sit up and she didn’t have the slightest clue of what was happening. We could try to get her to look at her mom, but it didn’t hold her attention for long and she might start crying on a dime. Now, take a look at her as a toddler:

[caption id=“attachment_6093” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Fall Out Boy - Save Rock and Roll[/caption]

The new Fall Out Boy album, Save rock and Roll, came out a few weeks ago after five long years.  Having listened to it about a half dozen times now, I figured I had a good enough handle on it for a review.  For context, I enjoyed the last three albums. I enjoyed Folie à Deux the most - I felt it was the peak of their maturity both musically and lyrically. (According to a recent Rolling Stone article, I’m in the minority)

[caption id=“attachment_6081” align=“aligncenter” width=“480”] Cities XL - Trio - buildings up close[/caption]

In addition to the game I played this month, I’ve decided from now on to  include a running total of the top games to see if/how they change with time. For example, when I wasn’t paying attention, Saints Row: The Third made the Top 7.  (Which, raptr, is a weird number.  Usually these things are multiples of five)

Today I heard a story on NPR’s Fresh Air about the state of child daycare in America.   Let’s just say it’s not very good. It was an interview with Jonathan Cohn who recently wrote a “The Hell of American Day Care” for The New Republic.  It was a story that had some details that rang too true for Danielle and I. One of the key points that Cohn makes is that daycare is very expensive - so expensive as to be a burden to those who need it the most, single parents.  That is a very, very true statement.  Danielle and I flip-flopped during the pregnancy about whether Scarlett would be going to daycare.  Around three months before she was due to be born, we decided to go with daycare so I set out to find all the daycare centers near our house that seemed reputable.I was quite surprised that it was hard to find one that was clean, provided stimulation for the kids, and wasn’t impossibly expensive . Eventually we found one that seemed good based on the tour. About a month before Scarlett was supposed to start, we went for a visit to meet the teachers. While talking with them, we realized that most of the kids were left alone and the workers weren’t washing their hands after changing the kids’ diapers. Disgusted, we decided to just take care of her at home.  The sad thing is that daycare at that place cost so much that we weren’t really losing any money with the loss of one income. That was what had made us so unsure of whether to go with daycare in the first place - the amount of money we’d still get to take home if she was in daycare was so small the only thing that kept us actually considering it was a fear of how expensive diapers and other baby products are.

I’ve had the same tagline for a long time, but it hasn’t always been the same.  In 2007 I had a focus on computer animation where I now focus on photography. I’ve been watching a lot of presentations from Wordcamp 2013 and one of them inspired me to focus on trying to blog every day (just as how I did photography every day for a year to practice photography and get better) and to focus on a certain topic per day.