While listening to The Command Line Podcast a few weeks ago, they started talking about how digital distribution allows for innovations in publishing.  I don’t remember what they mentioned exactly, but the prior link should take you to the show notes.  The talk started a series of synapses firing in my grey matter culminating in the following idea - what about a subscription model for authors.  Right now it sucks to be an author in that your pay is very irregular.  I know that my paycheck will be the same week to week.  But authors get an advance for a book and then some royalties depending upon how well a book sells.  So they can’t really plan their finances easily because they don’t know ahead of time how many books they will sell.  But, with digital distribution, it might be easier to sell the author’s readers on a subscription model.

Wow, it was a lot warmer this time of year last year.  Right now it’s in the 40s-50s outside.  Couldn’t dress like this now.

See the photojojo page on the web.

Enjoy your day off government (and other) employees!

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Or protest it, if you want”] [/caption]

I came to a disturbing realization the other day - I’ve come to feel that whatever isn’t online isn’t real.  This came about thanks to the Wii’s insanely stupid online policy.  Everything about playing online with the Wii is an exercise in frustrating the user.  Rather than always be connected to the net when the console is on (like modern computers, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3), the Wii attempts to connect to the game servers at the time you wish to play the game.  This leads to the very frustrated experience of wanting to play online, loading up into the game you want to play and then realizing that the system is having problems connecting to the Internet.  So you have to back out to the Wii menu and trouble-shoot the problem.  This wouldn’t be so vexing if it didn’t take the Wii ages to load games, including the “don’t throw your effing Wiimote around” warning every time!  Even in games where it doesn’t make sense!  (Like Rock Band)

Things have changed a bit since last time, so I decided to once again cover what flickr thinks my 20 most interesting photos are.

Tetris is the first video game I was unable to shut off on command.  Players of Sid Meier’s Civilization are familiar with the problem of “one more turn”, similar to the bookworm’s “one more page”.  Tetris was my first “one more turn” game.  I first played Tetris when I was five or six and received my Gameboy for my birthday or Christmas.

[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“237” caption=“Tetris on Gameboy, the definitive version in my eyes”] [/caption]

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“What emotion does this photo invoke in you?”] [/caption]

A few days ago, Mai told me that photos of landscapes make her feel lonely.  That really caught me by surprise.  The usual response to photos such as the one above is one of awe.  People usually feel a new appreciation for nature and/or that spot.  And, sometimes, people express a desire to visit that place too in order to experience it themselves.  But I never thought someone could look at a landscape and feel a sense of loneliness.  (Unless, of course, the photographer meant to invoke loneliness by selecting a certain type of photo or white balance)

My latest Photojojo capsule.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“I took this first one while I was waiting for my wife to finish up at work so we could go see some houses.”] [/caption]

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“After putting it off for a few years, we went to a Corn Field Maze. It was fun for a little bit until we couldn’t find our way back out.”] [/caption]

[caption id="" align=“alignright” width=“160” caption=“Katy Ho, a fellow Cornellian from C/O 2005 on the same bus in Brooklyn that I happened to be on.”] [/caption]

One in 1,600,000.  That’s odds of randomly meeting someone I know in NYC excluding my wife’s family.  And yet, due to construction on the Q line, Danielle and I found ourselves on the bus with Katy Ho, who we hadn’t seen since graduation.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“The trinkets I received for becoming a member of the Free Software Foundation.”] [/caption]

I’ve been wondering about a peculiar aspect of human motivation. Why do we require a present of some sort in exchange for a donation? Let’s take NPR for example. During membership drives a donation will net the donator a hat or tote bag or something like that. But why does there have to be a prize for donation? The point of donation is that you realize some organization or cause needs your money. So why waste some of that money to get a mug? And if you wanted a mug emblazoned with the NPR logo, you could just go to the NPR store and buy it. But getting gifts must entice more people to donate or organizations wouldn’t waste money on it when they could be using all the money to cover their costs.