The Latest from Boing Boing

Posted: 17 May 2009 02:31 AM PDT

John Naughton's talking sense about economics, news and the Web today in the Observer:

Things have got so bad that Rupert Murdoch has tasked a team with finding a way of charging for News Corp content. This is the "make the bastards pay" school of thought. Another group of fantasists speculate about ways of extorting money from Google, which they portray as a parasitic feeder on their hallowed produce. And recently a few desperadoes have made the pilgrimage to Capitol Hill seeking legislative assistance and/or federal bailouts for newspapers
It's difficult to keep one's head when all about one people are losing theirs, but let us have a go. First of all, some historical perspective might help. When broadcast radio arrived in the US in the 1920s, nobody could figure out a business model for it. How could one generate revenue from something that could be listened to by anyone for free? Dozens of companies were founded to exploit the new medium, and most of them folded. The problem was solved by a detergent manufacturer named Procter & Gamble, which came up with the idea of sponsoring dramatic serials: the soap opera - and the mass market - was born.
The moral is simple: eventually someone will figure out a business model that works for online news. But it may take some time, and lots of outfits will fall by the wayside in the meantime. That's capitalism for you.

Volume and diversity: the future's bright for news online

Previously:

How kids use the net now, from danah boyd

Posted: 16 May 2009 11:42 PM PDT

Teen net-researcher danah boyd (@zephoria) has been taking parental questions about teens' use of the net on Twitter and here are her responses:

@mirroredpool: What borders to teens place of social networking sites and education? How would they react to using an SNS to do class work?
@annejonas: i'm curious if they want schools involved in social networks or if they like it as a social space outside the realm of formal edu.
This is messy. Many teens have ZERO interest in interacting with teachers on social network sites, but there are also quite a few who are interested in interacting with SOME teachers there. Still, this is primarily a social space and their interactions with teachers are primarily to get more general advice and help. In some ways, its biggest asset in the classroom is the way in which its not a classroom tool and not loaded this way. Given that teens don't Friend all of their classmates, there are major issues in terms of using this for groupwork because of boundary issues.
@shcdean: What future do they see for FB or Twitter.
They don't use Twitter. When asked, teens always say that they'll use their preferred social network site (or social media service) FOREVER as a sign of their passion for it now. If they expect that they'll "grow out of it", it's a sign that the service is waning among that group at this very moment. So they're not a good predictor of their own future usage.
@lazygal: Do they really care about/use school library websites? Twitter? Pageflakes? Libguides? or only if teacher insists?
Nope, they don't. All but Twitter are categorized as school tools and are only used when absolutely necessary and Google won't suffice.

answers to questions from Twitter on teen practices

High times & hijinks on the High Plains circa 1969

Posted: 16 May 2009 11:13 PM PDT

Jackie Flaten says

Backstory: A North Dakota State University student newspaper editor thought it would be funny to promote Zap, N.D., a teeny tiny town smack dab in the middle of nowhere, as an ideal alternative to the customary spring break site of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. When the AP picked up his article, things got out of hand - high school and college students descended en masse, beer flowed freely and things pretty much went downhill from there.
The "Zap-in" happened a couple months before Woodstock -- one of the originators mused, 15 years later, perhaps something was "in the air, calling the tribes..."
North Dakota native Chris Breitling produced a documentary while he was a film student -- the film, Zap Revisited, is now available for the first time on DVD in commemoration of the 40th anniversary.
The YouTube link shows a two-minute clip of the student documentary, Zap Revisited, which looks at this event, originators and small-town quirky ND.

From the Zap Revisited Web site:

In the spring of 1969 an estimated 3,000 young people descended on the tiny prairie town of Zap, N.D., for a spring break blow-out. What started as an off-beat idea for a party ended with National Guard troops expelling the revelers from Zap and the nearby towns of Beulah and Hazen, creating a national media sensation.
Zap Revisited, a documentary by West Fargo, N.D., native Chris Breitling recalls the strange-but-true story of the "Zip to Zap", aka the "Zap-In" through the memories of people who took part in this uniquely infamous episode of North Dakota history. Breitling produced Zap Revisited as a graduate film student while at Columbia College in the early 1990s.
In conjunction with the 40th anniversary, Outcast Studios is making this DVD available to anyone interested in this unlikely High Plains tale set in the tumultuous spring of 1969.

High times & hijinks on the High Plains circa 1969

Can't see the video? Click here

Cheap Suit Serenaders on Fretboard Journal podcast

Posted: 16 May 2009 11:03 PM PDT

This week's episode of Fretboard Journal's BlogTalkRadio show (a talk radio show for music and guitar geeks) has two of the Cheap Suit Serenaders .

This week's episode features two multi-instrumentalists from the acclaimed Cheap Suit Serenders, Al Dodge and Robert Armstrong. We hear about working with R. Crumb, the early days of the Cheap Suit Serenaders, just how they got started playing old-time music and their instrument collections.

Fretboard Journal Talk Radio: The Cheap Suit Serenaders

Previously:

Graph of how #topics get played out on Twitter

Posted: 16 May 2009 11:02 PM PDT

From The Guardian's Meg Pickard, a graph that "compares 'people talking about #topic' and 'people talking about talking about #topic'. Outside of Twitter, this applies to pretty much any popular newsworthy topic...the news quickly moves from 'we're telling you about Topic X' to media coverage of the media coverage of Topic X. See: Twitter's own coverage in the media currently." (Pithy description from Kottke)

Twitter trending topics

HOWTO find great deals on codeshare flights

Posted: 16 May 2009 10:57 PM PDT

A Consumerist reader points out that you can save $300 on a $800 Virgin Atlantic fare from the US to the UK by booking it as a Continental codeshare. Consumerist explains how to search for deals like this:

So how do you find codeshares? First, find your desired flight number and punch it into a flight tracking service like Flight Stats. Look for a section breaking out specific codeshares and the flight numbers associated with the other airlines. Then, go to each airline listed and search for the codeshared flight number to compare the price. Once you've found the lowest fare, book it and start packing!

Use Codeshares To Find Cheap Summer Flights Abroad

HOWTO be a good sports-parent

Posted: 16 May 2009 10:55 PM PDT

Mike Dunford, a swim meet deck official, has some great advice for parents:

A personal best is always a major victory:
It doesn't matter if they finish first, third, ninth, thirty-eigth, or dead last. If they swam the event faster than they've ever swum the event before, it's a victory. This is still true if they've never swum it before.
Cheer for your children:
Do not yell at them. Do not tell them that they're swimming poorly. Never, ever, ever ask them what the hell they thought they were doing, particularly in the first ten seconds after they get out of the water. You're paying good money to put them on a swim team that has actual coaches who can handle all of the criticism (and who know more about how to swim and how to coach than you do). You're there to encourage them, not discourage them.
Cheer for other people's children:
If you've got a pair of lungs that can rupture eardrums at fifty feet, why is it that I only hear you during a few heats? Your kid is on a team. Support the team. If you don't know anyone who is swimming in a heat, cheer for everyone. It's a hard sport, and a little support makes everyone feel better.
Be a role-model for sportsmanship:
And when I say that, I'm talking about the good kind of role-model. Most swim meets are like most cereal box contests: many will enter, few will win. Your kids are going to get a lot of practice at not winning events. Teach them to show as much grace and class when they don't win that they do when they win.

There's more, click through.

An Open Letter For the Parents of Swimmers

Kingston Trio do "Zombie Jamboree"

Posted: 16 May 2009 10:42 AM PDT

Here's the Kingston Trio performing "Zombie Jamboree," a favorite song around our place. I'm partial to Harry Belafonte's version, not to mention Noel Anthony's wicked calypso version.

File under "Music to play Left 4 Dead to."

The Kingston Trio: Zombie Jamboree (Thanks, Rebecca!)

Open source banjo man getting hearing implants

Posted: 16 May 2009 10:40 AM PDT

A reader writes, "Patrick Costello - you have posted about his work as an open source banjo teacher several times - is having surgery this Thursday at Johns Hopkins to install a BAHA implant so he can continue teaching."

Patrick is the king of open-source banjo teaching, a public-spirited saint who teaches and produces teaching materials on a free/open basis. The BAHA is an implanted hearing aid that will be fitted as part of a surgery to relieve an excruciating bone infection.

Good luck, Patrick!

BAHA Implant Surgery On 5/21/09

Previously:

Rebinding a 1518 edition of Ovid

Posted: 16 May 2009 07:25 AM PDT

Jim D sez, "Last week I worked on rebinding a 1518 printing of Ovid's "Metamorphoses". Since the client wanted to have it done in a limp vellum binding -- which I don't get to do that often -- and the book itself is significant, I thought I would take some photos of the process and write the whole thing up, and that this might be of interest to BB readers."

Rebinding a 1518 copy of Ovid. (Thanks, Jim!)

Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download

Posted: 16 May 2009 07:16 AM PDT

EMI has told Danger Mouse that his latest CD won't see the light of day due to "legal issues," so he's responding by releasing the disc as a blank CD-R in a jewel case with art and liner notes. Fans can just download the music off a P2P site and burn it to the CD-R.

Dark Night Of The Soul, a collaboration with rock group Sparklehorse, also features Iggy Pop and The Flaming Lips, along with artwork by David Lynch.
It has already been streamed online, but Billboard magazine said a "legal dispute" with EMI derailed the project...
"Danger Mouse remains hugely proud of Dark Night of the Soul and hopes that people lucky enough to hear the music, by whatever means, are as excited by it as he is."
He added that the album, which comes with a limited edition, "100+ page book" of David Lynch photographs inspired by the music "will now come with a blank, recordable CD-R".
"All copies will be clearly labelled: 'For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will.'"

Danger Mouse to release blank CD

Hear The Entire Album: 'Dark Night Of The Soul'

(Image: Danger Mouse 2 - Gnarls Barkley, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from Staxnet's photostream)

Previously:

Uglified theft-resistant camera

Posted: 16 May 2009 06:48 AM PDT

Make Blog has a little piece on Jimmie's "uglified" camera: "He said that it was done in preparation for a trip overseas, where he wanted to make sure he kept his camera. After taping it up and otherwise camouflaging it, he developed a shooting technique where he folded our the screen, set the shots up, then held it up to his eye while shooting to make it look like a film camera. Film cameras, he figured would be of little or no interest to those with sticky fingers."

Jimmie's uglified camera

(Image: Jimmie's ugly camera, from connors934 on Flickr)

Canadian Tory talking-points leaked

Posted: 16 May 2009 06:45 AM PDT

Wikileaks has published a talking points memo from the Canadian Conservative Party, intended to form the standard stump speech/letter-to-the-editor/op-ed for the week:

Canadian Conservative Party May Constituency Week Caucus Pack, May 2009 (via Michael Geist)

LSATs are a rip-off

Posted: 16 May 2009 06:41 AM PDT

The LSAC is a nonprofit corporation that oversees the LSAT, the test you need to take to get into law school. They charge $194 for every copy of the exam that's distributed, including the ones that are distributed as PDFs and printed by prep companies. As Lessig sez, "It would seem a nonprofit would be keen to find a better way to make access easier. As Schwartz suggests, the exams should be free, or at least, following iTunes, $.99."

Suggestions for LSAC on Restructuring LSAT PrepTest Sales (via Lessig)

Can't see the video? Click here

Table made from VHS cassettes

Posted: 16 May 2009 06:17 AM PDT

Asaf sez, "After hanging on to my VHS tapes collection for about 15 years -schlepping them to every apartment I moved - I realized those movies are NEVER going to see the light of day or a screen, for that matter. So I decided to be kind AND rewind!"

Toploader VHS Table (Thanks, Asaf!)

Knit replica of village took 23 years

Posted: 16 May 2009 06:09 AM PDT

The ladies of the Afternoon Club in Mersham, England, knitted this complete replica of their village over the course of 23 years. It's to be sold in pieces to benefit the local hall.

In pictures: Knitted village (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Dear Esther: bizarre, touching Half Life 2 mod

Posted: 16 May 2009 06:06 AM PDT

Jim from Rock Paper Shotgun sez, "We recently posted up this piece by upcoming games critic Lewis Denby. It's about Dear Esther a bizarre Half-Life 2 modification set on an abandoned island. The mod itself is fascinating because of the slow, poetic style and superb narration - the designer Dan Pinchbeck describes it as a "interactive ghost story" - and it's more like a piece of fiction read with a mouse and keyboard than any trad horror-game. But what's interesting to me is the way it provoked Denby to examine the response of gamers to the mod, and how it changed his personal comprehension of what games could or should be doing."

If you're looking for fun, I've no idea why you're playing Dear Esther in the first place. This is fearless, classical tragedy. It ends with the sound of a heart monitor flatlining, for goodness' sake. Lead designer Dan Pinchbeck describes it as "an interactive ghost story," but the inevitable connotations of that are misleading. This isn't about bumps in the night or any other hackneyed horror archetypes. It's deep, heart-tugging, emotional trauma. Dear Esther is indeed ghostly and ethereal, but it's all thematic notation. Really, the only horror is in realising how truly heartbreaking this tale is.
Some people will tell you it's not a game. Depending on your definitions, maybe it isn't. You play as... well, that's never revealed, and since it's all in uninterrupted first-person, you've no way of finding out. During your time on what initially appears to be a remote Hebridean island, a disembodied voice will read fragments of a series of letters, written to a woman named Esther who we're never introduced to. And you'll explore, climbing higher and higher up the mountain in the centre, piecing together the proverbial puzzle and trying to establish, often in vain, just what this place is.

Touched By The Hand Of Mod: Dear Esther (Thanks, Jim!)

Chicago Alderman vandalizes public art depicting CCTVs

Posted: 16 May 2009 06:03 AM PDT

A Chicago Alderman decided he didn't like a public mural depicting Chicago PD CCTV cameras, so he had it painted over.

When Humberto Angeles woke up on Thursday morning, he heard a truck outside his Bridgeport apartment. He looked out the window and saw the city's graffiti blasters painting a brick wall across the street. They covered over a mural that Angeles says he rather liked.
ANGELES: What I got from it, it was just a mural for peace. That's what I got out of it. Peace.
The mural was a painting of three Chicago Police Department blue light camera's that you see on light posts in high crime areas. The Chicago Police logo is on the cameras but then the artist also painted Jesus on one post, a deer head on another, and a skull on the third camera. What the mural is supposed to mean is anyone's guess. Angeles agrees that it's a rather inscrutable work of art but he liked it and he says he feels bad for the artist...
Alderman Jim Balcer confirmed that he ordered the mural removed, saying some of his residents viewed the work as graffiti.

Alderman Destroys Public Art

Alderman says he had this mural destroyed

Dalek wedding cake

Posted: 16 May 2009 05:59 AM PDT

Here's a lovely, nearly-entirely-edible Dalek wedding cake -- we had a Portal cake at our wedding, but this is a close second:

The "tiers" (the base and the middle) are foam board wrapped in fondant, and were planned to be that way from the get-go to support the weight of the cake. The cake itself contains 5 chopsticks: two to support the second tier (holding the upper body) and one each for the core of the three arms. The lower half of the body is white cake frosted with vanilla buttercream and wrapped in coffee fondant. The copper balls are all fondant, and the piping is just royal icing. The upper half of the body is sculpted from Rice Krispie Treat that was then covered with fondtant and piped with details. The little armor plates and the accessories on the arms are made of sugar candy (gumpaste). The whole thing weighed about 10 pounds. Dassit.

Cakey bits (Thanks, Jeff!)

Previously:

Can't see the video? Click here

Storks' nests in odd places

Posted: 16 May 2009 12:09 PM PDT

RJ sez, "Storks will choose the position for their nest for a variety of reasons and if that happens to be atop a man-made object, then so be it. Some are welcomed and encouraged, others not so. Yet their ability to build huge nests in precarious positions never fails to surprise. Here are some examples that may just take your breath away."

Although many Europeans encourage storks to nest on the roof of their home - it is supposed to increase the fecundity of the householders - many would gasp at the inherent danger that lies in building one's home on top of a deadly current of electricity. In Denmark, however, the stork is not a welcome guest and so this would be considered appropriate alternative housing. The Danish believe that if a stork builds a nest on top of your house then someone who lives there will die before the year ends. These parent storks, however, will not be on the nest for great periods of time. This stork in Hungary is flying back to the nest to feed its offspring. The visit will need to be fairly quick though - stork chicks can eat anything up to sixty percent of their body weight each day. That is quite a few fish and frogs.

Avian Architecture: The Precarious Nests of the Stork (Thanks, RJ!)

(Image: Stork's nest II, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Tillwe's Flickr stream)

Open Database Alliance: a community run foundation for MySQL

Posted: 16 May 2009 05:48 AM PDT

Worried about the free/open database MySQL now that Oracle owns Sun (who bought out MySQL)? So are a lot of open database hackers, who've formed the Open Database Alliance to create a community-run foundation to oversee free MySQL development and releases:

The intent of the Open Database Alliance is to unify all MySQL-related development and services, providing a solution to the fragmentation and uncertainty facing the communities, businesses and technical experts involved with MySQL. Still under development, the Open Database Alliance is open to all businesses, organizations and individuals interested in helping create a new, centralized resource for MySQL and to ensure that it remains a top quality, high performance open source database.
Monty Program Ab, founded by Monty Widenius, the "father" of the MySQL database, and Percona, established by MySQL expert Peter Zaitsev, are the founding members of the Open Database Alliance. Monty Program is currently the primary developer of MariaDB, a branch of the MySQL database that includes all major open source storage engines, including the Maria transactional storage engine.

Welcome to the Open Database Alliance.

Open Database Alliance hedges against Oracle plans for MySQL