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Yesterday people both on- and offline were crowing about how Pink Floyd “won” a legal battle with their record label, EMI. At last, the band can force their fans to buy digital versions of their songs as full albums, rather than individual tracks. Wait, what? This was worth fighting over? Continue Reading »

Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome: people incur it all the time. They say an acronym but repeat the final word as well: DVD disc, ATM machine, ISBN number. Were the acronym to be fully expanded, they’re duplicating that final word and saying “digital versatile disc disc.” This used to aggravate me immensely, but the other day I saw a comment that made me rethink the issue. Continue Reading »

Remember Ubisoft’s amazing new DRM scheme? The one that would stop all those nefarious “pirates” by forcing legitimate purchasers of Ubisoft games to be constantly online? Yeah, well, it got cracked. Mere hours after the release, at that. Continue Reading »

It looks like a few suits over at Penguin publishing decided to “connect with this whole internet thingy” by turning their eBooks into applications. Because what’s missing when you read a book is a little self-contained social network / entertainment platform. This is the kind of mistake that stems directly from the mistaken idea that the internet is not a communications but a broadcast medium. Continue Reading »

This past fall I began taking art classes again, with the hope of finishing a picture I’d started in ye olde 2004 or so.I thought it would be cool to photograph it after each session to track the progress. While the shots aren’t consistent enough to do a true time-lapse, I think it will be interesting to see how the picture develops. Continue Reading »

Like just about everybody else, I often feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I want to do. Short of jettisoning my internal clock with something like the 28-hour day (and I can see my lab’s circadian expert shuddering from here), the best I can do is try to manage the time I do have. Continue Reading »

Ever since Ubisoft decided that forcing users to constantly “phone home” over the internet was a great way to stop unauthorized sharing of their games, the tired old DRM debate has been experiencing yet another flareup. I was rather disappointed with the treatment the issue got by a few of the webcomics I follow: While the comics they drew were funny, their editorial comments seem to be based on the flawed “conventional wisdom” rapidly losing traction in today’s world. Continue Reading »

I had my third of four med school interviews at Penn State University today and I left quite impressed. I felt like everybody there was really going out of their way to make the interviewees feel welcome, an attitude that sets a positive atmosphere right from the start. Continue Reading »

Four years ago today my cat James (named after the character in Ursula K. LeGuin’s Catwings) died at ten years old. Death is an integral part of life and while there isn’t much cause for sadness years and years later, I like to look back over the experiences I had while he was a part of mine. I was around eight years old and wanted to be a vet, so on one of my visits to the animal hospital we got the opportunity to adopt a rescued kitten. Continue Reading »

Ever since Snowmageddon started, the roof by my porch has been growing an incredibly long icicle. I grabbed some pictures of it yesterday morning, which was fortuitous: With today’s warmth it lost its grip on the soffit and shattered on the ground below.

The first two pictures should give you an idea of how large it got. Continue Reading »