Oldbie.org

Authors@Google: Michael Pollan

2008-05-14T00:28:23Z

Fantastic talk by Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.

Direct link to YouTube

Rare Children's Books

2008-05-11T16:15:35Z

Children's literature is big business these days. Just go to any mega-chain bookstore and check out the square footage devoted to the kids. It's fantastic that there are so many options for young readers, but the popularity of children's literature is hardly a new phenomenon.

The bookn3rd blog, which focuses on book history, has some great links and commentary for rare children's book scans from the early 20th century. My favorite is Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonder Book For Girls & Boys, from 1893. The color plates (see the thumbnail to the right) by noted illustrator Walter Crane are absolutely amazing.

Rare Children's Books at the Library of Congress (from bookn3rd.com)

Also see: Children's Book Online: The Rosetta Project

Cross-posted from Geekdad

Resources for Reading Out Loud

2008-05-03T00:07:58Z

My wife just finished listening to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere on audiobook. She's been gushing all month about how fantastic of a reader Mr. Gaiman is--he narrated the book himself--and how he gets all the accents just right. This is something very important to the two of us, as we both love stories read aloud, but we hate when they aren't narrated well.

To prepare for our own upcoming adventures in delivering memorable storytimes--our boy is nearing the age where he'll soon appreciate such things--I thought it would be wise to gather together some resources on reading to children and getting them interested in books.

The Read-Aloud Handbook, by Jim Trelease. This is the book for parents who want to read to their kids. Trelease first details the benefits for reading to your kids--longer stays in school, better vocabulary and comprehension--and then goes on to discuss methodology and reading materials appropriate for kids of all ages. There's also a section of read-aloud stories for you and your kids to enjoy. Excerpts of The Read-Aloud Handbook are available online, and Trelease has an additional collection of great read-aloud stories called Hey! Listen to This.

How to Get Your Child to Love Reading, by Esmé Raji Codell. Another good resource for finding good books to match your kids' interests. It's more than an index, though, because Codell has lots of fun experiments and activities to make lasting memories about each story.

United Through Reading Read Aloud Resources. A few techniques and suggestions for reading to your kids, as well as some recommended books.

The British Library Collect Britain Project. For those of you planning on reading the Harry Potter books to your geeklets, spend a few hours here listening to over 650 extracts from the Survey of English Dialects. Search by place name or date to find that perfect Hagrid accent.

Cross-posted from Geekdad

Comments Are Off

2008-04-25T17:29:24Z

Trying something here to combat the glut of spam. Comments will be disabled for a little while. Sorry.

Custom World of Warcraft Figurines

2008-04-25T15:11:26Z

If you're looking for something to go with your WoW-engraved MacBook Pro, or perhaps a way to lure the kids out of Azeroth for a few precious moments, FigurePrints may be your answer. This Seattle-based startup will sell you a 3D replica of your favorite World of Warcraft toon for $99.

You just give them your server and character name, and they pull the 3D model from Blizzard's Armory service. Pick a pose and click the print button, and your statue is assembled by a 3D printer, 1/250th of an inch at a time. It's touched up by hand, a nameplate is added (not customizable; sorry, HordeKiller434), and the whole thing is mounted inside a glass display case.

Speaking of mounts: that epic Netherdrake you spent hours of your life grinding for? Sorry, but it can't be included. Neither can your pets.

Apparently the high demand for the service and the amount of time necessary to create each statue means that availability is limited. FigurePrints is handing out new models via a randomized lottery, and the average lead time on getting one delivered looks to be around 30-60 days.

Which means you've got plenty of time to grind more epic loot for your figure!

Cross-posted from Geekdad

A Planet

2008-04-25T02:59:12Z

I seem to have written a poem. I'm not sure what to think of it, seeing as it's been about a decade since I last wrote poetry. I want to like it, but I'm so out of practice with writing that I am tentative. It's short, which works in its favor, but the device is extremely hackneyed and overused.

I do not care. I'm just happy that I wrote something tonight.

A Planet

You are an asteroid, a moon, a part of me
In orbit.
Perturbations occur; the planes will shift
This way or that.

If I hold you tight, there will be drag, decay,
Then terminal velocity.
If I let you go, out you will spiral, a part of me,
An interrupted orbit.

Cross-Posting from Movable Type to LiveJournal

2008-04-24T02:07:03Z

Natania told me the other day that some of our friends weren't getting updates to my blog via their RSS readers, and I realized that it might be due to the fact that they're still trying to follow my ancient LiveJournal. So I finally got off my ass and set up Movable Type to cross-post.

This was a little harder than I thought, however, because every Google search I did for "cross post movable type livejournal" or "posting movable type livejournal" or any other such combination resulted in a bunch of old and outdated plugins. I didn't feel like banging my head against a Perl script tonight, so they were right out.

Luckily, on the second Google SERP, I discovered CrossPoster from Movalog.

I'm not one hundred percent sure what Movalog is, but the author, Arvind Satyanarayan, knows his MT. Lots of cool plugins, not the least of which is CrossPoster, which was easy to configure, easy to use, and totally made my evening.

Is Captcha's Moment Passing? | Compiler from Wired.com

2008-04-17T00:15:32Z

From Paul Adams' article at Compiler:

As long as processing power, et cetera, is finite, just slowing down the bots is helpful, even if we can't block them altogether. But of course the bots will evolve, and so will the tests to stop them. There's no ideal solution. Would you rather be deluged with spam, or have to take a lengthy IQ test every time you post a comment on a blog?

Another reason I felt somewhat guilty about adding the Captcha to my site. Asking someone to type a rather simplistic six character phrase isn't along the lines of solving complex algebra, but it is a tiny roadblock in what makes blogs stand out from their dead paper progenitors: instant conversation.

How many roadblocks before it just becomes too much of a pain in the ass to deal with?

Link

4 color rebellion » The Great Experiment: Wii Fit

2008-04-16T18:47:23Z

Pretty nifty look at the upcoming Wii Fit game as a viable exercise regimen.

Link, via Penny Arcade

CAPTCHA, or Did I?

2008-04-16T02:58:52Z

As previously noted, I spent a good deal of time on Friday and Saturday, updating the blog to MT4. I'm a fan of the interface updates, and it's nice that comment spam is actually getting rated down again, but I'm still amazed at the number of spam messages that funnel through my site.

Between when I emptied it last night at around 9pm and when I checked this morning at 9am, I got over one thousand spam comments. This is after I added the CAPTCHA, mind you.

Which means that the built-in MT4 reverse Turing test has:

A. Been cracked by recognition software
B. Or my own site's CAPTCHA is being solved by horny Internet denizens eager to see more skin.

I'll probably just remove it because it didn't have any effect whatsoever on stemming the tide. I think my site was open to spammers' shitty links for a few months, and now they've labeled it as a go-to blog for Google juice. Which is retarded, because I'm using nofollows. But far be it from me to know the mind of a comment spammer.

More as the saga continues.

Free Range Kids: Giving Kids Freedom to be Kids

2008-04-13T15:25:25Z

Lenore Skenazy, who wrote a controversial piece in last week's New York Sun about letting her 9-year-old use the NYC subway, has a new blog called Free Range Kids, all about giving kids the same types of freedoms that we all experienced when we were younger:

"Do you ever... ..let your kid ride a bike to the library? Walk alone to school? Take a bus, solo? Or are you thinking about it? If so, you are raising a Free Range Kid! At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting. Share your stories, tell your tips and maybe one day I will try to collect them in a book. Meantime, let's try to help our kids embrace life! (And maybe even clear the table.)"

It's easy to get caught up in the media blitz and to constantly worry about your wee ones. We're always being told that the world is a harsher, more unforgiving place than it was when we were all kids. Is that true? I think it takes a lot of guts to let go of media-generated overprotective tendencies and let children discover the world around them, warts and all.

Cross posted at Geekdad, via BoingBoing

b00kn3rd: Really Cool Blog on Rare Books

2008-04-12T12:49:24Z

My friend Laura recently started up a blog called b00kn3rd.com that focuses on all things related to bibliophilia: rare books, the modern bookselling trade, and the history of books. I have to admit, I'm much more up-to-speed with the book trade than I was before I added her blog feed to Reader. She has a lot of fun with the subject, and it really comes through in her posts. My favorite so far: scans of old advertisements from the Georgia Tech archives.

Upgrade and Comment Spam

2008-04-12T02:49:16Z

I've upgraded to Movable Type 4.1. I contemplated migrating to WordPress, but decided that the transition was a little too much for a Friday night.

The upgrade wasn't too tough, but I had some issues with 4.1's Registration feature. The UI is a little confusing and I kept getting this error whenever I published:

Publish error in template 'Site JavaScript': Error in tag: Error in tag: Error in tag: TypeKey authentication is not enabled in this blog. MTRemoteSignInLink can't be used.

TypeKey authentication was set up, so I'm not sure what the hell MT was talkin' 'bout. I just disabled the whole Registration authentication dealie and it looks good.

Still having comment spam issues, though, so I'm disabling comments for a few days.

Now I'm going to go watch Battlestar Galactica.

Steampunk Novel Checklist

2008-04-08T01:40:40Z

My lovely and talented wife, Natania Barron, who is hard at work on her second book--a steampunk novel of sorts called The Aldersgate Cycle--has posted a fairly humorous steampunk novel checklist. So far, it looks like she's meeting all the right criteria.

It really is a wonderful book and I'm really looking forward to where Natania goes it.

Google Analytics Seminar

2008-02-22T20:54:16Z

Despite the fact that my photograph leaves much to be desired, it looks like Google has posted news of our Google Analytics training seminar, which will be held on March 25th and 26th in Raleigh.

I must admit, it's a little crazy seeing my mug anywhere on the Google.com domain.