$ cat /var/log/meri

[This post pertains almost exclusively to Facebook.]

[Also: This is not a post about politics. This is a post about human behavior, and language, and my hurting head.]

It’s kind of amazing how much of my ‘news’ feed is going by unread (thank you SocialFixer), simply because of the vitriol used by the people making the posts. Yes, you are completely free to say whatever you want, in whatever language you want. I am completely free to mark your post as something that I don’t want to see, and let my software take care of the rest.

I guess I don’t understand the motivations of these people. (And, trust me, the people in question here includes the full spectrum of liberal to conservative to weapons rights (or wrongs) to religion to reproductive rights to … just about anything a person can feel passionate about, really.) It’s clear that the people in question have no intention of actually trying to change someone’s mind, or they would use language conducive to that outcome. So, are they really just preaching to the choir, and hoping that the simple levels of noise pollution will get others to pay attention?

Because that’s what it is. Noise pollution. It’s clear that the system is on, but any signal is rapidly getting lost in the noise.

I’m all for rational debate. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one on Facebook. (I was about to say “the internet” but would have been lying. I’ve been on the internet for a long time, and there used to be actual discourse out there.)

Finally, if this post makes you want to remove me as a friend, then, well, it’s probably for the best. If it drives you to tell me how wrong and pigheaded and close-minded I am, then it may compel me to learn how to remove you as a friend, because my friends simply don’t behave that way.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled $SOCIAL_MEDIA_PLATFORM.

Every month, the University of Chicago press makes an eBook freely available to the intewebs for five days. This month, it is “You Were Never in Chicago” by Neil Steinberg. It is available for free until May 5th.

If you sign up on their web site, you will receive email notification on the first of each month, when they post a new book. I have never received any spam related to this service. I am in no way affiliated, blah blah blah. Haven’t even read this month’s book yet. 🙂

Greetings, all!

I know that there might be one or two other InDesign experts out there reading this, and I figured that, instead of polling individually and perhaps missing other closet experts, I’d post here.

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The end of April approaches. This, in and of itself, is not a thing. However, the end of April (generally) means the beginning of May also approaches, and that is a thing. See, the first full weekend in May reveals people scurrying all along the Eastern seaboard to descend on the little town of West Friendship, Maryland, home of the Howard County Fairgrounds. See, the first full weekend in May and the said fairgrounds are home to Maryland Sheep and Wool.

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[Warning: Your meri is very tired, and is waxing philosophical. Weirdness may ensue.]

I’ve encountered several situations over the past week or so that have made me realize what amazing friends I have. Yes, you. You’re an incredibly diverse, often eclectic group of people, and I wouldn’t trade you for all the yarn in … someplace with a lot of yarn.

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Greetings from scenic Worcester, Massachusetts!

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No. Seriously. That’s the name of the program.

If your household is like ours, you probably have a useless (to you) prescription medication or two kicking around. (Ok, if your household is like ours, you have a LOT of them kicking around. But I’m hoping you haven’t gone around the ‘which med will work’ wheel quite as much as we have.) You want to get rid of it, but you’re not sure how to do so in a manner that doesn’t involve turning yourself into a dealer or giving your local water supply a healthy dose of pharmacology. Turns out, there an appgovernment program for that. It’s called (I kid you not) “Got Drugs?”

Every now and then, they have a drug take-back day, where you can bring in your unneeded prescription medications and turn them over to people who presumably have some idea of how to dispose of them legally and in a reasonably environmentally-friendly manner. The next upcoming take-back day is Saturday, April 27th, 2013. Follow the link on this page to be taken to the search engine to find a take back location near you. (I’d link to the page directly, but they have a silly cookie-based session timeout thing.)

As careful readers will know, I’m something of an audiobook fiend. This all started when I had a 40-mile one-way commute. Said commute involved the Capital Beltway, and a bridge. If you live in the area, you know what this means. If you don’t live in the area, just take my word for the following: traffic sucked, and was the sort of make one seriously consider driving off the side of the bridge, just to get away from it. So, audiobooks helped me keep my sanity (such as it is).

Now, I clearly no longer have long commutes. Most days, I get up and head down 3 half-flights of stairs to my craft room / office in the basement. My car sits idle more days than it gets to tool around on the road. But, my love of audiobooks continues. I listen to them while I knit, or while I work on layout that doesn’t require paying attention to words. (When I work on layout that requires paying attention to words, I tend to zone out on the audiobook itself.)

I get the vast majority of my audiobooks from Audible, as I have for years. The addition of their Whispersync for Voice feature (thanks to being purchased by Amazon) makes me an even more devoted Audible fan. (This feature automatically syncs up your position between your audiobook and your Kindle ebook, letting you switch back and forth between the mediums more or less painlessly. It’s awesome.)

I just finished my latest listen (Under the Dome, by Stephen King (more on that in another post)), and so I went in search of my next listen. Audible kindly lets me search for books that are Whispersync for Voice enabled, and so I was browsing through that section, and I realized that there are some pretty nifty audiobook narrators listed here. Samuel L. Jackson. Elijah Wood. Anne Hathaway. David Hyde Pierce.

This inevitably lead me to ponder who I would love to listen to narrating audiobooks. James Earl Jones (already there, mostly children’s books and books of a biblical nature). Morgan Freeman (again, already there, but mostly interviews and a couple of short stories). Ian McKellan (a bunch of Shakespeare, and The Odyssey). Patrick Stewart (The Last Battle). Kevin Spacey (interviews).

It looks like my listening list is getting padded out.

Who would you love to listen to read to you? What works would you want them to read? Who would you hate to have to listen to? Would it matter at all what they were reading? (For instance, Gilbert Godfried’s voice drives me absolutely insane, but he does have two redeeming roles: The parrot from Aladdin, and the AFLAC duck (before he screwed up that gig for himself).

I’m putting together a web site which needs to have a portfolio of images on it. I want to do the standard thing where you have a thumbnail, and then click for the full sized image. But creating thumbnails is a pain in the ass, so I was looking at ways to do it in bulk, or at least to script it.

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As careful readers may remember, G and I just went through and culled about half of our collective book collection. While most of the books have found new homes, I kept aside about 4 paper boxes worth of them with the eye to selling them.

Now, of course, the trick is to sell them. The question is: where? Back in the day, half.com was the answer, but they seem to be part of eBay these days (not that that rules them out, just a data point). Amazon? Do you all think I’m crazy for selling books? (For those who think the latter, keep in mind a few things: 1) I’m unemployed. 2) I have a lot of free time. 3) I only kept books that I thought might have some specialty / specific markets. 4) I only kept books that were in new / like new condition.)

Ideas?