Julie's Web Journal at Stately Barrett Manor


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Writing. Technology. Life.





It's Friday. Have a Cat.
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
Why yes, it has been a crazy week. The cats are wondering if it's 'nip o'clock, yet. Here's Midnight, perusing the Fry's ad:

020312_midnight.jpg

She's kind of giving it a sideways glance, as if to suggest she's not really looking at geek toys. But we know better. Geek Kitty cannot fool us!

I'm trying to finish laundry, do a bit of sewing, then see about decompressing a bit. It really has been crazy this week, and it's not going to let up for another couple of weeks.

Have a good weekend!

Tags: Pictures  Cats

Filed under: Pictures   Cats         
2/3/2012 3:43:51 PM
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It's Friday. Have Two Cats!
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
Apologies for the lack of posts this week. I've been deep in a couple of projects, and I'm looking at a deadline in a couple of weeks for one. 

Today is lovely. I have the patio door open and the cats are enjoying the weather:

012712_abby.jpg

012712_midnight.jpg

Enjoy your weekend!

Tags: Pictures  Cats

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1/27/2012 1:11:48 PM
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2012 Color Challenge: Hose
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
Garden Hose

What's so special about this? Well, I chose the color green. This was shot this afternoon with a Canon T70 - a film camera. I used a 50mm lens, shot with ISO400 color film (CVS Brand) at f9 with a 500/sec shutter speed. Why, you ask? Our son is taking a B&W photography class using a 35mm camera. We picked up some cheap film so we could check out a couple of camera bodies and a variety of lenses. Seemed a good opportunity to shoot something for the challenge.

Tags: 

Filed under: Pictures   2012ColorChallenge         
1/20/2012 4:20:32 PM
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It's Friday. Have A Special Cat Picture
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett

Abby on the perch. Again. What's so special about that, you ask? Hey, this was done the old school way, with a Canon T70 and color film. Yes, film. As per yesterday's entry we checked out a couple of cameras. The battery died on one (and it takes one of those funky 6 volt batteries). The T70 takes standard AA batteries, so I'm hoping it will be fine for Chris to use, especially since we figured out how to get it completely into manual mode.

And Chris took this picture. We took them down to get developed and I scanned the negative. I thought he did okay.

Enjoy your weekend!
Tags: Pictures  Cats

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1/20/2012 3:52:24 PM
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The Closest I'll Probably Ever Get To A Hugo Award...
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
A while back I promised an announcement, as soon as all of the pieces fell into place. Here ya go: I'll be in charge of the Hugo Awards Ceremony for LoneStarCon 3. That's the 2013 World Science Fiction Convention.

Eeep.

No, I'll have nothing to do with the voting, so save your bribes. (Oh, send me something if you want. It just won't do you any good. And who needs a bribe? I've one the Post Code Lotto prize today - twice. It says so in my spam folder.)

So how do I celebrate? With an interesting cat picture. Give me a few minutes to get it ready to post.

Tags: Life


Filed under: Life   Conventions   LoneStarCon 3   Worldcon   Hugo Awards
1/20/2012 3:48:20 PM
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Blast From The Past
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
Chris is taking a B&W photography course this semester. Tuesday I checked him out on the digital camera. I was pleased to see he knew a lot more than I expected about photography. Some of it is from his design background, but he did have some grasp of focal lengths and f-stops and ISO and the like. He just needed to learn a few basics about the settings of the DSLR, and he was good to go.

Until he got to his class. This is old school B&W. They're required to have a 35mm camera, film, paper, and a few other old school supplies. 

Fortunately, I have a drawer full of old camera bodies and lenses from back in the day. We spent a couple of hours going through everything. I found a couple of Canon bodies and several lenses that might be useful. Next, I sat down and cleaned everything. I've had it all sealed in plastic bags, but some of the stuff was still pretty crudded up. Then we went to the storage area in the garage to see if I could unearth the old dark room supplies. I found a few.

Today we trekked across town to a camera store that caters to pros. (I had business just a mile down the street anyway.) Apparently they don't deal with that film stuff any more. Gah. To be fair, I am unsurprised. There are a couple of places in town that do, but I think we'll get better deals on film and paper online. 

We dropped by CVS and picked up some film to run through the two camera bodies, just so we can be sure everything is working properly. Amazingly, CVS still carries Tri-X. But we can get it for about half of what they charge if we order online. I'm hoping we can save more with a bulk order. He needs at least ten rolls of film. We might as well order a bunch at once if it'll save us money.

And no, the irony is not lost on me that the day we go scouring the planet for film and paper is the same day Kodak files for bankruptcy. There's some serious irony there.
Tags: Life

Filed under: Life   Photography         
1/19/2012 7:40:15 PM
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To The Copypasta Brigade
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
You know who you are. You come from the left, the right, from the middle. You have a point to make, and you don't care how you make it. The important thing is that you make it. You find an article or blog post that expresses your opinion perfectly. So what do you do? You copy the entire thing and paste it to a forum thread or comment thread to a news article or blog post. What's wrong with that? It's your opinion.

No, it isn't.

You've copied someone else's work wholesale and pasted it elsewhere without attribution. You may think it doesn't harm anyone, but think again. This is who you've harmed:
  • The author of the work. If you've copied that from a commercial web site, chances are pretty good the author was paid something to write that piece. Or, they may be getting paid per click or through ad revenue on the page. You are directly depriving them of income now. You may be depriving them of income in the future because by stealing their content you're depriving the site of traffic. 
  • The site where you posted the work. Perhaps you've noticed that a lot of sites are going dark over pending anti-piracy legislation. As the legislation stands, the entire web site can be taken down because of your stupidity. You probably don't care as you got your point across. 
  • You. If someone like me with decent Google-fu skills can find your deception in just a few seconds, it won't take the average person but under a minute to find you out. You've lost credibility. You can be branded as a plagiarist at worst. At best you'll lose credibility on whatever site you posted the screed as your own. Of course, you may not care. I can't help you there. But don't be surprised if people report your post(s) as plagiarized. Sure, if you get kicked off you'll just get a new ID and post again. I hope you'll get bored and go away. But if you want to post that stuff, I won't engage you. I'll just report and move on.
On the very off chance that I've shamed you into reforming your copypasta ways, here are a few tips that will help:
  • Always refer back to the source. Credit them. The URL is in your address bar. Copypasta that. Mention the author's name. If you shorten the URL (or the site you're pasting the link to does it for you), mention the web site's name. 
  • Consider posting just a paragraph at most. The link you provide will allow the curious to go read for themselves. There's also something called "Fair Use." You're less likely to get called out (or in trouble) for posting an excerpt and a link. You're also driving traffic back to the originator, which goes back to the very first bullet point on this page.
  • Use your own words. Along with the link and short excerpt, provide your own commentary. If you think the article speaks for you, without further comment, then say that. At least people know you're trying to do the right thing, which will help your credibility.
If you are part of the copypasta brigade, please consider using these basic courtesies. Your fellow forumites and commenters will thank you. So will the sites you frequent.


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1/17/2012 8:48:23 PM
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Not Going Dark, But...
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
Doubtless you've noticed the logo on a few pages has been covered up.

Why am I not going dark to protest SOPA/PIPA? Oh, several reasons, but first and foremost is technical. This site has been handcrafted since 2002. I've not used any sort of content management software. (And yes, we'll be celebrating ten years of the Journal in May!) In that respect it's not easy just to add a plugin. I've been moving toward using more CSS, but that's an ongoing process.

Will going dark do any good? I'm not sure. I do feel a need to speak up, though. 

The current legislation before Congress is not only unworkable, but dangerous. When you link to another web site, should you have to vet every single link on that site to make sure they point to legal content? Should you have to pay the price if the content you liked to is legal, but elsewhere on the site is a link to illegal content, or some illegal content is hosted? No. Absolutely not.

Should a large corporation have the power to take your site down simply because they believe that something on your web site is infringing on their copyright or trademark? No. That's what a DMCA takedown is for. While I don't think the DMCA is a perfect process, it at least gives the recipient of the order the opportunity to prove their content is non-infringing, or at least remove the content without losing their entire web site. We're all human and we all make mistakes. If you post something by accident, should you lose your entire site? No.

As a content creator, I certainly want the ability to ask for infringing content to be removed. I don't think that taking down an entire site is an apt punishment, unless the entire site is pushing infringing content. 

In this "corporations are people" era, we individuals cannot back down. 

This is why I'm blocking the site logo on the most-visited pages, in lieu of wrestling with HTML code on every page on this site.

Please consider making your voice heard.


Filed under: SOPA   PIPA         
1/17/2012 8:05:05 PM
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2012 Color Challenge
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
I'm going to try to take part in Trevor Carpenter's 2012 Color Challenge. The idea is to pick a new color every month and shoot as much as possible. I don't know if I'll be able to keep up, but I'll give it a shot.

I chose green for January because, in theory, it should mean shooting fewer plants, an old standby of mine. However, when I drug a few plants indoors to protect them from a freeze the other night, this picture set itself up:

Veddy Interesting...

I call it "Veddy Interesting." Some of you may be at an age to get that. The photo sits on an old radio in my entry way. That's my grandmother on my mother's side, ca. 1916.
Pictures

Filed under: Pictures   2012ColorChallenge         
1/14/2012 1:44:33 PM
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It's Friday. Have Two Cats!
Fresh (almost) daily from Julie Barrett
It's absolutely gorgeous out today, though too cool to open the doors. The cats are enjoying the sunshine:

011312_abby.jpg

Abby is on the high perch. Today she is merely poking her head through the vertical blinds. Some days she arranges them around the edges of the perch so she can lay back and look outdoors.

011312_midnight.jpg

Midnight pokes her head in for a moment.

Enjoy your weekend!

Tags: Pictures  Cats

Filed under: Pictures   Cats         
1/13/2012 1:17:19 PM
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