Image from here

The biggest problem of course with moving to digital is how are you going to get the videos or music to where you want them to be.   I’ve really fought with this problem literally for over a decade now (yes in 1995 I had a computer hooked up to a stereo and a TV).

The last incarnation I was using was a first generation Mac Mini.  The problem was that the streaming wasn’t fast enough for the Mac Mini (ironically every other computer in the house streamed just fine).   So I would have to copy video files over to the computer manually to get completely stutter free playback.  I dealt though until just a couple months ago.

Image from here

In November I purchased my first original X-Box (yes I’m behind the times).   I had always wanted to run XBOX Media Center on it, but didn’t want to go through the soldering effort to put a mod chip in, or track down esoteric software with the action replay kit to soft mod it.  I did manage to find instructions on how to mod the x-box and install XBMC with things I already had, such as a computer and screw drivers.  The most frightening thing about it was hot swapping a live IDE hard drive.   Years of tech work has told me this is a no-no, but I did it anyway and it worked.

I even went out and purchased a remote control for the X-Box and can now browse from the couch.   I went back and forth on whether to get a wireless controller or the remote, I settled on the remote because it was cheaper and more intuitive for anyone other then myself.

For MP3 playback we sometimes use the X-Box installation, but more then likely we are either using ipods, our N810′s, or the whole main floor audio we have going.   In the basement we have a computer working as an MP3 jukebox.  Off of this machine there is 3 different sets of speakers (one is the main stereo system) – that can cover the whole first floor of the house in zoned audio.    Each room has it’s own volume control and it works fairly well.  In the next year I will more then likely start running the cables upstairs to work on whole house audio.

This post has multiple parts to it, so fair warning I’m guessing this one is going to be long.   Lately I’ve been more and more annoyed at traditional hard copy media.  It’s a pain in the butt to deal with and takes up way too much physical space (for those that know me you find that sentence greatly amusing).

Pictures

This started happening over the last year with photo albums.   Photo albums are terrible.   It means normally that one person has a copy of the image and you can’t share them.  It is essentially technology of the last generation.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in having prints, but the pictures themselves.

I’ve made it my mission to start getting the family photos and scanning them in.   I’ve managed to get most of my father’s photos from the era he was with my mother.   The ones I’m missing are any he has of the kids hanging on the walls in his house.   My next run is going to be the pictures from his current family (so a good 15-16 years worth of pictures to go).

My grandmother on the other hand has been very tightfisted with her photos.  I can understand her being protective, but so far I’ve managed to get 59 photos out of her to scan (out of literally over a 1000-2000).   I have managed to scan my photo album, and more recently used the digital SLR and took pictures of my scrap book from high school.   So both of these can be tucked away in boxes that I don’t need to look at and take up physical space in my house.

All the photos I have are now uploaded to Flickr.   You can also read about my photo sharing issue with my mother over here.

Continued tomorrow in part 2

My complete and daily online activity for you to go all voyeuristic on.

	8:00am	Creeva shared a link on Google Reader. Enjoy the Sounds of Classic Arcade Videogames
	8:00am	Creeva scrobbled 2 songs on Last.fm. (Hide Details) leolaporte – TWiT 180: How Is Babby Formed leolaporte – TWiT 181: I Am Not Spock
	8:22am	Creeva posted 8 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar [none] [none] [none] We Are Having A Baby [none] [none] [none]
	9:30am	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent tired and cranky.
	10:59am	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x.
	11:00am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x
	11:02am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	11:27am	Creeva posted 14 photos on Flickr. (Hide Details)
	11:27am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. 02-26-09_1122
	11:38am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. 02-26-09_1128
	11:54am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	12:36pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent so much to do, so little time.
	1:24pm	Creeva dugg 12 links on Digg. (Hide Details)
	1:24pm	Creeva dugg 2 links on Digg. (Hide Details) Riding the Rails? Know Your Hobo Signs (PIC) Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg Team Up For A-Team Spoof
	2:34pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent water – it does a body good.
	2:48pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi.
	4:56pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:55pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:55pm	Creeva published 4 blog posts. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby We Are Having A Baby LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	5:55pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme.
	5:56pm	Creeva bookmarked 14 links on Delicious. (Hide Details) No description available. LeVar Burton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia No description available. No description available. Burton’s Star on Flickr – Photo Sharing! LeVar Burton — Because 140 characters isn’t always enough Diggnation — Revision3 The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte Twitter / BrentSpiner Twitter / creeva Twitter / levarburton LeVar Burton Adobe – Adobe Flash Player
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 6 tweets on Twitter. (Hide Details) tired and cranky LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x so much to do, so little time water – it does a body good This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 6 Jaikus on Jaiku. (Hide Details) tired and cranky LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x so much to do, so little time water – it does a body good This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:57pm	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. We Are Having A Baby
	6:54pm	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. We Are Having A Baby

Image from here

I know I just gave a post on using creative commons based works, and about the problems of dealing with international public domain laws, but Youtube has cracked down on me.   Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting e-mails from youtube that say the following:

Subject: A copyright owner has claimed content in one of your videos

Video Disabled

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video [redacted]. The audio content identified in your video is [redacted]. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap

Don’t worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.

Other Options

If you think there’s been a mistake, or you have other questions, please visit the Copyright Notice page in your account.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

Now in theory I could fight this, but I know I am in the wrong.  I had videos on my profile that did include copyrighted music.   For the most part they are not videos that I created, I was merely archiving them in a central location so people could find them.   All the videos that have been taken down are Machinima videos that were “filmed” in Star Wars Galaxies.  I can’t really take them up on the music swap suggestion, since the person that originally made the videos had a specific intent that went along with the chosen music.

This all goes into the idea of fair use and when is it ok to use something to create something else.   This argument is a bit out of scope for this post.   What I can say is all of these videos still exist online, archived in far off pages.   It is sad that they can’t be displayed to wider audiences since most of them do have true genius in their design.

I thought this apt to add before anyone thought I had a holier then thou attitude in anyway because of my recent conversations.   I knew the risks and issues involved with posting these pieces.   I never claimed any part of the work was mine, and the most important thing is – I knew where it stood in the grand scheme of things before I did it.   I’m not saying you will never run into a spot where you won’t ever use copyright material.   Just be aware of what you are doing if you do.

Recently I started contributing to the International Music Score Library Project and I’ve ran into a small snag.   Currently I’ve only uploaded two pieces ( I did say I was going to contribute more to the public domain going forward) and I received the following message the day after I uploaded the pieces:

Dear Creeva,

IMSLP is located in Canada and therefore operates under Canadian copyright law. A very important difference between Canada’s law and that of the USA is that the term is determined by the death date of the composer or author of the work in question (term is life-plus-50 years). I was able to find out that George Hendricks Rosenkrans died in 1955 and is therefore public domain in Canada. Gus W. Bernard is a different matter.

I was not able to find anything on the date of Gus W. Bernard, so I have to estimate his approximate lifetime. Please be advised that should info surface that he died later than 1959, the item you posted may well have to be deleted. Also, please try to include complete information on composers when you add a new name. You can often find out things quickly by means of a simple Google search.

Thanks,

[NAME REDACTED BY CREEVA]

Now I wrote yesterday that just because something is online it isn’t in the public domain.    Let’s look at the other side of the coin just because something is in the public domain, it doesn’t mean it is in the public domain.   In my normal mode of thinking, I think in US copyright law.     When we are dealing with other countries in our global economy and global communications infrastructure we need to be aware of their laws as well when interacting with other services.

Now the project above could get in trouble if the work is copyrighted in Canada and they display it.   I however uploaded it from the US so I broke no US law since both works were in the public domain here.   Did I break a Canadian law though?  I don’t know.   This is one of the problems when dealing with the public domain.   The question over the Canadian law comes to light when you consider while the service is in Canada, I physically performed the actions legally from a US computer.   Very fuzzy and gray in many aspects when you look at the big picture.

So when contributing ot the public domain – be aware where the servers are physically located in the world, be aware of the copywrite law in that physical location.   Now if only we could get a US Mirror to work off of for that project……..

The VCMA Community Concert Band is currently looking for a director.   If you know someone in the area of Vermilion, Ohio – or they are willing to drive to Vermilion, Ohio – please have them contact me.  Yes it is a paying position, but it’s only enough to be a supplmental income source.   If you know someone that is interested have them email me at creeva (at) gmail.com.

Picture from here

I really want to contribute to the public domain this year.   A short while back I wrote about how I thought the general public and the Internet was failing at actively giving back to the public domain.   To try to counteract this I’m going to make sure that I give something back.  I’m sure that I have at least a few books that can be scanned to submit to Project Gutenberg.   I would like to work on a sheet music archive.   I will still be releasing most of my images and video to the creative commons, so I’ll be submitting free to use and share work, I’ll just maintain control over it enough to make sure no one else is making money off my work, unless of course it’s me.

So what are you going to do this year to help out the public domain?

The Internet with it’s promise of a revolution has succeeded in it’s goal of changing the landscape of information and how it is disseminated to the public at large.   We deal with issues that new media and remixing is causing in the areas of old copyright.   I’m one of those that bemoan the constant increasing of time before works enters into the public domain.   I would like to see more information enter into the public domain quicker and I think the creative commons idea is the future of copyright law, but this isn’t about that.   It’s about the loss of public domain works.

It is true that efforts are underway to save and collect media that exists in the public domain.   There are even people creating new work specifically for the public domain.   We have libraries of public domain works and sites that collect information form past websites.   Videos are being collected and maintained where the copyright slipped by and were not renewed in time.  These things are great.   However there are too many people that could care less about the public domain or the ideas that spings out of it.

Most of the time public domain media is considered old and out-dated.   People want things that are new and exciting.  They want constant progress with no respect for the ideas of come from,  and don’t what forge from which the ideas have be tempered.  This leads to a loss of ideas, stories, pictures and music.

I once had an argument with someone in my support for the public domain.   I pointed out all the music and stories that have been lost to the ravages of time and may never be recovered.   Their response was if it was popular it never would have been lost.   This statement is almost as asinine as stating that I have nothing to hide, so it’s a good idea to perform surveillance on everyone.   While the latter statement points to no respect to your own privacy, let alone others.  The former statement has no respect for what has been created.

While we can look at three hugely popular sites for public domain media, Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and Wikipedia; these are all very niche sites that serve a particular purpose.   They each have a primary focus in what they want to maintain.  Since these are the big players in their directed niche they are considered one of the authoritative sources for the type of public domain media and information that is able to be retrieved from their site.   What about some of the niches that aren’t covered?

Project Gutenberg has a long standing history of salvaging books that have entered into the public domain.   They do a great service that literally takes hundreds of volunteers to take books form a print medium and convert it to digital text available to all.  They are known for their e-books, while they do have some other things that they try to maintain, this is what they are known for.   If you are looking for a book that is in the public domain chances are you will be directed to them first.

Archive.org on the other hand, while authoritative in some respects is the jack of all trades in the public domain sector.   You would use them for website history research using their way-back machine site, or you may check with them for public domain video or audio.   It is a haphazard gathering of people that seem to utilize the best of breed mentality, the problem with being the jack of all trades, is sometimes it’s a pain in the butt to use.   Archive.org’s usability is one of the worst of the mainstream big sites that I’ve used.  It’s hard to find exactly what you are looking for.

Then you have Wikipedia, which essentially the public domain research encyclopedia.   Yes, there are issues with it.  Sometimes you can’t trust.   Sometimes it can be edited.  With all these problems, it’s authoritative.  You can’t do a Google search on a subject most of the time without seeing a Wikipedia link on the front page.   People link to Wikipedia since it’s trusted and becomes the cumulative knowledge of humanity over time or does it – the question will be discussed in an upcoming blog article.

However there is plenty of other types of information and media that is not collected and adequately cataloged so it’s easy to use for a layman.   There are for-profit companies cataloging and maintaining repositories of public domain information, but these companies charge a fee for information that truly and legally wants to be free.   It’s just that no one cares enough to invest the time or money to create archives.   I’m not saying companies can’t make money from these ventures, but I think our higher institutions and governments should take first run at them until they are large enough to be spun out into it’s own non-profit organization.

What type of information am I talking about?

Legal Transcripts

Architectural Plans

Sheet Music

Video

Audio

Photographs

General Art

Etc, etc, – if it has been created it should be saved.

I will state of the big three mentioned above, some of those dabble in all of these things, but not to any appreciable level that exists outside of their primary focus.   Yes there are niche sites, this whole thing started out of looking for public domain sheet music.    No site is authoritative, they all have their own issues, and ironically enough they don’t normally have the same data the other site has.    There is no reason for this, scans are not proprietary or unique, nor do they count as a derivative work.

The other issue with this is global acceptance and resources.  Most of the collections of public domain works exists only within themselves.   There is a lot of cross work done by universities scanning the exact same item to be in their collection that another university has already scanned.     This is wasted man power since their is no authoritative repository to put this information into, or cross reference against.   So this leads to the popular stuff normally being at the front of the list and most likely to be duplicated again and again and again, while the more obscure things are left unread and unfound.

Archive.org, Wikipedia, and Gutenberg all of something else that these other niche sites do not have, global mirrors.  Being an American I could easily say the library of congress will eventually have everything public domain online.   The first part is if I actually made that statement it would be naive on my part.   The second thing is that it means other countries are counting on the United States to save the public domain data.   I’m sure we won’t put the same care to local translation and books, compared to American editions when it comes to preservation or public dissemination of the work.

I’m angry and annoyed.  I’ll be revisiting this topic, but hopefully this primer of where I am coming from is something for you to think about and comment on.

Picture From Vermilion Ohio News

I originally wrote this for the VCMA website – original story is here.

On December 6th, 2008 the hardiest of the VCMA members were down at Red Clay for the arrival of the Chrismas Tree ship. Temperatures were below freezing, but the band played on. It wasn’t in the vein of the Titanic’s band since luckily the members that showed up did not go down with the ship. The ship made it through the ice and arrived safely to deliver trees to the wonderful citizens of Vermilion.

From this performance the band was featured on the Vermilion Photojournal’s front page and a video on the Sandusky Register’s website.

A friend of Ruth Tanner’s took these following pictures of the band (click through to see larger versions):

Tonight the VCMA is playing at Kingston of Vermilion Nursing & Rehabilitation Services for our final christmas concert.  I’ve charged the camcorder and packed up up the tripod, so I should be able to get some video of the concert.   The last concert footage I’ve posted online was the Alumni Band Festival,  I’m next to positive I still have a VCMA summer concert that I haven’t posted yet, so that may be coming also.

The real reason this is interesting is after this concert I’m taking a break from both community bands I play in.  Because the babies birth should occur around the same time that both bands start up again for the spring season, my priorities for the spring have changed.   I should be back for the summer season of the VCMA, but the Ashland Community Band doesn’t have one, so I won’t be back with them until next fall.

It took alot for me to get back into music and playing with bands.  I’m really hoping that a vacation doesn’t put a lull over me that causes me not to return.  I guess I better return to the VCMA since I am vice president of the organization now.

Now as soon as my kid can hold a cornet, he’ll be learning how to play it.   That’s the plan anyways.  My luck he’ll be a woodwind player.

If you don’t know I’m the one on the left.  Saturday it was in the teens temperature wise, but the VCMA played (sight read) christmas music for the arrival of the Vermilion, OH Christmas Tree Ship.  I’m very glad that I was not clean shaven and have grown out a beard for the winter.   Some more pictures of me to ogle at.

I didn’t get video for everyone (I’m afraid my camera would have broke from the cold) – Here is a link to last year’s event that I did and shot video at though.

Maximum PC recently ran an article titled 50 Skills Every Real Geek Should Have, I wanted to go through and see how I ranked in their skill list.   Let’s find out.

1. Name the Connectors – yes I was able to :)

2. Run your essential apps on a USB stick – no I don’t do this, I could – I just prefer to run everything in the cloud or on my N810 – which is with me most of the time.

3. Straighten Pins on a CPU – I have done this too many times

4. Know the 13 basic HTML Tags – well I kinda know most of them – I use freaking wordpress I hardly need to use HTML and when I do I look it up and hav ethe answer in seconds.   Though I do know quite a few by heart that aren’t listed in the basic 13.

5.  Get through to executive customer service – hey I read the consumerist.

6.  Beat quake in 60 minutes – maybe at one point in time, but I’m not big on FPS games.

7.  Build a Hackintosh – I know how, I just don’t the components that seem to work, and I’m a cheap bastard that won’t buy parts just to run OSX - I’ll stick with ubuntu as my alternative OS.

8.  Watch TV Online legally – um that’s how I watch 100% of my TV these days.

9.  Get around a content filter from a public computer – yes I know how, I’ve helped friends at other companies, it’s not worth it to do it at my own job though.

10. Recite Pi to 23 decimal places – nope – I have no inclination to ever learn either.

11. Replace the controller board on a hard drive – hey I did that once, it’s not a skill that comes up at parties though.

12.  Benchmark your computer – really?  Is this even on this list? Yes, I was doing this before I fully understood what the benchmarks meant on my 386 DX40.

13. Decorate your room with only printer paper – am I physically in the skill set to be able to do this?  Yes I am – would I?  No.  I’m more likely to decorate with NES cartridges.

14. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered – yes I am capable – it would be easier if you encrypted it first though.

15.  Get into a windows computer if you don’t have a password – yes I’ve done this quite a few times.

16.  Hide data from anyone – yes encryption, hidden volumes, stegnography (which I got bored with in 2001) – I am capable of doing all that – I’m more likely ot share my data then hide it though.

17. Explain what e=mc2 means – yes I would like the e=MC2 with a side of fries please – yes I am capable, but refuse to put in the details here since I want to make it through this list.

18.  Abstain from buying extended warranties – I may have bought one, once – it was on something i thoguht it fall apart though – so it’s all good.

19.  Use photoshop or gimp – yes I am capable.

20. Use a DSLR in full manual mode – I can – I’m just lazy and prefer it to do the work.

21. Mooch your neighbors wi-fi – my neighbor doesn’t have wi-fi but I’m ready to mooch when they do.

22. Protext your wi-fi – Wep2 currently – For a while I had mac filtering, I hated to keep getting mac addresses from visitors though.

23. Create an animated spray in Valve games – um – I don’t think I’ve played a single one for more then 5 minutes….so this one is a no.

24.  Setup RAID – yes I’ve done this a few times over the years for my home network.  Now implement Iscsi raid across multiple computers – that’s a challenge.

25. Calculate a Pitchers ERA – no I don’t know how – but I know google will give me the answer quicker then I can calculate it.

26. Run two Operating Systems – um I dual boot currently……

27. Install a hard drive in laptop – done before and some day I’ll do it again.

28. Pull off an elaborate prank – I think have the skill set and knowledge – I just never have – unless stealing street signs as a teenager counts.

29.  Rocket jump with a macro – um – I said I don’t really do FPS games – so no I can’t do this.

30.  Wire your home with ethernet – um every place I’ve lived with my wife we have had wired ethernet – we even used RG58 at one point.

31.  Know the 6 most important linux commands – yes I get command not found when I’m not thinking and run them in windows.

31. Rip your CDs to Flac – we did this for awhile then went back to MP3

32.  Stream Music, Movies, Pictures to any TV in the house – I’ve done this before – now we just carry our laptops around – shrug.

33.  Install and configure a VM – yes I’ve done this for literally years (maybe even a decade by now)

34.  Run multiple monitors – yes I use to dual monitor and run SWG on two different ones at the same time – I’m sad I know.

35. Run hacked firmware on a router – yes liek the rest of hte world I have a hacked linksys router /yawn.

36.  Pick a lock – I’m not good at it, but I’ve done it a couple times.

37.  Tell the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – it’s been awhile but I think I could.

38.  Avoid DRM on everything – well streaming video legally that they talked about above seems to contradict this one doesn’t it.   However all my local video, music, picutres, and ebooks are DRM free.

39. Download a flash video and reformat it – yes I’ve done this – youtube videos locally stored on the N810 ftw.

40.  Get around in DOS – I grew up and DOS and resisted windows for a long time – so let’s just say yes.

41. Rip a DVD to h.264 – yes been there done that.

42.  Overclock your PC – yes I’ve done this my pride and joy was overclocking my AMD 133 mhz 486 to 160 MHZ – and it benchmarked and ran like a pentium 133 for half the cost.

43.  Use remote desktop – it’s part of my job – so yes.

44. Debate the merits of a star destroyer vs. the enterprise – yes, and the star destroyer would win.

45. Buld your own computer – built too many to actually count – I’m serious to – I worked at a small PC store and we sold hundreds – thousands of machines – so I cna build my own.

In irony they don’t seem to actually have 50 things on their list – so I think most geeks should know how to count also.