Posted on February 16, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

Facebook and the Question of Ownership

This is not as frustrating as sitting through an English lit lecture on “authorship” but it still managed to cause a minor stir today:

Posted yesterday by Consumerist, Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.” – this article picked up on changes made last Wednesday by Facebook on their terms of service agreement with their users. Basically they are saying that they own all the stuff that we users upload: pictures, video, blog posts, comments and messages… etc. Websites like Mashable reposted the article and started surmising what this means for us end-users and why Facebook hasn’t been forthcoming with this change, Facebook: All Your Stuff Is Ours, Even If You Quit. And really, why were they opting instead to change the terms of service quietly, choosing to wait for the oncoming blog-storm to roll in?

So obviously, once the story broke yesterday, it started a flurry of indignant tweets and retweets on Twitter. I first picked up the story early in the day when just the Consumerist story was floating around, but as more and more people retweeted the news, bloggers began writing and by the end of the day, Facebook decided it needed to respond. Facebook: Relax, we won’t sell your photos | The Social – CNET News

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Posted on February 12, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

At Disneyland and Wondering about Writing

Vasant and I sat in the Blue Bayou (the restaurant inside Pirate of the Caribbean) and talked about my trouble writing fantasy for nearly two hours today. If you’re going to have a talk about creativity, talking about it at a table right on the edge of the moonlit swamp is the place to do it! I wrote about my problems writing a specific genre a couple weeks ago in a post called “A MESS”, but to be less vague, the genre I have difficulty writing is fantasy. It’s not that I don’t like fantasy. I do. I love it. But there’s something subconsciously blocking me from producing any works of fiction in that genre at all. And the crazy part is- I’m finishing up a novel that has nothing to do with it. A novel I’m incredibly proud of and excited about. BUT… now that I’ve id’ed this problem in me, I can’t get it out of my head. I keep thinking there is a better writer within my subconscious that is being blocked by this mysterious hangup. Why would I love fantasy, have an incredible imagination, but feel frustrated and fogged in whenever I try to write it? And it’s not that I’m trying to write it and I’m just no good at it. I can’t write it. I can’t get more than a paragraph into it- I all of a sudden get angry, ditch the idea and walk away from the paper or laptop. It’s dumb.

I feel like when I can figure out what this problem is, and breakthrough with a completed short story in this genre, I’ll be able to get to parts of my imagination that for whatever reason have been blocked off. I don’t know why I blocked them off, but I know I have and I’m not resting until I solve this problem, open this door and write a fantasy story.

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Posted on February 2, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

Visual Map of SuperBowl Twittering

Okay, so I not only had fun at our impromptu SuperBowl party, but I had fun twittering during the game- as I said in last night’s post.

Brought to my attention by Twitter user @mashable, The New York Times picks up the chatter and maps the game visually across the nation. Very cool!

Map of Popular Super Bowl Words Used on Twitter – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com.

Posted on February 1, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

True Love and Twittering During Superbowl

So I was sick all last week, so my efforts to try and blog more often totally crapped out. I had a three day migraine that lasted until midday Saturday. I’m still under the weather, but well enough to get out and about.

While I was sick, I missed a dinner reservation, a haircut, a gym trainer appointment, a paper deadline, and lost 10 followers on Twitter. But I also lost 3 pounds, sooooo…. win?

Sadly no. The loss of 3 pounds does not cancel out tons of mass guilt I feel for letting dozens of balls drop because of a stupid cold/flu. At least the migraines stopped and I can be sick without being unable to Twitter or read or write. Being sick is one thing, but migraines are the worst. (I’m not liking, by the way, that Twitter topped the list before read and write. What’s happening to me?)

*

Anyway, I found this INCREDIBLE news story on a local news site this morning:

Couple die together after 62 years of marriage | KOMO News – Seattle, Washington | News

The story tells about a couple who recently died, after being married for 62 years, within six hours of each other. The wife had been diagnosed as terminally ill, and the husband basically ‘gave up the ghost’ when she passed away. Their relatives are quoted as saying that “their lives ebbed and flowed” together, and so, as sad as they are to lose both of them at the same time, they’re overjoyed that they died as they lived- completely in love and dependent on one another.

My husband Vasant and I were lying in bed the other night, and I couldn’t sleep- so I was distracting myself by trying to match my breaths to the duration and depth of his (he ALWAYS falls asleep right away). It took a while to slow my breath down to match his, but I kind of felt a “chi”-like energy in my gut breathing with him like that. I felt warm and drowsy and after ten or fifteen minutes fell asleep on his chest.

THAT is how I dream our last moments will be. In our nineties, on a house by the ocean, coming in from the garden and lunch, we’ll lay down together to nap, match breaths and just let go of this world. We’ve talked about that scenario so many times, and this story just kind of makes me feel reassured that it does happen. Vasant’s grandfather gave up the ghost six months after his wife went. Nothing was wrong with him- he just didn’t want to go on without her. The article details how it’s actually quite a regular phenomena, for couples who have been together for an incredibly long time to just “quit” life after one partner dies. Vasant and I read the article today and felt like that ideal afternoon 70 years from now… may be more than just our own sentimental wishes.

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In NON-SENTIMENTAL news, I twittered during the Super Bowl. It was fun. A small party actually happened at our place, last minute, which was wonderful, and while we’re all hanging out, I’m also twittering (I’m not anti-social, I’m WONDERFUL at multitasking twitter and live interaction). But man, watching the game was fun, but it was made even more enjoyable by watching it with all the people I follow on Twitter- especially when everyone in the room was yelling the same thing as all the people on Twitter. It was like being at TWO superbowl parties. I’m sure someone somewhere will right an article about that: Multi-tasking social events: Real Life and Twitter Superbowl parties and how they intertwine.

By the way, best movie trailer? Transformers 2. Best non-movie commerical? It was a tie between MacGruber and Alec Baldwin’s Hulu/Alien commercial. Great stuff.

Posted on January 20, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

A MESS

Growling at myself today. I have a million things to do and I can’t stop to focus on any of them for more than a minute.

I’m taking a break from revision on the book to finish a short story I’ve been playing with since the fall. I am in love with the concept of this story, but something comes and blocks the actual production of it everytime I sit down to work on it. So I distract myself with blogging, twittering, facebooking and then get up and do something like laundry or cook.

Now some stories are just bad ideas and I talk myself out of finishing them because they’re better prompts and exercises than they are anything else.

But some stories are great, and the reason I have trouble with them is not because I’m at a dead end, but more like a locked door. There’s some psychological key to the door and I’ve got to find out what it has to do with, why it’s there at all, and what it will take for me to solve the problem in my head so I can get through it.

Sometimes it’s as easy as solving a plot problem. But this one is a “me” problem. I know the reason why the story isn’t flowing. It’s a genre I’m uncomfortable with. I know that’s why it’s important for me to take the time to complete this short story. But what I don’t know is why I have this problem to begin with. Why on earth would this genre, which I love reading and watching, be difficult for me to write? When I sit down to write it, something inside me squirms and feels miserable, almost guilty.

I’ve got to solve this. This story needs to come out, and I feel like when it does, it’s going to be like opening the cork on a good wine that was forgotten in a dark and musty cellar.

That or it will be like opening the top of a septic tank.

Whichever, I need to find out why I love this genre but feel like I’m barred from creating anything in it myself.

Posted on January 20, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

We Have a NEW PRESIDENT!!!!

I am overwhelmed to the point of tears. It was a wonderful speech. It hit hard against the darkness of the last 8 years. It offered hope, and while drawing differences between the present and the past, offered continuity with our most enduring values. 

The White House’s website is up, with a new look and a new outlook on how to connect with the people of the United States and the world. 

White House Blog is featured prominently on the front page. 

Vasant and I are on the way to class, but go out the door with a sense of new hope and promise underneath each footstep.

Posted on January 16, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

My favorite Lost episode…

I’m watching “The Constant” right now, arguably the best episode of LOST’s season 4, and debatably the best episode of the entire series.

Theory:

You can’t help but think that Desmond’s adventure through time and his desperate attempt to connect with Penelope Widmore is going to be integral to the series finale, and tie up the entire show. If you’ve seen the episode, you’ve got to wonder if this is not just a charming sci-fi love story, but something more. A foreshadowing of the time/place shift that perhaps the Island has now gone through.

The island moved when Ben released the same kind of electromagnetic energy that occurred when Desmond unlocked the fail-safe down in the Hatch. Desmond, after surviving the event, became unstuck in time (his first experience in this is not his flashes, but in the episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes” (Season 3, Episode 8). Leaving the island aggravates this and without a constant, Desmond’s sanity unravels until he can reach Penny in the future.

At the end of season 4, the island moves. That same electromagnetic energy that unsticks Desmond in time has moved the Island. If in the episode “The Constant”, it’s revealed that when things become unstuck in time they need constants, that could be a VERY IMPORTANT clue as to why the Island requires all that left the Island to return to it together, as a Constant for the Island.

Just a thought.

I love this episode. The editing, acting, music, and the importance the story itself carries, not just for two characters but for the overall schematic of the show, is incredible. And the fact that every LOST fan I know cried at the end of this episode speaks something about the ability of the show creators and the writers to make us care for the characters in the cast who we’ve seen maybe the least over the last four years, but who feel like maybe, by the end of the show… they may end up being the most important characters of all.

I could watch this episode over and over, and yet…

I know that because they put so much dramatic emphasis on Penny and Desmond’s separation and their promises to stay true, constant and find one another…

I am pretty such they will be disrupted soon in season five and driven apart. We know Ben is looking to kill Penny, and Widmore really hates Desmond, and would like nothing more than to use Desmond’s knowledge of the island and then dispose of him.

5 days until the new season begins. CAN. NOT. WAIT.

Posted on January 14, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

A Surplus Population

“Well, if they’d rather die, they had better do it and decrease the Surplus Population.” – Ebenezer Scrooge

Chewing The Fat: Requiem. by Dave Hingsburger. 

A friend of mine posted this article. I read in horror a tale about paramedics who were called to the aid of a 59 year old man. H had called for their aid because of a heartattack. Operators who had remained on the line, however, listened as they agreed to let the man die because he was fat. 

I was horrified at the thought of this being true. How could people choose to let a man die? I’ve read those articles that rail against the obese as harbingers of doom, carrying disease and pestilence, weighing down our health care system and pushing their health cares on us. I especially love the *health experts* who decry obesity as a strictly modern phenomena. That is not historically accurate at all, and I’ve got the pictures of King Henry 8th to prove it….

But to decide to let a man die? 

I had to fact check it: Paramedics arrested after allegedly ‘neglecting’ dying man | The Guardian

There it is. It actually happened. 

Two paramedics actually let someone die because they judged his lifestyle, rather than save him because that’s what they’re paid to do. 

I hate fat phobia. But what I hate more is the skinny idiots in this world who have only ever had five pounds to shed who say that fat phobia is a made-up fear that fat people use to feel victimized in a victim-centric culture. 

A couple days ago, Jack Cafferty  at CNN blogged about his outrage over our nation’s rise in obesity (Cafferty File: Obese America), not checking to see what the study was based on, and disregarding the many comments protesting the findings of the study. Most doctors disregard Body Mass Index (BMI) as a viable way of measuring whether a person is healthy or not. But man, obesity sure makes Jack Cafferty (who I usually like) pissed off. This is not his first fat-centric rant.

But fat phobia is rampant in our culture. If you aren’t aware of it, you probably aren’t also, now or in the past, a member of the people discriminated against.

But this is unheard of. This is scary. The writer of the article above put it best, and made me cry when I read it:

“A note of fear creeps into my life. What would ambulance attendants see if they came for me. A fat, disabled guy, in an apartment full of wheelchairs, long reachers, and grab bars. What value would my life seem if it was just my body they saw – not my connections, not my routines, not my hopes and dreams…”

-Dave Hingsburger (Chewing The Fat: Requiem.)

What does any of us see when we look at a fat person? Shoot, I know FAT PEOPLE who are FAT PHOBIC. People who make stupid judgments about how a person lives and who they are the second they size up their body size miss the point of what health is all about. I know skinny people who eat nothing but junk and never work out, and I know big people who work out four times a week, weight train and eat healthy, moderate organic diets.

Bemoaning “Life’s not fair!” doesn’t make life anymore fair, but maybe telling Barry Baker’s story might encourage those of us who hear it to be more fair in our assessment of each other. These cruel, quick judgments are hurting our society more than sugary sweets do.

*

We all need to be better than we are presently.

Posted on January 14, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

Obama Honors McCain at a Dinner the Night Before Inauguration

So this is incredibly classy:

Obama to host McCain at bipart. dinner – Jonathan Martin – Politico.com.

Posted on January 14, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

Saving My Livejournal

What’s not “about to fall apart” these days? We were discouraged from giving gift cards at the holidays because businesses are filing Chapter 11 right and left, people are moving banks because of rumors that a financial institution is about to fail, and it seems that nothing right now is stable enough for us to trust in. Economic forecasters say this recession will last through the third quarter of this year, and we’ll probably not feel any upturn until 2010.

So with that in mind, it shouldn’t shock anyone that LiveJournal may be in trouble too…

LiveJournal, after many management changes, is again having problems LiveJournal deletes ‘about a dozen’ jobs | The Social – CNET News. It’s not a surprise, since many of the most stable institutions are having problems, that LiveJournal is as well. There is even rumors here and there that LJ may shut down for good due to recession problems and problems keeping up with the newer blog sites and social networks.

I’m new here on WordPress, but I’ve been on LJ for years, and I’ve tried to maintain my journal, even as our friends migrated onto greener e-pastures. Sites like WordPress have already started advertising LiveJournal specific import tools so you can relocate your journal to a more stable host LiveJournal Migration Made Easy « Blog « WordPress.com.

So I started looking through the options for downloading my journal, just in case. Since moving here and seeing the above WordPress bulletin, I started looking to make an xml file of my livejournal posts. I found a lot of good Mac download clients for LiveJournal (I settled on xJournal). But sadly, I soon realized that any client making an xml file would only grab my posts. No comments.

The comments, for many present or formerly hardcore lj-ers, was the REASON we loved LiveJournal. I mean, CRAP, my goddaughter would not be alive if it weren’t for the discussions that happened in the comment sections of livejournal. Friendships, family, drama, encouragement, good jokes and great stories unfolded in the comment sections. That is a hard thing to let go of- to realize seven years could soon disappear without any archive.

But that brings me to my great discovery!!!

LJBook (Turn your blog into a PDF Book)!!!!!!

This site is a free service that will take your livejournal, no matter how big, and turn it into a book: posts, comments, all security levels, even archiving the moods and music for a given post. The pdf is nicely laid out, and you can set it so it starts a new post on a new page, and it preserves ALL THE COMMENTS. You can archive journals, or whole communities. If you have a LiveJournal, you just need to log in to your journal on their site, select the conversion preferences, and make sure you’ve converted your journal from the old format: Change Old Encoding Settings. Go to that page and if your livejournal has mainly been written in English, select Western European (windows) and hit “Save”. LJ Book will be able to convert your journal and ALL the comments therein into a lovely pdf book that you can download to your computer, and print even (the site recommends Lulu.com)

Anyway, I’m here now, on Facebook, Twitter, and so while I still use my livejournal, I’m on it less and less. I’m just glad that I know the years of journalling and community formed over the comments there will be archived now.