2009-07-24

Life, Metered Verse, and Everything

So lately I've been thinking of putting my poetry (both page & stage) into a formal chapbook. I made my first extremely limited chapbook (only 1 issued) a few months ago. Basically I got tired of carrying my poems to poetry slams as a bunch of loose pages in my back pocket. A friend of mine made his own chapbook and it inspired me to do the same. So I made a couple copies of my poetry collection to date and gave it to my mom and wife.

I've been very honoured to actually have people tell me they have a favourite poem. I've even had someone request a piece. The main thing holding me back from making my own actual chapbook (for sale & everything) is that my poetry doesn't really have a theme to it. I can group them a little bit. But not enough for each group to have it's own chapbook.

When I mentioned this on my FaceBook status a few days ago I got some suggestions. But today (out of nowhere) I got inspired. As a fan of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series I've decided to call my chapbook "Life, Metered Verse, and Everything". I hope to get some help with some graphics. Maybe something to go along with the Green Smiley face on one of the Hitchhiker books.

2009-07-10

Google Chrome OS? Why bother?

So accroding to the official Google blog the company is going to be doing what we have all suspected they'd be doing for some time: taking on Microsoft head-to-head. Basically they are going to use a Linux base to run their plethora of cloud computing services.

But my question is "Why bother?". Sure, Google offers LOTS of great products. In fact, I use them regualry and have a personalized iGoogle homepage. I love being able to take my bookmarks, documents, and email with me wherever I go. I can even look up my own web history in case I forgot to bookmark the page.

But many people DON'T like Google. Mainly because they track and monetize user activity. How much will they track with their own OS? Will they track keystrokes? It's getting a little scary if you ask me.

The funny part is there is already an OS that already does this without all the risk: Good OS. Since it's Linux based you don't have to worry about Microsoft and all the viruses, worms, and trojans associated with it. Desktop icons for all of Googles great gadgets are preloaded in a very intuitive manner. Best of all, it runs Firefox instead of Chrome. So it keeps Googles' user activity tracking at more of an arms length.

So keep your money from corporate Microsoft and your data from the prying eyes of big brother Google and get a Good Operating System. because free is ALWAYS good!