blog.travispoling.com

It's official: I'm done with Blogger

2011-11-23T23:16:00.001-05:00

I've been contemplating moving from Blogger for a while, and now I have a reason. Read more at my new Tumblr blog.

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SOPA: "The demon copyright law straight from hell"

2011-11-19T00:27:00.001-05:00

Molly Wood gives a great run down of SOPA in her latest "Buzz Report", starting around 1 minute:

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Writers & Artists, Hackers & Geeks: End the Stop Online Piracy Act

2011-11-19T00:09:00.001-05:00

The US Congress is debating a bill that would end up censoring the internet in broad, even draconian ways. The bill is known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). A number of organizations have banded together to stop it, including groups that I've supported for a while, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, Mozilla, and Creative Commons. I'm particularly interested in stopping the bill as a writer and user of free and open source software. Creative Commons explains...

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And now for something completely different... an iPod Touch!

2011-10-12T23:18:00.000-04:00

If you can believe it, this free software fan broke down and entered the world of Apple with a new iPod Touch. Maybe it was Steve Job's passing, or maybe it was the fact that there seems to be no viable Android equivalent. I'm not ready for a smart phone yet and still don't have much interest in a data plan, but I'm trying out the world of touch devices and so far loving it. I really think that most of our writing will be done on touchscreens in the not to distant future. Heck, I'm...

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ThinkPad Tablet makes my writer parts tingly

2011-09-30T16:24:00.000-04:00

Ever since I bought my first IBM ThinkPad laptop a few years back, then upgraded to a Lenovo IdeaPad netbook, I've been interested in both portable writing devices and in IBM, now Lenovo (as far as laptops/netbooks go, since they bought ThinkPad and kept it just as robust) products. None of the tablets out there have caught my attention because none of them look like anything I would want to write on. Being a writer, and as of this fall a professor and grad student in composition studies, I...

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My vision (and call for help) for a Linux OS for Writers

2011-09-30T01:30:00.000-04:00

Several months back I had a great idea: Put together an operating system based on GNU/Linux with everything a professional writer needs. Here's where my brainstorming has taken me: Built on top of Ubuntu, Lubuntu, or Fedora, some top shelf, open/free, completely stable flavor of Linux. The learning curve should be zero, or as close to zero as possible. Writers should want to use this OS because of its professional quality, and they shouldn't have to completely relearn a new OS in the...

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Citizen journalist films abandoned Reid Hospital

2011-06-28T13:07:00.002-04:00

Here is an important piece of citizen journalism, a video of the abandoned former Reid Hospital in Richmond, Indiana. The local newspaper, the Palladium-Item, has 3 of his videos posted. UPDATE: 4pm All 3 videos are gone from YouTube. One says it is now private, and the other 2 have been removed by the user. I was worried the take down was from someone other than the user. He could have received some form of take down order, but that's only speculation on my part. It was fun while it...

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First Reactions to Ubuntu 11.04

2011-05-04T01:07:00.002-04:00

I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my new Lenovo Ideapad S10-2 (my ThinkPad T43 started overheating and died several weeks back), and I'm getting used to the new Unity interface. So far I like it, but I'm having trouble configuring it to my own specifications. I installed CompizConfig Settings Manager. Under the Ubuntu Unity Plugin settings, I set the launcher on the left hand side of the screen to autohide. By default, the launcher hangs out on the left side of the screen on the desktop,...

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A big day for literary swag in the mail

2011-03-21T17:42:00.000-04:00

I got home today to find a box from Poetry magazine and an envelope from Google in my mail. I pulled in a pretty nice haul of free stuff, if I do say so myself. Poetry magazine sends out up to 10 free issues each April for National Poetry Month, so I signed up to get some to hand out to friends. I don't recognize any of the poets in this issue, but if someone gets to like poetry a little more, all the better. The Google Ebooks bookmarks were a total surprise. I found a blog post...

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This Lent, no web surfing allowed

2011-03-09T23:50:00.000-05:00

This year for Lent I'm giving up surfing the web. I'm not giving up the internet entirely. It's still useful for lots of things: email, networking, news, research. I'll still check my email but I'll use my time more efficiently, reading and responding to what needs attention. I'll still check Facebok, but I'll *check* it, maybe follow a few links, make a few comments, but then close it out as soon as I've skimmed content from my news feed. I'll still check news sites but only to stay up to date...

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Rest in Peace, Caleb.

2011-02-25T22:44:00.001-05:00

We lost our cat tonight to a long fight with illness. Rest in peace, Caleb. But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me wholeheartedly, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it. (Numbers 14.24 NRSV) from "The Kitten and Falling Leaves" by William Wordsworth from poets.org See the kitten on the wall, sporting with the leaves that fall, Withered leaves—one—two—and three, from the lofty...

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What I really want to do is teach writing

2011-02-25T00:15:00.002-05:00

What I really want to do is teach writing; not because of the adage, those who can't teach, but because I see all of my five previous rambling and wandering years of seminary leading up to being a guide for people to be more creative, imaginative, and artful in their expressions of what is most vital in their lives. Even my thesis is aimed at liturgists who want to make worship more poetic and engaging. There are two experiences in seminary that stand out as high points of discernment, moments...

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Remember Blogs?

2011-02-24T01:09:00.000-05:00

Remember blogs? Those pages on the world wide web you would read for various reasons--to get to know someone better, see sailing pictures, check up on your exes, read those comics the guy doodled next to you in class? To tell you the truth, I almost forgot they existed until recently, when I realized I've been neglecting this space for a while. Let's face it; Facebook has almost killed the personal blog. Let's not let them have the final victory. It's time we indie bloggers took back our own...

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Poetry Ebooks in Barnes & Noble Nook Shop

2011-02-22T10:49:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to get my poetry ebook, Poems That Should Never be Bread in Church, in the Barens & Noble Nook Shop for a while, and finally did about a couple weeks ago, along with a single poem , Praying for Touchdown Jesus: A Flarf Poem. Hopefully more will come in the future. For now, enjoy these. I requested they be free of Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, so theoretically they should work on any device and software that reads epub files, and not only Nooks or other...

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The weekend was a crazy liberal idea!

2011-02-21T22:25:00.002-05:00

A few days ago I left a comment on the poster website Political Loudmouth, and today I found my suggestion made into a poster. Here's the image, along with my name credited in the caption. And here's more crazy liberal ideas!

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William Stafford Online Reader website launched

2011-01-25T18:12:00.001-05:00

If you're looking for poems, books, art, scholarship or news related to my favorite poet William Stafford, or just want to see what I've been up to lately, check out the website I just launched today, the William Stafford Online Reader at williamstaffordreader.com.

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"Step aside, Nook 3G. Your time is past," says Barnes & Noble.

2011-01-25T00:18:00.003-05:00

UPDATE 26 January 2011...Or not. Another blog says Endgadget had it wrong. Drippler.com says "perhaps the 3G model is more popular than the WiFi-only model if there’s less stock for it." Who knows until Barnes & Noble says. Check out the post correcting Endgadget if you want. It's all speculation at this point. ORIGINAL POST: Anybody who has been following the Nook forums on Barnes & Noble's website has read posts worrying that BN is going to discontinue the e-ink Nook now that the NookColor...

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My first reactions to NOOKcolor

2010-10-26T18:04:00.000-04:00

Originally posted on B&N's NOOK forum. The Daily on my NOOK just updated, so you can read about the NOOKcolor from the B&N Unbound blog (or you could just read the post here http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Unbound-NOOK-NOOKcolor-and/NOOKcolor-The-Ultimate-Reading-Experience/ba-p/695350 I doubt I'll be getting a NOOKcolor in the near future, since I just got a NOOK in August. But I'm still geeking out over the announcement! Here's what I think of the NOOKcolor, off the...

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Brethren pastors codemn Quran burning

2010-09-09T15:44:00.001-04:00

As anti-Islam bigotry rises in America these days, there are some voices of hope. Two of them are from my denomination, the Church of the Brethren, a tradition that promotes peace and reconciliation in a world of hatred and violence. As a Pentecostal pastor in Florida in Florida plans to burn Qurans on Saturday in "commemoration" of September 11, two Brethren pastors have made it onto their local news to join many other political and religious voices condemning the burning. The first Ed...

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Walt Whitman on your ereader!

2010-08-02T18:44:00.000-04:00

Today I reformatted Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" to indent lines carried over on ereader devices. This means that when you increase the font size on your Nook or Kindle, the left overs won't go all the way to the left as prose would, but indents the rest of the line to the right. You can test this out with "Song of Myself" on your ereader device or app by downloading the file for your reader at the post at nookPoet. On a side note, I came across this lecture on "Leaves of Grass" by Billy...

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Loving B&N's nook already...and I don't even have one!

2010-07-23T22:36:00.003-04:00

Cross-posted at nookPoet, my new nook fan blog. Check it out at nookpoet.blogspot.com. I think I've fallen in love...with Barnes & Noble's nook ereader device! After getting the BN Desktop Ereader to work on Linux Ubuntu (see my entry at WineHQ to find out how), I was hooked. I looked around the web and compared it to the Amazon Kindle, and came up with a number of advantages. The nook has expandable storage with Micro-SD cards. BN publishes in epub, an open source...

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Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" made into film

2010-07-23T12:55:00.000-04:00

Curious to see what poetry books are available for ereaders, I stumbled across an announcement for a film retelling the story of Allen Ginsberg's hit Howl. From the trailer it appears to be a pretty good movie. Here's the synopsis from moviestrailer.org:It’s San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist,...

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National Youth Conference Worship

2010-07-19T13:30:00.003-04:00

I composed the litany for today's Church of the Brethren National Youth Conference. My part begins after the song contest winner, and ends right before Ken Medema's performance. UPDATE JULY 23, 2010 To read the liturgy, download the pdf here.

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Ebooks: The Next Frontier in Poetry

2010-07-15T11:07:00.001-04:00

Former US poet laureate Billy Collins recenntly expressed concern about the way poems are formatted on ebook readers like the Kindle and iPad. Rather than breaking a line and indenting the continuation if the line's too long, the carry-over goes flush left. This works fine for prose, but for poems with longer lines, this can get annoying, and could even ruin the poetic encounter with the electronic page. The left image is what a poem might look like on a Kindle, compared to the much more...

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UNESCO Literacy Project

2010-07-11T02:03:00.000-04:00

UNESCO, an organization with many projects including literacy, has declared September 8 as International Literacy Day, and Bloggers Unite have called on bloggers to blog on literacy on September 8 of this year. Since I've happened to stumble into this cause a little early, I'll go ahead and post a UNESCO video about one place they are providing literacy education in a place where it's been missing for years. More posts on literacy may come in the future. To view other posts on literacy...

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