Month: January 2016

Ferrets are entertaining

Wow, two posts within minutes. My life is exciting.

My ferrets are playing in my room currently. I emptied a tissue box earlier and left it on the floor for them to play with. I just hear this scratch noise and turn to see if Bandit is trying to jump the gate to get out of my room.

I only see Smore on the floor. No sign of Bandit. The tissue box is tipped over.

Bandit’s in the tissue box.

No, correction, she’s stuck in the tissue box.

She’s apparently too big to get out if she crawls in. So I have to gentle pull her out and tear off the top so it’s just an open box now. Bandit be getting fat with old age, geez.

Annoying assignments

You ever get that assignment that expects specific personal information out of you that you cannot attain easily due to circumstance?

Mine is cultural and ethnic background information about my family. I cannot contact my grandparents easily due to conflict between them and my parents. My father is dead and his side of the family is basically unknown to me. My mother only knows stuff up until my great-grandparents.

That leaves me with little info to dig through. That or try to do an internet search with ancestry and pray that it’s not lying to me. I don’t trust the internet with that kind of info.

Hope the teacher doesn’t mind me not mentioning anything about how my family came to America and all that…because I have no clue. And probably never will. Oh well.

So much work to do

I’m beginning to regret taking my current class load. I have 17 books to read through (7 novels in one class, 6 novels in another class, 2 textbooks accompanied by 2 more novels).

My plan was to complete my liberal arts and put in plenty of credits for my major. I’m certainly doing all of that…every single night. Most stuff is completed within a day or two of its due date because of how packed my homework schedule is. Reading the novels is the hardest. I’m forced to read for 2-3 hours per stretch to get it all done in time. Stopping for breaks is just asking for procrastination, at least with me.

At least I don’t have a bunch of papers to write. Thank goodness for that…so far, at least.

What a morning…

So I wake up today a little late because I was up until 3 last night talking to friends over Skype. I go to the bathroom and then immediately have to get out because my brother has to go. When he has to go, get out of his way because he means business. So I decide to get breakfast.

I barely finish getting my breakfast together when we get a phone call. It’s my brother’s girlfriend, whose car I saw going up the driveway while I cooked said breakfast. She’s stuck on the driveway, no traction. She didn’t even crest the top because she slowed down and her tires spun, so she reversed back down into the ditch right by the house.

So I’m not even up half an hour and I’m in boots, gloves, and coat, walking around in snow that’s dumping into my boots, shoveling snow from the underside of a very low-set car. Then we push it out of the ditch and have my brother drive it up the driveway because hey, he’s a competent driver, right?

Wrong.

He did exactly what she did. He slowed down midway up, managed to halfway crest the top, and got stuck. So we (me, my mom, and his girlfriend) have to go up and push him over the top onto the plowed road. When people plow our road, the top of our drive develops a lip of gravel and junk, making it hard to crest if you don’t do it in one fast go.

So that was my morning. Fun. Welcome to Minnesota.

Reflection of my blog so far

Second weekend with this blog in place. Still learning the ropes, particularly with my About page placement and tagline. Other than that, I’m pretty satisfied with my experience so far. Things will likely be tweaked as my information pool grows, naturally.

First few posts were tests, iffy but they got me started (https://animatedroseblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/test-post-numero-uno/ and https://animatedroseblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/test-post-2/ ). You got to learn a bit about me while I flailed and struggled to adapt to this new portion of internet life. I’m still flailing and struggling, don’t get me wrong, but not as much as I was last week. Having a Twitter doesn’t help (still have to remember to use that thing).

In my efforts to find topics to talk about in my daily posts (dates on this thing are messed up, I noticed), I’ve babbled about many things that most may find pointless. I’ve complained about the weather, talked about what colors my mom has dyed my hair with lately, and questioned the positioning of knives in a drying rack at my house. Again, rather pointless things but they’re my things. Nobody said everything I had to post had to be entertaining…

I’ve done class stuff for assignments, naturally. I actually had to do research! Spooky, right? Just kidding.

I’ve referred to the Missing Manual a lot to figure some things out. That thing is my current lifeline here. Without it, I’d likely be totally lost. I’m so glad that thing is free online. Phew!

Still scrabbling for topics but I’ve got one thing I’ll be okay talking about–my original story ideas. That will probably be a big topic among the many boring things I decide to post about daily, because writing is a big part of my life.

Overall, I still have a lot to learn about this blogging thing. I’m willing to keep learning because this seems interesting and fun. We’ll see what happens with it in the future.

Creative Commons and Intellectual Property

Creative Commons (CC) is a free licensing system that allows for a “some rights reserved” usage of online materials while still maintaining copyright. It offers certain usage rights to the public while still maintaining primary copyright to the creator, allowing the work to be used and expanded and such without turning it into public domain. CC should only be used by those who don’t wish to reserve all rights to their work.

Intellectual Property (IP) is any creation of the mind: inventions, literary work, art, and so forth. They are protected in law by patents, trademarks, and/or copyrights. This allows them to get recognition for their work without having it stolen from them.

Online copyright can be an issue unless it is done right from the moment that the work is posted online. Downloadable content cannot be policed and thus is vulnerable to illegal copying by pirates and those who believe all content should be free. File- and password-sharing will be difficult, if not impossible, to prevent.

When you plan to use something that is not yours, always try to determine who the original owner is and get permission. If you believe it is protected by copyright (always presume it is, for safety) and you’d be violating the law by using it, ask permission before doing anything with the thing in question. Identifying the owner(s) can be simple or difficult depending on how old it is, how many hands its copyright has passed through, and whether it is still copyrighted or has fallen into public domain due to old age. Payment may or may not be required for its use. Always get the agreement in writing as proof that you were granted permission and for any legal usage if you are called into question over it.

I’m not sure how I would license my work. On here, all I have is typing but I have works posted elsewhere online. I think I would pick a CC license because I like seeing where others might take my work within reason and I enjoy doing collaborations with others. I’d need to do more in-depth research regarding that decision, personally.

Links in order of usage

https://creativecommons.org/faq/

http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/

http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2011/06/article_0005.html

The Basics of Getting Permission

RSS Stuff

There, did the stuff for RSS. The video helped. So did The Missing Manual.

Most of the RSS buttons were up on the bar with my printer and stuff, not on the websites themselves. That surprised me but I caught on quickly enough.

Also, adding an RSS widget! Add RSS Links for your own stuff. The RSS widget links to others’ content, not yours! Put RSS Link widget on your page, classmates, not RSS widget!

Off to subscribe to feeds now.

Knives

When you wash dishes, do you put your knives point up or point down?

I’ve always put them point down so when I put them away, I don’t have to worry about maneuvering around sharp blades when I put utensils away. I can just grab handles. No worries.

My mom and brother put them point up. That scares me when I have to put dishes away. I don’t like knives. I don’t like sharp objects. It took me forever to be able to cut my own apples with a knife because I always feared cutting my fingers.

Just something I decided the blab about since I just had to put dishes away. Points were up. I have still managed not to cut myself. Hooray.