Children’s Book Week is May 11 – 17

It’s Children’s Book Week from May 11 – 17, 2009.  It covers everything from picture books for very young readers to teen fiction.  As part of the celebration, the Children’s Book Council is going to list the Children’s Choice Book Awards on May 13.  The award is given to books selected by children as their favorites of the year.  You can print out the official Children’s Book Week bookmark.

This event has been celebrated since 1919 in schools, libraries, and bookstores.  You can celebrate at home by reading to young children each day of the week, buying your kids some wonderful new books, printing out posters for their walls, encouraging them to enter online writing contests, and just letting them know that time spent reading is worth much more than time spent watching television.

The Hunt for Gollum: Excellent LOTR Fan Film

huntforgollumThe Hunt for Gollum is a 40-minute fan-made film that is available for free online viewing. The film was made through open collaboration of enthusiastic fans working under the leadership of director Chris Bouchard.  I’ve just finished watching it and can report that it is a wonderful success that tells its story with the perfect touch of mystery, action, and romance.  It captures the look of the Peter Jackson trilogy expertly and incorporates highly professional costuming, makeup, photography, script writing, and acting.  I think the producers of the LOTR trilogy should include this film when they release the eventual DVD of the upcoming film of The Hobbit.  Perhaps this is the best fan film ever made.  It probably is.  I have not seen all the available fan films, but it is difficult to imagine that anyone has made a better one.  Watch the film and then think about the fact that it was made for under $5,000.

Apple is a Nightmare of Censorship

andasgamecensorLook at the image to the left.  If that image disturbs you to the point of banning the comic book, you are unintelligent.  No doubt about it.  It disturbs Apple so much that they’ve removed the comic book from their App Store.  Clear censorship.  The comic book is by author Cory Doctorow who has written many fiction and non-fiction books.  Most of his work supports open source creativity and remix culture.  I suspect that there’s more to Apple’s censorship of this work than meets the eye.  Apple hates open source stuff.  They lock down their products like nobody’s business.  They even think it’s illegal for you to make your own applications to load onto your own iPhone or iPod Touch.

Recent events at Apple and Amazon paint a disturbing picture of what is going on with these technology-based companies as they try to handle creative content.  It seems that the more efficiently a company designs and builds technology, the more interested they become in controlling and censoring content.  This is the fundamental core of fascism.  It is a very dangerous idea to give control of publishing and content to these companies.  It must not be allowed to happen.  They do not care one whit about freedom of expression.

What has become very obvious over the past year to any discerning observer is that Apple is a far right-wing conservative organization with truly frightening ideas of what content should be made available on a publishing platform.  Censoring the image of the Ork getting his head chopped off in a comic book is just what I would expect from an Islamic fundamentalist group or a right-wing Christian organization.  If the Taliban opened their own app store, I doubt they would publish an application that features a bikini-clad female chopping Muhammad’s head off.

So here it is –  for all intents and purposes as far as creative expression is concerned: Apple = Taliban.

I think Apple has some very smart engineers and designers working for it, but is burdened with a high-functioning nitwit at its helm: Steve Jobs.  We hear a lot about how smart this fellow is, but he appears to be about as clever as your average car salesman.  Apple needs to dump this guy quickly and figure out how to run itself as a content distributor because Mr. Jobs is not up to the job.

In the 21st Century you don’t run around censoring creative work in the United States of America.  You do that in China, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Singapore, Burma, etc.

I would suggest Mr. Jobs apply for a job in one of these places.  They would simply love to have him.

Is Apple Ready to Burn Amazon’s Kindle?

apple_media_pad_mockupThis image is floating around the internet along with rumors that Apple is ready to unveil a much larger version of its iPod Touch that might be called MediaPad.  Apparently, it has a 6-inch HD touchscreen and will have cellular wireless connectivity.  So people are writing about this thing as a Kindle-killer.  Apple is also rumored to be preparing an ebook reader application that will allow book purchases through the iTunes store.

I think this has been coming for a while and I am almost certain that Steve Jobs will implement the first serious major competition for Amazon.

Remix: Lawrence Lessig’s Book for Free Download

remix_cover_lSome of the most interesting writing about copyright and remix culture comes from attorney Lawrence Lessig.  His latest book, Remix, is available as a Creative Commons licensed download.  In a world where kids can download everything for free, how do you make commerce thrive and how do you avoid criminalizing an entire generation?  These are the primary questions Lessig asks in this book.  If you make a baby video that happens to have Prince playing on the radio in the background and you upload it to YouTube, have you broken a copyright law?  Prince thinks you have.  But Prince is an idiot with a guitar.  I seriously doubt that the guy can even read.  Lessig is much smarter than Prince.  Read his book with Prince playing on the stereo in your room.  Film yourself.  Then upload to YouTube.  That will make Prince go insane.

I found this book via BoingBoing.

And by the way, you have our permission to film yourself with our audio playing on your stereo in the background.  We’re much smarter than Prince too!

75 Ways to Draw More: Advice for People Who Don’t Draw

Michael Nobbs has posted a little booklet on Flickr that has a list of 75 ways to draw more.  Interesting concept.  But of course it should go without saying that if you need to read a list of 75 ways to find more time to draw, you probably should be doing something else anyway.

I think the main information to take away from an illustrated list like this is from the illustrations that show you how to print the list out.  What they show you is that you can just look at an object and start drawing lines on a piece of paper.  Something will emerge.  It might be messy.  It might be neat.  That will be your drawing.  I call this little piece of advice ‘1 way to draw less.’