I use Creative Commons because I believe that it's better to share my creative works with people who can appreciate it than it is to die with a huge stack of unpublished works.

Creative Commons is not permission for you to make money off my work without compensating me. Creative Commons is not the same thing as dedicating your works to the Public Domain. Creative Commons is a way to let other artists know that they are welcome to see, enjoy, be a fan of, redistribute, and build on your work.

Raster and I played some good cop/bad cop on the Internet the other day regarding this subject. Here's a shout-out to the Creative Commons discussion going on here.

A side issue not being discussed here is the general emergence of the feeling that "the Long Tail" is bullshit. My opinion is that if you feel that the Long Tail is bullshit, I say you and I are probably talking about a different Long Tail.

Also, if you want to learn more about Creative Commons, I highly recommend this film.

Thanks be to the good people at Mabusse, developers of Photo Extractor, the free windows application that can extract otherwise lost photo data from a corrupted SD Card.

Enjoy the software author's webpage:

Do You take a digital camera with You to the holiday? Have You ever seen a message on the display about the flash card is unreadable and will be formatted now?

Google is awash with crappy demo versions of similar products that do the same thing, only for money. Photo Extractor is free, functional, and saved the day. If you have a damaged memory card, before you give up and send your photos away into the ether, try Photo Extractor. Some of the photo rescue programs I saw while hunting around wanted as much as $90 for a functinoally identical product. Worse, some of the photo rescue programs show you your unrevoverd photos and stamp "DEMO VERSION" across the top of them, effectively holding your photos hostage for $30 in blood money. Screw you guys.

Photo Extractor just works, works well, and doesn't try to exploit my panic over my lost photos for their financial gain.

I don't have any eGold, but if I did, I'd, as the author of Photo Extractor suggests, "transfer 10 USD to my e-gold account 1324912. "

Chatting with PRL today, he says: "Some days feel like successes and some feel like total failures."
And I ask, "Why don't they teach you _that_ in business school?"
I tweeted about it earlier, you may recall.

I just wish someone had sat me down and said: "Look, it doesn't matter what you do in life. There will be things that will suck. The trick is to minimize those and maximize the things that don't. Then everything will be ok."
I like to imagine that wise sage then leaning back in his comfy wooden college professor chair and smiling at me. Then he'd lean back in and with a twinkle in his eye, tell me this: "Also, one day, your boss' boss is going to use you as leverage against your boss. When that day comes, the best thing you can do is be quiet and slowly creep out of the room as if you were invisible."

I explained this sentiment to my wife last night. "I don't want to change the world," I said. "I don't need to make waves or break the system down. I can work the system. I just don't want to be hassled."

And she says, congratulations. You've turned thirty.