For the Birds

The boy and I were strolling through some shops in downtown Saturday evening. He was drawn to a pleasant, simple, little bird house. He asked to buy it.

"We coooouuuld buy it, but wouldn't be more fun to make one?"
We made two actually.

2 Bird Houses: 2 four-foot cedar fence planks, 1 package 1 1/4" brass wood screws : $7.00 per house with screws a-plenty for another outdoor project. (Brass screws wont rust, the cedar will weather nicely)

We sketched out our design and measurements together. We laid out the cuts, I operated the saw, we drilled and assembled. Hole in the door is 1 1/4" in diameter (my largest paddle bit). We drilled pilot holes for the the screws so as to not split the wood. We used a larger bit to drill 1/32 or so down the top of each hole to counter-sink the flared head on the screws so they would be flush with the face of the wood. We used both screws and wood glue.

For the swinging clean-out door (a feature we lifted from the model at the store) we used a drill bit the diameter of the shaft of our screws to drill holes in the sides. This allowed the screws to pivot freely in the side panels while screwing securely to the sides of the door.

The boy learned a rip vs. a crosscut, how to set a fence on a table saw, some spacial reasoning, how to follow a plan, how to recover from a goof or two, and how to see a project through, among other things.

He had a great time. I had even more fun than he did.

The Glass is 3/4 Full!

I'm a 'fine-print' junkie. My interests in advertising, marketing, psychology etc. compel me to deconstruct the messages presented to me. (Much to the annoyance of my dear wife).

So, um. "75% organic". I think I know what they were trying to say. But, to me, the implication of that pesky other 25% is somewhat alarming.

This package design brought to you by the same folks who invented the "75% non-toxic" and the "75% painless" marketing bugs.

Seuss & Me

The daughter has been assigned to do a book report on a biography. She chose Dr. Seuss. Part of her assignment is to create a puppet of the individual and perform her report in the first person for the class. We're pretty involved in the homework around here anyway, but building a puppet? Oh yeah.

I've suggested to the daughter that she explain that while we did work on this together (which we did) her father went a little crazy living out some repressed Muppet fascination from his youth.

Puppet: Styrofoam head, clearance fleece skin, yarn hair, dollar store infant shirt, old sock collar and cuffs, refrigerator clippy things (for hands that can hold items), 20 lone socks for stuffing, surplus pair of 3D glasses and a bunch of hot glue.


The kids glued on his googly eyes this morning, post photos. Now that I look at him, he'd pass for a Stan Lee puppet too.

Electronic Freedom Foundation to the Rescue!

The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) and (to their credit) Google have developed some options for countering Google's cyberstalking advertising initiative. While it is not an opt-in program, which would be best for users and terrible for Google because few people really want to be watched like this, it is something. Like all good placading gestures, the options offered rely on the initiative of the public to go to some effort to thwart the harvesting of their web browsing behavior.

Get the full EFF break down of this issue. Then consider if you want to avail yourself of the "Advertising Cookie Opt-Out Plugin" - even the name takes work. You may also influence how the stacks of data they gather about what you appear to like on the web is used with the Google "Ad Preferences Manager Tool".

So, in summary, Google will follow you everywhere all the time unless you get an opt-out restraining order. But, at least you can get a restraining order.

Oh, and please consider supporting the EFF in some way. I have donated in the past. They do great work helping the web-using public protect themselves.

Big Google is Watching

Here we go again. Google is going to (officially) start watching, recording, and selling your web browsing habits. "Interest-based advertising" is based on profiling your interactions with content on the web. No word as yet if you, as a user, have the right or an easy mechanism to globally opt out of their cyber surveillance.

The team at AdSense, Google's advertising arm, sent me the following "Hey, you need to update your privacy policy to tell people they have no privacy. Thanks." note...

Hi,

We're writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site's privacy policies. You'll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user's previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. "sports enthusiast"). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the "sports enthusiast" interest category.

As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557 to ensure that your site's privacy policies are up-to-date, and make any necessary changes by April 8, 2009. Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, we're unfortunately unable to suggest specific privacy policy language.

For more information about interest-based advertising, you can also visit the Inside AdSense Blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/03/driving-monetization-with-ads-that.html.

We appreciate your participation and look forward to this upcoming enhancement.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team

I find this move objectionable as both web developer and a web user.

In addition to being creepy, this kind of pervasive cross-domain tracking of a user is going to make life very difficult for honest, ethical web developers who use cookies responsibly. The inevitable and largely indiscriminate cookie-killing backlash that is sure to follow is going to make moving around the Web seem like work as users are confronted with warning after warning about benign cookie operations.

I believe an ethical implementation of a personalization engine like this must provide an easy way to opt out and allow people to view and adjust their profile.

Inferring user 'interests' is a dicey game. In 1998 the Internet consultancy I worked for acquired a Toronto based web firm that had developed a personalization system that inferred users' interest based on their browsing. The newly acquired staff held a seminar to educate the company on the capabilities of their software. The presenter talked about the benefits to the user, downplaying the privacy and ethical issues. Near the end of the talk the presenter pulled up his own profile to illustrate how well the system can know a user over time. While he stood facing 150 of his new colleagues the 30 foot screen behind him declared that "...you are interested in 'sex' and 'young children'."

Fortunately, they were listed as separate interests. The moral of my tale is that even if you turn your back on the privacy issues in a system like this, they are still there.

Playing with Photos

I've been working to digitize my family's photographs and slides. Among the slides were a series of photos taken by my late uncle John. He had convinced my mother, then 17ish, to sit for him while he practiced his photography. I decided to work with one of those slide images.

I dug through my own images and some stock and whipped up the new composite. I took about 3 hours. There are a lot of refinements that still could be made, but I'm pleased with the outcome. This is a fun way to refresh older photographs.