jake – Page 51 – The Jake of All Trades

Flag Day, a historical aside

Today is flag day. Garrison Keillor has an article up about the poem, The Defense of Fort McHenry, or The Star Spangled Banner as it would be later known as.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

But, you may think, how did that become our anthem?

Well, the music is from a song called “To Anecreon in Heaven” which was the official song of the Anecreontic Society in London. Now I have no idea what this society did in general, but they did drink.

And this song was not a ‘drinking song’ but rather a sobriety test. See, as we know from this year’s super bowl, this is a hard song to sing! So, when a society member wanted another drink, they had to sing a verse IN KEY to prove they were sober enough to continue.

Thankfully I’ve never had to do this, as I can’t stay on key singing “twinkle Twinkle Little bat”

So then what? Well, Key’s brother-in-law somehow noticed that this poem worked perfectly with the music to this not-quite-drinking song he just happened to know and got the paper to print it together. Even Washington Irving thought it was a good idea and reprinted it in his paper.

Next thing you know people are singing it all over.

It would be a be a while before it became our anthem, though. 1889 the Navy decided it would be the official tune played during the raising of the flag. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson ordered it be played at military occasions.

Two years later, 1918 it was played during the World Series, but not at the beginning, rather during the seventh inning stretch. I suspect it was moved to the beginning of the game since we all know you sing “take me out to the ball game” during the seventh inning stretch (which was written in 1908).

It would be 1931 before President Herbert Hoover signed the law to make the “Star Spangled Banner” our national anthem.

But hey, don’t believe me, go look! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner

Two minor things. One: the flag that Francis Scott Key was writing about had 15 stripes, rather than 13, since at the time we were adding a star and stripe for each new state. Since that would have made the current flag look like a bar code, I for one am glad we stuck with just stars.
Two: there don’t seem to be many Woodrows anymore. Maybe it is time.

eBooks, File Formats and DRM

The intention of this is not to be a rant, but rather a discussion. I still feel like it may rant at times… so apologies.

Right now, in the grand scheme of things there are two major outlets for eBooks: Amazon and Barnes and Noble. (but what about iBooks!? two examples are enough for this fable…)

Amazon uses a proprietary formate .azm, and the Kindle can also read .mobi files.

Barnes and Noble uses a DRMed epub format and the Nook can read epub files.

Now, even if Amazon sold epub or BN sold mobi files chances are that the Kindle would still not read BN books and vica versa. This is an issue not with the format (well, maybe for azm; epub is a standard) but rather the DRM. Incompatible DRM prevents compatibility.

What the hell does that mean?

If I buy an MP3 from iTunes I can put it on my Android phone. I can play it on my computer or in my car. I can play it on my Nook or my DS. It is an MP3. It is a standard, it is DRM free, and there are lots of things out there than can play MP3’s.

Now there are a ton of file formats for text out there: word documents, RTF, PDF, epub, just plain ol’ text files (and many more). Any one of these could be used for ebooks, but for now, no single one of them is. eBooks doesn’t have its MP3.

Add on top of that DRM, region locking and other publisher non-sense and what do you have? Frustrated users.

Think of it this way: you write a book and publish it on paper… anyone who can read that language can read your book. Do the same in eBook? well, they have to have the right reader, or reader software, live in the right place, even sometimes read it in the appropriate amount of time. Why would you do that? Why would you make it harder for people to pay for your book?

If I want to give you money, why won’t you let me?

In the end it is more about DRM and control than anything else. Amazon and Barnes and Noble want you to buy their ebook reader. The publishing companies want DRM because they believe with out it we would all be horrible pirates… and then they can sell us our books/movies/music all over again when the next new gadget comes out.

That DRM is making it so I cannot buy a book through Amazon for my Nook. I am not buying a Kindle; one $150 device is enough. So who does that hurt? Me, kinda, because I am missing out on a book. But really it hurts the author. That DRM is preventing me from giving them money.

The optimal solution would be for writers to sell DRM free files directly, thus allowing me to: a. give the author money directly and b. put and read my ebook on anything I want to, just like an MP3. Now I am fully aware of the technical and logistical problems with setting up a store on a website and would not advocate it to everyone. But it would be nice. Instead, as a community of readers and writers ,we should push back against this trend and say “Hey! let me buy from where I want and read where I want!”

I just want to read your book.

A Month in the Life, May

Ah May. May was a month, no? It was almost as if the tides were changing, not just on a global level but all the way down to the personal level. Had we ebbed too long in one direction? Perhaps. But these changes also are time, and that time was time away from art.

This is not an excuse, simply a setting.

There was art in May. Some pictures, some doodles, and some writing. I focused mainly on writing my Dr Who story, which is now at 45,000 words, nearly 8k of those were written in May, making it the longest fiction I’ve written. There is more coming too. That is itself an accomplishment and something I am happy about. Sure it isn’t as easy to show off as a month of fish or thirty poems, but still is something I glad for.

So the fruits of this month will be on display as more episodes of the Doctor show up on my website. This adventure through time and writing I am taking is a fun one. I hope it is as much fun to read out there. It has done wonders in not just this month but since I started working on it to remind me of all the parts of writing I love.

And as we slip into June, maybe the currents will become steady again so we can all remember how to navigate these waters.