Strange Shelffellows

In light of all the hubbub around Dell's battery related recall, I dug up some photos of my melted PowerBook from September, '04. Kinda psychedelic, hmm? [Update:] Related: Need for Battery Power Runs Into Basic Hurdles of Science. (Via Techmeme)

melts in your lap, not in your hands

Also, here's the big ol' mixer I've been going on about. Talk about butterflies in Bangkok; reallocating desk space for this thing has precipitated an entire office overhaul. (The pen is there for scale.)

16 channels, 16 tons?

Which in turn has led to 90% of the books my husband and I have accumulated since 1989 or so being jigsawed into 3 thankfully capacious desk cubbies, in a serendipitous, Dewey Decimal defying riot. A Woman's Guide to Tantra Yoga is cozying up to Legal Issues in the Global Information Society — and other pairings not ordinarily found in nature.

elvii and cats, living together

Up To

Potty Training Tyler

Actually, he's doing most of the work at this point. Today was his first foray into the great, wide, world sans diaper, while we shopped, ran errands, etc. for several hours. He did superb, no accidents. Yet.

Podcast Training Me

I'm getting a crash course in gang 'cast hosting from Leo Laporte, which is simultaneously (1) a dream come true, (2) surreal, and (3) supremely humbling. Topics covered range from detailed technical minutia to big-picture approach, strategy, and tips. Leo's brain is overclocked and supercooled, with data flowing from it in multi-gig chunks. You should see my mostly-illegible-because-so-hastily-scrawled notes: "Port map the XLR to the SPDIF IP address, and you're good to go!" (That's far from right, I'm afraid.) I've got a pile of cables coming, to connect a similar pile of devices to the gi-normous mixer and iMac. Seems like burning something pungent in the light of the full moon, spinning 'round three times, and kissing my elbow might be a good plan. That any of this might actually work must turn mostly on the whims of powers beyond my ken.

Order Training My Office

The physics of podcasting are only slightly less daunting than finding a home for the contents of 20 boxes of stuff on my office floor. Though I purged heavily before lugging any of it home, rounds 2 and perhaps 3 are in order before this place is once again navigable. "Remember to tip your trash collectors, and enjoy the show!"

Sand, Search, And Three Toed Sloths

• Every now and then I wonder who exactly this Jim Carroll fellow is I have on my blogroll. I've never met him, and the precise reason he's there has been lost in the mental ether. But even though how I stumbled on or decided to blogroll him remains a mystery, he stays there because of posts like this one, which might just have earned him indefinite tenure: Why innovation thrives in sandcastle building.


• Bob Thompson at the Washington Post has an interesting piece on Google Library, Search Me?: "There's a 10-1 chance, [Stanford library communications and development director Andrew] Herkovic estimates, that [This Is Our Land's] copyright expired without being renewed, which would put it safely in the public domain. But 'if you were the corporate counsel for Stanford, Google or anybody else, is 10 to 1 good enough?'"


• The Google Operating System blog looks at the new Blogger. (via Digg)


• Howard Bashman illuminates just what exactly it is we appellate lawyers do. (via Blawg Review #70)


• John Stossel considers the innovation costs of excessive litigation, in the context of ATLA becoming AAJ.


• Diego has his own show??? Big news in the Howell household.

Hide And Seek

Steve Gillmor, Hidden in plain sight: "I'm having a surprising amount of fun writing this blog given that no one is reading it." Ah well, the jig is up (gesturally speaking).

Christina Aggregate

• Monica Bay elucidates problems with e-discovery in the Enron case: part 1, part 2.


• Monica is also enjoying Chris Anderson's book enough to feature its ramifications for the legal world in the upcoming issue of Law Technology News.


• Kevin Heller, citing recent stats re YouTube: "in Jul 06 86 of the top 100 videos were user-generated content."


• Jim Calloway and Tom Mighell in the ABA's Law Practice Today provide a comprehensive look at all things blawg.


• Marty Schwimmer points to things that suck time and resources.


• I can't. "[F]ully comprehend the reasons why law firms or government agencies would reject any blogging by their employees," that is.


• Ernie Svenson has been submitting dispatches from Panama.


• The AP offers its take on the University of California joining Google Library.