Ninja Pajamas, and other good things.

I haven't posted in a few days. Mostly because I've been required to *work* at work, and Ayric has been in residence. He did a very regrettable thing, actually. He bought and installed the low-cost alternative version of this.

For those of you who know me, it's been about 2 years since I've had television in my home. I didn't miss it at all. Now it's like crack. However, it hasn't been a total loss.

While watching the Iron Chef marathon and the South Park marathons, I've been contributing to Project Gutenberg, which has fascinated me for several years, I'd say at least 6 or 8. Project Gutenberg is basically a gigantic collaberative project to bring all uncopyrighted literary materials to the digital domain for free distribution. PG hosts over 10k free ebooks or etexts, and is growing at the rate of about 100 each week. To me, an avid reader, the preservation and distribution of the written word is exciting. As you can imagine, transcribing entire books accurately would be an overwhelming task even for a largish group of people. However, it's done primarily by volunteers. Through the Distributed Proofreaders project, everyone can contribute to this undertaking, one page at a time. Basically, after you sign up, you can aid the project simply by comparing and correcting a page of the book of your choice. An actual scan of the page appears next to an editable text area, and all you have to do is make corrections to the interpretation made by software. Some pages require HUGE amounts of editing, and others just need maybe 5 small corrections. I've done 100 pages thus far, and it's really addictive. I'm probably just a geek. However, there's at least 20 projects going at a time, and you can hop in and out at any time with no commitments. Short stories, poetry, financial accounts, even crochet patterns are available, and you can seek out your personal interest. Personally, I like the short stories the best because you get to read something you might not have come across otherwise, making small corrections as you read. Take a look. Now for the stuff you're here for.