Photo: TheLizardQueen

We're inside the 2 week runup to our trip to Ireland. This is a trip that we originally wanted to take 10 years ago when we got married. At that time, we didn't have the money, so we told ourselves we'd go 5 years later. Of course, by that time, we were busy and, while we could have charged the trip and paid it off, we couldn't afford to pay for it outright, so we postponed it 5 more years.

A little over a year ago, we set up a savings plan and started siphoning money off for this trip. After a significant amount had piled up a few months ago, we started booking portions of the trip and paying for them from that account. The flights ($2500 total), hotels (another $1400), car rental (more than a rental car should cost), etc. were all checked off the list with absolutely no debt incurred.

We're going to be doing the kind of travel that we've come to realize really matches how we like to do things. We book hotels smack in the middle of relatively large cities and then see and do things nearby, working out for day trips as it makes sense.

For this trip, we're actually going to spend time headquartered in 3 different cities: Cork, Limerick and Dublin.

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Photo: Duchamp

I'm about as big of an advocate of the use of Creative Commons licenses for my creative work as you'll find. Nearly everything I make online is licensed under either the most permissive of the Creative Commons licenses (for things like articles, photos, documents, etc.) or one of the most permissive software licenses (for code and software), like the BSD license. That enthusiasm with a shared pool of resource led to my recent Photos from the Commons project and really drives much of my online activity. There has, however, been a longstanding problem with Creative Commons licenses that is probably going to get worse before it gets better. This problem exists on one of the axes on which Creative Commons helps people apply copyright license control. Those axes are:

• Attribution. If you republish, repurpose or create something from my work, you can't claim it as your own. My name needs to be attached. All of the licenses include this protection.
• Keeping the work free. The ShareAlike axis determines whether any changes you make to my work must also be licensed in the same way. This is often called a "viral" nature in license like the GPL and works similarly in Creative Commons.
• Commercial use. This is where things go from nice and black/white to a nasty shade of muddy gray.

That tricky axis of commercial use is specifically why I am steering entirely clear of any photo that includes a NonCommercial clause for the photos project. The problem, articulated in a much better way than I would do here, is that no one can really agree on what exactly *constitutes* commercial use. That can lead to really nasty confrontations that I want no part in. Adding to the confusion is the fact that for photos, there's an additional dimension wrapped up in the commercial use that could actually get messed up even if the use is non-commercial. The actual reproduction of a photo is covered by copyright. If you wanted to make prints, posters, etc. you needed a copyright license. However, if your chosen photo contains recognizable people (and sometimes inanimate objects as well), and you're using it as part of packaging or advertising something else, you also need a model release. This is illustrated by an episode of Friends (which is scary to realize is now nearly 15 years old) where Joey had a photo taken only to discover it on a billboard with a caption along the lines of "This man doesn't even know he's got herpes". That issue has caught a few businesses using Creative Commons photos for advertisements, even though the photos in question weren't restricted from commercial use. Fundamentally, these are the kinds of problems where rapid changes in how the law works along with a massive increase in the number of people now affected collide. Unfortunately, changes like automatic copyright and extensions with no registration, while partly intended to handle the influx of work under copyright without additional staff at the copyright office actually amplified the problem by creating enormous piles of copyrighted works by people who have no idea how copyright works. Alas, I'm certain it will get much, much worse before it starts to get better.

Photo by: Bob Jagendorf

Back at the beginning of 2007, I had an idea to highlight some of the amazing photographs that are added to The Commons every day. In my zeal for the idea, I jumped right to trying to do a "Best of 2006" book, but didn't start until January of 2007. Thus was the project doomed to the inevitable interference of life.

Fast forward to early this year and I got the itch to revisit this project. However, fully aware of how easily a grandiose book project could get pre-empted, I instead let it brew for a while before just jumping in where I had left off.

What I've seen works best for side projects like this idea is when things are built up out of small components. Those small components or small tasks lend themselves well to an hour here and there generating actual progress and usable results. There is no grand churning in the background with a final product emerging at the end.

So, for this idea, I think it makes much more sense to use the domains I bought for the project (fromthecommons.com and .org) and the subdomain I set up for the photo version specfically (photos.fromthecommons.com) to do smaller highlighting of great Creative Commons photos on a daily or weekly basis using a blog format.

A later book at the end of the year would thus be much simpler as all of the nominated photos would already be chosen.

So, I set up Wordpress on that domain and modified my tools for finding great photos from The Commons and it's up and running. Because I plan on putting ads up, I'm currently limiting the photo selection to those that are licensed Creative Commons Attribution. While I think that there's clear freedom to also use some of the other licenses, this one is clear and there's no shortage of great photographs to choose from.

The theme I'm using isn't exactly what I want for the long haul and I need to change the photo template HTML a bit, but those are tweaks that can come as things progress. In the mean time, if you enjoy good photography and are interested in open source creative expression, it's probably a site you may want to watch.

This morning, I awoke to a white blur outside my bedroom window. As I put on my glasses, the white came into focus and I could see that snow was clinging to every surface in sight.

The heavy, wet snow of an early spring storm was stacked on every branch and twig; all of the horizontal surfaces had 6 inches of the sticky stuff on it. This happens only a few different times each year and it's always truly beautiful to behold.

Unfortunately, most of the time when I am greeted by this sight out the window, I'm getting ready to go to work or otherwise obligated to move on with my day. By the time my obligations are fulfilled on those days, the snow has melted in the spring sun and the opportunity to enjoy the scenery is gone.

This morning, on the other hand, was a weekend.

I showered, threw on my hat, coat and boots and grabbed my camera for a trip to the closest park: Lake Palmer. It's a combination of forest and wetlands that is just 5 or so minutes from my house.

This being Minnesota and above freezing, I wasn't alone in enjoying the park. However, all of that snow muffled all sound but my own breathing and the wet crunch of snow under my boots. That deep quiet emphasized just how noisy and chaotic life has been for the last 3-4 months.

I wandered for about a half hour, taking pictures as I followed the trails, leaving them whenever I saw something interesting.

The cattails were particularly interesting, with ice and snow layered over the exploded fluff of the tips of the plant.

That time alone with my thoughts, taking pictures of the natural beauty surrounding me was some of the best time In recent memory and a great way to enjoy the warm weather.

The photo highlights from that session are here.

In the last couple of days, I've seen a couple of really good examples of why I really love Creative Commons. People have been using CC-licensed for the exact kinds of things that they should be and in ways I hadn't planned for or couldn't have necessarily expected. Beyond that, the people involved spanned the globe in ways that just wouldn't have happened even a few years ago.

First, on Tuesday, a guy named Matías, from Argentina enjoyed my little humorous look at marriage and datatypes (much more than my wife did, I might add). He enjoyed it so much, he decided to translate it into Spanish and post it on his site. While he asked my permission, he didn't need to because of the license for all of the content on this site (unless otherwise noted, it's CC-BY).

Now, those on the geekier side of life who life life en español can dig the article too.

Second was Roy Blumenthal in South Africa, who, upon getting an art project to make something about "80s", went looking on the Flickr photo finder for a CC-BY image that matched his vision. From that image, he did a sketch and eventually a painting and a lineart version. He released the resulting art under another Creative Commons license (adding the non-commercial clause as he's allowed to do).

I'm finding it funny how Creative Commons is creating enough of an incentive to result in all of this extra expression, despite all of the work being under less restrictive terms than standard copyright. *MORE* stuff is getting created *and* society at large gets more access to it than when it's locked up to wait for someone to decide that it will make enough money to be worth releasing.