TWIT 144, OpenLibrary and Little Brother

I was able to finish listening to TWIT 144 this morning before going to sleep and they were talking about OpenLibrary.org. Brewster Kahle, the guy who heads this project is also responsible for the Internet Archive project. He talked at length about how OpenLibrary.org was helping preserve old books for future generations. Their main efforts were in getting books scanned and translated into digital forms to preserve them electronically. It's a great effort and it should be supported. Too bad their funding from Microsoft stopped. They would now have to source their funds from the public. It's a worthy cause, you might want to consider donating to it.

On the topic of free books, they got to talking about Cory Doctorow's new book towards the end of the podcast. I didn't know he gave away free eBook copies of his work. I went to Craphound.com to get me an eReader copy of Little Brother. A for-pay copy is available in audio form, an excerpt of which they played after the credits on TWIT 144 (kinda like the way that extra scene was shown after credits in Ironman - hehehe). Anyway, if you would like to support the author and listen to the audiobook version, click on the graphic below:

Package Tracking Thru Twitter

Found out through a tweet from John C. Dvorak that the twittering public can track their packages through Twitter. Following the instructions, the way to do it is to follow @trackthis on Twitter. You then send a direct message (and not @reply) containing your package's tracking code plus a short phrase describing the package (useful when you start getting the updates). A direct message will be sent to you every time your packages moves locations. The service currently supports FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL tracking. Neat, huh?

Torn

It was a rough first day. Today was my wife's first day back at the office. My world was again jolted out of orbit because of the change in the schedules we had grown accustomed to in the last few months. I went to work, and she was there in the morning to welcome me home. This morning, she left early to get to work by 8am.

Sleep-deprived, I brought our son to the doctor this morning. He had been running a fever on and off since Saturday night. Doctor said he was having an episode of tonsillitis again. Weather was not helping at all. The heat was affecting him, but we had no choice but to make the commute to the hospital. We finally got home by 1:30 PM. His fever got worse. I had a hard time getting him to drink medicine. My baby girl wasn't in the mood either, she was crying whenever my mother (or I) put her back in her crib. As if in jest, she had no trouble sleeping whenever I rested her on my shoulder.

Two hours of sleep was all I managed. And I'm going to work tonight. This is going to be a long night. And tomorrow is going to be a long day. Sometimes, it seems I will never see the end of the week without trouble creeping up unexpectedly :-(