Creative Commons - how not to use CC

I now know first hand the most annoying thing someone who has used a Creative Commons license can do is to think they can change the type of license they have already applied.

Over 6 months ago I wrote a poem for a friend. At first I was just playing around with adding it to a photo to see how it could enhance the poem. The first image I picked looked great, even though I was not supposed to remix it due to the CC that had been applied. I therefore found a second image that I could remix and it actually turned out quite lovely. In the last week I decided to post that poem to my blog. However, when I looked up the photograph on flickr it seemed that photographer had changed their CC licence for all their photos to all rights reserved - WTF...

Maybe the most constructive thing would have been to message them and find out why they had made the change. I might have even been able to explain to them that such changes make life difficult for others and come to an agreement. Instead I searched and found a new image with the most open CC license available - Attribution only. To celebrate finding an image that is along the lines of the poem I have also applied the same license, even though I am not required to.

Check out the remix of the poem and photo here. However, I am not sure if this is exactly how I want it - so I may remix this again...

Lesson is - if you apply a CC license that lets others remix your work, it is not only rude to change that license, it also goes against the idea of CC. Once you have applied a license you cannot change it, so pick a license carefully!

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Why do I write poetry? Q&A

I have been chatting with a friend Ian about keeping a blog and what he could do with his photography. You can check out Ian's photography blog or Flickr photostream. I love Ian's photos as I often find myself seeing the world through Ian's lens in a way I would never had imagined.

Ian emailed me on Sunday a range of questions that can be summed up as - Why do I write poetry? Here is my response to those questions (with only a little editing to make sure it actually makes sense):

• Inspiration. How do you come up with ideas?

Sometimes words simply pop into my head and they will not go away. Other times I see something, an event or what the sky looks like today and I want to express that experience.

• Construction. How do you go about getting your ideas down? How do you get from there's-this-idea-in-my-head to ah-what-a-nice-finished-poem?

It is easier when the words that come to me are in some sort of sequence and I go from there. But sometimes it takes a bit more work. I often know if those random words I jot down are worth working on further. I try to create the shell and then decide again if I want to do more work. Then it is a process of polishing and chipping away. The longest I have ever worked on a poem is over a couple of months but that was about a particular event that was difficult to write about because I was telling the story of other people I know. Though there have been a couple of times that I have found the draft of a poem I wrote years ago and came back to it.

• Editing. Do you edit as you go? Do you write in one go, then edit after?

Most of the time I try to get my thoughts down in one go but sometimes things stick out as I type them up. I have scraps of paper all over the place with bits of poems that will never been complete and others that were the 1st draft. Yet now I find it useful to type things up directly when they come to me. I have even resorted to typing them in my phone as a text.

• Style. How do you feel about formal styles of poetry - haiku (whatever it is), limerick, sonnet, pentameter etc, blank verse, ..? (Have you tried them all?)

I like experimenting with particular styles, to see how far I can go and to challenge myself. However more often I just write what comes to me and the poem tells me how it should be structured. I know that I need to teach myself more styles so I can simply write a poem that ends up being a particular style. Oh and limericks are evil and for some reason I find them impossible to write. I have only successfully done so once and that was when I wrote something about the work I do as a gift to a colleague.

• Why do you write poetry anyway? Aren't there enough starving poets in the world already? (Not intended to be provocative. I'm sure you have a serious answer to this.)

Have you ever read the blurb on my blog? That sums up why I write poetry ;-).

I do not expect to make a living out of poetry but I would love to be recognised as a poet in the same way I am a librarian and you are a teacher. I have thoughts constantly rushing through my head and quite often those thoughts are abstract and hard to explain. Poetry allows me to take what is in my head and create something that is no longer part of me. It is hard to explain but I often find myself wondering how I came up with a poem. Recently I have actually asked myself "where did that come from and did I really write that". I can not actually memorise my poems as I often feel like they are separate entities. What I enjoy most are other people's reaction to a poem and what they read from it. It makes me look at one of my poems with new eyes.

Now I am putting the challenge to Ian to answer similar questions in regards to - Why do you take photographs Ian? I have pasted slightly edited questions to better suite taking photos rather than writing poetry. I think these are the sort of questions that anyone who has creative pursuits may find worth answering themselves. I especially think Graeme should also answer these questions as well in regards to the photos he takes (be careful what you say :D)

• Inspiration. What inspires you to take you camera out to take a shot?
• Construction. How do you go about composing a photo as you take it? How do you get from there's-this-idea-in-my-head to ah-what-a-nice-finished-photo?
• Editing. Do you edit as you go with digital images? Do you take a lot of photos, then edit after?
• Style. How do you feel about particular styles of photographs - black and white, portraits, abstract (Have you tried them all?) {ok trying to sound clever and come up with some eg with little success}
• Why do you take photos anyway? Aren't there enough starving photographers in the world already? (This is intended to be provocative ;-). I'm sure you will have a serious answer to this.)
• Is there a photo you have seen that someone else has taken that has inspired you and how you take photographs?

Cooliris: pictures upon a wall

The Cooliris plugin is a web browser plugin made by Cooliris that provides interactive full-screen slideshows of online images (wikipedia). The instructions for how to install Cooliris in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari is located via cooliris support. If you find yourself enjoying using cooliris as much as I am then you can also follow the cooliris blog. Once you have installed cooliris you are able to search things like Flickr and Google Images.

Searching images through cooliris is fantastic in that the images you find can be displayed on a wall. Cooliris then makes it easy to scroll across many images, focus on a particular image, bookmark your favourites and jump out to the site the image is located on. I had seen cooliris demonstrated at a conference last year. However, it was only when a colleague dropped the URL on my desk and said try this did I give it a go. They gave no explanation beyond that and I think you will only truly understand what cooliris is if you yourself give it a go.

While looking at cooliris the first time another colleague asked me what I was looking at. I showed them and then asked if there was something they wanted to search. They suggested trying to find a photo of the All Saints Church in Dunedin - so I put in the terms Saints and Dunedin. Then the most wonderful thing occurred: the first result was of them in the church, which had been taken by the local newspaper. They were thrilled :-)

This in itself is a wonderful way to find images yet it gets better.
The power of cooliris comes into play when you discover sites that have enabled cooliris - how to enable your site. As already mentioned Flickr, Google and Facebook have enabled cooliris.

Now to start my blogroll to show you why I love cooliris so much.

One of my favourite blogs is Secret Agent Mama: shooting from the hip. The photography is breathtaking and there is sprinkling of poetry throughout, which as a poet I love. Now go to the photostream in flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/secretagentmama and activate cooliris. I have to admit it took me a bit of playing to figure out how to look at a site like this in cooliris. At first I tried searching in cooliris itself with "secretagentmama" but I kept picking up other images as well.

I have discovered that any blogs on blogspot also seems to let you activate cooliris.
For me this means I can see a wall of amazing doodles that Beck posts on her blog BeckaDoodles. And then for a change I can view a wall of gorgeous vintage postcards from Cpaphil Vintage Postcards.

If you love history then you will really like the last example I will give you, which is via the National Library of New Zealand in the Manuscripts and Pictorial Collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library digitised collection. Once you arrive at the site search for something like "shortland" and activate cooliris. Though I have noticed you might have to refresh once or dig a little before cooliris realises it should be working. Dr Edward Shortland was the nephew of one of my ancestors and to see his letters like this is fantastic.