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My son really likes the ABCs and No. Not quite as grabbed by 123s. I find that I can listen to the Science songs over and over, moreso than the other albums, so I will try to put this one on heavier rotation. Barenaked Ladies also have a children's CD called Snacktime with some good songs on it. Yeah, it's a real trend, though some of the best collaborations were back in the day on Sesame Street.

Maybe mentioned in another thread, but I didn't see it. TMBG have been keep very busy, releasing several children's albums. I am particularly fond of some of the songs on Here Come the ABCs. Anyway, they've just released Here Comes Science. I suppose it might be controversial in that they take a strong stand for science and a bit of a swipe at ignorant people (sort of like the same people that would be offended by the new movie about Darwin: Creation). Here is the opening of Science is Real: Anyway, leaving this aspect aside, I think this is a very catchy collection. For my taste, it is the best of their four children-oriented CDs. If one does order this, I would definitely get the version with the DVD (same with Here Come the ABCs). They have a new recording of Why Does the Sun Shine that leaves the refrain more or less alone but stretches out the rest of the lyrics (making them a bit easier for children to follow). More interesting is that this is immediately followed by Why Does the Sun Really Shine In the video, John Flansburgh tries to keep out the original song from playing while singing this: I also really like Meet the Elements and What is a Shooting Star, both because of the lyric contents and the music. I would definitely check it out if you are at all interested in TMBG (or are a middle school teacher )

Well, I see that there is a current eBay listing with an listing price of $150 but no bids so far (this is listed as a cassette version and for local pickup only, so I suspect not going to do so well). Over on AAJ, they seemed to settle around $400 most of the time, but that was 5 years ago, so pre-Recession. It would probably go for somewhere in the $200-500 range unless you can interest a Japanese buyer...

Strange title, never heard of the author, not very impressive cover. Therefore it far exceeded my expectations, & I endorse it highly. Compelling writing IMHO. I'm happy a friend suggested that I read it. There's already a sequel of sorts called The Gourmet. BTW, the UK cover is nicer. I don't know how much more I would pay for that, but between the two, that's the one I would opt for.

Agreed. I managed to miss out on a used copy at a (long-gone) record store on Belmont (I think I was doing something daft like waiting until I had written a paper to reward myself). Fortunately, they still had a new copy at a fair price, and I thought about it for a day or two and bought that. This was around the time they were being phased out. A few months after this, I noticed the Borders on Michigan Ave. had one, but that was the last I've ever seen in a store.

Let us know how this is. It's one I'm definitely thinking of picking up (in about a year when there are scads of remaindered copies ). I finished Kirn's Up in the Air. Not a deep book by any means, but pretty entertaining. A bit of a twist at the end which doesn't feel total gratuitous. I imagine that's in the movie version, but it will be a while until I find out. I gave up on Jeter's Noir. It was ok for what it was (sf written as noir), but I am really trying to clear out a lot of books out of my house, and have started dropping books that aren't grabbing me, particularly if they are long (this is nearly 500 pages). Jeter was actually the guy called on to write sequels set in the Blade Runner universe (the film far more than Dick's vision). So I started this instead. A Way of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien It is a lightly fictionalized story of a boy growing up in Hollywood with movie star parents, who are fading and unstable (are there any other kind). This is how the first paragraph ends: "Oh what a world it was! Was there ever so pampered an ass as mine?" The voice is detached, ironic, jaded, etc. As I've gotten deeper into it, it reminds me of Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries. If you liked that, you will probably like this.

Yeah, I used to really like OmniPage, but Caere was bought out and the buzz is that the newest versions are buggy and when you need to download a driver or something you are out of luck. Oh, and they charge you $20 to speak to anyone in customer service when this happens.

Well, AbbyyFinereader Express (which I will probably order) cost about $50 and runs on XP. A bunch of these OCR software packages give you a 15 day free trial, but you can only OCR one page at a time -- which sounds exactly what you are trying to do, so you might go that route. I still don't understand the GOCR well enough to try it, but there is surely a way to get that working on your system as well, and it should be fine for text only -- and it is free. Main bit of advice is to save often (not as big a deal when doing one page at a time).

This is a little out of my comfort level. But I do have a question about GOCR. Does it handle tables at all? Or allow part of a page to be saved as an image (and then embedded into the resulting document)? Those are things I absolutely need before I start monkeying around with learning a new OCR software. If not, I'll just stick with some of the commercial versions. Thanks. Eric

You've got a few choices. Do you still have the page proofs? If so, I would use those. If not, if your scanner supports multiple pages in a scan, then I would probably scan 10 pages at a time -- to avoid losing data due to crashes, etc. I'm in an unfortunate situation, since the scan settings reset for every single job, so in my case, I actually make a copy of the thing I am scanning, then automatically feed them through (this counts as a job). Make sure the settings are at least 300 dpi - 400 dpi is better if the output files aren't too large for your available storage. If you have page proofs, or have already copied the book, I think converting to a TIF file will take 30 minutes, running batches through the scanner (this assumes you have a copier/scanner. Again, do this in installments (no more than 35-40 pages at a time). If you are scanning the book page by page, it might take 2-3 hours (or more if you have the software attempt OCR on the spot -- better to just save the files out and process later). Then you will run the OCR software. If you mostly have text and few or no footnotes and pictures, then maybe 1 day of going through and cleaning up. It could be more. That's a lot of pages. If the scan isn't clean or you have tables, footnotes, etc., then I'd say 2-3 days of intense work. That's my general experience. Yeah, pretty much my advice. This does assume Allen has a multiple page scanner and not a flatbed!

I generally set my scanner to output TIFs, then after the editing and processing I usually just save to Word documents, but some people prefer saving to PDFs. I think the PDF-direct output is for people who just need a permanent record but don't intend to edit (receipts, accounting stuff and contracts tend to fall in this category).

Benny Goodman King of Swing and Swing Swing Swing box sets. These make up the Yale Archives collection of BG. I had two of these on cassette, and it will be nice to have them all together. Also ordered Oliver Nelson/King Curtis/Jimmy Forrest - Soul Battle from DG. Kind of bummed I didn't see it on my last visit on Tuesday and have to make an extra trip (and probably spend even more money).

I used to really like OmniPage (I think I had version 8 or 9). I've heard relatively good things of the software through OmniPage 12, but then the company was bought out and the customer support/service went completely to hell and none of it worked well with Vista (no big surprise there). OmniPage 16 supposedly bites. I'm totally bummed because my home computer finally died, and I can't find the installation CDs, so I have to get new software. I'm leaning towards the ABBYY FineReader. I'm pretty sure that if you buy it (not just use the trial version) you can save out multiple pages. Any insight into this? Second, does it offer a "straighten page" option? For some of my scanned material, I just don't have an option but to try to utilize this feature. Thanks for any thoughts.

Ordered a couple of Jimmy Forrest CDs. I might have ordered a few others, but I thought I might already own them. This has certainly happened before, so it's time to slow down, apparently. Anyway, over at DG, I got the Farmer-Golson Jazztet - Moment to Moment and Jimmy Forrest's Heart of the Forrest with Shirley Scott and our very own Randy Marsh! One copy left of Heart of the Forrest at DG.

No question having Favre gives them a lot more options. Supposedly, he was only supposed to be there to hand off to AP, but Green Bay really focused on stopping the running game (and to be fair did a good job of that), daring Favre to beat them in the air. Of course, he answered in spades. The Vikings' goal line stand (in the 3rd?) was also huge. My wife didn't know who to root for, so hoped for a tie. But the Vikings are clearly the better team. No chance of that. Yeah, Vikings @ Green Bay should be good.

What a huge disappointment. He sets up 3 or four plotlines, and then just ends the story right before the climax. The rest of the novel doesn't make up for this deliberate lack of closure. For instance, I found the refusal to wrap up the plotlines in Murakami's After Dark disappointing, but I enjoyed the rest of the ride. Slightly higher hopes for this.

JazzLoft just announced they had 3 stereo sets come in, so you could try there as well.

About halfway through Seven Serpents and Seven Moons by Demetrio Aguilera-Malta Somewhat overripe magic realism (about half the characters can turn into animals of one sort or another, plus there is a wise-cracking Jesus statue who occasionally comes down from his Cross). Probably this can be laid at the feet of Garcia-Marquez... On deck is Kirn's Up in the Air, which yes was just released as a movie with George Clooney. I've actually owned it for a long time, but would like to read it first before I rent the movie via Netflix.

So you're saying in a year or two, we'll look back and wonder "what was that all about" (it being the flavor of the month)? I'm seeing it everywhere -- on the train, at the office, even in the hands of someone waiting to get into an Audrey Niffenegger reading. I'm sure the film rights are already being procured...

I was thinking seriously about this set, but I just can't see getting it now, given how you'd still have to buy (or rent) all the films to hear the commentary and see the various episodes of It is Wonderful to Create. It certainly doesn't free up any shelf space if you already own some of these already (that would have been something at least). I guess they didn't want to cannibalize sales of the main line Kurosawa's, but how are they going to move enough copies of this to people who aren't film buffs? (Film buffs almost by definition would want the bonus features.) It just strikes me as a poorly thought out marketing decision. Someone on the Criterion board said they sell a lot of these bare bones box sets to interior decorators whose clients want to purchase a lot of class, but that was before the recession hit... That said, if in a year or two it starts showing up at a much, much lower price point ($100-150), I might get it.

Agreed. I actually emailed someone at Criterion and asked. I think the hope is that two of the early films are on 1 DVD and Seven Samurai remains on 2, but that is probably wishful thinking. Nonetheless, supposedly all new transfers (except maybe Dodes’ka-den), which would make it more baffling if there were no audio commentaries (I asked this as well). Again, what is the market? A lot of fans already have too many of the films to buy this, but then why go to the trouble of new transfers? Ok, now I am even more confused. In some of the promotional material -- and as discussed on the Criterion boards -- it sounded like they were all new transfers. This is not the case. And the commentaries will be dropped off. I think a lot of people will be fairly pissed off about this (specifically the fact that they have to wait so long for the unreleased films to be released separate from the box, since the box is frankly kind of lame and definitely not for Kurosawa connoisseurs).

Agreed. I actually emailed someone at Criterion and asked. I think the hope is that two of the early films are on 1 DVD and Seven Samurai remains on 2, but that is probably wishful thinking. Nonetheless, supposedly all new transfers (except maybe Dodes’ka-den), which would make it more baffling if there were no audio commentaries (I asked this as well). Again, what is the market? A lot of fans already have too many of the films to buy this, but then why go to the trouble of new transfers?

I've been watching the Nikkatsu Noir. The local store (Facets) got a couple of sets in. My impression is this is pretty bare bones (no stand-alone bonus DVDs), though I suspect the commentaries already on disc will be included. I would be a lot less likely to buy this if it didn't at least have the commentaries! A lot of questions raised, but still a pretty tempting box set, particularly if (like me) you enjoy Kurosawa films but don't own that many.

Curiously this came up already in the reviews. Criterion lost the rights to Ran, so grab a copy while they are still floating around. Similarly they never had the rights to Dreams.

I see that Criterion is re-issuing Monsoon Wedding: http://www.criterion.com/films/2364. No question that the bonus features are great, as ever. But this was out already and had a pretty good commentary by Mira Nair. Will the transfer be that much better? It isn't clear whether the Criterion commentary with Nair is recycled or a new one. Still, this is on the questionable side for me. I'll probably just rent the bonus features and decide how much I love them. This is one I will probably get (financial situation permitting), but it is a bit on the extensive side: http://www.criterion.com/boxsets/678 The AK100 box set celebrating Kurosawa's 100th anniversary has 5 unreleased films and 20 others. I've seen many of these, but as it happens I only own Ikiru. Pre-order price of $320 at Criterion and $300 at Amazon (though it may go lower).