The 2005 CD wasn’t actually completed until 2006, and only included three books, one of which was the longer but much beloved Velveteen Rabbit. (It is kind of sad when time and timeliness become a factor in the creation of a Christmas present… but it was in this instance. I’ve tried to be better about it since then, to greater and lesser effect.)

The first track I’d like to feature from this CD is the short—but very cute—Guess How Much I Love You, by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram.

This story documents a peculiar exchange between a narcissistic elder bunny and an insecure but effusive younger bunny who share a vague and unhealthily competitive relationship, and who apparently belong to a cult which has stripped them of their names and only allows them to be referenced by the color of their fur.

As the story progresses, the junior bunny attempts to elucidate the magnitude of his devotion to the elder bunny, but with each new platitude, the elder bunny is compelled to explain that his devotion to the younger bunny is actually the greater. He accomplishes this through various means, including physical feats of strength and simple size-related intimidation techniques. In the end, the elder bunny—not content to allow the youngster even the smallest victory—must get in the last word, even as his companion loses consciousness. One imagines the elder bunny smiling to himself with smug satisfaction, before dropping off to a fitful, horror-filled sleep.

Too much?

[UPDATE: 1 hour after this post launched, I realized I'd neglected to include the audio. Whoops.]

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When I first switched to Linux, I also attempted to switch to Gimp—which is generally considered to be Linux’s Photoshop. My experience with Gimp, especially versions before 2.5, was not great, and I switched back to Photoshop pretty quickly.

One of my freelance clients publishes a newsletter every month, and I convert the PDF into JPG images to use on the site as a sort of low-fi online version. I discovered pretty quickly that Gimp’s conversion routines did a terrible job. Eventually, I found a solution using ImageMagick, which I had used previously in my bipolar gallery scripts.

Converting images is super easy with ImageMagick’s convert command, and as it turns out, convert can also handle PDF files.

Here’s the commandline I use:

convert -density 300 -size 4100 sourcefile.pdf -quality 100 outputfiles.jpg

Basically, this converts each page of the pdf into a 300ppi JPG with a maximum dimension of 4100 pixels and a JPG quality setting of 100% (or no compression). Each page is saved as an individual JPG named outputfilesXX.jpg (where XX represents the page number, starting at 00).

This gives me much higher-quality starting images than Gimp provided, which I can then resize as needed.

convert has a huge array of features beyond this simple example, and is worth a look if you need to do image manipulation from a script, or batch operations on images from the commandline.

Here we are in June—one whole month into the new coffeemonk.com. I’m happy that I managed to get out a new post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10am. It wasn’t originally a goal for the site, but I decided a few days prior to launch that it might be good to make it an unofficial one. Aside from some last minute post-writing in the last week, it’s been a very comfortable experience, all told. Not sure how long I can keep it up, so we’ll just have to see.

Anyway, I wanted to take a moment, now that we’re a month old, to look back on the past month and see what we made of it.

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Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? is apparently a story about a neurotic and possibly delusional individual who wanders the countryside attempting to communicate by imitating the noises of animals and nature. Or perhaps he’s an amnesiac who has lost the capacity for human language altogether, and who is known as Mr. Brown solely because of the color of his outerwear. In any event, his unfortunate condition provided his psychiatrist—the infamous Dr. Seuss—an excellent opportunity for profit.

The reader is drawn along on the patient’s perambulatory adventure, and is given the opportunity to observe and occasionally participate in a re-enactment of his mad mimicry. Graciously, Mr. Brown’s repertoire of sounds is somewhat limited, and does not venture into the mechanical or electronic, so the book remains relatively short. The book closes with a review section, which one imagines might be an abstract representation of the troubled man’s unconscious mind.

Seriously though, Mr. Brown Can Moo is a great little book that smaller children simply love. It is especially fun when, once they’ve been through the book about 20 times (a day, for six straight months) and know pretty much what to expect, the reader begins to mix up the animals and their sounds. Toddlers love making animal noises, and they squeal with delight (or homicidal rage) when one presents the obviously ludicrous idea that a dog might say “quack.”

This is the last track off the original 2004 Christmas CD. Next week, 2005!

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