Abby is in first grade and she has daily homework. Much of it involves writing. One thing that she is not good at so far in school is using that ridiculous three-line ruled paper, probably because she's been using the plain lined paper for so long already, even in kindergarten.

The problem with this paper is that there simply doesn't seem to be anywhere to obtain it easily.

While I would love to run out and pick up a ream of the stuff to use as scrap paper after Abby switches to college-ruled for second grade, it seems like a waste. Plus, even if I order the special paper, when I run out of it, there's no trekking to the grocery store to get a new pack. But I have a solution.

I'm not sure why someone didn't think of this before. Maybe they did, but I couldn't find it. If you're searching for three-lined paper for first grade or second grade, and you need some in a pinch, this might be the thing for you.

I've created a PDF that lets you print the lines (solid on top and dashed in the middle) in either portrait or landscape orientation. The top and middle lines are blue, and the bottom is red. If you print it on a laser printer it still works, it's just not likely to be in color.

The usefulness of this has already proved its worth in its first night in existence, and I'm hoping that with practice, Abby's writing on the odd paper improves.

You are welcome to download the PDF and print out your own paper at home.

Today at Woot they're selling a 30GB Zune for $99, so when the clock flipped last night, I bought one. At some point in that process the whole MP3/radio idea mix leaked into my consciousness, and I ended up dreaming about it. When I woke up this morning, I was asking myself, "Is radio dead?"

One of the significant contributors to this thought is the release of Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows. It's not about the album itself - I don't have it, and am wondering if I even want to bother given that my thoughts about Radiohead deserve a full post of their own - but another question I had asked myself about it: Is the album getting radio airtime?

Radiohead is a reasonably big name in music. Will radio stations play the album they've released online outside of the traditional distribution chain? The model for radio is usually to be courted by the music industry to play new music, especially of bands that people may want to hear on the air. The purpose is to generate money in advertising because people will not tune away from the ads between songs if they think a song they will want to hear comes next. So will radio stations play In Rainbows?

Another thing to consider is the music industry's reaction to a station that does play In Rainbows. Traditional distribution channels may balk at stations that subvert the usual supply chain. In other words, they won't give their new music to stations that play "freed" music, and so stations (because they want to be able to play that music to support their advertising) won't play the freed music so that they keep getting more top 40 from the record labels.

I wonder if there are statistics about how many people use MP3 players in their cars rather than listen to the radio. With the support in many new cars for accessory ports, I think the number may be climbing significantly. I recall hearing bad things about the adoption rate of HD radio, something that could potentially attract listeners to the medium. Stations in my area have it. But why listen to ads when you can listen to pre-recorded, personalized content? Perhaps radio should have done something different with the HD technology than digitally rebroadcasting the same stuff they do on their regular stations.

I listen to radio all the time in the car. I listen to the AM news station. And when I don't listen to that, it's the MP3 player in my phone or CDs that I have burned of my own music.

I'm reminded that not everyone is so technically savvy. I recall a humorous memory of riding in someone's car where the car radio had a warning label "Anti-Theft Device" very prominently displayed next to the tape deck.

A few of the folks I "hang with" online are/were involved in the 9rules network. I am not a member, but I had tried to become one at one point. I've been following the recent actions of the network with some interest, and thought I would save my thoughts for later as they may be relevant for other communities in which I am involved and have influence. Some background on the current issue is probably in order.

Essentially, many people had joined the network for the purpose of being affiliated with other bloggers who created great content. Their goal was to enrich the web. These folks chose to participate in the network insofar as they posted new, quality content to their own blogs, which were syndicated specifically to the rest of the members. Although the network powers-that-be had created a site for interaction among members, these folks never saw participation in those forums as a requirement to their membership, simply their continued contribution of quality blog content.

Recently, the terms of membership changed so that you must participate in the forums to remain a member. The people who thought that their blogging contribution was enough realized (with different levels of reaction) that they would no longer qualify for membership and asked to withdraw. This accounts for more than half of the people who I relate with who are/were also 9rules members. What's bothersome to me, especially had I been a member, is the process surrounding the change of the terms of service.

It seems as though the people deciding that forum participation should be a requirement were the people who were already active on the forums. Members who did not see a value in the forums or did not see participation there as a requirement for membership understandably did not visit the forums to participate in the decision. Rather than send email to members asking if the change would be agreeable to the membership, the decision was made and notices of the change sent.

It is interesting that so many people had a different impression of what 9rules was all about and have left. Not only is that interesting, but also the reaction that the 9rules maintainers have had to the poor response to their actions. Take for example Christian's experience.

The responses in the comments there from Tyme and Scrivs, two 9rules maintainers, seem openly hostile. You can find examples of similar reactions from them on many of the sites who have decided to leave the network. It's natural that they would be upset that people would leave, but to react in such a way is very strange when trying to foster a community.

Moreover, wishing that the communication had happened privately when you operate a blog network is an outright pipe dream. Listen to yourself speak the words: "Private" and "Blog". Nuh-uh.

What might have been a better reaction to the growth of their community? A better effort to shape the direction of the community than alienating their long-standing members. The solution is simple.

When communities get large, they naturally segregate. By separating the forum participants from the non-participants, but allowing the groups to continue, both groups could thrive within the community. Instead, the two groups were created, and one of them was told to shove off. If one of the main purposes of the network is to help each other and be a community, this is a very strange way to accomplish that.

I suppose it's easy to stand somewhere outside all of this and preach, not having built my own blog network or managed their large membership. I am interested in all of these going on because practically all of the bloggers I know in real life were members of 9rules, and it's all I hear these days. Plus, being a leader in a (non-blogging) community of my own, I am interested in the metamorphosis of this network that was once well-respected by the people on the web that I myself respect.

Were I to create my own blog network (and I have no delusions that I have time for such a thing), it wouldn't be about creating content for the network site. It would be about connecting users better.

The web is too diverse to drop every blog into a single, strict category. It's also difficult to find the "key site" that pulls together the blogs dealing with a single topic.

For example, I hang around with a lot of Philly bloggers in real life. I write about hanging out with them. I write about my own experiences in Philly. While my site does have content about Philadelphia, you'll note that it's not primarily a blog about Philadelphia. Pigeonholing my site into a single "Philadelphia" category seems narrow-minded.

If I was looking for a list of bloggers from Philadelphia to see if they had similar experiences to mine, or simply to read about what's going on in my area, where would I go? There are a few sites I know of as starting places for sure, but there isn't a place that connects all of them together well. Even the ones I know of that connect them to some degree are all content-generating, meaning that sure, you have a blog of your own, but membership is based on your contribution to the aggregating site.

A better blog network would unite people with common interests. It would pool sites together like Technorati does under specific but varied tags, and give bloggers more control over which channels their own blog (and blogs they read) belonged to. You would be allowed to categorize content from your own site or others', create events and topics for discussion among the blogs that fit your reading criteria, and participate solely from your own blog: Content is for your site, indexing, relation, and membership is provided by the network as its sole features.

One of the things I really think would be neat is a way to forward discussion topics to people who have expertise or interest in what you want to read about. You could forward food topics to groups of foodie blogs, or tech questions to techie blogs via the network, and then watch the network for blogs that respond to your topic. Blogs that write about a chosen topic could see what other blogs in the network have also said about that topic, and contribute to the conversation on those blogs. The network site could map that interaction as output that outsiders could follow. It could be very cooperative, yet wouldn't require participation in a forum.

Well, it's something to think about for later when building up the Habari community, to make sure that if we refocus what the community is all about (which I hardly expect us to do, but you never know) then we need to make sure that we don't let go many of our long-standing respected members for lack of informing them of the changes and asking for their involvement.

Plus, if someone cooks up a network such as I've described, be sure to invite me.

When we used to travel as kids, the entertainment in the car consisted of counting cows out the window, playing the "I'm going on a trip" memory game, looking at the maps stuffed into the pocket in back of the driver's seat, and as a special treat, those "magic ink" puzzle books. But what we most often did in family car trips was sing songs.

It's a very unusual idea now to think of singing songs in the car, since the advent of in-car DVD players, MP3 players, and the GameBoy, but for little kids who don't have the toys or aren't interested in those things, some interaction with the family via singing in the car can be fun.

This morning, the kids woke me up by playing a CD of kids songs and nursery rhymes far too loud. Some of these songs were songs we used to sing in the car on our long-ish trip from home to the Bay. There were many songs that we sang that were not on their CD, and quite a few nursery rhymes that I didn't know anyone had put a tune to.

Some sample staple songs include "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes". I also remember singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot", which seems like an odd traveling song to sing, now that I think about it. There were a few other tunes with religious overtones, like "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", which is interesting to think about as an adult who can better appreciate the origin of these songs.

I've had no luck so far with teaching Abby how to sing in the round. The best rendition of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is still a bit out of reach. Also, songs that support harmony, like "You Are My Sunshine", are not quite ready. Maybe we just need to practice more.

Riley does a great solo job of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" these days. Often after school while waiting for Berta to come home, the kids and I would sit on the family room floor and see how we could change the sound of the familiar songs. For example, Riley was thrilled with the sound of "Baa Baa" when put to a "We Will Rock You"-like percussion pounded out on the family room floor.

We also learned a few songs in Scouts when I was younger. In particular, a song I didn't learn, but heard at camp once and loved, was called "The Cat Came Back". I searched for the lyrics recently, but without the tune to accompany it, it's hard to recall how it goes only having heard it once. It's a fun song, though.

Searching for "The Cat Came Back" in particular I've found that it's one of the few children's songs that uses a minor progression in the song (although they won't say explicitly what it is, which is bothersome for trying to figure the tune out). Exposing kids to different types of music is good at Abby and Riley's age, and I hope they are able to benefit from it.

It's only a matter of time until they're too old for kid music and prefer to sit in the van with their headphones on listening to top 40. I hope I can expand their musical horizons to the point where they enjoy more than just that, and perhaps in the future have the same happy memories of singing in the car that I have, just as I will look back on the happy days of them playing kid music far too loud for me to sleep in on Saturday morning.

Three of Berta's sisters came in from out of town to visit last weekend, and in trying to come up with something to do, we decided on a more seasonal activity - a corn maze.

Rocky's Corn Maze is in Parkesburg, just before the end of the route 30 bypass. If you take the bypass to route 10, you'll have to turn around and go about 300 yards. Look out for the small sign on the left side of the road, or you'll zip right past it.

There aren't many attractions at Rocky's but the people are friendly. There were a few animals that you could feed, including goats, chickens, and pigs. And some other animals were there just to see, a horse, a donkey, and two baby calves that they fed milk from giant bottles while we were there. In all, not too fascinating for folks that are used to this kind of thing, but interesting enough for us suburbanites.

The hay ride was a slight disappointment, traveling only to a small deserted "pumpkin patch" seeded with fresh pumpkins that obviously didn't grow there. But the main attraction was the amazing corn maze.

At the large unused silo located on the farm, you pay admission ($9 for adults, $6 for children), and you head into the maze. I was thinking that a maze wouldn't really be much fun unless there was a goal, and this maze had 6 goals. Located at points throughout the maze were stands with hold punches. Punch the corn kernel at each of the locations to complete the maze.

Apparently, the maze materials - the maze design and maps, the staff t-shirts, and the printed materials given to visitors - are all part of a kit. One of the maze kit items was a punch card for recording all of the stand you visited in the maze, and it had 18 kernels on it. I tried to imagine an 18-kernel maze. It would probably take a full day, or two, to complete such a large maze.

Berta, Maryann, Abby, and I wandered around the maze for a while. After we hit the first two stands and got our punches, Bert and Maryann decided that they would find the next stand more quickly if they went a different way than what I was suggesting. Abby came with me, and we parted as two groups. By the time we saw them next, Abby and I had completed all 6 locations, and they still didn't have the third kernel punched. Because of the layout of the maze, we were able to get the rest of their card complete without much of a detour before returning to the exit.

It was a fun little trip, and the maze was much more than I was expecting. I wonder if there are more such mazes located in the area with some more side attractions to go with them. It might be worthwhile to visit them as a second seasonal trip.