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The Librarians' Index to the Internet (lii.org) is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 10,000 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries. lii.org is used by both librarians and the general public as a reliable and efficient guide to Internet resources. Created in 1990 as a Gopher site, lii.org is now hosted by UC Berkeley.
The Antikythera Mechanism: "In 1901 divers working off the isle of Antikythera found the remains of a clocklike mechanism 2,000 years old. The mechanism now appears to have been a device for calculating the motions of stars and planets."
Kaliber10000: "The designers playground, a global digital design forum for people who actually have something to say, and know how to do it. Updated weekly with a new issue by a new designer or design team."
DocBook XML: DocBook is an XML/SGML vocabulary particularly well suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications).
See that monster in the box? That's my master's thesis; a rude thing, it refuses to hush or to leave quietly. Notions of hypertextuality and the construction of text rattle around in my head; I could write ten pages a day about Barthes and intertextuality but have already written enough.
While I was in Rome, trapped in that damp hotel room 47 steps from Trajan's Column, I watched parts of The Godfather dubbed into Italian... sparking memories of the film shown on television when I was a wee child, the horror of much of it and an alienation from the rest, so far was I from father and son and the mantle of responsibility, things I couldn't even imagine at six.
And these things prompted me to ask Donna to bring it home the other night, and damn if it isn't charming and seminal both.
Tomorrow is my birthday.
"... The iPic web-server, the world's tiniest implementation of a TCP/IP stack and a HTTP web-server. The chip above is a complete micro-computer, and it includes all components of a complete computer on a single tiny micro-chip (this includes the CPU (central processing unit), memory, serial port interface circuitry, and clock oscillator)."
Free is now available, a site which presents primary research material for those interested in micromedia and Canadian community radio. The current archive is about two megs in size, with approximately 100 documents, and is very much a work in progress. Design wise, it is ugly right now, the the inside of a Mercury rocket.
I like to imagine that we are prepared for the encounter with mass media by dreaming. Whatever supposed neurological function it may perform, it certainly allows a notion of experience which transcends concepts of an empirical reality. And so to the mass media teach us what is reality; could you follow the action in your first Hong Kong action flick? Was it something you learned?
So it is with the The Blair Witch Project. At least a decade of video verite, of Cops and OJ and the Gulf War, leads us to a new sort of suspension of disbelief, something nearly overwhelming, something which made me shake. The aesthetic side clicks, primarily the excellent sound work and the twisted stick totems. Much better than a sanitized, perfectionist-driven Star Wars; one hopes it will not turn into Twin Peaks.
It's the last year to enjoy this site before the Millennium Bug hits.
I have the habit of purchasing the latest, snazziest Web design portfolio books, most recently Cool Sites: Freeze-Framed and Down Cold. These tomes typically contain glossy page after glossy page of simply wonderful, heavy-as-hell HTML art. Coming in from the other side is useit.com, Jakob Nielsen's excellent site about usability and Web design.
I snapped up The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations as soon as I stumbled across it, and it has been the most useful and fun colour book I have purchased in years. What is unique about author/designer Leslie Cabarga's approach to colour is his understanding that our perception of how various colours work in combination is cultrally based, and changes over time. A colourful tile that might look fashionable in the late-19th century can look quaint or garish in the 1990s. Cabarga presents hundreds of historical colour combinations based on actual period designs. What makes this useful is that each design comes complete with CMYK codes which can be plugged directly into Photoshop, or converted (roughly) into HTML colour codes. It is no exageration to say that this book has opened me up to a world of colour combinations that I wouldn't have considered in the past.
"The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is a research and development facility dedicated to the issues of media and information technology for people with disabilities in their homes, schools, workplaces, and communities... NCAM's mission is: to expand access to present and future media for people with disabilities; to explore how existing access technologies may benefit other populations; to represent its constituents in industry, policy and legislative circles; and to provide access to educational and media technologies for special needs students."
Last night, dreaming an odd moment grappling with height, fear of falling from a pointed ledge. Then, stepping off into the sky, flying through the canyons of Manhattan, passing Tom Cruise on the way, and Gene Siskel, bless his heart, giving me a thumbs up.
More a tranquil eye? Perhaps. Somewhere along the line it opened, and I pulled the design inside-out.
Greg can't sleep, and walks the halls. I'm listening to Four Calendar Café for the second time this evening: it remains both atmospheric and poppy, and it is so like autumn tonight, with so much change in the air.
I have been a fan of Project Gutenberg for a long time; it was one of those obvious great site ideas that made me a believer in the Internet in 1994. I haven't really been following PG all that closely in the couple of years, but a mention on lemon yellow this week prompted me to visit. I was surprised that Project Gutenberg doesn't have it's own domain name. I wonder if they would accept the donation of gutenberg.org, or something similar.
Fascinated today remembering an offhand comment by Dorota, that gladiatorial contests in the great Coliseum of Rome may well have had predetermined outcomes. I have few good images of the site out of my visit there but remember vividly a tour guide's descriptions of hundreds killed in various forms of combat each day, their bodies stuffed into the sewers. Absurd on one level but on another far-fetched.
In the latest (2 August 1999) Wrestling Observer Tadashi Tanaka writes of unspecified classical Greek murals which depict wrestlers executing moves which cannot be executed without the assistance of one's opponent.
More of the same, combat as more than a physical contest.
I have come across a number of Web sites in the past few weeks whose designers have adopted a maximum page width of 540 pixels. Not Yahoo, CNN or other high-traffic mass sites, but smaller sites like lemonyellow.com. I imagine this is a response to misconceptions about how their pages might look under WebTV. Worry not: WebTV seems to ignore your width attributes, although Windows CE and the various Palm browsers may well be a different story.
When I was doing the redesign of the IDRC public site in 1997 it was a bit of a leap for many around the project to imagine a standard 600 pixel width; 17 inch monitors are standard within the Centre and there was some concern that the pages would be "too narrow." Now it goes without saying that creating a readable column is critical, with an emphasis on the content itself.
Iain wrote me last night:
some guy comes up to me last night in the new wave club. says "hey, weren't you in TDG?" so naturally i'm cautious. "maybe." so he says, "yeah, it was you and this other guy named Iain." "Nope, I'm Iain." "yeah, yeah. It was John that I met online on Babylon. He taught me basic HTML, and it changed my life...."
Turns out this guy does consulting work for businesses on how to set up ecommerce yada yada yada. Has a linux box @ home....
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