"a new kind of child porn"
A very long thread at Metafilter after someone suggests that teenage girls with webcams is "a new kind of child porn".
March 2001
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March 27, 2001
Managing Content on the Web
Seybold Group feature: Managing Content on the Web.
March 21, 2001
OpenContent
"OpenContent's only excuse for existing is to 'facilitate the prolific creation of freely available, high-quality, well-maintained Content.' This Content can then be used in an infinity of ways, restricted only by the imagination of the user. One of the most significant uses may be supporting instruction and helping people learn. 'What is content?', you ask. Content is just about anything that isn't executable. If you're interested in freely sharing your software, visit the Open Source Initiative or the the Free Software Foundation. If you're interested in freely sharing content, read on."
March 20, 2001
bad news
I don't like reading the news all that much these days. What I see doesn't jibe with what I found in the 1970 edition of the World Book, the one I used to memorize as a child. While all the pieces of meme fit together, the puzzle, once solved, reveals difficult and unpleasant truths. Don't wonder what is wrong with "globalization": read about the courts created under NAFTA that operate in secret and allow corporations to sue governments when they don't like an aspect of public policy. Or the media industry's attempts to create a universal copy protection technology for consumer PCs. Who's world is this?
March 19, 2001
more on weblogging software
For the past few months I have been looking for weblogging software that could possibly replace or supplement Blogger, but it has been a frustrating search. The feature that no one seems to have, and this makes little sense to me, is the ability to backdate entries. I would like a system that could handle the whole of a journal, and while I am not as proflific as some, I have been doing this for awhile.
I like the idea of running something on my own box that can parse XML pages, one for each of my entries, but my Perl skills are minimal and I don't know Python at all. Stay tuned.
March 18, 2001
Wittgenstein's Mistress
In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.
Somebody is living in the Louvre, certain of the messages would say. Or in the National Gallery.
Naturally they would only say that when I was in Paris or in London. Somebody is living in the Metropolitan Museum, being what they would say when I was still in New York.
Nobody came, of course.
The first lines of David Markson's 1988 novel, Wittgenstein's Mistress. Article by Keith Gessen at Feed.
March 15, 2001
transform
After a few weeks of design I am getting back into the content management challenge as a real, solvable problem. A
March 14, 2001
old stories
Some days I want to be everything and know everything, and other days the snow pulls at my feet when I walk and I have nothing. So I read about old times and old stories, because I think that if I understand the beginnings of things the end will make more sense. And the apartment is too chilly, and there is too much snow.
March 9, 2001
More dreams
More dreams: S Club Seven. One of the girls said that over the last two years one of the boys had become horrible. It was like an expose. Then something about the different crimes they had committed, or how they would do crimes. Then: Someone I didn't recognize showed me a piece of paper with quotes (I assume from his Web site) from a former co-worker who used to work with us and then left suddenly last year. The experience was "alone, unsupported, isolated." I became angry and went to his office; it is small and has no windows. There was a strange looking webcam device on his desk. I played with it. "Did you know he took his person year with him?" I yelled at the strange fellow with me, I began to toss stuff around the office. I got more and more destructive in the office. The fellow wasn’t there. It didn't matter, it wouldn’t matter if he was there.
I go down stairs. I know I’m at work, but it doesn’t look like it: the spaces were more open, large staircases connecting the floors. There was a large group of people sitting at school desks in a foyer. They were watching someone in a room who was teaching them, but hiding inside a bit of furniture, peeking out. They were all looking forward. I tryed to talk to someone but they just looked at me like there is something wrong with me.
March 8, 2001
Dream, March 8th
I woke up from a dream: Some sort of odd gothic world. Another planet that someone calls Mars that was going to invade the Earth. Cory was there. Something was happening but I don't remember what.
Then... I was at the reunion concert of a 1980s band but I can't quite... There are two men, older, run down, sitting in a green room, waiting to perform. They talk to me, and I am uneasy with them. Eventully I figure out that they must be the Smiths, although they don't act like I would expect the Smiths to act. Whatever that is.
March 3, 2001
on the shelf
On the shelf: Rickard and Mitchell's Unexplained Phenomena: A Rough Guide Special, The Sopranos - The Complete First Season, Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques, Paul Levinson's The Soft Edge : A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution, Donald D. Hoffman Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See, Alan Cooper's About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design, Hebdige's Subculture, the Meaning of Style.
I expect the lack of fiction is a good indication of my own current imaginative state.
