waz under?
waz under? is a useful and interesting Perl script for reading on the comment tags on a Web page. Also available as a handy bookmarklet. From bitterpill.org.
August 2001
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August 31, 2001
August 30, 2001
Not that he wasn't real, just that he was real plus
I remember running into Dustin Hoffman on a rainy New York street some years ago; he had only a month earlier played the part of the Lomans' pale and nervous next-door neighbor, Bernard, in a recording session with Lee Cobb of Death of a Salesman. Now as he approached, counting the cracks in the sidewalk, hatless, his wet hair dripping, a worn coat turned up, I prepared to greet him, thinking that with his bad skin, hawkish nose, and adenoidal voice some brave friend really ought to tell him to go into another line of work. As compassionately as possible I asked what he was doing now, and with a rather apologetic sigh he said, after several sniffles, "Well, they want me for a movie." "Oh?" I felt relieved that he was not about to collapse in front of me in a fit of depression. "what's the movie?"
"It's called The Graduate," he said.
"Good part?"
"Well, yeah, I guess it's the lead."
In no time at all this half-drowned puppy would have millions of people at his feet all over the world. And once having ascended to power, so to speak, it became hard even for me to remember him when he was real. Not that he wasn't real, just that he was real plus. And the plus is the mystery of the patina, the glow that power paints on the elected human being.
Arthur Miller, "American Playhouse: On politics and the art of acting," Harper's Magazine, June 2001.
Everytime I turn it on, it's Gary Condit!
You know, I don't spend all day and all night surfing the Web and cranking out high-quality alt.media. Sometimes I like to sit back and let someone else do the driving. Gee, I wonder what's on CNN, the all-news channel, right now. Maybe they'll be able to tell me how the vote in East Timor went today. Let's see... hey, they're talking about Gary Condit! Everytime I turn it on, it's Gary Condit!
August 29, 2001
Whatever Happened to the Humble Home Page?
Adam Druckman asks Whatever Happened to the Humble Home Page?: "No, I'm not referring to Sony.com. Or the front page of CNN's Internet edition. Rather, I'm thinking about the lowly personal home page, the Web's first official foray into personal publishing... So what happened to the personal home page? Did it die? No, it just changed... Instead of home pages, today's budding Web publishers create Web logs (or "blogs," as they are often called). Essentially, a blog is a daily journal -- each day, the blogger posts a short thought, comment or Web link. The next day, a new entry appears."
August 27, 2001
What is Palm to do?
What is Palm to do? My Palm III has been having problems lately. Three weeks ago I turned it on to find six months of un-synced-due-to-hubris data wiped. My own fault; I never back up enough, and had jammed so many goofy apps on my Palm, with so many custom databases, that I was scared to run Backup Buddy in case my PC hung. It's working now, but flakey, and although I don't know the exact problem, I know enough not to squeeze it, lest it be wiped again. Common sense, I suppose: don't squeeze the Palm.
So, I've been looking for something new, and doing a bit of research, and discovered to my horror that Palm is in trouble; in fact, the whole platform, the Palm OS, is in trouble. Handspring is bleeding money, and the Windows CE-driven Compaq iPaq is the new hot thing. The editor of Pen Computing even said he dumped his Palm for an iPaq.
A 'new form of minstrelsy'
Do you think the stereotypes in gansta rap make it a new form of minstrelsy?
There's a certainly much more anger in rap than I've ever evidenced in coon songs. Coon songs seem more willing to placate. In the rap which we find degrading, you can hear the rage, you can hear the anger, you can hear the self-hate very clearly defined, in the absence of the same kind of tyranny that those who lived in the coon-song period faced. Those rappers are caught in a trick bag, because it's a way to make unconscionable sums of money and a way to absent yourself from any sense of moral responsibility. It's all in the name of 'that's he way we are.' Well, is there more to us than being just the way we are? Do we have no responsibility? Do we have no sense of dignity?
Harry Belafonte, quoted in The New York Times Magazine, August 26th, 2001.
Despair, Inc.
"I'd like to invite you to learn more about Despair, Inc. by reading the following articles. But I won't, because the information contained herein is as grotesquely spun as the news you enjoy on nightly television... Consider yourself warned." - E.L. Kersten, Ph.D., Founder and COO
Atomic Books
Atomic Books: "Literary Finds for Mutated Minds, Alternative/Underground Books, Comics & Fanzines."
August 26, 2001
The Philadelphia Airport has rocking chairs
The Philadelphia Airport has rocking chairs. They are sturdy, white, all identical, perhaps purchased at Walmart, and placed usually three together between plastic plants, or facing a window. Their slogan: "Think of us as a shopping mall with a landing strip." But they can't beat Washington Reagan nee National, with its Smithsonian Store and Sushi Bar.
I was in the air for three hours over Baltimore. There were thunder storms over Washington Thursday night, and the one hour flight went on and on. Stupidly I hadn't had dinner in Philly, thinking I'd be on the ground in Washington before 8. Something like 11, instead.
The hotel driver, Charles, waited for me, and we stopped at a Hardee's on the way to Fredericksburg so I cou8ld gobble my first roast beef in months. I left Ottawa at 3 pm, and arrived at my destination at 11 pm.
August 20, 2001
Keeping the public in check
Angry: the article in the weekend Ottawa Citizen about police surveillance of the protest movement. I assume there are no police dossiers concerning the Fraser Institute or international media bully Conrad Black. I wonder if they realize what effect this is going to have on so many of us that had been standing on the sidelines.
Love and Rockets
Nice piece at Salon about Love and Rockets. I always found it a hard book to follow, because I read Music for Mechanics in one sitting on the floor of CKDU during a funding drive party. You can't tell the players without a scorecard. I didn't jump in with both feet again until the early 90s, then it disappeared, and now its back. Maggie and Hopey are in their 40s now, and I'll have to check it out.
Third World-style political oppression right here at home
Another benefit of globalization: Third World-style political oppression right here at home: From the Ottawa Citizen, of all places: "Officers from various police forces and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service have infiltrated, spied on or closely monitored organizations that are simply exercising their legal right to assembly and free speech. Targets of such intelligence operations in recent years... [include] a senior citizens' satire group that sings about social injustice... Individuals have been arrested for handing out literature condemning police tactics... "
August 16, 2001
organic information design
Benjamin Fry, organic information design: "Design techniques for static information are well understood, their descriptions and discourse thorough and well-evolved. But these techniques fail when dynamic information is considered. There is a space of highly complex systems for which we lack deep understanding because few techniques exist for visualization of data whose structure and content are continually changing. To approach these problems, this thesis introduces a visualization process titled Organic Information Design. The resulting systems employ simulated organic properties in an interactive, visually refined environment to glean qualitative facts from large bodies of quantitative data generated by dynamic information sources."
August 13, 2001
Monday the 13th
Back from Toronto. Two days of project management seminar and one and half days of vacation. Not sure if two days off can really be called a vacation. The other-worldly weather, humid and hot, reminded me of a science fiction story I read as a kid: it never stops raining on Venus, and these lizard people kill you. It's the sound of it that drives everybody batty. Sweat drips onto my glasses, onto the inside.
I've lost my copy of Black & White. It's somewhere obvious. I feel I should be playing it, especially now that the villagers can play soccer and the beast will dance to the Twins.
I had to have a treat this afternoon and sat in the window of the Second Cup staring at a dark pregnant sky. When the rain came, it seemed to all come at once, with great sheets of it sending people scurrying. And somehow the sun shone through it. Very much like a movie.
August 7, 2001
changingtheclimate.com
changingtheclimate.com: "The idea of this Web site is to stigmatize the insanity of mindless American consumerism and vapid status acquisition. The all too common image of the single commuter, mom on an errand to the local shopping center, or parent taking their kid to softball practice in a bloated gas guzzling behemoth is enraging those citizens who have a sliver of conscience regarding their lifestyle and the environment."
August 6, 2001
Because of the humidity
Finishing up a long weekend, after several weeks of waiting, with the only consolation being the air conditioning in the office. D is trying to work on her thesis, but if she runs the air conditioner we might blow a fuse. Today I don't know how hot is was, maybe 34 C, though it felt like more because of the humidity.
So it's been hard to do any writing at all, and I may take a longer break still. We're off to Toronto on Wednesday, a work/vacation of sorts. Scraping moments together is the order of things these days. I'll be in training for a couple of days, and I hope to see old friends after that, and then back to Ottawa. And time ticks away.
CMSWatch.com
CMSWatch.com provides independent information, news, opinion, analysis, and software evaluations about content management systems and products.
August 3, 2001
Metababy
"Metababy is an experiment in collaboration, a Web site created by its visitors. You're welcome to post anything you want on Metababy, and anybody else is free to change it... To participate, just navigate to a URL on the site and click the "Edit" button in the lower, right-hand corner. If the page already exists, you can change it. If the page doesn't exist -- if you get a 404 -- you can create it."
TeeVee
"TeeVee is a critically-acclaimed Website created by a group of malcontents, most of whom went to college together and most of whom work in the media, the computer industry, or both. We've been given a grade of 'A' by Entertainment Weekly twice, inexplicably praised by Don Imus, and mentioned in passing by various minor Internet columns. We're also available for parties."
BLAMMO
BLAMMO: "it's a bomb -- sexy stylin' satire where slice of life meets worst of the web. upbeat. interactive. intelligent. twisted. pop. make a b-line for BLAMMO! ... a satirical work of fiction, BLAMMO is an original product brought to you by
x.64 new media lab. any
resemblance to people or situations alive or dead is entirely incidental."
CROON
CROON: "Songs have the magical power to evoke your memories, like musical Madeleine cookies. CROON is a place to talk about those memories. Got a song that reminds you of something? Tell us about it."
3:AM
3:AM is fiction, poetry, and commentary by a group of mostly liberal thirty-somethings residing, for the most part, in the American south.
August 2, 2001
The problem isn't too much greed, but too much cowardly greed
"Spineless lenders, weak-kneed investors and meddling regulators intent on reducing risk pose a greater threat to the global economy than the volatile financial markets... 'The critic's image of the global financial markets as a giant casino is wrong," [writes British financial writer Daniel Ben-Ami], 'On the contrary, the modern financial markets are more often characterized by a fear of risk-taking than a reckless disregard for danger.'"
Camworld: Content Management Systems
Cameron Barrett has a bare-bones site about content management systems. It lists a few platforms.
August 1, 2001
Alternativa
"Alternativa, a web directory for web sites be they design, art, writings, personal narratives or any other inspirational web sites."
WryBread
WryBread: Prank phone calls, Apple tech support recordings, guerrilla audio performances...
Soviet posters
Posters from the former Soviet Union reflect the official ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Though they were printed in massive quantities, most were, for some reason, destroyed in the early 90's
DALiWorld
DALi: "Imagine a virtual world teeming with artificial life. This virtual world is an ocean, and the ocean is populated with a diverse and abundant ecology. Sea horses float among coral reefs, schools of fish dart and weave to evade hungry predators, a mother humpback whale and her calf migrate to cooler waters to feed... Myriad beautiful autonomous creatures are caught in the web of life that plays out before your eyes. As a user you are able to build and influence the ecology of the world, sculpt the surroundings, breed artificial life, or create new life forms from scratch. Sound like the sort of thing you would like to have running on your computer?"
National Security Agency UFO Documents
National Security Agency UFO Documents Index: "The documents listed on this page were located in response to the numerous requests received by NSA on the subject of Unidentified Flying Objects. In 1980, NSA was involved in Civil Action No. 80-1562, Citizens Against Unidentified Flying Objects Secrecy v. National Security Agency. Documents related to that ligitation are marked with *. "XXXXX" has been inserted in a title if a portion of the title has been deleted prior to release. To select a document click on the document title, and wait for the PDF version to be downloaded to your local viewer. Approximate file sizes are given after each selection for user convenience."
Coming to Terms
Coming to Terms: "But the problem is that the term 'information architect' just isn't a good description for this broad practice of work. And as Mark Twain said, the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between 'lightning' and 'lightning bug.' In fact, I'd argue it's becoming a jargony term that's in some ways preventing clients and co-workers from understanding what we do."
Web Design Patterns
Web Design Patterns includes useful samples and descriptions of navigation (Bread crumbs, Double tab, Meta Navigation, Outgoing Links, Sitemap, Split Navigation, Matrix Navigation, Repeated Menu), page elements (News box, Home, List builder, List browser, Tabbing, Paging, Wizard, Parts Selector), searching (Search, Advanced Search, Search Area) and e-commerce (Shopping cart, Identify, Registering).
comics :: exercises in style
comics :: exercises in style: "Exercises in Style was inspired by a work of the same name by the French writer Raymond Queneau. In that book, Queneau spun as many variations as he could — over 100 — out of a mundane, two-part text about two chance encounters with a mildly irritating character during the course of a day. He started by telling it in every conceivable tense, then by doing it in free verse and as a sonnet, as a telegram, in pig latin, as a series of exclamations, in an indifferent voice... you name it."
The sameness of interfaces
The sameness of interfaces by Matt Webb: "A few interfaces to traversing a space are the standard Windows GUI, a Nokia mobile telephone menu system, a text adventure, DOS. Put aside what the entire map looks like and how it's presented on the screen — whether it's a network or a hierarchy. Put aside how the memory of navigation is presented, other windows open in the background, or a numerical crumbtrail in the corner. What remains? What remains is for each node there are a number of exits and a number of items attached to it."
