Simon Willison lets us in on his blogging technique - and it’s not pretty. Lots of tabbed browser windows, notepad files and other such stuff. I admit: I’m the same. Way too many tabs open, BBEdit running in the background with pages filled with links, half-finished ideas and other such scraps ready to rustle together in to an entry. What I’d really like is some software for OS X that lets me put all these ideas in to a temporary “offline blog” that I could work on at will, then when things are finished I could post them up.
Kottke on the Commercialisation of the iPod. I pretty much agree. There are a lot of things now where you get something but you can’t own it. I know people like Lessig have a lot to say about this - the control of code etc. but it all boils down to this… If I buy something I should be able to do what I want with it. If I buy a car, I should be able to open the bonnet and take a peek. Ditto if I buy a computer. Companies are playing the “new tech” card to include shit that people don’t want and then using the DMCA-inspired coding in to prevent them from doing what they want. And that’s a shame.
I’m not a religious man. In fact I’m an almost ‘unreligious’ person. I think religion is rather silly. But even I think that perhaps ‘karma’ is returning to haunt those who exploited Tomb Raider for every penny they could squeeze. According to this Reuters article, the studio that made Cradle of Life (the movie) is blaming the makers of Angel of Darkness (the PS2/PC game). Why? Because the game was sub-par (and like the film wasn’t… whatever…). Here is the problem with Tomb Raider: it’s overdone. It’s typical Hollywood - take one fairly average idea and string it for as many sequels as you can. Just to test my thesis I went on to GameFAQs and searched for ‘tomb raider’. I counted up about 10 different editions of Tomb Raider for PlayStation and PS2, and a few for PC, GameBoy etc. Now. The only game series that comes to my mind when I think of ‘ten editions’ is Final Fantasy and maybe DragonQuest. The latter I don’t know much about, but the former has one unique thing that seperates it from Tomb Raider and Co, and that is good ideas. Whether you like Final Fantasy, even if you hate RPG’s, you have to accept they have good ideas a-plenty - even if you restrict yourself to just 7, 8, 9 and 10, you’ll find more excellence for each quid than you would in any of the Tomb Raiders. That’s the problem with these games - they are contentless. And in a medium where such a premium is charged for games (£20 - £40) if you haven’t got the content, you’re not going to get my custom.
Once you start watching The Cheeky Girls video at ten to two in the morning while compiling category lists and action plans for the imminent launch. So it’s done. That was easy. The difficult bit is to come shortly - porting over all the old content and users from the previous database.
High-speed bullets and high-speed photos
A gallery of high-speed photos of bullets being fired through objects. Rather cool…
Zeldman on Web Writing
This is rather cool. The infamous Zeldman has provided a list (yep, on A List Apart) that you must consult when you pick up your pen, or the virtual equivalent of one. It really does have some fantastic advice, and if you haven’t already read it, you must. Now.
There is quite a lot of good content. I wasn’t so bothered about the technical stuff, but some of the more interesting stuff is fantastic: Indie Content Production, why do we go on the web?, how the web is becoming a glut of content and is the web at an end?.
Cheeky Cheeky!
Thank some higher being (whatever) that I’m not going abroad on holiday this year. (Ananova) Because the last thing I could face hearing as I left this country is a rendition of “We are the Cheeky Girls, we are the Cheeky Girls - you are the Cheeky boys, you are the Cheeky boys.” Why don’t people just go the whole hog and become pornstars rather than being pornstar-lite pop stars and forcing inane Eurodance down our throats whenever you flick on the radio?
Even more worrying - they’re releasing a Boney M cover tommorow. It’s enough to make me want to go deaf voluntarily. Now, I’m just trying to work out what crimes, torts or European Convention on Human Rights articles this new single and their forthcoming album might be committing. I think that it may be committing the tort of ‘nuisance’, possibly GBH against my eardrums, and it falls foul of the ECHR on Articles 2 (right to life - because after hearing The Cheeky Song your life is as good as over), 3 (prohibition of torture), 9 (freedom of thought - because after hearing aforementioned track, you won’t be thinking any longer) and 10 (because you won’t be expressing yourself in any meaningful way either - just mindlessly repeating that “we are the cheeky girls”).
IMDb Trackback
Wouldn’t it be excellent if we could post blog entries about movies via TrackBack to IMDb? That way it would be so much easier to tell IMDb about lame movies (like Bubble Boy). Each movie could have a TrackBack URL so that people could ping it with information. That would rule.
Call me cynical, but the ‘convenience’ excuse has been coming up a lot recently when the Government has been thinking of ways of infringing on our privacy further.
Gigli has crashed and burned. They’re pulling the adverts for it. And I’m laughing. “Karma” seems to have come around for J-Lo and Ben. (Thanks, Greg Story @ Airbag for the link.)
Incrementalists and Completionists
A nice bit of pop psychology on how you solve problems. I’m not sure myself - at times I’m an incrementalist (things like websites are never finished) and at times I’m a completionist (you can’t hand in an “incremental” photography project or law essay can you?).
ElectricVenom on… Thinkers v. Linkers v. Iso, Extra v. Intra and the sleazy politics of removing people from and adding people to your blogroll.
LotR Meme Check
We have some nice Elvish fonts will keep the strange homo-erotic, cable-TV-watching hobbits at bay. Fellowship has no meaning **whatsoever** thanks to these diaries….
Must go now, have to raise massive demon army to scourge the earth. Also, have manicure appointment.
As well as that, there is an unbelievable amount of crossovers between LotR and Harry Potter. Not to mention the odd Simpsons crossover.
Okay, I must get some sleep and some Tolkien.
Will users pay for content?
Slashdot discuss. Here’s the easy answer: provide quality content at a reasonable price and allow people to pay flexibly (read: PayPal, debit cards, cheques etc.)
Miss the point, BTW!
Reading Julie Birchell’s column in today’s Grauniad makes me wonder. Does she realise that the majority of complaints about reality TV, pop music and the cult of celebrity arise from their lack of quality? I don’t care about their social class or their financial futures. I really don’t give a shit. What I get annoyed with is when they decide to go out in to the world of “showbiz” without having anything to say or do. No reason. There are only twenty four hours a day. I want to fill those hours when I am not otherwise engaged in work or learnin’ with something that I’m going to enjoy. I enjoy listening to rock music because as Bono once said (I think): “Pop music tells you that everything is okay, rock music tells you that it isn’t.”
We live in a world filled with intolerant and dastardly fundamentalist Christians and lying war criminals (politicians usually). Every day some twat-in-charge decides that we ought to spend tax money on spying on private lives or ‘helping out’ the dying music industry. And I’m supposed to take that lying down, with a few doses of Girls Aloud to soothe me. Fuck that. I’m bitter and bitter people need hard rock. They need quiet stuff as well, but quiet means in tempo and volume not in content. Even if you are listening to electronic mumblings it’s from people with something to say.
My dislike of Big Brother is not because I have something against the people on the programme or that I want to keep the contestants from escaping ‘council estate’ life. Bullshit. The reason I hate Big Brother is because it’s meaningless, vapid and thoroughly content-free. I need something with substance. We don’t have this vessel of pinky-grey matter stuck between our ears so we can waste away watching Jade Goody’s life in minute detail, and I quote: “I am intelligent, but I let myself down because I can’t speak properly or spell.”
Sorry, but as much of an antithesis this is to Gen-X postmodern irony, I am finding it harder and harder to be amicable towards modern culture. While once I might have found the Cheeky Girls funny (I still do to some degree), it now leaves me cold and unsatisfied. Well, I see the irony in it, but I can’t be bothered to bask in it’s burning flash of light for much longer. I don’t demand my entertainers to have a “double first from Oxford” but I do demand that they finish primary school before entering the world of entertainment, which the majority of the Top 40 can’t seem to manage. I don’t want to be perceived as some crusty culture vulture who looks down on opera translations, but how long before we have singing monkeys releasing songs with jokes about bums? I’m all for an open market on creativity - it should not be restricted to “poncy art students”, but don’t lecture me as being “hierarchy-respecting” if I think that Atomic Kitten are talentless bozos who have made no contribution to the world of music. Because they haven’t.
“All reality TV means is the further democratisation of showbiz”. Right, let’s call bull on this. It is not a ‘democratisation’. In a true democracy justice is blind and your vote is confidential to you. In showbiz, it’s a matter of good looks and not all that much “up there”. Unlike the judges and law lords, Simon Cowell and his cohorts do not turn a blind eye to the looks of Pop Idols and Big Brother contestants. They are picked for their looks and marketed for their nooks. It isn’t democratisation. It’s just taking a charade and extending it to a wider base of entries.
The creative arts are not a democracy. They are a meritocracy. The ones with merit rule over my cultural intake and the ones without lose power just like that. As with all meritocracies, if you can’t prove your utility, then you’re on the slag dump. That rules out all the “glitter-dusted” pop monotony-bots. They can’t provide proof that they are worth the time and attention paid to them, and therefore in my mind they are worthless. In meritocracies you have winners and losers. The winner is given generations worth of respect and admiration. The losers are forgotten and can only be found as newsprint recycled for serving grub on in a dank fish-and-chip shop. In this game, Shakespeare is a winner. Jade Goody isn’t.
Red Buttons Can Suck My Cheddar
Whilst poking about in the BBC archives I found this little gem on interactive “red button” broadcasting. I can say that these things offer ittle or no value to me - if I want to ‘interact’, I can go outside or on the Internet. What the “red button” world has become is TV + Commerce which just sucks. I see enough adverts on television without pressing a little button to let me see more of them. Real interactivity would be to allow real people to get involved in programmes.
Until then ‘red buttons’ and other screen garbage is still an annoyance and a pesterence that stops me from seeing the TV programme. Unfortunately, the programme itself is rarely worth watching either.
The Nightfly
“A just machine to make big decisions / Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision” “What a beautiful world this’ll be / What a glorious time to be free”
Everytime I turn the news there is bad stuff. Wars, poverty, famine, inequality, blackmail, politics. It’s amazing that people can stay positive through it all. It’s even more amazing that we can celebrate the “beautiful world this’ll be”. Heads up, kids - there’s more to life than misery and badness.
How to Write a Textbook
An amusing look at the process of writing a textbook. (Thanks, Arts and Letters Daily)
MusicBuilder is a neat and fun application to build HTML pages featuring images of all the albums in your iTunes collection. There is also Home page maker which will do the same thing for your favourites in Internet Explorer. All good fun!
This is why the Internet exists.
Not to provide information to people around the globe. Not to provide global communication at a low cost. No. It’s so you can see stick figures impersonating Christopher Walken in the Weapon of Choice video. (Thanks, MeFi)
Write a story, go to jail
According to a recent Wired News article, a guy is being tried in Oklahoma at the moment for writing a story. While I think it’s a load of poppycock, it does raise an interesting legal point. The statute states an almost incohate offence. In Britain we have the incohate act of attempt and to prove it, it must be shown that you committed an act “more than merely preparatory”. This is the sort of situation that is not even “merely preparatory” - it doesn’t prepare for the act. He was just screwing around.
The Economist have an article on web logs at the moment describing their potential for business, profits and all that other stuff they bleet about.
Plastic.com have got an article about yet another Christian idiot, this time on the bench in Alabama who wants to use his courtroom as a place to put a big statue with the Ten Commandments on.
Young people are idiots, remember
Whilst reading some of the responses on the MeFi thread, chill said what I’ve thought about how young people are portrayed in the media.
OK, BBC3 sucks but don’t just pull the plug, look at why it sucks (it is indistinguishable for Sky One/E4 and forgets that some “Yoofs” actually have brains) and improve upon it.
Too true. BBC3 seems to offer nothing - the ‘news’ on there consists of celebrity meandering (who needs the Hutton Inquiry when Justin Timberlake substitutes so well for real news?). The channel seems intent on inflicting enormous amounts of Fame Academy on the world.
My problems are endemic of how young people are dealt with by the media - as if they are idiots. Children’s TV is filled with vapid personalities with little to say and big booming voices to say it in. Subtelty is a lost cause in TV-land: if it isn’t wrapped round a brick and smashed through people’s eardrums at maximum volume they won’t “get it”. And whatever problems the rest of the media has, it’s amplified by childrens programming.
I don’t claim to be a mastermind, but why is there some commonly held belief that all “youths” are mobile-phone toting, Max Power reading retards decked out in stripy sports gear listening to ‘four to the floor’ dance music. News has to be repurposed for a Radio 1 audience - given a ‘beaty’ background and screamed.
Perhaps we’re genetic mutations, but it’s nice to think that we’d be given a little bit more credit than being told that “you are interested in Justin Timberlake - no objections”. The BBC is supposed to stand for more than that. Unbiased reporting and balanced, intelligent commentary. That’s what I’ve come to regard the BBC as standing for. On BBC3 tonight, there is one and a half hours of Fame Academy, a movie, a “shocking” documentary of a U.S. GUM clinic, some tedious programme about ‘beauty’. Probably all packed in typical ‘punchy’ style necessary to hit the youth market. And all bathed in the beautiful lack of content that distinguishes the youth media market from anything for the older generation.
I haven’t really been following the Hutton inquiry, but from the little bits I’ve read about it, it sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than the MTV Music Awards. How fucked up is that? I’m finding more interest out of the going-ons of a government inquiry than I am for the “cool, hip” MTV that I’m supposed to spend all day worshipping. Why? Because the former is relevant to what’s actually going on.
The message that needs to be learnt by dumb media execs is this: “kids aren’t dumb - they don’t suddenly grow brains when they are twenty-five. Stop acting like it.”
This guy rivals goatse for sickness. Twenty bloody beef patties and cheese. That’s disgusting. That’s fucking sick. And, by the looks of it, it’s a standard order dish. (Found at Kottke)
Kent Newsome thinks that TechMeme has “evolved from the New York Times of the blogosphere to the Wall Street Journal of the blogosphere. I don’t read the Wall Street Journal for one simple reason. It bores me to tears… layering a media slant on top of the larger business focus makes it even less techy and more something else. Something less interesting. Some square thing trying to get stuffed into a round hole.”
I’m just beginning to use Subversion, and this blog post seems to explain what I need to know. I’m doing it all within Eclipse, which is brilliant as it includes all the features from oXygen… The Version Control with Subversion book is online too.
