Category: Random

When I went out for Time Out New York‘s fifth birthday party, I didn’t expect for one minute that the event would be as large as it was. Nor, for that matter, did I expect them to put up a page with photos from the evening. Had I known this, I probably wouldn’t have gone to sleep on the stairs at midnight. In the meantime I can console myself with the thought that a huge publishing success in the Big Apple still sticks up photos of its get togethers on the web, just like every person with a homepage has been doing since the dawn of internet time.

“Metafilter error messages have become the Oracles for information on weblogging elistism. More news at ten…”

The World’s Best Newspaper Website?

Astonishing, ground-breaking, “future of the web” kind of stuff – the International Herald Tribune‘s site screams class while being incredibly functional. It’s not immediately intuitive because it really is such a leap into the future, but it comes with this kind of functionality:

• CSS and DHTML coding keeps the important task bar continually on-screen.
• Every article can have its text size increased on the fly or be presented in three column or one column formats.
• Every page is immediately printer-ready.
• All ad-banners can be hidden if they are too intrusive.
• All articles are database driven and allocated to a subject index and a region index.
• And most impressively, all articles can be “clipped” by clicking on link to the left of their taster. The taster flies across the screen and deposits itself on the floating toolbar. You can then review your clippings at your leisure, having browsed the tasters in full, without having to continually click back to an index page.

Clear, elegant and astonishing. The bar is raised quite substantially.

I have no idea what this is, but it’s really entertaining and I want to know more. Can someone send me a copy of “Bust”? While we are on the subject of strange sites, can someone please explain to me who would invest in the URL “LooOfTheYear.com“?

An extraordinarily depressing view of myself as expressed by Colorquiz.com:

Your Existing Situation
Active, outgoing, and restless. Feels frustrated by the slowness with which events develop along the desired lines. This leads to irritability, changeability, and lack of persistence when pursuing a given objective.

Your Stress Sources
Wishes to be independent, unhampered, and free from any limitation or restriction, other than those which he imposes of himself or by his own choice and decision.

Your Restrained Characteristics
Willing to become emotionally involved and able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity. Remains emotionally unattached even when involved in a close relationship.

Your Desired Objective
Wants to make a favorable impression and be regarded as a special personality. Is therefore constantly on the watch to see whether on the watch to see whether he is succeeding in this and how others are reacting to him; this makes him feel he is in control. Uses tactics cleverly in order to obtain influence and special recognition. Susceptible to the esthetic or original.

Your Actual Problem
Strongly resists outside influence and any interference with his freedom to make his own decisions and plans. Works to establish and strengthen his own position.

I must be the last person in the world to have noticed that disinformation has redesigned itself. It’s strange to look at it now, with the X-files collapsing under itself and conspiracies and abductions feeling somehow like yesterdays news. I wonder whether it gets less page impressions nowadays. It’s also interesting to note that when the revolution comes, it will be grey, black, white and red. Still.

So it’s nearly December and where are all the Oscar films? There’s normally a good block of them appearing around now. More to the point, can you think of any movies from the last year that instantly said to you, “That’s Oscar material”? It’s still more telling because of the block of films that have been appearing on DVD and video over the last few months. Movies like Three Kings, Being John Malkovich and American Beauty show the standard of last years films and you can take them home. But is there anything of any comparable quality in the cinemas? I’m afraid not.

I’ve been trying to keep it on the backburner in my head, but I know that I’ll feel completely appalling if I don’t get to go. Last year around March it was pretty much all I could think about. I am of course talking about SXSW. Katy is also pining to go. The question is: Will we find the money in time?

We’re rapidly approaching adbusters.org‘s Buy Nothing day. I’ve always viewed this as an intelligent and resourceful way to demonstrate resistance, but I’m now beginning to think that I was wrong. Because this event does nothing so much as acknowledge that our sole point of resistance is as “consumers” – something that I think is fundamentally wrong.

The next stage of culture jamming could very well originate at adbusters.tao.ca, which strips the movement of many of its trappings and goes for the jugular. Hence: Steal Something Day. What can I say? I’m actually advocating this. Choose your target carefully and in line with your principles…

In the old days it was much much easier. Politicians were only celebrities in America. In the Uk, they were scruffy, mad looking people, often with eyes pointed in different directions and with a chin continually covered in drool. And that was before Thatcher’s gradual lunacy pushed her over the brink into Hawk-Nosed Hitlerite. But now … well now politics is all about image, which is why William Hague will never become Prime Minister. But who will suceed him as leader of the Conservative party? And will his looks (and university sexual misdeeds) carry the day? Only you can decide.