Category: Random

So I’ve been thinking about the term to ‘force yourself to do something’ and kind of reeling at the absurdity of it all. I mean how can you force yourself to do something? Somewhere in your head you have one version of yourself pushing another version of yourself to do something they don’t want to do? Presumably kicking and screaming? But they’re both you, right? Not just the one that’s doing the forcing, but also the one being forced. So you might as well say that you were, “trying to resist forcing yourself to do something”. That would be equally bunk, right? I mean it would make as much sense, and realistically is a feeling I’m more familiar with.

So both the forced and the forcer ‘you’ are component parts of you. You can’t just identify with one of them. Which makes me think a bit about free will and which parts of the mind are genetically encoded and whether the part of the brain that needs to be forced is somehow being characterised as base matter – like we used to think of the body as being – with the forcer being our animating spark of divine will trying to get the corpse-like flesh of the body moving in a useful direction – the lightning to our Frankenstein’s monster of lethargy? Wow, that was a long sentence.

So basically saying that you had to force yourself to do something is a bit like saying that a rock is in constant battle with itself about whether to sit there or whether to get up and go for a walk. I mean, realistically it just stays where it’s put because that’s what it does. Whether you do things or not isn’t about internal conflict, it’s surely just about following your dictates – either dictates to animate yourself or dictates not to do so.

So why does it sometimes seem such a bloody enormous battle to convince oneself to even start doing a piece of work? What kind of stupid fucking evolutionary process ends up with procrastination, paralysis and apparent indolence? I mean, what kind of creature does well in the world by sitting at home in front of a computer for three hours in the early evening trying to motivate itself to write something about set-top boxes?! Where’s the reproductive advantage there?!

Stupid bloody world that should make me be this way and then make me neurotic about it.

• What happens to the water-cooler moment when TV is consumed on-demand?
  Michael Sippey on the creation of episode-based micro-communities for people who consume TV episodes after-the-fact…
  (categories: michaelsippey postbroadcast television tv tvseries broadcast pvr dvd alias media mediaconsumption grouplistening)
• Kevin Spacey ‘to play Lex Luthor’
  “Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey, 45, has been signed up to play Lex Luthor in the Superman sequel, due out in 2006”
  (categories: film kevinspacey briansinger superman superheroes comicbooks adaptations cinema movies)
• The controller of BBC2 is in hiding – according to the Daily Mail at least…
  “BBC2 controller Roly Keating, his wife and their three young children were driven out of their £1million house after a Christian group posted his private address and telephone number on its website.”
  (categories: bbc censorship christianity christian bbc2 jerryspringer jerryspringertheopera controversy religion blasphemy god depressing governance)
• Dan Hon on the whole Jerry Springer ‘controversy’
  “I can feel the moral fibre within me shrivelling as I type. In fact, I am sure now, more than ever before, that Jesus is a nappy-wearing gay baby. I had my suspicions before…”
  (categories: jerryspringer bbc censorship christianity christian god bbc2 jerryspringertheopera controversy religion blasphemy depressing)
• Check out the comments after this blog post
  How depressing. Comment spammers are – I think – even more reprehensibly bottom-feeding than the human charity spam on the streets that harrass you on the way to work…
  (categories: commentspam weblog weblogs blog blogs comments spam spammers gamingsystem arseholes bottomfeeders vile)
• New favourite “Have I Got New For You”-style guest publication of the week – this week it’s The Dairy Reporter!
  Includes stories like, “A Tetra Pak subsidiary has found a dipping and coating solution for novelty ice creams, which it hopes will eliminate sub-standard ice cream coatings ‚Äì welcome news for ice cream manufacturers…”
  (categories: dairyreporter guestpublication icecream diary cheese milk yogurt weird news industry)
• Clearly faked ‘iHome’ purports to be the new Apple product (but Media Centre – rather than Center? I think not…)
  I’ve already linked to it in the main weblog, but I want to keep it for later, cos it’s a neat fake…
  (categories: apple rumours expo ihome mediacentre mediacenter cupertino photographs fake)
• David Galbraith’s predictions for 2005
  Most interesting one: “Googlets – People cash out and leave Google, creating a startup frenzy in SF”
  (categories: google prediction davidgalbraith 2005 future expectations business technology IPO microsoft)
• Kottke’s questions for “Design for Web 2.0”
  This is an old one but really interesting. Lots of questions here that are worth asking
  (categories: design future discussion debate usability innovation groups socialsoftware brochureware ux userexperience userresearch ethnography designprocess process web2.0)
• Daring Fireball on the rumours surrounding upcoming Apple Products
  “It’s not hard to imagine that first-day reaction to the Mini would have been better had rumors not set the false expectation that they were going to sell for $100-150…”
  (categories: apple expo rumour software hardware imac osx ipod ipodmini rumor thinksecret daringfireball lawsuit)
• Guardian Review of “The Subterranean Railway” by Christian Wolmar
  Thanks to the 2lmc-ers for mentioning this. Key quote: “This new book is an entry-level history of the Underground, and it becomes clear from reading it that the faults of the system were built into it from the moment the first sod was turned.”
  (categories: architecture systems transport underground book subterranean railway train london londonunderground history design)
• G-Cans photos of Tokyo’s massive underground flood and water systems
  I was sure I’d posted this before, but I can’t find it anywhere on delicious or on the main weblog, so I guess I didn’t. Stunning pictures – like something from Quake…
  (categories: gcans g-cans tokyo japan architecture flood water underground systems structure moody atmospheric photographs photos pictures photography beautiful disturbing quake halflife game design)
• An article on overcoming procrastination…
  (1) I’ve not read it, but it’s sat in my to read pile forever so I’m giving up and sticking it in delicious for later. (2) I’m only ploughing through that pile because I’m trying to avoid doing the Apple piece… No joke. I’m a disaster…
  (categories: procrastination work workingpractice motivation selfcontrol selfdiscipline discipline depressing ironic lazy)
• Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)
  “What are you doing up so late, staring at the computer screen reading this? For that matter, what am I doing up late writing this at 11pm? Are we all nuts?”
  (categories: sleep science circadianrhythms hormones biology work)
• Dan Heaf and partner declare Airport Express war upon each other…
  Bloc Party vs. George Michael… The dynamics of a thousand upcoming familial battles…
  (categories: airportexpress airtunes music audio technology newmusicalfunctionality apple osx itunes ipod)
• US Army was interested in emerging technologies that might allow you to make straight men beg for sex with other men…
  “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.” The US Army are – bluntly – sick fucking fuck fucks…
  (categories: freaky funny sick homophobic vile gay homosexuality chemicalweapons morale army usarmy usa america americans)
• Videora combines RSS with BitTorrent to create a download-based PVR equivalent
  Mooted a lot last year, very interesting stuff, windows-only which kind of sucks, apparently no better than the RSS plug-in for Azureus…
  (categories: rss bittorrent downloads tv television ondemand pvr download windows azureus feed feeds programmes)
• Ways to fix your life: Quit your job
  And I quote: In some ways, now is a better time than ever to quit. “If you’ve been at one company for too long, corporate America figures that you are a dud,” says Barbara Sher…
  (categories: job employment career careerprospects promotion dedication reward work workplace workpractices workingprocess business life)
• Homer Simpson uses tabbed browsing
  Dumb old link. I shouldn’t have posted it, but I did because tabbed browsing is awesome and non-tabbed browsing sucks…
  (categories: humour homersimpson webbrowsers browsers browser tab tabbedbrowsing tabs userinterface funny cartoon tv television)
• US Postal Service reached an accomodation with the band The Postal Service
  “Each side stood to gain from the strengths of the other. One thing is for sure, Tamborello and Gibbard wouldn’t have received the same cooperation if they chose the name ‘Outlook Express.'”
  (categories: postalservice mail post uspostalservice band music litigation law conflict trademark copyright name)
• February will be Gay History Month
  I feel like I should do something to celebrate it, or educate. I wish I could do something with work. I’ll have to think more about this…
  (categories: gay history gayhistory gayhistorymonth lesbian transgender politics campaign campaigning education)
• Spam breeds more spam
  Weblogs where comment spam is left untended appears to attract even more comment spam. Which would suggest that it should be quite easy for Google or whoever to start redressing the page rank (if they’re not doing it already)…
  (categories: google pagerank commentspam movabletype weblog weblogs blog blogs comments spammers scum searchengines scripts automation)
• Insane Christian comic book that’s designed to demonstrate why Evolution is bunk
  I can’t even begin to put into words how terrifying I find this.
  (categories: evolution religion propaganda christianity bunk creationism intelligentdesign parody caricature)

Given my Zen-like state of calm today, this is potentially not the kind of thing I should be posting on my site in full view of my boss (hey dude). But it’s funny and it reminds me of a couple of weird working times in my life and the middle of one particularly appalling break-up and anyway, I’m still trying to procrastinate around writing up the Apple piece. Again. Sigh.

This is all inspired and illustrated by the book outline of How to be Creative by Hugh MacLeod, that I’ve just been reading about (again) over at his site. Early 30s people sure are a grouchy, disillusioned, stroppy, self-important and cynical bunch of bastards, aren’t they!

PS. Be warned, the linklog today is bloody enormous. It’s going to arrive around midnight with the force of a small atomic device. If you actually read any of the links I post, set aside a good hour tomorrow to work your way through them. Or just mark the damn thing as read in your RSS reader and skip on to something more useful.

So I watched Jerry Springer The Opera last night on BBC2. It was pretty rude, pretty funny and had an interesting and surprisingly sophisticated philosophical outlook. I’m delighted that we live in a country where such things are broadcastable and I can’t really see why anyone would have had such a problem with it that they would have try and have it banned – particularly given the almost grotesque amounts of warnings that were placed around the show to try and avoid offending people. This was much less bizarre or troubling television than – say – the live Autopsy that was on Channel 4 a while back, or Derren Brown playing Russian Roulette.

The response around the net has been interesting and varied. Here’s a brief selection of some of the most interesting comments I’ve read on the subject:

• Frankie Roberto on Jerry Springer
• Martin Belam on Jerry Springer
• Stewart Lee responds to criticisms of Jerry Springer

Martin also mentions the BBC’s Points of View Messageboard where there’s been a lot of debate about the show – most of the comments that I’ve read at least have been highly supportive:

• Well Done BBC for Jerry Springer
• Jerry Springer – Enjoyable Television
• Gerry Springer Opera
• Crazy Arguments to justify Jerry Springer
• Jerry Springer The Opera – ABSOLUTE DISGRACE
• Jerry Springer is hardly worth such controversy

I should point out again that I’m also delighted that we live in a country where people are free to protest against things like Jerry Springer as well, and I understand that there is a complexity here about what is appropriate or innappropriate to broadcast. Certainly I’ve complained in the past to the BBC about things I think are unfair or dangerous or damaging. Sometimes I think the complexities of BBC policy on this stuff aren’t known to people outside the organisation. If you’re interested in knowing what the BBC thinks is appropriate or innapropriate (and what it judges itself against), then I can heartily recommend reading The Producer Guidelines which are well-polished and thorough.

• Bill Gates on Creative Commies “There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.”
• The various costumes shown in the credits for the new series of Alias The new series of Alias started a few days ago in the States and once again they decide to change the premise and do a bit of a reboot… This time, however, I’m not quite as impressed as previously…
• Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston announce split I don’t know why this is interesting, to be honest, but somehow it is…
• BBC braced for Springer criticism They’re broadcasting Jerry Springer – The Opera tonight on BBC2 and this will – apparently – cause civilisation to collapse
• File-swappers ready new network “Legal attacks on websites that help people swap pirated films have forced the development of a system that could be harder to shut down.”
• My dumb fontified handwriting keeps turning up in the strangest places I did it in an early version of fontifier before you could do punctuation marks. And now I’m loath to try and add those characters cos they’ll look weird, and don’t want to do it again in case it’s not as good…

A while back I started getting really interested in home entertainment appliances and the future of pervasive computing in the home and stuff, but I haven’t really had enough time to really pursue my thoughts in this area too much. But earlier this year I started trying to assemble a picture in my head of what an Apple home entertainment appliance for the home would look like and how it would work. I had a really interesting conversation around this stuff with Kevin Marks in August or something, which got me fired up a bit more and several more with people at work that were variably useful. At a certain point I determined that pretty much everything I was thinking about was pretty unadventurous and everyone knew it already so I kind of left my sketches and doodles aside and only fiddled with them when no one was looking. Well anyway, the long and the short of it is that everyone’s now speculating about what Apple are going to release next week and a fair few of the speculations are unsurprisingly in the same path as my doodles were – particularly the fake mock-ups of an Apple Media Centre that have been circulating and Webb’s recent thoughts. So I’m going to try and drag everything together as quickly as possible and slap it up over the next 24 hours while it still might be of some limited interest to people… Um… That’s the lot for now, though…

• Who was Ayn Rand anyway: ‘Her novels were based upon the archetype of the “Randian hero,” a man whose genius leads others to reject him, but who perseveres nevertheless to achieve his values…’
  Given that description and my own incipient genius, it’s a wonder that I find so many of Rand’s followers to be self-involved right-wing psycho nut-bags… Maybe they’re not Randian enough… Prole-scum…
  (categories: aynrand objectivism wikipedia philosophy codphilosophy thefountainhead books philosopher rightwing isolationist novelist)

• CNN commentary on the new series of ‘Alias’
  Alias never did terribly well in the UK – they’re now showing series three on ‘five’ around 1am in the mornings on Monday or Tuesday nights. Which is a shame cos it rocks…
  (categories: tv television alias sidneybristow spy spies drama adventure jennifergarner)
• The Rumour Mill says that Six Apart is going to buy Live Journal
  “I have learnt exclusively that Six Apart, the parent company behind hosted blogging service TypePad, and Moveable Type is about to acquire Live Journal, for an undisclosed amount. The deal is a mix of stock and cash…”
  (categories: livejournal sixapart weblog weblogger blogger blogs weblogs blog acquisition rumour textpad movabletype)
• Around 2,000 controllable webcams from around the world, discoverable by Google
  Click on an image of somewhere interesting, and you can move the camera, change resolutions – all kinds of neat stuff. Except you probably shouldn’t, because it’s bad…
  (categories: google search webcam cam cameras securitycameras security exposed clumsy interesting cool)
• Every programme page on Radio 3 created by the system I worked on…
  So basically this is me playing with the ‘inurl:’ string that I noticed on the webcam URL. Not noticed it before, and lets us do all kinds of neat stuff…
  (categories: url google pips programmeinformationpages bbc radio3 spidering)
• The shape of my brain as of January 2005
  Make sure to check out the shape of other people’s brains by visiting the group (bottom right of page)
  (categories: visualisation delicious flickr map mindmap brain stuff erm tags folksonomy fauxonomy folksonomies tag folktag)

What else is going on? Er… Well, The Bloggies are up for nominations again – of all the weblog awards these are the ones that I think most accurately reflect the community that I know and understand, even though I’m a bit fatigued by even these least dodgy and most attractively low-key of community awardages.

Normally I would be standing up here and making a passionate case for why I deserved to be queen of blogworldia this year, because it’s fun to be queen, it’s trivial as all buggery and because certain categories are basically really fun to be nominated in (the gay category is always a shit-flinging bitchfight to the death, even though Ernie always wins it each and every year). Realistically, though, I’m not sure that I could stand up and say hand-on-heart that my site’s been terribly interesting or useful or fun this year. I think work’s kind of colonised my life a bit and my site’s suffered. But nonetheless, if you’ve taken a few too many diet pills this evening and are feeling particularly buzzy in the mind, then you could always nominate plasticbag.org for ‘Best British or Irish Weblog’, ‘Best Computers and Technology Weblog’, ‘Best weblog written by a gayer’ or whatever. Lifetime achievement would be nice too, except realistically someone needs to give that one to Haughey or Blood already….

To be honest, if there’s any value in these competitions whatsoever it’s in weblog discovery – helping people out there find some new unexpectedly awesome people to read about, interact with and hang out with online. So whether or not you want to participate in the damn thing, can I recommend at the very least you go and acquaint yourselves with some of the following sites and services:

• Trash Addict for best written and best homo
• del.icio.us for best web application
• Gyford.com (creator of Pepys Diary) for Best British / Irish
• Ultrasparky.org for best poof
• Trabaca for best poof
• flickr for best web application
• Mugwump for best poof
• City of Sound for best British or Irish
• Interconnected for best writing
• Online Blog for best computers / technology

So I’ve been a bit low-key on the web recently so I thought maybe I’d post a few updates around individual themes. First up, old news about the Innocent Smoothies-inspired Tiny Hat Project. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here is the description I posted on the second of December:

“Concept in a nutshell: buy drinks with hats, give money to charity, wear tiny hat, get someone to take a photo, look dumb, get dumped by your partner, embrace the fundamental pain of existence. You know, for kids!”

The next thing that happens after we’re all rolling around from how funny we are with our tiny little hats is that I get a phone call from Innocent Smoothies, who are duly excited about the whole thing and want to send us free smoothies. Dumbstruck I agree delightedly and tell everyone around us the story of free smoothiedom. We all wonder to ourselves whether the drinks will have the requisite little tiny hats. Perhaps they’ll have new flavours or something…

The days pass and no tiny hats arrive. Increasingly mortified, I become embittered by the world, and – to try and feel better in my desperate isolation – turn to drugs and murder and the humiliation of children. But still, nothing arrives… Until finally I get a phone call from reception – or more to the point Webb gets a phone-call from reception. Apparently the drinks have been sitting in the post-office for several days now uncollected, have gone off and fermented, exploded a little bit and ruined a bit of the carpet. They are thrown away…

Consequence of which is that my faith in Innocent has been restored, which makes me feel better. On the other hand, my faith in the communications around the BBC has been dented a bit. And I have no more little hats, or health giving smoothie-related vitamins. But I have a vaguely entertaining story to tell, so in the end everything worked out okay. Or so everyone will believe until I die of scurvy…