plasticbag.org

Andy at Dlog has responded to people’s criticisms of his weblog design reviews (including a slightly savage one from the real world). His reply is well considered and good reading. I was particularly gratified that he decided to clarify his criteria for review:

“Some people have voiced concern over how I’m judging the quality of a weblog based on design. I don’t think that’s the case, though – I’m just talking about the layout, the look of the page. As I mentioned earlier, Riothero is one of my favorite blogs. And kottke.org, for that matter, is a site I rarely visit. My stupid little “grading system” has nothing to do with how Good or Bad a blog is, just what I think of the design.”

As a final thought – a bizarre Invisibles Preview has appeared on ebay. Does anyone know anything about it? If so, let me know.

Before I get down to business (as it were), can someone explain to me how I have missed haughey.com after all these months of weblogging. I can’t even remember how I found it today. Very much worth a visit.

A day without blogger. And a difficult day it was too. My complete inability to update the site at lunchtime or before work has been profoundly frustrating. In general this has been a pretty weird day, and one that cannot hope but improve (that is of course assuming that my meeting with my new flatmates goes well). After that, I am off to the Liquid Lounge, before (possibly) heading on to Popstarz. I’m wearing a dark blue Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt with the number “36” on the back should anyone else be there.

What is it with A&F anyway? We don’t have them in the UK (so forgive my ignorance) – I picked up some of their clothes while in LA with Kerry and Sean. The catalogues are renowned for their homoerotic imagery (and with good reason), but they still seem to sell just as much to straight men of a pretty conservatively masculine disposition as they do to gay people.

A&F are basically part of the same trend in clothing that spawned the horror of the Evil Gap Clones – ie. everyone wearing the same thing – looking the same. This is a great source of horror to many people, and given my politics you might expect me to have a similar reaction. Weirdly though, I don’t – it’s almost as if clothes have become so generic that they have become invisible – for most of us they are no longer the demarcation points of culture or class. Perhaps homogeneity has resulted in a certain amount of liberation. Perhaps if we all wore the same thing….? On the other hand, I always have in the back of my mind the line from A Handmaid’s Tale – spoken by the arch-conservatives who want to ‘free’ women from dangerous things like ‘free will’ – that there are both freedoms to and freedoms from. It is the sign of the politically libertine to always aim for the former (“go libertines!”).

Homogeneity in and of itself shouldn’t be considered a bad thing – sometimes the act of mimicry inevitably carries with it a certain amount of irony. Take openlog for example – is this a piss-take, an affectionate (self?)tribute or a straightfoward design decision? It’s the same and yet because of its mimicry it has its own unique identity. [Check out kottke.org if you don’t know what I am talking about.]

Today began with a very sad event – a direct result of my vagrancy – somewhere in all the move I crushed one of the pairs of sunglasses I bought in LA. If I was of a more morbid disposition I would say it was symbolic.

I’m still at Chris’ place which is nice because he doesn’t expect me to go out and entertain him all the time and he likes watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is ultimate escapist entertainment. Tomorrow I’m on the move again though, which is exhausting – this time to Camden to stay with Liz. And of course I have my meeting with my new flatmates. The sooner I get a flat, the sooner I get my computer back. The sooner I get my computer back, the sooner I can finish the site (and the sooner I can get a good night’s sleep).

One thing I really need to know – does Darren of timemachinego go to the EasyEverything on Tottenham Court Road? Because if he does, I’d like to wave to him one day from the balcony at Time Out. Which reminds me – the website is currently running a online drugs poll which I worked on.

Any regulars to barbelith are familiar with the nexus – the anti-establishment post-counter-sub-cultural discussion forum. Recently there has been rather more in the way of conflict and flame-wars than normal – so much in fact that I have been sent a really interesting article from Wired about The Epic Saga of The Well (May 1997). The well was one of the first and most significant online communities, and it was – at times – wracked with conflict and crisis.

Temporary plateau of weirdness reached. Things remain weird, but have ceased to get increasingly so. Chris has said he will put me up for a couple of nights, which is really decent of him and means that I can now slide through into next week courtesy of him and Liz. I am getting increasingly worried about my new potential flatmates however – not in terms of whether I will get along with them, but about when we will actually find a place to live in and what compromises will have to be made in the process. Hopefully I will have resolved this by Friday night.

Most attractive new weblog of the day definitely goes to Fifty-Five.