Category: Random

If you liked Spider-Man, you’ll love…. The Amazing George W.: “My father’s downfall is my fault… Now I know… With Power comes Responsibilitude…”

My XCOM co-panellee Ben Hammersley has finally done something useful with his time, other than write huge tomes on RSS, co-create Warchalking, figure out when his dogs were born and wear that bizarre murderer-style hat. He’s written a good introduction to Newsreaders for the Guardian. It’s a fluff piece obviously, but it’s nice good fluff because we all agree with it. Like candy floss. If you’re interested in subscribing to plasticbag.org you may be looking for that foul little orange button with ‘XML’ written on it. But you won’t find it, because it’s bloody horrible looking. Instead you can find the feed here.

I can’t be the only person who’s in awe of how good plasticbag.org is. Each and every day that Tom fellow (what a looker!) writes extraordinary – self-promotingly – witty garbage about all many of things that I don’t give a damn about. That’s got to be seriously hard work, right? I mean, talent like that doesn’t just fall drunk out of trees, now does it? Well here’s your chance to prove how common and banal a skill weblogging really is! I’m calling this one “We are all plasticbag.org” – write a post in the style (if there is one) of this here site. Make it funny, crappy, elegant, pointless, artful, wondrous – awe-inspiring even. Best ones get posted on this here hallowed Indian burial ground…

Ok. Sex. I mean – why? I mean, let’s be honest – It’s a bit shit isn’t it. I mean it’s not like computers? It’s all unreliable and irritating. Ok maybe it’s like computers running Windows… People only pretend to like it anyway so they can fit in. It’s like Eastenders. No one wants to watch it, but if they don’t, how the hell are they going to have anything to talk about at dinner parties? Sex is exactly the same. And I don’t watch Eastenders. PS. Anyone who decides to burst my bubble on this one is going to get a smack…

Barely inspired by this very boring looking article which I couldn’t be bothered to read, I’ve spent a good twenty minutes trying to uncover The Ten Secrets of a Successful Website – a much much less boring microsite bashed together by Jason Kottke when he was doing cool creative things with 0sil8.com rather than being godfather of weblogdom. Here’s a particularly choice quote:

“When dealing with a web site, especially a corporate web site, branding is the most important thing. Therefore, the logo has to be the most visible element on the site. That means it has to be on every page, preferably in the upper lefthand corner of the page. the logo must also be large… Set your screen to 640×480 resolution and make sure the logo takes up a quarter of your browser window. Of course, this means that the content will be pushed down the page a little. Don’t worry, content isn’t that important and people will find it if they really want to. And again, if you can animate or make your logo 3D, that will increase its impact even more.”

And while I was at 0sil8.com I thought I’d better mention some other classic Kottke that you young folks were probably too busy sniffing glue and having underage sex to have seen the first time around:

• Remember a movie
• Remember a move (II)
• Steal this website
• Send a li’l lovin’
• simply porn
• the great mother’s day car-be-que of 1999
• Zero is…
• tilde jason

So it looks like Meg Hourihan’s article about professional weblogging was prescient. BBC Scotland is the latest organisation to try their hand at corporately sponsored personal publishign (of a kind) with the launch of Scotblog. It’s a fairly strange site mixing stories of particular interest to Scots with very personal musings on postcards. Is this really what Meg meant, I wonder? At least it’s a change from the Guardian’s useful but dry link-based site. [via Darren]

“If it were up to a public vote, a la the bloggies, I most certainly wouldn’t win, but with a panel of judges I’ve definitely got a chance. Of the eight judges, I’ve sent five of them a mince pie in the post, and I threatened Anita Roddick with throwing rocks at customers of the local Body Shop unless I get her vote. This one’s in the bag.” [Lawrie Malen]

[Note added September 21st, 2002: There is apparently a new driver – version 2.0 – that is available for users of MacOSX. It’s available here. As of this date I haven’t tried it, because I’m too nervous that it’ll bugger up my connection. If you have tried it, let me know how you got on with it via e-mail.]

[Note added September 1st, 2002: If you are looking for solutions to your ADSL/Alcatel/Jaguar problems, then I would take Mr Webb’s advice and read this extremely helpful guide to upgrading your drivers]

Several years ago, when I was still doing my postgraduate work in Bristol, I had a friend called Louise who was very into the healing arts of Reiki. I’m not a great fan of alternative medicines – I don’t dismiss them out of hand, but I’m a sceptical man. Something has to be plausible for me to advocate it. Louise and I went shopping one day, and returned back to my flat exhausted and grumpy – and my feet were killing me. At this moment – slumped in my sitting room – Louise asked me a very strange question. She asked me, “Would it freak you out if I said I could make your feet feel better from right here over the other side of the room?” My eyebrow stretched so high I thought it might never come down again…

Bear with me, because I’m coming to the point. All regular visitors to plasticbag.org over the last few days will be familiar with the problems I’ve been having with the ungodly enemies BTOpenworld and Alcatel. But my story has a happy ending, and it’s all to do with the wonders of MacOSX.2. Last night, you’ll recall, I discovered that there was a fix for the Alcatel drivers that was floating around on a discussion board. A fix which, although it would work, was beyond my technical expertise.

Enter Matt Webb who sitting comfortably in his house in Hammersmith sent me a message via iChat. He suggested that he might be able to fix my ADSL drivers from the other side of London. Would this freak me out? Absolutely. But I went along with it. First I determined my IP address from my network preferences panel. Then I turned on ‘remote access’ in the sharing panel. Then I made Matt an account on my computer and gave him administrator privileges. This took two minutes. And then, while we chatted, he connected to my computer with SSH through my modem, fixed all the files through Terminal, gave a bit of a smiley grin and told me it was finished. We signed off, I restarted my computer with all the cables plugged in – and now I have a fully working broadband connection.

Now I don’t really know who to celebrate here. I’ve got no idea whether or not something like that would have been possible on a standard Windows installation, I’ve got no idea whether the instructions given were particularly clear or ludicrously complicated. I don’t even know whether this is something that Matt feels completely comfortable doing, whether he fixes things like this every day Lone-Ranger style… What I do remember is that old line from science fiction, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

We’re seeing the acronyms everywhere at the moment – RSS & RDF. They’re becoming icons of webspace like HTML and CSS. But interestingly, unlike HTML and CSS, almost no one seems to know what they stand for. So to clarify – and obfuscate – in the same stroke, let me reveal to you the wonder of geek naming conventions. RSS stands for ‘RDF Site Summary’ of all things. And RDF in turn stands for the the elegant and punchy, “Resource Description Framework”. Aren’t you glad you know that?

Take a seat. No really, sit down. You’re going to be shocked by this. Sony have decided to stop making Betamax VCRs! I know! I know! Who saw that coming?!