Category: Random

This weekend has passed like so many recently – in a complete blaze of do-nothing apathy and computer-assisted life-avoidance. The proposed redesign of plasticbag.org has come to nothing (so far), nor has the rebuilding of the Barbelith Underground, the bloggerising of the news page at The Bomb or the assembling of an architecture for the whole barbelith/plasticbag/filmsoho assembly of sites. Also I have yet to do the thing for the collaborative project I’m supposed to be doing with Matt. More to the point, I haven’t really done a lot of job searching yet, either.

Yet another article on weblogging, this time from zdnet.com. This one, at least, doesn’t miss the point quite as much as some others: “But, regardless of whether they manifest themselves in the corporate world, blogs in their purest forms will remain throwbacks to the early days of the Web, when the rallying cry was the democratization of information and individual empowerment – not initial public offerings.”

Nanotechnology from the top-down? “Careful on that couch! It could be a resting robot. Scientists are starting to make robots out of smart building blocks that make them morph into different forms to suit the job they are doing. Eventually, the researchers hope to use thousands of microscopic units to make infinitely flexible machines, fit for any task.”

This may be the best description that I have written of the Barbelith Underground:

“This forum was originally created by a group of people who found a part of themselves inspired by what is commonly considered the lowest form of trash culture: the comic book. Something in this comic book spoke to their dissatisfaction and frustration with the world as it stands today. The writer of the comic book had felt the same way, by all accounts, and wanted to use his medium to help people recognise their own feelings of dissatisfaction with the world and channel that into a creative energy of transgression, answering back, full-on teen rebellion. The call to arms was promptly answered.

“The Barbelith Underground is, above all, about change and idealism. It’s about change because the world is not what it could be, it’s not what it SHOULD be either. It’s about idealism because the world should be a place where imagination can thrive, not a place where it has to be constrained and controlled.

“Beyond that you’re unlikely to get consensus – the wonder of this place is that you can come here to be inspired, not to be told what to do. And this can lead to frustration – what you think should be done may not be done by all. It might not be done by any. Some of our number believe in the power of direct protest, some believe in the power of the viral idea, some believe in bombs and guns, some in books and media. Some are liberal, some are libertarian, some are … not.

“Start a thread, create an idea, propose a cause and hit the streets, or … don’t. But wake up.”

Where are the Blogger clones?

This text has been edited:
“If anyone out there is prepared to ‘lease’ the rights to develop Organizine or something similar then I beg of you – transform the web again. Give the common man access to the means of high quality media production. Lets watch the divisions between the uber-media and the micro-media blur still further, so that those of us who love the concept of online content management tools, but who have reached the limits of what Blogger can perform cleanly, can be free to create new content, new cultures and ever new worlds.”
tom@plasticbag.org

I am one of Nikolai‘s randomly chosen collective of first round judges for the Bloggies project, which is both tremendously interesting (there are so many sites that I haven’t come across before) and incredibly tiring. I must have ploughed through a good couple of hundred sites today (before, during and after work) that I haven’t seen before – some of which are significant finds, designed well, or about subjects that fascinate me.

For any of you who might be interested, here are the numbers of first round nominations that plasticbag.org and various other sites that I like received: plasticbag.org: 4, notsosoft.com: 7, kitschbitch.com: 2, kottke.org: 6, lukelog: 3, evhead.com: 4.

Walking West provides possibly the clearest and most elegantly designed weblog links and (brief) review page I’ve seen to date.

Viral Marketing Strategy: my editor was sent a hand-written postcard with a URL (http://www.ramitin.co.uk). Lurking on the site is a 70s-style macho-car-porn-parody Quicktime video which you have to see to believe. Assumption: timeout.com editor will send it to influential media people, resulting in full press saturation in two-to-three weeks, and a first full feature for the director within six months. We shall see if it is successful.

I’m completely astonished by Meg‘s ability to take hundreds of unflattering photos of everyone she meets, and yet never put the ones of herself on the web.

Last night was possibly the largest meeting of UK webloggers to date. There were over twenty people present, most of them drunk. Particular “heys” go out to Matt, Darren, Matt and Davo.

I’m really tempted to apply for this job as Information Architect. It looks terrifying and challenging. It is possibly just out of my league though.