Category: Random

Nikolai presents the first annual weblog awards, otherwise known as “The Bloggies”. Much as awards are a fairly dubious enterprise, this one seems to be very much in the spirit of the weblog, including categories such as “Best Meme” and “Best Article or Essay about Weblogs”. plasticbag.org is eligible for at least six categories in my opinion, and it would be nice if someone nominated me for something. But other places that you should certainly consider looking before you make up you mind include: prolific.org, notsosoft.com, riothero, interconnected.org, zeldman.com and kitschbitch.com.

12:01am: May I be the very first UK weblogger to welcome you to the New Year. For good or ill, we are now living in science fiction – it’s the 21st Century by anyone’s reckoning. A strange computer called Hal is about to become sentient and then go insane. Monoliths are being discovered even as we speak. Arthur C Clarke is feelish a bit sheepish generally, I would warrant. [2001]

There has never before been as much weight of fantasy placed upon a year – indeed upon a century. The world has never seen change as dramatic or as rapid. There has never been this many people to will a new vision of the planet from the ether. Reality and Fantasy are colliding, and for once I’m not entirely sure which one will win. May you live in interesting times.

[Happy Millennium from Jeffrey Zeldman]

It’s 11.30pm on New Year’s Eve, and I think for the first time in about ten years I am not the slightest bit frantic, worried, depressed or feeling inadequate. This is also the first time in ten years that I didn’t go out for New Year’s. After last year – all of the pressure to enjoy yourself, the frantic obsession with the new millennium appearing, the cold weather, the mud, the crowds – nothing appeals to me less than going out. So fuck it. I’m going to stay in and do stuff that I like doing: watch movies, eat pasta, read books.

Does anyone know anything about the technical underpinnings to hushmail? It has been suggested to me as a free, encrypted and relatively secure form of web-based POP3 e-mail.

I stumbled upon something completely astonishing today – something that I don’t really know what I think of. I think you’ll be able to gauge your own level of interest from the title alone: “ARTIFICIAL SYNCHRONICITY, language MANIPULATION, KUNDALINI AND THE CORNERS OF REALITY: HOW THEY’VE TURNED YOU INTO A MENTAL SLAVE & SOME TOOLS TO HELP YOU DECONSTRUCTING THIS BRAINWASHING AND GETTING FREE FROM THIS CIRCUS”. [Interested?]

The BBC does their review of the year’s films: “Hollywood’s year of nostalgia“. The only parts of the article that I disagree with heavily are the penultimate couple of paragraphs: “But the movie to cap 2000 has to be comedy Meet the Parents, starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller”.

What is the future of comic books? For many of you that question will seem laughably redundant. I mean – who cares about comic books? Well you should care – and not just because the rest of the world’s media feed off the disposable writing encased in these 24 page periodicals – but because comic books are direct taps into the heart and soul of pure imagination where nothing is limited by budgets, ideas can be germinated quickly and circulated faster, and where a man can just as easily fly as he can meet God.

So what is the future of comic books? Warren Ellis’ State of the Comic Book Nation.

I know that the design aspect was never their main priority, but I have to say I am delighted that Haddock.org has redesigned. The new look is much clearer and more intuitive to use.

What is appropriate protocol? When someone writes something about your site that you think is incorrect – or you think should inspire further conversation – should you e-mail them and talk to them about it. If the original comment is a criticism, should you be able to address it? Or is it more appropriate to “rise above” criticism?

I’ve just been reading dissing.org. Brief bit of history on this one. A while back someone who posts to dissing.org wrote something about plasticbag.org that wasn’t a criticism – but brought some fairly standard concerns about weblogging (how useful/interesting personal content was on a site for example), and asked a couple of questions (like how many people read sites like plasticbag.org).

I wrote an e-mail which I thought explained why I thought personal content had a place. I don’t know – perhaps it sounded harsher than I intended. I don’t think it did. I’m now trying to work out if I should have said anything at all or not. The reaction I’ve got from the site seems completely out of proportion to the e-mail I wrote. So here’s my question to you – is it better to respond to criticism or to ignore it?

The two questions I get asked most regularly about the sites that I run are, “What does barbelith mean?” and, “What is barbelith.com about?” [I’ve left out the “Where do you get off being so self-indulgent?” one, because the answer to that should be obvious to everyone.]

The answer to both of the first questions is in my mind answered by a few choice passages in Douglas Coupland‘s Girlfriend in a Coma, which is an interesting book that spirals off the rails in a couple of places:

“Didn’t you feel as if all of the symbols and ideas fed to you since birth had become worn out like old shoes? Didn’t you ache for change but you didn’t know how to achieve it? And even if you knew how to do it, would you have had the guts to go forth? Didn’t you want your cards shuffled in a different way?”

This sense of frustration with the world just not being as cool as it should be – as if all the magic popped out for a cigarette and never came back – is something I think I share with everyone on the Barbelith Underground. We’re starting a cult. You want to join?