I had the opportunity yesterday to go to Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn Meet the BBC at RIBA in London. I took comprehensive notes of the event, if anyone’s interested. The part that got me most excited was the work that Vint is doing to extend the internet across the rest of the solar system – starting with Mars. More on that story:
You know, the reason why you’ll be seeing odds and sods turning up in the linklog that have been all around the interhighweb three or four times is that it’s very uncommon for me to post something until I’ve read it properly. That’s why I’m linking to Why tables for layout is stupid now even though – you know – you’ve all bloody read it already. My long-established stash of links is gradually being sorted out and worked through and you can expect more blasts from the extremely recent past to be clogging up the old P.B. before the end of the weekend…
Did anyone read a book when they were a kid that had two teenagers running through a forest, touching a piece of ball lightning and being transported to Ancient Rome? I remember one bit distinctly – the two boys being surprised when they realise they’re in Rome because where they come from it’s called “Reme” after the brother Remus rather than Romulus. I’m only asking because I stumbled upon a post on Fiona’s site which suggested using Amazon to find the name of dimly-remembered books. Only I can’t find it. If no one has any idea, could you someone please pop into Wroxham library and see if it’s still in the kids book section after twenty years. Thanks!
Oh my god! I’ve got a whole week off. What on earth am I going to do with myself? I mean I’ve got lots of forms and bills to sort out, and no clean clothes and a flat like a pig-sty and I actually still have some work hanging over my head which I’m going to try and get done tomorrow morning so I don’t have to think about it any more (although I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll still be with me at the end of the week). I’m also going to Norfolk for my brother’s eighteenth birthday (which is so weird and exciting and strange) and four hours after work has ended, I’ve already got things tumbling out of my head almost uncontrollably. Two site sketches down on paper, plans for redesigns, bits of jottings taking shape, social software things. And I even have this urge to go out and get drunk and maybe go dancing or something. I never feel like that. I wonder where I can find nice fun people to play with…
One thing that I probably won’t have time to do is to think around the landmark east project. It seems to me that those of us with insane creative web-building urges should be able to contribute to something like that in some way. Maybe something using ubiquitous computing, or feeding in contributions to the public and turning into something physical and manifest automatically. Or maybe some kind of collaborative architecture experience – like that font project that was around a few years back, where individuals came to a page and turned one pixel on or off, trying gradually to assemble some kind of alphabetic glyph. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could create a structure, a landmark, a monument like that? Chunk by chunk, brick by brick, curve by curve… Together. The manifestation of a people.
Weblogger south, Weblogger north!
Come hear my tale of Christmas glee…
Which this year shall be much in rhyme
(I’m sorry and please bear with me…)A mount so high it touches space;
Within: a massive darkened cave,
Wherein a sharp and pointy race
Of tiny elves has been enslaved…And in the centre, Mrs Claus –
A tower of computer might
(And built for no apparent cause)
Stands passive in the candlelight.Beside her there’s a silhouette
A disconnected robot form
Who waits each year for holidays
The chance to serve and be reborn.But then, what’s this? The Yule alarm!?
A klaxxon sounds throughout the lair
And with a twitch, the robot’s arm
Thrusts holly fistfuls in the air!He stands, a monster, next the flames
That every year before hath burned.
And lo! His robot voice proclaims
That SECRET SANTA HAS RETURNED!
So Secret Santa 2003 has launched. For those of you who are newbies, the point remains the same – you give us details of your site and your wishlist and then on December the 10th we send them out to another person elsewhere on the web who buys you a present. You get someone else’s details and buy them a present. Everyone gets a present! Everyone’s happy!
This is Santa’s third year, and Cal, Denise and I are back to serving just the weblogging / personal publishing community. It’s only right and proper given that’s the community that we’re part of and care most about. And Secret Santa has generally been a tremendous success. Over the last two years over 1,000 presents were sent out to people, promoting peace love and general loveliness all over the world – from Japan to Germany!
This year the one most obvious difference is that I’ve rewritten the copy so that the vast majority of it is now in bad poetry. I’d like to apologise to you all for this straightaway, particularly to the UI, usability and editorial professionals out there who probably won’t appreciate how hard it is to put clear instructions into groups of rhyming eight-syllable sentences and will just concentrate on the “It’s not very good” aspect of the whole enterprise…
This is probably well known by now, but according to a friend of mine who is still trying to work out whether to get the 12″ or 15″ Apple Powerbook, he’s been advised by a man he talked to at a London Apple Centre that a 15″ variety will take longer to be delivered because Apple have accepted there’s a problem with the screen getting brighter spots on it. Apparently they’ve definitely ceased production while they look into it. This is probably extremely good news for those of us who have a Powerbook with this problem, and it might explain why I have still not received my return voucher, over a week and a half after I rang them up. I’ll be checking up on this later, but I thought I should probably share the news. If anyone has more information on the subject, please feel free to add links in the comments.
Watching the Baghdad Blogger on Newsnight this evening has been a vaguely dispiriting experience. It’s not entirely clear what his remit was or what the circumstances of the film were, but it looks like he was given a camera and very little support and left to try and drag a film together. The idiom was very webloggery – insight into the individual’s life and background blurring into commentary on life in Iraq. As an approach I think it’s very powerful – the most startling moment for me was his mother talking about watching Pop Idol and realising (yet again) how similar and connected we all are – but the implementation was terrible and – I fear – a bit embarrassing. The whole thing felt – yet again – like one of those blurred confusions between webloggery and journalism that journalists keep making that always seems to come out slightly badly for the bloggers concerned. Or maybe I’m being a little unfair…
Some of the things I’m thinking about at the moment – at work and not at work – that I’m having real trouble articulating for some reason but that maybe I can do something with if I set some of them free:
Gah. I can’t think properly. Too much stuff piling up unexpressed. Too many things I’m not expressing properly. Too many opportunities not to produce stuff of suitable quality and value.
Half-Klimt (one, two, three), half-Rothko (one, two, three) – I know they’ve been everywhere, but they’re so bloody beautiful: Every Playboy Centrefold: The Decades. There’s something so elusive and gestural about them – and the traces of writing and iconography lingering around the bodies just makes the whole thing seem even less to do with flesh and still more numinous.
The same artist achieved similar effects with a triptych of stills of late night chat-show presenters and used the same process on images of homes for sale, which is equally breath-taking.
