plasticbag.org

The best think about the line below (that I quote from an article found via the LMG) is that it seens actually uncomfortable with people not building things under the influence of pure capitalist monetary lust: Taming the Wild, Wild Web: “The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn’t excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws,” said Thomas Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant. “The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn’t have a strong profit motive. But this is a business, not a government-sponsored network.”

I couldn’t disagree more with this review by Danny Graydon.

Two more of my reviews from the BBC’s film site: The Man With the Golden Gun (“There’s no shortage of innuendo, action, exotic locations, or casual misogyny. Unfortunately it’s too camp and cruel an adventure to raise more than a Moore-like eyebrow.”) and The Empire Strikes Back (“Luke comes most clearly into focus when his terrible destiny is made clear to him, and in the process Darth Vader is transformed from a caricature villain into a terrifyingly dark, but human creature”).

BBC News: Canada opens door to marijuana. I’m interested in this one. Now, personally, I think it should be completely decriminalised – but that’s very much a personal opinion. What surprises me is that you can already use heroin derivatives in medicine but not marijuana based ones. At least Canada has made it possible for people to do research with it.

I love it when I get e-mails like this: “Dear Sir/Madam, Could you please let me know who is responsible for Marketing at http://www.barbelith.com. Thanking you in anticipation.” You just start laughing inside.

Technical fun: .htaccess for fun and profit. Have been wandering around plasticbag.org and barbelith.com for the last couple of hours using .htaccess files to fix the 404 errors that have been caused by the moving of a thousand files over several years. For more on .htaccess: BareMetal.

Just been pointed to blog-a-thon-you by Simon where there are two full reviews of plasticbag.org.

The first thing you learn at journalism school is how when you write a review you are always writing for an audience. You write something that you believe would make sense to your readership – not necessarily to yourself. That’s where the skill in reviewing comes – in divorcing your own particular obsessions (or at least disguising them) from the ‘useful service’ that you are actually trying to provide. I mean, if I loved ‘Graffitti Bridge’ but because I’d studied the semiotics of ‘Prince’ for ten years, I still shouldn’t give it a good review for those people who are looking for an evening’s entertainment. Proper reviews also depend upon building a relationship of trust between you and your readership – which means that you really should try and spell everything properly, and get your grammar right.

But of course, you don’t have to write a ‘proper review’ in order to express your opinion. In fact you can write whatever you like. But of course, unlike a proper review (where what you write is thought-through, intelligent, built for an audience and literate) with a personal opinion there’s almost no limit to the range of entertaining and appropriate responses. You can stick your tongue out, wave your arse in the air, write nasty songs involving rhymes for ‘shunts’ or indeed even respond with a counter review.

Or you can, of course, just completely ignore it.

When did Status.Blogger.Com get so sexy?

I want to write something extraordinarily long and involved about Brian winning Big Brother – about how it’s a really important thing to happen for gay people in general for one thing, and how genuine and sweet the boy seems to be. But I can’t really at the moment. Congratulations.

Whatever she says is completely untrue.