September 30, 2003
Gleaning, Exchanging and Vernacular Media - an absolutely fascinating post (in part a response to the new MIT publication, New Media: 1740-1915) comparing weblogging with past information gathering and dissemination strategies (scrapbooks, parerga) and drawing a neat analogy with gleaning, a favourite term of mine since seeing Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse at the EIFF a couple of years ago.
Current events at Wikipedia - brilliant, as you might expect, although lacking an RSS feed. [via Kottke Remaindered Links]
A Childhood Saved - boyhood nature journals archived online. Bless.
Danah Boyd points toward a song about Friendster: 'I saw your new boyfriend on Friendster' runs the chorus. Oh, the humanity. Also, Danah notes that Friendster has become a common vocabulary word. I wonder if she is aware of the -ster suffix now deployed in Glasgow to differentiate between real world friends and Friendster friends? As in: I am Jack; Jackster is my friend Janet's Friendster friend..
September 29, 2003
The Scotsman: Whisky of Mass Destruction - how the US spied on a tiny island distillery
September 28, 2003
September 27, 2003
An open letter to "tableless" recoders and, in response, An open letter in defence of "tableless" recoders
September 26, 2003
There's an email list for discussion of and announcements about the proposed changes to Tramway
Kill Your Timid Notion - experimental music and film festival in Dundee, with Acid Mothers Temple and Philip Jeck, among others.
The Crazy Signs of Scotland. That's one peculiar definition of 'crazy' you have there, pal. [via Onfocus]
Tramway move not done deal, says Arts Council - I received a letter from the City Council Leisure Services Dept. to this effect today, and I rather get the impression that they are shocked by the angry response to the daft plan to install ballet dancers in the home of high art.
John Leslie on Richard & Judy: 'I have never behaved innapropriately towards a woman.' Half the female students at Edinburgh University would beg to differ. Allegedly. Oh, and the above quote is a precis, because he stuttered out the line ten times before he got it right. You know, like liars do.
Layout-o-matic - is it International *-o-matic Week, or what? Anyway, this is an awfully useful layout generator. As you probably guessed.
Robert Palmer dies at 54. A sad day. And I'm not being sarcastic - his 1980 album Clues is fabulous, especially I Dream of Wires and Johnny & Mary. We'll not mention Power Station, though, eh?
Nisus Thesaurus - rather fabulous Services-aware thesaurus, albeit with a few too many Americanese words for my liking. [via the terse but informative 2lmc spool]
Surprisingly amusing scouse counting sheep thingy
Dell DJ (Digital Jukebox). Ugly as sin.
cat /usr/share/calendar/* | grep `date +"%m/%d"`
September 25, 2003
Submit | Response. You know, for kids.
BBC: No WMD in Iraq, source claims. Surprise, sur-fucking-prise.
Harper's Magazine: The Revision Thing, A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies
A wee bit of reciprocal linking: Oddobjects. Very interesting site, with art reviews, a massive index of art and net.art links, plus videos of abandoned listening stations. Oh, and odd objects, as the name suggests.
September 24, 2003
There was a brief comment spam on Submit Response today, reading 'Mishka rules!' and linking to mishka.com, a site with a 'Coming Soon' message and a contact email. Now I see that said Mishka is riding high on Blogdex and Popdex (and not doing too shabbily on Google either), thanks to a huge amount of comment spamming to Movable Type-powered weblogs. I've never seen a comment spam have this impact before. Wonder what that's all about. Other than someone being an annoying wee prick.
September 23, 2003
Musicworks - Cross Media Music Convention Festival - Damn, I'm in France during this. Well worth blagging into, by the looks of things.
Toys for Iraqi Children - I would send reliable electricity, running water, democratic self-governance and bullet-proof vests to stop soldiers killing parents. But they won't fit in a jiffy bag.
Google Search by Location - US only, unfortunately
I'LL FUCKING HOST IT! [via ObLinks]
Make Life Easy With Autocomplete Textboxes
Radio Free Blogistan: Entering the flow - Christian muses on the process of weblogging.
September 22, 2003
"Fuck" - let's face it, swearing on the BBC is the most interesting thing to come out of the Hutton enquiry. Or the Yes Gilligan Was A Bit Sloppy, But More Importantly The Government Lied (Probably Best Not To Dwell On That Last Bit) Enquiry, as I like to call it. Not often, admittedly. [via Plasticbag Linklogger]
If anyone deserves the epithet 'Gobshite' this man is it
Pro Anorexia's Journal - a Livejournal community of militant anorexics/bulimics. Having known several women with eating disorders, this... well, I was about to type 'makes me sick,' but that wouldn't exactly be appropriate. I really wish I'd never seen the post from a breastfeeding mother asking for tips on how to maintain her fasting without fucking killing her kid.
Pink is the new orange, off-white is the new pus green
Denim - an informal tool for early stage web site and UI design
Rounding Tab Corners - another well-written wee tutorial at Complex Spiral
DeKstacy, despite the awful name, is a pretty solid, nice and simple mixing package. Because I don't mix records together on principle (or, you know, because I'm shit at it) Ableton Live or Traktor are overkill, and this means I might do a laptop-only set soon, instead of the frankly preposterous iPod 'n' 7" rule I favour at the moment. Note to self and Leon: do a fucking nightclub again, you lazy fucking bastards, it's been fucking years since we had a residency and two sets at fucking Optimo and a couple of house parties is not fucking good enough. Ca-fucking-pisce?
I just got a PXL 2000. Woo! I suppose I should warn readers of Submit Response that I shall doubtless be posting a lot of achingly pretentious 'short films' in the near future. Either that or you'll see a brief 'PXL 200 for sale' notice on the weblog within a month. Anyone know how you get video into an iBook?
SideTrack is a replacement driver for the trackpad (touchpad) found on Apple PowerBooks. It brings many of the trackpad scrolling features found on Windows laptops to MacOS X. - including a rather odd-sounding capacity to scroll using the side of the Trackpad. As noted on 2lmc spool, where I saw the link, this could take some getting used to. I wonder if having that functionality would actually be worth a week or too of accidental scrolling cock-ups.
September 21, 2003
A list of feeds available through Edu_RSS. It's a bit glitchy, but there is much of interest to be found. I just dropped the Scotland, Filesharing and (eugh, horrid term) Culture Jamming feeds into NetNewsWire and have wasted, ooh, at least half an hour as a result. [via Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
Upcoming.org - Anyone want to do a UK-based clone of this? [Correction: Andy, the man behind Upcoming.org just wrote to tell me that the site is international. Apologies for hasty linking.]
Guru Josh's website looks like the V/Vm versions of his songs sound [via NTK]
Great post from Charlie Stross on the EFF's worries over the IEEE's stance on electronic voting, and the (huge, near-insoluble) problems of electronic voting in general. On a more trivial note, Charlie deploys the word 'panglossian.' I love that word, so I do - as evocative as it is euphonious.
September 20, 2003
Human chess in an urban setting [via MeFi]
Saving and restoring tabs in Safari - John Gruber's scripts tweaked to add tab functionality
Antipixel: The kanji for "word" - gen - carved into rock above Jinata onsen
September 19, 2003
Peep Show. Television comedy that is - get this - funny.
John Titor, Time Traveler - some bloke popped up online for four months claiming to be on a mission to recover an obsolete IBM computer to help rebuild the post-WWIII world of 2038. Interesting use of the web as a medium for what you might call conversational science fiction. [via b3ta]
List-o-matic - tool to help generate CSS-styled list-based navs. Obviously. Moderately handy.
Wireless Park Lab Days - connecting virtual and physical space using open WiFI networks.
CocoaMySQL 0.5 - for managing MySQL databases locally or over the internet. Not tried it yet, but it looks pretty bloody useful.
Saudis consider nuclear bomb. Oh shit.
I wish the Independent would let me read this piece on genius cartoonist Art Spiegelman's resignation from the New Yorker for free. [via Boing Boing]
Magnatune - We call it "try before you buy." It's the shareware model applied to music. Artists get a full 50% of the purchase price. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep their rights to their music. We are not evil.
World's Oldest Genitals Found in Scotland!
Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Arr! Aaa-aaarr! Aaaarrr! [via everywhere]
Daring Fireball: Save and Restore Safari URLs - very, very handy
September 18, 2003
Abstract Dynamics: The Idiot Savant (Friendster Triumphant) - a lengthy post with some interesting points on the Friendster interface - looks crap, works well; silly logo encourages silliness - and the suggestion that the site's success is partly down to bad decisions having good results (hence savant)
September 17, 2003
MacAmp Lite X archived - handy for playing all those Shorten and FLAC files one downloads with Bittorrent. For expanding: MacFLAC, Shorten X and (for the command line masochist set) shntool and Shorten v3.4 tutorial. Now, if only the folk seeding files in these fine lossless formats weren't all Deadheads and Phish phans. Like, totally nice sharing ethos, dudes. Shame about the music.
September 16, 2003
Data-based Art: new media information structures in visual art - a seminar I'd quite like to attend (although the performances sound a bit ropey). But it's in Gateshead, where I am not.
Daily Mislead - a daily chronicle of Bush administration distortion
Rubik's cube speed-cubing algorithms
A list of Social Networking Websites/Software
Treemaps for space-constrained visualization of hierarchies [via Bbum's Rants, Code & References
September 15, 2003
Angel dog dress-up. I prefer my dogs in bee drag. I'd link to the entry on Wet Bee Diary (easily the best bee-based weblog on the world wide web) that pointed me to that photograph, but it's permalinks seem to be a bit screwy.
UKIYO-E - experiments in dub + electronica, Yorkshire Playhouse Bar, Leeds
Explicitly Codifying Relationships at Many to Many. Further examples and commentary at Connected Selves
I'm at my sister's in Leeds at the moment, and there are three open wireless networks available to me from neighbouring flats. Handy. Wish I'd checked before dialing-up this morning.
Glancing - notes toward an application to allow ultra-simple, non-verbal communication amongst groups of friends online. Interesting ideas. I keep coming across stuff like this on small groups and small social transactions. And about, erm, that odd virtual space thing, where, for example, a weblog is like a room inhabited by the poster(s), regular commenters and known lurkers, having a definite sense of space-with-people-in-it. There's probably a jargon term for that, but I don't know it.
September 14, 2003
Canada scuppers the all-out RIAA assault on music downloaders. Downloading music being, um, legal in Canada, so long as it's for personal use. Sorry, but the only response I'm capable of at this point in time is "hahaha..." (Via Metafilter)
September 12, 2003
When can we expect an Apple iServe? - What's the point? Doing the job chez Mottram: an Airport-enabled handbag iBook plugged into the internet and the stereo, with Backup Public Beta 2 backing-up files from the new iBook to old and iTunes 4 doing it's Rendezvous thing taking care of music, plus a Belkin TuneCast so I can listen to the World Service on the radio when Radio 4 goes rubbish in the afternoon. I won't mention obsessive-compulsive use of Salling Clicker. Yes, sir, I am a wanker. Might write up a how-to on Submit Response, although it's a piece of piss, to be honest.
Phark: Accessible Image Replacement - an alternative to Todd Fahrner's solution using text-indent
If you're reading this on a Reading page (as opposed to the Submit Response sidebar) you'll notice little arrow thingies at the end of each post. These are 'permalinks.' I hear that they are all the rage amongst the 'webloggers.'
Tribal Futures and Tribal Past - judging by this post at GeekBox, I'd like Friendster more if it had some Tribe.net-like features.
September 11, 2003
The Power Mac G5 in pornographic close up
Friendster network graphs. [via an interesting post at Many to Many about visualising data from social networks, among other things.]
eBay item number 2854446313. Otherwise known as Michael Alig's Mom's white mink fur coat. Skronk!
MMS Memo - Watching the evolution of MMS camera phones and the Symbian OS for the purpose of Moblogging [via Evhead]
September 10, 2003
George Hotelling attempted to sell a song he'd downloaded via Apple's iTunes service on ebay. Now Apple have blocked the resale "for technical reasons". Hmmm. That digital rights management thing just gets trickier and tricker, don't it? (Via No Rock)
I just received an email to tell me that Blogger Pro is no more, as all the pay features are being rolled into the free version. So every Pro subscriber is being given a free Blogger hooded sweatshirt in compensation.
September 09, 2003
Reader - a collaborative performance group working in Glasgow
Andre Torrez : Why I Have A Scar On The Side Of My Chest - a story which is really quite remarkably similar to the story about why I have a scar on the side of my chest. Perhaps I should start a Spontaeneous Pneumothorax Experiences community weblog. Or perhaps not.
RSSWeather feed for Glasgow. Because turning my head to look out the window is too much effort.
The Today Programme's interview with Salam Pax was as dull as ditchwater, not unlike his Guardian column. Jim Naughtie's trail was fun though: 'If you know what a weblog is, good for you. If you don't, it would take too long to explain.'
Matt suspects the hand of Jeffrey in the electrocla$h-tastic switchable graphics on the new iPod page.
September 08, 2003
Dave Winer - It's not surprising to me, in a way, that weblogs have become such an important part of the early 2004 presidential campaign. Probably surprising to the US electorate, the overwhelming majority of whom have no fucking idea what a weblog is. I hate this kind of trumpeting nonsense - weblogs might conceivably have an impact on the political process at some point in the future. Now? Not so much.
iTunes for Windows and Mac iSbogus
Share the Music! - Recommendations for Great Free MP3's and Music Sharing Technologies
Snopes: Suddenly Less Credible - Shock And Awe tracks the Snopes U-turn on the veracity of the rumour that Bin Laden family members were flown out of the US two days after the September 11th attacks. Suddenly less credible indeed.
"Music is not Mitch Bainwol's passion, and he's never used a file-sharing service like Napster or Kazaa. NCAA college basketball is where this Georgetown graduate's extracurricular interests lie." So he's perfect to be head of the RIAA, then.
September 07, 2003
Coherence Engine - just a plain link to the front page, because I can't single out one of the recent posts on maps for special attention. Fascinating stuff.
September 06, 2003
SuperWorm To Storm The Net on 9/11 - if this article is right, we're all doomed!
Stopdesign: Making the Absolute, Relative
Listamatic - The Listamatic shows the power of CSS when applied to one simple list using samples from Eric Meyer, ProjectSeven, SimpleBits and others
September 05, 2003
September 03, 2003
t610 + Salling Clicker +Indigo = Home of the future! I wonder if anyone is actually using this?
Jenny Everywhere is an open source comic character.
A profile of my wee pal Hannah Mcgill, she is unlinkable no more!
September 02, 2003
The Distributed Library Project
Both Reading and Submit Response are being syndicated over at Robert Brook's website, whoever he may be. (Not a complaint, of course - I love this sort of a thing, hence the Creative Commons license on most parts of this site.)
September 01, 2003
When the President of the United States can't even hold a dog, what hope is there for the world?
Noney - Noney notes are cultural tender for the payment of any amount, anywhere
Communist Store Windows by David Hlynsky, and Mimosa, a collection of Soviet snapshots. [via MetaFilter]
Cumbernauld: Town for Tomorrow - an 'online exploration of an entropic utopia'