Archives for December 2002

And I have to confess, now even I think the world has gone insane... (December 30, 2002) The weirdest quote of the day comes from Anne Widdecombe about the weirdest, least pleasant and most ludicrous story of the day. She said, "Jesus Christ said suffer the little ones to come unto me, not that they should be...

And the winner of Yahoo!'s Person of the Year is... (December 29, 2002) And the winner of Yahoo!'s Person of the Year is George W Bush, which I'm sure has come as quite a surprise to anyone not living in the USA. Whatever one's personal opinions, I think it's quite likely that the...

Move along. Nothing to see here... (December 29, 2002) If you believe I have a reputation at all, then sit comfortable while I abandon all claim to intellectual expertise, skill or insight and instead link to this really nice picture of Tobey Maguire which makes my heart-rate pick up...

On Schott's Original Miscellany... (December 29, 2002) I initially had a few reservations about Schott's Original Miscellany. After all, wasn't it just one of those funny fact books that people with knitted loo-roll covers place in the toilet? But when you see it - when you get...

On a lack of fearlessness in man to man contact... (December 29, 2002) So through the magic of a constantly updating Google News RSS stream to NetNewsWire1, today I stumbled upon a piece in the Orange County Register called Manly Images. It's an article about how John Ibsen - a researcher into early...

Among my other Christmas presents was a salutory reminder... (December 29, 2002) Over Christmas I was given some Clinique for Men eye-firming lotion and hair-gel, some soap, some Armani scent, a novel about Heroin addiction and a book called "How to be Alone". Add this to the wedding I went to yesterday...

On the ethics and responsibilities of running a web-site... (December 29, 2002) The ethical and legal problems that occasionally Google is confronted with are essentially the same as any site run by any individual or business: Do I have an obligation to the people who use my site? How do I reconcile...

Using Airport to connect a G4 Mac and an iBook (connected to the net via BT ADSL)... (December 29, 2002) I'm looking for advice (and/or links) on how one might go about sorting out the wireless networking of one G4 desktop Mac and one lovely sexy-new G3 iBook (both running OSX 10.2.3), the former of which is currently connected to...

Raëlians claim they've created the first human clone... (December 27, 2002) In an article on the New York Times' website, Religious Sect Announces the First Cloned Baby [via Scripting.com]: Raëlians are followers of Raël, a French-born former race-car driver who has said he met a four-foot space alien atop a volcano...

On the Pepys Diary Project and the clotting of the memestream... (December 27, 2002) The word/phrase 'lazyweb' (which I believe was coined by Matt Jones) refers to the way in which if you describe something you'd like to exist online then someone else somewhere else will build it for you. But what do you...

My extended family is full of insane freaks who buy me dumb fucking Christmas presents... (December 26, 2002) Now comes that part of the year when you rush out and buy those odds and ends that you hoped you'd get for Christmas but didn't because no one in your family really understands the real you - no matter...

Why does the BBC hate the shows it buys? (December 25, 2002) So you're a massive public service broadcaster that employs roughly forty thousand people, running a number of national and international TV shows and radio stations as well as having the most trafficked website in Europe. And you buy some American...

What kind of weird inspired genius would buy me a present like.... (December 25, 2002) What kind of weird inspired genius would buy me a present like this? That's not to say it wasn't an inspired choice - because I always get very excited when Diarmuid proceeds to spend my licence fee on a nice...

On copy-protected CDs... (December 25, 2002) So I got my first copy-protected album this morning as a gift for Christmas. Or at least I think it was copy-protected. My first reaction? I'm going to have to take it back. My main places for listening to music?...

On Tiny imperfections... (December 23, 2002) There's the smallest imperfection on the track-pad of my iBook. It's atom-sized, it's a mote - a tiny little piece of dust that's unremovable and feels like a microscopic coarseness when I run my index finger over it. It irritates...

For essentially the same reasons (December 22, 2002) For essentially the same reasons that I paid Blogger money to go pro, I will certainly be buying NetNewsWire Pro when it is finally released. The beta has just been put online and I'll be downloading it as soon as...

I wonder if the Bloggies are going to happen again this year? (December 22, 2002) No real reason. Just wondering. Does anyone know if the Bloggies are happening again this year?...

On the augmentation of human social networking abilities... (December 19, 2002) I've been reading Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, by D.C. Englebart (Stanford, 1962) and there's this really interesting paragraph in it that I think is true: The process of developing this conceptual framework brought out a number of significant...

Yesterday was a very good day... (written shortly before going to sleep last night) (December 19, 2002) So I'm sitting in the single bed that I sleep in when I'm visiting my family and the floor is covered in wrapped and half-wrapped presents and I'm trying to remember when I last had such a genuinely nice day....

On receiving anonymous presents via Amazon... (December 19, 2002) So today I received a packaged from Amazon which I thought was my Christmas shopping arriving, but it wasn't. It was a gift for me from my wishlist. I haven't opened it yet, but I don't think it's my Secret...

Two submissions to ETCON 2003... (December 17, 2002) So I've submitted two proposals for ETCON 2003 - one on 'Personal and Mainstream Publishing' and one on 'The Despotism of Social Software'. I have no idea whether or not they'll be even vaguely interesting to the parties concerned, but...

New picture on the Mirror Project... (December 16, 2002) When I decided to put a new picture of myself up on the Mirror Project I decided to write a little text to accompany it. The text is stunningly anodyne: My daily trip to work involves me getting the number...

On being increasingly unimpressed by Technorati... (December 15, 2002) For an automated service that does little more than aggregate a few useful tools - most of which were already present in sites like Blogdex - Technorati is surprisingly clunky and weirdly formed. I mean, for a start it has...

Jesus Christ... (December 14, 2002) Oh for god's sake. There isn't a Santa Claus. It's your parents. They do it all. Ok? I mean, come on... How thick are you people?...

The next couple of weeks.. (December 14, 2002) So it's coming up to Christmas and all over blogdom people's sites are juddering a bit as they try to balance work, Christmas shopping, party-season-stuff and seeing their families. Personally I'm planning to go at least partially offline for a...

While I'm doing the gay thing... (December 14, 2002) While I'm doing the gay thing, and more to remind myself than anyone else, here are a few of the stories that I got this morning when I did a search for 'gay' on Google News - just to show...

A few thoughts on Jason Kottke's post on HIV... (December 14, 2002) I suppose this is an example where a politically neutral examination the transmission of a viral entity through a network suddenly takes on a huge weight of real-world issues and commentary and ends up looking totally different. Jason Kottke has...

The history of woot, whoot and w00t... (December 14, 2002) Inspired (a long time ago) by a conversation with Matt Webb and Dive Into Mark's History of the tilde, I started researching the history of the exclamation w00t and it's two parallel analogues woot and whoot. Then I got hideously...

On finally buying an iBook... (December 13, 2002) Right. It's done. Finally. The wait is over. Almost eighteen months after I first swore that I'd sell my soul if someone would give me an iBook, I've finally snapped (like a twig in a blender) and actually gone and...

While cleaning out my virtual closet I found... (December 12, 2002) While doing a routine purge of my computer I stumbled upon three graphs made to illustrate the difference between an increased marginal 'effort' cost and an exponential one. This is a flashback to a now old argument about whether or...

Time Out mentions Whorechalking... (December 12, 2002) So for a couple of days now I've been staring blankly at the plasticbag.org secret statistics page, trying to work out why around four thousand people each day have decided to wander around Whorechalking. So it turns out it gets...

An introductory guide to Keynesian Economics... (December 12, 2002) A link without an origin, I found this explanation and background to Keynesian economic analysis a few days ago, but couldn't think of enough commentary on it to make it worthwhile. In the end I retreat to the anecdotal. I...

The dream I had a couple of nights ago... (December 11, 2002) So in the dream, my mother is putting powder-blue mascara onto my eye-lashes. But it's all clumpy and grotesque - like water thickly mixed with blue flour. She's convinced it's a really good idea. I'm not horrified by the concept,...

Only a few Secret Santa hours left... (December 10, 2002) With only a few hours to go, this is just a last minute reminder that Secret Santa 2002 closes in a couple of hours. Get there quickly before the Elves get irritable......

On Dan Hill's "Adaptive Design" Piece... (December 10, 2002) I still haven't completely formed my opinions on the recent IA seminar on "Adaptive Design" I attended (Dan Hill from cityofsound speaking). He's put up the presentation along with some notes which should make the whole process rather easier. The...

First thoughts on Wiki (December 10, 2002) A few thoughts on Wikis: There aren't enough simple sets of instructions for people who are completely unfamiliar with Wikis. It's quite hard to make the mental leaps necessary to get past that very initial stage of frustrated apathy. But...

In which Tom mentions that he's just started his first Wiki... (December 9, 2002) Little to say except that I've spent some of this evening working to install my first ever Wiki using UseMod. I've got a very specific project in mind - getting a group of less-than-totally-tech-savvy community members to get together and...

The Unwedding of Ultrasparky... (December 8, 2002) Of course the most important news in blogdom at the moment is the upcoming big gay wedding of Sparky and the Rooster (thanks to Google Images for those photos). I can't say congratulations enough! I'm stormingly jealous as well -...

On the Social Software Summit in New York... (December 8, 2002) It continually upsets me that things like the Social Software Summit in New York happen and that I don't get to go to them all. Hearing Clay speak on areas very close to my heart in London recently was tremendously...

Three Stories of The Invisible Poof... (December 7, 2002) So the story goes like this... A friend of mine who used to work at The Express is talking with some friends in the office. She happens to mention me in conversation. A passing acquaintance of hers stops with a...

Towards a way of measuring a stale paradigm... (ps. needs an edit which I'll come to later) (December 7, 2002) Let's start by positing the idea that Thomas Kuhn is right when he talks of paradigm shift - that ideas don't simply change slowly over time, but instead occasionally move with seismic speed, size and repercussions. That the progression from...

Danger! Danger! High Voltage! (December 7, 2002) Prepare to have your world widened - for Meg is right - the song (and video) for Danger! High Voltage by the Electric 6 is about to colonise your consciousness and redefine music for you for the next twelve months....

No! No! It's a sin against television! (December 6, 2002) This will mean nothing to the people who come here to read rambling usability articles, or stuff on social software - or even the few people who come to hear me ramble on about what happens after-hours. This will only...

100 Greatest Gay Britons... (December 6, 2002) If I had to choose the gay men that I consider to be worthy of the 100 Greatest Gay Britons poll that is happening over at Naked Blog, I would probably make sure that the following were among them: EM...

The only thing worth watching on the internet... (December 6, 2002) Everyone in the UK pays a license fee for their television which means that we can have a high-quality public-sector television broadcaster: the BBC. The BBC also has the most-popular site in Europe. And yet while I'm delighted that it's...

A terrifying excerpt from Richard Stallman's website... (December 6, 2002) From Richard Stallman's (creator of the free software movement and the man behind GNU which is itself at least partially behind Linux) website: I'm a single atheist white man, 49, reputedly intelligent, with unusual interests in politics, science, music and...

Yet again manufacturing scarcity... (December 6, 2002) In the interests of fair exposure, I'm going to link back to Scott's response to my response to his comments on my thoughts about manufactured scarcity, although I'm going to have to leave a more thorough response for another day...

If you need a baking sheet then it counts as cooking... (December 5, 2002) I'm a master of the pre-packaged culinary treat. You get it in a packet. You put the packet in the oven. You take the packet out of the oven. You have lovely food. It's that simple! So as I'm sure...

On my failings as a geek... (December 5, 2002) If I was a better geek, this article on XFML at diveintomark.org would be fascinating, illuminating and revelatory. Instead I stare at it in desperation, terror and confusion as the words change and resolve themselves in front of me to...

There are too many funny facts in this article for me to be able to take it seriously... (December 5, 2002) Ok. I can just about buy the idea that you can use soundwaves to cool things down, and that you might be able to assemble a fridge that operated by those principles. I can almost buy the idea that two...

New stuff on the right-hand menu... (December 5, 2002) I've added a couple of nice little things to the right-hand menu of the site today. You can now talk to people who live near me and work near me via UpMyStreet Conversations. The site's progressing quite well - there...

Announcing the first, and probably only, product of Barbelith Interviews... An Evening with Grant Morrison... (December 4, 2002) New today - there's a huge slab-like rambling tome of an interview with Grant Morrison over at my other major ongoing project (barbelith.com). Here's a sexy quotable: "The space in The Invisibles, the idea of reclaiming space is based on...

A brief gripe about Technorati.com... (December 4, 2002) I know it's not finished yet and everything, but Technorati still hasn't figured out that plasticbag.org is a weblog or that plasticbag.org, www.plasticbag.org and plasticbag.org/index.shml are the same page. I just want to have my own little 'Cosmos'. It doesn't...

On the manufacturing of scarcity... (December 4, 2002) I really want to write a proper response to this piece on randomchaos.com which discusses the ethics of 'manufacturing scarcity'. But I've been meaning to write something thorough and intellectually satisfying for days, and nothing's coming. So I'm just going...

How micro-fame will make people undertake more tiny miracles... (December 4, 2002) Why would someone built a model of the Enterprise out of Lego? Or perhaps I should ask (because I spent most of my early teenage years building Lego models of TV and movie space-crafts and vehicles) why would anyone decide...

Bottle-necking and diseconomies of scale.... (December 3, 2002) Here's a not-particularly-good example of how diseconomies of scale can interfere with the practices of those who would abuse the network and transform it into something it was never supposed to be - a broadcast medium... The BBC News article...

On democracy and online community... (December 3, 2002) Here's a really useful piece of writing by Robert Putnam, author of the astounding Bowling Alone about the decline in social capital in America: Anonymity and the absence of social cues inhibit social control - that is, after all, why...

On Chanson D'Amour... (December 1, 2002) Presenting for your delectation the laughably awful lyrics of an atrocious auditoriy nightmare by Manhattan Transfer that is so sublimely awful that I might even decide to have it played at my funeral. That would be a sight. My parents...

A picture of Tom, yesterday... (December 1, 2002) My friend Fenner is getting married, and he's having a stag weekend abroad that I can't go to. So he and I met up with mutual friend Nick yesterday to kind of see him off. We went to Nick's club,...

The XML feeds of everyone I read via NetNewsWire... (December 1, 2002) For anyone who uses NetNewsWire or a similar rss/rdf reader or is interested in the sites that I read on a daily basis - here's a complete list of the feeds that I check each day: ( blogdex: recent ),...