Archives for March 2003

What is Trackback? (part one) (March 31, 2003) As part of an (hopefully) ongoing series - here's the most very basic introduction as to what Trackback can do. This is not a study of how it is done - and it makes certain assumptions that I'll go into...

Playing linklog catch-up... (March 28, 2003) Lots to get through this morning - all the stuff that I've meant to talk about in greater depth but haven't had time to do so... Apologies to all concerned for trivialising your hard work... My favourite new kind-of-weblog is...

When e-mail clients attack... (March 28, 2003) This probably couldn't be any more trivial, ridiculous or infantile. But - just occasionally - OSX's Mail.app's tendency to truncate e-mail subjects and place an ellipsis at the end of the line has unintentionally funny side-effects......

George Bush Funeral Home... (March 27, 2003) There's a page on this site that's recently been getting a fair amount of traffic. It's a page in the gallery which includes pictures of an establishment in Norwich, Norfolk called the George Bush Funeral Home. I don't know how...

NetNewsWire Strawpoll... (March 27, 2003) Inspired by a terrifying conversation with Dan Hon in which he revealed that he had 135 subscriptions strapped to his groaning copy of NetNewsWire, I decided to do a bit of a straw-poll. Not enough people were available online for...

The sky over Primrose Hill... (March 27, 2003) A couple of weeks ago I went to visit a friend in Primrose Hill. On the way over the bridge across the train lines I saw a beautiful sky. I like skies. You don't get to see them enough in...

Brief thoughts on e-mail newsletters... (March 25, 2003) The site for the Text E-mail Newsletter Standard is a well-intentioned and intelligent attempt to develop some standards for plain-text e-mail newsletters. It only falls down because the accessibility-conscious design strategy they've taken doesn't seem to be actually very easy...

Good things to do with noises... (March 25, 2003) Noise. Where would we be without it? Trapped in a sensory-deprivation tank, perhaps. Maybe - at a push - in space (although we'd have to not have any air-tanks or helmets or anything to experience the absence of noise, and...

Observation on the Trackback "How To"... (March 25, 2003) I don't know what it is about Trackback that makes it utterly impossible for anyone to explain it well. Certainly the How Trackback Works (from cruftbox.com is a scruffy but noble attempt to make it comprehensible to people. But I...

Blogroll revisited... (March 24, 2003) I'm slowly and systematically working my way around plasticbag.org, sorting out the weblog sidebar. I'm trying to find the best ways of helping the site to explain itself on each and every page - without compromising cross-site and inter-post navigation....

Designing for extreme readers... (March 23, 2003) So a mainstream news site is often comprised of many hundreds - thousands - of individual news stories. These stories are mostly designed to fit into a pretty clear taxonomy which reflects "what the news site is for". This taxonomy...

Are you sure? (March 21, 2003) I went to see Richard Dawkins talk at the Douglas Adams Memorial Lectures a couple of weeks back. Dawkins was introduced by Stephen Fry, who quoted Niels Bohr in saying, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum mechanics hasn't understood...

New ideas for sit-coms... (March 21, 2003) Does anyone remember this TV series? It had like six "friends" - three 'boys' and three 'girls' -and they kind of lived in this really obvious set in New York and the friends who were boys were Dorky/Slutty, Dorky/Sarcastic and...

The Bangles at the Shepherd's Bush Empire... (March 21, 2003) Now, somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago, I was a singular fan of the Bangles. I had all three of their albums, from the weird and vaguely unlistenable first one, through the poppy second album through into the lush...

My nights are headache grey... (March 20, 2003) Two nights in a row I've left work with a burnt-out grey headache. Desperate-need-for-a-holiday time is here, and thankfully Actually-going-for-a-holiday time is rapidly approaching. But more on that later. More rested today - my head spinning a little, but with...

In support of Robin Cook... (March 18, 2003) For those Americans amongst our company who may not know who he is, Robin Cook was, until this morning, Leader of the House of Commons. He was a high-placed member of the British cabinet, and an ex-Foreign Minister. Today he...

Sunday night / Monday morning (March 16, 2003) We all need things that are good to think with - interesting or fascinating questions that are worth exploring. Here are a few interesting questions people around the world have been asking this week... Is the BBC arrogant, unfairly subsidised...

Clutter on your desktop... (March 16, 2003) Clutter is my favourite new OSX toy. It starts off as a tiny little window that links in with iTunes. While you're listening to music, it pops online and grabs cover images from Amazon. Now that - in and of...

A Singular Lack of Integrity? (March 16, 2003) On the news now, a correspondent reported from the Azores where the pro-war-in-Iraq lobby have been meeting. She said something I found startling. Apparently at several points during the last few months it had looked like the UK/US position would...

Has B3ta been spammed? (March 14, 2003) Apologies: I don't know for how long it has been the case, but the game is now loading for me in a separate window - this could have been a change at their end or a browser bug at my...

On the meltdown at the Guardian... (March 14, 2003) Mad outbursts in national newspapers are like the rays of sunshine glinting through the storm clouds of international news. It's lovely to be able to sense the person who wrote the news, and get a sense of his or her...

A microcampaign to turn on autodiscovery... (March 13, 2003) 1) Key Problems with Movable Type. If you're a Movable Type user then you probably share a few key experiences with me. To start off with, you've probably mis-spelt it Moveable Type more than a few times. You've probably chortled...

A wifi hypothetical... (March 13, 2003) So here's a hypothetical situation for you. Let's say that there's a Starbucks in the high street. Let's say that this Starbucks runs a wireless network in association with T-mobile. And let's say that they charge for access to this...

Will Blogdex fix it for me? (March 12, 2003) Right. I'm on a mission. I'm wacked out on Dr Pepper and dog-related endorphins, I've just watched Mission Impossible on TV and I've got at least three posts I want to get written by eleven o'clock. Let's be honest with...

On Doughnuts, Wifi, e-democracy and Section 28... (March 12, 2003) I wonder if it's converting to Movable Type that means that I find it so hard to write. I wonder if it's the fact that each entry gets its own full page to sit-upon that makes me nervous about short...

Fresh and fertile Monday linkage... (March 10, 2003) You know, really, if you think about it, it's totally ok just to steal links from Popdex, Blogdex and Daypop because you're still only going to steal the good links and that helps everything self-filter even more effectively. Or something......

The first sign of the googlopalypse? (March 9, 2003) It's the first sign of the apocalypse - Google is throwing up errors all over the shop. I've checked with a few other people to see if it's happening with them too. My favourite response was from Matt Haughey who...

Saturday Night Linkage... (March 8, 2003) I'm still reeling from writing that last post in a blast of confused and desperate-to-get-it-out-there enthusiasm. And I still have no idea whether it's total bunk or not. So I'm going to throw out my linklog for the evening and...

Value Judgements on two kinds of networks... (March 8, 2003) I don't have the expertise or the discipline to dive into this as fully as I would like, so I'm just going to sketch out a few thoughts which maybe someone else would like to pick up and run with....

In lieu of content... (March 6, 2003) As a result of one of the most profoundly tiring days I've had in a very long time, please accept this link-log with my apologies. I'm so exhausted I feel like I'm melting into goo. Back to your regularly scheduled...

On Ethical Weblogging (Part One) (March 4, 2003) Update: Wednesday March 5 - The text of this post has been slightly edited and adjusted in an attempt to tighten up and clarify my argument. I believe that my position is essentially the same, but you are advised that...

Big Gay Linkage... (March 3, 2003) Ok. Next year I want to be a Best Gay Chap nominee again. Do you understand me? I'm not satisfied with just being known for my design skills. I want to be the world's best homo. I know I don't...

Blogger & Pyra redux... (March 3, 2003) Keen-eyed new media news spotters will have seen the article this morning, Google takes the plunge (by Bobbie Johnson) about the search engine company buying Blogger. Bobbie got some comments off me, a couple of which made it into the...

Sunday night celebrity countdown... (March 2, 2003) Being a brief list of the celebrities that I've come into fleeting contact with over the last month or so. The gentle reader is expected to bear in mind that said celebrities are unlikely to be of the stature of...

On the avoidance of harm... (March 2, 2003) There's some fascinating stuff around about the relationship of depressive illness to strategies of harm avoidance: Clinical depression is associated with two modulations occurring simultaneously and chronically, dysphoria and the generalized stress response. Dysphoria is a modulation that is part...