Archives for July 2003

Post-structuralist Wifi? (July 31, 2003) So in the dream I'm back at University and I'm in one of those literature classes that you actually only get at school, where people are supposed to give their massive critical insights on a chunk of a play that's...

The Balkanisation of Blogdex... (July 29, 2003) The last couple of days have seen a Daypop and Blogdex Top 40s that are totally overwhelmed by political articles from the States. If it wasn't for the fact that many of these articles are concerned with the war in...

Music from the Diet Coke advert... (July 28, 2003) It's been driving me mad for weeks, but now I finally know the music that's playing in the diet coke advert where the girl is on a train and everything she reads around her seems to be suggesting that she...

Hating your community... (July 28, 2003) So I think the worst thing about running online communities is that fundamentally you have to spend at least some of your time dealing with incredibly unpleasant people who want to do nothing more than fuck you and said community...

Friendster insanity... (July 27, 2003) So someone wants to be my friend on Friendster. Yawn. God I'm popular. Blah blah blah. Except - what's this - they have a user number of something like 750,000!? My god, how many people are on this damn thing!?...

Superdistribution and Superlocalisation... (July 27, 2003) So I did my talk yesterday at EUvolt and I think it went OK. The paper was a bit of a Frankenstein's monster of components of older papers glued together with liberal smatterings of last-minute thought-goo - but I think...

Keith Waterhouse on weblogs (redux) (July 26, 2003) While digging around in my site to try and find some quotes for a piece I'm presenting at EUvolt today (I'm so bloody busy my ears are bleeding), I stumbled upon an old piece on Newspaper columnists that Keither Waterhouse...

Webb's favourite colour... (July 24, 2003) My colleague, Mr Webb, has done it again. Today's project is an attempt to find The Web's favourite colour. Here's how it works - you take a photo of your favourite colour with your camera phone and send it via...

Ponces and Spies... (July 23, 2003) Another quote from The Cambridge Spies because I got it for my birthday and I'm watching it again because I really enjoyed it last time... Queen: "Never trust a man with a bad moustache. Homosexualists never have moustaches... Have you...

As spies, so pundits? (July 23, 2003) On The Cambridge Spies: "In a dirty bogus business, riddled with deceit, manipulation and betrayal, an intelligence service maintains it sanity by developing its own concept of what it believes to be the truth. Those agents who confirm this perceived...

Stairs of Broadcasting House... (July 23, 2003) The awesome stairs of Broadcasting House......

Oh Hateful Windows! (July 22, 2003) Until I started my new job at the BBC - with the exception of miserably short stints in cyber-cafés and the like - I hadn't used a Windows PC in getting on for two years. Now I'm compelled to. My...

Improvements in Hydra... (July 22, 2003) Thanks to Mr Hammersley, I'm currently playing with version 1.1.1 of everyone's favourite collaborative editing tool Hydra. The big change? There's now a built in live-updating HTML preview facility. Some of the implications are fairly obvious - you can now...

What a long weekend... (July 20, 2003) What have I done this weekend? I've driven (mostly with Nick and Katy) about three hundred and fifty miles. I've taken my friends to a Norwich gay bar full of army fetishists. I've smashed things with my Hulk Hands. I've...

Fragments of speeches... (July 18, 2003) I've been reading Blair's speech to Congress (page one / page two), and I think my first reaction is that it's an interesting combination of jingoism, liberalism, pragmatism and self-love. The bits that are a bit craw-sticking are the fawning...

Encouraging men to masturbate... (July 17, 2003) Masturbation cuts cancer risk: "Men could reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation, researchers suggest. They say cancer-causing chemicals could build up in the prostate if men do not ejaculate regularly. And they say sexual intercourse may...

On empty, dreary bitching... (July 15, 2003) Two people who - as usual - have managed to find specious grounds to bitch about the weblogging event at the House of Parliament yesterday: (1) Andrew Orlowski (2) Simon Kent (hitherto) from 2lmc.org. Some people seem to be able...

Coates vs. Watson... (July 15, 2003) From Palace of Westminster to The West Wing in one bus ride... I'm too exhausted to write much about the Vox Politics event in the House of Commons that I attended earlier this evening - I'll leave in depth discussion...

Behold the ravages of time! (July 14, 2003) This is going to sound ridiculous, but when I turned thirty, never in my wildest dreams did I actually think that time was going to continue moving after said birthday. Certainly I didn't think that there would be birthdays after...

Juicy fresh Apple links... (July 13, 2003) A selection of carefully filtered Apple-related linkery for your popular consumption, many of which had their origin in the monkey brains of 2lmc: Fetch Art for iTunes Haughey's Migrating between Macs Macintosh Keyboard Shortcuts Detour controls where all your audio...

Things to do with RSS readers... (July 13, 2003) When I was in Helsinki, I started thinking about RSS aggregators like NewNewsWire. More particularly I started to think about what extra functionality they should be able to provide. Personal Blogdex: Here's the most obvious idea. You have a whole...

Today's favourite search request... (July 11, 2003) Digging around in my search requests for a laugh, I find this lovely little gem posted in the last few hours: "Holy shit, for the first time since I have begun visiting this site (about 3 years or so) I...

Catching up on the world of the future... (July 10, 2003) The new job is proceeding apace - I've spent more consecutive man-hours in meetings than ever before in my life. Or so it seems at least. The edges of the job are beginning to become clear, and it's all terribly...

Freud on Super-heroes... (July 9, 2003) Freud on super-heroes and super-villains? The man who, in consequence of his unyielding constitution, cannot fall in with this suppression of instinct, becomes a 'criminal', an 'outlaw', in the face of society - unless his social position or his exceptional...

CSS stuff... (July 7, 2003) A few CSS links from around the internet recently: Lurking in Shadows: CSS and drop shadow effects About hebig title pictures Information on border slants...

Tiny T610 Collage... (July 7, 2003) I'll be buggered if I can figure out how to get photo-messaging or e-mail or the interweb working on my little T610, which they don't tell you but doesn't actually make images of a decent useful size (not 640x480, but...

The internet is not shit... (July 6, 2003) I've been hearing the same sentiments by a lot of people over the last few months in different types of language. Some say The Internet is Shit. Some others say that Virtual Community has died. Without wanting to doubt the...

Can weblogs change politics? (July 6, 2003) Are you interested in the political implications of weblogs and social software? Then come to Can Weblogs Change Politics? - an event held in the House of Commons on July 14th. Here's an quick excerpt from the proposed topics of...

On AOL's weblogging project... (July 6, 2003) So the first members of the weblogging extended family have been exposed to AOL's proposed new weblogging tools. The general consensus seems to be that they are of surprisingly good quality and that they are approaching the service more like...

Working in the West Wing... (July 5, 2003) It's been a slow-posting week on plasticbag.org and that's directly related to fast-moving, sleepless, hectic first week of new job acclimatisation. It's still far too early to get a sense of what our every-day work is going to be like,...

Theroux Theroux Theroux! (July 5, 2003) Ok. So this brief post is so entirely not about social software or weblogs or technology or futurism or 'the industry'. This post is - well - it's quite a lot more shallow than that. This post (which is nearly...

Web splinters under my fingernails... (July 1, 2003) The web splinters that have been working their way under my typing fingernails today include: Dan Hon's running Google Ads Reboot Talk Videos Panther's Finder in-depth Bart & JP are so cute 3-day weeks and powercuts? [via 2lmc]...

Okay, so I'm trivialising it... (July 1, 2003) I'll tell you something for nothing. I'm beginning not to care who's right about this whole bloody RSS thing. Is it Dave? Is it Mark? Is it the Penry the mild-mannered janitor? I know it's an important debate, and I...

Return to Broadcasting House... (July 1, 2003) So I don't know where to start really so I'm just going to come out and say it. After several weeks of organisation, negotiation and discussion I find myself cheerfully back in gainful employment. My new job has almost intimidating...