Author: Alasdair
Bruce Sterling At Reboot
Shut up and listen to the clever man.
Links For Wednesday 8th July 2009
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Look, I know I go on a lot about IE, and most of you are sick of it, but the gods honest truth is that using IE actively stifles innovation on the internet, because we have to spend so much time working out how to support it that we don't have the time or budget to get on with anything really interesting. Until Microsoft either take the web seriously enough to implement some proper fucking standards, then using IE is actively hindering the rest of us getting on with inventing the future. Even if you don't care about viruses, please stop it, or urge the people who are making you use it to stop it – I will happily provide supporting documents to counter *any* or their arguments about "business" or "security" reasons.
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"Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika."
Links For Tuesday 7th July 2009
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Iphone app for mac users – get growl notifications from your mac forwarded to your iphone as push notifications. I can see a number of uses for this one…
Music Video: Sour
Via Phil’s always-worth-the-time Sleevelessness, this is the one of the cleverest music video’s I’ve seen in a while – both for the visuals, and the involvement of their fanbase. The bit with the cameras is particularly impressive, just for the careful planning it must have taken.
Another One And Other
Just a reminder, mostly for the Londoners, (although I will be getting broadcast live on the the elektrical internets by webcam, if anyone is that heart-stoppingly bored) that I will be on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of One And Other on Monday July the 20th (not quite two weeks away, now) between 10 and 11pm.
I plan to be up there with camera and tripod taking such pictures as suggest themselves to me, weather permitting. If you fancy coming along to watch/throw things, I’d appreciate the support. If you fancy turning up in some kind of ludicrous outfit, thus helping ensure that I have things to photograph from up on the plinth, that’s even better, but outfit or not, if you’re in town, and not busy, do swing by.
Links For Monday 6th July 2009
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"The next time you see an application you like, think very long and hard about all the user-oriented details that went into making it a pleasure to use, before decrying how you could trivially reimplement the entire damn thing in a weekend. Nine times out of ten, when you think an application was ridiculously easy to implement, you’re completely missing the user side of the story."
Clients at work routinely ask up to "just you what you did for [otherclient] – just reuse the code, so it won't take you very long", and then look at us like we're trying to con them when we explain that no, we can't do that. And this is kind of why – we learn and reuse relevent bits, but each client gets a custom codebase, because we build the best tools we can for each one. So they're not interoperable.
Links For Thursday 2nd July 2009
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I for one welcome… etc.
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The latest public project from Schulze and Webb, beloved of this parish for basically being much cleverer than me, is site that tracks the word-of-mouth buzz around BBC TV and Radio programs. Yes, it skews populist, for obvious reasons, but I can think of ways round that, and in an iteration or two, might be a really good way of tracking good telly that one would otherwise miss.
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Bit of a note to self – with the loss of my laptop, I am kind of aware that had I gotten around to putting proper encryption on the thing, I would not have had to bother with the hassle of changing every single bloody password I use. If you use a laptop, or notebook PC, and don't encrypt the entire HD, then you're running the same risk as I did. (Hell, it's true of desktops, too, but they're not begging to be lost of stolen on a daily basis.) You can find software that will do this for you linked from the link above, whatever OS you use.
You morning dose of… of… of something.
I don’t know what the fuck this is other than “RoboGeisha”.
Enjoy.
Links For Wednesday 1st July 2009
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"The rise of psychogeography was in some ways an impulse to rediscover those old natural paths that I and others like me had trodden through the ruins, to find ways of rediscovering serious memory, something which Peter Ackroyd (with Chatterton), Alan Moore (From Hell) and Will Self (The Book of Dave) were searching out among the virtual ruins of a London that was becoming a shadow played out on the newly tarted-up walls of Notting Hill and Shadwell.
As well as the friends and relatives who have also become memories, we are equally dependent on the geography of our cities for the myths and rituals by which we live. Without conscious ritual, all we have left are buried tram tracks, some vague ideas of what still lies under the steel-and-concrete cladding and a few bits of film footage."