- Free as in "Me" | 43 Folders
Merlin Mann on content republication, and the right of the individual to control who gets to profit by their work.
- Tropo.com
API for a telephony service that can be used with any one of a variety of the usual web languages. Might be handy if I need to start building telephony functionality into web apps.
- Vice Magazine – THE DARK LORD OF LOGOS
This is the problem with my auto-linkblogging. I should have blogged this one first, so that you would have gotten to it second. Damn. OK, go look at the link below. Then come back and look at this one, because bands below really should have gotten in touch with this guy instead.
- The most unreadable metal logos – my 13 picks | Lady Omega : : Design, Art, Music
These are just stunning. As in I'm stunned that anyone thought "yes, that's what I want the logo for my band to be".
Tag: culture
Bookmarks for April 9, 2009
- David MacKay: Sustainable Energy – without the hot air: Download
I want to sit down and read this properly when I get time – an actual accessible book on the maths of energy consumption vs. possible energy production, as opposed the usual waffle.
- Coilhouse » Blog Archive » Latex/Guns/Gnosis: The Matrix Turns 10
A short retrospective of the first Matrix film, as it turns 10. a) it is horrifying to me that that movie is ten, because it means I am very old, and b) I particularly love the title of this article. It occurs to me that I have never satisfyingly run a game with all three of those elements, and I really must get around to having a go at that.
- Cory Doctorow: Getting tough on copyright enforcers | Culture | guardian.co.uk
I think this is a fair trade. I will accept a three strikes copyright warning system only if all copyright enforcers are held to the same standard: three wrong accusations, and they're out, too. Want to bet me that they'd all be gone before the rest of us would?
- Focal point (game theory) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Must remember this on in future – the basis by which two parties that are unable to communicate will still be able to select the same focal point in a game/challenge.
- re: diverselessness (tecznotes)
A companion to the other piece on monoculturalism, this dealing with internet communities and the origins of elites, and the social effects of these technologies, and some opinions on where these phenomena are likely to lead to.
- Whimsley: Online Monoculture and the End of the Niche
Why recommendation engines are creating even more of a mononculture than we had beore, even though everyone feels like they're finding more niche stuff.
- BLDGBLOG: Postopolis!
I have significantly less than fuck all architectural training, but it hasn't escaped my notice over the last few years that many of the most interesting creative types I know do have some history with the discipline, and I've increasingly found my own interests tending that way – not literally in the designing buildings sense, but in the sense of being aware of people's relationship with the space around them, and how to optimise that space to get the best out of life.
Postopolis therefore sounds like it would have been a fascinating event to be at, even if 90% would have gone sailing over my head. Any chance of holding the next one in London? It's at least as interesting as LA… - cityofsound: Postopolis LA
Dan Hill was at Postopolis and has written an excellent series of posts on it, and on LA in general. Thoroughly recommended reading.
Bookmarks for March 17, 2009
- How Not To Sort By Average Rating
Scary looking maths for doing user-ratings based ranking that doesn't fall into a couple of common traps.
- Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: friends with benefits
Insight into why password security may be a flawed model for websites.
- Growing Sentences with David Foster Wallace
How to take a simple sentence, and turn it into something that reads like David Foster Wallace.
Bookmarks for February 26, 2009
- National Insurance Numbers (NINOs): Format and Security: What to do if you suspect or discover fraud
This is, I assume, information that might be useful to a number of people. God bless the British governement.
- John Hodgman on "meh" – Waxy.org
This is a perfect summary of that ghastly little word. Key phrase here "It's part of the toxic Internet art of constant callous one upsmanship."
Bookmarks for February 23, 2009
- The history of the smiley face symbol | Art and design | The Guardian
A short history of one of the most recurrent and widely used design motifs of the last 50 years.
- Former NiN Drummer Takes Album Promotion A Step Further
Are you paying attention, music business? This is clearly the future of album promotion. I really, really hope someone take him up on one of the more stupidly expensive ones. And that he goes through with it. After all, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing in the most stupidly over-the-top manner possible.
- The Demon-Haunted World
"Or the past and future of practical city magic." Look, just go read it, because it's a clever man talking. It is not mysical, it is futuristical, and I'll give good odds that a lot of what he's talking about will come to pass. And it reminds me that I must dig up and revise something I wrote years ago on digital shamanism.
Bookmarks for February 19, 2009
- The Technium: Amish Hackers
Absolutely fascinating article on the adoption of new technologies among Amish communities. It doesn't necessarily seem like such a bad way to live, although obviously they'd need to remove God from the business before I'd sign up.
- London architecture – a set on Flickr
Del linked to this set of lovely photos of various buildings in London. And now I'm doing the same, because she's right, it's ace.
Bookmarks for July 8, 2008
- Anarchogeek: The ascendancy of Hacker News & the gentrification of geek news communities
Good metaphor. I get my geek news through blogs instead of community-type sites for this sort of reason – the window where the site is gentrified enough that the a-geeks don’t annoy me but the masses and the attendant noise/churn haven’t arrived is small.
Bookmarks for March 7, 2008
- Hallelujah
A short cultural history of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. If, like most people, you think it’s always been a relentlessly sad song, you should probably read this.