A Donkey on the Edge

Darn, it's been a whole week - getting sloppy. Piece in the Guardian today theorising about what will happen when punters become able to apply professional-grade special effects to video. The suggestion is that video news will eat itself as we all retreat into home-made news dissemination.

It's a nice idea to think that bloggers might be creating some form of accurate transcription of history as it happens. Personally, I don't see how anything new is happening. In a sense, information has been mediated right from the start. Whether it was a journalist filling via a telegraph wire from Congo, a photo-journalist in Vietnam or just plain-vanilla television news, reality was never guaranteed. We simply agree to consume what we feel is the most likely candidate, according to our own personal belief system.

You could argue that you have to be there ? to see the bullet, hear the explosion to get reality. But even then, without any grasp of a bigger picture, a bit of background, some sort of history or context, how real is your experience?

I seem to remember Faye Dunaway finding a work-around to this problem (I think she was coming on top of William Holden at the same time) with the Mao Tse Tung Hour...

Maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, hijacking 747's, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd open each week's segment with that authentic footage, hire a couple of writers to write some story behind that footage, and we've got ourselves a series... Bosch: A series about a bunch of bank-robbing guerrillas? Schlesinger: What're we going to call it - the Mao Tse-Tung Hour? Diana: Why not? They've got Strike Force, Task Force, SWAT. Why not Che Guevara and his own little mod squad.

So what's next for the television companies?

Anyway, Nick is still not getting enough sleep, but it's for a good cause: Clem is five weeks old tomorrow and has almost doubled her birth weight! She weighed in at 10lbs 1oz at the Solent road health center this morning. The fuel for this amazing trick is of course coming out of Nicki's nipples (she says that sometimes they feel like atomic raspberries).

I've been real busy this week on the work front, lots of meetings, coding and quarking. In the middle of all that, I've managed to have my first ever acupuncture session.

I confess I was slightly dissapointed by the experience as I had been led to believe that I would be a changed man. In the end I left the health place the same man except with a sore left arm...

Spread the word, wear the dot http://trusted.resource.org

Found this while reading the tasty Textism.

Gosh, you learn something new everyday on the web. The following from a Stanford U paper

In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext. Google is designed to crawl and index the Web efficiently and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems.

If only I had done something useful at school ;-)

Funny article in the Guardian this morning. Barbara Ellen remembers the hairy hippies of "The Joy of Sex". She laments the passing of said hippies as the new edition has replaced the daft drawings with (no doubt very earnest and tasteful) photos of models.

I was reminded of sneaking a peek at my parent's copy as a little boy. Just for the record, I hope the new edition removes a lot of the original's nonsense or there is going to be a whole new generation of eight-year-old boys who believe men are gay because they fear the vulva. I seem to remember reading that the vulva would jump out and grab the poor guy. This was actually supported by an illustration of what looked like a large pink garden trowel sticking out from between hippy lady's legs - scarry stuff ;-)

Right, I'm sure there were some other pearls in there that I've forgotten. Anyone?

Now, this is silly :-)

The world is made up of wires and stuff. Just scratch away the skin on your arm and look what's there. Wires! The Internet uses wires too, mainly for stuff.

(from Tim Ireland's bloggerhead)

More strange and wonderful stuff from Cal. Check out this icq conversation

apparently, and these people want to help students avoid it. You'd think that a site called Plagiarism.org might try and make a more unique logo. I mean it's a logo with a swoosh(!):

The ultimate reference for swoosh logos is probably swoosh no more and of course the seminal enormicom created by 37signals who brought us that imortal line Complete sentences are so Q4'99. That's why your new brand includes its very own three word tagline.

Finally, v-2.org have a lengthier piece on the subject of the march of the swoosh (but lots of goofy flash navigation).

playful, retro, unpredictable, jazzy (occasionally, and not in a good sense, I'm afraid). But definite potential overall.

Billy serves beer :-)

Hi dug, Here is the site favoured by academics who are involved in the fight against plagiarism. Its quite a big project about electronic detection, and does mention plagiarism.org

What do you think of their logo?

B-)

Nicki and I were on holiday in the land of Ben and Laura last year, when we stopped for lunch in West Virginia. Food was fantastic basic southern stuff, served with those large brown plastic glasses full of home-made ice tea. I can't remember what we had, but it probably included bbq pork, corn and a sloppy joe (for Nicki's edification).

Anyway, this particular restaurant was pretty much dedicated (all walls covered with tributes, number three on the front door where the "licensed to sell spirits" sign on a pub normally is) to Dale Earnhardt. None of us had ever heard of the man and just chalked it up as another "meeting Elvis" southern experience (I'll tell you about the visit to the prison gift shop some other time).

Anyway, saw this on the illuminated donkey and it reminded me of Ben and Laura

The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the Intimidator. During my trip it gradually dawned on me that the near-ubiquitous #3, in commemoration of Dale Earnhardt, had almost entirely replaced the cross as the pendant of choice in the South. Now, in the long tradition of Virgin Mary sightings, an Earnhardt miracle has occurred.

(yes, allrightallright, I was vanity surfing

I remember preparing for Halloween when I was in 3rd grade at the American school in Milan. One of the kids had a real Bell helmet and a driving suit painted black with a white skeleton all over it. I couldn't believe how cool that was (even though I'd never heard of NASCAR). Stock car racing does hold a particular spot in the American subconscious methinks...

Mmmmm... Clem had her first colic last night. Not fun :-(

Very impressed with Tomy UK (the people who make those funny radio powered baby monitor things). I thought mine was broken as its flashing light morse code alarm was doing what I thought was the wrong thing. I checked out the web site looking for a plain and simple tech spec on the alarm codes but couldn't get anywhere. The site is all Flash and content free - a real load of poo but to my surprise, when you fill in the "contact us" form (why nasty comments about the site from concerned parents etc etc) they then call you back soon after submitting the form

So much for Mr Ecrm ;-)

I'm sure Blogchalk is a just silly trick to get people to publish this sentence (must be an evil backstory somewhere...): Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United Kingdom, London, West Hampstead, Dug, Male, 36-40!

So there you go...

From Simon Willison via Zeldman

...On second thoughts, if you have a blog - blog it. Enough blogger interest leads to mainstream media interest, and the more bad press this gets the better. Sites like this can not be allowed to go without comment, and the more comment the better. Let's humiliate these people in to never, ever creating something this bad again.

okydoky, here's what one million pounds buys you (except, after Dr Evil, a million doesn't seem like that much...):

nato davos enron wto chechnya milosovic afghanistan cyberterrorism network terror waco oklahoma suicide bomber iraq iran ngo gmo homeland security ashcroft cia nsa fbi saddam hussein chemical weapon mass destruction bush cheney reagan hemp opium bin laden al qaeda andersen cocaine ecstasy anthrax bolivia black helicopters dirty bomb arafat khaddafi taliban (textism.com).

from dack.com - the cellphone theatre mini movies (originally designed for viewing via mobile).

Ooops... Tell you what, kextunload is intense. Imagine editing the kernel via an ssh conection. It was fun til I killed the usb bus completely (no keyboard no mouse)

Does anybody else find the thought of Israel building walls around Palestinian enclaves disturbing? Can you say Warsaw? I guess the next step on the road to a peaceful settlement will be the mandatory wearing of yellow crescents? Anyway, here's a more considered response

What is going around here? Can you believe the British government wants to remove the double jeopardy rule, make previous convictions admissible in court and do away with jury trial in some cases. No legal student, I couldn't tell you why the double jeopardy rule exists, only that without it, a government can simply keep locking up and trying dissentors.

Hi dug,

I think you must mean 'whingeing'. The 'h' is constantly dropping from words like this because English folk pronounce 'w' and 'wh' in exactly the same way, which always jars for Scots who pronounce them differently.

btw, Margaret Thatcher (remember?) started pronouncing 'wh' the Scottish way after she went for elocution lessons. John Wells, the phonetician at UCL, pointed out that the 'wh' became the same as 'w' in England long before the 'r' dropped out of words like 'cart', so it's interesting that the elocution teacher still perceived this regression as worthwhile.

The 'e' is there to make the 'ng' sound different from 'winging', 'singing' etc.

B-)

(thank you Billy grin)

Hadn't seen the man in years (literally). It was strangely reassuring - he hadn't changed a bit, still the same high-energy unstoppable force of nature :-) He has moved on from being London's top celebrity photographer to television director which is pretty darn exciting as this is basically his life-long dream. Sven's wife Mandy (Amanda Burton, the actress) and girls are good too - his wee baby is now a teen-ager (shudder).

I did say I wasn't going to focus on memory or reminiscing, it's just that the sun was shining and we talked about people we worked with together (Jen and Will finally managed to reproduce and have two lovely kids) and it all got me thinking.

I can't believe I missed his Stay Still ten year bash - it was apparently a major drunken and glittery (in that order?) affair and he had one of my prints for sale (a 45 inch close-up of Jack Dee's right eye). His picture editor handed me a huge bag of outtakes which I went through when I got home. It is quite bizarre looking at transparencies and not even remembering shooting them.

In among the dross was a little snap I did at Barnsdale, Geoff Hamilton's garden, for the Christmas issue of the Radio Times (1995?). What an amazing day that was. I drove for miles to get to his place up North with Gemma Day (who is now a fully-fledged photographer) to photograph Geoff's flower arrangements. When I got there, he walked us through his (giant) garden, cut a few tons of greenery and left it all in a big pile. He then fucked off to choir singing leaving gemma and me to turn it into a styled interior shot of beautiful flowers.

It was bloody frightening, but we fudged it ok in the end and drove home our hands full of thorns. Geoff died in 1996.

(Friday 2 August-- works still in progress) I was making some moodboards in illustrator the other day and hit "outline" ? which got me this groovy background pattern of random boxes...

Ok it's 19k but sure looks nice on a 21" monitor ;-)

Just spotted two muslim women with three kids outside the mosque in St John's Wood trying to flag a cab. As I sat at the lights I saw no less than four (!) empty black cabs refuse to pick them up.

They're off to Scotland for the week as the bathroom builders move in this week. On the way home I dropped in on the Odeon and saw Minority Report - interesting film.

Is it just me or did the 5k disapoint this year? This year for the first time, most of the 'cleverer' entries don't work on my machine. The fact that these same entries are often highly rated worries me. Mebbe next year we could have a "web" category instead of the current "device dependent" category :-(

Lessee...

03:00 put computer to sleep
03:30 put dug to sleep
05:15 paper boy hangs satchel on front door
06:30 builders climb scaffolding out front of house
07:00 kevin + andy arrive to gut the bathroom
07:20 paul knocks on door (he's kev's boss)
07:30 paper boy retrieves satchel
08:30 nadinne (the designer) arrives
08:45 wake computer up

Darn, and I thought I'd catch a few zeds with Clem in Scotland ;-)

Clearly old Chrimble has too much time on his hands. His power rating in paranormal deathmatch (and he could afford the magic wardrobe) would indicate that the man has fought 4,761 opponents, taking an average of two minutes per fight, that's 9,533 minutes of fighting, or 158 hours (the equivalent of twenty (20!) workdays) of metaphysical bloodshed ;-)

But if you have adsl http://www.spent2000.com/2002/ works well. I liked "It's good to be here" (I would have provided a link, but hey, the whole site is a big swf so no links).

No wait - I am trying to say I like this site, yeah?

our bathroom designer is sitting in the kitchen weaving silver thread. I half expect her to pull out a golden fleece or pose with a six-legged lion (or was that five-legged, must check my Assyrian art history ;-)) She's making some sort of tiara-type thing with little incrusted bits of glass (I'm guessing) - she's got a box full of little hard things that shimmer...

with poorly framed art-historical references, here's Pat the plaster hard at work in the bathroom. He does look fairly Herculean, no (or am I thinking Atlas...)? And what a smooth surface — months of practise and I can't get anywhere near that - I'm beginning to wonder why I did the back room myself ;-)

This from http://boingboing.net/:

Let's put NetSol to death. We're the Alpha Geeks of our social circles. When people ask us about registering domains, let's be sure to tell them to register anywhere except NetSol, because they will sell your domain to someone else and do nothing about it. When we attend conferences where NetSol or Verisign execs are speaking, let's hijack the Q&A and hound them about why we should trust them when they so cavalierly robbed hoopla.com's owner of her property. If NetSol resolves this issue (ha!), then ask pointed questions about why it took such a massive putsch to get them to do the right goddamned thing. If you're at an ICANN meeting, raise hoopla.com and your own horror stories and demand that NetSol be stripped of its charter. Tell your company to certify with companies other than Verisign.

Netsol's whois search returns the following:

Expiry Date: 6/10/2003
Registrant
Yi-Chi Wang
Wang Yi-Chi
3F, No. 1-2, Alley 23, Lane 10, Bau-Jian Rd.
Junghe, TW
106

Talk about a fucking meltdown — this is like santa coming 'round on boxing day to take your presents away :-(

I have been sleeping days all week. It's the only way to be 'fresh' for use of the broadband connection without workmen hammering and drilling... I've developed a rash and am wondering when The West Wing's Sam and Ainsley are finally going to have their earth-moving sexual encounter. Spent most of today over at Billy's house. Sat in the bath for an hour and then slept on the grass getting sunburned for two or three.

It's amazing how debilitating not having a bathroom can be.

I was about to hit the "send" button (these notes are posted via email) when I remembered the Seven-of-Nine and Janeway love stories... I'm guessing it's mostly women who write this stuff, so Aisnley and Sam sounded like a good candidate. A quick Google later and voilà

I love you, Ainsley Hayes. I love that you never let up, I love that you're passionate about what you believe in, I love how you were with Theresa and Paloma, how you and Mom are with one another.
Sam, People are staring at us. I think they want us to board so they can take off.
They're staring?
Uh huh,
Then let's give them something to look at. Sam grabbed her and pulled her close for an earth shattering kiss.
There's going to be TALK, Sam, she said when he broke the kiss.
Do you care?
Let's give them something to talk about. Ainsley grabbed his tie and pulled him in for another tender kiss. Eventually, they boarded the plane to thunderous applause.

Ahhh...

arse. deathmatch has been hacked. As much as I like the idea of a secure internet with no open relays and exploit-resistant boxes those silly hackers (you know the ones, the ones that shouldn't be calling themselves hackers in the first place coz hacking has nothing to do with messing with people's stuff and use that really annoying STUpidZ4U upper-and-lower HkkkerZZ typography grrr) shouldn't do the own thing.

Particularly if they did a rm -R as root thereby deleting everything (including my little alien avatar I had wasted hours getting to level 600 more grrr).

Bastards.

Had a very nice day yesterday kicking around London in the sun with Andrew Keith Ward

We met up in Borough Market (fantastic - I alway say i should spend more time down there...), drank far too much wine whisky and beer (not in that order) and ended up roaming around the south bank.

At some point we got to convince the woman at the Tate ticket desk that Andy and I are art students who not only must get in to Tate Modern to see the Matisse show forthwith, but that even though we forgot our student cards we should still get the concession.

Enjoyed show v. much :-)

After Tate we tried to squeeze another pint in at the Blackfriars, but it was closed (I've always wanted to go in and check out the amazing pseudo-gothic interior) so instead decided to get sensible and head home :-)

Had a back-up :-) So all is well in deathmatch (trying to get enough to buy the warp drive).

Yes, intellectually I know this is sad, but hey...