Jonathan Sanderson’s weblog, since 2001.
Via – where else? – Metafilter – the Collier Classification System for Very Small Objects. Lovely, lovely concept, though I do wish the resulting names were just a tad more pronounceable.
Also, does it remind anybody else of the sort of thing Ben Schott might do?
For reasons I don’t quite understand – well, I do understand, I just don’t quite agree with the interpretation – a couple of fairly prominent Mac users are switching to Ubuntu’s GNU/Linux distribution. Which is fine. If it does what they need, good luck to them. I’m thinking of dusting off my old K6 desktop and trying Ubuntu on it too, and am hampered only by a marked lack of spare monitors round these parts. Oh, and the basic problem that there’s nothing – nothing that’s important for me, at least – I can do on Linux that I can’t do on OS X. Also, I don’t have a quasi-religious passion for ‘free’ (as-in-have-you-any-idea-how-nonsensical-this-phrase-is?) software. But hey, hedged bets and everything, I’m still interested.
No, what worries me about Cory’s migration in particular is his declared aim of ‘documenting every step of [his] switch‘ at Boing Boing. Oh please, please don’t do that, Cory. I’m already a tad fed up with the sheer volume of posts on that site, and more posts doesn’t help at all. Particularly if they’re off-topic for the blog. See, Boing Boing is ‘a directory of wonderful things’ – my perception is that it’s about the lovely, the unexpected, the dramatic, the impressive, the quirky, the alarming, the plain interesting. Its strength is the diversity of its stories.
It’s already arguable that all the DRM activism stuff is misplaced – why isn’t that at an EFF blog, again? – but if they add platform evangelism too, well… sheesh, I don’t know. Particularly if that category of post is coming from Cory, who can be prolific in a please-stop-I-can’t-take-it-any-more sort of way.
It’s not that I don’t want to read about Cory’s Ubuntu experience. I do. Pilgrim’s list of Ubuntu/Linux software is extremely useful, for example, and it’s clear from that alone that desktop Linux has come a long way since I last tried it. I just don’t want to read this sort of stuff at Boing Boing, because it doesn’t fit my image of what Boing Boing is.
Perhaps I’m being ‘old-media’ to think that the audience is important. But Boing Boing’s signal:noise seems to have been falling of late, and I’m not alone in thinking that.
(next target: Make. Which really should post less than fifteen things an hour).
I’m sorry. I know I should be above such things. But I still find this story completely giggle-worthy, in a sniggering schoolboy sort of way.
I’ll grow up, eventually.
My friend Debs’ films with Richard Dawkins about religion, ‘Root of all Evil?’, have been put up on Google Video – notably without the somewhat crucial title question mark, and also presumably in violation of copyright – apparently by a new-ageish forum group (who will probably complain if they get wind of my calling them ‘new-ageish,’ but at least those complaints might help me work out what they’re actually about without wading through reams of forum posts developing a picture for myself. What, you expect journalism here? Get a grip!)
Anyway: Part 1 here; part 2 here.
From the release notes:
iChat:
Addresses potential causes of “insufficient bandwidth” alerts in iChat.
If a conference doesn’t start as expected, iChat will now offer to send a report to Apple for investigation.
Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease…
(video chat is one of those things that’s surprisingly useful, and surprisingly irritating. The combinations of clients and routers that actually work together in practice appears to be almost vanishingly small, and every time I’ve tried to do it, it’s driven me up the wall. The common failure in iChat AV is ‘insufficient bandwidth’ – which usually means something else entirely – though it’s also rather fond of ‘…did not respond.’)
One of the ongoing grouses about the (bollocks horrid jargon phrase alert!) blogosphere (all clear!) is the (supposed) existence of an ‘A-list’ of bloggers whose combined popularity has spiraled ever upwards, to the (supposed) disadvantage of ‘the rest of us.’
Well, basically, get over it sunshine, some people are just better at it than you are. That argument aside – and speaking as somebody hovering just below the D-list of the blog world – the conference-junkie peer-respect thang is simultaneously both appealing and irrelevant.
So I won’t pretend not to experience a little thrill every time The Daily Grind here happens to pick up a stray comment or link from somebody whose blog I read. I find it quite scary – as I’ve mentioned many times, I tend to assume nobody reads this shit, and the thought that People Of Note might, in fact, do so is probably enough to put me right off it, if I really thought about it. But I also find it gratifying. It’s nice to be noted by people I respect.
But here’s what I suspect’s been going on of late: I think, at some recent bloggers’ shindig – which I could have attended had I been in London/San Francisco/wherever the hell BloggerCon was – a bunch of A-listers got drunk one night. Collectively, they decided to all show up at some poor unsuspecting obscure blogger’s site, and start linking and leaving comments. Just to, you know, freak them out.
How else can I explain Hammersley and Marks suddenly popping up in my comments, and now Euan Semple claiming to have seen the downloadable Guardian story here?
I’m being A-bombed. It’s the only rational explanation.
You watch, next I’ll have Winer and Kottke and Cory and Arrington and Scoble and Malkin and Zeldman all show up.
Bastards.
From what I can tell reading this NASA page, the answer is: pretty much how we got there in the first place. Which is either clever and efficient re-use of existing technology… or wildly underwhelming, depending on your point of view. What I find alarming, however, is how easy it is to find things to be snide about. A bit of a manned spaceflight rant from me, after the fold:
“Our company policy is to settle invoices promptly, so you should get paid very soon.”
“I’m a freelancer: my policy is not to believe anyone who says that.”
See, I know Rocketboom has an audience of something absurd like 300,000/day. I know they’re held up as the pinnacle pioneers of video blogging. I know all the bad press is basically about whether they’re too corporate or not.
But me? I don’t watch simply because I find Amanda Congdon almost precisely unwatchable. Sorry, lass, but… oh, tone it down a little from the art school ‘I’m a pwesenter!’ schtick, please!
Perhaps it’s a British/American thing? I know Rocketboom’s supposed to be irreverent and witty, but from Glasgow it’s just annoying. I’m going to grit my teeth for a week and see if I can bear it.
I have a small, cheap, but generally quite handy little Matsui 14-inch portable TV. Only, I don’t have such a thing. I loaned it to somebody, not so very long ago.
Trouble is, I can’t remember to whom. Anybody care to own up, and hand it back? It might be handy next month. Thanks awfully.