October 2009
37 posts
“THINK just for a moment before you let your children out dressed as witches or...”
– Oh, fuck right off, Brisbane Times, you humourless dolts. Halloween, the threat to Australian pockets.
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“My reading of the last 40 years of US history at the moment is that each...”
– John Emerson, commenting on The prehistory of “liberal fascism” at Crooked Timber. As a dynamic, I think it’s true for almost all centre-left governments in the western world for at least the last 20 years.
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Original Sound Version » Blog Archive » Stay... →
Long and fascinating interview with the composer behind the Diablo soundtrack, whose new game “Torchlight” is very reminiscent of that great old RPG.
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UI Anti-Pattern Watch: Search Box to Hell
Readers expect that when we use a search box on a blog, we’ll receive search results for that blog. Don’t mess with our expectations by including results from “across the network” or generic results from Google. The latter is a clue that you’ve messed up your Google Site Search configuration. The former is a sign you just care more about monetisation than you do about...
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Warn-out Words Watch: "Curation"
So, I think “curation” is in danger of becoming very stale: once an insightfully applied description to the best habits of good link-bloggers such as Cory Doctorow, now a catch-all word labelling everything that we do on social networks. You can now even curate your friends and acquaintances, or at least you’ll be able to as soon as Twitter pulls its collective finger out and...
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Chromeography →
Via Simplebits, a blog about chrome decals and logos. I used to love chrome when I was a kid. I spent hours with colour pencils and felt-tip pens trying to recreate the look, to relatively poor effect. It’s so much easier and yet slightly less rewarding to do it in a 3D renderer.
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It's not as easy as it looks to write this badly
Via Kottke, a couple of choice excerpts from a blog called How to Write Badly Well.
Being tense:
I sit at my desk with my head in my hands and sighed. It is only three days
until the deadline, I think, and I’m going to have had to finished
everything before then. If only I have finish this now,
I thought and lean back on my chair. Just then,
the phone has rung. I am answering...
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My Lord! A New Evony Ad! And It’s Everything We... →
Bleeding Cool provides a potted history of the truly barrel-scrapingly poor ads for online strategy game, Evony.
I vaguely recall a William Gibson novel set in a future where commercials had been refined to such a degree that every product was represented by breasts. Clearly, we now live in that future age.
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Groupthink →
New Australian group-authored politics-and-culture weblog. Perhaps the editors sensed a (much-needed?) gap in the literature, as it’s way heavier on the snark than the venerable Larvatus Prodeo.
Recommended.
Synth Britannia →
Was more interested in this program before I realised it was focusing on the New Wave and not something really culturally crucial like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. (hyperbolic Doctor Who fan mode: off)
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“Tonight the BBC will host an episode of Question Time on which they have invited...”
– [Guest post] Having my say: Griffin on QT « Paperhouse - “Speak You’re Branes” contributor Nelson on how the BBC has, in attempting “balance”, managed to create a climate of legitimacy that the ultra right-wing BNP has exploited to advance its political aims in the...
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“Well, after 6+ years on an ancient and highly customized install of Movable Type...”
– Dan Cederholm in a post explaining his decision to move his weblog from Movable Type to Wordpress. It’s a common story and I think 6apart need an answer to the problem of people being unwilling to upgrade their MT from ancient versions - because when they eventually do, they often just ditch...
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Mozilla Labs » Raindrop →
Not entirely sure what this is: maybe something like a supercharged desktop version of Shaun Inman’s Fever server-based RSS application? But with extensions for Twitter and everything else.
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“Writing tip: write as though you’re being paid by the word; revise as...”
– Writing wisdom from Twitter / Matthew Sturges, co-author of Jack of Fables.
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“One thing about conferences that didn’t get explicitly mentioned: at a...”
– Commenter “Salient”, on going to mathematics conferences as a grad student, in an otherwise unobjectionable post at Crooked Timber: The path to tenure begins in the first year of graduate school. I presume senior mathematicians also quietly drink the blood of unwary postgrads who wander...
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“A Conservative government could “rip up” the BBC’s royal...”
– BBC NEWS | UK | Tories could ‘rip up’ BBC charter
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NASA's LCROSS lunar mission uses Hitchhiker's... →
This made me happy and a little sad, all at the same time.
Charles in Charge of My Direct Messages? →
Via Andy Baio, the douchtacity of Scott Baio on Twitter
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Letters of Note →
Via Kottke, a beautifully designed and sometimes heartbreaking anthology of written correspondence, scanned and transcribed.
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Where The Wild Things Are roundtable: Spike Jonze,... →
The AV Club’s roundtable interview with some of the talent behind the Where the Wild Things Are adaptation. I kind of love that Jonze and Eggers just call Catherine Keener “Keener”.
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...And Other Fancy Stuff: How Google Wave Could... →
The requisite period of cynicism has expired and I’m now very keen to kick the tires.
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Dungeons and Dragons Online: behold the power of... →
The smartest use of a “freemium” business model I’ve heard in a long while. D&D Online is free to play, but with an optional subscription for more features, or you can just choose to buy extra content at will.
Turns out a lot of users will spend more than the $15 a month subscription if they have the power of choice.
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David Hockney's iPhone Passion - The New York... →
iPhone art by a living master, using the Brushes app. Via @Circulatinglib.
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Nee Naw, a British ambulance dispatcher blog →
Oh my god. The latest post available as I write this is entitled “Marshmellows”. Oh god oh god oh god. Via Stoush.net
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Trailer For K-9, Trailer For K-9… | Bleeding Cool... →
Abhorrent. And John Leeson’s voice is being badly mis-directed. Why get the original actor if you make him sound completely different?
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September 2009
49 posts
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WYSIWYG Editors for ExpressionEngine →
I see there have been some major advances in WYSIWYG editors since I last looked. I commend the focus on semantic markup!
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“Recently you were selected as an inductee into Who’s Who. In spite of...”
– Some asshat passive-aggressive spammer who will be first against the wall when the Nick Spam Lethality Revolution comes.