January 2011
36 posts
Scobletitlement →
(n) The notion that new media blogging personalities have a right to be glorified wherever they go online
/via chipotle
“It’s an unscalable, unsustainable example, but lets unpick what could be going...”
– Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: 40p off a latte. (via iamdanw)
“unpacking the old ubiquitous computing cliche of your phone vibrating with a coupon off a latte when walking past a Starbucks”.
I’m not completely convinced that this doesn’t work at scale. But for the first...
1 tag
2 tags
The First Decade of the Future is Behind Us →
if it’s already the future, then what comes after the future? This question is the wrong one. It’s like asking what comes after history? More history, of course. The more interesting question is this: now that the future is here, how do we survive it?
/via Nicolas Nova
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By an orange thread we hang →
Perhaps I should have been worried when they returned with three tennis balls, a ball of string and a telescopic pool broom pole
Charming story about how ABC News Online’s Brisbane office moved to temporary offices in the aftermath of the recent flooding and how the network infrastructure was hacked back together.
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Crossing the Country in a Convertible Cadillac →
TWO thousand miles into the trip, with another 1,000 yet to go, it was a 30-cent fuse that finally stopped us. But maybe that’s the sort of trouble you have to anticipate when trying to cross the continent in an old car.
/the NYT, via Motoring Con Brio
David Seah's Compact Calendar →
I can’t tell you how much I love David Seah’s “Compact Calendar”.
Rather than being a month-by-month arrangement, it’s a whole year, arranged in a column down the page, with contiguous weeks on the rows.
I use it for planning things that will last longer than a month (which in academia is most things).
(Pro-tip for Australians: grab the 2010 version from here...
How now, brown car? →
browncar:
Hey, look at me, being quoted as if I’m an expert.
But maybe it’s simply that, like most things from the ’70s, there exists an element of nostalgia for those old brown cars. At least, that’s how Ben Kraal sees it. Kraal knows brown cars—he also writes the Brown Car Blog. “Brown is so identified with the ’70s,” he told Maclean’s. “Some of us are just tragic fans of the hopeless, and...
3 tags
“Capable of carrying up to seven passengers in three rows of seats, the new 2007...”
– I have traced the decline of BMW to this event.
/via the WSJ
Brisbane floods: before and after →
A before-and-after roll-over satellite photo thingy illustrating the extent of the flooding.
The one for the Rocklea markets is particularly shocking. The markets are the (only?) wholesale fruit-and-vegetable markets in this city of almost 2 million people. I heard on the radio that they re-opened today.
/via ABC News and Peter J Black
“The future is there looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we...”
– Cayce explains the “Blue Ant” trilogy. Pattern Recognition, William Gibson, 2003 (p59 of the 2005 edition)
“I am not overstating it when I say the atmosphere in Brisbane and Queensland is...”
– floaties not included by @SquigglyRick (via freedomtodither)
I’m not (currently) in a flood-affected area, but I was at the local shopping centre today (or mall, for those following along in North America) and it did have a subdued feel and the floods elsewhere were all anyone was talking...
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516,000 Megalitres
I’ve been getting emails from a few people inquiring as to my general well-being in the current “extreme weather”, as the radio calls it, in South-East Queensland.
If you’re not familiar with the geography, or the scale, of Queensland, and all you’ve seen are the pictures from the flash flood in Toowoomba yesterday, rest assured that Toowoomba is two hours drive...
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Know the rules; break the rules →
putthison:
There was a time when these rules were generally known, at least among the affluent (those with more than one or two sets of clothes). At the time, breaking those rules was a genuine act of rebellion. (Or a genuine act of ignorance.)
These days, few know the rules. Alec Baldwin plays a business executive obsessed with status on 30 Rock, but buttons the bottom button of his coat....
Almost Entirely Unlike
H2G2, chapter 17
He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
The Jargon File:
Used ironically of things which are in fact almost entirely unlike X, except for one feature which the speaker clearly regards as insignificant. “That is not entirely unlike cool…at least it’s...
“As the poor world grows richer, we can expect more of the same: unencumbered by...”
– I’m quite sure you’ll find “entrenched customs, regulations, special interests and legacy infrastructure” in “the poor countries”, too. It’s just that they’ll be different to the ones that we have.
/ via The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be, at...
“As the poor world grows richer, we can expect more of the same: unencumbered by...”
– I’m quite sure you’ll find “entrenched customs, regulations, special interests and legacy infrastructure” in “the poor countries”, too. It’s just that they’ll be different to the ones that we have.
/ via The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be, at...
Analysing WikiLeaks: Bruce Sterling's plot holes →
Yes, I’m late with this. But it’s so good.
What is most intriguing about the WikiLeaks saga is not the pathology of hacker culture as envisioned by Mr Sterling’s fecund imagination, but the possibility that Julian Assange and his confederates have made dull liberal principles seem once again sexily subversive by exposing power’s reactionary panic when a few people with a practical...
“Today’s US government is almost completely gridlocked – and astonishingly...”
– Sounds awesome!
/via 20 things we learned in 2010 | The Observer
(via Instapaper)
Of Thanksgiving Turkeys and Black Swans →
My friend Ricky liked Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan.
Analysing WikiLeaks: Bruce Sterling's plot holes →
Yes, I’m late with this. But it’s so good.
What is most intriguing about the WikiLeaks saga is not the pathology of hacker culture as envisioned by Mr Sterling’s fecund imagination, but the possibility that Julian Assange and his confederates have made dull liberal principles seem once again sexily subversive by exposing power’s reactionary panic when a few people with a practical...
“Today’s US government is almost completely gridlocked – and astonishingly...”
– Sounds awesome!
/via 20 things we learned in 2010 | The Observer
(via Instapaper)
“In order to help prepare, the Air Froce has “taken tips from the purveyors of...”
– The most important news and commentary to read right now. - The Slatest - Slate Magazine (via iamdanw)
I’m half-way through Zero History at the moment, so this strikes me as completely natural. Not normal, but certainly obvious.
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I resolve, as I do every year, not to make resolutions.
Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You →
plsj:
“[P]eople will increasingly be surrounded by machines that can not only see but also reason about what they are seeing, in their own limited way … ‘It’s a world where technology more fundamentally understands you, so you don’t have to understand it’.”
Well then, I feel safer already!
It’s funny how this idea keeps coming around. The idea that a computer will be able to...
