Archive: Posts from January, 2005
January 31st, 2005, 3 Comments »
It’s been a busy couple of links. Forgive the linkdump:
- Ah, there’s nothing like a
decent satirical fan film. This one is a mock trailer from the forthcoming
Star Wars movie. It’s too long, and the jokes are hit-and-miss, but it’s worth
three minutes of your life for the hits. I used this
mirror (MOV).
- Four word movie
reviews. Some movies in current release:
- "Obsessive compulsive hottie assassin."
- "Yeats inspires Swank trainer."
- "Julia loves camera, man."
- Some raging alpha-geeks visit
London’s Speakers Corner and yell about copyright.
- Not
quite as small as the iPod Shuffle, but it’s got a display.
- Painter, blind from
death birth (you’re all very clever), renders
recognizable scenes (thanks, BoingBoing).
- This guy sold
everything he owns on eBay, and tracked its progress around the planet
(thanks, Monique, who’s getting a blog).
- A bit of animated
fun produced by CBC Radio’s Content Factory (thanks, Todd).
- This
ad (MOV) was banned from the Super Bowl. It’s safe for work, but makes
light of last year’s malfunction.
- It’s a
corset t-shirt. Hooray for modernizations of oppressive clothing.
- SafetyRider
rocks out. It’s flashy flashy, and has sound, but it also has a overalls-weaing
cat rapping about escalator safety: "Elevators, escalators, moving walkways,
you really gotta watch your step these days."
- An amazingly inventive
travel journal.
- The most obsessive Buffy database ever. Finally, a site that shows me all
the Buffy episodes featuring
dairy products.
3 Comments »
January 31st, 2005, 22 Comments »
In 1986, my mother went in to my high school for parent-teacher interviews. She met with my science teacher, Mr. Collins, who greeted her and remarked “ah, Darren, the boy with a Coke in his hand”.
I don’t drink alcohol, coffee or tea. I don’t do drugs, eat red meat or put other potentially nasty things in my body. I am, however, serious smitten with Coke. It is one of my few vices.
It’s time to grow up and accept that drinking a can of Coke a day isn’t particularly healthy. For the month of February, I’m not going to drink any soft drinks. Cold turkey. The whole enchilada.
The last half-can sits beside my keyboard, waiting to be savoured. If I or my posts turn grumpy and incoherent, it’s because I’m coming down. Forgive me. More updates as events warrant.
22 Comments »
January 31st, 2005, No Comments »
If you’re employed in the technology sector, and have never listened to an interview or recorded session from IT Conversations, what are you doing? The Gillmor Gang is a regular feature on this site–a recorded conversation with some of the smartest of the technorati (they’re kind of heavy breathers, though).
I rarely listen to the radio, and am underwhelmed by most podcasts, but a recent Gillmor Gang was pretty compelling:
Steve calls in from the Integrated Media Association’s New Media Summit with his special guest, Stephen Hill. The talk is all about the convergence of radio (most notably public radio) and “new media” if that term even makes sense any longer. That convergence is due to digital technologies and the fact that it’s now possible for nearly anyone to create broadcast-quality audio with a very small investment in equipment.
A key point that I took away was that podcasting is following a very similar path to the introduction of FM radio or underground radio. People originally dismissed these developments as being amatuerish, ramshackle and faddish, but the latter became the juggernaut of AOR.
Another great feature of IT Conversations is that I don’t have to register to listen to recordings.
No Comments »
January 31st, 2005, 1 Comment »
Maybe everyone else on the planet has seen this amusing parody of an abstinence site, but I’d missed it until this morning. I wondered if this was an artifact from some grassroots marketing campaign for that Josh Harnett vehicle, 40 Days and 40 Nights.
1 Comment »
January 31st, 2005, 10 Comments »
My sister-in-law writes to ask what she should do with her old cell phone:
What does one do with an old cell phone!? The phone was not traded in for an upgrade, but I wondered if a person just puts it in the garbage? Telus suggested that I take it apart piece by piece and hang it onmy wall or make some art!? It seemed to me that there were organizations which accepted them to re-furbish. I had once heard of a place in East Van that re-furbished phones for sex trade workers so that they could dial 911 in an emergency.
I didn’t have much luck with a Google search. Any suggestions?
10 Comments »
January 30th, 2005, 6 Comments »
Travis writes, wondering about My web stats suggest that I’m preaching to half the choir with this one, but here’s my latest column for The Yaletown View (and its sister publications).
Geeks like to diss Microsoft. They don’t like Microsoft’s history, its technology
or its business tactics. Microsoft has built some excellent products-Microsoft
Excel, for example-over the years. However, 90% of the computers in the world
run Microsoft Windows because of good marketing, good timing and good fortune,
not because of great software.
Fear not. This isn’t a column demanding that you switch to that open-source,
geek favourite Linux. Or to become a snobby Apple user. Those aren’t bad ideas,
but are still kind of a hassle for the average human. [more]
Read more…
6 Comments »
January 30th, 2005, 5 Comments »
Cory Doctorow has a good rant on Quicken removing functionality from older versions of their software:
This is the dirtiest of pool imaginable. Bait-and-switch. I wonder if it’s even legal. You’d think that if Intuit had actually made a compelling new product that it could entice its customers to buy an upgrade; seems like they’ve decided that instead of improving their products, they’ll just extort money from customers who were stupid enough to buy from them in the first place.
I’m going to track this story, to see whether it dies on the vine or develops into a full-on PR disaster.
5 Comments »
January 30th, 2005, 10 Comments »
Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog, here’s a short essay from Gear Live in praise of Apple’s one-button mouse. The Apple Weblog summarizes the essay:
- The majority of computer users don’t use the two-button mouse on either platform (”Giving the average person a
right mouse button is like giving a bald man a comb.”).
- It encourages developers to stick to the Apple standard of providing a way to access all application functions
from a single mouse click in a menu.
- The un-average user who will desire a two-button mouse will more often than not chuck out their two-button and go
with some higher order of multi-button mouse, anyway. Why bother sending a two-button, then?
I had a look, but couldn’t find any usage surveys to quantify mouse button usage. The average computer users I know make at least occasional use of the right mouse button. They certainly know what I mean when I tell them to ‘right-click’. After all, doesn’t the average user occasionally copy an image from their browser window? I think they do, and that they use the context menu to do it.
Read more…
10 Comments »