July 16th, 2008, 11 Comments »
I don’t drink. I did when I was a teenager, but that was mostly for show. I never really acquired a taste for alcohol. Plus, I’m kind of anhedonic. I’m not a teetotaller–go forth and drink up–it’s just not for me.
At various people’s urgings, I have, on occasion, tasted an alcoholic beverage. They mostly taste bad, but nothing tastes more foul to my virgin tongue than wine.
Of course, nearly everybody else loves wine. And that’s fine. I do find the snobby celebration of all things vino quite farcical. The frequent bollocks from wine producers, sellers and consumers gets kind of grating. Plus, I find that anybody who takes a single wine appreciation course becomes a confident assessor of the grape juice, and can hold forth at length about its ‘oaken, fruity frankness’ or whatever.
I’ve always imagined that it was just a twist of fate that made wine the most examined beverage in our society. Why not, say, orange juice? “My, the pulpy tang of this Valencia 2002 really sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?”
I can’t remember where, but I recently read a fantastic article about the moral superiority that now accompanies discussions of food and wine. Like, we’re better people because we eat organic chicken.
That’s a long, ranty introduction to this blog post entitled “How To Be A Snob: Drinking Alcohol” (thanks to Waxy):
Do not speak. Scent is pretty easy to verify, so if you guess wrong then everyone will know what a yutz you are. If someone ventures their own review as to what it smells like, frown as though you’re too busy concentrating on this intense bouquet to interrupt it with stupid words. This automatically gives you the edge, since as a conneisseur you know enough not to discuss anything until the full tasting is over.
I could follow these instructions, and just skip the drinking step.
UPDATE: Boris rightfully points up that this would be the perfect opportunity to pimp VinoCamp at UBC Botanical Gardens. He assures me that “it’s like wine tasting minus the snobbery…or something.”
11 Comments »
May 14th, 2008, 2 Comments »
I’m just trying out this Scoutle silliness. Not sure about that name, by the way.
In order to activate the service, I’m obligated to post this widget to my site. That’s obviously a proven viral marketing strategy, but the requirement irks me.
I do like that their logo is two bare feet. That pleases me.
2 Comments »
April 14th, 2008, 11 Comments »
I don’t know why I ever listen to or watch the news. I find it extraordinarily frustrating. I turned on the CBC’s Early Edition this morning and the first three local news stories concerned crime (leading off with the eight-day-old Merritt shooting).
At the moment I’ve got CBC TV news on and they led with two crime stories, followed by a story about automated bathrooms, the weather and finishing up with a piece about a piano prodigy. Is this really what amounts to credible news in this country? Has the CBC lost this much perspective?
And this, keep in mind, is the CBC. They’re the best this nation has to offer in TV and news reporting.
Shame on them for fostering the “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality that’s so prevalent in our mainstream media. It’s exploitative and irresponsible. When our state-subsidized media is this lousy with FUD, who have we got left?
And just to clear something up: don’t believe the hype on crime. Canada is a very safe country. Crime rates have been more or less in decline since 1990, and are currently at a 1978 level. Unless you’re a criminal, your risk of experiencing violent crime is extremely small.
Any time you hear the media fostering fear about slavering rapists and murderers at your door, think critically about the news. Who does your fear serve, except advertisers?
11 Comments »
March 14th, 2008, 4 Comments »
I’ve been hearing plenty of noise among the Alpha Geeks this week about the sudden emergence of FriendFeed. It’s basically a way to aggregate all of your sundry feeds in one megafeed of stuff. I’ve noticed a flurry of new followers of my FriendFeed this week.
I first tried FriendFeed and wrote about it back in October, and here’s what I said:
Holy crap. Who in their right mind would want to see all of that in one place? It’s my stuff, and I don’t even want to see it.
I feel the same way today. I don’t need more stuff, I need less. I went on to remark on the one way I might make use of FriendFeed:
If FriendFeed or somebody else lays some clever filtering on top of my friend’s mega-feeds. To start with, how about a filter that shows me everything my friends tag as ‘fordarren’, regardless of what service it’s in?
Louis Gray wrote a post boosting FriendFeed, and I think his essential point was this:
There are a definitely a wide number of sites out there that let you share all your activity in one place, or to track friends’ activity, but FriendFeed is the only one that lets you share items directly to the feed, elevate discussions through comments and show “likes” to highlight individual posts.
Later, he re-emphasizes the interactive aspects of this very simple service.
Comments Here, There and Everywhere
That may have some appeal, but there’s a downside: FriendFeed splits the conversation around a given chunk of content.
Louis’s post is a great example. Currently there are nine comments on his blog. However, there are two other, distinct comments on the aggregated link in FriendFeed. The FriendFeed readers don’t see the blog comments, and vice versa. It’s like the conversation is happening in two languages, and some people aren’t understanding the whole thing. I occasionally see a similar problem in blog posts imported into my Facebook profile.
The solution to this problem is simple in theory, but painful to implement. There needs to be an open comments protocol that all of these services buy into, so that, for example, a comment in Flickr can also appear in FriendFeed and a blog post displaying that photo.
In my experience, these cross-industry APIs and standards take a long time to hash out and agree upon. Then it takes even longer for the sundry stakeholders to bake into the next release of their software. If this already exists, I’m not aware of it.
In the meantime, FriendFeed just bifurcates the interaction that Louis espouses.
4 Comments »
January 24th, 2008, 1 Comment »
Thank goodness keyword stuffing was a Web 1.0 problem, and a thing of the distant past. Yay for tags!
1 Comment »
November 17th, 2007, 8 Comments »
For professional reasons, I’m forcing myself to pay more attention to this whole microblogging/status trickle space. I believe I’ve discovered a way to update Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Tumblr and Facebook all at the same time. That would make life easier, certainly.
But I need a Jaiku invitation. If you’ve got one kicking around, please send it to me at darren {at} darrenbarefoot {fullstop} com. Merci.
UPDATE: Invite received, thanks to James. I am now Jaiku-enabled.
8 Comments »
