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Slimejam
A weblog by Christopher Miles
Freelance writer Riccardo Mori steps back in time to a Mac running System 7.1 (connected to an old iBook running System 9 as “a bridge between the ‘old’ world and the ‘new’ world” of his regular setup) to avoid the shiny, internet-connected world of distraction that OS X offers: emails, RSS, spur of the moment research on the muddy muddy web. Great photo of his barebones setup; I felt instantly calmed (and envious).
If you overuse your CAPS LOCK there’s a good chance you’re senile, according to a new study. Judging by the comments on a typical YouTube video, there are a lot of people with really really really early onset dementia.
In the 1930s, author and entrepreneur Paul Otlet dreamt up an information retrieval system that seems to foreshadow the modern world wide web.
Spooky! Judging from Twitter Trends, Michael Jackson and the lesser known but similarly named “Micheal” Jackson died ON EXACTLY THE SAME DAY
In seeking to find the Latin for ‘hairy’, Googling “latin hairy” proved rather educational, if not entirely relevant
Phrases that are surprisingly safe to Google #17: “Things to do with sausage.”
I feel a warm, smarmy glow whenever a signup form tells me my password is ‘Strong’.
I think Twitter Search could safely remove “obama OR mccain” from its list of ‘Nifty searches’
Among other things, 2008 was the year your Auntie Glenda friended you on Facebook
I figure an ASS reader is some kind of special toilet paper with Braille lettering on it. Either way, when I tried to install one on my computer, all I got was a bunch of errors and some nasty smears on my monitor.
(Design Encyclopedia, which ought to know better)
According to the email in my junk folder, all I have to do is email a chap named ‘Burton Wolf’ and my ‘rodney’ will become ladies’ new toy
Discovered while looking at Wikipedia entries on people more successful than me. (By definition, anyone who has a Wikipedia entry.) But at least failure and obscurity are effective safeguards against this kind of Wiki-vandalism.
There’s an episode in the third series of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer in which Buffy becomes infected with demonic blood and gains the demon’s ability to hear people’s thoughts. At first she finds this new power amusing, entertaining, even useful; but by the end of Act II, Buffy is overwhelmed by the cacophony of voices in her head and falls unconscious in the school cafeteria.
I was reminded of this when I happened upon Twittervision, which is a Google Maps/Twitter mashup tracking the latest tweets from around the world.
For those unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s a microblogging format — a standalone version of the status updates (in this case, tweets) you might have encountered on Facebook, for example. (You might, but probably won’t, be interested to know that my masthead is an RSS feed of my Twitter status.) It’s the very acme of Web 2.0 in that even if you could explain it to your parents, they would quite rightly perceive no useful purpose for it.
If everyone in the world had a Twitter account, Twittervision would be a veritable crystal ball for gazing into the zeitgeist; as it is, it’s a veritable monocle through which to scrutinise the thoughts and doings of about half a million computer nerds.
One day, of course, we will live in a world in which everyone’s thoughts — your thoughts, my thoughts, nerds’ thoughts — are broadcast to the internet before we’ve even had time to think them. And as we’ve seen with Facebook, today’s internet buffoonery is tomorrow’s answer to the prayers of advertising executives everywhere.
I love the internet. Radiohead fans awaiting a special announcement at radioheadlp7.com during the week were foiled by an elaborate Rickroll.
A Rickroll occurs when you post a link that is so tantalising that over-eager Android’s Dungeon–types simply can’t resist clicking on it (“Footage of Carrie Fisher’s costume fitting for Return of a Jedi? Yes, I believe I would profit from seeing that”) but which actually sends the eager clicker in the pastel and flaming red coloured direction of a Rick Astley video on YouTube. Yes, that Rick Astley, emblem of the late 1980s and winner of the ‘popstar who most looks like David Caruso’ competition hosted and judged by myself about six minutes ago.
A fuller and more amusing explanation of this internet phenomenon can be found at encyclopediadramatica.com.
And yes, I have been Rickrolled — because when it comes down to it, I’m really just an over-eager Android’s Dungeon type.
No, I won’t tell you what I clicked on.
First there’s all the fun of adding wacky information about yourself to your Facebook profile.
Then comes the slow realisation that anyone — current or prospective employers, the police, animal rights activists — can now discover that you’re interested in ‘nude performance art’, ‘cockfighting’ and ‘nude cockfighting as performance art’.
Then begins the guilty, remorseful process of deleting the offending material before it gets noticed by anyone in a position to strip you of your job, your liberty or your afterlife.
