Where does all the time go?
(oh, thank you Phewsha)
New York magazine has an in-depth guide on how to hate the Beatles. It’s a detailed seven-step guide on how to perplex people by telling them that you don’t think the Beatles were really all that.
Of course, it’s followed by 10 pages of comments, wherein Internet people believe that they can change the writer’s mind.
And, as it turns out, the article isn’t really about hating the Beatles, it’s more about cultivating an interesting indifference to them:
Do it at the right parties, and you can wind up standing in a corner looking like a delightful raconteur, with half a dozen people standing around you hanging on your every word, because they’re desperate to convince you that you could not possibly hate the Beatles and must be mistaken somehow.
It’s worth reading. But, just in case you actually like the Beatles, I’ve happened across another site that will help you develop contrary opinions to enliven your Christmas parties and frustrate the people you’re talking to. It’s called Smugopedia, and it is billed as “a collection of slightly controversial opinions about a variety of subjects … the chance to buy a fleeting sense of self-satisfaction at the small cost of alienating your friends and loved ones.”
Perfect! Just what I need! For a taste, check out the entry for author Malcolm Gladwell:
The problem with Malcolm Gladwell is that he writes too well: when you read him, you don’t know if you’re agreeing with his controversial ideas because he’s right, or because he’s enchanted you.
Why, I think I’m going to bust that one out this holiday season for sure.
Browse the Future Shop website and click a bad link, and you’ll wind up at this custom error page. It’s cute, but I also like the clever “was I now actually browsing into the future?” meta-ness of the text.
Heh.
Click here to see it for yourself.
Sep 062010
Starbucks and the Internet crowd pretty much go hand-in-hand, which is why this cup cosy by Etsy user Sewarta is just perfect. But you really just have to love coffee and be a little involved in Internet culture to appreciate it, I think.
Unfortunately for me, and everyone else who wants one, she is back-ordered for months since it hit sites like The Daily What. She hand stitches everything, so it’ll take awhile.
I still think I’ll put an order in. It’s too cute!
I have no idea if this is real. If it weren’t 30C in my house right now, I might find the energy to do a little more research. But it is, and I can’t. Or won’t. Your choice. It’s too hot for me to care what you think right now.
Back to the matter at hand. According to this article,TorrentReactor has bought its own town — primarily to screw with the RIAA:
TR has apparently paid $148,000 to buy the town of Gar and renamed it TorrentReactor. Gar was a very remote village relying on the sale of vegetables to keep the 200 or so locals in food and clothing. Now it looks like it may turn into a hotbed of Internet activity.
I like this. A lot. It’s kind of like the Internet — the great democratizer — has broken out of the bounds of cyberspace to provide for people in real life. It’s a website you can actually, physically visit. It’s something beyond ones and zeros.
Although I can’t be sure I am explaining myself due to the imminent heat stroke, suffice it to say that this move by TorrentReactor has caught my imagination. The virtual world continues to leach into the physical realm.
And, in this case at least, I can’t see that it is a bad thing.
Jul 142010
I took this shot on the last day of the Winnipeg Folk Fest, and it is probably one of the few times I’ve seen a meme enter the real world. It was a tarp marker, which is a bit of a tradition for some folkies. Every year there is a tarp “shuffle” to claim a little piece of land in front of the main stage, and many people use some sort of marker for their friends to easily find the tarp. Tarp markers range from the cute, to the utterly ridiculous. This one, and the meme it references, is somewhere in between.
I never did find the other half. Longcat is indeed looooooooooooooooooooooooooong.
Jul 052010
What will accessing the Internet be like in 15 years or so? This guide attempts to tell you.
Like all future predictions, this one is almost certain to be dead wrong. The fact that it name-checks much that is modern makes it even more likely to be dated and obsolete when the actual year rolls around.
And, if 15 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone dug this out from some online archive and posted it for people to laugh at and mock. It’ll be more an artifact of it’s time than a good predictor of the future.
But the thing is, it’s a satire. And, as such, it’s supposed to say more about the now than it does about the future.
Sadly, the future it does predict is frighteningly plausible:
The internet is split into roughly 120 country regions. This is to ensure that fitting entertaining content will be streamed to you, and that you will not find content that may be unsettling. Your Geolocation should be automatically derived from the position of your point of login – if it matches with the country provided in your RealIdentity card, you’re ready to go. Users from the US may enjoy great copyrighted US TV show reruns like Friends 2020, for instance, while users in other countries may have different tastes and preferences.
Oh, my, that would never happen, right? Except that’s already what the entertainment cartels did with DVDs.
It’s strange what kinds of things become Internet memes — you know, those things that catch on and circulate all over the place. There doesn’t seem to be any formula as to what might catch on. For example, I was sure that Grant’s experiment with eggnog last summer was a sure-fire hit. Sadly, it seemed to sink with barely a ripple.
Now I read about a new image meme: “Sad Keanu.”
For example:
(photo courtesy urlesque.com)
I’ve not come across any of these images in my admittedly excessive time on the web, which begs the question: Is it really an Internet meme if it is only reported as a meme? Where does that threshold lie for something to become so pervasive enough online that it can be considered a meme?
These questions lead me to ask another question: Has the Internet given birth to a new field of philosophical inquiry?
Surely answers to these questions exist. At the moment, though, I’m too busy looking for pictures of sad Keanu.
Jun 192010
Sometimes, things that are “Internetty” seem to escape and roam around in the real world (sorry — IRL). It’s a little like Moriarty escaping from the Holodeck.
Sometimes, these things are awful, like when you actually hear people say, out loud, “Oh, em gee, I’m el-oh-elling!”
Other times, though, things that are virtual somehow would be awesome if they were real. That’s why you see fanboys lusting after girls dressed up as video game characters, by the way.
I prefer my real, actual Internet to be a little more refined than cosplay.
For example, who hasn’t loved the fact that then Internet has a “Like” button? Wouldn’t you love one in real life? Here you go:
It’s £10, blue ink pad sold separately. And here’s where the real world still had an advantage — there’s also a “Dislike” button:
It’s another £10. Totally worth it.
Get the “Like” button here. And get the “Dislike” button here.
Jun 042010
Click the graphic for full-size viewing:
(or click here, if you prefer)
There’s a great site that graphically illustrates the dates of many of your favorite Internet memes. There are videos you’ve seen a million times and maybe a few you haven’t seen.
Check out Internet memes and let the good times roll.
(Sorry about that.)
May 102010
When I tried to mow my lawn yesterday, the lawnmower wouldn’t start. That’s not unusual — I don’t take exceptional care of the thing through the winter, and a rough start is S.O.P for springtime.
But this time, when I cleaned the gunk off from around the blade and filled up the gas tank, it started, belched white smoke, sputtered, and stopped — a little rougher than the usual first mow.
Internet to the rescue, I soon found that the white smoke was probably caused by burning oil, and the oil had probably leaked out while I tipped the mower on its side to clean and sharpen underneath.
The stalling was probably caused by an oil-clogged air filter.
Cleaning the air filter was easy, and the mower runs great now — better than it did all last year — but I wouldn’t have known where to start without a page of lawnmower repair tips.
Here’s Chuck’s tips — which are easy to follow, written in a folksy style, and come complete with pictures that show you what he means.
Chuck also has several other “fixit” pages, including how to recone a blown speaker, how to roll dents out of a bicycle frame, and how he fixed his cordless drill ad battery pack, plus the charger.
The pages are also delightfully retro. Thanks, Chuck!
Apr 282010
It doesn’t seem all that long ago that Geocities was the place to go if you wanted a presence on the web. Creating websites from scratch was a horrifyingly daunting prospect and there were none of the Web 2.0 social media sites that all the kids are talking about these days. (Okay, perhaps it’s not just kids — in fact, an estimated 42% of Canadians have a Facebook account).
But Geocities…man. You could customize it by making the background all sorts of sweet colours, add some tinny musics, some animated gifs…there was no end to the things a creative individual could do in creating their own personal presence online.
Sadly, Geocities was shut down last year. To my mind, it was the Internet equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Entire communities of information and knowledge and sparkly, flashing fonts disappeared overnight. Tragic.
For those of use that miss those days, if even for brief moments of nostalgia, there is an answer: The Geocities-izer. Simply enter the URL of any website into the text box and the Geocities-izer will reconfigure the website to appear as it may have been seen on Geocities.
Welcome back to 1999.
Absurd Intellectual, had it been established ten years earlier. Stylish, no?
In 2006, designers at iA worked with Facebook on a possible redesign. Facebook didn’t use their stuff, so now they’ve put some of their ideas up on the web, and they’re looking for a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.
I saw thumbs-up. And here’s why — it looks usable!
Their three-column idea makes Facebook emulate the look and feel of an email client, so it’s familiar. And it looks much cleaner and more streamlined than the mess that is current Facebook . Here’s a screenshot:
Click on it to see it full-sized.
With your news feed down the centre, you can explore comments at your leisure, rather than two comments from each status update.
I like it. I wonder why Facebook didn’t?
Techcrunch has more commentary, and there is a little more at the iA site, too.
While I fear I may have just written a “Worthwhile Canadian initiative“-style boring headline, I actually have quite exciting news.
Apparently, the Canadian government will soon be releasing all their data in XML. If you don’t know exactly what that means, have no fear — it’s a file format that is easy to share, easy to read, and easy to manipulate. So that means it will soon be much easier for dataheads to pore through the mass of information that the government produces, and find nuggets of interest.
Want a preview? Try OpenParliament.ca, which keeps track of your politician, and what they’re doing, linking to press mentions and bills that they’re working on.
Or, try How’d They Vote, another website that tracks your Members of Parliament, and lets you search their voting history — or how many days they didn’t show.
Perhaps the budding leader is datadotgc.ca — a play on a would-be-official website that Canada does not have:
Unlike the United States (data.gov) and Britain (data.gov.uk), Canada has no open data strategy. This must change. Canadians paid for the information gathered about our country, ourselves and our government. Free access to it could help stimulate our economy and enhance our democracy. In pursuit of this goal, this website is a citizen-led effort to promote open data and help share data that has already been liberated.
The founder of datadotgc.ca wrote a great column in the Globe and Mail earlier this week, exploring some of the interesting possibilities for short-term and long-term change that this access to data might cause:
Over the long term, more advanced versions of these websites could help rebalance power in Parliament away from “the centre” (PMO) and back to individual MPs. If citizens are fractured but engaged along hundreds of conversations there are all sorts of information niches for MPs to fill and play important roles within. More importantly, if constituents are able to monitor and create feedback loops via social media, then MPs could have a deeper connection to their local communities, ones that might empower them to be more independent and prepared to occasionally buck the authority of party bosses.
Regardless of the long-term implications, giving Canadians faster, more comprehensive and customizable information about Parliament is something the institution should encourage.
I am looking forward to what these grassroots websites can dig up — I just bookmarked all three of them.