randomwalks/dj

Amy Sedaris fans will delight!

P.S. There is never a good excuse for wearing fur.

P.P.S. Amy Sedaris and Bjork are two of the most inspring women to me.

P.P.P.S. I will give my everlasting gratitude to the reader who get their paws on this poster and then gives it to me - I can't seem to find it anywhere:

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on February 10, 2006 1:04 PM

There are more photos of the unit at Nintendo\'s official web site.

Originally posted by funkaoshi from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 1:04 PM

In his review of Syriana, Ebert calls it a "hyperlink movie" [warning, some spoilers]:

A recent blog item coined a term like "hyperlink movie" to describe plots like this. (I would quote the exact term, but irony of ironies, I've lost the link.) The term describes movies in which the characters inhabit separate stories, but we gradually discover how those in one story are connected to those in another. "Syriana" was written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, who won an Oscar for best screenplay adaptation for "Traffic," another hyperlink movie. A lot of Altman films like "Nashville" and "Short Cuts" use the technique. Also, recently, "Crash" and "Nine Lives."

In a hyperlink movie the motives of one character may have to be reinterpreted after we meet another one. Consider the Matt Damon character. His family is invited to a party at the luxurious Spanish villa of the Gulf oil sheik whose sons are Nasir and Meshal. At the party, Damon's son dies by accident. The sheik awards Damon's firm a $100 million contract. "How much for my other son?" he asks. This is a brutal line of dialogue and creates a moment trembling with tension. Later, Damon's wife (Amanda Peet) accuses him of trading on the life of his son. Well, he did take the deal. Should he have turned it down because his son died in an accident? What are Damon's real motives, anyway?

The blog item Ebert is referring to could be Mark Bernstein's post about Adaptation from January 2003:

Adaptation is strange, curious, improbable little film. It belongs in the all-time hypertext film festival. Interesting double-feature with Wonder Boys. Fascinating double-feature with Mullholland Drive. Ebert, like everyone else, loved it.

Mark also discusses the hypertext film festival in a post about Perfect Blue, which More Like This picks up on. As you can guess, I love hypertext films.

Update: In a review of Cape of Good Hope published subsequent to that of Syriana, Ebert reveals the source of the "hyperlink movie":

The movie belongs to a genre that has been named "hyperlink cinema" by the critic Alissa Quart, in Film Comment. She suggests the structure was invented by Robert Altman, and Altman certainly brought it into modern times and made it particularly useful for showing interlocking stories in a world where lives seem to crash into each other heedlessly. "Crash," indeed, is an example of the genre, as are Altman's "The Player" and "Short Cuts," and such films as "Traffic," "Syriana," "City of God," "Amores Perros" and "Nine Lives."

Quart's article isn't online, but here's a bit of it:

In fact, Happy Endings could serve as proof for the currently fashionable theory that we shouldn't worry that our web-based, video-game-loving culture is dumbing us down. Watching Happy Endings, you too can conclude, as some of our brightest young pundits have, that multi-task entertainment actually makes us sharper. If this is true, the new genre Happy Endings belongs to--hyperlink cinema--could be the most IQ-enhancing of all. Happy Endings, which Roos also scripted, joins his The Opposite of Sex (98) in the hyperlink canon, alongside the likes of Magnolia, Time Code, and, most recently, Crash (with a special mention for TV's 24). Of them all, Happy Endings is best in show...The best thing about Happy Endings is that, like hyperlinking itself, it's irremediably relativist. Information, character and action co-exist without hierarchy. And we are always one click away from a new life, a new story, and new meaning, all equally captivating but no better or worse than what we have just left behind.

Thanks for sending this along, Peter. Also, it occurs to me that Steven Johnson may have written about this at some point, perhaps in Everything Bad is Good for You.

(Rating: 4.5/5 stars)

Originally from kottke.org, on February 10, 2006 1:04 PM

Originally from l-e-mental, on February 10, 2006 1:03 PM

First of all, very special thanks to everyone who posted comments on Zoe's last show. All you Boing Boing and WSJ readers and beyond...much appreciated. Everyone seems to want a track listing. We'll try to find time to do that for this show and the last show soon. But the artists featured are listen in order in each of the posts, so you can follow along and probably figure out which song is which. Also, if you have Yahoo! Music Engine you can see Zoe's playlist from this week here.

Zoe's two favorite bands, Built to Spill and Pretty Girls Make Graves, both have new albums coming out, and both get previewed on today's show!

This week's show is doubly long (nearly two hours) and features the likes of The Actual Tigers, Alison Krause, The Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles, The Brakes, The Books, Built to Spill, Broken Social Scene, The Constantines, The Dandy Warhols, The Dresden Dolls, The Hold Steady, Joni Mitchell, The Joggers, Jens Lekman, Kelly Clarkson, Rogue Wave, The Like, Pretty Girls Make Graves, The New Pornographers, Okkervil River, and Sly and The Family Stone.

Download this week's show here.

Stream this week's show on Webjay.

Podcast Zoe Radio at Yahoo! Podcasts.

Enjoy!

ian, aka papa

Originally from Zoe's Radio Show, on February 10, 2006 1:02 PM

So the bidding is over at the eBay auction for five days of ads on the Rocketboom video blog....and the final bid is $40,000.

The winning bid is from TRM, an ATM and photocopy services company. Andrew Baron, the co-founder of Rocketboom says they aren't saying more about the ads right now, but are "scrambling around to try and work another couple of deals from some of the other bidders."

He says he's amazed by how many major US brands stepped forward. But they couldn't get everything lined up in the short time Rocketboom wanted to do the ads (early next month) "So maybe today we will land another contract and maybe next week a couple."

Originally from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on February 10, 2006 1:01 PM

Originally from Modern Art Notes, on February 10, 2006 1:00 PM

I. Lewis Libby Jr. told a grand jury that he was authorized by his "superiors" to disclose classified information in June and July 2003.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on February 10, 2006 1:00 PM

Did I (kinda already yes) mention how Ray Fenwick has become my new academic hero? I'm still laughing.

The Unique Gifts of Genius
Physical Gifts of Genius
Mental Gifts of Genius
Reborn! Genius!

Unexpected Exam
Exam Results

Cancelled III

Metaphor
topicnamewithheld

Originally posted by Anne from Purse Lip Square Jaw, on February 10, 2006 1:00 PM

Today's Link:

Catch the Sperm: Soccer Edition

Since 1987, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health and the Swiss Aids Association have been using the STOP AIDS campaign to provide regular information to everyone living in Switzerland about HIV/Aids and ways of protecting against it. The "Catch the Sperm" series of games designed to promote safe sex.

Originally from Sex & Games, on February 10, 2006 1:00 PM

Regina Lynn has a new review up of a sex game for couples called Bliss - Play Together, Stay Together.

A previous Link of the Day here, Bliss bills itself as "the Game for Lovers" and can do "what no other romantic board game or computer game can do. It uses advanced computer technology to adapt itself to your personal romantic preferences."

Originally from Sex & Games, on February 10, 2006 1:00 PM

Originally posted by Janusville from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 1:00 PM

I love this, that's all.

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 1:00 PM

• Joel on Software reviews the latest Ajax calendars
  They suck.
  (tags: web20 calendars)
• Runner's World Interview: Haruki Murakami
  (tags: murakami running)
• Yahoo! News Photo
  Asian babies!
  (tags: asian babies)

Originally posted by Alaina from alaina browne lives here, on February 10, 2006 12:59 PM

Here is the Mercury News story today (free registration) about MySpace, the hot social-networking Web site that is causing so much concern among Silicon Valley parents and schools that they are organizing to shut access to it entirely in some cases. At San Jose's Presentation High School, administrators banned MySpace after discovering some students were logging on from school -- and that some had posted photos of themselves scantily clad and partying. School officials told......

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from SiliconBeat, on February 10, 2006 12:58 PM

Pissed Brooklynites:

I pass by this building on the Q train everyday and I've gotten quite used to seeing this stark facade that is owned by Jehovah's Witnesses. But reports from CURB say that it is being turned into 450 luxury condos. But the developer is being sued for building residences on a building that sits on public park land. Hmm I suspect that city politics will allow the developer to win by rezoning the land.

"developer Robert Levine's plans for the 12-story Brooklyn waterfront building he
purchased from the Jehovah's Witnesses for $200 million. The 450 luxury condos at One Brooklyn Bridge Park (now with basic web presence !) will enjoy refrigerated storage for grocery delivery, a meditation room, an indoor driving range, private riverfront cabanas and one big fat lawsuit . The Daily News reports that opponents are going to file suit in an effort to block the private residences, which will sit on public park land once that whole thing gets built."

Condos a go? Foes say no [NYDN]
The Watchtower: Brooklyn Heights Real Estate Magnates [Curbed]
Brooklyn Bridge Park Gets Its Walking-Around Money [Curbed]
[360 Furman St. building photo from Brooklyn Papers ]

Originally from Hi Tricia!, on February 10, 2006 9:00 AM

NASA's Spirit Mars rover has arrived at a site dubbed "Home Plate" within Gusev crater. But what the robot found has left scientists puzzled.

Originally from SPACE.com, on February 10, 2006 8:19 AM

Originally posted by inkdroid from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 12:45 AM

Originally posted by alainabrowne from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 12:44 AM

Originally from Perl.com, on February 10, 2006 12:44 AM

Warning: Rambling about work ahead.

I went off on MovableType’s atrocious performance while posting to Lifehacker awhile back. Turns out that one of MT’s biggest performance pain points is the huge number of possible post categories the Gawker sites (including Lifehacker) use - a number that goes well into the thousands. (Why, you ask? Well, narrow topic silos and focused category pages make for good sponsorship opportunities and highly-targeted text ads and great Google-fu, and we’re an advertising-supported business.)

Anyway, we use a plugin for MT that turns categories into “tags,” allowing you to enter categories in a del.icio.us style input box versus the clumsy category dropdown. “Go nuts with tags!” was the editorial edict. So we did, adding categories at a clip. Sadly, we were shooting ourselves in the foot. Rendering the interface with a list of hundreds of tags slowed things considerably, specifically, the “suggest a tag” Javascript on the New and Edit Entry pages. Apparently MT’s not built to handle more than 250 2500 categories per site, and we’re the first to push this limit. (Buh? 2500 is a lot more reasonable than 250. Tx Anil.) Also, apparently MT’s database interface makes what only needs to be one query for one recordset one query PER CATEGORY - thus, hundreds of queries per page request, hence the slowdown. (As a developer, can I just say - WTF, 6A? Anyway.)

Gawker’s solution was to remove the helper Javascript from the MT interface and have us enter tags cold; for me and my co-editors this was unacceptable, given how prone we are to typos and crazy variations of the same tag (”Mac,” “OS X,” “Mac OS X”, “Stuff we like,” “Things we like,” “Books”, “book,” etc.)

Fortunately for Gawker, I don’t have any access to the MT installation or template editing/creation for Lifehacker, so I was a bit handcuffed, not able to do much except complain loudly. Finally, to stop the tag mess from getting worse editorially, I wrote a Greasemonkey script which includes the static category list Javascript from afar on those pages, which is super damn fast AND gives us back the past tag helper. I’d publish that script but it’s got a little too much information about our server setup and is specific to the tags plugin, so I won’t. But you get the idea.

If we can get a category template of that Javascript include publishing every few hours and including newly-created tags (the existing one doesn’t update with new tags, boooo), life will be good.

Now back to our regularly-scheduled programming. (Ha!)

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Spun, on February 10, 2006 12:44 AM

more cliff notes

Originally posted by cory_arcangel from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 12:43 AM

An easy way to turn already-online audio files into a podcast feed. Great for creating a "personal podcast queue" for sending files to your iPod.

Via del.icio.us/tag/unmediated

Originally from unmediated, on February 10, 2006 12:42 AM

No matter that the TV sets themselves are outdated, pre-revolution relics imported from America or sets from Russia over fifteen years old; green-hued beasts jimmy-rigged with ancient computer parts and fantastically adorned like religious altars.

Originally from unmediated, on February 10, 2006 12:42 AM

Maggie Hennefeld and Thessaly La Force filmed a short documentary at last month's NYC Free Culture Summit. The short, available for download from the Internet Archive under a CC Attribution 2.5 License, features among others "retired activist and full time novelist" Cory Doctorow, CC staffers Francesca Rodriquez and Eric Steuer, and former CC intern Fred Benenson letting people on the street know about free culture.

The Free Culture NYU blog has more.

Originally posted by Mike Linksvayer from Creative Commons Blog, on February 10, 2006 12:42 AM

Originally posted by cory_arcangel from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 12:40 AM

Asian babies!

Originally posted by alainabrowne from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 12:40 AM

a very interesting chat interface which uses the 'mouse as a baton' for conducting a conversation. instead of simply pressing 'enter' to send a message, the interface allows the user to control the flow of text & the size of circles used to visualise their messages, much like gesturing in real life. [mit.edu & mit.edu]

Originally posted by fofoda from information aesthetics, on February 10, 2006 12:40 AM

Originally from l-e-mental, on February 10, 2006 12:40 AM

Internet cafes and companies that install wireless networks and satellite dishes are thriving in Baghdad.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on February 10, 2006 12:39 AM

---

Missed the Rhizome Net Aesthetics 2.0 panel in Chelsea a couple of nights ago because I had to w*rk. Too bad--really wanted to go. MTAA has a report. The distinction between the early vernacular web and the current more "regulated" web laid out in in Olia Lialina's article here serves as a good background for understanding the shift from net art 1.0 to version 2.0. Essentially it's the world of home pages, links, and artist-scientists vs the world of blogs, Google, and fast delivery of every imaginable kind of content (except the gallerygoing kind), with artists, scientists, and artist-scientists struggling to make sense of it. I have also pontificated on it, though not in product release terms. Another distinction I would make is between the anecdotal ('70s conceptualism in web form--what Sally McKay has called "long-loading, find-the-place-to-click-me narratives packed with theoretically correct reference to the body or lack thereof") and the purely experiential (entertainingly transgressive images, music, and video produced in a collaboration-friendly, peer to peer, non-Industry environment; deliberate confusion between professional and amateur [the vernacular thankfully hasn't gone away]; better sound and pictures generally) that broadband and googling makes possible.

Update: Sal Randolph has a report on the panel at Rhizome.org.

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on February 10, 2006 12:39 AM

The Bush administration was alerted to broken levees and flooding in New Orleans hours after their collapse, documents show.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on February 10, 2006 12:38 AM

Originally from serenalarogers, on February 10, 2006 12:38 AM

Originally posted by sudama from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 10, 2006 12:38 AM

The Clarabellas want to make one thing clear. They are not an artists collective nor an agency; they are a family than spans the globe. The super-styled owl here is by family member Kat Leuzinger, and the group also features the previously-blogged Pietari Posti.

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration Blog, on February 9, 2006 7:29 PM

Duke University's Adrian Bejan, along with colleagues from the University of Evora in Portugal, has discovered something potentially quite important: a recently-developed theory of optimizing flow configurations over time called Constructal theory can be used to model key parts of the global climate, and do so using only a small number of well-known inputs. Moreover, this theory could be used to build models of changes to weather patterns resulting from greenhouse gas accumulation. What makes this notable -- and possibly worldchanging -- is that Constructal theory is shaping up to be a universal physics principle applicable to everything from traffic flows to the evolution of the circulatory system. This is kind of abstract, but bear with me -- this could be a major discovery.

Click through to World Changing for much more! --dj

Originally posted by Jamais Cascio from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, on February 9, 2006 7:28 PM

A few Ajax links I’ve been hoarding:

• Ajax Tutorial: Ajax What Is It Good For?
• 24 ways: Edit-in-Place with Ajax
• Mastering Ajax, Part 1: Introduction to Ajax
• Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Make asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax
• Mastering Ajax, Part 3: Advanced requests and responses in Ajax

Updated with one more link.

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Spun, on February 9, 2006 7:26 PM

A friend of mine disables image hotlinking from her site using mod_rewrite, but she also syndicates her weblog to LiveJournal, so she allowed livejournal.com to hotlink with her .htaccess file, like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://(www\.)?livejournal.com.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ images/stealingbandwidth.gif [L]

But recently LJ changed their URL scheme to subdomains, so all her friends were seeing her “You’re stealing bandwidth!” image when they read her journal from username.livejournal.com.

So, we modified her .htacess mod_rewrite rule to:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://([a-zA-Z0-9_]+\.)?livejournal.com.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ images/stealingbandwidth.gif [L]

And in the process I was once again reminded how the simplest of regex’s can still completely kick my ass.

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Spun, on February 9, 2006 7:26 PM

IMG_7518, originally uploaded by JulianBleeckr.

I wish I’d made it to Geneva in time for the ‘objects that blog’ workshop - this looks to be some of the output: Blog-e-mon.

This sort of kiddie-crack spimeplay-fun will be coming sooner rather than later I imagine…

Originally posted by Matt from Blackbeltjones/Work, on February 9, 2006 7:26 PM

Songbird plays the Web. Play any MP3 on the Web without leaving the page. Songbird can view Web pages as dynamic playlists that it can play, save, or automatically download every day.

Songbird plays your music too. Songbird has all the features you expect in a desktop media player. And Songbird constantly improves. Like Firefox, Songbird's features may be improved with user installed and contributed cross-platform extensions.

Soon, Web page authors will be able to publish playlists and transfer MP3s into Songbird to build digital music stores like eMusic, music subscription services like Yahoo! Music Unlimited, virtual jamming services like Ninjam, playlist sharing services like WebJay and more. (SONGBIRDNEST.COM)

Originally from Agenda Inc. Live Feed, on February 9, 2006 4:05 PM

Joel Spolsky has probably saved a lot of people a lot of time by looking at some of the new online Web 2.0 calendar applications -- including 30 Boxes -- and finding that none of them meets his needs. He...

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog, on February 9, 2006 4:04 PM

Yahoo has rev'd MyWeb 2.0. I think the idea is right on, but does anyone else sense that 360 and MyWeb are, well, a bit ahead of Yahoo's own audience curve?

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog, on February 9, 2006 4:04 PM

The portent of doom implied by my hard drive failure scare from several weeks ago turned into an ugly reality this past Saturday morning: I woke up to a locked-up operating system. When I tried to reboot, the resulting sound coming from beneath the laptop’s keyboard was loud, whirring and not very confidence-inducing. By then I had more or less made peace with the fact that the hard drive was dead, and another long walk to Tekserve confirmed it.

The PowerBook is still under AppleCare extended warranty protection, and it will be back within the week (I hope). I feel very fortunate, though; immediately after the first signs of trouble, I quit my procrastination and scheduled full backups of the hard drive on alternating nights to two different external FireWire drives — aided in no small part by the sheer awesomeness of Shirt Pocket Software’s invaluable SuperDuper! product. As a result, I lost less than a day’s worth of work; not perfect, but it could have been loads worse.

SuperDuper! made it exceedingly easy for me to create a complete, bootable mirror of my hard drive, which actually allows me to continue to use the same system — with all of my files, preferences and software tweaks intact — with another Macintosh. I pulled my old Aluminum 15-inch PowerBook G4 out of retirement and booted it from one of the backup FireWire drives. This allows me to continue to be productive — in theory. It’s a trooper, but this old PowerBook is painfully slow, and the whole setup is just a shade too far to the dangerous side of fragility for me to be willing to do much work on it. All of which is to say that, until my PowerBook returns from Tekserve, I’m doing only a minimal amount of extracurricular computing, surfing, blogging, etc. I hope to be back on my feet again next week.

Originally from Subtraction, on February 9, 2006 4:04 PM

Sorry to disappoint you in terms of humor, artwork or riot-worthiness, but here are the cartoons that have been implicated in the deaths of eleven people so far:

 

And here are three other images that were added to the original twelve cartoons by a group of clerics who travelled to the Middle East in January to publicize the original publication, including the center image, which is a contestant in an annual French pig-squealing contest. The image below on the right shows a dog humping someone bowing in prayer.

Originally from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, on February 9, 2006 4:04 PM

Damn, the DS is on fire.

Originally posted by funkaoshi from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 9, 2006 4:03 PM

"Why aren't you paying attention to attention? ... If you can capture your own "attention data", then two important things follow. First, you could use your time and attention better. Second, you could trade your data with companies for other benefits."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 9, 2006 4:02 PM

Hello, Typepad! is going to be in beta for a few hours. Pardon our dust.

Update: Things are a little more settled now. "Best viewed in Firefox" until I get a few more spare hours (har, har).

Originally from hello, typepad, on February 9, 2006 2:32 PM

"I'm not doing it for pay, I'm doing it for pagerank."

Name redacted to protect the guilty.

Originally from hello, typepad, on February 9, 2006 2:32 PM

Originally uploaded by merlinmann.

Flow, from 43 folders. I've been thinking about "flow" the last few days. Does good flow create a good mood, or vice versa? Is there a way to incrementally improve your "flow" without falling into anxiety.

This is the same graph (which I can't find right now) that video game directors use when they try and make games "playable." To make the game harder, you grow the line faster along the y-axis, but you risk alienating casual gamers. Robin Hunicke maintains an entire category on this topic.

See also Mindjack interview with Stewart Butterfield, Feeling' it and the occasional use of the phrase "Still digging!"

Originally from hello, typepad, on February 9, 2006 2:32 PM

"Apple's upcoming midtown Manhattan retail store will mark a first for the company as sources report the location will be open 24 hours a day." I'll stop by the iPod Bar after picking up my repairs at Tekserve.

Originally posted by yatta from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 9, 2006 1:43 PM

they're surprisingly playable  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on February 9, 2006 1:42 PM

Launched just in time for Valentine's Day, -- Mob Crush is a simple way to send a picture message to your crush's phone or email. You can remain anonymous, leave a clue, or reveal yourself. Mob crush keeps no record whatsoever of the information and will not share it with anyone.

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on February 9, 2006 12:56 PM

Finally, the Grammys have realized they are not like the Academy Awards. What matters most is not the celebrities, or even who gets the awards, but the music.

Originally from NYT > Arts, on February 9, 2006 12:56 PM

The passing of Tom Roberts, a guitar virtuoso and cult hero who was revered by some of the biggest bands of the 1990's, marks an important loss for American punk rock.

Originally from NYT > Arts, on February 9, 2006 12:56 PM

The award winning, QUALITY OF LIFE, has just confirmed its New York release date. New York follows an incredible run that the film had in San Francisco.

Quality of Life will play a very limited NYC engagement starting April 6 at the Pioneer Theater in the East Village. You can purchase your tickets in advance now by clicking here.

Quality of Life tells the story of two SF graff writers struggling to maintain their lifelong friendship after they get busted for painting. Click HERE to see the trailer.

Since the filmmakers are distributing the film themselves, and do not have the backing of any major film distributor, QoL is only scheduled for one screening a day for a single week. They are considering allowing the film to stay longer and possibly add more screenings each day – on one condition:

They will only do this if we can sell a large number of advance tix.

So if you expect to see the film in NYC, please buy your tix now.

The filmmakers are also looking for people to join their NYC street team to get the word out about the film coming to NYC. Email andy [at] qualityoflife-themovie.com if interested.

Originally from Wooster Collective, on February 9, 2006 12:55 PM