What Day is it Again?

Well, I'm coming to terms with the fact that yes, my body clock is broken, broken, broken.

I'm sure it's a lot to do with bad sleep hygiene, and the ammount of time I spend underneath artificial light at work, and when I get home. Clue: all of the time. It's particularly not being helped by the clocks changing today (not going back, as I've said in three different conversations already, but actually forward...).

There's added complexity to this at the moment. As I spend a lot of time in Warcraft, arranging things on server time (which is CET, or GMT+1) I've got used to mentally performing the maths to adjust to local time. I was rather excited by the idea that finally, BST would mean that Local time and Azeroth time were the same. Oh no - it turns out that Europe jumps to summertime now. I have NO idea whether any of my PC based clocks have changed, either, so I'm in an odd time-approximate limbo. Anyway, the upshot of this was accidentally going to bed at 1am on a schoolnight. It makes the Australian's trouble with Outlook look relatively trivial.

Boing Boing: Aussie timezone switch borks Exchange Server

And then thinking, weirdly, that the London Marathon was yesterday, whereas it is in fact in a months' time. Not to mention my diary slowly creeping out of control...

Something that seems to have slipped into the entertaining curiosity section of the newspapers is Friday's Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill reading in the House of Lords.

Now, more sunlight in the evenings is a Good Thing. I hate dark evenings, and long for the extra sunlight of summer. It makes me happier and more productive. But I do wonder about the bill - if, for instance, the Tabliods picked it up, and realised that it is actually a way of getting us on to Central European Time by stealth - can you imagine? it would be worse than giving up avoirdupois for kilos in the shops... I don't mind about the europe bit at all, personally, but I'm always sad to leave GMT for the magic of it being the universal standard, the zero point. It pleases my sense of mathematical balance, if not my sleep patterns.

Anyway, I'm hoping that I'll have woken up by the end of the day; at some point, hopefully, willpower willing, I'll be able to report that I've taken positive action on the whole sleep patterns thing. But I wouldn't set your watch by me.

How to Become an Early Riser

I'm bad in the mornings.

Well, actually, I'm very good in the mornings - but alas, I'm very good at the wrong thing. I'm good at not waking up, at rolling over, at being completely unrousable and dead to the world. I've been like this since I had a bad bout of depression during uni - around the same time that I developed serious RSI. I don't think the two are connected, but you never know.

Anyway. When I saw Cory linking to
How to Become an Early Riser I got a bit over excited. At last, the internet has delivered me the solution to the curse that's been ruining my life for the last few years - I, too, can become more efficient and successful, and not a complete pain in the bum to get out of bed.

It seems like sensible advice. And I read through it thinking it might be the answer. Until:

When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don't think about it. I've learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don't allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.

Ah. OK. So, fundamental understanding of the problem then. The waking up, fine. The alarm, great. The actually having enough control of myself to move, and not just to roll over and go straight back to sleep? Nu uh. That's actually the problem, love. Not the bedtimes thing, sorry.

Can someone write me a 'how to control your errant willpower when you're only semi concious, and not noted for your self control at the best of times, fatty.' article, please?

You know you play too much warcraft when...

You get one of these.

And think it's really lovely.

A Long Overdue Post about Nostalgia for Times that Never Were

Scattered around my various hard drives, and also various conversations over the last year, is a blog post. It's one of those mythical blogposts; one that would set a trend, be linked to, be sparkling and brilliant, insightful and timely. Alas, because I am nothing if not the queen of prevarication, I fear that the time for it may be past. So this is a summation, a mere shadow of the blog-that-might-have-been, only written because I find myself at home sick.

Last spring, I decided that I scented a new trend in the air. It didn't have a name, or an organising principal, but it did have some common symptoms. At the time, I tagged it as Faux Vintage, but that may not be the best term.

So - what is it? Well, there's a loose theme of nostalgia running through it, for a time before the 1960s. Roughly, it's any 'reworking' of 1890s to 1950s mainstream culture. It's camp, rather posh, about louche fun and frippery, about properly mixed martinis, about surface, about dressing for dinner, about the lost art of being a gentleman, about authenticity, about being most terribly modern.

If it had a manifesto, it would be Oscar Wilde's Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young

Its visual aesthetic is somewhere between Aubrey Beardsley, sideshow art, cheesecake pinups and the Picture Post.

It sounds like The Real Tuesday Weld, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain or perhaps Noel Coward.

For fun, it likes to go to Lost Vagueness, or The Modern Times Club.

If feeling a little more louche, it may go to the Whoopeee Club, or even become involved with the Aristasians.

It might buy outfits from Danger Dames, or a proper gentleman's tailor.

It reads the Chap.

I'm not sure that there's much to say about it, per se, other than that it feels slightly like a response to so much slick, mediated, shiny culture; that it's a radical position in that it rejects the current mainstream in favour of a mainstream long gone. It isn't like punk, it's not a rewriting or a revolution, but it dismisses all the teenage angst of the underground with a raised eyebrow and a 'Well, I suppose it can't be helped; you are young, after all.' It's not a postmodern reappropriation either; it's not cynical enough. It's about genuinely enjoying the nostalgia, and the safe feeling of better times.

Most of all, it's stylish.

Geofftech - iBlog » All Mapped Out

Geofftech - iBlog » All Mapped Out

I love the tube map.

I also very much dislike the way that LUL's (TfL's?) lawyers have removed satirical sites that should, in fact, be covered under fair use (satire, I belive, being one of the exceptions to copyright, but I need to check the letter of the law on that one) of their prior art.

You know, like THE WORLD FAMOUS WORK OF ART, the Great Bear. Go and sue the Tate already, why don't you?

And re Trademarking; well, last time I checked, TfL weren't in the primary business of non-commercial comedy blogging, so where's the infringement?

I may actually get round to using Write To Them to register my displeasure with my London Assembly representative, the Mayor, and my MP. I encourage you to do the same.

Idiot Customer service, part Oh-I've-lost-count

I tried to join FileFront on saturday. I got stuck in an endless loop of failure to authenticate. So I told them. Here, for your edification, is our correspondance.

Kim Plowright to support@filefront.com 4 Mar (2 days ago)
Hi there,

I'm trying to use your service to upload a piece of game video.

Initially, I poked around on your Submit a File link (points to http://personal.filefront.com/) but kept getting directed to http://manage.hosted.filefront.com/ which just shows a message 'Please Login'.

So, I tried to register for your site. Interestingly, all through the registration there are large banners informing me that I do not need to register to upload video... but your submit a file link requires a login. How does one login without registering?

Finally, I went through the free registration process. The form submits my info, and returns the result page, but this loads your contextual navigation and a tall banner ad in the right hand margin of the page, then reports 'done' with no content in the content area. I'd take a wild stab at the possibility that your advertising services'
javascript is interfering with your registration system, if only because I've just had to troubleshoot a similar problem at work.

I haven't recieved any 'complete your registration' emails, so I assume that my registration isn't complete, and there was a further stage of information needed.

Can you let me know:
- What is the mechanism for uploading video if one chooses not to register on the site
- When I might be able to finish registering, and what the problem may have been?

Incidentally, I've tried in both Firefox 1.5 and IE6 on a PC running Windows XP. I tried to register using the 'register' link next to the login.

Thanks
Kim
----
L*** <***@filefront.com> to me, support 18:03
Miss,

Thank you for contacting customer support.

That is an error. You must register to upload to our site. Our records show
that your account was created. Some users email service blocks are email or
thinks it's spam and it's sent to the junk folder.

If you have anymore questions please feel free to contact me at this email
address.

Thank you for using FileFront.

L***
Customer Support Rep, FileFront
Ziff Davis Media Game Group
***@filefront.com
----

So... the answer appears to be 'Our site is wrong - and we think you're too stupid to have checked your junkmail folder, despite the fact you tried on several browsers and could use the word javascript in anger. And we didn't notice your questions, either'.

Sod that, I'll use YouTube, I think.

Peter Serafinowicz does the Oscars

O! News - Google Video

<drawls>
Well, yah, like Robert and Peeeee-ter got in touch to tell me about their latest Proooo-ject, yah?
</drawls>

Peter Serafinowicz, teh ofiishul Look Around You voice of Star Wars Darth Maul (tm) has made a piss take of Oscar night reporting. So here it is. It is silly. He does an uncanny impression of Alan Alda.

Also, he's looking awfully thin. I'm worried. Maybe his celebrity lifestyle is taking its toll.

The Artyom Reader » Reverse Evolution? This is Bloody Weird

The Artyom Reader » Reverse Evolution? This is Bloody Weird

I point to this, not because of the inherrent fascination of the subject matter, but because of the comments made by visitors to the site.

This, gentle reader, is the level of debate you'll get around genetics, evolution and human biology in a country where students are taught that evolution is 'wrong' and that intelligent design is a viable alternative.

You get people who are incapable of commenting coherrently on what evolution actually is, means or implies.

Etiquette of Common Situations

The Weekly / Etiquette of Common Situations Archive:

"Situation: Defeat at lawn tennis.

Attitude: Sporting.

Solution: Accept loss gracefully; retire to house pleading heat; belabour servants until racquet breaks."

Sigh. I really should get round to writing that modern book of manners...

You Know Me, part 3.

OK, so I'm a sucker for personality tests; good ones, that is, not 'Which Desperate Housewife are your shoes like?' of course.

So this one is interesting; I'm a cautious artist, which is quite a nice way of describing me. The extraordinary thing is how very low I score on confidence. Ouch.

Interestingly, though, it rates me as an ISTP on the Myers Briggs, whereas two years ago I was an ISTJ; I think it's more accurate, as the judging aspect of my old categorisation indicated much stronger adherence to rote and rules and convention than I have. Also, the ISTP is fiercly territorial, which is accurate...

Of course, the problem I now have is working out how to make use of the insight...

Mirror Crack'd

I love Time Out for the moments of utter last moment woo it allows you. I stopped picking up the mag a year or two ago (I decided that £2 a week was too much to pay for the illusion of a cultural life) but just by chance I flicked through a copy in the office the other day. There, nestling in the also-rans in the film section, was a single line: a one off showing of Mirrormask at the NFT, followed by a Q&A with Dave McKean.

I think I may have actually squeaked out loud in the office.

Alas, on ringing for tickets the NFT tell me it's booked up. But I can queue for spares 30 minutes before doors open.

Oh yes. Yes, indeed.

Mirrormask first popped into my conciousness... ooh, years ago. I like Mr McKean's work very much - even looked into getting him to do something for the Dr Who website, only to be given a polite 'he's busy' by his agent. So the idea of a whole film done in his painterly goth-collage style was... overexciting. I'm a sucker for a pretty movie. But then it all went mysteriously quiet - a website appeared, but no release date. No advertising, no fanfare. It seems to have snuck in to the NFT by the back door, slinking through the shadows in Gaimanesque style.

I've even had the script book sitting by my bed for months - since may, in fact, when Ian bought it as a courting present. It was unread, as I didn't want to go in knowing too much about it.

So... I was pretty excited when I managed to get tickets after getting up at the hellishly early hour of ten last saturday. And then, the film.

It's great. Really. Flawed, yes, but very very lovely. It's classic Henson, too - a dark fantasy for solitary ten year old girls who don't like boy bands, and right out of the Labyrinth / Dark Crystal tradition.

From the Q&A afterwards it was clear that McKean sees the failings of the film; if anything, he was much to hard on it. Artistic training tends to teach you to criticise your work - it's how you improve - and I suspect that he was only seeing the shots-that-didn't-composite properly, or glitchy CGI. But the audience just don't see that - it's the kind of thing you only notice when you've been locked in an edit suite for two years. The audience saw a dark fairytale, unlike anything else filmed before.

Actually, the only thing it needed was a bit of ruthless exec-ing; it looses pace about three quarters of the way through, and a tiny bit of tightening up would make it a world-beater. Specifically, it doesn't need the 'Close to You' mechanical dolls section; whilst beautiful, and cool sounding on paper, it just disrupts the flow of the story, and doesn't really give any more depth to any of the characters. Alas, I get the feeling that it was the only bit that Gaiman (the co-writer) and McKean really agreed on, which is why, I assume, it made the final cut.

Gina McKee is a fantastic choice for the mother/evil queen role; she has a slightly ethereal quality which sits uneasily alongside her very real presence, which makes the transition between Mum-to-a-difficult-teen and jealous-faerie-bitch quite natural. And of course, Rob Brydon is just genius. He's so bloody affable!

But the look of the film is a triumph. I was really wondering how McKean's work would translate into motion graphics; it would be hard to maintain the level of density and constructedness in his illustration in a film setting. But it turns out his bricolage technique - compositing by any other name - is simple to translate. I asked him about the challenges of going from flat to film, and he basically said that as he works by building raw images up into a whole on a computer, it was pretty simple to extend that to see the shot footage as just more source material.

The man has a good eye, too - the direction was unobtrusive, but not pedestrian at all.

So what are the stand out images? Well, the visual density of the piece makes it hard to single anything out - it's like dipping your eyeballs in golden syrup and glitter. The Sphynx are great - they get the human-face on puppet feel of a Tony Oursler but have convincing weight and solidity in the story world. Sequences with the black Queen vomiting out darness are as disturbing as a Chris Cunningham video. Throwing down books to hitch a lift is a genius sequence, well executed. The Cities are marvellous, with a sharded, changeable feel that suits the hypnogogic imagery.

It seems a shame, then, that Sony don't seem to know what to do with the picture; how or whether to market it, or what market it's for. And it needs a cinema release; it will be beautiful on DVD, yes, but you need a twenty foot screen to appreciate the richness of the visuals

So - to sum up. An amazing opportunity to see a film that will become a lost masterpiece even before a commercial release. I feel sad that so few others got the chance to see it too.

When Designers Go Feral

Look everyone, this is what happens when TV people run the internets. They make it look like it's 1998, and its running off a 4x CD Rom!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/

Also - dark green on Cyan? What were you THINKING?

I'm actually quite embarrased about this.

Gay Robot Love Story

The Empire Strikes Brokeback, or something.

21st Century Folktales: Games, Worlds, Stories - Presentation for BBC Writer's Room

So, about a month ago, I gave a talk about games. It was scary, but I got some nice feedback from the people involved.

I talked about the way that stories intersect with play, and how moving around in a virtual space is a bit like writing a character biography. I also pointed at some technological changes that might blurr even further the intersection between 'game' and 'real' worlds.

It's kind of a basic presentation, as it was written for a non-expert audience. But have a look and tell me what you think.
mildlydiverting.com - 21st Century Folktales: Games, Worlds, Stories - Presentation for BBC Writer's Room

Also, if you can work out how I've managed to break my CSS in firefox, I'd love to know.

Haptics

YouTube - Crazy Multi-Input Touch Screen

Just a little pointer to a lovely bit of video showing a haptic interface, with multi-point touch screen manipulation of images. Check out the multiple spinning records...

My favourite thing about 'The Island' was the desktop that functioned as screen and input device, controlled by touch and an executive toy. Vannevar Bush must have been thinking along those lines with his desktop memex...

Channel101 - The Unavoidable Future of Entertainment

Channel101 - The Unavoidable Future of Entertainment

Hmn. I think my department could learn from this. It's like Jackass meets Guerilla Film Maker's Handbook...

Super Dirty Sekrit Achilles Heel

I'm a cultured kinda person. I like terribly dry music, and thoughtful art, and stately television, and Radios and BBC 4s. I like my laughs intellectual and clever clever, not dumb and crass. I have a loathing of American Teen Grossout comedies. I despise South Park.

But I have a filthy little secret. Sometimes, when I think no-one is looking, I degrade myself by wallowing in Low Culture. It makes me feel dirty and transgressive and wrong. I enjoy the guilt.

I debase myself, and I love it.

I like wrestling, and the comedy output of Jack Black.

I like oiled men in spandex, and I *adored* Heat Vision and
Jack. Men with mullets faking fights make me... well, flustered. And I have watched a Ben Stiller product and laughed.

There. I've admitted it.

Imagine, then, the ammount of wiping up I had to do after I was sent this:

Nachos are Yummy

It could only be improved by the addition of Owen Wilson, who I've had a bit of a thing for since back before I went straight. It was Shanghai Noon that did it. Mmmm, cowboys.

del.icio.us Tags: wrestling fetish jackblack

Post about Posting this before

Issue 513, 30 January 2006, Giving déjà vu a second look

Have I ever mentioned that occasionally, I get Deja Vu *so* bad that I have to sit down and take a breather? It's usually when I'm very tired or stressed. I can recognise it as Deja vu, but sometimes my brain tells me that no, I've actually recently dreamed this situation. On really bad occasions, I get Deja Vu of having had Deja Vu *in the same situation before*, and of having dreamed the event triggering the previous Deja Vu in the same situation.

Frankly, when I get those, I get nauseous and have to have a cup of tea to recover. It renders me incapable of doing anything but going 'Woh...' (like Neo learning Kung Fu, frankly) and calming my head until it catches up with itself.

I wonder, then, if it's linked to my terrible short term memory?

Post about Posting this before

Issue 513, 30 January 2006, Giving déjà vu a second look

Have I ever mentioned that occasionally, I get Deja Vu *so* bad that I have to sit down and take a breather? It's usually when I'm very tired or stressed. I can recognise it as Deja vu, but sometimes my brain tells me that no, I've actually recently dreamed this situation. On really bad occasions, I get Deja Vu of having had Deja Vu *in the same situation before*, and of having dreamed the event triggering the previous Deja Vu in the same situation.

Frankly, when I get those, I get nauseous and have to have a cup of tea to recover. It renders me incapable of doing anything but going 'Woh...' (like Neo learning Kung Fu, frankly) and calming my head until it catches up with itself.

I wonder, then, if it's linked to my terrible short term memory?

Art Website, Yun Bai Contemporary Art, Yun Bai , Fine Artist , Los Angeles, Conceptual Art, Abstract Paintings, Works on Paper, Installation, Sculptur

Art:Porn interface

From boingboing, chinese enammel work made from cutup wankmags. Rather beautiful, and also SFW!

What Makes It Great? (First Draft) - Joel on Software

What Makes It Great? (First Draft) - Joel on Software

An interesting, if flawed little article. It kind of relates to the 'Lovemarks' concept - some things just attain significance beyond their apparent worth, and people become emotionally attached to them.

But look at Joel's choices for great design - Brad pitt, the ipod, Aeron chairs, Sweet Home Alabama. Yes, all good things, but that choice says more about the 'transcendant factor' in those designs. The key thing is the eye of the beholder.

Joel's choices scream late-20s-early-30s young urban white male, with a techy leaning. They say 'this is my taste'.

What happens when you consider, say, a TG Greens Easimix bowl in that equation? Or a top loading washing machine? Or a traditional wooden spoon?

It's like the 'ugly concrete buildings' argument. Back in the 18th century, people used to look at mediaeval and gothic buildings and go 'ugh, it's so ugly and old fashioned, we must pull it down immediately!'. By today's standards, they were vandals. I remember, when I first found out about this - when I was a teenager, about 15 years ago - I thought 'Hmn. People hate concrete building from the post war to the 70s, and pull it down on site these days. How long til someone decides it has aesthetic value and thinks we're vandals?'. That seems to be happening already...

So, my point is, I think, that any list of 'great' design is about taste. Taste is arbited by the media, and also by what owning one of those 'great designs' says about you as a person. iPods aren't just about looking pretty, they're about being the kind of person who owns an ipod. They're about conspicuous aesthetics, conspicuous consumption, and branding.

It's about fashion.

Surely what Viral Video was invented for?

Smash hits from Guardian Unlimited: Culture Vulture

Man falls down stairs in museum, smashes priceless antique vases. Blames shoelace. All is caught on CCTV.

*offers prayer to gods of Google Video*

Wonderland: Take one IP: should you or should you not turn it into a MMOG?

Wonderland: Take one IP: should you or should you not turn it into a MMOG?

A-Tay is pointing to a discussion about the suitability of known IP for MMORPG worlds.

It occurred to me that the 'Jedi problem' (ie, the Star Wars Galaxies' problem in that most people signing up to live in a Star Wars world are going to want to be the ub3r l33t Jedi, thus throwing the balance of the game right out of whack) - as I was saying, the Jedi problem is almost completely missing from the world of Star Trek. Trek is about regular old human beings, with no special powers, just some sufficiently advanced technology, exploring the universe. Success happens through smarts, organisation, and following 'Star Fleet protocol', or your basic Milk-of-human-kindness thing.

Because the characters are just regular joes, there's no balancing problem. Like the American dream, you succeed by working hard and having a modicum of talent. You don't need to play Kirk, or Picard. Play the game well enough and you start writing your own, new mythology; you become a legendary Star Fleet captain. It's all about the pips.

Two Slightly Distressing Pieces of Homophobia

Don't be openly accepting of gay sexuality, just in case people get upset with you.

Way to go, Blizzard. Because the constant gay jokes made by other players in game don't get to me *at all*, oh no, never, no no. And I *never* wish that there were people around who were a bit more mature and welcoming. No, never.

Lowri Turner: Some of my best friends are gay! No, really!

...and I bet they're *really really* pleased with that piece of journalism, Lowri. Careful, or they might not give you their *fabulous* advice about scatter cushions next time you need it.

Slow Animation

A really cute little online animation maker, based on the simple concept of making a flip book. The interface is lovely - really simple to get the hang of (although the flash is buggy if you run your pen off the edge of the paper...) and the icons are self-explanatory.

In five minutes, I'd made a tiny little animation about a Snail and a Very Loud Noise.

FLIPBOOK! - Snail Tale by Kim

Dancing Rats

Dancing Rats - this one is for my Dad, really.

But the site is worth looking at - the most astounding selection of soft toy animals, some of them eerily realistic.

But the ratties are Teh Cut3zorr!

Musical Strangeness is Musical Goodness

Chevron - ZeBOX Artist: "Emails + Viruses :: mp3 :: 1.30Mb "

James at work just pointed me at this; a chap called Chevron, who makes... well, kinda early 90s nosjavascript:void(0);
Publish Post talgic electronica. Including one called emails and viruses, which is a combination of text-to-speech virus alerts, and Kate Bush. Oh, and pleasingly vrrwooooompy techno noises.

Brand new, it's retro.

Live Whale!!

Live coverage of the Whale in the Thames, via BBC News Player.

Man, it's why you pay your license fee, isn't it?

More creative meta-play

One of the (many) things that I failed to get across in my talk this week was the variety of meta-play that goes on in MMORPG worlds. Quite aside from the game world play-narrative, there is the demotic play-narrative; events sparked by the social nature of the worlds that then become folklore. Here's a lovely example - a bunch of players who dressed up as hicks, and went griefing in a lowbie area.

The Daedalus Project: Slideshow

Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!

There's been a fair bit of machinima watching in our house over the last few days, what with giving that presentation n'all.

Most is fart jokes. Or the porn song. Or people who have chicken, of course.

But Intro this guild promotional video is... kinda marvellous. It feels like it might be a rather dreamy pastoral euro-film from the sixties.

And now, I want to remake the scene from Jules et Jim where the threesome run across the bridge, but with Taurens. Oh yes.

It's ALL There, There.

One of the central tennets of Alexander Technique - which I've been doing for about a year now - is being present; remaining aware, and in the moment, and connected to your physical being-in-space.

Now, oddly, I spend most of my waking hours being in not-space - my concentration is out in the no-there of cyberspace, both at work and in my main leisure activity.

It's a strangely disjointed feeling - my life is lived so intently on the other side of a screen, that I often feel slightly disconnected when I'm not drifting in search of information, or following a simple string of challenges in Azeroth.

The great thing about AT is that quite asside from relieving the incredibly painful sympoms of RSI - which, of course, are brought on by hours spent at a computer - is that it resets me - brings head and body back in to the same place. I leave lessons feeling... functional. Rooted. Aware. Whereas I leave the office feeling useless, sleepy and impotent. But anyway.

This virtual double life I lead took me to a strange place yesterday; most specifically, to Sevenoaks.

I was asked by the BBC Writers Room to talk to a group of writers about.. well. Games. The brief was 'to inspire them with my experiences of Games and Online Worlds.' I think I may have reinforced the idea that these places are where geeky people who don't function well in the real world hang out. Oh well. But then again, what kind of psychology does it take to want to sit around writing about the human condition, then watching other people act out those fake emotions? Horses for courses... :-)

Anyway - it was fairly gruelling; three days worth of preperation and rereading source material, putting together a beautiful powerpoint and getting there to find... no projector, so everyone sitting around my laptop. But I was fairly pleased with the ideas that shook out.

I topped off the day with - finally, after having barely logged in for over a week - an evening playing WOW. I hit 50! We killed the farting princess! Go Altus Chillers! etc etc.

There is a strange backdrop to the game at the moment; there are massive 'world events' going on - quests and narrative points that involve every player. Currently, it's preparations for a war; all are gathering resources as fast as possible in order to complete the quests to open the gates to a new world area. It's rather like being in a crowd at an unexpectedly significant event - no-one is quite sure what will happen, rumours are flying around, there's a palpable sense of expectation in the air. Also, the economy has gone completely barmy - with usually cheap resources selling for huge ammounts. I'm reading 'Wartime: Britain 1939-1945' at the moment, and the parallels with the atmosphere during the Phony War and attitudes to Rationing described in the book are... well, maybe it's just me being over excited, but it feels very real.

The thing is, when you spend enough time somwhere else, you invest in that other world, and in some way leave part of yourself there, or take the world with you when you shut off your monitor. And when little reminders pop in to your regular old RL existence they seem... somehow, much more exotic. And you miss the other place in the same way you pine for the holiday beach on your first day back in the office.

Anyway. Look! Tourists in a virtual game! Cool! Medivh Server have done it already!

(I'm incoherrent with tiredness today - can you tell?)

Secrets of Massively Multiplayer Farming

Secrets of Massively Multiplayer Farming

An interesting article about 'farming' - basically, working in a virtual world to get in-game money to sell for real-world profit.

It's rather thought provoking; particularly the 'your partner can't be trusted'. It feels rather like a cold war spy thriller.

Corporate Objectives

just another post about corporate idiocy; a topic close to my heart after 8 years in a corporation with a tendency towards the encouragement of idiocy.

The frankly shoddy customer support I got from Hewlett Packard led me to try and track down their head of Customer Services; you know, just to let them know that they suck, like you do. Instead, I found this:

About Us: Corporate Objectives:

To provide products, services and solutions of the highest quality and deliver more value to our customers that earns their respect and loyalty.
Underlying beliefs supporting this objective:

• Our continued success is dependent on increasing the loyalty of our customers.


• Listening attentively to customers to truly understand their needs, then delivering solutions that translate into customer success is essential to earn customer loyalty.


• Competitive total cost of ownership, quality, inventiveness, and the way we do business drives customer loyalty.

Well, at least the grammar is better.

Look Around You

So, the lovely Messrs. Popper and Serafinowicz are relasing their new DVD on monday - Look Around You series two. Hurrah.

I mention this because (celebrity name drop! Woo!) Mr. Popper just sent me a link to one of the extras:

Birds of Britain.

Hurrah. It's great.

It's also slightly confusing, as I watched about an hour's worth of Jack Hargreaves' Out of Town the other night, which included a ten minute segment about a man teaching baby kingfishers to catch minnows in his garage. Which was priceless, but not actually a comedy. Cognitive dissonance ahoy...

Anyway - if you've no idea what I'm on about, by the power of internet piracy, you can watch the whole first series on Google Video.

del.icio.us Tags: funny video lookaroundyou bbc birds

The Mayflower Hotel Nottingham can't bring itself to give a fuck at the moment.

My lovely boy bought me an HP Photosmart 330 Printer for Christmas. It's fabulous - it prints beautiful photos, and is generally a lovely thing.

Except I had to install a few hundred megabytes of imaging software on to my PC in order to use it; there are two processes running in my taskbar now, and frankly the software is... well, it's not as elegant as it could be.

I'm a really proficient Photoshop user; I learnt on photoshop 3, back when you set it to run a filter then went off for a cuppa and a fag to let it do it's thing. So, really, all I need from my printing software are a bunch of standard drivers that integrate into windows nicely.

So, yeah, a couple of hundred MB of cruft on my machine, plus the chance to sign up for 'Extended Features' (um, that seems to be lots and lots of special offers, plus software that reports your usage back to HP... Great) isn't quite what I was looking for.

So, anyway. I sent their customer service department an email asking if there was a way to install just the essential drivers without the huge imaging suite.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the response I received within sixteen minutes of logging the ticket with HP. That's sixteen minutes of 'massive research on the issue', in case you don't pick that up.

Dear Kim,

Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.

I understand that is there any other way to install just a limited set of drivers for imaging software.

I first appreciate your time for providing us an opportunity to serve you. However,I assure you that there is no need for any concern and I shall be glad to provide you complete assistance.

After massive research on the issue, I am sorry to say that there is no other possible way to install the limited software.
As, all the software program for the drivers is linked with one another.

I am sure this should resolve the issue. However, please reply to this message with the results if it persists. We shall be glad in assisting you further with it.



Sincerely,

HP Total Care.

Dear HP Total Care. Not only are you the patronising face of a company who makes second rate imaging software, but also, your grammar is incomprehensible.

Tomorrow, if I can summon the energy, I'll post customer service emails from the three other companies I'm bashing my head against; including, for your edification, the 'No, we think that book is not yet published, even though we sell it under a slightly different title and you clearly stated that you've seen it in the shops and provided ASIN numbers for both database entries' emails from Amazon, and if you're really lucky, the 'Oh, our updates are buggy. Can we suggest that you uninstall everything, then reinstall our updates one by one, then tell us when the error reoccurs so we can have a conversation with an engineer to find out if this is a known issue, even though it's been reported all over the internet?' tickets from Sony VA customer services.

Is it me, or are the 'expert systems' just destroying these corporations' relationships with their customers?

Gamasutra - BioWare Announces Writing Contest For Industry Jobs

Gamasutra - BioWare Announces Writing Contest For Industry Jobs

And in other news - blimey. Bioware. They're ace. And they're looking for writing talent in the modding community. They rock!

Tags: games gaming writing interactivenarrative

Alternate Reality Games SIG

Alternate Reality Games SIG

Hmn. IGDA are starting a mailing list for people working in Alternate Reality Games.

Hie thee down and sign up, my pretties.

Tags: games gaming arg

Advent Calendar 2005 :: Leslie Harpold

I'm not big in to christmas.

I'm not really sure why; it started to happen when I was in my teens. I used to love singing carols in the cathedral, and very much liked the frankinsencey whiff of tradition around the festivities.

But... I don't know. Maybe it was just growing up, and growing out of the avaricious fervour of a kid waiting for santa.

This christmas is particularly odd. Last year I was in the death-throws of a relationship - it actually ended on the day after boxing day, and only got through christmas by drinking myself stupid. The memories are still raw, and combined with my now-regular burst of midwinter depression have proved to be a difficult storm to weather.

The nice thing, of course, is my new relationship; too soon, not what I expected, but nonetheless good. We've got work to do, yes: I need to stop being so reserved, uptight, offhand and cautious, he needs to wash his own socks occasionally; you know, the ususal domestic stuff. But it's... good. Working. Solid. Nice. Not the most exciting set of words to use about it, but to be honest, they're words I set great stock by, and think are much underrated.

So, this christmas will be a change; a new start, a going forward. And for once, it's almost worth celebrating.

Aaaaany-way. This long digression is a preamble to pointing to a small christmas celebration put together by the redoubtable Ms. Harpold, to which I've contributed a memory of a christmas past.

Tags: christmas memories

PlayOn: 10 Things About Conversation in Virtual Worlds...

I stumbled across this interesting piece about player interaction in MMORPGS from a link sent by Ian - with whom I spend a lot of time in Warcraft.

He'd initially sent it for the breakdown of race / gender / faciton stats - which confirmed my hunch that there really aren't many Lady Taurens in game. Only 19% of players have female horde characters, and only 11 % of Taurens are female in game, and only 18% of warriors are female... so - erm, no, I don't have enough data to work that one out, but I'm a minority in a minority of a minority - and I bet even more so as I'm actually a female player, and there are less of us.

Digressions aside, further down the blog is a discussion of how avatars signal their behaviours and interactions in game. There are obviously /emotes in game, but those are very deliberately signalled by the user. I tend to use a lot of /emotes, but it's something to do with playing with my real-life partner a lot of the time; we make a joke of our real-life status in game, so we'll often /kiss or /hug on meeting. I have a personal preference for /tickling in-game strangers, too - especially whilst on the zeppelin, which is idle time in game terms. I'm like one of those japanese tube perverts.

The fascinating thing is the analysis of the possible behaviours an avatar could display whilst the player was performing in game actions. For instance, if you consult a map, you're not 'seeing' the world; your character could signal this by having their face hidden behind a large unfolded map. Fiddling with objects in bags also takes a player away from concentrating on their avatar - so their avatar could appear distracted by ferreting through bags in game.

The problem of facial expression not being visible at a distance is simple to solve in WoW - you only see it when targetted on someone, and then only in the small character information lozenge that displays...

Simple observation of real life behaviours do map on to game worlds, and help bring a tangibility to the social aspects of the game. It would be interesting to find a game with rich charater interaction modelled into it, and compare the rates of 'anitsocial' play with a less-rich environment. It would be nice to find out if social behavioural cues help foster greater socialisation (sociability, or 'good behaviour') in game.

Tags: wow games virtualworlds avatars

Every Tiny Detail

Good God.

This is one of the best CGI images I have *ever* seen.

The only downside I can see is the over-texturing on the skin - it looks a tiny bit too shiny, and a bit too textured; you'd be likely to take it in as a waxwork rather than a photo of a person.

There was a moment - a tipping point, I suppose, in trendy new parlance - a couple of years ago when an all-cgi image fooled me. I definately get fooled by CGI inserts in live action all the time - it's moreorless seamless in films these days. But when you're, say, playing a game, or watching something you're conscious is all computer generated, you're less likely to suspend disbelief.

There were amazing bits in Final Fantasy, but it still had the problem of the complete lack of 'heft' - none of the characters had bulk, or weight, or momentum. I spent a lot of time in art college studying human anatomy, makind drawings of people in movement, so I tend to spot when bodies aren't moving right, or are slack, or badly articulated. The most difficult thing seems to be to make figures look like they're standing - that their feet are in contact with the ground, and are bearing their weight. Look out for it - few animators bother to make feet articulate much.

Digressions aside - the point at which my brain finally got 'tripped up' was in Monsters Inc. Yes, I know it's a film about imagainary creatures. But there was a scene when the big furry one was stuck in a snowstorm, with the wind blowing through his fur, on his arm. And I caught myself processing the character as a Muppet - a real, big furry puppet. Then went... wow, that's some good fur animation to make me think that.

How long, then, until someone thinks to give animators lessons in the Alexander Technique, or Ballet, or similar, to give them enough physical awareness to create the full illusion of a live person?

Geek Log(os)

The main perk of my job (appart from a rather good pension scheme, obviously) is having the full OED at my fingertips; we have a corporate subscription. The online version is fantastic (if incredibly badly laid out as a website...), and I have to stop myself looking things up, as I loose hours from my working day in a kind of a clicktrance.

I get a 'word of the day' email from them. Today's was 'Stonewall' - interestingly, no mention of its use to refer to the Stonewall riots, but I wonder if this is covered in the usage the dictionary covers... but anyway. They're also involved with a word search - they're looking for very early citations of words like 'cyberspace' - pre-1982, and 'bouncy castle' - pre-1986.

It turns out that they actually have a public lexicography project on the go; the only truly public facing element of it is the Science Fiction Citations word hunt. I thought it was worth pointing to, as I'd never heard it mentioned on the web before, and I know a whole big bunch of people who'd be interested.

Paging Cory, Piers, Ian, Nick and Ann!

Tags: scifi sf language words oed

Nat' Academies Press, Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (2005)

Nat' Academies Press, Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (2005)

Amazing reading.

I really, really want to visit the area around Chernobyl.

I'm strange.

Tuppence a Bag

An aquaintance is out in Finland, where it's very cold. He decided to feed the local birds, only to be given a very thorough telling off by his neighbours; basically, for encouraging pests.

I think feeding wild birds in the cold winter is a lovely thing. We're all set for a desperately cold one this year, so in part inspired by the desire to upset some Finns, I emailed my dad for his 'bird pudding' recipe. He makes it every year, filling half coconut shells with it, and leaving it hanging in the garden. It works - they have a fabulous selection of small wild birds, inclduding wrens, goldfinches, and once, memorably, a family of treecreepers. Robins in particular are very scenic at this time of year.

Anyway - the email from him (part typed by my mother, who is quicker on the keys) is another parental classic. I thought I'd share it here so you, too, can make bird pudding, and also marvel at my mother's ability to know exactly where the cheapest porridge oats can be bought, and her in-depth suet foo. I'd suggest M&S or even Fortnums' potatos, personally, because you don't want to be giving the poor birdies inferior food now, do you?

PLOWRIGHT FAMILY BIRD PUDDING

Dad wants me to give you the recipe. I dont know whether I have it correctly in my mind but I only know what dad puts in it ? no proportions so it will require a little experimentation to get the right consistency. It depends on the weather - if its cold the stuff will stay put and if it gets warmer then it might trickle out as the fat melts! Do you just want to put a dollop on the bird table or are you planning to hang it up in a container?

Any way, find the hardest fat which is suet but it will be in a packet shredded but if you warm the whole mixture to get it to come together I imagine the suet will melt so give it a good stir and then refrigerate.

add to the suet - any of the following...

• Cooked potato - not too much as its not the birds favourite
• Porridge oats (Cheapest asda or lidl or netto in plastic bag)
• Any nuts chopped


• Stale biscuits, cake, bread crumbs


• Seeds e.g. sesame, poppy (or buy a small pkt of wild bird seed)
• Dried fruit e.g. sultanas

Dad says its better to get butchers suet. It is in big lumps but will melt if you just break it up a bit. It should be in the greatest proportion in order to hold the additions

love Ma x

P.S. (obviously not taught my Grand mother to suck eggs) just melt as much suet as you can scrounge or charm from the butcher into large pan blend in what ever you can reheat if to stiff, then cool. old chips from your fish & chips are good
love Dad

del.icio.us Tags: recipe bird birdfood

Dream Software Giveaway

I have a piece of imaginary software in my head. I have a suspicion that someone may have made it already, but frankly, it's really hard sifting through freshmeat and all of these places to find what I'm after.

Anyway.

This piece of software is simple. It doesn't have a thousand bells and whistles on it, it feels like using a wiki, but not so much that someone who hyperventilates when taken outside Outlook would start panicing. It's intuitive. And it replaces the need to make insane numbers of charts with dates in excel.

It's like a cross between spreadsheets-used-as-reporting and scheduling, outlook calendar, a wiki, issue tracking software, upcoming.org and some kind of database.

The thing that it does, though, that I've never seen any software do, is allow you to work in fuzzy time.

So, say you had a project that you knew was coming up, but the best you could say was 'I think this is happening in the second half of next year, and it's probably a three month project, and it belongs to this category, and this is a quick summary, and I will need to think about this again in a month'. You could put in exactly that information, and it would appear in the long term view.

But the thing is, as projects got nearer, you'd get more precise information about them. So your long term view is... well, sort of logarythmic. For the first week from the current date you have daily tasks shown, which you'd derive from the database-come-wiki of issues and actions against each project-blob in the system. After that short term bit you'd maybe get four weeks with headline tasks. Then you get a quarters worth of monthly view, then it would go into quarters for maybe a year, then it would be maybe yearly until 3 years out, then just 'in the future'.

So it lets you see what's coming up in a timely way, and doesn't drown you in detail beyond what you immediately need to do.

Of course, it should produce nice reports - a quarterly plan, a plan by month, a risks-and-issues sheet, a daily to-do list for each person involved in one of the sub projects. The thing is, different people need to track different kinds of information, for different reasons. As these 'future fuzzy blobs' move towards the present, you can start adding streams within them, breaking them up and firming them up as they approach and your plans get clearer. The whole thing is about bringing just enough timely clarity to everyone involved, when they need it. So your management of the stuff gets more detailed as it needs to; and the system is bright enough to realise when facets of your blob are getting neglected, and reminds you to pay more attention to them.

The ability to zoom in and out of detail levels means you can use it to see that your year is shaping up with no peaks and troughs, and also to get right in to the nitty-gritty of stuff that really needs to be done this week or else...

And it should track changes to dates as they happen; so that project you pencilled in for July gets brought forward, but remembers that it was orignally planned for then. Thus, when you look at the way things have happened over a year, you can see what changes happened, rather than having to wrack your memory.

When stuff gets done, it gets remembered. And if you have information about how well that stuff did - say, some kind of stats, in the case of a web project, it lets you hold that data against the 'things that actually happened' - so you can see that thing X went out, and changed your figures in way Y, thanks to person Z who did the tasks.

If you really, really put some thought into how this could become useful - how it would help people keep track of stuff on a personal basis, and how those little personal to-do lists then aggregated up to give you an overview of progress - it could be utterly utterly amazing.

Basically, it's the web 2.0 of project management. But it's bubble up in a way that MS Project isn't - its about slowly taming the chaos one little bit at a time, not about making that tiny resource reassignment that suddenly means your project ends in 2015.

It's project management for the way that the disorganised work.

Now, if only I could be bothered to kick of a project to get it built...

Tags: work software idea scheduling

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur - Dip!

BBc Micro Start Up Sounds

How good is that? Eh? Eh?

Tags: retro computing audio

Cyril Isenberg

I had a strange but lovely aspect to my childhood; I grew up on the campus at the University of Kent, where my father worked in the Chemistry labs. My friends and I - all offspring of university connected peolpe - used to have the run of the campus, and whilst most kids were doing kid stuff like hanging out down the rec, we'd be hanging out next to the Foulcault's pendulum in the physics building. Explains a lot, really.

Anyway - ages ago I was talking to someone about Cyril Isenberg, (Eisenberg?) an academic who has the singular talent of being able to deliver a captivating lecture to an audience of children. He specialised in fluid dynamics, I think; as a kid this translates into bubbles and smoke rings, two things he demonstrated with great enthusiasm.

I want to say that he must be getting on in years now; he seemed old to ten-year-old me. Maybe he was only in his thirties, and hence I'm maligning him. But, it turns out he's written a book, and furthermore is STILL GIVING HIS LECTURES.

If you're in the Oxford area, I thoroughly reccomend you go and see this. He's ace.


===================================
Oxford University Scientific Society presents:

The Magic of Soap Bubbles
Dr Cyril Isenberg
Department of Physics, University of Kent at Canterbury
6th Week, Wednesday 16th November

Young people are always fascinated by the perfect spheres produced every
time a bubble is blown. These bubbles are surprisingly stable which has led
scientists to study their properties closely.

In this demonstration lecture, Dr Isenberg will illustrate some of the
properties on a grand scale, forming bubbles with spectacular shapes and
colours. Principles such as thermodynamics mean that the bubbles created
must obey certain geometric constraints, and so can be studied and applied to
solve mathematical problems, such as the construction of networks of roads,
pipelines and cables, and so on.

The bubbles also have a molecular structure similar to cell membranes, so
detailed studies of soap films can give an insight into more complex
biological membranes.

Date: Wednesday 16th November (6th week)
Time: 8.15 pm
Location: Inorganic Chemistry Lecture Theatre, South Parks Road
£2 for non-members. Light refreshment will be served.

**The Oxford University Scientific Society, founded in 1882, holds weekly
lectures by prominent speakers in all fields of science. For our current
termcard, check out:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~science/

del.icio.us Tags: science bubbles cyrilisenberg

Tags: science bubbles cyrilisenberg

AOL to Have Reruns on Demand

AOL to Have Reruns on Demand:

The preliminary talks between Time Warner and Google appear to be the most promising, sources said, in part because Google is already the search engine on the AOL service, they have partnered for years, and they have figured out a basic structure that would benefit both companies in a joint venture. One possible scenario is that Google would find ways to send more Internet users to AOL's network of Web sites, and the parties would share the increased ad revenue. Google is working on devising the best way to do that without compromising its search results. The focus is on increasing the number of users on AOL's network of sites by giving America Online a new way of bidding on keywords that trigger ads on Google.

Hmn.

WipEout Pure Burgertown Races

Aw, it's nice to see people doing well.

Ages ago, when I was in an editorial / creative kind of a job, I tried to comission web talent - illustrators and so on - to create little cartoons for the BBC comedy site. It never really took off, sadly, as I left the role, and it never became a regular enough feature to build an archive and an audience. Shame. Never mind.

Anyway - Jon Burgerman did some ACE illustrations for us. They were very cool. And now those wise folks at Sony Europe have got him in to design a level for WipEout Pure on the PSP.

AND he's got a book out.

Tags: illustration games design

Pornadelica

Very definately NSFW, but in a good way - pages from a seventies pornographic colouring book.

This came up on boing boing, and I just had to investigate. You know, for research. The pages are somehow better for not being coloured in - whoever did them - by hand, remember, there was no Adobe IllustratorTM in those days - had an amazing eye for a line.

They're like Alphonse Mucha on hardcore and acid.

And would make *fabulous* stained glass windows.

History by Phone Numbers: The Clapham Sect

There's an ongoing trauma involving connection (or, more specifically, the lack thereinof) to a super-fast 24 meg broadband service in our house at the moment. The upshot of this is no internet - or WoW! - for me at home at the moment.

Shoddy service from Be has led to an interesting little local history lesson, however.

Connection speed on ADSL is partly dependant on your distance from your local exchange - the longer the copper wire from the exchange, the more noise, and the worse your connection. Our housemate looked at a diagram of the dropoff rate and emailed me to let me know we're a mere 802 metres from our local exchange - which is Nine Elms.

I'd been wondering where our exchange was - partly, to be honest, because I'm a bit geeky about London Exchange mnemonics. I know there's a Battersea exchange too, so wondered if the housemate had the right one.

So - first stop is the list of London Director Exchange Names to check out if Nine Elms exchange matches our phonenumber. Lo and behold, Nine Elms, like my old Putney number, is one of the strangely named ones: MACaulay - my phone number starts 020 7622 - the 622 corresponding to M-A-C on an old dial phone. So I'm definately on Nine Elms... but why the funny name?

My first stop for local info is Google - a search on my postcode for Macaulay might give something away. There's a school and a road named Macaulay - so there is some local connection to the name. And it's related to Clapham Common northside, rather than the more Vauxhally area of Nine Elms itself. So, a quick google on Macaulay and Clapham brings up the local school's site - no information about where they got their name from on there. But a bit further down is this article - it turns out that Zachary Macaulay was a member of the Clapham Sect - a group of social reformers responsible for the abolition of slavery.

He was the father of Thomas Babington Macaulay - another abolitionist, and author of the Indian Penal Code. He also wrote history books - including Lays of Ancient Rome.

It seems that whoever decided on the strange Director Exchanges in the London Phone system had a small weakness for classsical history.

Tags: telephone exchanges local history mnemonics

BBC Broadcast Rebrands, Kim Laughs and Points.

Sometimes, I despair of the industry I work in. I particularly despair of the marketing and branding aspects of it, which strike me as being a strange mass delusion; some kind of group hysteria of idiocy.

So, it is with a disbelieving shake of the head that I reproduce a marketing email I recieved this morning.

We are pleased to announce our new name - Red Bee Media
As of 31 October, we will no longer be called BBC Broadcast.

We wanted a name that reflected where we have come from. When we were Broadcasting and Presentation we were known as B&P. As BBC Broadcast we have been known as BBCB. So an evolutionary step was to play with the sound ?B?.

The spelling as ?Bee? came from an internal brainstorm when we were looking at nature?s expert navigators, because as a company facing the digital future we need to help the consumer become equally adept as navigators. We have always used Red as our colour property and this gave added strength to the name.

We look forward to working with you as Red Bee Media

www.redbeemedia.com

Just to reinforce the general mindless idiocy of this marketingese, it's worth noting that their brand spanking new website is currently showing a holding page:

This domain has been registered on behalf of a client by www.123-reg.co.uk

It's worth noting that there have been a couple of outbreaks of marketing idiocy in the last day or two - Apple's branding of the not-quite-cold Rosa Parks with their 'Think Different' logo was particularly sickmaking, too.

Sometimes, I wonder why I took a job based on marketing our deparment's output; I'm fated to be bad at it by the standards of the industry.

I Need a Flasher

... actually, I need to track down a good actionscript type person, on behalf of a friend.

Do any of my illustrious readers know of someone who is good, not an idiot, not completely flaky, and who might be available?

Add a comment. Drop me a line.

1337

store.istheshit.net [European version]

And this one is for Dr McDonald, coder of the aincient world.

Alice in Wonderland Park - a fun family day in Christchurch, Dorset

Alice in Wonderland Park - a fun family day in Christchurch, Dorset

For 'Tips.

Heh.

Download Quicktime 7 Without Downloading iTunes 6

Just a little public service announcement.

You don't have to download the latest version of iTunes in order to get at the juicy QuickTime7 goodness, by the way.

There's a cunning little link to a standalone installer, which at first glance looks like part of the feature set of QuickTime 7 Pro. But isn't.

So, here, in all it's glory, is the QuickTime 7 Standalone Installer, without iTunes.

AND - you don't have to type your email address in the box for the download to work, either.

That is all. Go back about your business.

del.icio.us Tags: apple quicktime download

Tags: apple quicktime download

Why be Original?

The Boyfriend has just written a very long post about copyright. Now, I'm kind of broadly in favour of some kind of copyright protection, because the spirit of copyright is to protect the little guy - to give the creator of a work the legal footing to stop someone ripping-off their hard work, and profiting from that.

It's particularly useful in cases where, say, a newspaper reprints content from a website with no payment or attribution. This kind of thing happens, and copyright gives the original author recourse under law to get recompense from the naughty thieving newspaper.

I'm less mad on the excesses of copyright (the Sonny Bono extensions, the insane over-controlling despotism of the RIAA etc) which I feel - although I couldn't argue cogently, that's what The Boyfriend is for - contain some erosion of the rights of the little guy. They seem to be there to protect huge corporate interests, who are already making more than enough money, thankyouverymuch.

There is a flip side to the anticopyright argument though: to the Creative Commons / CopyLeft approach, and its espousal of remix culture. well, yes, let's free up all that stuff for us to play with.

As remix, remake, remodel becomes shorthand for creativity, what happens to originality? To the completely new, to the fresh, to the 'my god that's so different and strange that I'm not sure if I like it' feeling you get from something completely without precedent? By opening up all of the output of human ingenuity to free reuse, do we risk overloading our young creative minds with choice, and freezing our culture in a permanent postmodern phase of bricolage?

My creative outlet has always been the visual arts, and I'll hold up my hands and say that yes, it's easier to remix than work from fresh. It's much easier to make a satisfying and rich collage than a completely original work. Borrowing someone else's beautifully nuanced image will make your work better... but does it thus loose some you-ness?

Good artists borrow, great artists steal. Does a genius remix? Is a cut and paste job enough to make us change our way of thinking about the world? Is the nostalgic tickle of a sweet juxtaposition enough, or are we making ourselves poorer in the face of cultural overload?

I don't have answers to this. But I'd be interested to know what other people think. Are we destoying our culture by plundering it? Are we tearing down the cathedrals to build new walls? And are utility and neccessity driving us to do it, or merely ennui?

del.icio.us Tags: copyright remix potsmodern culture

Tags: copyright remix potsmodern culture

Outrageous Advertising Sexism

WPP Group worldwide creative director Neil French is reportedly leaving the holding company after making sexist comments.

French gave a speech in Toronto this month in which he was asked why women were under-represented among the top ranks of creative directors.

He replied: "Because they're crap"


Wow.

I think I'd quite like to remove this guys balls with a rusty spoon.

Just, you know, to make a point.

How not to answer queries from sophisticated users

Sometimes, sending stuff through your marketing and publicity department is a very, very bad idea.

Particularly when the thing in question is a set of questions for your developers about the mechanics and difficulties of making a huge MMORPG.

And very particularly when the questions are posed by slashdot.

I find it utterly, utterly extraordinary that companies still think that sanitising responses into blandness is any kind of way to treat their customers. (Who, of course, pay the wages of everyone working in the company. Including the marketing muppets.)

But I guess that I'm unusual, in that I'm one of the crazy young internet things who are so awkward and don't behave the way marketeers think I ought. Or something.

Helpful Microsoft AAC support

So - my work PC has upgraded to windows media player 10. I've got some AAC files kicking around my hard drive. I can't play them. So I pootle off to see where codecs for AAC / MP4 can be found.

And I follow the links from this Microsoft Knowledge Base page.

Oh.

Useful.

Warcaft lingo explained through giffery

From a post on expectnothing.com (GIF Image, 412x226 pixels) - a little primer in World-of-warcraft slang.

I'm completely obsessed with the game at the moment; it's eating all my spare time, and I'm experiencing an odd split in my realities between regular life and life-as-a-dim-giant-cow-lady.

Yes yes, insert your own joke there.

The bleed between the people I know in-game and in RL is odd too - I'm playing with the marvellous Alice; and of course I'm usually sitting next to the boyfriend. The bickering gets quite amusing, but what my online chums never see is the shouting that goes on between the two of us if I fail to tank properly, fall off something, pull aggro, or any one of a number of failings I'm prone to, what with being a bit useless at playing games.

The surprising thing is that I'm finding being a big, stupid bumbling idiot who just hits things very, very liberating.

Anyway - I think it's only a matter of time before Alice and I end up in the same meeting, and one or the other of us uses our in-game names, or some other slang. It'll be entertaining.

Nielsen on Information Pollution

Jakob Nielsen on information pollution.

Brevity is the soul of wi.

Epic 2015

A fantstic (if slow loading) little flash video about the history of the internet, as seen from 2015.

There's also one from 2014 with a happy ending, apparently.

Blog Links

Ooh! I have been thanked for being unquantifiable yet heartfelt.

What a good description of me as a whole.

Blogging - it's all about the buffs, you know.

Although I ought to warn Chris that I will, at some point, flex my Zoology degree muscles and take his post about evolution appart. But politely, at least... *winks*

In other news - I've been invited to a party by some marvellous trannies, on the basis of a hyperlink.

I consider it karma payback for the time I helped a drag queen sort her wig out in the loos at Revenge. Well, you should never let a queen go out in public if the back of their wig is a mess. It's only polite to help. Oh, that and being a good person to shop for girl pants with. And the time I put pins in the fairy called Pip and made zir weekend.

I wonder if it's time to run my life as something other than an elaborate personal in-joke? It's shallow, I know. But I do enjoy the feeling of being able to chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all on a regular basis.

Google master plan: service offerings

Google master plan: service offerings,
originally uploaded by niallkennedy.

Finally, the path to the dark side becomes clear.

Involves 'tealeaves', apparently.

Bülitt Tåem

A very nice bit of flashvertising, from IKEA.

Via Gavin.

del.icio.us Tags: flash design av

Hunting Friendly Infovores

You?re It!

So... I'm listening to Joshua Shachter et al chatting away at Etech via IT conversations, and idly looking at a blog about tagging too.

Now... I like tagging. It suits my slightly messy mindset, and fits in nicely with the way that I remember stuff. It's fun, and useful, and simple and quick, so I use it.

There are quite a lot of discussions going on about tagging around work at the moment. Obviously, we have some seriously heavy duty IAs, Data Modellers and whatnot around, so the discussions tend to degenerate quickly into a 'It's sloppy/It's great' sort of place - more due to a collision of paradigms that anything else.

Mr Coates posted about one of these conversations the other day; and made a comment that (I think) came out of a chat we'd had. And this is where the link to tagsonomy.com above comes in:

Here?s an analogy. I visit a lot of thrift stores. The true cost of an item in a thrift store is a function of the time it takes me to find it, not the price (which is always cheap). A very large thrift store is more likely to have what I want, but at a greater discovery cost. Like del.icio.us, a thrift store is great for serendipitous discovery but not so good for known item retrieval. Put another way, del.icio.us wouldn?t be your first choice if you needed articles on Rousseau and the French Revolution, just like the Sally Ann wouldn?t be your first choice if you needed a smoking jacket, size 42T.

OK - so it's not as easy to pinpoint very precise information with a folksonomic system. I can't disagree with that. That's what google is for.

But the benefit you get from such a fuzzy, messy system works on the personal level. If you found it, and tagged it, you're more likely to be able to find it again under your personal filing system than, say, a Dewey Decimal system.

And the point where it becomes *really* useful to have things in big rummage bins is when you're browsing.

This is the pleasure of the charity shop (that's thrift store to you AmeriCanadians). It is the pleasure of having a mooch about; it isn't focused searching for one particular thing, it's finding something you didn't really know you wanted, but that gives you immense pleasure when you find it. For example, a copy of an out of print book by a favourite author. A Vivienne Westwood Tshirt for 50p. An insanely funny old record.

This is what del.icio.us offers; a way of finding websites you didn't know you needed. You can very easily specify the kind of thing you're interested in (well - as long as it's a bit geeky or involves naked chicks, in del.icio.us's case) using a tag then you can rely on distributed serendipity to find it. The numbers of people using the system mean that the work of looking for that exciting, tangential nugget of infotainment gold in the bottom of the brantub is distributed, and the things that would be overlooked are found.

It's about finding out something new, not checking up for that verifiable piece of information; about broadening the edges of your knowledge, not deepening it.

Does that make any sense at all? Probably not. But the thing to remember is that people use the web differently. And not just one person to another - an individual will use the web differently at different times; having a tool that suits your mood or mindset is only of benefit. We, the people wot make stuff for computers, tend to make stuff in our own image. Let's acknowledge that not everyone likes the way we make stuff.

Stop worrying about using one, or the other. Use both. Overlay two maps on to the territory.

And another point; the quote above assumes that time=money. This is a fallacy; I can afford to invest time into looking for that tux that fits. I will invest more time into looking for that tux that fits that is half the price of the one in the high-street shop. Financial and Temporal richness do not always map directly on to one another in the personal sphere; only in the sphere of business, and even then not very well.

Folksonomy is about the pleasure of the chase.

Tags: folksonomy tagging metadata

Technovia: What to do when a PC goes wrong

Technovia: What to do when a PC goes wrong

Loads of other folk - including BoingBoing - have pointed to this already. But just in case mates that read this haven't found it elsewhere...

It's a really useful guide to your rights if you need to return electronic kit that goes wrong.

And my boy wrote it. Isn't he clever? Aaaah.

Tags: consumerrights which?

Boing Boing: Legos site treats visitors to lecutre on correct trademark use

Boing Boing: Legos site treats visitors to lecutre on correct trademark use

Oh, Cory, really.

It's just you American types that refer to Lego Bricks in that funny plural form.

To the rest of us, it's always sounded dumb... :-)

Tags: lego trademarks boingboing pedantry

Typetester ? Compare fonts for the screen

Via Colskee, a lovely tool for testing CSS typography on screen. Lets you fiddle with font, spacing and alignment, see what it looks like, then spit out the CSS for it.

Not sure how good the CSS might be, but it's fun, anyway...

Tags: typography design css

french for toes - Google Search

Well.

In the course of trying to make an elaborately situationist and intellectual joke in french, I realised that I do not know the French word for toes.

Luckily, in this day and age, the internet will contain this knowledge.

Won't it?

Oh.

Tags: google search smut

Google Blog Search

...but why would I *want* to search just blogs?

I can't see that 'blogs' are a useful subset of 'the internet' - I do get a feeling that this is more about exploiting the 'claim your blog' ego-boost dynamic to favour static sites over personal opinion pieces in the google index?

Tags: blogs google

del.icio.us Tags: blogs google

So long, Technorati (kottke.org)

So... Technorati is borked beyond hope; well, it's not like we're paying for it.

But anyway - I was interested to read of an alternative on kottke.org - pubsub.com. I had a quick look, found it... somewhat counterintuitive to use, but as I needed to reccomend some ideas for tracking celeb mentions on the web, I pointed a colleague to it.

About ten minutes later she came over and said 'Think you better look at this...'

A search on 'The Queen' had turned up some beautifully lurid blowjob porn.

So... I'll be rethinking that strategy then.

It's an all-to-frequent problem with engineer designed products - they forget the editorial and social buffers they need to impliment to make a product useful, usable, and for that matter, safe for work.

Tags: technorati rss blogs

False Positives: Technorati and del.icio.us Tags added with GreaseMonkey for Blogger.com users

False Positives: Technorati and del.icio.us Tags added with GreaseMonkey for Blogger.com users

Wheeeeeeeee! Not currently linking to my profile, but a bit of JS piggeryjokery shuold sort that out.

Oh, I'm all folksonomied up. w00t!

Tags: blogger blogging apps greasemonkey tags folksonomy

The Joy of SSX

Stop sniggering, you at the back there. That was an S in the middle.

The ever-spiffy 'Tips has posted a little heads up about SSX on the PSP. She's also mentioned that SSX is the only game her friend Paula will play, and enjoy.

Now, my ex, Sarah, generally despised computer games; had little interest in them despite being extremely tech literate, and used to get very bored of me playing Sim City, Civ, KOTOR etc for hours on end. To be honest, this played a small part in our eventual break up. I even got her the CSI game, as she was obsessed with the show and loved anything gory or forensic; it held her attention for all of five minutes.

BUT - the one game she would play was SSX. She loved it; we used to sit in bed on saturday mornings playing 'going down the mountain', as it got nicknamed. She had her favourite character (Zoe, in SSX Tricky; she's sassy and a bit punk; perfect) and became incredibly focused about winning tricking medals on each level, to the point of learning controls and mechanisms; she got at least as far as the Alaska level before getting stuck and frustrated.

The frustration set in when the time limits for racing down became too tight - she couldn't get to the next checkpoint in time, let alone fit in enough tricks in the meantime; the game punished her for preferring and developing skills in the freeform trick mode over the focused race mode.

We talked, once, about why this was the only game she liked. I can't remember verbatim what it was she said, but I absolutely remember the gist. It was this:

That she never died. No matter what happened, she *always* got to the bottom of the hill. It didn't matter if she came in last, or didn't win a medal; the fact that she could always 'complete' the level meant that the game didn't make her feel 'bad'. She didn't feel she'd failed.

I think producing games that still give you the feeling of having beaten something *even when you've failed to beat it* might be a key factor in designing games for non-gamers. It could even be the feeling that if you've failed to beat it, it just hasn't worked out right, like patience.

I see it in myself, too; I always play games on the easiest setting, and am a sucker for cheats; I loose interest as soon as the time required to build up skill to play the game is greater than the (usually very tiny) ammount of time I'm prepared to invest in playing. The number of games that are compelling enough to be more fun than work when getting over the difficulty-spikes approaches zero for me; of the 40 or so games stacked up in my living room, I've completed... two? Three? Certainly less than 10%, probably closer to 1% of all of the games I've played in my time.

It's an extension of playing styles, I think. I'd question if the kind of person who tends to develop games is likely to be the kind of person who temperamentally prefers a certain playing style that is at odds with the casual gamer.

Reaching more people through games will be about expanding the types and styles of games, not about agressive marketing or ubiquitous technology. Growth will come from careful thinking about content.

TVShows.org - Download TV Shows, Download Movies and Clips

TVShows.org - Download TV Shows, Download Movies and Clips: "By using this service, you agree to the following conditions: You may not use this service to obtain or distribute software or any other copyrighted material that you do not have the right to. Any violators must leave this site immediately. This site is meant for educational purposes only. You will find a complete online guide and proprietary file sharing software within the member's area. Plus, get access to leading free P2P software, tutorials, tools and music resources. Purchase of a Subscription is not a license to upload or download copyrighted material. We do not condone copyright infringement and urge you to respect the copyright laws of your Country."

Versus the following Google Ad:

Sponsored Links
Missed an Episode?
Download Doctor Who
episodes to watch at any time!
www.TVShows.org

Hmn. How does that work then, that 'not condoning copyright infringement'? Surely advertising that you *can* download a copyright TV show on their service is condoning infringement?

IfNotThenElse

IfNotThenElse

Wowser.

So, sending out pings to let people know about stuff (or, the email way of keeping in touch with no real effort involved, which I recently seem to remember having seen written up as a fabulously expensive piece of consultant research that we could have told them for free anyway) sometimes pays enormous dividends. On dropping my 'Hey, the husband is on Radio 3' note to a huge tranche of people I should really take more time and effort over, a friend dropped back a 'hey, me too!' note, and pointed me to his most recent musical collaboration.

It's really rather good. It sounds like a cross between the soundtrack to 'Crash' (the JG Ballard one, rather than the one doing the rounds in a cinema near you currently), Aphex Twin, and improvised Jazz.

I reccomend a listen. Oh, and read Mr Nik Newark over on the side bar there; he's teh funneh.

Appointment to listen: BBC Radio 3 - Pre-Hear - 3 September 2005

Newsflash!

My husband is a composer. This saturday, one of his pieces is being performed on Radio Three. In the same bill as something by Peter Maxwell Davis.

The show is called PreHear, and is on at 10.40pm on saturday night. Take a transistor radio to the pub and listen to it just before last orders.

He's rather good, and quite listenable. Promise.

1,2,3,4 -- I Declare IM War

1,2,3,4 -- I Declare IM War

An interesting write up of the power struggle about to kick off in IM space.

I wonder how much the proprietorial attitude taken by the key players is based on the mindset bought about by the stunted US SMS market?

Eye Crush

I'm weirdly in love with Sam Taylor-Wood's photographs at the moment.

I used to have one of the Five Revolutionary Seconds shots up above my desk; Self Portrait with Single Breasted Suit and Hare is one of my favourite photos. AND she did a jolly good desert island disks, too.

That is all.