Yesterday was Ze's 100th "the show". It's vlogging at its best, funnier and with faster download times than Amanda Congdon! On top of the humor aspect of the site, Ze's doing some interesting things with interactive content, including but not limited to a worldwide project to make an earth sandwich and playing a game of chess over a wiki. Talk about vlog 2.0!
Ze's been on the web for a long time, being goofy. In fact, I linked to him back in December of 2004. Go me!
Lore reports that Warren Ellis is starting a comics collective called, as you may have guessed from the title, Rocket Pirates! Submissions are open, and will remain open indefinately, or as Warren puts it: "The submissions process will remain permanently open. Unless, you know, I change my mind. I am unpredictable and I drink a lot."
All comics on the collective will be free to access, at all times, which is, in my humble opinion, the only way to go. I guess I wasn't busy enough, after all. Time to get cracking on those solo comic projects I've been dreaming up! Or get Theo motivated, but honestly, that could be a whole lot more difficult.
If you haven't seen it, feel free to check out the comic Theo and I did between October 2005 and May 2006. It had its good moments. 🙂
Claire Hoffman is brave. Joe Francis is gross. Either might be an oversimplification. Claire covers the adult entertainment industry for the LA Times, and as such might be a bit of a masochist, or perhaps at this point simply finds the wanton excesses of American society both trite and banal. Joe, the founder of the Girls Gone Wild empire, reveals himself as a young, frightened kid on a power-trip. In a way, being gross is an act. Sadly, that doesn't make it any less gross, and in a way all the more disturbing.
Claire's article covers Joe Francis, certainly, but it also covers a disturbing trend in our society. It's not that we're losing our inhibitions, necessarily, it's that we're selling them. Whether it's for a t-shirt and a trucker hat or for that elusive "fifteen minutes", people are becoming all too willing to do anything in front of a camera, for any reason. Ironically, even Joe has a problem with this. Like Dr. Frankenstein, and Girls Gone Wild his monster, it has inevitably turned against him and taken away that exposure of innocence he urgently sought and replaced it with a calculated exhibitionism.
But the women are changing, Francis tells me, and that makes him sad. In the beginning, when "Girls Gone Wild" cameramen first popped up in clubs, the women who revealed themselves seemed innocent—surprised, even, by their own spontaneity. Now that the brand is so pervasive, the women who participate increasingly appear to be calculating exhibitionists, hoping that an appearance on a video might catapult them to Paris Hilton-like fame.
The story is interesting, and it's difficult to stomach. But I think it's honest and it's necessary, because like it or not, this is our society.
Gross, innit?
Read the complete story: 'Baby, Give Me A Kiss', by Claire Hoffman: LATimes
Joe Francis, the founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He's pushing himself against me, shouting: "This is what they did to me in Panama City!"
It's after 3 a.m. and we're in a parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago. Electronic music is buzzing from the nightclub across the street, mixing easily with the laughter of the guys who are watching this, this me-pinned-and-helpless thing.
Francis isn't laughing.
(via r.stevens)
On the evening of July 27th, the Deleting Online Predators Act passed in the House with 410-15-7; otherwise known as a ridiculously gigantic margin. The bill, which is incredibly vague, threatens once again federal internet subsidies for schools and libraries unless they take measures to block social networking sites and chatrooms. The goal is to block children, specifically; adults should still be able to ask permission to access the sites.
How many times are we going to try and put walls around the internet? How long will it take us to realize that our kids are smarter than we are and that the only way to really protect them is to be there, paying attention to their lives, and getting involved.
Though advocates for the bill constantly mentioned MySpace, the bill is broad enough that any site that allows "communication among users" could be blocked. In the Web2.0 world, this could mean pretty much every site out there, before too long. Blogs, forums, chat, IM, Skype, Amazon, Ebay, Livejournal, and online games are all at risk. Why not just outlaw the internet for anyone under 18 years of age, or better yet, 21, and see how much we've shot ourselves in the foot when, in less than a generation, we don't have any web innovators anymore.
From Library Journal:
"This unnecessary and overly broad legislation will hinder students' ability to engage in distance learning and block library computer users from accessing a wide array of essential Internet applications including instant messaging, email, wikis and blogs," said ALA president Leslie Burger. "Under DOPA, people who use library and school computers as their primary conduits to the Internet will be unfairly blocked from accessing some of the web's most powerful emerging technologies and learning applications. As libraries are already required to block content that is "harmful to minors" under the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA is redundant and unnecessary legislation."
DOPA is in the senate now, and it needs to be stopped. Please make your voice heard on this one, or else it's another Patriot Act in the making.
ZDNet has a great rundown on DOPA if you want the background skinny.
(via geekaresexy)
Susann from McGill's GSLIS called yesterday about some funding they found for me. I called her back this morning, and in the interim dreamed that perhaps they had seen my library experience and wanted me to do some sort of work study bit in the library there, since I was obviously so well-qualified. It's not work, sadly, but it is an international tuition waiver, which means that, for my first term at least, I'll be paying Quebec tuition rates instead of international rates. She told me that it's a $3500 difference for the term, and I'm definately not gonna quibble about that. I do wish more people would just call me up, out of the blue, and offer me money, though. It's a disappointingly rare occurence.
I'm getting more revved up, and more scared, about the impending departure. In the meantime, I've tried to make the most of being where I am and particularly in taking advantage of the people I love who are nearby. I went to Friday Harbor over the Fourth of July to see Cree and Benj and Gypsy, and to meet Nomi and Anne and Renee and little Aye-la. It was unaccountably good to see these, my friends, my best friends, of gradeschool through highschool and beyond, doing well, living happily, in good relationships and making healthy choices. All of them went through rough patches, during which I didn't speak with them much if at all. We all have to go through things on our own sometimes, and nothing I could have done would have helped, I think. It's great to have them back, though, even if I am leaving.
This past weekend I went to Port Townsend, where I was born and where my mom lives still. It was a little hectic but a lot of fun in a house packed with my mom, Abby and myself, Coyote and Paul, and even Kas and Lavinia. Kas is another best friend from highschool, my acting buddy, and has been living in Holland with his musician wife. Last time I saw him was four years ago when I graduated from Evergreen, and our visits always seem to be for too brief a time. Brief or no, at a visit every four years, I'll take what I can get. Seeing my sister and mom is always nice, of course, and being in Port Townsend is ever-relaxing, even when the time spent is busy and occupied. Abby got along well with everyone, and vice versa, which is nice since I imagine her being in the picture for a long, long time. I wasn't worried, but it's still nice when these little details work themselves out.
She'll meet my dad this weekend, which should be interesting. I'm sure they'll get along, even if my dad's a little strange. Still, I'm a lot strange, and she seems to like me okay, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue. I've yet to meet her parents, though I imagine I will before I head east. So far, she's been a gem about meeting my family, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to being a little nervous about meeting hers. It's not that I've heard horror stories, or have any reason to be concerned, except she's been so good and my family likes her enough that I want to be able to return the favor.
August 15th. Now less than two weeks away. Sweet zombie jesus …
… please keep my ailing sanity in your prayers as I get ready to leave behind the city and friends and woman that I love to pursue some silly graduate school … thing. It'll all be worth it, right?
Riya is a visual search engine that lets you upload, tag, and search your own photos or any other photos in their index. Pretty normal, right? The neat part is that it has some capacity for recognizing objects, including individual faces (with some margin of error). Once you've taught it to recognize your friends, it will automatically tag your photos that those friends are in with their names, making it easier to search for them later. Riya can also breakdown searches into related tags, letting you jump to similar interests or narrow down your search. The main downside right now is that all large images are automatically resized to 800×600 pixels. And let's face it, in today's digital photophile age, that's a pretty big downside. Adult pictures are removed, though it appears that they may rely on user-policing to mark "adult content", and I was able to find some without much effort. In the name of science, of course. All in all, it's a neat idea, definately in beta, but worth keeping an eye on.
The ButtKicker LFE Electromagnetic Transducer has a fancy name and a fancier purpose: to make sound move you. Without creating any additional audio, it can be placed below or attached to your couch or chair to make you feel the bass. At $200, I seriously need to get one of these.
Table of Malcontents is a daily read (when I have the opportunity), and has enough good stuff over the past few days that you should really just hop over there and check it out. But if you need my encouragement, I particularly enjoyed: Pirates and Treasure, Modern Living/Neurotica Series (though it's super-creepy), and 787 Cliparts.
After about a month of almost painful deliberation, I finally screwed up my courage yesterday evening and bought myself a laptop. Talking to Abby about it, I told her that the more you know about computers the more difficult it becomes to choose one. I wanted dual-core, but I also wanted 64-bit, and I wanted at least a 5400-RPM hard drive, decent graphics, and at minimum 1GB of RAM. I preferred something smaller than the fairly standard 15.4" screen, which tend to weigh in starting at 6.5lb, and I wanted built-in wifi with bluetooth. Also, I didn't want to spend very much.
Easy, right?
I spent a lot of time on Dell's website, trying to finagle a deal with coupons and instant rebates. Even with the $750 rebate on certain Inspiron notebooks of $1999 or more (which technically meant I could get a $2000 laptop for $1250), I was unenthused about my specs. Poking about on Newegg.com, I noticed that the Turion 64 X2 notebooks were much cheaper than I had figured they might be, but that they didn't have one that really matched my every little desire.
Long story short, with the help of NoteBookReview.com and HPshopping, I decided on a very snazzy, classy, black Compaq V3000Z, tricked out to match my exacting standards. So what did I get? Check these babies out:
Curious what a 1.6ghz processor might be in AMD-terms, I checked Newegg, and it appears that, were the processor single core, at least, it would be a 2800+. That sounds nice and snappy to me, though I'm sure your mileage varies. The only part I'm not completely tickled about is the integrated video, though evidently the Nvidia GeForce Go 6150 is the cream of integrated video cards for notebooks at the moment. A dedicated card it's not, but since there aren't any x2 notebooks available right now with dedicated graphics cards, I won't take that too personally. Besides, it could be detrimental to my health if the notebook were able to play games too well. Willpower and all, you understand.
Two features that have me particularly thrilled are the wifi switch on the keyboard, which allows you to easily disable your wireless capabilities, for security as well as battery-saving purposes, I would imagine. The other one is the HP-proprietary Quickplay, which is described in the review as:
Quickplay is possibly the only software pre-installed which is worth keeping. Quickplay or QP for short is HP's take on the media center and unlike the media center QP can run without booting into windows and play DVD's, video, pictures and movies located in the shared documents folder. It is a nice tool if you watch movies or just play music on the laptop. It has a dedicated button which can launch QP from within Windows and even when the laptop is turned off. The optional remote might be worth buying as it is capable of controlling the Quickplay controls and will be useful when watching a DVD.
That sounds pretty damned neat, and I'm excited to try it out.
One of the main reasons I was so damned picky in choosing a notebook is that I wanted it to be (surprise) Windows Vista compatible. Fully compatible. Which means a 64-bit processor and the graphics power to handle Aero. This baby should, I think, do the trick. Now, about that Vista release date …
The only real pain about the entire situation is that it isn't estimated to be built until August 7th, and then it's being shipped 5-7 day ground. Who can be expected to be that patient after blowing that much cash on a laptop!? Do they think I'm some sort of saint? Cross your fingers for me that they finish it sooner, because I want to play around with it a bit before I start heading eastward. Also, if you like, feel free to suggest some names. And carrying cases. I'm in the market for both.
Today's Blogger Blog of Note is a lovely sketchblog by an artist named Rachel E. Morris. Rachel is an illustration student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, though she'll be graduating this December and, I imagine, will start making her way as an artist in the world. She describes her sketchblog as "where I will put things as I do them, before I get off my ass and stick them in the official webpage gallery." The rest of her website is annoying to navigate, but there's definately some nice art there, so I recommend gritting your teeth and checking it out, if you're into that kind of thing.
I've had a great deal of respect for Paul Giamatti since Sideways, particularly, and thought he did a bang-up job as Screw-On Head. Today I ran across his reading of Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider", which is a beautiful poem and wonderfully read. (download from PoetryFoundation.org)
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
-Walt Whitman
Quick updates on the life of the Wa (that's me).
All my ducks are in a row to go to McGill. I got my CAQ (documentation) and my funds (loans), and I put in my notice at the two places that need it (my apartment and my job). I've been telling people I'm leaving August 15th, which is indeed the plan. I'm scared to death.
Part of the reason I'm scared is that I've fallen in love. Really, really more in love than I was even a little bit prepared for, and now I have no idea what to do. I've got some big decisions to make, and some serious conversations ahead. And some tears to shed, I'm certain. Love has the very strangest timing.
Theo's been talking about revitalizing La Casa, which I guess I'll believe when it happens. He's still sitting on two scripts, and after that … well, honestly, I'd really love to get back to writing comics on a regular basis. I've had some good ideas while we've been on hiatus. If we do get back to it, I'd like to try a different format. The 2×2 panel at 600×800 now seems a little too cumbersome, and I wonder why we ever chose it. My super-secret goal is to be nominated for best new webcomic for next year's WCCA. We've also thrown around the idea of starting a webcomics-review site. We've been thinking about it for about a year now, and mostly because Eric doesn't update as often as he used to and Fleen is more-or-less completely uninteresting to us.
I've been playing softball over the summer, and our team has won one game out of about … ten. We can't even maintain a perfect losing record. We were on track to win a second game, but then the bastards came back in the bottom of the 7th and kicked our asses. It was hell of fun, though.
Yesterday it hit 101 degrees. That's not hell of fun at all. That's just hell.
I've been giving it some thought, and from here on out the "Dancing Librarian" exlibrius category will be a little more strict with its content. I'm going to try and narrow it down to be more pertinent, library-related information. One of the reasons I moved to ahniwa.com was so that I wouldn't feel guilty when I didn't post library-related news. Even so, I'd like to offer that more specific content, unadulterated, for those readers who might not be too interested in my other ramblings and much more frequent linkish posts.
That said, I'm also going to make more of an effort to keep up on my library-related reading (I'm 976 posts behind in my "library" bloglines right now), and in turn write more that directly concerns libraries and librarians as well.
Everyday is a sweet, romantic, predictable animation that simply made me smile, so I thought I'd share. I'm sure it helps that I've been in a wacky, romantic mood lately.
(via lore)
To mark its anniversary, the Secret Crocodile Adventure Club is going sequential! Or at least, as the Archcroc V admits, "sequential for as long as I can stand!" I've been a member since pretty early on, and enjoyed it immensely. Theo and I even competed in the first (and so far, only) guest-croc competition, in which we placed moderately well and which earned a lovely print that now hangs proudly on my wall. Even so, I'm really excited for Stig's promise of sequential crocodile stories, and a more story-telling, webcomicky feel.
If you enjoy it, I really recommend signing up for the weekly mailing. The rantings and ravings of the majestorial Archcroc V are just as if not more amusing than the illustrations themselves. For now, go check out Prince on the Mountain, page 1.
Proof that Canada has cooler news than we do, and really hot lesbians.
Student Nicole Dawson, 22, made out with girlfriend Tau, 27, at the southeast corner of King and Bay yesterday to protest alleged corruption in the investment industry. Here's how it went:
11:58 a.m.: Ms. Dawson slips Tau the tongue, two minutes ahead of schedule.
12 p.m.: The protest gets under way proper. Six protesters hold up signs targeting the Ontario Securities Commission and its chairman: "Liberal OSC a Sham," "David Wilson Must Go," and "Stock Market Rotten."
12:02 p.m.: Two young men pace around the protest, wearing the stunned, elated look that men wear when they stumble on something like this.
12:08 p.m.: The women get to second base, caressing each other's rears and nuzzling each other's breasts with impressive focus.
(via ryan)
Edward Tufte's latest book, Beautiful Evidence, has gotten some mixed reviews, but whether good or bad they've certainly piqued my curiosity.
From 37signals:
“What struck me is how you almost never have to hold something in your head while turning the page…he usually finishes his thought within the two pages you can see…and when you flip, it’s something new…that’s an excellent self-imposed constraint…’whatever i need to say, i’ll do it here.’”
and from an Amazon.com reviewer:
This book is, of course, going to be widely read and highly praised. But I don't think it will it be read enough. It is frustrating to read something like this advocating ethical scholarship and standards for evidence when there are new books that flat out lie about science. And when you can lie about science — that part of human endeavor that Galileo transformed with his forever idea that it was all about evidence — you can lie about anything.
To do your bit to kill truthiness, you could do much worse than following the principles in Beautiful Evidence.
(via kottke)
My friend Jason sent me the link to a story on American Patriots, in which librarians receive a very pronounced mention. Well, we are pretty darned kick-ass, after all! From the Common Dreams NewsCenter:
But the librarians have not just been lobbying to change the Patriot Act, they've been on the front lines of exposing its abuses. When four Connecticut librarians challenged an attempt by the FBI to use a National Security Letter to obtain records of who was reading what in that state, the Justice Department slapped a gag order on them. But the 64,000-member ALA and its Freedom to Read Foundation stood up for the librarians, working with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Association of American Publishers and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression to make a federal case of the issue. In May, after the FBI dropped its defense of the gag order–and shortly before it withdrew its demand for the records–a federal appeals court declared that order moot, and the librarians were at last free to speak out. Peter Chase, director of the Plainville, Connecticut, public library, explained that he and his fellow librarians decided to fight because of their frustration at receiving the National Security Letter even as "the government was telling Congress that it didn't use the Patriot Act against libraries and that no one's rights had been violated. I felt that I just could not be part of this fraud being foisted on our nation.
There once was a librarian,
who referenced as well as one can.
While helping a student,
he said it would have been prudent,
if you'd shown up with some sort of plan.
(unfortunately based on numerous true stories)
From the creator of Hellboy and starring Paul Giamatti, The Amazing Screw-On Head follows the anti-espionage adventures of President Abraham Lincoln's top spy, who just happens to be a robotic, metal head with some nifty attachable bodies. You can watch the entire pilot on scifi.com, and I really recommend it. It's freakin' hilarious. From the site:
In this hilarious send-up of Lovecraftian horror and steampunk adventure, President Abraham Lincoln's top spy is a bodyless head known only as Screw-On Head.
When arch-fiend Emperor Zombie steals an artifact that will enable him to threaten all life on Earth, the task of stopping him is assigned to Screw-on Head. Fortunately, Screw-On Head is not alone on this perilous quest. He is aided by his multitalented manservant, Mr. Groin, and by his talking canine cohort, Mr. Dog.
Can this unorthodox trio stop Emperor Zombie in time? Does Screw-On Head have a body awesome enough to stop the horrors that have been unleashed? Where can we get a talking dog?
All these questions (O.K., maybe not that last one) will be answered when you watch the thrilling tale of The Amazing Screw-On Head!
(via r.stevens)
Michele McNally, Assistant Managing Editor for Photography at the New York Times, has an enlightening Q&A involving equipment, use of photos in the news, and advice for young photographers (among other things). Even if you're not that in to photography, it's pretty interesting from the news standpoint.
(from Boudist)
In a flash of intuition I decided to visit the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation website to see if they had proclaimed yet their awardees of the 2006-2007 fellowships. I hadn't heard anything, which the realistic side of me said was probably bad news, but I usually muzzle that side of me and throw it in a dark closet (where it is, I think, quite content). The optimist in me held out hope, as is its wont, and honestly didn't take it too poorly when it read, from the "press release" issued just today (hence a flash of intuition), that I was not awarded fantastic monies to ease my way through graduate school. Reading on, the Foundation provided brief bios of some of the "winners", and I let out an exasperated sigh. How was I, who had led a non-heroic life of quiet if passionate academia and subtle, local public service, how was I to compete with these "heroes" of service and scholarship?
The new Jack Kent Cooke Scholars include:
I mean, check out those buzzwords: "traveling the world", "college basketball star", "Peace Corps volunteer" (twice), "teaching music to village children", "NASA", "Mars Exploration Program", and "NASA flight surgeon".
I understand, certainly, that scholarships are meant to be given to outstanding scholars in their field. I guess that I am, nonetheless, a little off-put in feeling like the Foundation is awarding some sort of glamorous scholarship heroism rather than those of us in a more perhaps salt-of-the-earth type job, if one that still has incredible educational and social consequence. This leads me, in turn, to wonder if any of the awardees are going to graduate school to study library science. I'd love to know, but, ignorant, I'd be willing to wager that none are.
Maybe I'm just a little bitter that libraries and librarians are an undervalued commodity in our society's educational and community landscapes, despite their incredible worth and potential. That, and I was honestly pretty excited that they might just up and give me $30k a year, both years, to get my master's degree. Can't blame a guy for a little disappointment there. I always felt I could use a few more loans, anyway ….
I would, though, sincerely like to congratulate the seventy-seven recipients of the Fellowship. Way to be, and good luck with your space exploration medicinal music-teaching photography peace corps type stuff. Me, I'd rather be a librarian. Even a poor one.