OK Go - A Million Ways
If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.
My brother, possibly the only person I know who is capable of finding odder things on the internet than I am, sent me the link to this really cool video. Check it out:
PS. Has anyone noticed that YouTube’s “embedded” player no longer plays embedded? It simply sends you to the YouTube site to play the video.
This is annoying because what I really liked about their player in the first place is that I could show a video without making people leave my site. That’s why I’ve switched to Google Video for this one.
Tag spamming
One of the cruel realities about the internet is that every new innovation will be accompanied by an equally creative annoyance.
I’ve posted before on how I think that tags are generating a new kind of “channel,” where programming and content is essentially decided by the users who tag things. Tagging is now the basis of Yahoo!’s new My Web service, and is even going to be part of the file-system in Windows Vista.
In short, tags are up and coming in a big way.
How long until we get tag spam? And how will we be able to deal with it?
We should be thinking about this now, because as soon as tags really become mainstream, plugging a del.icio.us feed into my feedreader will probably get me more pages for pen1s enlargement than it will for the subject I was interested in.
I love blogrolls
I think blogrolls are the bread and butter of blogging in many ways. Or maybe they’re the toaster, because really you need the blogging bit to make it all work in the first place. But regardless, I think they’re fantastic.
Blogrolls are, when properly used, a list of recommendations. It’s the digital equivalent of “hey, did you see this?”
It’s also the best way to find new blogs. I regularly check out blogs listed in the sidebar of ones that I already enjoy reading, and quite often I’ll find something new and enjoyable. I think that’s one of the coolest things for everyone to maintain.
So I try to keep my blogroll to things that I read and would recommend to others. If you’re looking for more blogs, it’s a fine place to start.
Walkout
I met Edward James Olmos today. He came to Oxy for a panel discussion after a showing of his new HBO movie Walkout.
He was really cool, and the movie was good with a lot of heart. I hope the movie does well.
That’s about all for now since my head feels like it’s going to explode.
Comment spam
Comment spam is getting out of control. Most of the time, bloggers just deal with it, or approve their own comments, or develop some method of dealing with it.
I certainly don’t envy the bigger blogs their trouble.
But Akisment has been working well for me so far. I don’t know what method it uses to filter through the comments, but the ones that look like spam get dumped into a queue, like a junk mail folder, for me to look at or delete.
So far, it’s caught 244 spamments and I’m pretty sure it hasn’t caught any real comments (although I guess I don’t know that for sure). Hopefully this is a linked system with other WP blogs, and the more it gets used the more effective it will get.
Your funny news for the day…
According to the BBC, A sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his wife after he was caught having sex with the animal.
Oh, Bond
Casino Royale will be an interesting film. They really need it to kick some ass.
In updates: they finally found a bond girl, (which means they can really get production going) and Felix Leiter comes back (last seen in License to Kill) as a black man. Shark bites can do amazing things.
The Scourge?
My friend Ben Adlin, who is very interested in typography and design, tagged an article for me on del.icio.us called The Scourge of Arial, written by Mark Simonson.
Needless to say it’s a very interesting history of Helvetica, Arial, and fonts on the modern computer. But my first question from the title is “why is Arial a scourge?” I’m really no typographer, so Arial has always looked like a perfectly good font to me, and I’ve certainly used it in web-design before (although my current favorites are Trebuchet MS (seen here) and Verdana (seen everywhere else)).
The problem is that the article never really answers the question. I understand and appreciate the history of Helvetica, and how Arial seems to have emerged as a replacement because of convenience and economics, but I don’t see how that necessarily makes it a poor typeface.
Simonson does note that:
To professional designers, Arial is looked down
on as a not-very-faithful imitation of a typeface that is no longer
fashionable. It has what you might call a “low-end stigma.”
But from a purely aesthetic perspective, is Arial really that ugly? Or is it just a matter of class?
The problem with performancing
On the whole, I like performancing. I like the idea behind it and I like the rich text setup for writing. It reminds me of the days when I used an lj-client to keep my livejournal updated (I’ve sinced moved back to the web interface).
The problem with performancing is that it’s not integrated in any way with my drafts in Wordpress. I tend to get five or six ideas at once, and so I generally keep about 20 or so post ideas in my drafts queue at any given time. When I’m suffering from a lack of inspiration, I have a host of pre-thought up topic sentences I can elaborate on.
Sometimes, they don’t turn out that well, so I have two or three posts that are completely written that I’ve never posted because I’m just not happy with them yet. Regardless, I can’t access any of these stored posts from performancing.
It looks like the “notes” feature is built in to serve the drafts purpose, but I wish I could just log my existing drafts into the folder instead of having to keep separate lists.
Begin filming
Tomorrow and Sunday I will be filming the bulk of my student film for this semester, but unfortunately I forgot to even try to rent a boom mike, so I’m just going to have to do my best to scrub good audio from the built-in camera microphone.
Not a good start to a film that I had hoped to have really good production value.
Anyway, with a little luck and ingenuity, everything will go well this weekend and I’ll be 3/4 of the way done with my film class this semester.
Parking stall of temptation
Do you ever have the urge to park just because you see a good spot?
I think I’m defective because this happens to me a lot. Whenever I’m driving back to campus, I have to pass a lot of differnet buildings with their own parking lots. And whenever there’s a really good spot available I have this desire to park in it.
Nevermind the fact that it’s usually nowhere near where I need to be; it’s just such a good spot!
Speaking of Disney
I posted several days ago about how Disney gets it, but I spotted an article on Business Week that really went over the bold moves that Disney has been making recently:
Certainly, Iger deserves praise for devising a digital strategy and
delving into areas that made other top execs leery. And just as they
did with the iPod licensing deal, Iger and Co. have made it clear
they’re willing to bend the rules to implement that strategy.
The new CEO Robert Iger, despite having a name that makes me go “what hump?” every time I hear it, really seems to understand that the future distribution of media is going to be all digital and all based on “on-demand” mentality. The new Disney service called MovieBeam (who knows when it rolls out) basically involves buying a “MovieBeam player” (like a DVD player) that works like a Netflix subscription, except you cut out the shipping.
The concept is solid but they need to work out some details before consumers will really go for it, I think.
The point is - Disney does get it, and that means that like it or not, other media companies will have to follow.
IE7 beta: reviewed
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been using Internet Explorer 7 (almost) exclusively since the 10th, so I figure it’s about time to post my thoughts on the new browser:
It’s really impressive.
Coming from Firefox, which was built with functionality in mind, the first thing I noticed was how much prettier IE7 looks. Fortunately, it’s more than just pretty.
IE7 comes with a few killer features that, with a minor exception, are probably familiar to anyone who uses Firefox. In fact, a lot of the functionality built in is directly compatible to Firefox (think ctrl+click to open in new tab) and made switching over extremely easy.
My favorite additions (aside from tabs, which isn’t really anything special anymore) are the built-in RSS reader and the quick-tabs function.
The built-in RSS reader is simple to use, integrated well with the broswer (ctrl+j brings up the sidebar) and is lighting-fast. The speed is the real kicker here, because it kicks any Firefox plugin’s ass at drawing up content. My guess is that most FF plugins redirect the feeds through their servers, whereas IE7 probably just pings the feed.
Quick-tabs is a really cool function, especially since I tend to browse with 7+ tabs open at once, that allows you to get an expose-like view of all your open tabs, letting you click on the thumbnail you’d like to go to.
Other than that, there are a few things missing - I don’t get control over how javascript links open (tab, new window, etc.) and I don’t have access to the unbelievable scope of plugins that Firefox allows me to use, but I’m sure these types of things will become available when IE7 hits public release. There’s an option in the tools menu for adding “add-ons,” which I suspect will be similar to FF extensions.
But the bottom line is that I’m really impressed with IE7. It’s unfortunate though that it reads like a prettier Firefox with a better RSS system. Either way, it will make a big difference when it’s officially released, because it will bring this type of browsing to the other 80% of computer users who currently use IE.
Friedman, I’m disappointed
[ Note: I x-posted this on my livejournal, and there is an excellent discussion in the comments about the issues involved ]
Thomas Friedman opens his column today by saying (no link because it is TimesSelect):
I have no doubt that the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad have caused real offense to many Muslims. I’m glad my newspaper didn’t publish them.
I’m disappointed that Friedman would say that, largely because of points about free speech that are eloquently made by Tom Evslin here and here, but the essential problem is that not printing those cartoons is
- bad reporting, and
- giving in
Friedman, of all people, is someone I would expect to understand how not printing offensive cartoons (that are directly relevant to the news story) is like saying “Yes, that’s right, it’s offensive and you can determine whether or not we are allowed to print them.”
Meanwhile, anti-semitic cartoons are reprinted in the US because they are relevant.
So Friedman is glad that the New York Times is self-censoring it’s news reporting to keep terrorists happy. I’m just sad that US media no longer defends free speech.
A published author?
I hesitate to say that I’ve ever published any of my writing, since most of everything I’ve ever “published” has been “self-published.” Basically, that means it’s written, reviewed, edited, and presented by myself.
But if you’re on (or near, I suppose) Occidental College today you can pick up this week’s edition of the “Occidental Weekly,” in which I wrote an article on blogging. I’d link to it but there’s no online version.
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