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Six Apart User Gathering

Six Apart User Gathering
Originally uploaded by mgtrott.

Early Feedback on V for Vendatta

good posters
Originally uploaded by david.

James Wolcott: The Red and the Black:

V for Vendetta may be--why hedge? is--the most subversive cinematic deed of the Bush-Blair era, a dagger poised in midair. Unlike the other movies dubbed "Controversial" (Fahrenheit 9-11, The Passion, Munich, Syriana), it doesn't play to a particular constituency or polarized culture bloc, it's working on a deeper, Edger Allen Poe-ish witch's brew substrata of pop myth."

More or less exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks, Tom Moody.

Best of CNN++

In exceptional circumstances, graphics from other news sites sneak into the Best of CNN series. This is one such circumstance.

Look at those beautiful bars. Does that count as desecrating the flag? (Yes.)

Rest vs. XML-RPC

(Mom, you can skip this one).

XML-RPC (XML Remote Procedure Call) and REST (Representational State Transfer) are two different architectures for enabling conversations between web sites and robots. People argue to the point of tragedy over which is "better," "simpler," "easier," and "more correct."

While perusing the Weblogs.com API, I was impressed that they had made their data available over both XML-RPC and REST, and also that the two formats were functionally equivalent.The explanation of their XML-RPC API takes two and a half pages and 364 words. The documentation of their REST API takes 80 words and two and a half paragraphs.

I bet Skynet uses REST.

The Internet is Full of Good People

Earlier this month Mr. Sun gave me a top compliment: "I read a bunch of [hello, typepad] posts and I know a lot of things he likes and not much about what he hates. That's nice." Thank you, Mr. Sun. When the giver of life (and lyric) compliments you for being positive, you run with it.

I've been reblogging quite a bit (last Tuesday was a highlight), but it doesn't take the place of regular old blogging, so I'm going to try and pick up the pace again. This last week was full of drama (Sudama - was it the stars?) but I was struck by the good, rather than the bad, behavior of folks on the Internet.

Rogers Cadenhead stepped into a snake pit of xml pedantry and nearly a decade of failed ideas and nasty politics, in hopes of making software better. Some people in the tech community grouse about the "back channel" and then send private email messages around trying to intimidate people out of their ideas. These same people call for the end of venture capital as we know it, and then lean on friendly investors to lay out even more dire threats. Rogers' responses have been measured and reasonable. I trust him and the rest of the RSS advisory board to make software better.

In a similar vein, my friend Judith lost her camera in Hawaii. When Canadian tourists stumbled upon it, they did the right thing by alerting the park ranger, but then did the wrong thing by telling Judith they were not going to return it. Judith knows their name, phone number and address, but has refused to release that information even to the press. She could have their names dragged through the mud - honestly, she could probably have their house burned to the ground in twenty minutes - but instead she is patiently plodding through legal channels hoping the family decides to do the right thing. If you have something that's not yours you return it, right?

And finally, my friend Jason Kottke ended his year long micropatronage experiment. Jason's design and content is the gold standard of weblogs, and has been for years.

At some point last year I was sitting near Jason at Eyebeam, and he offered to show me some ideas he was working on for kottke.org. He opened up a photoshop document, and proceeded to zoom through 15-20 different styles and color schemes. The layouts were all top notch, obviously, but I was most struck by the thoroughness and level of detail in his own mockups. The layers were all logically named and grouped, so he could fly through ideas almost as fast as he could talk about them. If you know photoshop well, you know what I'm talking about.

It was really at that moment I realized how seriously Jason took his work - here was a document that less than five or ten people would even see or know existed, but it was of a higher quality than 95% of the work that professional web designers hand over to their clients. Jason took an enormous pay cut last year in hopes of making his blog better, a great gift to his readers. I think he succeeded, albeit maybe not at to the lofty levels he set for himself. I am sure kottke.org will continue to be outstanding, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

People like Rogers, Judith and Jason that make the Internet great.

Marlon James' Plog

The Googlerati are abuzz with the news of Malcolm Gladwell's new blog. It looks like he intends to post often, which would be a gift.

But my favorite new author's site came to me not as a blog, but as a plog - it's Marlon James' "space" on Amazon.com. His review of Wide Sargasso Sea immediately caught my attention: "Call it collective male guilt, or the result of living in a world where fathers never kept their side of the bargain, but I am drawn to stories of women who come undone and women who have to make do."

Mr. James, if you like, I'll set up your typepad blog for free. It will look less crazy than this blog, more like the Ted Blog, and you can escape that Amazon frame.

Shake Shack Reopening Countdown

Teacher OR Blogger?

In The Last Weblog Assignment, my Mom shows off her versatility as teacher and blogger:

But thanks to everyone for sticking with it. I have enjoyed cruising through your colors, shapes, words, movies, and books. You have increased the dimensions of my world and, I hope, of one another's worlds as well.

<3, Dr. Jacobs

P.S. I have checked them all, so don't try to publish on a previous date. Just be honest---always the best policy. I am happy to give you partial credit.

Tabla Spices

tabla_spices
Originally uploaded by Alaina B..

Big Time Textuality

textually.org has been on fire recently. If you like cell phones & mobile technology, be prepared to lose your afternoon! Some highlights: San Jose art museum to offer guided tours over cell phones, library reminders over sms, man's corpse phones home (as his coffin was being lowered into the ground!), sms boom leads to digit damage (3.8 million people now complain of text-related injuries every year!), Prague hospital announces death by SMS, and mcomic makes it easy for independent comics to distribute their work over SMS.

Prospect Park NYC

Imapix at Work
Originally uploaded by lefion.

Inspired by the US team's curling success, surveying work has begun on a curling ice in Prospect Park, hopefully to be finished before next winter.

Cat in a Saucepan

Cat in a Saucepan
Originally uploaded by Lady Macabea.

Easy.

Dwarfs, Little People and the M-Word (headline entry for my weblog post)

Roger Ebert - Dwarfs, Little People and the M-Word (xhtml)

I am an actor that you have reviewed neither favorably nor unfavorably in two different movies: one was "Death to Smoochy," the other "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her." I have absolutely no objection to you trashing a film or lauding it. I do object to the use of the word 'midgets' in your review of "Death to Smoochy."

Too lazy/busy to blog today, so I offer you this classic Roger Ebert meditation on height and bigotry.

Again with The the MoMA

Boats on ground

The same but silver

Moblogger descending staircase

People love those Campbell's Soup cans

Beta!

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

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

Overheard this Morning

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

Name redacted to protect the guilty.

On "Flow"

Originally uploaded by merlinmann.

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

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

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

1927 Oberlin Mathematics Club

1927 Oberlin Mathematics Club
Originally uploaded by david.

The Mathematics Club meets every two weeks throughout the school year. The first part of the meeting is always spent in a social half hour. Students and faculty here have the chance of personal acquaintance that they do not get in their class room.

After satisfying ourselves with tea and wafers, we proceed to satisfy our starving souls with mathematical pie. Nothing seems too large or too small for consideration. We pass from the orbital motion of the atom to the vastness of celestial measurements. Nothing is too practical to be void of theory, so we have applications in mechanics, architecture, engineering, and economic problems. But we do not get confused and think that we are discussing lumber problems when logs are mentioned. We know that "sign" and "sine" are not two ways of spelling the same word. And who besides a mathematician can ever be sure he doesn't mean eclips when he says ellipse? We discuss with ease not only the fourth dimension, but the fifth and sixth. Infinity and imaginaries are very real to us. Everything complex is made simple through short cuts and ingenious devices. We even have resort to the music of the spheres for we have harmonic properties always with us. And most interesting of all we learn of the little red bugs. Some have white arrows on their backs and others haven't.

The Math Club is a liberal education in itself, and sooner or later we all hope to arrive at a "modicum of mathematical maturity."

President HENRY F. ROOD

Page one hundred ninety-one

Bottom row - Wood, Brown, Holle, Roy, Kestler, Andrews, Vaughn
Second row - Williams, Eickelberger, Miss Sinclair, Spencer, Ebert
Third row - Schoeple, Christian, President King, Symons

Thanks, Sarah and David!

Strich Armstrong

The Huffington Post's Contagious Media Festival launched today, and my early favorite is Awwwwstrich. It's only thirty seconds and well worth your time. In fact, I claim that if you watch it twenty times it's a good use of ten minutes.

Ostrich! Ostrich!