« May 2005 | Main | July 2005 »

June 30, 2005

Cheez Built into the OS.

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger

I'm playing with some secret new technology that makes the tech blogging world even flatter. Not from Microsoft (the inventor asked me to keep it quiet until he's ready to release it). But, it totally is going to change how I blog (and it really already has although I can't change my style until you all get it too). It brought me Leslie's blog, for instance.

I've been playing with an enormous piece of Sekrit Cheez. It is transparent cheez, but also citizen cheez upon which an entrely new model of sekrit citizen cheezmaking will be based. It will change the way you use Sekrit Transparent Cheez. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I pinky-NDA'd it.

But the MSSCM (MainStream Sekrit Cheezmakers) will yay verily be brought way low by the majesty and PopulistTrain power of my milestoned, corner-turning, discussion-ending SekritCheeeeez.

It even has a format: SCML (Sekrit Cheez Markup Language)

I probably won't be able to even think about it until it is "announced" at SekritTransparentCheezDex next month. So don't bug me till then.

Or as Shelley puts it:

I’ve always thought that alluding to ’secrets’ that others aren’t privileged to know is a conversation killer, but that’s beside the point.

Posted by John at 2:50 PM | | Comments (1)

June 23, 2005

Mayakovsky and F O'H are spinning in their graves.

Exclusive: interview with Mr. Sun about the OS X Weather Dashboard widget (kottke.org)

I recently had a chance to sit down with Mr. Sun, a long-time resident of both our solar system and the blogosphere, and I asked him about his Weather widget representations.

Holy crap. Maybe you should give up your day job. This is past bad, it's sophomoric. Avoid my mistake and don't read the whole thing.

Posted by John at 12:04 PM |

Less incorrect

Gothamist: Less Small Time Pot Arrests?

Less Small Time Pot Arrests?

Grammar nit: this should really be fewer, not less. Few is for counts, less is for measures.

Posted by John at 10:41 AM |

June 22, 2005

I'm a highly paid rebel, baby

BuzzMachine ... by Jeff Jarvis:

I'm just not a pledge kind of guy. I'm not a joiner. Guess that's why I am a blogger.

Oh, please.

Posted by John at 7:59 PM |

June 21, 2005

Good to know.

» Crosstown Traffic | Steve Gillmor's Inforouter | ZDNet.com

I hereby renounce the thought that I am carrying the ball, the water, the meme, or any other burden-for RSS, attention, podcasting, or whatever damn thoughtbomb Dave Winer, Adam Curry, Dare Obasanjo, Brendan Eich, or whoever comes up with. I am NOT an evangelist.

Right, you're a tech "journalist," or as we like to call it around here, a "shill." I am constantly amazed at how a buncha white guys who all seem to pal around, often without making that clear, can even pretend to write about technology without having it be pretty much fawning ads for some MSB's latest revolutionary milestoned tech hardon. Oh wait, forgot - it's a pure meritocracy.

Posted by John at 11:13 AM |

June 15, 2005

If a tree blogs in the forest

One other thing wrt the last entry. In his answer to Dave Rogers, "Doc" Searls says:

Meanwhile, all of us — you, Dave Rogers, David Weinberger and myself — can say what we damn well please here, in this...

Well, what is this? A medium? Or a place? The distinction seems academic until it comes time to regulate it. Then it's all a matter of how you frame it. The results can (and will) be very different.

If only it were that simple. The idea that we're all free to "say what we damn well please" is disingenuous. It's not about utterance. It's about audience. I can say what I damn well please till my face turns blue, but if no one is listening, what difference does it make? The hierarchy doesn't inhere in the medium, it inheres in the distribution. Does anyone really think that a truly pure meritocracy could possibly result in a network so heavily dominated by white males? Could you possibly believe that for one minute while still having even a jot of common sense? I don't think so.

Posted by John at 2:33 PM |

Smart guy

Dave Rogers has been writing some really intelligent stuff about A-list as mediators:

The internet has no soul, it is an artifact. Human beings have souls, maybe. Their souls are perhaps something to be concerned about. The "soul of the machine?" Perhaps we might read Forster again. One encounters this quite often in the metaphors and myths put forward by Doc and Dave and others. I've objected to the notions of "the values of the internet," because again, the internet is an artifact, it doesn't have values. People have values, and not all the people using the artifact share the same values. This is unhelpful and places barriers in the way of seeking reasonable solutions to legitimate problems, and like it or not, Doc and Dave are among the authorities placing those barriers there. They are responsible for them. Not solely, perhaps not consciously, but nevertheless they are responsible.

Read the whole thing. He has been saying in a much more eloquent fashion what I usually just spew in a cloud of weak snark. Highly recommended. Plus he's giving "Doc" Searls shit-fits, which is always nice to see. Unfortunately it's not causing him to reconsider any opinions. Why? The basis of the whole sale - it's a pure free meritocracy - would be jeopardized.

Posted by John at 2:07 PM | | Comments (1)

June 14, 2005

more important things to blather about.

New A-list meme: posting about how much you don't care about the Michael Jackson verdict, often while providing links to the media you turn your nose up at for covering it.

Posted by John at 10:00 AM |

June 13, 2005

Still organically dead.

the smoking vegan: The PETA conundrum

Should we all sleep better at night because KFC might make sure their nuggets-to-be get a dunkeroo in the ol' (and oh-so-humane) stun tank before they get their throats cut while they're still alive? Why does PETA focus on making the torture more humane as opposed to just fighting tooth and nail to stop it? Do you think the inmates of Birkenau would have died just a little happier if the Zyklon-B was mint-scented?

This has occurred to me in the past. At Providence's earthy-crunchy health food store, the late, somewhat lamented Golden Sheaf, I once asked the cashier standing in front of a sign touting "organically raised" turkeys for Thanksgiving whether they'd been organically killed as well. This was of course in the days when "health food store" = vegetarian.

That last line, though, is optimum snark.

Posted by John at 5:25 PM | | Comments (2)

June 9, 2005

Widget Wurld.

For the most part, Dashboard (link goes to gratuitous Apple marketing page) in OS X Tiger has left me pretty tepid. It's certainly visually beautiful and slick, but I find its weird modal operation kind of useless. Most of the widgets I've seen so far have been charitably best described as "pretty dumb."

But today I finally found one I want to install. An RDoc Dashboard widget.

But I still hate the modality of it all. That really bothers me, and is so un-Mac like. The HIG used to preach hard against the evilness of modal applications. Then again, Mac on Intel? Who woulda thunk it?

Posted by John at 1:07 PM | | Comments (2)

June 5, 2005

Because they didn't name him "Jake HasBeen."

Cory Doctorow: Penn and Teller's Penn Jillette has named his new baby daughter "Moxie CrimeFighter." With an incap on the "F" in CrimeFighter. This man is my hero.
It would have been so much better if they had named Cory "Pompous ShortAttentionSpan." With the incap. As it is, I hope his "hero" is also having "Torture Me" tattooed on his newborn daughter's forehead. It'll save everyone a lot of time and trouble in future. Folks, it's a child, not another way for you to dick around demonstrating how totally k00l you are.

Posted by John at 9:17 AM |