|
|
blog. |
|
|
-- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" |
jueves, noviembre 29, 2001
|
linkydink What do Mozart, George Washington, J. Edgar Hoover and Michael Richards of 'Seinfeld' have in common? Membership in the mysterious, and dwindling, fraternity of the Freemasons.
|
linkydink Matt Groening's Life in Hell (no web presence, so no link) is one of the greatest comic strips I am aware of. The Daily Collegian runs it sometimes. Here are some creepy, unauthorized animations based on the strip. They're actually not too bad, although I'm pretty sure Will and Abe are supposed to blink.
|
linkydink UPDATE. A GIRLFRIEND TRYOUT EXAM WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE END OF NOVEMBER. THE EXAM WILL BE MULTIPLE CHOICE/ SHORT ANSWER / ESSAY FORMAT AND WILL BE E-MAILED TO CANDIDATES WHO HAVE SHOWN INTEREST.
miércoles, noviembre 28, 2001
|
linkydink "On 9 August 1942, the starving musicians of Leningrad staged the most extraordinary concert ever given. With huge speakers pointing towards the German lines, the citizens of the blockaded city gathered to hear Shostakovich's heroic Seventh Symphony. Almost 60 years later, Ed Vulliamy traces the orchestra's few survivors to discover how the Nazi Panzers faced the music."
|
linkydink "I'm not much of a men's sports fan, but a few years ago I went with some friends to see the U.S. women's soccer team play Mexico at Foxboro. I was horrified at how loudly the crowd cheered for every U.S. goal, even after 4 and 5 and 6 and up to 9 goals had been scored against Mexico, who never scored. It didn't seem like something to celebrate, beating such an obviously mismatched opponent. It's this kind of arrogance that I see when I see all the U.S. flags everywhere."
|
linkydink today is National Transgender Day of Remembrance. there are a lot of dead. are we making any progress?
|
linkydink "Three main waves of feminism" makes feminism sound like a boss in a mid-80's shoot-'em-up game. This would imply that feminism moves around in a fixed pattern, and has a weak spot that is only open when feminism is firing.
|
linkydink speaking of feminism, does anyone have good definitions of the three (or more) main waves of feminism? i found a page or two about it, but haven't had a chance to really read them yet. (too busy writing my econ paper about starting a porn site.)
martes, noviembre 27, 2001
|
linkydink 1. What was the last book you read? Did you enjoy it? The last book I read in its entirety was Bruce Sterling's cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I feel like I should've read it five years ago. Books I have been recenty scanning include O'Reilly's CGI Programming With PERL and Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton by Graham Lock, which are both enjoyable in their own peculiar ways. 2. What's your favorite book of all time? Possibly Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson... but I'm going to hold off on really answeing that one until I'm a little older. All time is a lot of time. 3. What's the worst book you've ever read? Your Mom's porno book. 4. What book that you've read would you most like to see adapted into a movie? Either O'Reilly's CGI Programming With PERL or see #3. 5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? If I'm unlucky, I will enjoy cmoore's birthday in Northampton on Friday and then buy records from her radio station on Saturday, and then injure my brain compensating for lost time on Sunday. If I'm lucky, I'll realize that the world is a beautiful place and I should be happy in it doing homework my whole life.
domingo, noviembre 25, 2001
|
linkydink 1. What was the last book you read? Did you enjoy it? Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie Macdonald. yes, yes, yes. i've been raving about it all weekend, and you all should read it. 2. What's your favorite book of all time? i don't know that i can choose just one. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land and Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One are right up there. (and i'm sorry, but the movie of Power of One just sucked.) 3. What's the worst book you've ever read? Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt. i was forced to read this for school over the summer before seventh (i think) grade. i shudder to recall the horror of the experience. 4. What book that you've read would you most like to see adapted into a movie? none. ugh. i can never watch movies made of books i like (or even really books i've read) because they have to dumb them down (and/or shorten them) so much. that said, The Moon Is Down by Steinbeck is short enough and interesting enough that i think a decent movie could be made of it. 5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? eating and sleeping as much as possible. which i did. unfortunately, in the process i also became extremely angry and frustrated with my parents. still need to talk to them about that. right.
|
linkydink I'll give it a shot. 1. What was the last book you read? Did you enjoy it? Trigger Happy, a book about video games by some British wanker. It's got some really good analysis of the medium, and though it's not the book that will make people think of video games as an art form, it's a step in the right direction. However it tends to wander. But overall I like it. 2. What's your favorite book of all time? Heavy. Right now I'd have to say Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, who may or may not be or have been a Northampton resident. 3. What's the worst book you've ever read? The House of the Seven Gables was pretty boring. Very little plot, and none of the implied sex that made The Scarlet Letter such an enduring hit. 4. What book that you've read would you most like to see adapted into a movie? I don't really have any ideas. I guess The Lord of the Rings, and look how easy I am to please. They even got that guy who made all the movies with evil mothers in them to direct it! 5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? This coming weekend I will probably still be working on a paper that's due tomorrow.
|
linkydink 1. To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. More than I expected to, which was a lot. 2. Sewer Gas and Electric by Matt Ruff 3. The Bone Collector, by Jeffrey Deaver (It was a book first) 4. I think one of the Berserker short stories by Fred Saberhagen could be cool as an action/drama. In general, books don't make good movies. (Princess Bride and Harry Potter I notwithstanding) 5. Bit late for that, isn't it? I spent some time with my parents and drove home yesterday (6.5 hours, bleah), and today I've wasted time and gotten used to being at home again. And the orignal 5... 1. Where were you born (city or state or just country)? Ithaca, NY 2. What is your favorite number? e 3. Vanilla or chocolate? I don't understand. Why pick vanilla? 4. What section of a bookstore would I find you in? Remainders, Science Fiction, Mystery, Philosophy. That was not in order. 5. What kind of mattress do you have on your bed? soft? firm? water? I sleep on a queen-size 10-inch thick futon. Mmmmm....
|
linkydink Start with the Spice Girls. Remove the overdone sex appeal. Lose the stupid nicknames while you're at it. Add 18 years of history, a great deal of talent, a backup band, writing their own music, and just a lot more musical depth. Oh yeah, and make them Finnish. What do you get? Hmmm...
|
linkydink Heather's Friday Five Starting it off... 1. What was the last book you read? Did you enjoy it? Global Brain by Howard Bloom, and yeah, I enjoyed it. 2. What's your favorite book of all time? The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. 3. What's the worst book you've ever read? The Crucible by Arthur Miller. 4. What book that you've read would you most like to see adapted into a movie? Sandman by Neil Gaiman. 5. How do you plan to spend your weekend? Hanging out with friends on vacation from school and cleaning (still) the house.
jueves, noviembre 22, 2001
|
linkydink Tuesday and Thursday of next week at Wesleyan's Crowell Concert Hall, I'll be performing with my turntable as part of Anthony Braxton's orchestral ensemble. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
miércoles, noviembre 21, 2001
|
linkydink happy thanksgiving (one day early)! any blogsters who're gonna be down in southern CT are welcome to hang out at my house friday or saturday. give me a call.
lunes, noviembre 19, 2001
|
linkydink 'Factory patches, plugins, templates, incompatibilities, needless complexity, general standardification, all these things are bad. Confronting the data where it lives opens the possibility of community with the data. Hiding behind high-level scripting languages does not promote meaningful relationships with the bits.'An interview with Beige, whose music is nauseating in a good way. (via rhizome)
|
linkydink At first, I was very skeptical, 'cause it seemed like everyone and their dog was getting (and now has!) a blog. I didn't quite understand why I would want to post something on the Web where forwarding via email had sufficed for so long. Yes, I think blogs have their weaknesses compared to email (in-depth discussion doesn't seem to flourish as well), but they also have their strengths such as the almost unlimited number of perspectives that can be shared. I'm not about to write a critical analysis of online publishing methods, but I think y'all get what I'm saying.
|
linkydink today's the blog's one-year birthday. any thoughts on that? i think it's been a pretty fun venture.
|
linkydink "The underground Super-Kamiokande Observatory in Japan detects elusive neutrino particles from space by using photomultiplier tubes to register the flashes of light they produce when they pass through a huge tank of water. On 12 November, one of the photomultiplier tubes exploded causing a chain reaction that resulted in most of the other 11,200 light detectors also blowing up."
|
linkydink Media-Wars: Once again, overzealous activists ruin it for the rest of us. 'Yes, CNN has banned the word "indymedia" from its chat room, according to Edna Johnson, a representative for the company. But that's because Indymedia fans were spamming other people in the chat rooms, constantly telling chatters that they should get their news from the independent site.'(via the partially-crippled M-Teper)
sábado, noviembre 17, 2001
|
linkydink Because I feel like it, and my homepage is down, here are Jimmy Tones' Sounds of the Moment: Yum yum yum! What a good time to be alive.
viernes, noviembre 16, 2001
|
linkydink cmoore: the most oft-used distinction between "rap" and "hip-hop" that I've heard from self-proclaimed hip-hoppers has hip-hop as an overall culture, which includes the individual artform of rap, as well as breakdance, graffiti, DJing, and arguably beatmaking, beatboxing, and video-games. Does that make "rap" a gerund?
|
linkydink can someone (perhaps jt) tell me the difference between rap and hip-hop? enlighten me, o knowledgeable people.
jueves, noviembre 15, 2001
|
linkydink "A computerised DJ that uses feedback from the dancers to generate new music has been developed by artificial intelligence experts at Hewlett-Packard, meaning clubbers may soon only have themselves to blame if they do not like the music they are dancing to."
|
linkydink In a note of alarmism from people with every right to be alarmist, I present an editorial from the Moscow Times, purveyor of "up-to-the-minute news on Moscow, Russia and the world." I only wish I could just laugh it off, but the number of new and frightening things on the United States freedom front staggers even a veteran cynic like myself. Oh right, the editorial
|
linkydink "This flyer was created -- by the feds -- to disseminate information about who the bad guys might be. However, it's wording made it look like a disinformation campaign to paint at least a few groups of Real Americans as domestic terrorists."
miércoles, noviembre 14, 2001
|
linkydink "It's not the east or the west side. It's not the north or the south side. It's..." (This take a while to load but it is worth it.) (via MeFi)
lunes, noviembre 12, 2001
domingo, noviembre 11, 2001
|
linkydink hey, JT, I'll trade ya'. Algorithms and Complexity I took, but Compilers is one of the few core CS classes I failed to take while in school. And I'd really like to. Oh well, I guess I'll just whore out what skills I have.
|
linkydink next semester I'll be taking Algorithms and Complexity and Compilers. I won't be taking Modern Dance I or Composition In The Arts because their schedule conflicts with the abovementioned. Fuck- I really think I chose the wrong major. Oh, well. There's always Indoor Technical Climbing.
|
linkydink I managed to obtain a draft of Smith's policy on transexual students. It reads, in part: "Um... no penises, OK? They're icky." Take of it what you will.
|
linkydink next semester i'll be taking Game Theory, Fairy Tales and Gender, and Anarchism: Theory and Practice. exciting, exciting.
sábado, noviembre 10, 2001
|
linkydink jimmy: Smith has no official policy on trans admissions; they'll take anyone who's biologically female, as far as i know. that does exclude transwomen - that means M-to-F - (even post-op), but i don't know if that's ever been tested. they do take pre-op trans guys. i believe you can technically be thrown out if you actually transition while at Smith, but i do know of people who've done it - or at least started the process - and still walked at graduation. there are plenty of pre-op and non-op transguys - F-to-Ms - here (we're getting a rep as a fairly trans-aware/trans-friendly place to be, which, imho, is a good thing); there've also been guys who had chest surgery and/or went on testosterone. a good way to be allowed to live off-campus (which at Smith is a process heavily enshrouded in red tape and beaurocracy) is to tell the administration that you're trans. an official policy is slated to be drafted soon - T committee wavers on whether or not this is a good or bad thing, although it's been pushing for it since the committee's birth my first year at Smith - so we'll see if things change after that. i'd love it if they'd take post-op transwomen, but i'd hate it if they excluded transguys who choose to transition while here.
|
linkydink Smithies: Some friends and I are wondering what Smith's admission policy is w/r/t transexual idividuals. It seems to be more administrationally ambiguous territory than, say, transgendered people who can still be officially designated "male" or "female". Have there been any interesting cases of men-born-as-women or vice-versa being denied/granted admission (or even expelled?)? Interestingly, we decided that it would only be a potential issue because Smith is so purportedly liberal-- such questions would presumably not even be considered at most other all-female schools, eh? Or would they? Maybe you can school us.
viernes, noviembre 09, 2001
|
linkydink The answer as to why the Britney Spears single is so good. Personally, I'm not with it, but maybe I can look forward to a DJ Food remix.
|
linkydink yo, timmy is on the tip. the new britney spears single is the hizza giz. i've been blasting it in Helpdesk and shaking my ass. the 9 out of 10 customers agree that i dance better than joey fatone. 
|
linkydink Breakcharmer: I must be crazy to put a Britney Spears MP3 on my webserver, but here it is for a limited time only.
|
linkydink Deep thought of the day from Simon Reynolds: 'The "fascism" in this music is the desire, enflamed by the music but also satisfied by the music, to merge with a collective vastness ("Into Sound", as one Acardipane track is titled). This is also the desire to merge with the rave massive: mobilized but aimless, united but apolitical. In a sense, this music isn't about but simply is the desire for mission, insurgency, destination, destiny, singlemindedness, rage without object, belief without creed. And it suggests that fantasies of purity relate to our ancient desires for the absolute. When you come to think about it, music is just about the healthiest, safest place to deal with such longings.'
|
linkydink Wow, that's a pretty grim-sounding article. But hey, Fresh Samanta is a Maine success story. Like Steven King and Rustic Overtones (haven't you heard of Rustic?). I never did care for it myself - cran/grape is awfully complicated for me, let along the unholy fruit blends Samantha is into - but success is success. I worked for a Maine-owned coffee shop whose owner carried Nantucket Nectars juice but not Fresh Samantha. One of the more tenured baristas mused that this was because the coffee shop's owner was jealous of the fact that his business hadn't gone as far as Samantha's. I like to think that was the case.
jueves, noviembre 08, 2001
|
linkydink '"We should have realized Coke was going to buy them once they were just 'Samantha'," said one industry observer. "Shit just wasn't fresh no more."'
|
linkydink one of the Hampsters in my Digital Humanities class sent this hypertext to the class. interesting use of the medium. i like it.
lunes, noviembre 05, 2001
|
linkydink I've taken on a last minute audition and I'm wondering if anybody's read any plays lately with good monologues for youngish female characters. This question is mostly for bloggers who've been in plays with me before, but I'm open to suggestions from anybody. I've gone over a few things from past plays, but I'm sort of looking for something new, if anybody's got any ideas post 'em up or e mail me. Thanks!
|
linkydink Got a Dreamcast? Was it manufactured before November 2001 (check the bottom)? Well, this kicks ass. Way better than writing papers for our Digital Humanities class.
|
linkydink cmoore: How technology has influenced x, for any x that is culturally significant? Identify, family relations, international politics, etc. all: cmoore asked me to throw in some more I suggested to her via AIM.
|
linkydink so. zole and i have to write papers for our Digital Humanities class, and we're fresh out of ideas. the class has covered (or will, by the time the paper's due): how technology has influenced writing (production, distribution, form, etc); computer-generated fiction; how technology has influenced music (production, distribution, form, etc.); and computer-generated music. anyone want to suggest us a topic? anything. help help!
domingo, noviembre 04, 2001
|
linkydink "Widdershins is a mail list for the discussion of the intersections of hacking and hacktivism, politics and government, cyberspace and meatspace - all rolled up into one. It is meant as a central location for discussing such things as world events in relationship to technology, proposed legislation and its impact on hackers, and the ever-changing cyber landscape viewed from the security explorer."
sábado, noviembre 03, 2001
|
linkydink '“Check out my stupid shirt! I’m a moron!” said Director of Operations and Supreme Allied Commander for the Liberating Forces of Laughter, Rutherford Chang ’03. “You’re slandering me! Don’t slander me you fuck!”' Wesleyan is getting silly.
viernes, noviembre 02, 2001
|
linkydink the long hours sitting by a phone waiting for a poor soul without internet only sometimes bring you joy. this is one of those times. is your job this much fun?
|
linkydink “Despite the rumors circulating, the Boogie Club does not sacrifice goats to the gods of Devo.”
|
linkydink It took my dad the better part of 1989 to read all three books of The Lord of the Rings. I hardly remember any of the details, though. I'm not sure I was paying attention. I've been meaning to re-read them.
jueves, noviembre 01, 2001
|
linkydink I've just been reading a mind-boggling article (via Slashdot) about the technology used in the upcoming Lord Of The Rings movies. I could just wet my pants. If you haven't seen the movie's latest trailer, then, uh... you probably have a better social life than me.
|
linkydink jimmy tones - i thought you might enjoy marn's description of various things Australian (she just got back from the land down under), in particular... <voice of doom>TimTams!</voice of doom>
|
linkydink "A Californian man has invented an electronic bra that will stop sportswomen's breasts bouncing and keep them warm." short descriptions of this and other weird stuff.
|
Slashdot asks: 
