Month: September 2004

Finally finished the design for Alyssa’s fancy new blog, thought I’d share.

The Interesting Part: This is the first blog I’ve created using WordPress instead of MovableType for the publishing aspects. This is important because WordPress, like Linux, and unlike MovableType is a distributed open-source project, which means it is free (both as in beer, and as in speech), and is created by volunteers in their spare time. Deliciously ethical and utopian.

This blog, and all the underblogs, will probably be migrating as well in the near future. Maybe some of you have noticed that the site has been particularly gimpy lately, and it will be easier to migrate the site to a new server with WordPress blogs than MT.

(note: there is still a kind of open invitation to anyone who wants to blog onto my site (i.e. simianuprising.com/you), you can do it with Blogger or with wordpress if you wanted. Really it’s no better than the free services in any serious ways, only ridiculous ones. E-mail me jer at simianuprising dot com if you are interested.)

This website for Zephyr Consulting is almost certainly the most amazing and beautiful piece of web art I have ever seen. It creates an atmosphere thick enough to taste, and even seems to tell a story about what the company stands for and believes before you’re even sure what it is they do. The animation is flawless, and the imagery alone radiates an aura of awesomeness.

Normally I’m turned off by the clunkyness of a flash interface (not to mention the nightmare it constitutes in terms of accesibility, interoperability and reverse compatibility) but this piece is just so well done that I can’t help wanting the whole internet to be just like it. Where’s the movie this thing should be becomming? How can I get a job with these guys? (yes, I realize they offer courses, if only I lived in Chicago)

(via. warren)

Lately I’ve been noticing that more and more people are aware of the problems with and discussion about copyright than even six months ago. At this one party I met three different people who had to some degree read Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture (one of whom I had the day before convinced to buy it, though it is available at that link in dozens of formats for free) and were excited about it and the ideas it represents.

Whether catching the interest of university students constitutes an actual change, especially concerning the mass public, is obviously up for debate, but increased awareness is always the first step, right?

[for anyone interested in the things happening: Deep Links (blog of the EFF), Copyfight, Lessig Blog]

“TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I’ve ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.”

-Found in an interview with Reason magazine (via boingboing). Barlow was a writer for the Grateful Dead before becomming active in the politics of cyberspace and was the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a technological freedom advocacy organisation. Also of interest by Barlow : A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, a delicious and intense peice of cyber-philosophy if there ever was one.

-Also, tricked into watching CNN because it was playing in the pizza place, I couldn’t help wondering what value can be derived from watching constant coverage of a hurricane that cannot be helped. Are the viewers at home gaining any knowledge because of it? Will it improve their lives somehow? How is this pointless data being sold as news at all? Isn’t there a corrupt and stupid politician they could expose or something? (also, why does CNN have to constantly assert that they are the most trusted source for news? Does the station worry that the public will forget how much they trust them?)

Simian Update: Celebrity photographer (of, not is) attempts soul-theft of various primates.

(via BoingBoing)

Apologies for any weirdness that may have been noticed in the last couple of days, namely dissappearing posts. The problem seems to have been fixed (damn sketchy server).

Just so we’re clear I am back, and I did have an amazing time. Halifax is a tiny and delicious city with just enough girth to satisfy one’s need for serious techno-penetration, but is small enough to walk across in half an hour. Also, it is said that people there are nicer than on the mainland, but I’d say that the difference is even more pronounced in their cats, who roll over to have their bellies scratched by strangers on downtown streets. Now that’s service.

note: a certain mr. comeau wrote a couple of posts about our adventures.

(photocredit: Sarah Tracy, a beautiful soul who let me into her heart and home, but tried to trick me with buddhism.)