A web developer in Montreal
Amazing clip from a Johnny Cash spoof coming out soon (I don’t really know about the movie). Tim Meadows’ character berates his friend to stay away from the Reefer, answering his questions with angry facts about the evil substance.
A taste:
JCR: .. well I don’t want to OD on it.
TM: You CAN’T OD on it!
JCR: It won’t make me want to have sex, will it?
TM: It makes sex EVEN BETTER!
YouTube Link, well worth your 58 seconds.
Screenshot taken with MacOS Activity Monitor, found in Applications > Utilities. Great for seeing why your computer is going so slow, or just to have fun graphics flash on your screen (for bonus points set the dock icon to show ram usage and turn on ‘show cpu usage’. The fun never stops).
My friend Hugh just launched a new site in his empire of podcasting (He previously founded the amazing Libri Vox directory of public domain audio books, and the ill-fated but extremely useful Collectik, which was a web2.0 app that organized your podcast subscriptions and included social networking features as well, kind of like YouTube for podcasts).
This time he’s aiming for simple (Collectik kind of got out of control and became insane) with earideas, an edited podcast directory of well-made, thought-provoking audio content with a smooth interface and not too much clutter. The quality of the program selection is excellent based on my areas of expertise. Earideas already covers most of the stuff I listen to regularly that isn’t total junk, and when I’m feeling adventurous it has so far rewarded me well for my experimentation. Good luck with it Hugh, here’s hoping it forms the bedrock for CollektikZilla.
While you’re thinking about it, I better mention Search Engine, the best goddamn radio show I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a new CBC Radio project discussing technology and it’s social effects that always manages to titilate and amaze, and it makes a solid go of incorporating user submissions and interaction into the main journalism behind the pieces. I have no idea when it plays on FM, but it’s playing RIGHT NOW at the link above (hint, it’s the earideas page for Search Engine, the CBC one isn’t as easy to use), just click on the play button for one of the shows and give it a chance. (this one was a recomendation from Hugh as well).
Not sure what a Podcast is? It’s just an easy way to offer audio ‘channels’ over the web, so people use them to download new episodes of things as they come out. Here’s the wikipedia article about it.
Got this in email: CBC.ca slideshow laying out 8 things you could do with the ~1 Trillion dollars that has been spent on the Iraq war so far. Some of them are a bit silly, but they get across the raw, unbelievable scale of violent waste that is U.S. foreign policy.
Examples:
- Buy everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan a car
- Buy two wii’s for every child in the world
The lesson, it seems, is that few things could be less valuable monitarily than getting yourself involved in other people’s business when they don’t want you there.
Here’s my Trillion dollar plan for world peace:
The beauty of my plan is that it is totally honest about what we’re getting at. We think they’re doing it wrong, and we’re doing a better job socially. They want strict cultural control and we want strict consumer freedom. It’s a globo-cultural war as well as a geo-political one, and we’re confident that in the long run, our ideas will win like crazy. So rather than blowing up civilians who are just trying to survive and pushing them to join our worst enemies, we should inundate them with the things which we’ve already seen can turn any human into a mall zombie. Give them candy and Shrek and How to Lose a Man in 10 Days. Mall zombies make terrible zealot terrorist soldiers, they’re too busy txting each other and thinking about their shoes to learn to use automatic weapons.
Of course the result would be so flat and vaguely anti-social that it’s barely better than what’s there now. Not to mention the fact that, like the suburbs in the west, the trashy pseudo-cultural hi-def fantasies would make these areas into cesspools of strange, unpredictable activity and fetishism, though that can go either way on a case by case basis.
Bonus points if you choose to use the remaining millions to also ensure that everyone also has their share of actual nourishing food. Though you should be careful, if the sugar:food ratio goes too far towards actual food then they may start thinking for themselves again and realize that you’re brainwashing them. If this starts to happen, increase the cup size of sugary drinks, they won’t even notice the difference.
[Caveat: Unfortunately, the plan assumes that each person will be so enthralled that they will keep the iPod and watch the videos, rather than selling them for a pittance to a merchant who would then sell them to westerners on eBay. You’d have to either work hard to combat that kind of thing, or just flood the entire market such that no one cares about iPods anymore, which might be off the scale of this kind of plan.]
[Photo from some military site. Note that though for security reasons you might still want soldiers giving out the iPods, the plan would be much more effective if you used those cheezy Apple Geniuses. Geniuses Without Borders anyone?]
I don’t want to sound like a broken record, and I’d hate for this site to become “Jer’s anti-Facebook page” (though maybe I should start one, like I did for MySpace), but pretty much every ad I see on Facebook lately has a kind of trashy decadence that blows my mind. I don’t know if you guys are seeing the same things as me, but it makes me queasy.
First, this doosy shows up on a Facebook page a few weeks ago, promoting a service selling World of Warcraft gold. Now, I’ve already adressed their use of stupidly sexual images to promote unrelated things, so the fact that they are using photos of actual women (albeit dressed in costumes that are based on the video game WoW) is tacky and lame but not surprising. What’s surprising is that they would promote the gold selling service at all. Gold farming and selling (Wikipedia link) is a process where cheap foreign labor (Chinese ‘sweatshop’-style) is paid to play the boring but ‘treasure’ yielding parts of games like WoW, then that treasure is bought for real money by rich players who want to experience success in the game without devoting a lot of time to it. It is cheating in every sense of the word, both for the player and for the farmer, who are both breaking the terms of service of the game itself and the social contract functioning within the game world. It spoils the fun for everyone who doesn’t want to pay for their in-game success and has a very real impact on the economy in the game world, making all items more expensive (there is a very important action system that is gamed by the gold buyers and sellers) and making it harder and harder for legitimate players to be successful without devoting all of their time to competing with the cheaters (I have friends who quit other similar games because the gold buying/selling market had destroyed all of the fun).
For Facebook to promote this service is like them promoting pirated software sold out of Russia or knockoff Louis Vitton purses, it is an illegal service that functions through loopholes in international law and spoils the whole idea of the involved product (purses, software or in-game gold). I may not play WoW anymore, but that shit still makes me mad. (For what it’s worth, I’m not against knockoffs of stupid, overpriced merchandise like Louis Vitton bags specifically because it devalues the originals, which is the only sane direction for their value to go)
Sorry for the lengthy discussion of WoW economics, for those of you less nerdily inclined, this one should hit home about what kind of site we’re all hanging out at. Not just stupid and tacky, but I think actually disgusting, we’re presented with someone’s bust and asked to consider “a wide range of cosmetic procedures”. Thanks, 416 SURGERY, I’ll be the person I really want to be any day now thanks to your botox and silicone.
Uh, is it just me, or is the girl in the Facebook ad pictured at left a bit under-dressed? I get that the ad is about “working from home”, but is that really the best picture to get the message across? It seems senselessly exploitative to me. I mean, when the photographer was choosing the outfit and placement, what were they going for: Relaxing at home, the feeling of freedom you get from being a contract typist? Does she need to wear a see-through shirt to get that across? Is it an underwear ad or what?
Even worse, if the promoted service ‘cashinbiz.net’ isn’t an outright scam or pyramid scheme, then it’s definitely something so sketchy that a reputable site should no sooner promote it than penis enhancing pills or Nigerian businessmen who just need a bit of help. I’m sure that ridiculous, fool-tempting stuff like that generates incredible revenue for Facebook, but it’s so obviously just manipulative bullshit (I’m going to give you money so that I can work?), I can’t believe FB would take them on as an advertiser.
People have been complaining that Facebook is invading their privacy by targeting ads at them based on their listed interests and other information, but I couldn’t care less about that. Having the ads match my interests increases their value and shows me less crap that I really don’t care about. Hopefully it will let them make a profit off my eyeballs without helping hucksters rip me off.
Found at Songbirdnest, home of the up-and-coming Open-Source/Free Software music player which does everything iTunes does but is Free (as in freedom) and also does more. The software itself isn’t ready for public use yet, but I have high hopes of switching to it when it’s ready.
The cartoons were on this great article about how Apple intentionally built it’s newly released iPods in a way that makes them only work with iTunes, which means that you not only are put in a position where you’re more likely to use their store and other products, but also that people using computers running operating systems other than Mac OSX or Windows are unable to use the new iPods because only Mac and Windoze have iTunes. Luckily the article links to a way of fixing the intentionally broken iPods, but it’s just one more example of Apple trying to control their customers with DRM when just leaving it alone would have been easier.
My tummy is rumbling, I wonder if it’s cause I’m excited about Songbird or because I’ve been using iTunes all day?
Found this yesterday on the YouTube front page and checked it out out of curiosity, The Guild. It’s a funny, clever and informed look at what WoW (World of Warcraft) players are doing in real life.
At first it comes off as just a cutesy look at the sillier aspects of WoW gaming, people’s little grottos they set up for themselves to play, their use of voice chat without knowing what the other players look like etc.
What I loved was the almost depressing level of honesty that develops as series works through the problems that come up in people’s lives. Somewhere between the main character hanging up on her shrink (who’s telling her that she won’t admit she has a problem) and another character looking spitefully at her own children for distracting her from the game, the show takes on a tone of morbid realism that I think is pretty honest. It’s still funny though, and the plot is actually pretty good (though the episodes are very short and there’s only 3 at this point).
Entertaining article in the Globe and Mail about the abuse Hummer owners have come to suffer at the hands of people like myself who find them horrible and insulting to the idea of moving humans around. Mostly the tone is neutral bordering on defensive, it’s fun to hear people trying to justify their ridiculous purchases to themselves. Best quote hands down (though I can’t believe they printed this in the paper, isn’t it a legally actionable threat?):
“A hippie guy and girl were crossing the street in front of my vehicle when the guy pulled down his pants and mooned me in the middle of the street,” says Mr. DeRisio, who ignored the young man until he doffed his trousers once more.
“The second time I slammed the gas pedal down and chased him down the sidewalk with my truck,” Mr. DeRisio says.
“He ran so fast it was like the doors just opened at a Grateful Dead concert and he had general admission seats. I slowed down and let him catch his breath, and rolled down the window and explained to him the next time he did something like that he would be eating granola bars through a straw.”
Also, on the subject of the Cadillac Escalade and the Ford Expedition, SUV/Trucks which apparently have worse mileage than the Hummer: If you are driving them just to look badass, you are an asshole. Anyone driving a car that gets sub-optimum mileage in general, or that is not compact in the city, is an asshole. At least the Escalade and Expedition have somewhat useful shapes/layouts, so that contractors, technicians and DIYers can use them to lug big messy things around without buying a giant truck (which is obviously worse if you just needed a small truck). A hummer is not useful for anything except combat situations and swamps, and last time I checked, the gang violence at the St-Laurent club scene isn’t that bad.
(unrelated pathetic image found here, article courtesy of dad)
My post titles resonate oddly well with random cute cat pictures.
Link. (the page goes through your rss feeds and creates random lolcat images). I think the real question here is what isn’t better with cute kittens?
(via. Boris)
p.s. My recent favorite