An interesting interview that explores the assumptions we make about the technology around us and the unintended consequences those assumptions have:
Not sure why I’ve been so taken with the whole Lolcats phenomenon, but I have. And I even find many of the spinoffs snort-out-loud funny. Dear reader, I never promised you shining prose or sparkling intelligence. Or a rose garden.
But the ultimate, the absolute best, has to be LOLCODE. Yes, I know it’s an almost unbearably geeky in-joke. But I submit that the whole Lolcats thing is an unbearably geeky in-joke, so this becomes more like the difference between 7,000 nuclear warheads and 12,000 nuclear warheads. Once you can utterly nuke the entire earth (or your social standing) further measurements are pointless.
P.S.: WANT!
P.P.S: Where LOLCats come from
I admit it: I’m an 80’s music geek. I hate to sound like those annoying old farts I grew up hearing who always said “Music was way better 20 years ago..”, but honestly, I do think music was better 20 years ago. The most innovative bands I hear today are bands that would have easily fit into the alternative rock scene in the 80’s. You have to admit that there’s a much bigger gap between The Rolling Stones and The Clash than there is between Joy Division and Interpol. What new has happened in the past 20 years?
All this is provided as background for the amazing archive I ran across the other day: the Kino Digital Video Portal. Most of these are Boston bands or bands that played Boston in the late 80s, and there are some incredible videos here. My faves:
Human Sexual Response – “Land of the Glass Pinecones”
The Specials: Too Much Too Young
Cool thing is, I saw all these bands perform these songs at one point or another in Boston. I actually got to see the Thrills perform “Hey” at the Rat, which just shows you how freaking old I am.
Gah! Is there really nothing we can do about domain name squatters? I can’t think of an equitable solution to this, but it’s incredibly annoying to be developing a web application, come up with the perfect name, and find that some moron has been sitting on it for 3 years with a placeholder page.
I’m really starting to feel that anyone who has a placeholder page for longer than 1 year should be challenged. Paying some spam-king squatter $5k for a domain name is just not feasible, and we devs shouldn’t have to resort to awkward naming structures or alternative TLDs to avoid this kind of BS.
….
OK, I’m all better now.
