I would have sworn I mentioned these but can’t find any reference. John Grisham’s King of Torts was… predictable. And not very interesting. But I couldn’t put it down. Hmmm. I enjoyed William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition more than any of his recent books. And Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon was pretty damned good, despite similarity to early Gibson novels.
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
“In the 25th century, it’s difficult to die a final death. Humans are issued a cortical stack, implanted into their bodies, into which consciousness is “digitized” and from which -unless the stack is hopelessly damaged- their consciousness can be downloaded (“resleeved”) with its memory intact, into a new body.”
— Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
Blogging from Baghad?
I have no idea if this is the real deal. But if it is, well, it’s kind of amazing. Or maybe not. If it IS legit –and at least one person has done some research– it’s just such a good example of blogging.
“…half an hour ago the oil filled trenches were put on fire. First watching Al-jazeera they said that these were the places that got hit by bombs from an air raid a few miniutes earlier bit when I went up to the roof to take a look I saw that there were too many of them, we heard only three explosions. I took pictures of the nearest. My cousine came and told me he saw police cars standing by one and setting it on fire. Now you can see the columns of smoke all over the city.”
Assume for the sake of discussion this what it appears to be. No governments. No big news organizations. Just some guy in a city under attack, publishing his thoughts, feelings, whatever… to the entire world. The Internet has changed/is changing the world and blogging is an important part of that change.
Doc Searls, David Weinberger: Net fundamentals.
“When we look at utility poles, we see networks as wires. And we see those wires as parts of systems: The phone system, the electric power system, the cable TV system. When we listen to radio or watch TV, we’re told during every break that networks are sources of programming being beamed through the air or through cables. But the Internet is different. It isn’t wiring. It isn’t a system. And it isn’t a source of programming.”
1. The Internet isn’t complicated
2. The Internet isn’t a thing. It’s an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet’s value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internets three virtues:
– a. No one owns it
– b. Everyone can use it
– c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already
Halley Suitt on writing and blogging
“And everything I ever learned about writing didn’t matter anymore. Everything I ever thought about writing went out the window as the breeze blew through my hair and the words poured out of me. I didn’t have to take writing seriously. I didn’t have to take words seriously. I didn’t have to sound like anyone else. I didn’t have to sound like The New Yorker — which weirdly, I sometimes sound like a little by NOT TRYING TO SOUND LIKE IT. So it showed me that I had a lot of hang-ups about writing and it showed me how to get over them fast. It showed me how to sound like myself. It gave me back my voice, which surprised people and surprised no one as much as it surprised me. Blogging was a place I could go and be me, completely, totally, unapologetically me. And if people didn’t like it, screw ’em. And I could write the hell out of the screen and if it blew up and disappeared, it didn’t matter anyway, because I could always come back and try something else again later. So despite all my inclinations towards bottles of ink and pads of paper, I started to blog and blog and blog and blog and there was no stopping me.”
Windows Media Encoder Series 9
Discovering the power of Windows Media Encoder Series 9. I’m really poor with math and have to believe I’ve made some kind of error but it appears that Media Encoder crunched a 780 meg avi file down to a 9 meg wmv file. And it still looks pretty good. I don’t see how that can be. Feeling my way along with new tools and you can check out a couple of early projects. The first is a 5 minute montage of pix from many moons ago. The second is a sixty second trailer for an 18 minute piece I did on The Derry Brownfield Show (did I post this already?).
Till now, I’ve really tried to make everything work for folks still on dial-ups but I think I gotta let that go. Life is just shitty at anything less than broadband. I know, I was there for many years. It just sucks and I’m sorry about it. So get cable if you can or DSL. If not, just check your email and forget the web. It really isn’t there for a dial-up.
Pattern Recognition
Finished William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and enjoyed it as much as expected. With the characters and settings still in my head, it was strange to read (on Gibson’s blog) how real they are for the creator:
“One odd moment, sitting in the lower lobby of the SoHo Grand, Cayce’s entrance suddenly unspooled and I looked up, almost expecting her to walk in. And simultaneously reminded I don’t know what she looks like; she’s written “from inside”.
This means zip to anyone that has not read the book. Other nuggets that got some highlighter:
“Like sitting in a pitch-dark cellar conversing with people at a distance of about fifteen feet.” (pg4)
“The future is there, looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now. (pg57)
“Far more creativity, today, goes into the marketing of products than into the products themselves, athletic shoes or feature films.” (pg67)
“Musicians, today, if they’re clever, put new compositions out onthe web, like pies set to cool on a window ledge, and wait for other people to anonymously rework them. Ten will be all wrong, but the eleventh may be genius. And free. It’s as though the creative process is no longer contained within an individual skull, if indeed it every was.Everything, today, is to some extent the reflection of something else.” (pg68)
“History erased via the substitution of an identical object.” (pg194)
And my favorite…
“She is increasingly of the opinion that worrying about problems doesn’t help solve them, but she hasn’t really found an alternative yet. Surely you can’t just leave them there.” (pg92)
Derry Brownfield Show Trailer
I’ve spent most of my evenings for the past couple of weeks working on my first video project. The hardwarde (Sony) and software (Studio 8) have gotten so good and so affordable, I had to take the plunge. I decided I needed a practice project that would hold my interest while allowing me to make countless mistakes. The result is an 18 minute piece on The Derry Brownfield Show, a daily, one-hour talk show heard on 80+ radio stations. Documentary is too grand a word but my objective was to give listeners a peek into the studio. Lots of places to make mistakes: lighting, sound, composition. Once I get the basics in hand, I’ll try something a bit more creative. These buggers are too large for downloading but I’ve made a little 60 second trailer. [Watch on YouTube]
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
No, I can’t think of anything I didn’t like about Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Favorite scene? Maybe when a paranoid, strung out Chuck Barris puts a gun to the head of The Unknown Comic demanding to know his name. I hope every word of it was true.
Wanted: white male boxer
Thanks to Terry McVey for spotting this classified in The Daily Dunklin Democrat (January 19, 2003). If you missed it, it’s the edition with the story by Buddy Winkle on professional wrestling, featuring James Arness and Psycho.