Pete Hindle

Pictures and stuff from a guy who likes coffee.

Tag: internet

April 15, 2011

Massive Tab Sweep

Buster Keaton.

Firefox’s newest version is crashtastic on my Macbook, so I’m putting a bunch of my open tabs on here in a blog post. I’m pretty sure it’s not right to have all these tabs open anyway, and I should have some sort of tab purge normally. Is there a nominal number of open tabs/windows to have underneath, before the pressure of unread & “interesting” tabs becomes some sort of mental pressure?

Whatever, let’s go:

There. Maybe Firefox will work now. Have a good weekend, everybody.

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April 8, 2011

Creativity Linkage

The hard part for any person who is creative is to go back to work and keep being creative. I know that I’m more creative at night; sometime I have to rouse myself out of bed to finish something, or make a note of an idea. But there have been times in my life when it’s just been hard to get the creative juices flowing, especially when I’ve been forced into other peoples schedules.

However, to hang on in there for the 12 years that Josh Mirman states as the period it takes to become a “success”, you’re going to need some strategies. Here’s a few inspirational things that have kept me going recently:

  • Sustainable Creativity, by Micheal Nobbs, is a good start for anyone with less-than amazing energy. Nobbs has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (like I do now) and his discussion of what it takes to keep going on and being creative, when you can hardly keep going with the normal stuff.
  • How To Steal Like An Artist is a good guide to the other part of being creative: getting inspiration.
  • Back to Work is a weekly podcast by Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin about knuckling down and doing things, but it’s a lot more entertaining than that. I often listen to it in the background while I’m working.
  • Fear of Missing Out is a blogpost by Caterina Fake, one of the people who created the photosharing site Flickr (remember that? Used to be huge, sort of prototype social networking). In it, she tells us why social media isn’t always the best thing to pay attention to – you’ll end up craving the funfunfun that your friends are having, and forgetting to make your own fun. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you find making things fun.
  • From Your Desks, by Kate Donnelly, is my favourite blog right now. It’s just interview after interview with brainy writers, artists, and designers, showing you their workspace. I find this fascinating, because it allows you to see the many and varied different ways that people create. Just like I work best at night, other people work in the morning. It’s about finding what works for you, and making a space so that you can come back and do it repeatedly.

 

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April 7, 2011

Every Single Elfquest, Ever, Is Online

You can find the Elfquest archive here: http://www.elfquest.com

I haven’t read any Elfquest. Back when I was seriously into comics, between 1990 and 2000, Elfquest seemed like one of those big things that was just there. It was on a par with Cerebus – a long, ongoing series that was difficult to get into because it was hard to find all the issues. Comics shops used to be notoriously bad at remembering to give you the comics you wanted to pay for, let alone the comics from the past which you might want to read. I’m looking forward to digging through the back-catalogue.

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April 6, 2011

N+1 Magazine’s essay, “Sad as Hell”

“In the past year, I graduated from college, got a desk job, and bought an iPhone: the three vertices of the Bermuda Triangle into which my ability to think in the ways that matter most to me has disappeared. My mental landscape is now so altered that its very appearance must be different than it was at this time last year. I imagine my brain as a newly wretched terrain, littered with gaping chasms (What’s my social security number, again?), expansive lacunae (For the thousandth time, the difference between “synecdoche” and “metonymy,” please?), and recently formed fissures (How the fuck do you spell “Gyllenhaal?”). This is your brain on technology.”

From “Sad as Hell”, by Alice Gregory. Read the rest at N+1 magazine’s website. I highly recommend it.

I would also recommend N+1′s publication, “What was the Hipster?”, which can be obtained from the London Review Bookshop, or for an extortionate amount from the N+1 website. Word to the wise though, N+1 seem to be having some trouble with distribution in the UK.

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December 2, 2010

Free Prize: A Stress Headache

I just got off the phone with Three mobile, and I CLAIM MY FREE PRIZE. Now send paracetamol.

A few days ago, I was sitting in a cafe in Biggleswade, reading my RSS feeds, when I saw an interview with John Allison at Coilhouse. Great! I love John Allison’s webcomics work, being a late convert to Scary-Go-Round, and it’s school-age follow-up, Bad Machinery (currently running). Allison is a smart guy with a lot to say about comics, with his recent “Manifesto for UK Indie Comics in 2010” provoking fierce internet debate. Worth checking out, even if you don’t intend to ever look at another comic.

So I was interested to read what the interview with him would say. I clicked through, and…

I was bombarded with adverts for smut. Coilhouse, it seems, is on the naughty list – that ever-growing list of websites that are considered too rude or ‘adult’ for people to be allowed access to them. Instead of the interview, what I got was a portal, that said for a £5 fee I could look at some adult material. The problem is that I’m not interested in adult material; I’d like to read something that is quite clearly not adult material, but is hosted on a site that might, occasionally, have some pictures which don’t disguise the fact that (whisper it) women have nipples.

I sent an email to Three asking to be removed from the filtering list. About a week later, I got a call from a Three rep with a heavy Indian sub-continent accent, who then put me through to their “iPhone team”. There, a man with a less-heavy Indian accent tried to convince me that I wanted to pay £5 to look at smut, so I was forced to point out that as an adult I don’t need to be protected from filth. I was told by this “iPhone team expert” that my phone was advanced, and that I had advanced internet.

I got real pissed off at this point, and told him that I had one and a half degrees, and I know pretty well how the internet access works, and that I didn’t see why I should have to pay money to get access to the internet. After being on hold for a bit I was told that I would now be given “x-series silver” for free, for the rest of my contract (I asked twice if it was really free, as I was mighty suspicious) and that would allow me to look at “adult” content. I just checked and I can now access coilhouse.net.

The whole process was highly stressful and completely unnecessary. As an adult, I shouldn’t have had to opt out of any online filtering, particularly not filtering that stops me from looking at content that isn’t actually rude. It should have taken a few seconds to opt-out, but instead it took over twenty minutes with me continually having to ask to be removed from the filtering service, and continually turning down any offer of “adult services”.

This is a clear example of the type of two-tier internet that will happen if net neutrality isn’t enforced by law. The site I wanted to see wasn’t rude, or pornography, but to gain access to it I had to argue with people at my internet provider. If the UK’s current government can’t see that this is a problem now, they will only have to wait until stories like this become commonplace – because this free headache wasn’t all the trouble I went through.

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November 27, 2010

Banelings! Banelings! Banelings!

Sometimes I come across something that is so far out of my experience that I am fascinated. This is a video made by “Husky”, who is internet-famous for his Starcraft 2 commentary. The piece is a parody of a Justin Bieber song.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Bieber song, nor have I played Starcraft. I’ve heard of both of these things, and poking around Husky’s back-catalogue of Youtube videos is interesting as it exposes me to a lot of expressions I’ve never heard before (rage-quit? Gibs?), but I’m not too interested in searching out the original song.

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October 29, 2010

Ce n’est pas un billet de blog sur la China Miéville

I’m not the only person to have “beef” with major internet corporations. For instance, here’s the full text of a letter from China Miéville to Facebook, asking for them to stop impersonators on their site.

Facebook
1601 S. California Avenue
Palo Alto
CA 94304
USA
6 October 2010

Dear Facebook People,

URGENT COMPLAINT– PLEASE READ, MORE ACTION TO FOLLOW SHORTLY

1) The short version:

At least one person, if not more, is/are impersonating me on Facebook, with (a) fake profile(s) claiming my identity. Despite me repeatedly bringing this to your attention, you have taken no action to remedy the situation. And I’m getting very annoyed.

2) The full version:

This thing you hold is called a letter. This is the third time I’ve contacted you, and I’m doing so by this antiquated method because, and I realise this may shock you so brace yourself, I have no Facebook account. Which means it is nigh-on impossible for me to get in touch with you. Kudos for your Ninja avoidance strategies.

Back when you had a button allowing me to alert you to a fake profile despite not having an account myself, I contacted you that way. I was answered with a resonant silence. Subsequently, when the problem persisted, I hunted lengthily for, found and left a message on the phone number you go out of your way to hide. Absolutely nothing happened. So here we go again: third time’s a charm.

I am being imitated on Facebook. I believe the only reason anyone is bothering to do this is because I’m a novelist (published by Macmillan and Random House), a writer and broadcaster, with a minor public profile. I think there are one or two community pages about my stuff on Facebook – that of course is very flattering and nice of people to bother. The problem is that there is or are also pages by someone(s) purporting to be me. This is weird and creepy. What’s worse is I know for a fact that some readers, friends and colleagues are friending ‘China Miéville’ under the impression that it is me, and that others are wondering why ‘China Miéville’ refuses to respond to them. And I have no idea what dreadful things or ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’ are being claimed as mine, nor what ‘I’ am saying.

I know lots of people enjoy being on Facebook. Great. More power to them. Vaya con Dios. Me, though: not my thing. I have absolutely no interest in it. I am not now nor have I ever been a Facebook member. Short of some weird Damascene moment, I will not ever join Facebook – and if that unlikely event occurs, I promise I’ll tell you immediately. In the meantime, though, as a matter of urgency, as a matter of courtesy, as a matter of decency, please respond to my repeated requests:

• Please delete all profiles claiming to be me (with or without the accent on the ‘é’ – last time I looked, I found one ‘China Mieville’, and one more accurately rendered).
• Please do not allow anyone else to impersonate me. I have neither time nor inclination to trawl your listings regularly to see if another bizarre liar has sprung up.
• And while you’re at it, please institute a system whereby those of us with the temerity not to sign up to your service can still contact you on these matters and actually get a [insert cuss-word] answer.

I appeal to you to honour your commitments to security and integrity. Of course as a multi-gajillion-dollar company I have absolutely no meaningful leverage over you at all. If David Fincher’s film doesn’t embarrass you, you’re hardly going to notice the plaintive whining of a geek like me. All I can do is go public. Which is my next plan.

I’m allowing a week for this letter to reach you by airmail, then three days for you to respond to me by phone or the email address provided. Then, if I’ve heard nothing, on 16 October 2010, I’ll send copies of this message to all the literary organizations and publications with which I have connections

…

some of the many books bloggers I know; and anyone else I can think of. I’ll encourage them all to publicise the matter. I’m tired of being impersonated, and I’m sick of you refusing to answer me.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,
China Miéville

Miéville’s an amazing writer, and I picked this story up not via my usual nerd-stops of io9.com and tor.com, but by Google Reader’s ‘explore’ feature (where I found it was featured on many blogs). I don’t think it came up via Miéville’s own site at Rejectamentalist Manifesto. I saw him talk early this year, and from what I could hear he’s not that impressed with the Internet as a whole, so I think his site is more a way of distracting people from whatever footprint he might be making online.

What it says to me is that we have identities beyond our mere physical bodies, and that it takes work to control them, and it takes more work to control them as you become more famous. An “online presence” is a sort of metallic aura, and the more we engage with the online world, the more apparent our aura becomes – but famous people, or people who have some sort of cultural cachet, like Miéville, have an aura that might be beyond their control. For instance, cat-bin lady suddenly became famous and well-known, and lost all privacy she might have had.

Miéville’s specific complaint was not that the virtual dopplegangers were passing themselves off as him, but that they were independently claiming to “like” things. Stelarc, the Australian artist who has an ear on his arm, tried to create autonomous networked copies of himself back in the early 2000s, recognising that at some point our self, our animus, would be replicated – probably imperfectly – by machine. Where this leaves the singular voice of the author, or any individual who would seek to make money from presenting a unique world-view (examples might include comedians, chess-players, and international bankers) is having to defend their uniqueness.

Unless, of course, licensed copies can be made.

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October 5, 2010

Shush

The argument for comments on a website is something like “it allows you to have a conversation with your audience”, but I’m no longer so sure about that. I’m lucky to get some nice comments here, which makes me very happy when it happens, but in the past few months I’ve been fighting an avalanche of spam. I’m not about to turn off comments just yet, but I have been tempted to recently.

Because, jeez, that spam is irritating. And jeez, the comments on other sites are fucking irritating. In fact, commenting has got to such a stage at this point in history that it’s propensity to turn into a slanging match is well known. But is that the right thing? Should we keep commenting as it is, or is it a system that should evolve?

  • The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory – normal person + anonymity + audience = fuckwad. It’s a truism that you can also get on a slightly-more-polite t-shirt.
  • Engadget Turns Off Comments – when a bear-pit like Engadget, whose business plan is dependent upon page-views, turns off it’s comments, you know something is up. “What is normally a charged — but fun — environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations… and that’s just not acceptable.” they said, because citing the above theory would not have a calming effect. They’re back on now though, but by default casual browsers don’t see them.
  • Speak Your Branes – one of the earliest sites dedicated to lampooning the miserable commentator. The choices are mainly culled from the Have Your Say forums of the BBC, which I’m not familiar with. Sounds hellish though.
  • Help us improve debate on CiF (Guardian) – the Guardian is one of the sites where I feel most dismayed by comments. Some subjects, especially the arts coverage, turn into a spiteful mirror of the message of the written article when the comments start. I think that some of what they are suggesting might help, but I’m not sure that having the author of a piece engage with trollish behaviour will do anything to improve matters there.
  • Antisocial Web Script for Greasemonkey – if you can’t beat ‘em, delete ‘em.
  • A Comment on Comments – from Suw Anderson, a mover and shaker in the media world, who notes that most news websites forums are toxic wastelands, and asks these organisations to reconsider the idea of ‘social’. I actually left a length comment on this piece, maybe you could read that. I only made one spelling mistake (I think…)
  • Why there are no comments on Daring Fireball – one of my favourite blogs on the internet, as much as for the voice as the content, responds to criticism that his site should have comments: “I care about what’s best.” Scroll down to the second half of the post for his extended views, which are worth reading.
  • Anger Management for Trolls – a contemporary piece from Wired magazine, which states that science will stop those pesky humans with their bad thoughts. I dunno, Wired, I’m dubious… maybe it has something to do with human nature?

That is a lot of linkage for now, and I’m going to let you click and mull to your own conclusion.  But here’s one last thing, from Mitchell and Webb, which Suw Anderson used in her piece:

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July 27, 2010

The Five-Ball Flash Links

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10179130&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1

Above: the retro/Victoriana/steampunk video for “Flush”. I like the giga-Victoria.

I’ve been learning to juggle five balls recently. Four balls is pretty boring; essentially, it’s throwing two balls in one hand simultaneously – something that’s hard, but not impossible. Throwing five balls is something other entirely, requiring a serious amount of practice and training. Thankfully, I’ve got the internet to help out.

I don’t read all this stuff a lot, because it’s maddening to think about it at the same time as trying to do it. There’s a certain about of mindful meditation, but after a while I’ve just been listening to music. When not throwing balls into the air, I’ve been catching up with my reading or watching movies. It’s not all work work work, y’know.

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February 5, 2010

Browsing for Entertainment?

I hate and love the way we browse the web.

I’m almost certainly somebody with a high degree of addiction to the written word. It’s not an internet addiction; I was raised in a family that has an unholy veneration for the written word, and the advent of the internet just allowed me a greater access to a wider range of subjects. More often than not, it’s the next link to the next interesting thing that keeps me stuck in my chair. I can get stuck into a subject, and emerge with my eyeballs throbbing and the front of my skull feeling weirdly disjointed from the rest of me. I’m sure you know what I mean – hotels in Berlin? Patagonia? The Russian space program in the pre-perestroika eighties?

Hey, we all have our foibles.

For me, this love of words is so strong that I don’t bother to watch explanatory videos. If you can’t write a few paragraphs of text to explain your project, software, or website, then it’s likely that I won’t watch the video. I tell myself that the reason is for this is that my reading speed is so high, I would deal with text better – but it might be that I just love reading.

But what I dislike about the way we browse the web, this hopping between different sources, is the lack of depth that it encourages. Not in the writers, authors, and creators, but in the reading of what we see online. If a particularly good, well-researched article is published online, you’ll see a flurry of links to it within the first few days, gradually dying off over time. There’s also a major “bubble” effect, where people on the internet write about people they know on the internet, and claim that it’s important.

(Sadly, this is also part of our economy as well; it’s ludicrous to think that any of the dotcom businesses are not incredibly overvalued at the moment, including the larger companies such as Google and Yahoo! If you disagree, look at Yahoo!’s rapid fall from grace after last years attempted takeover. These companies are still as overvalued, as they have been for more than a decade.)

It’s this bubble that causes the lack of depth. Our system of search, our way we hunt out interesting things on the internet, is based on the recommendations of such a small and narrow-minded set of interests that we see only a fraction of what is available. Compare typing into Google to walking through a large bookshop, or a library; you’ll never get distracted by an interesting title on the way to your email. You’ll never linger in the economics section because you caught a glimpse of an attractive person browsing around there. And you’ll never pick up a copy of Borges’ Fictions because it has a great cover.

And that’s what I hate; the narrowing down of accidental discoveries. Because without that, we’re all reading from the same page.

Further Reading

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