If you have suggestions, or you think I’ve missed something out, let me know. You can either leave a comment or use the Contact page.

(SuperAmazingDoesItForYou video link)

After a morning spent tussling with installing, then uninstalling Zotero, I’ve finally had it with those instructional videos that software designers create. I think that nothing beats the written word for communication of information, but I’m consistently finding that complex software is being explained by the use of an instructional video.

And usually, that video sucks. Seriously, what’s up with programmers making videos? Are they bored of typing all day?

So, in the spirit of the age, here’s a video for my new, forthcoming product, SuperAmazingDoesItForYou. I haven’t actually got round to writing any of it yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

Bin Badder is a Mac-only piece of art software that I wrote for the online magazine Unlikely 2.0, sometime in the past half-decade. I found it recently when vanity Googling myself, and decided to update the software a little bit and put a copy of it on my site.

(A brief discourse into vanity Googling – I was trying to solve an issue about Google’s cache of this site, which would involve some knowledge of SEO. I think I’ve got it now, so I can stop turning up webpages like this one, which states “People like Pete Hindle are clueless morons of the first degree”, according to Google. Annoyingly, the Sunday Mail can’t get their head around webpage design – it must be, like, 1993 in their office – so you’ll have to dive into the source code for the webpage to see me being humiliated by the middle classes.)

For the original piece, I wrote:

Bin Badder takes the form of one of those annoying you-must-click-through programs, and is a political statement regarding the resurgence of terrorist activities in the west. I make no excuses for using a stupid scripting language for a minority platform – here, the political message directly mirrors the method of distribution. Because such a outré political message is unlikely to be received without knee-jerk response, and only a minority would ever consider the proposed link seriously. Therefore, limiting the choice of viewing to a minority makes little or no difference, as the piece is essentially didactic. And most people respond badly to being didactic-ed upon.

I think the message slightly loses it’s potency this side of the financial meltdown, as we are more concerned with money issues currently than a nebulous “terrorist” organisation whose effectiveness cannot be proved. I don’t doubt that there are terrorists, but I’m pretty much going to cite Bruce Schneier on the social effects of our current security strategy if you wish to start a debate on the subject.

Thanks to Unlikely Stories for hosting the original of the piece, and please take a poke around their site at some of the interesting things they have.