found_drama

• Must Read: The Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life
  Read 6 of the 20; added the rest to GoodReads (except for the 2 that weren’t in GoodReads); not sure about “life-changing” but at least 5 of the 6 I have already read were very very good.
  (tags: scifi literature)
• TED 2008: Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes, Susan Blackmore Says
  (tags: meme memetics research essay todo)

• How to recreate Silverback’s Parallax
  at Vitamin Features (via JH)
  (tags: css webdev design)

• nintendo8.com
  “play Nintendo 8-bit games online (no download required)” — but since when was Ducktales 2 a Top 100 game?
  (tags: games todo)
• 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA HDD Stage Rack
  @ GeekStuff4U.com (via LifeHacker): this is an awesome idea — a “dock” for your “otherwise internal” hard drives
  (tags: geek hardware)
• Casual cryptography for web developers
  (tags: cryptography security webdev work todo essay)

The most excellent folks at Magic Hat gave me a shout out in their Mardi Gras wrap-up blog post today:

A special thanks to Rob Friesel over at found drama for letting us use one of his 2007 Mardi Gras photos for our official site. Check out the great photos he took this year.

You’re welcome!

For anyone in VT that didn’t make it out this year, it was a blast. Good times had by all, for sure. Next year should be awesome, as well.

Read Wired’s piece on the 37signals guys last night and then saw it again this morning via DF.  Haven’t looked around too much to see what others are saying but the DF emphasis seems to be on “ginned-up conflict” vs. doubled revenue in ‘07.  Coming away from the article last night, I find myself with my own mixed feelings about their approach.

On the one hand, if you’ve created something as massively popular as Rails, the conventional wisdom is that you are in some way beholden to that project both technically and culturally.  And regardless of the technical successes and/or limitations of your platform, there is a definite case to be made for a cultural failure if that cultural figurehead is out there making hostile statements and calling everyone else a crybaby.  Doubled revenues are nice but carving out a niche island and then burning all the bridges that lead there?

On the other, I would be a liar if I didn’t see some merit to the “fuck off” approach.  The conventional wisdom also tells you that “everyone else” is going to lean on you for answers first instead of either (a) trying to figure it out themselves or (b) making a substantive contribution.  I.e., Newton may have stood humbly on the shoulders of giants but he’s still Newton.  Not that the lads at 37signals are necessarily making Newton-level contributions to the webdev or business fields but I don’t believe that the metaphor is any less apt.

For me, the crux of the article lies in one particular quote:

“Someone on the outside would look at what we do and say, Let’s ratchet it up to some enterprise level,’” he argues. “I don’t want to make our software more complicated. I really don’t understand why everyone’s interested in Fortune 500 customers. I just don’t get that.”

Suggesting that it’s about your goals and your audience.  There is a lot of pressure when you shift your focus to those enterprise deals; the stakes are higher, the scopes change — everything is different.  And if that’s not where you want to be, if you are unwilling or unprepared to go there, then by all means don’t.  Maybe it’s because you believe the Fortune 500 companies are aging dinosaurs whose times are limited.  Maybe you just don’t like wearing collared shirts to your demos and presentations.  If nothing else: if your brand and your credibility are built on values like keeping it small and always keeping the middle-finger preemptively and defensively up, well then have at it.

I would suggest, dear reader, that when considering Consider the Lobster, that you consider it in the same light as David Foster Wallace’s collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. Use that book as your frame of reference for style and content and you can place this collection firmly into the category of “typical” DFW. That being said, if you thoroughly enjoyed A Supposedly Fun Thing… then you’ll likely thoroughly enjoy this one as well; by that same coin, if you’re on the fence, you’re unlikely to be won over; and if you dislike DFW¹ then this collection will probably do you no favors.

So in this reviewer’s opinion: Consider the Lobster is more of the same. But that’s a good thing. Read the rest of this entry »

1. If you truly and I mean honestly and passionately dislike DFW, well then I suggest some rigorous therapeutic interventions. [↩]

More than slightly b’gocked by the following:

While exploring Amazon.com’s MP3 offerings today, I came across something rather unexpected.  When I found In Rainbows, the sidebar suggested that I might also enjoy this collection of lullaby renditions of familiar Radiohead songs.

???

A. & I checked out a few samples.  And I was surprised that these were actually…  pretty… good?  Though perhaps not as cognitively dissonant as Metallica lullabies.  Meanwhile lullaby versions of The Cure could have passed as simply dub versions of those particular songs.

Following up on my first X-Files viewing post:

• Conduit. Season one, episode four. Back to the central alien theme; Duchovny nails Mulder and brings out the combination of quirk and moroseness that is this character’s hallmark. On the DVD series’ first disc, this is by far the best episode thus far. It has nuanced variations on the character archetypes that will become part of the show’s signature but more so than that, this episode has a wonderful rhythm and balance. We keep swinging nicely between the conventional and the fantastic; as if the field report narration wasn’t enough, it becomes apparent in this episode that Scully rules the narrative: bikers have crazy stories and a burned-off ear isn’t “evidence” of UFO shit but you’ll be damned if you don’t witness some creepy and not-quite-explicable shit of your own…
• The Jersey Devil. Season one, episode five. A Neanderthal (???) “wild man” comes out of the Pine Barrens to terrorize Atlantic City, NJ. It’s a bit jarring to go from “Conduit” to this episode though. “Conduit” is in the central narrative arc; “Conduit” is structurally sound and establishes Scully as our narrator; “Conduit” is emotional. “The Jersey Devil” seems to discard some of this. It’s played a bit flat. Scully-as-narrator seems almost discarded; but we do get some fair characterization with respect to Scully trying to “have a life” and a bit more Mulder’s obsessive tendencies.
• Shadows. Season one, episode six. A decent rebound off of “The Jersey Devil”; we still don’t get back to the central narrative but we do get Scully-as-narrator back in substantive effect. We don’t mind that there are no aliens because the story is strong on its own. Poltergeists versus terrorists? Hell yes.
• Ghost in the Machine. Season one, episode seven. Not exactly brushing against the paranormal. Which maybe explains why our principals are involved only at the behest of some estranged colleague of Mulder’s. Narrative structure (viz. Scully) returns rather strongly here, more so than in “Shadows”. But ten or so years after this episode was produced, this one feels oddly dated. It isn’t the DOD involvement (that shit never goes out of style); it’s the modems and the huge honkin’ CRTs and the impossibly sophisticated AI apparatus. At least their AI “death” scene gives the appropriate propers to Kubrick and HAL9000.
• Ice.  Season one, episode eight.  Core subject matter but not the core story line; all done with ice cores.  I find myself missing the Scully field report here but I suppose it would not work in the overall narrative structure of this particular episode.  Über-hostile ammonia breathing space worms infecting an arctic ice crew and then Mulder and Scully get on the case.  Probably the best-paced episode yet; certainly the most suspenseful.

Got a better spot than last year, at least as far as pictures go. Speaking of which: here are the rest of the Mardi Gras pictures.  (I think that this one is by far the best.)

A lot of Obama supporters and stickers out there in the crowd today.  Let’s hope that bodes well for March 4th.

• Steps Magazine: Trains and Plants
  via B^2
  (tags: biology plants science genetics research essay)
• CONTEST: Tell Us Your New Weird Story, Win Tons of Cool Stuff!
  via Alana: The Bus Pass story. All the way…
  (tags: writing todo)
• The Internet Review of Science Fiction
  via Alana
  (tags: fiction scifi magazine writing todo)
• Daily Kos: I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype (now a supporter)
  Need to finish but looks like a good, fair, and thorough side-by-side of Hillary vs. Obama
  (tags: blog politics news essay todo)