Gigli currently at a rating of 20 on Metacritic and falling.
I love that Anil, Userland competitor, is wearing a Blogger tshirt in this photo. Competition? Naw, nothing but love between weblog software companies.
Restaurant, The
I don't watch reality shows, but I made an exception for the The Restaurant, a show about the opening a new NYC restaurant...cause I like food and restaurants. About five minutes in, I knew it was a mistake. It's like they took everything I hate about New York & media and crammed it all into one show. Everyone was a jackass...I had to turn it off after 10 minutes. Should have known when I first heard about it via Gawker. Blech.
Lance shuts down Glassdog. Well, sort of, but not really
@ the movies
The Kid Stays in the Picture
The story of Hollywood mogul Robert Evans is reason enough to tune into this film, but the on-the-cheap special effects are notable as well. The primary effect -- building on Ken Burns' technique of panning and zooming across photographs to create the illusion of motion -- separates the subjects of photos from the backgrounds and then panning each at different speeds, creating a remarkably alive 3-D "scene", almost like Bullet-Time from the Matrix, only with photos.
Uncommon knowledge about a computer game
I played a few games of 20 questions against a computer yesterday. The system learns how to guess more effectively from its opponents; the more people play it, the better it gets. It's pretty good right now, but needs a little work here and there. It guessed that I was thinking of "a computer game" in about 16 tries, but offered up the following extra information about computer games after its successful guess:
Uncommon Knowledge about a computer game
Does it have a handle? I say Probably.
Is it cold blooded? I say Probably.
Does it lay eggs? I say Probably.
Does it live in grass-lands? I say Probably.
Can it be worn by a person? I say Probably.
Does it change colours? I say Yes.
Does it beep? I say Probably.
Can you read it? I say Yes.
Can it swim? I say Probably.
Does it have a hole in it? I say Yes.
Do you open and close it? I say Yes.
Can it live out of water? I say Doubtful.
Have you seen one in real life? I say No.
Does it reflect objects? I say Yes.
Is it mechanical? I say Yes.
Does it usually live on a farm? I say Probably.
Did it conclude I was thinking of a video game or a cold blooded duck with a handle? Or, as a computer game itself, is it so deluded as to believe it can swim and lay eggs?
Budget cuts=no overniters for air marshalls, $4bn/mo in Iraq? It just don't add up!. Josh Marshall follows the money. Did I mention the hijacking warning?
You'd think that Yahoo! could do a better job in coordinating their advertising with their news content. screenshot of Kobe pic right next to Reebok "Whodunit?" ad
Pirate radio's all you get in Marfa, Texas. unless you have XM radio or something, but you don't.
Stare tactics: NYPD toodling around on Segways. so Segways aren't allowed on the street, and bikes aren't allowed on the sidewalk?
Actual Phrases from My American History Textbook. A McSweeney's list
Keep your marketing department out of my iPod
Well, Sippey's publishing stuff on Stating the Obvious again, offering up some possible next steps for Apple's iPod, including making it more like TiVo:
Imagine similar functionality on the iPod: when you sync your catalog with iTunes, the device uses iSync to fetch new content to insert into the iPod UI: headline news, sports scores, weather reports...as well as promotional content for the Music store, quick surveys, email program opt-ins, third party ads, etc. Give the user the ability to opt out of the marketing content, of course, but provide micro-incentives like Amazon.com's nickel-incentive trivia program towards song purchases at the Music Store.
Great idea and pretty much inevitable, but the suggestion of it makes me want to hop on a plane to SF and strangle the responsible party. I see ads when I pee. I pay to watch ads at the movie theatre. Most television programming is filler for advertising (which explains why most of TV sucks). Many magazines are mostly advertising. MTV is 100% advertising. The Post-It Notes on my desk are from Barclay's Capital. Clothing without prominent advertising printed on it is getting difficult to find. I am marketed to and advertised to everywhere I go. So now I'm supposed to sit through promotions -- while draining my battery, BTW -- each time I turn on my iPod?
Of course not...the user will have "the ability to opt out of the marketing content". Given that in the entire history of capitalism, this has happened very few times, I'm understandably more than a little cynical on that reassurance. I guess if anyone could pull off a good balance between the utility of such a system to the user (which could be considerable) and the annoyance factor, it would be Apple (or Google). But that's a pretty big if.
I'm an iPod owner. Owner. I own it. It's mine. It's not Apple's, BMG's, or Universal's. It's mine. I can put whatever I want on it, be it music or anything else that I can fit into its 15 gigabytes. As Cory found with his T-Mobile Sidekick, purchasing a device that relies on a service/interface/whatever that is controlled by someone else is not ownership. Such rented devices (TiVo springs to mind) can be extremely useful, but perhaps not so good in the long term (what happens when TiVo goes out of business?). If Apple is pushing me advertisements and marketing which I can't opt out of and are draining *my* battery while I look at them and taking up *my* hard drive space, is my iPod really mine or is it Apple's? Will there continue to be a market for hardware that the buyer completely owns or -- because it makes more money for the companies producing the hardware -- will everything I "own" in the future (telephone, DVD player, DVR, music player, cell phone, PDA, PC, refrigerator, television, washing machine, &c.) be dependant on a service for its continued operation?
Using inkblots as passwords. Microsoft Research
Sun tattoo
Late last week, I got a small cut on my chest that I covered with a band-aid. Before heading out to the beach on Saturday, I took the band-aid off and put on some SPF 15 sunscreen. After taking a post-beach shower, I looked in the mirror and noticed a mark on my chest. Somehow the skin where the adhesive parts of the band-aid had been affixed had burned a bright red, leaving the part where the bandage was, along with the rest of my chest, lightly tanned. So now I've got what looks like a band-aid sun-tattooed on my chest.
3mm photos of Paris, by street. oh, and nine other French cities. via archinect.com
That one will stick with me for awhile
While picking out some orange juice at the market just now, I glanced at the expiration date. SEPT 11. Instead of thinking, "oh, that's a good one, that'll keep for awhile," I thought, of course, of 9/11.
Six Apart will be unveiling the features for TypePad this week. On the first day of TypePad, my CMS gave to me...
"Um, are you a dealer?" production groupblog of 'Buddy: The Musical'. neighbor spies piles of prop money. mild hilarity
@ the movies
Seabiscuit
Pretty good, but a little heavy-handed in spots. Can Hollywood make a "serious" film without being heavy-handed?
Also, before the show, Mark bounded up to the folks waiting in the front of the line to get into the theatre and said, "are you guys as excited as we are to see Seabiscuit?" Instead of the proper response of laughing nervously, one of the guys yelled, "yeah!" We then laughed nervously.
Disney celebrates infinite copyright extension of 75yo Mickey with big merchandising push. guess what's not on Lessig's Amazon wishlist
Sesame Street Fever OR Sesame Disco? Now you don't have to choose.. via TravelersDiagram.com
'little guy' stars of MPAA ads losing jobs as studios move production out of US. est. impact to US economy: up to $10bn/yr
Pop!Tech 2003
The highly regarded Pop!Tech conference is coming up in a few months, October 16-19 to be exact. I've never been, but from hearing about from various sources (a list below), it sounds like an ambitious conference that tries to identify and discuss broad trends across politics, technology, culture, science, and economics...and largely succeeds in doing so. This year's roster of speakers includes Golan Levin, Tom DeMarco, James Howard Kunstler, the L Train, Bob Metcalfe, and Kevin Sites.
The organizers of Pop!Tech have been nice enough to extend a special offer to kottke.org readers. Register for Pop!Tech 2003 using this link and you'll save $200 off the early bird rate and $500 off the regular price. Who says kottke.org never saved anyone any money?
Oh and here's the promised links to coverage of past Pop!Tech conferences:
PopTech, The Blog (J.D. Lasica and Buzz Bruggeman)
PopTech 2002 coverage (David Weinberger)
PopTech 2002 (Ernest Svenson)
Conferenza Pop!Tech 2002 Report #1 (Shel Israel)
Conferenza Pop!Tech 2002 Report #2 (Shel Israel)
Conferenza Pop!Tech 2002 Report #3 (Shel Israel)
My toothbrush can kick your toothbrush's ass
I returned home from the drug store last night ready to write something about the odd arms race that's developed among toothbrush manufacturers. A competition is afoot to make the world's most colorful, fat-handled, ergonomic, elaborately bristled, and, in some cases, motorized toothbrush. I was skeptical that any of this was in the service of making consumers' teeth cleaner, but merely for emptying our pocketbooks at a faster rate for the privilege of buying something that doesn't even fit in the toothbrush holder. But, I had to buy a new brush, so I selected the one that least resembled a cartoon spaceship and placed it in my basket.
This morning, I brushed my teeth with my new toothbrush. And damn if it didn't feel about 200% better than my old brush. The grip was very comfortable, and the way the brush was angled...well, it was just perfect. My teeth practically brushed themselves. The toothbrush arms race is paying off! Here's to toothbrushes with really big handles and 6 HP motors.
39 networks showing MPAA ad in primetime 'roadblock' Friday. Conveniently, they're only owned by 8 companies. Viacom has 11.
Billy Blob: flash worth loving. Karma Ghost and Butterfly Effect rocked at Sundance
video game incorporates sunlight into gameplay. Don't go outside, just open the window.
Rex reports from inside Minn. Flash Mob. "Confusion is good." Agreed, but NY Cow Parade is still lame.
new NYC trend: mogul cons and ex-cons. If you're indicted, you're invited.
Ridiculous over-the-top Flash site. This is why people hate designers.
Digital (not txt) Gutenberg. "The first book printed with movable type.". Ben and Mena are so modest
rent a cottage, get a passive aggressive landlord for free. ancient (1997) Slate piece
whoa, Nelly. Gawker discovers comments. daring people to keep talking about metrosexuals
On fashion
Things that are in right now or have been in within the past year or so: velour & terrycloth sweatsuits, trucker hats, jeans that look like you've been wearing them to shingle roofs for 12 years but really you just paid $132 for them, mohawks (also fauxhawks and pomohawks), hoodies, and tshirts that are brand new but look like they are old.
Me? I'm biding my time for the day when unironed dress shirts, vintage Old Navy jeans, tshirts wrinkled from being folded in the dresser, and pants wrinkled from the hanger become fashionable. Then I will be money. So, so money.
Entering a "how many antenna balls are in this Chevy Trailblazer?" contest. Serious geekfest, surprise ending
The Helvetica vs. Arial fighting game. For the ...wait for it.... type of person that likes fonts *and* Street Fighter
A soup by any other name
I have a soft spot in my heart belly for soups derived from other types of food. I had a bowl of mashed potato soup (w/ broccoli and cheddar) yesterday. I've had cheeseburger soup (if only it had been bacon cheeseburger soup). Baked potato soup (w/ sour cream and chives). Macaroni and cheese soup. Tortilla soup. Salisbury steak soup.
Flavors I am not looking forward to trying: belgian waffles soup, peanut butter and jelly soup, eggs benedict soup, chicken salad on rye soup, liver and onion soup, or bruschetta soup.
Great review of the design of cover to Ann Coulter's book. "First of all, everything is centered. This is a gross misrepresentation of Coulter, who couldn’t be further to the right."
Hmmm, looks like John Robb's weblog did get axed @ Userland. Not cool at all
How to Read Wired Magazine. Classic Suck from October 1995
NBC pursuing LeBlanc for 'Friends' spinoff. Matt, if a monkey's involved, RUN AWAY
Q I have a swarm of bees in my hedge. Can you take them away? A Yes, but are they bees?. UK-centric bee FAQ
BBC (rightly) praised for making stuff up. unsung thousands of hours of original plays/movies/drama on radio
Passing Showerman. temporary savantism through transcranial magnetic stimulation
Metropolis interview with Gridlock Sam. co-coined the term "gridlock," put up "Don't even think of parking here" signs
Why We're in Business by Tim O'Reilly. from April 1992 O'Reilly internal newsletter
Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Man. Jorn Barger and weblog as Wunderkammer
Introducing Movable Type. old interview with Ben and Mena
Some preview hacks from Amazon Hacks. But what's with the knife on the cover?
Turns out Wall St dude's $23m Hamptons pad is on a gay cruising beach. Now claims he was drunk and/or it was just a phase in college.
Secret Service Video Lending Library. Of course, you must file a FOIA request...
Tongue Transplant Thuckthethful. in Authtria
Humorous Man Jaywalks in Seattle. Sounds like news to me. Seriously.
"Why, you're hairy, Potter!". out-of-context sexual innuendo from "The Order of the Phoenix"
It was a dark and stormy night (with cheese)
Mariann Simms has won the 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, "a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels". Her submission:
They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white...Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.
The contest is named for Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, a Victorian novelist whose opening to Paul Clifford is widely regarded to be just a bit over-the-top bad:
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
When not winning contests, Mariann runs HumorMeOnline.com.
Some animals Photoshopped together with other animals. Cool, but needs more Jack Nicholson...see below
Gay or Eurotrash street quiz. a pre-metrosexual-era classic
you lived the lie; soon, read the book. gayprom.com
Drudge: I know you are but what am I?. White House tells Drudge that ABC reporter is Gay, Canadian
New White House email system upsets Jakob Nielsen. Does the "I have a differing opinion" batch get bcc'd to John Ashcroft?
ExtremeIroning.com. taking ironing to the edge
Business lessons from the donut and coffee guy
"Next!" said the coffee & donut man (who I'll refer to as "Ralph") from his tiny silver shop-on-wheels, one of many that dot Manhattan on weekday mornings. I stepped up to the window, ordered a glazed donut (75 cents), and when he handed it to me, handed a dollar bill back through the window. Ralph motioned to the pile of change scattered on the counter and hurried on to the next customer, yelling "Next!" over my shoulder. I put the bill down and grabbed a quarter from the pile.
Maybe this situation is typical of Manhattan coffee & donut carts (although two carts near where I work don't do this), but this was the first business establishment I've ever been to that lets its customers make their own change. Intrigued, I walked a few steps away and turned around to watch the interaction between this business and its customers. For five minutes, everyone either threw down exact change or made their own change without any notice from Ralph; he was just too busy pouring coffee or retrieving crullers to pay any attention to the money situation.
If you were the CEO of a big business -- say, a movie studio, music company, or multinational bank -- you'd have been tearing your hair out at this scene. He lets his customers make their own change?!?!! How does he know they're making the correct change? Or putting down any change at all? Or even stealing the change? Where's the technology that prevents the change from being stolen while he's not looking? Surely there's a machine that could be invented to keep track of it. Bad, bad, bad! Unclean, unclean! Does not compute...
Hold on there, Mr. CEO, don't go all HAL 9000 on us. Ralph probably does lose a little bit of change each day to theft & bad math, but more than makes up for it in other ways. The throughput of that tiny stand is amazing. For comparison's sake, I staked out two nearby donut & coffee stands and their time spent per customer was almost double that of Ralph's stand. So, Ralph's doing roughly twice the business with the same resources. Let's see Citibank do that.
It's also apparent that Ralph trusts his customers, and that they both appreciate and return that sense of trust (I know I do). Trust is one of the most difficult "assets" for companies to acquire, but also one of the most valuable. Many companies take shortcuts in getting their customers to trust them, paying lip service to Trust™ in press releases and marketing brochures. Which works, temporarily and superficially, but when you get down to it, you can't market trust...it needs to be earned. People trust you when you trust them.
When an environment of trust is created, good things start happening. Ralph can serve twice as many customers. People get their coffee in half the time. Due to this time savings, people become regulars. Regulars provide Ralph's business with stability, a good reputation, and with customers who have an interest in making correct change (to keep the line moving and keep Ralph in business). Lots of customers who make correct change increase Ralph's profit margin. Etc. Etc.
And what did Ralph have to pay for all this? A bit of change here and there.
masturbation lowers risk of prostate cancer. Gotta give those Aussie researchers a hand
FBI questions ATL man for reading FoxNews critique in coffee shop. i.e., someone REPORTED him for reading. via obscurestore.com
from the secret police files of mr Pablo Picasso. those crazy French.
Larry Wall's State of the Perl Onion address from OSCON 2003. mit Powerpoint slides!
The Tour moves on
Thanks to Mary for stopping by yesterday on her Virtual Book Tour for Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. The Tour moves on to crabwalk.com today; Josh is running an interview with Mary:
I have a very utilitarian bent. I think the things that people have ended up doing after death, however grisly, are great. It's good to be helpful to others. So there is that message, that you can be useful after death. I've gotten letters from people who've said, "Now I'm going to donate my body to science."
Particularly in the beating-heart cadaver chapter, I really came down strong on the side of being in favor of donating organs. It would be such a waste for someone in that situation not to donate with 18,000 people waiting for organs. But for the most part, it's meant just as a fun and informative read.
(And I apologize to all the cycling fans who thought this post was about the Tour de France. Visit the Tour de France blog, the 2003 Tour de France page @ Wikipedia, or follow the action live at VeloNews if you're into that.)
Bilbao, Rio, Taichung. Guggenheim announced for Taiwan?. Zaha Hadid did the moving (literally) design. via Archinect
GameSpot reviews real life, gives it a 9.6/10. "combat actually isn't a major factor for most players in real life, though players are bound to engage in a few skirmishes early in their lives"
mandala paintings. via Dublog
news link collection: stupidnakedpeople.com. a steady stream of people sorely lacking in embarrassment. note: site title legible at 10 paces
Artist Manabu Yamanaka explores Buddhist notions of pain, age, disease. aka, nude portraits of 90+yo Japanese women. probably not for work.
Author Is a Cop-Out
[This is a guest post by Mary Roach as part of the Virtual Book Tour for Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.]
So I wrote this book (buy from Amazon) about the bizarre, amazing, heroic things dead people have managed to achieve in their careers as research cadavers. And I find it all quite impressive and inspiring. You would think, given how I feel and what I know, that by now I'd have contacted the local medical school to fill out a willed body donor form. I have not. I'm a cop-out. I tell people it's because my husband is squeamish and would reather not picture me on a slab, in pieces. This is true, but it's not the whole story. You know what it is? I'll tell you. This is pathetic. I'm having a hard time with the thought of being old, withered, revolting and naked -- did I mention naked? -- in front of strangers. I don't mind their taking out my spleen, cutting off a leg -- none of that bothers me. I simply don't like the idea of healthy young people looking at me and being quietly disgusted by my withered flesh and dilapidated hull. (I mean, I'm 44, and already it's happening!) It's embarrassing. Of course, you can't be embarrassed when you're dead. I'm presumptively embarrassed -- the way I am when I come back from an aggressively hip party and imagine all the things that were said behind my back. Though I'll never hear them, and quite possibly they were never said, they're unsettling nonetheless. How disappointing to realize that even death isn't free from neurotic insecurity!
Very few people donate their bodies to science. I'm curious as to the reasons. What keeps you from doing it? Surely most people have better reasons than mine!
Welcome Mary
The Virtual Book Tour is still chugging along and tomorrow (Wed.), author Mary Roach will be joining me as a guest editor here on kottke.org. She'll be talking about subjects related to her book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Welcome Mary.
On fame and graphic design. "[fame will] change you, and not always for the better"
midwest farm listings to pick your own fruits and vegetables. via Gaper's Block
Digital porn. Not what you think, work safe, and pretty funny.
Bark Mitzvahs?. I swear, some of my best friends are dogs and/or Jewish, but this is inane.
poet Frank O'Hara killed in freak dune buggy accident on Fire Island, 7.25.66. there ARE worse things than wearing the wrong thing, so please, take care
ferry death from crystal meth on Fire Island. no pun intended. via gawker
EU orders farmers to give toys to pigs. from the EU's Euromyths collection
Using the Memex
I've been reading a lot over the past few months, both online and in book form. Not unusual, but I've noticed that I retain a lot more from my online reading than from the offline. My recall of names, facts, circumstances, themes, and lessons from articles I've read online is excellent, but not so good when it comes to books. Part of it is that I approach book reading as a leisure activity and not as work or study, although I'm not sure the opposite is necessarily true for Web reading (partially perhaps, because I do use the web to brush up on design and programming issues -- work stuff). But the bigger reason for the difference is probably due to the nature of what the task of reading entails in those two media.
Books are self-contained. There are 332 pages in my copy of The Selfish Gene (incl. endnotes). There might be a bibliography, but unless you're in the library, reading up on any of the 200 or so references contained therein would prove challenging. Everything you get with a book is in between its front and back covers.**
With the web, you're always in the library. It's not always a proper library (some of the "reference" materials can be a little sketchy), but it's better than nothing. And the materials you want are very often hyperlinked right in the material you're reading for instant research gratification. Web reading is a deeper and more active type of reading. I can completely research a particularly interesting topic, jumping from site to site to Google to site and back to Google, hunting down exactly what my brain is jonsing for, and skim over the stuff I'm not so keen on. I'm not dependent on the author of the book to give me exactly what I want; I can "write" my own book of sorts, editing the subject matter as I see fit. It's this active reading -- researching really -- that I think is responsible for the much higher rate of retention with online reading.
** "Ha ha, not quite!" you're rightly saying to yourself. You've got your whole lifetime of experience and a healthy imagination to draw upon. Two covers my ass, books are as full as you want to make them. That's one of the drawbacks of reading on the web for me. My recall is excellent, but I typically don't stop to ponder like I do with books. There's always that next thing to click on or research. I don't have to work out for myself on which points Dawkins disagrees with Stephen J. Gould...I can just go and read for myself. I might recall more from web reading, but I think I get more from books. (Although, online research while reading a book is a very potent combination...if you remember to ponder before scurrying off to the web for easy answers.)
See also:
The internet is shit (seemingly arguing for libraries instead of the internet...like we should have either one or the other, but not both or the universe will explode)
The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive? (NY Times)
Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (James Gleick)
Project Gutenberg (reading books on the web)
Report: Online Training 'Boring' (Wired News, "Studies have shown that onscreen reading retention is 30 percent lower than with printed material.")
Digital Divide (pbs.org)
As We May Think (Vannevar Bush, Atlantic Monthly)
Matrix Reloaded thread passes 1000 comments. 931 in the old thread, 72 in the new one
@ the movies
Winged Migration
A beautiful study of life and of earth by way of some birds. The cinematography in this film is amazing.
Canadian gov't now growing, selling pot. it's half the street price (is there anything national health care CAN'T do?)
Finding naked people, software will automatically find photos with large amounts of skin color. Can be used for porn filter
Vive Le... Minitel. I can't believe this story is actually dated July 14. 2003.
Hollywood tykes wresting power through email, msg boards. fametracker.com, baby
(How the mighty have fallen) CAA tyke to Page Six' Elizabeth Spiers: 'I'll probably never use e-mail again'. Page Six' Elizabeth Spiers ??!!
"You read the script: 'Midget walks across stage.' And that's what I did.". Bloodymidgets.com, via Obscurestore.com
A bunch of behind the scenes stuff about Winged Migration. Great movie, btw
New sidebar links
I redid the "not recommended" links on the front page of the site. I'm using Movable Type to manage them.
Movable Type is the new way to do absolutely everything, BTW. I use it for my weblog, my bookmarks, my grocery shopping list, and my address book. I no longer need TiVo or my email application...I run everything through MT. Going to movies these days is easy with MT. It checks my vision, does root canals, makes my travel plans, transports me back in time, and balances my checkbook. Even expensive hookers are a thing of the past with Movable Type (although it doesn't go down as often as Blogger does). Thank you MT, you've made my life worth living again!
So yeah, new sidebar links. Check out the new ones if you're into reading words and clicking links.
whey all ze french people at?. heads up: that man accosting you on that Manhattan street may be writing for the Times.
@ the movies
Adaptation
What can I say about this film that hasn't been said (by me) before? Nothing.
After 40-years, father-son team complete Zeus' family tree. 3,673 figures of Greek Mythology, all related in a 20-generation family