The Significance of Diaries

While reading for my generals, I have been taking note of all weblog/diary related material with the intention of posting it eventually. Today I ran across an engaging quote in Yi-Fu Tuan’s paper Significance of Artifact:

Diaries retain a measure of the past in the present. First as a physical object we can see that the binding is fragile and that the pages are yellow with age. Then there is the testimony of penmanship—the way that it has changed over the years. Most important of all, obviously, are the feelings, moods, and incidents as they are captured in the entries. But how etiolated they now seem. The keeping of a diary may indeed reassure an individual that he has lived. On the other hand, the skeletal notes and the blank pages are reminders of how little of time can be salvaged by such a literary device. On April 7, 1824, Eugène Delacroix, after reading through what he had written earlier in his diary, added the following comments:

I feel that I still retain control of the days about which I have made entries, even when they are past. But as for the days which are not mentioned in the diary, it is as if they had never existed. What dark abyss has swallowed them up? Are these flimsy pages the only token I have of my past existence? And so my mind and the life history of my soul are to be destroyed because I am not willing to commit to paper that part of them which might thereby be preserved”

I wish I had more time to unpack this, but I’m a bit under the gun (oral exam in t-minus 2 weeks), but I wanted to post it before I forgot and it was lost like the rest of my existence during this busy time.

This ain’t no charade, moron

nissan muranoThe newest billboard on the interstate circuit is an advertisement for the recent Nissan “sport utility vehicle,” the Murano. Nissan is certainly trying to push some envelope with this car, which one I’m not entirely sure, but most probably the I-hope-to-god-I’m-not-going-to-that-future-futuristic envelope invented by the Pontiac Aztek. And the most striking feature of this ugly ass SUV is its name: Murano.

I may not speak Italiano, but here in the sweet US of A that word would be pronounced “idiot.” To add insult to injury, anyone driving a Murano is also self applying the name stupid to their choice in transportation. I just can’t see how this slipped passed the focus groups and executive decisions.. you might as well be honest like Dihatsu and call it the Charade.

The tan, svelte Marlow

anil marlowFor those of you who made it to SXSW this year, especially them people who I planned on meeting up with or attended my panel, I apologize. I had my shitkickers buffed and my wifi antenna packed, but due to financial constraints, I was unable to make it to Austin; it was quite a sad weekend here in Boston.

I did apparently make an appearance on my very own panel.. a tan, svelte speaking moment captured by audience member Anil Dash. We’ll just say I’m way ahead of Steve Mann in my telepresence skillz. Just try me.

I’m converted! Hallelujah!

I have to say, I have been skeptical about Friendster since I received my first spam many months ago. But when I was invited to join by one of my professors yesterday (given, he’s a social networks researcher), I couldn’t resist the temptation any longer.

Of course I’m drooling over the data set, and worked up about the potential to do some analysis, but the most exciting part has been exploring the structure of my personal network. Two initial observations:

  1. Friends are often connected in unexpected ways. Even though the interface doesn’t support this sort of exploration, it is common to find a third party that is connected to two of your friends you would never expect to know each other. Perhaps they don’t, but damn, it’s a small world.
  2. Personal networks have quite a bit of overlap. After adding a few of my friends, I was connected to a surprising number of people, over 5k, in what I assume is three degrees of separation. But with every new friend I add, the number of new people I in my network seems to shrink.

For all it’s worth, Friendster is much more fun than I thought it would be. Obviously, the more people they convince, the more interesting it will become. And then of course they’ll fail to find a suitable business model, close their front door, and sell off this amazing data set for millions of dollars. Or get acquired by Microsoft.

When geeks strike back!

geek headsetAli Rahimi, self-proclaimed “Coolest Stud at MIT” claimed his title thanks to a retro-sheik headset design manufactured for his cell phone.

English dork Nick Roope, associated with the B3ta crew claimed rights to this title (or another analogous stud title in England), revealing his prior design, implementation, and publication of old-skool headset.

Embittered with rage and fury, Ali has thrown the ball back into Nick’s court. The audience is tense. And we all wonder.. do geeks believe in ex post facto laws?

You go girl!

One never knows how to react when a good friend starts a weblog. I mean, sure, everyone’s doing it and I support each and every little one of them! Go blogs! But when a friend picks up the torch, there are only two ways things can progress:

  1. You pick up some new facts about them that you didn’t want to know, or ignored purposefully, an intentional amnesia that sustained your tenuous friendship, or
  2. Everything about them makes you more intrigued, allowing your friendship to blossom into something bigger, better, and more beautiful.

andrea harnerAndrea Harner, the girl behind the pictures behind BlackPeopleLoveUs.com, among other things, is an old friend with a new blog. And unfortunately she falls into the first category. LOL! LOL! No really, her shit is tight, and putting me to shame.

you go girl: andrea’s photo blog

Some notes on WiFi theft

Some may remember that I chose my current apartment based on the wifi capital of the neighborhood. The area is richer than I would ever have expected, moving from 2 networks last May to a whopping 15 at current despite the sparseness of residences (mostly Victorians).

Of these 15 networks, 10 are strong enough to reliably reach with my antenna-equipped laptop, and only 2 of those are not encrypted. I made a huge faux pas last week when, under extreme duress due to network link droppage, I opened up my benefactor’s router control panel, released the host DHCP and rebooted the router. Note that I’ve done this before many times, and with no effect.

Someone in the household must have noticed because now, despite getting a signal and IP address, I am unable to push anything through the router. At first I assumed this behavior to be a timely bug, but as it persists, I’m starting to suspect some human intervention.

I want free wifi, no doubt about it. But given that people will be suspicious of my theft, I’m willing to lend a helping hand and contribute to the cause. Sans posting flyers all over my neighborhood, I can’t see any way of contacting my potential providers (especially since 14 of the 15 have default SSIDs). It’s just unfortunate that the technology is engineered in a way that prevents me from contributing.

To my old network provider: so long, and thanks for all the bandwidth.

Silly Americans, the Internet is for other countries

sunsetThe last posted date on my weblog often becomes a daunting reminder of how thin I can spread myself. More importantly, it’s a testament to how connected a person needs to be to keep up to date with the connected lives of webloggers.

As it turns out, Mexico was a dichotomous experience with respect to the online world. On one side, stranded at my resort for the Sunbelt Conference, I had access to the hotel’s “business center,” a euphemism for one computer with 57.6k modem and a fax machine open 4-8 hours daily. With 200 conference attendees looking to keep in touch with their distant friends, the line for this stupid computer was usually 5 deep. The final two days of the conference the hotel closed the business center altogether, claiming a transition between service providers. To say the least, my aspirations of doing some live blogging of the conference went unfulfilled.

Continue reading “Silly Americans, the Internet is for other countries”

The Terrible Mr. G

What happens when you play Counterstrike too much? You end up with a potty mouth. And some enemies:

So, the story goes that co-worker A got sick of co-worker B’s constant profanity whilst playing Counter Strike. Co-worker A then hid a microphone next to co-worker B’s desk, and captured this stream of rantings. Then, as co-worker A was a member of an electronic music-making concern, he endeavored to edit it all together. The end result was this: The Terrible Mr. G.

I highly recommend the song above to anyone who has played/knows someone who plays/heard someone play Counterstrike (via my first mine).