Ludovician

A Systematic Classification of Office Chairs

2010-07-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

During a recent fruitless search for a replacement near-desk seating solution, I made an important discovery: there are only three basic designs of office chair currently available in the industrialized world.

1. Plain ugly

2. Space-age ugly

3. Faux-leather executive ugly

Furthermore, my research has revealed that any outlier chair not conforming to this sophisticated classification system is either uncomfortable beyond any reasonable measure or moronically expensive.

The Computer Is Dead, Long Live the iPad?

2010-02-02T13:11:00.000-08:00

There's something I've never really understood about computers: Processors speed up, memory grows, software evolves ... and yet, where's the real benefit of all this breathless, constant development to the vast majority of end users? All we seem to be getting is added complications. Sure, computers these days are marginally cheaper than they used to be, and there are tasks you can perform with today's machines that you simply couldn't in years past for want of power or memory. But most people don't use their home laptops to edit video or design three-dimensional models. Plus, many of my elderly machine's most impressive capabilities, such as video streaming, rely more on external factors like fast internet and WiFi than internal ones.

In fact, the majority of users generally only need a computer for a limited list of relatively simple tasks -- surf the web, send emails, play MP3s, write a letter, store some pictures -- none of which require much raw power. And yet, year after year, it seems that computers must increase in speed to cope with the increasingly bloated operating systems and expanding software suites that few of us know how to use properly because they're so complicated and change so frequently.

Which is why I've been so excited about the idea of netbook-style computers. None has yet delivered the right mix of usability, price, battery life, and size, but the general movement toward simplicity and value seems like a shift in the right direction. Why should you have to buy the computing equivalent of a powerful, temperamental sports car when all you need is a cheap, reliable runabout to get you to the shops?

And this, of course, is the hole that Apple is hoping to fill with the iPad. Lots of tech-focused commentators have been quick to point out its various perceived flaws: it doesn't multitask, the software is closed, it has a silly name. But the reality is there's an army of people who simply don't care about the first points, and will quickly get over the third as long as the thing works as intuitively and reliably as promised (and, judging by the iPhone, it probably will). If it does what you want it to, who cares what's going on inside?

Which is not to say that the iPad is perfect (a front-facing webcam wouldn't go amiss, for example), but I don't think Steven Frank's talk of it heralding a new age of computing is too far off the mark, either. This is the machine that is getting Rob Foster's grandma and technophobic friend excited, people who don't like computers as they are right now. And it's this huge untapped market of non-technically minded end users, not tinkering enthusiasts and experts, that Apple is aiming for.

Scoop! Local Reporting Not Dead After All

2010-02-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

Living on one of San Francisco's more vertically inclined streets, I don't get many unexpected visitors. Even the most dedicated charity workers and zealous religious evangelists rarely climb the steep hill and stairs leading to my door. So I was doubly surprised -- and impressed -- when a pair of Mission Local reporters turned up last night making inquiries about an attempted burglary near our house this past weekend. I thought this kind of labor-intensive doorstep journalism was a thing of the past, especially at such a local, police-jotter level. Seems I was wrong.

Now all we have to do is come up with a way to pay people for doing it.

Digital Life After Death

2010-02-01T10:36:00.000-08:00

SFGate.com has an interesting report about what happens to our online identities when we die. The main focus is the difficulties bereaved relatives have when trying to obtain access to their deceased loved ones' password-protected email accounts, social networking profiles, and so on. Apparently there are companies now selling solutions to this problem, basically offering to set your online status to "dead" after you check out.

This article, and another in last week's New Yorker about cryonics, got me thinking: why not aim for online immortality instead? It would be simple enough to write an application that would offer digital life after death. After signing up with the service, it could analyze your status updates, likes and dislikes, favorite links, etc. for as long as you remained connected to the land of the living. Then, after you logged off for the final time, the program would continue posting similar items -- "ooh, isn't the weather cold," "loving my new iPad 5," "still breathing," and so on -- creating an online presence that would never expire. It could even copy your face and paste it onto new photos posted by your living friends, to make it look as if you're still having a fine old time with them all.

If the idea took off, soon there would be a thriving online community of the undead, filling out Facebook quizzes about the afterlife, retweeting one another's posthumous musings, and making amusing mashups of Adolf Hitler in Downfall. Hrm, perhaps there's money to be made from offering this service to the living too.

Dragon: Just Say the Words

2009-12-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

The new Dragon Dictation app for the iPhone is incredibly impressive. It even understands my strange foreign accent. You want proof? Well here it is. This post was dictated ~~within a single mistake~~. Okay, without a lot of mistakes. But for a free application it really doesn't get any better than this. Download it now (before you have to pay for it).

The Best iPhone App Review Site, Reviewed

2009-09-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Actually, it's not just the best iPhone app website, it's also the only one I've seen that's any good at all. One might imagine that anyone setting out to help users sift through the 85,000+ programs now available via Apple's app store would take a cue from the gadget itself by creating a website that's reasonably simple and intuitive. Instead, pretty much all of the dedicated app review sites available are bloated, hard to use, and ugly.

In contrast, First & 20 takes a simple idea and executes it beautifully: it has asked a growing collection of "designers, developers and tech writers" to provide a pic of their iPhone home screens and to write a little about some of the apps they use most. The website's simple design also takes many cues from the iPhone's user interface. But most of all, it answers the first question if want to ask anyone with an iPhone: what apps do you like and use the most?

Of course, it would be even better if the net was widened a little to include people from some other, less techie industries. Judging by the choices up there right now, you'd be forgiven for thinking that everyone who uses an iPhone is also obsessed by Twitter (the two most popular apps are Tweetie and Birdfeed). And the running count of white/black phones seems rather superfluous. But, these small grumbles aside, I love it simply for introducing me to a bunch of excellent apps people with brains actually use.

The Last Post: When and How to Close a Blog

2009-09-21T16:13:00.000-07:00

I've just posted the final entry on my other blog Strange Things Will Happen. I started it a couple of years ago when I moved to the States from Britain, and it was my first adventure in blogging. Closing it was therefore a difficult decision to make, but ultimately the central idea -- me writing about life on the wrong side of the pond -- had run out of steam. Over time, the lack of desire to write fresh posts tells its own story. But, after realizing that it's time was up, I decided to finish with a definite full stop rather than just let it die through neglect alone: hence the concluding post.

Still, I feel slightly weird that it will continue to be available online for the foreseeable future. Part of me wants to delete it now, rather than let it grow old and stale in plain sight. But I realize that this is just my inner print journalist talking. Sure, libraries always do their best to make sure printed copies of newspapers and magazines don't ever disappear completely, but prior to around 1996 the effort you would have to make to find any publication more than a few months old meant that, to all intents and purposes, it had ceased to exist. The same is still true for many print-only publications. Being put in an archive box or relegated to microfiche may not be death, but it's close enough.

Here online, everything stays as it is -- or at least it's supposed to. Google is even digging up old books and resurrecting their pages through the god-like power of scanning. Soon nothing will disappear, and everything will be available with a few taps of a keyboard -- unless one of those taps is marked "delete," that is.

Euphemism Watch: Working for Free

2009-08-31T20:03:00.000-07:00

As a freelance writer and an editor, I feel a strange compulsion - no, a duty - to check the writing/editing job listings on Craigslist on a regular basis. It has become a depressing and humbling ritual in recent times. In fact, about the only pleasurable part of it for me is marveling at all the creative ways the only prospective "employers" left these days attempt to infer that working for them for nothing is somehow a lucrative opportunity, while simultaneously avoiding any explicit mention of, you know, having to work for them for nothing.

Indeed, I heartily recommend this sleazy exercise in euphemism-spotting to others. Rubbernecking through these lonely missives from a dying industry can be a darkly amusing experience, especially if you're the kind of person who greets news of any major disaster by packing a picnic and loading the kids into the car, or if you enjoy seeing the English language being abused to within an inch of reality.

To give you a taste, today I saw perhaps my favorite attempt yet at turning a lack of meaningful pay into a benefit. This ad seeking a voluntary editorial manager for some unnamed, underfunded internet startup helpfully mentions "... if you happen to be on unemployment insurance, this work will not jeopardize your benefits." No, and it won't trouble your bank balance either.

Interviews will be taking place soon; please leave your dignity at the door.

How Stupid Is the US Postal Service?

2009-08-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

This letter arrived at our house yesterday. I've messed around with the photo a little (to protect our privacy), but on the original you can clearly see our house number and street address, under a long-departed previous resident's name. Well, you can as long as you ignore the large black cross my wife added to the envelope the first time it passed through our mailbox about a week ago, along with the big circle round the return address and the lettering that says "return to sender addressee unknown."

Maybe we missed some detail of the US Postal Service's protocol for correctly marking return mail, but the intention seems fairly clear. While I realise that much of the sorting system is automated these days, I was still labouring under the delusion that someone human would look at a letter before it gets delivered. Perhaps not.

We've now released this salmon-like letter back into the wild, intrigued to see if it manages to find its way to the wrong destination for a third time.

Stationery Porn 2: Black n' Red Notebooks

2009-05-06T00:16:00.000-07:00

I blame Moleskines. I had never even though about notepad brands until I picked up one of those expensive little tarts in a store. Then I saw the little sticker they all have that boasts about how they were once the workbook of choice for Hemingway, Picasso, Jesus, or whoever. I wasn't immune to the romance of the idea. In that moment I suddenly had a vision of a bookshelf loaded with pleasingly battered-but-matching notebooks, each filled to bursting with my scribblings. What could be better?

Well, them not being Moleskines for a start. Regardless of their rather ridiculously high price, I discovered that I don't much care for them. The paper is too shiny and doesn't seem to absorb ink very well (an important factor when you're trying to write in a smudge-prone hurry). Plus, they make you look, well, a bit pretentious.

So now I'm going steady with the Black n' Red notepads pictured above instead: hardback, casebound, A5, ruled.

As well as being pleasingly European, the A5 size (148 x 210mm, or slightly wider than a sheet of letter paper folded in half) is just right for my needs. The books are small enough to be portable, but big enough to make writing on my lap reasonably easy. I'd already discovered that smaller pocket-sized pads are hard to write in when you don't have a desk handy as they offer no wrist support, which is the same reason a hard cover is also essential.

Black n' Red offers similar books with a spiral wire binding, but I've never really cared for these: the pages can be ripped out too easily (often by accident) and the looser binding makes the whole thing feel flimsy and cheap. In contrast, these casebound pads have proper sewn-in pages, as well as a handy marker ribbon to make up for the lack of a place to store your pen.

But the thing I really love about these notebooks is the way that, as they wear and get scuffed around, the black around the edges rubs off to reveal red colouring underneath; sometimes it's the little things in life that are the most pleasing.

San Francisco's Sidewalk Street Signs

2009-05-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

One of San Francisco's many little quirks is the way that its street names are written on the sidewalks – either embossed or inlaid into the concrete – on each and every street corner. Unfortunately, the concrete guy seems to have had a little trouble at the meeting of Howard and 2nd streets, a discovery which led me to discover a whole Flickr collection of misspelled or mutilated street names from around the city.

But, while lots of people gleefully post pictures of similar mistakes, I can't seem to confirm the story I've heard about why the names are there in the first place. Supposedly, the practice began after the 1906 earthquake and fire, when parts of the city were devastated to such an extent that the emergency services had trouble finding their way around – with large areas razed to the ground, all the normal buildings and landmarks they would have used to navigate by had disappeared. But, while walls may still collapse and street signs fall in a future quake, these sidewalk signs should remain.

Indeed, they already help people to find their way around; as this Flickr user says, "It's hard to get lost in San Francisco." But what I like most about them is that they reinforce a powerful sense of place for those of us lucky enough to live here.

Dead Bad Timing

2009-04-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

A little while ago - around the same time I realised I had a better than moderate chance of outliving Jesus - a great idea for a website popped into my brain. First you would input your date of birth, and then a message would pop up telling you about dead people you had recently outlived, something like: "You are 28. Jimi Hendrix was a guitar god and changed rock'n'roll as we know it, but he died at 27 and you didn't so who's laughing now?" - or words to that effect.

I even started compiling a list of notable persons who had shuffled off this mortal coil before their (and my) time: Sid Vicious at 21. Buddy Holly, 22. River Phoenix, 23. Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, and so on. Not only that, but I foresaw a time after the site was up and running when I could begin to milk the obvious spinoff potential, particularly in the greetings cards market: "Happy 25th Birthday and Congratulations! You've totally outlived James Dean ..."

But then I saw this: Dead At Your Age. The bastards.

The moral? Even though I've now lived longer than Jesus, I still haven't quite completed that world-changing religion project I've been talking about.

Great Ideas: Grolsch Guitar Strap Holder

2009-03-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

These two pieces of minor-key music memorabilia were retrieved from the stage of San Francisco's Great American Music Hall after a Tindersticks gig on 15 March.

A British roadie, on-hand for helpful observations, pointed out that the plectrum is of a type available at pretty much any music store "for pennies." But that was kind of missing the point: thanks to an accident of circumstance, this particular piece of grey plastic had become more valuable - at least to me.

However, the other item is definitely the more interesting of the two. Originally a seal from a traditional ceramic Grolsch bottletop, musicians the world over use these little pieces of rubber to help keep their guitar straps fixed to their guitars. (This isn't so much of a problem when straps are new, but as they age the leather ends become softer and more pliable, and therefore more prone to coming unfixed).

Of course, you can buy much more elaborate metal or plastic devices to lock your strap in place but, like the aforementioned plectrum, this version is both cheap and easy to get hold of.

Hero Worship: MacGyver

2009-03-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

Forget your A-Team movie ideas, cancel that rubbish Knight Rider rehash (oops, too late), and please don't give these geeks any more reason to discuss what kind of helicopter should be cast in the title role of an Airwolf remake. Instead, it's time to stock up on chewing gum and get your Swiss army knife ready. That's right kids, a real hero of Eighties television is returning: MacGyver.

The only mystery is what took him so long. Despite his occasional use of non-ecofriendly ingredients (that pesticide, soap flakes and tile cleaner smokescreen in season one, episode 16, for example), his improvised gadgets introduced a whole generation of impressionable youngsters to the principles of recycling. And it's probably no coincidence that, as they've grown up, a thriving subculture has emerged surrounding the MacGyver-esque use of household objects in all kinds of DIY gizmos and projects, as exemplified by the Maker Faire, and magazines like Make and ReadyMade (the latter even features a monthly competition called the MacGyver Challenge).

So welcome back, Mac - at last, the world is ready for a sustainable action hero.

My Career Has Cancer

2009-02-19T07:05:00.000-08:00

As a writer and editor, I've been forced to face some hard truths about my profession lately. Basically, it's fucked. Regardless of the impact of the economic crisis, the publishing industry has been going through its own internet-generated shitstorm of change for some time now. And no matter which way you look at it, there seems to be dwindling amounts of money available for people like me.

The evidence is clear. I'm writing this for free, for example, a rate that is only marginally worse than some of my recent paid jobs. Shrinking income is nothing new for journalists, but when I started out in the mid-1990s staff salaries and freelance rates were contracting at an almost imperceptibly slow rate, mainly by failing to keep pace with inflation; now pay is crashing faster than a dropped brick.

Increasingly in the new media economy, the creators of content can't seem to make enough money, if any at all, from the content they create. What was once a proper job and a reasonable way to make a living is fast turning into a hobby.

There are lots of people out there trying hard to come up with a new business model for publishing that will change this, but so far they've failed. There is no iTunes for journalism, and the ideas designed to create one seem to range from the hopelessly idealistic to the plain dumb. Holding out for a solution like this is increasingly looking like hoping to be saved from a terminal disease by a miracle cure that hasn't been invented yet. It's a nice thought, but not a very realistic one.

Of course, these changes have been happening for some time now, so it shouldn't be so much of a shock. But it is. At first I wondered optimistically when things were going to take a turn for the better, and I looked for any encouraging signs of recovery, or at least remission. I got online, I started a blog or three, I embraced the new media revolution in the hope of not being left behind. But all the while the good jobs have been drying up, leaving more journalists chasing fewer jobs that are paying less.

Lately my thinking has changed, and I've found myself wondering about how long I should fight this. At what point should I simply give up and go do something else instead? My career has cancer. It has spread. The prognosis isn't good. But, like a smoker who keeps on puffing cigarettes even when he has to do it through a hole in his throat, I just can't give it up.

UPDATE: It's Still Hard to Be Wealthy

2009-02-10T09:10:00.000-08:00

When is the New York Times going to get it? In the midst of our current economic clusterfuck, almost no one is feeling sorry for the rich bankers who caused it. Well, except for rich bankers themselves and NYT hacks that is.

But today sees publication of the latest in the grey lady's series of poorly judged articles about poor rich folks, this one hilariously titled "You Try to Live on 500K in This Town." It's all about the harsh choices faced by top executives forced onto the breadline by President Obama's proposed limits on pay for incompetence:

"As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable," said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, The Manny, and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. "Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale."

Apparently rich bankers also spend lots of money on designer clothes, big houses, and fancy cars. I mean, they're practically broke but for their stock options, property portfolios, and other valuable assets. And it's not like they caused the current financial shitstorm, is it?

Oh, actually, wait a minute ...

Death, Satire, and President Bush

2009-01-19T09:50:00.001-08:00

Since the US election in November, The Onion has also been pondering the death of satire, or at least satirising death, by marking Bush's final days in office with a series of brief reports on the almost-ex-President's demise.

Spider Eggs Hatch In Bush's Brain (January 14)
Single-Engine Cessna Crashes Into Bush (January 6)
Bush's Eyelid Accidentally Nailed To Wall (December 8)
Bush Dragged Behind Presidential Motorcade For 26 Blocks (December 4)
Bush Passes Three-Pound Kidney Stone (November 28)
Crocodile Bites Off Bush's Arm (November 19)
Bush Tumbles Wildly Down Washington Monument Staircase (November 12)

Almost as amusing (or not, depending on what you consider funny) is the debate and hand-wringing these stories have caused in places such as the Huffington Post (scroll down for the first of many pages of comments).

UPDATE: The Onion found time to squeeze in one more on inauguration day: Bush Dies Peacefully In His Sleep (January 20).

Situations Vacant

2009-01-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

When the frequency of layoffs in the publishing industry has increased to the point where they seem almost commonplace, you'd think that the announcement of a print publication actually expanding its workforce would be a cause for celebration. However, this report about hipster bible Vice taking on seven new staff seems profoundly depressing next to the news that The Economist is losing 13 staff.

Palm Reading: I see an iPhone in your future

2009-01-14T01:26:00.000-08:00

The news that Palm is about to re-enter the smartphone market with the Pré is unlikely to tempt many users away from buying a BlackBerry or iPhone. That includes me, a long-term Palm PDA user.

The one thing that has given me cause to reconsider is the realisation that my Palm Zire 71 has worked without hassle or serious complaint for six years now. That's six whole years. Translated into human terms, it's the gadget equivalent of living to the age of 200. But, while senility hasn't set in yet (it still remembers my dates and addresses without error), it doesn't have the energy it used to and now requires far more frequent trips to the charger. The end, I fear, is nigh.

Of course, there's no place for silly feelings like nostalgia or pity when it comes to technology (unlike, say, blind adherence to trends and the whims of fashion) so I will soon be replacing it with something shiny, new, and - more likely than not - made by Apple. Proof, if any were needed, that even making really good, reliable products is no guarantee of success these days.

Who's First Against the Wall?

2009-01-13T01:01:00.000-08:00

In these economically troubled times, why can't more layoffs be reported like this, courtesy of Keith J Kelly last week at the New York Post?

Stone cold: The recession isn't bothering Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, at least in his personal life. He's busy skiing at his multi-million dollar home in Sun Valley, Idaho on his annual prolonged winter ski holiday. But that doesn't mean the minions at Wenner Media are being spared. About 10 people were axed so far this week, including the head of production, Lou Terracciano, hired only six months ago, and more are expected to go today, insiders are saying. Men's Journal is expected to be particularly hard-hit.

And then there's this article in the Telegraph on the financial problems faced by billionaire publisher and businessman Anthony O'Reilly. After outlining "the parlous state of the Independent, the flagship newspaper, which is losing between £12 million and £14 million a year," the normally business-friendly Torygraph dares to point out that:

"The [Independent News & Media] group's five senior directors were paid a total of £7.97 million, including bonuses and pensions last year, with Sir Anthony receiving £2.2 million – a 20 per cent rise on last year. However, the board has approved large-scale redundancies as a cost-cutting measure."

Of course, both these examples have something in common: they're media stories. Publishing companies are suffering acutely in these hard times, and rival publications seem to be taking particular relish in turning on each other like starving dogs. But what of Wall Street?

I long for the day when the business executives whose catastrophic mismanagement got us into the current financial crisis are tarred and feathered and run through the streets like the criminals they are. In the meantime, I'll settle for them being named and shamed. It isn't much, but it would be a start.

Stationery Porn: Leitz Folders

2009-01-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

I recently took delivery of these Leitz hanging files. I won't bore you with the reasons I needed to source some longer European A4 folders rather than standard US letter ones, but it took a surprisingly long time to find an American supplier that stocked such subversively sized pieces of stationery. I guess there isn't much call for metric filing round these parts; indeed, the mere act of ordering them probably means my name will shortly appear on some Homeland Security watch list or other.

And little wonder: these functional, utilitarian beauties certainly look as if they might have Communist sympathies. They are German-made, and look bleakly efficient in a Lives of Others sort of way. The simple act of filing may never be quite the same for me.

UPDATE: Satire Not Dead After All

2009-01-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

I spoke too soon: satire isn't really dead. It's not even resting. It's just a bit ill. In his introduction to Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper’s Magazine, Roger D Hodge agrees there is a problem, but he identifies it as a mere disease, one he calls "self satirizing syndrome":

The disease manifested itself almost everywhere at once, but the superficial effects were most spectacular in our national mirror: the Media, which absorbed and digested the once proud opposition of the Press and made of it a mere legitimizer of horrors. The self-refuting absurdity of the Bush presidency, with its pretensions to manufacture an imperial reality, parallels the rise of the aggressively oxymoronic genre of “Reality Television,” with all its unintentional ironies. Among so-called news programming, Fox’s “Fair and Balanced: We Report, You Decide” is of a piece with Anderson Cooper’s “Keeping Them Honest” ... More perniciously, the self-importance with which the quality newspapers fawned on George W. Bush and his retainers in the decisive years after September 11, 2001, particularly in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, bears comparison with the bitter satires of G. K. Chesterton and Evelyn Waugh.

Put in this context, Obama's election victory didn't represent the final death knell for satire (as so many commentators seem to think) but the opposite, a day when the world become slightly less ridiculous. If nothing else, the inauguration on January 20 will mean humorists finally having to put some effort into lampooning the president, rather than just pointing and laughing like they can just now.

Poor Little Rich Kids

2008-12-12T19:21:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has always had a reputation for viewing the world through some very expensively tinted spectacles. Even in happier economic times it seemed to have a curious perspective on what constituted financial hardship, like in this article about Silicon Valley millionaires who don't feel rich enough because their neighbours own even bigger houses or drive better Ferraris.

However, the credit crunch seems to be casting the old grey lady even further adrift from ordinary people's concerns. This week alone has seen not one but two brilliantly badly judged tales of monetary suffering. First there was this excellent piece by Frank Bruni on how tough it is in New York to feed two people for under $100 (or around two days' pay on minimum wage). Then today we have this treat focusing on the teenage offspring of formerly wealthy parents who are having to struggle by without such basic necessities as pilates classes and sushi lunches.

Breaks your heart, doesn't it? And all this just weeks before Christmas too. It almost makes you forget about people losing their savings, jobs, and homes.

The Geek Who (Nearly) Destroyed the Earth

2008-12-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

This story from Wired about Dan Kaminsky, a computer consultant who found an astonishing, fundamental security flaw in the internet's underlying architecture, is interesting for two reasons.

The first is the way that a relatively low-level backroom geek could find a decades-old crack in the system's foundations that had the potential to wipe out not just individual websites or companies, but to destroy the whole structure of the internet and just about everything connected to it.

The second is the unspoken subtext that Kaminsky is starting to regret behaving like such a good boy scout after discovering the problem, and now secretly wishes he had been bad-assed enough to become some sort of international supervillain instead of heading straight to the authorities. You can bet he's now hard at work trying to find a second needle in the haystack.

Malcolm Gladwell: The Kicking Point

2008-12-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

As anyone familiar with the work of Dorothy Parker knows, it's much more fun to read reviews that heap derision rather than praise on their subject. Which is why I enjoyed this Andrew Orlowski demolition job "The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell: A guru for the brain dead". Even if you don't agree with everything Orlowski has to say, you have to admire the art in his vitriol. And, just in case that title wasn't enough to entice you into reading the whole thing, here's a short extract which serves as a handy distillation of the rest of the piece:

The man [Gladwell] has a 6,300 word disclosure statement on his website. All it needs is: "I've got nothing to say, move along."

Netbook vs Smartphone Smackdown

2008-11-18T11:10:00.000-08:00

One thing the internet isn't short of is "product review" websites. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these are really just ads for retailers, while the rest are generally vapid and ill-informed. Even those offered by seemingly reputable sources, such as big-name newspapers or magazines, are often just regurgitated press releases.

Thankfully, with a bit of digging around you can find a few that offer intelligent analysis from people who use and understand the products they are writing. Some even have enough perspective to put forward the odd negative point of view. For example, I've been thinking recently about investing in either an iPhone or a more compact laptop, as my regular MacBook is a bit too heavy (and valuable) for me to carry with me all the time.

Then I read this excellent article on The Register comparing netbooks and smartphones , which put me firmly in my place. Am I a misguided geek who wants to waste a few hundred dollars on "a cheap, underpowered laptop", or am I a member of the "busy San Francisco digerati who needs constant access to the web to watch Facebook friend connections and Twitters his every vapid thought" via an iPhone?

Hmm. You know, I could always just buy a pad of paper and a couple of pens.

The Death of Satire

2008-11-11T02:01:00.000-08:00

Right now I'm re-reading Don DeLillo's novel White Noise, and feeling slightly disappointed. When I read it the first time a little over ten years ago, I was dazzled by its daring comic grotesques, but now the dread of modern life and apocalyptic "airborne toxic events" seem very dated.

One passage in particular stood out. The main character's wife is reading a list of ridiculous predictions from psychics in a National Enquirer–type magazine. They involve Bigfoot, UFOs, the ghost of Elvis, and so on. Then there's this one:

Members of an air-crash cult will hijack a jumbo jet and crash it into the White House in an act of blind devotion to their mysterious and reclusive leader, known only as Uncle Bob.

Of course, DeLillo wasn't alone in predicting such a thing, but it was still strange to see what was once a ludicrously far-fetched joke transformed by the passage of time into a sad piece of history. However, the best part of 20 years had passed between DeLillo writing the passage in the early 1980s and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, which seems like a reasonable interval between comedy and tragedy.

The gap between reality and satire seems much smaller now, and it's increasingly hard to make comedy that is funnier or more extreme than what we see actually happening. I'm thinking of the fact that in 2003, Arnold Schwarzeneggger managed to release Terminator 3 and be elected Governer of California in the space of just three months. Or the way that it's often hard to tell the fake Bushisms from the real ones.

It's not just in politics. Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker stopped writing his brilliantly caustic spoof listings magazine TV Go Home because he was finding it increasingly hard to top the ridiculousness of reality TV -- which is perhaps no surprise considering he started writing it in 1999, the same year a UK garden makeover show travelled to South Africa to transform Nelson Mandela's herbaceous borders.

And, with the recent US election, satire was cast aside almost completely as the news itself became comedy. A trend started by the likes of the Daily Show reached its natural conclusion when Tina Fey won near-universal praise for her comic portrayal of Sarah Palin in a Saturday Night Live sketch which quoted the vice-presidential candidate verbatim.

Now the election is over, hopes are high that the incoming administration is going to have a positive effect on many aspects of life, both here in the US and further afield. However, I'm not sure that the appointment of a black man named Barack Hussein Obama as president is going to do much to help the struggling world of satire.

UPDATE: Fivethirtyeight.com

2008-11-11T00:49:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has a nice profile of Nate Silver, the guy behind the political statistics website Fivethirtyeight.com, which I've gushed about before. The detail that caught my eye was the fact that Silver called the election an hour and a half before the big television networks did. (Indeed Silver actually predicted the result months ahead of time, but we'll skip that for now.)

This strange dance between election night reality and reporting is a subject I'll return to.

NaNoWriMo, No-No

2008-11-10T16:24:00.006-08:00

November is National Novel Writing Month, an annual event which encourages participants to write a 50,000 novel in just 30 days. I took part for the first time last year, and to my surprise actually reached the end with 50,000 words. I hesitate to call what I ended up with a novel though, or even a rough first draft. It was condemned by several fatal flaws.

First, I attempted to write a thriller by mistake. I didn't start out intending to, it just turned into one. It turns out that it's very hard to write a successful thriller by accident. Thrillers take careful planning. Mine was an unplanned disaster.

Second, my writing kept slipping into a smart-arsed style that relied on a lot of slightly painful jokes. This was one of things I had always feared would happen if I ever attempted to write a novel. It wasn't pretty, and was made doubly frustrating by the parts where this didn't happen. Why couldn't I write like that all the time?

And, third, I never actually finished the damn thing. Sure, I wrote 50,000 words, but I reached that total without even getting close to an ending. This was mostly because, by that point, the plot made absolutely no sense and had pretty much collapsed in on itself due to the unbearable weight of its own contradictions.

So what could I do with it? In the words of Zoot, "If I had a match, I could put it out of its misery."

So this November I signed up to do it all again, resolving to learn from my mistakes. But I quickly discovered that it's pretty much impossible to write at such a furious pace while also working for a living (this time last year I was still enjoying the last few weeks of my immigration-enforced unemployment). No, actually, I'll correct that. It's possible to write at that pace, the question is whether you can write anything worth reading. And I clearly can't.

Both NaNoWriMo and its founder Chris Baty's "how to write a book" book No Plot? No Problem! are excellent exercises in encouragement, especially in the way that both drive home the central point that first drafts aren't supposed to be the finished article: indeed, they're supposed to be rubbish. But what I've discovered is that there is rubbish, and there is irredeemable crap that no amount of turd-polishing will help become anything other than shinier shite.

Forcing yourself to write more than 1,500 words a day, every day, is a good way to produce a high word count, but that means writing when you aren't in the right mood, when you don't have fully formed ideas in your head, when you're tired, when you'd really rather be doing anything else. Sometimes the results will surprise you, but not often enough to make it worthwhile for me.

So I've abandoned my November novelling ambitions. Instead I'm planning to write at my own pace, rejecting Chris Baty's high-octane approach in favour of following my friend Alison's more elegant advice. "Writing a book is simple," she says. "You just start writing, keep writing, and don't stop until you finish."

File under: I wish I'd thought of that

2008-10-28T11:46:00.001-07:00

I'm officially in love with fivethirtyeight.com, the presidential election website run by baseball statistician Nate Silver. Operating under the tagline "political polling done right," he has applied a fantasy sports enthusiast's love of number-crunching to the upcoming ballot, examining the various polls and statistics, and arriving at some interesting conclusions.

In particular, his thoughtful, intelligent analysis of why the various polls are wrong (and let's not forget that to a greater or lesser degree they are all wrong) makes you wonder why we pay attention to any of them in the first place. For example, there's the simple fact that most modern polling companies don't call cell phone numbers, despite the increasing numbers of voters who don't have a landline.

Even better, the site is about much more than mere stats, and includes some excellent on-the-ground first-person reports from campaign battlegrounds around the country. Because these stories aren't the site's main feature (and because this isn't a traditional news website), they tend to be more anecdotal, subjective, and, frankly, interesting than much of the coverage coming out of the traditional news media that I've seen. Just read this provocative story about a racist couple who say they are voting for Obama if you don't believe me.

Best of all, it's all put together by just a handful of people (there are only two credited writers -- even if there are more "backroom" people involved now, I'm guessing there's probably no more than about five total). Note to self: must come up with an idea like this one...

Blacking out Microsoft Word

2008-10-21T09:49:00.004-07:00

I hate Microsoft Word. It is fussy and irritating, and too often tries to do "helpful" things you don't want it to - unless you spend ages working out how to turn off all of its irritating automated functionality. Also, as a Mac user, it is the most unstable piece of software I use on a regular basis, and has been over many years and updates.

So thank god for Hog Bay Software's WriteRoom text editor. I was initially attracted by its retro green-screen user interface, which blacks out your entire monitor, leaving only a column of green text in the centre and NOTHING ELSE. Bliss! It is sold as a "distraction free writing" environment and it is that: a blank slate to scribble on when you need to write something that actually requires some thought, all rendered in soothingly muted colours.

But more than that, it is a really simple and effective text editor. I thought it was all about aesthetics, but when you're writing the last things you want to worry about are fonts, paragraph formatting, spelling, tiresome talking paperclips and all that other automated shite MS Word tries to force on you.

It's what a word processor should be: like a typewriter with a screen, or like a pen and paper that creates something legible. And, of course, you can always use Word to tart it up into a nice-looking letter or formatted document afterwards if you want to.

(There is also a version for PC users, called Dark Room.)

Philip Glass vs. The Muppets

2008-06-23T11:23:00.001-07:00

I love the random celebrities who show up on Sesame Street, but I never thought Philip Glass would have been among them until now.

There's something quite scary about the videos though. It's like some kind of nightmarish tyranny of geometry...

3am Eternal Damnation

2008-04-01T16:57:00.002-07:00

Is God a cunt? It's a question worth asking, according to Bill Drummond (formerly of the KLF) and his very strange website Penkiln Burn.

Raw Shark Videos

2008-03-17T16:33:00.001-07:00

Further to the aforementioned Raw Shark Texts, I've been reading a bit about the clever marketing campaign behind the book (so clever that I completely missed it, but kind of clever regardless). It includes a whole bunch of YouTube videos supposedly posted by the book's main character, and they reminded me in turn of this article Andrew pointed me towards a while ago, which looked at the online world created around the TV show Lost.

Lipstick Traces

2008-03-16T21:03:00.000-07:00

As both of you know I'm reading Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces now. I'm only half way through, it's slow going, occasionally jarring frequently laborious but you never know when something will grab you. I soldier on because those bits are too valuable, maybe just because I haven't read anything like this in years but probably because it has deep resonance with my analytical biases. Oh, and it reminded me of something that a fellow student stood up and asked in class back in college. Next post I'll attempt to describe this fascination instead of just talking about how it makes me feel.