Category: The Internet

Crimes Against the Internets: The Re-Imagineering Blog

Mickey's not going down with the shipThe internet is full-to-bursting with self-important nerds who are simultaneously obsessed beyond reason with the minutiae of their chosen hobby and convinced that they could do a better job than the people currently in charge of that hobby.

This isn’t breaking news. It happens with movies, comic books, television series (somehow, Joss Whedon remains exempt), and I imagine it happens with stuff I’m not a nerdy fan of myself. I’ll bet that the world of Civil War re-enactments has its own little dramas playing out, with people resentful at the ego-maniac glory hound who insists on playing Grant with copper buttons on his uniform although any real devotee of history knows that Grant insisted on bronze buttons because of an incident in a copper mine when he was three.

So if this behavior is all just part of the natural gestalt of the internets, why does reading The Re-Imagineering Blog make me want to hit the writers of that site repeatedly over the head with a manure-filled sock?

Because, as we’ve learned from Robert Louis Stevenson and countless Lifetime TV movies, we fear the darkness that lives within us all. And I hate the Walt Disney World version of the Enchanted Tiki Room, and I think that the WDW version of The Tower of Terror is infinitely better than Disneyland’s.

I just don’t think you’ve got to be such a damn douche about it.

These guys call their blog “Re-Imagineering,” but they don’t do much other than bitch and moan, and parrot back public-relations quotes from Walt Disney about magic and imagination as if they’d just won some kind of argument. You could make a pretty convincing argument that the greatest talent of Disney (the man) was in selling himself and his ideas. As much as we like to believe otherwise, the real world doesn’t reward you with such a long-lasting legacy and reputation based on talent alone โ€” you can be the greatest visionary the world’s ever seen, but it’s not worth anything if no one listens to you.

So all the Disney quotes and truisms that get passed around do have some genuine value. It’s just not so much value for making a theme park, but selling it. Of course, that’s not all that Disney did โ€” he had great ideas and very importantly, knew how to find the guys who knew how to make those ideas work, and get them on his side. Any idiot can just say, “Disney theme parks should be magical.”

And they do, repeatedly, all over the internets. There’s all kinds of moaning and hand-wringing and people saying, completely without irony, “What would Walt think?!?” But if the guys on this blog are putting themselves forward as “Pixar and Disney professionals,” it’s not enough to just complain about how things just ain’t like they used to be. They need to put up or shut up.

And, incidentally, stop being so long-winded, pompous, and sanctimonious. Everything I read from the writers of that site reminds me of the Achewood strip where they prank call Garfield.
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Crimes Against the Internets: Valleywag

When you’re a procrastinator, like I am, and you work from home on a computer, like I do, you end up seeing a lot of stupid on the internets. Stupidity on such a level that it’s not enough to just sit back and say, “man, is that stupid;” you’ve got to go evangelical and spread the word.

When you’re as lazy and attention-deprived as I am, that sense of indignation fades quickly, and you move on. I always assumed that I’d be bitching about digg.com (slashdot for sub-literates) or Television Without Pity (a TV website that’s populated entirely by the abrasive, plain girls everybody avoided in high school, and still somehow manages to be even gayer than gay.com). But it’s hard to work up enough enthusiasm to rag on them.

For some reason this post on Valleywag pushed me over the edge. I’m a fan of Sjรถberg’s, but not enough to jump to defend him or anything โ€” for all I know, the guy’s a dick in real life. Still, he’s funny, he’s occasionally insightful, and he puts genuine content out there on the internets for free. Valleywag can only claim three one out of those four.

The pointlessness of it is what bugs me. What’s the point of ragging on a column and its author for not being tech-oriented when the author’s said he’s approaching it not as a tech column? “Can’t be bothered to do his job?” Where did that come from?

Now, I get the impression that because I write a post for SFist every once in a while (when I’m not out of town), I’m supposed to have some kind of weird relationship with the Valleywag. I haven’t quite figured it out โ€” based on the comments I’ve read, either I’m supposed to lay off them as an unprofessional courtesy, or I’m supposed to have some kind of friendly rivalry going on. I don’t get that, because I don’t see what there is in common:

  • I don’t have any illusions about being a tech journalist or insider. I look at what real insiders and journalists write, repeat it, and then add my half-baked opinions and references to movies and TV shows. I guess you could say that I do for real tech news what “The Family Guy” and “Robot Chicken” do for real comedy.
  • I’m not a moron.

I used to assume that even though I think a gossip site about silicon valley was a completely stupid concept, that there are people out there who are into that kind of thing. Now I think that even if there are people into that kind of thing, they are also stupid.

Apple’s known for the yabbos who are obsessed with Steve Jobs. They deserve to get made fun of, but Valleywag’s missing the point. They don’t deserve to be ragged on because they’re obsequious, they deserve to be ragged on because they’re obsessed with Steve Jobs. Pointing out completely irrelevant gossip about Steve Jobs isn’t any “cooler.” And at least he’s someone notable โ€” who the hell cares to see candid photos of the Google founders wearing a dress? Or read some moron bitterly ragging on something as stupid as an internet website?

Frenzy

If you want to see an example of something that took me way longer than it should have, then check this out:

I wrote a little utility to export my RSS Feeds list from my news reader (NetNewsWire) to html. It’s as close as I can come to a links section for the time being, and it still took for freaking ever.

The reason I did it is because the RSS feed reader on the Sony PSP is kind of cool, but entering links into it is a total pain in the ass. I assumed this would be simpler.

I don’t keep all of those up-to-date, but most of them I’d consider worth passing along. Make your own recommendations in the comments, if you’re so inclined. It’s not like I spend too much time browsing the web anyway.

Update: Just so I don’t end up leading any other PSP owners astray: apparently, Sony’s concept of an “RSS Channel” and mine are very different. The PSP’s feed reader only works on audio podcasts, as far as I can tell. Even if you get that far, though, it doesn’t recognize one of the two most common RSS formats, so half of my list isn’t accepted at all. As the WWW Consortium would say: “weak sauce.”

Still, knock yourself out with access to my bookmarks, and still feel free to recommend your own.

A Bunch of Noise

What started out innocently enough as a search for “I Want Candy” by MC Pee Pants (second page) somehow ended up with me on the iTunes Signature Maker.

It’s a java app that digs through your iTunes library and generates a file that contains snippets of your favorite tracks mixed together. It’s not exactly pleasurable listening; the author’s sounds okay (kind of like what I imagine an alien SETI program would hear), but it seems like most of them come out pretty atonal.

I imagine the only way to get something that flows well is if you’re one of those people who claims “I have a very eclectic taste in music” but it turns out you listen to a bunch of bands that sound exactly the same, but you have the soundtracks to Manhattan and O Brother, Where Art Thou? to show how diverse you are. Or something.

On the other hand, this is pretty much what it sounds like in my head all the time, so maybe the computer don’t lie.

And speaking of noise, I just realized that I’ve got to be in Florida all next week for work. I’ve known about the trip for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been thinking it was further away. If it’s anything like the last trip, it’ll be that infuriating feeling of knowing I’m at Disney World but being unable to get out and enjoy it because I’m working. And even when I get free time afterwards, it’s no fun going to the parks by myself. Plus, during the week the parks close a lot earlier, leaving only a couple of hours between the end of a work day and closing time. Since I’m contracting, I can’t get into the parks for free unless I’m working there โ€” which means I have to pay full price just to go a couple of hours.

And I’m not really fooling anybody, I realize. Even on a business trip it’s pretty damn cool. At the risk of sounding like I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid: the Disney hotels really just get everything right, and they’re a blast to stay at even independent of the parks. And as for the parks, I’m still hoping I get a chance to check out the new Expedition Everest ride at Animal Kingdom. It’s not supposed to open until next month, but supposedly it’s in “soft opening preview” mode now.

Update: Calendars are hard. Apparently I’m not leaving next week, but the week after. I just wanted to make sure that the Internet was aware of my travel plans. Go on about your business.

Checklist

One of the consequences of having a spastic attention span is that I’ve got a huge mental to-do list that grows faster than is possible for a mortal human — even one with my considerable gifts as granted me by your yellow Earth sun — to check them off.

And because it’s all in me head, it’s completely unsorted and un-prioritized, so stuff like “do laundry” is right there mixed in with “write a Flash prototype for that card game you want to do” and “make quarterly tax payment” is right below “watch the season premiere of ’24′” and “learn Japanese” and “get medical insurance” are somehow getting exactly the same level of procrastination. Which really doesn’t make sense, and is making me into more of a flake than I ever intended: “Sorry, I would’ve shown up for surgery to give you my kidney, but I’ve been meaning to finish reading this issue of Batman for months now.”

I keep seeing links to online and offline organizers and to-do lists, but have yet to find one that even closely approximates how my brain works. Err, “works.” I need to be able to add entries quickly, the second I think of them, attach notes or whatever other information I need to get it done, reorganize it and assign/change priorities so easily that “organize the To-Do list” doesn’t become another item, and give a real sense of accomplishment once I’ve checked one off. And maybe give me a cookie.

I could write my own, but I hope I don’t have to point out the problem there.

Still, even though technology hasn’t yet caught up with my brainspasm method of neural functioning, I have managed to make some minor headway. I’m assuming nobody reading this cares all that much about Java reflection and persistent object databases, so I’ll leave that stuff out. Even though it’s kind of cool, and isn’t so over-engineered as to be useless.

Finished Shadow of the Colossus
And I’m going to have to recant my earlier reviews of it — interesting concept and presentation and great visuals, but it’s not a good videogame. It feels too gamey, and it’s not a good game; it’s a frustrating game that you only keep playing because the concept is interesting. Sure, the conclusion is satisfying as an interactive movie, but I decided halfway through the last level that there was nothing they could show or do that’d be worth the frustration of beating the final boss.

Watched The Aristocrats
I’d expected it to be more interesting than funny, but it turned out more funny than interesting. The whole “joke as jazz performance” idea isn’t strong enough to carry a feature-length movie, and I’m not really buying it since very few people actually tell the joke. But pretty much all the people they interview came out of it seeming pretty cool and funny, even the ones I don’t usually like. The only ones who still seem irredemably creepy and annoying are Taylor Negron and Andy Dick. And that sleazy guy in the jacuzzi. And the bad ventriloquist.

Updated the website
Not really, but I did finally clue in and add a link to Fingerbutter.com. And that’s interesting either as a comment on the anonymity of the internet or on how dense I am. A while ago I saw via technorati that some new site was linking to mine, and so I checked it out to make sure they didn’t have any of my tasteful but misguided erotic photos on there. It wasn’t until last night that I actually made the connection that it was my friend Joe’s website. Even though his name is on the posts, he links to our mutual work friends, and he mentions stuff I should’ve recognized, I’d just been thinking, “hey, that’s nice and a little odd that some stranger is linking to my website.” I went back through and re-read it all hearing Joe tell it, and it makes sense now. So the lesson is either that Joe needs to add an “about” page, or I need to rethink my life dream of becoming a private investigator, or some combination of the two.

So that’s four down (I also finally saw Conan the Barbarian over the weekend), about a billion to go. Now I’ve got to go buy replacement ink cartridges for my printer, which had been hovering on the list between “write a novel” and “reconnect with friends I’ve been neglecting for way too long,” but just shot up in importance because of “do taxes.”

Oil-guzzling babies (and, suitably, ghost dogs)

Inugami from The Obakemono ProjectConsidering how much I love Pom Poko and tanuki, and I got Taiko no Tetsujin mostly because it had dancing kitsune in it, I’m surprised I haven’t seen all of this stuff sooner:

My new favorite website is The Obakemono Project, which is like a web encyclopedia of Japanese folk monsters and spirits. Each one has a description and a drawing that is dead-on ultra-cool perfect. For example, the Aburaakago is a spirit that takes the form of a baby and sucks all the oil out of household lamps.

Raccoons with giant balls and lamp oil-guzzling baby ghosts. And katsu curry rice. I, for one, welcome our new Japanese overlords.

That site leads to The Fantastic Shigeru Mizuki English Language Resource Page, which showcases the work of the Japanese cartoonist and his manga about bakemono. Pretty cool stuff — reminds me of what you’d get if Rat Fink had centuries of folk stories to back it up.

And another link from the Obakemono forums led to the news that The Great Yokai War is playing as part of the SF IndieFest next weekend. It’s a movie about a kid who has to stop a war between various goblins, demons, and evil wizards. I swore I’d never see another Takashi Miike movie after Audition, but word on the street is that it’s not quite his usual fare and even I would be able to tolerate this one.

Now there’s something to look forward to after Wondercon.

Update: The artist’s website is here at DrunkenTengu.com, and pretty much all her stuff is teh coolest.

Mokuyoubi

Today there’s an SFist post about Google China and how it, apparently, proves that Google has gone from being hero to millions to as corrupt and evil a mega-corporation as :spit: Disney! Ah well, I hope I’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that every web search I do makes me complicit in tyranny.

Since I still don’t have a “links” section working, let’s spin the big wheel of Thursday topics I could talk about to pad out the rest of this post:

We have a winner!

My favorite blog of the moment is called Drawn! The Illustration Blog, because it’s all over the place. I would’ve expected that art-viewable-on-the-internets would consist of about a million webcomics and then the occasional portfolio, but this one shows how much creativity and variety there is out there.

The coolest bit, to me, is how frequently you’ll see people in the visual arts who’re willing to show you how it’s done. Like Olduvai George’s step-by-step demonstration of how he draws a mammoth. There’s still no chance of most of us making something like this painting (yeah, it’s a painting; I would’ve sworn it was an Ansel Adams photograph), but it takes a little bit of the mystery out of it.

Sugar Frosted Goodness is like an artists’ jam session. I’ve been trying to follow the work of this guy, Drew Weing (from Savannah!) ever since he did an Achewood guest comic, and his latest stuff just looks great. The “Copper” tutorial is another step-by-step demonstration, this one of a webcomic. Plan 59 (formerly Ephemera Now) collects “commercial art of mid-century America,” and I’m still trying to decide which ones I want to buy and hang up over my couch.

And of course there’s Illustration Friday, which Jeff contributes to. He wins because of this drawing of Solomon Grundy.

Writing Too Much About iWeb

NetNewsWire ScreenshotThere’s a new post on SFist wherein I talk about how iWeb isn’t as cool as HyperCard.

And talk, and talk, and talk — I blame ecto. I liked it enough to pay for it, and now it means I don’t have to use web browser editors for my crucial blogging endeavors. Which means I’ve got even less restrictions on my natural inclination towards long-windedness. It turns out that living in fear of accidentally hitting the back button and losing everything was the only thing helping me towards succinctness.

My other discovery yesterday was RSS readers. I knew of them, of course; I’m not that far out of the loop. But I thought Safari was plenty sufficient — it tells you what sites have been updated, and then you can click on the links to see the full thing as it was intended to be presented.

After trying out the dedicated readers, though, I’m hooked. It actually makes what is essentially a time-wasting activity more efficient. You only see what’s updated, and it checks every site you’re interested in. I decided on NetNewsWire, but PulpFiction was almost as good. The only reason I didn’t choose that one is because it looks too much like Mail, which feels like work. NetNewsWire straddles the line between web browsing and efficiency, plus it just looks better.

This isn’t all just unfocused rambling, for once: the topics actually have something to do with each other. When I was setting up the different news readers, I could check out all the content from websites without ever visiting the page itself; some of the sites I’d never even heard of before. It only took a few minutes to come up with a NetNewsWire theme that I liked better than any of the defaults, and better than most of the source pages (including my own).

Which raises the question: does all the attention to CSS and webpage design even matter all that much anymore? Artistically-challenged people like myself should be excited at a world where substance is more important than style, and poor graphic design skillz aren’t a barrier to entry. But it’s kind of disappointing, too — there’s always the potential for a full website to have more functionality than a simple newsfeed, but I like the idea of a site’s just being attractive enough that you’re encouraged to see it, just for looks.

iWeb is on the other end of the spectrum from RSS feeds. It’s all about presentation, and the back-end support is pretty weak. It’s not even featured enough for a blog as simple as this one. But it makes it relatively easy to make a page that’s pretty damn slick; I imagine that people more artistically inclined could do really nice stuff with it. I just wonder if it’s doomed to irrelevance. Do people even care how a website looks anymore? Livejournal is one of the most popular blogging engines out there, and I’ve never seen a livejournal entry that didn’t look like ass.

I never thought I’d be arguing for style over substance, but there it is: I want the intarweb to look better. And before anyone points out that charity begins at home: I’m working on it.

Not at CES

That last post turned out to be all about “Arrested Development,” so I guess this is the one that’s posting just for the sake of posting.

I made a post at SFist yesterday about all the rumors around a Google PC. The story itself is kind of lame — even the rumor sites were saying that it was unlikely, and by the time I got home to write the post, the rumor had already been officially denied.

But what was more interesting to me was the whole “meta-story,” how the thing got so wide-spread so quickly, even though there was really nothing to it. As far as tech rumors go, it was actually kind of approaching compelling. It was a wacky idea (not only a line of cheap PCs, but they’d be writing their own operating system!) that had a little bit of validity because it was printed in the LA Times. And it had the whole “black fiber” angle that I still don’t quite understand but puts an X-Files spin on the whole thing. It’s just amazing to me what a phenomenon the company’s become; Google is building a public perception kind of like NASA’s during the space race. Or seeing as how it’s trading at over $400 a share these days, maybe it’s more like the Tyrell Corporation or SKYNet or Arvin Sloane’s OmniFam.

So I keep hearing stuff coming out of CES, but none of it’s really sticking as particularly interesting. I’m curious to see how Windows Vista looks; I keep seeing articles mentioning that MS is demoing it at the show, but nothing with real details. This eBook reader mentioned on Gizmodo looks pretty cool, and I’ve always liked the idea but don’t think I’d want to be an early adopter of the technology unless it gets a lot cheaper; both for the device itself and the content. Especially since the thing doesn’t have a backlight; what’s the point of an electronic book that you can’t read in bed?

Next week I’m going to be at the MacWorld Expo for at least one day. Maybe that’ll get me all geared up to be Geek Republican again, spending way too much money on disposable electronics and consumerism. At the moment, I’m worried that something’s wrong with me — I’ve got gift certificates for the Best Buy but when I went to the store Tuesday there was nothing I wanted!

Uninvited

Technically you’re supposed to wait on these things until somebody passes the baton, but it’s 4 AM Pacific Time and I’m still awake browsing the internet and I’ve already seen 4 different variations of this thing 4 times tonight.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: video store clerk, working the shrink-wrapping machine at a Maxell tape warehouse, accounting assistant at a veterinary school, computer game designer.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Raising Arizona, Young Frankenstein, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Four places you’ve lived: Decatur, GA; San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Athens, GA.

Four TV shows you love to watch: “Alias,” “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law,” “The Venture Brothers,” “The Daily Show”

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Tokyo, Paris, Dublin, Rock City

Four websites you visit daily: Achewood, Gizmodo, Musty TV, GameSpot

Four of your favorite foods: Japanese curry soba, biscuits and sausage gravy, the Chick fil-A sandwich, my mama’s corned beef hash

Four places you’d rather be: in bed asleep; seeing the sunrise from the Boardwalk at Disney World; taking a leisurely tour of Kyoto; at the top of the Empire State Building

Four of your favorite songs: “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin, “Sweet Thing” by Van Morrison, “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” by Alison Krauss & Union Station, “Song for My Father” by Horace Silver

The Bob Loblaw Law Blog

Turns out there really is a Bob Loblaw Law Blog, a fact which makes me about as happy as anything on the internet can. (It doesn’t look like a fake site done as a “Arrested Development” tie-in, because a) it’s been up since November, b) if it is a joke, it’s an unbelievably subtle one, and 3) that would imply that Fox pays to advertise the show).

Yesterday was about as crappy a day as I’ve had in a while. When I got back from King Kong Sunday night, I stayed up a couple of hours later to finish some work I had to get done. And then I couldn’t get to sleep, at all. I wasn’t wired or anything, just absolutely unable to get the brain to turn off. It was around 7 am before I could get to sleep, and that was only after I watched an episode of “Lost” that upset me so much I just wanted to lie down (it was the one where Claire’s baby is born and Boone… well, you know). I was awakened at 10 am by a phone call, but when I answered it they’d already hung up, and then I just fell into a coma again. Missed a phone meeting, missed the work I was supposed to get done, just completely f-ed everything up.

When most people get insomnia, they’re at least able to get up the next day and be tired but semi-functional. For me, I always get into this weird state where I’m semi-conscious but physically unable to get out of bed. I guess if nothing else, it’s a reminder that I don’t need to be actively seeking more caffeine.

I also headed out to the post office to pick up a package my parents had sent. (Presumably I was asleep when it was originally delivered). The line stretched all around the post office, and there was a separate line in the back to pick up packages; that line had about 10 people in it. So I waited for about 20 minutes, until there was one woman in front of me. The guy handed her her package, mumbled something no one could make out, then closed the door. The woman turned to the rest of us waiting in line and said, “He said they’re not taking any more customers.”

It was one of those things where I just shut down; I had absolutely no idea how to react. That somebody could be that much of a dick — not even saying to my face that he was closing up, but just shutting the door and slinking off into hiding — my brain doesn’t know how to handle it. The woman behind me did, though; she shouted “Asshole!” and stomped to the other line. Everybody else who’d been standing in line filed past me to the other line or out the building to come back the next day, and I just kept standing there.

Sure, my rational brain knows that cussing at the guy or pitching a fit wouldn’t have done any good and would’ve just gotten me upset, but the whole thing was doubly annoying. Once for wasting my time, and double for giving me another opportunity to just stand there filled with impotent rage, wondering what would be a better course of action than just standing there like a wimpy doofus, or getting into a profanity-filled screaming match with a stranger.

The rest of the night was good, anyway. I had a big steak.