I am only posting this for the record.
You could argue that yesterday was the day Netscape died and, as that browser has played an important part in my working life, I thought I would note the moment.
2005: Fans Vote On Qualifying Rules
2003: 40 Days and 40 Nights
2003: Consumers Around Your Product
2002: London Life Underground
2002: 50 things
2002: I say “medieval” – You say “medireview”
The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate.
I am back from Paris. It was truly delightful and I had a fantastic time in the sunshine. Really, I would rather not go back to work today. Still, it seems while I have been avoiding the web for the weekend there has been some interesting things published. My favourite shows that the web really remains personal publishing for every-and-anybody.
In spite of all the terrible e-marketing, spam and viral promotions that swamp our online lives, it’s good to know that somebody with a great idea and a little bit of talent can still get noticed and recognised by the online world.
In The Guardian online last week, Anthony Cox described how his spoof error page turned into a so-called ‘Google bomb’ for weapons of mass destruction.
2005: Two Minutes Silence
2003: 1789 And All That
2003: Wind Power
2002: Number One
2002: Ask Homer (and remember HotWired)
We used to have big Christmas parties down here for kids from the local children’s home, with the platform decorated like Santa’s Grotto and this secret train for delivering presents
Today’s Link (is actually a little bit old): BBC NEWS | ‘My years working on Mail Rail’
2005: Nightlfe
2005: Summertime In London
2004: A Little Update
2003: Formula One 2003 Race Calendar
2002: Rod Stewart plays Glastonbury
2002: Paris in the Summer
I have just submitted my reviews of Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men and Downsize This to Amazon. While reading the reviews I visited michaelmoore.com and was intrigued to read this.
Well, take a look at my Oscar “backlash”:
On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at “Bowling for Columbine” in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%.[Source]
2004: Celebrity Gardening
New Scientist is reporting that a new study suggests that songs with violent lyrics increase aggressive behaviour in people. Well, this should please those who harp on about song lyrics driving all to kill our neighbours. While it doesn’t seem to me to be revolutionary, I note this article because the study, apparently, “contradicts a popular suggestion that music loaded with violent imagery, such as some rap and heavy metal, are cathartic in venting aggression” [source]
I think I have missed something here. I thought the popular suggestion was that such lyrics turned us all into gun-wielding maniacs and that such music needs banning. Or have I missed some social change somewhere …
2005: links for 2005-05-06
2003: Fly Away
Last week, in a post about Trackback I said that I wanted to challenge a number of items in the original post on the topic over at plasticbag. The I decided not to write anymore about it because blogging about blogging can get incestuous and dull.
Then, today I read Erik’s piece – and the associated comments – about how he did not believe Trackbacks were difficult to understand. So I reconsidered some of what I was going to write and concluded that there were valid things in my mind originally that I wanted to say.
Today, then, I want to disagree with the following two – more-or-less- related assertions that:
Enabling Trackback just to get a link from a more popular site is not what is was designed for
Well yes, that’s partly true but it’s inevitable. The more popular sites are more likely to be the ones to spark conversations (or bring a conversation to the attention of more people). Therefore people will link to them. Seamless linking is exactly the point of Trackback and it let’s you know who is interested in the conversation. Following on,,
Using Trackback without contributing to the conversation is wrong
The assertion follows that if you Trackback without contributing then this is wrong (or somehow not fair). Plasticbag itself seems to be a site that proves this is not happening. Look at the Trackbacks – a range of varied authors and sites some with more to say than others. None of them seem to be swamping Plasticbag and making it unreadable and many of them are good contributions to the discussion.
It’s unrealistic to believe everybody will have something new to say but it doesn’t mean they are any less valuable in the debate. Somebody who simply points to a debate (via a link list or some such device) is opening that conversation to an audience (and the link that makes Trackback work means a blog is pointing to a conversation). A higher number of links suggests a conversation has stirred interest and imagination. Hey it functions as a Google-style page rank system. If Trackback were implemented everywhere you’d easily be able to see the most popular conversations around – even if not everybody had something new to say. This is good – it doesn’t need a Google to allow me to find other, related, writings because I do it from where I started.
I’d rather you accepted Trackbacks if you Trackback to my site because it helps the conversation grow. But if you don’t, so what? It doesn’t mean your part in the discussion is invalid and suggesting that it has to be a two-way street seems, somehow, against the spirit
And I still have to get round to editing the trackback system on my site. I admit I am more mouth than action on this topic at the moment, but when time allows I’ll sort it out.
2005: Your Search For Philip Olivier Returned Results
2004: Simplify The Site
2004: Britain’s Railways
2003: It was fun – no need to search my site anymore
Let’s be honest, it made a good story and made me laugh. It’s certainly an urban legend that I will be telling again and again, but it’s an urban legend (i.e. somebody made it up and it’s started spreading like wildfire).
It’s the story of Andrew Carlssin, the so-called time traveller who made a mint on the stock market (I laughed about it last Friday for Friday Fun – didn’t that say something to you?). But it was quoted on Yahoo with the origins being given as The Weekly World News. Weekly World News – that’s important. It’s not true.
The urban legends site has more information so you’ve no need to search here search anymore. Given that the clocks changed last weekend, maybe I should enter the contest to see who can save the most daylight. Now that’s true – honest!
And the irony that I am having to post this on 1st April is not lost on me.
2005: Your Search For Philip Olivier Returned Results
2004: Simplify The Site
2004: Britain’s Railways
2003: Trackback away
Oh my Friday fun:
NEW YORK — Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall Street wiz on insider-trading charges — and incredibly, he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256!
Carlssin declared that he had traveled back in time from over 200 years in the future, when it is common knowledge that our era experienced one of the worst stock plunges in history. Yet anyone armed with knowledge of the handful of stocks destined to go through the roof could make a fortune.
“It was just too tempting to resist,” Carlssin allegedly said in his videotaped confession. “I had planned to make it look natural, you know, lose a little here and there so it doesn’t look too perfect. But I just got caught in the moment.”
In a bid for leniency, Carlssin has reportedly offered to divulge “historical facts” such as the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and a cure for AIDS.
All he wants is to be allowed to return to the future in his “time craft.”
However, he refuses to reveal the location of the machine or discuss how it works, supposedly out of fear the technology could “fall into the wrong hands.”
Officials are quite confident the “time-traveler’s” claims are bogus. Yet the SEC source admits, “No one can find any record of any Andrew Carlssin existing anywhere before December 2002.”
[Source] [Via MetaFilter]
I wrote quite a lengthy piece about Trackback and why I didn’t agree with some of Tom’s opinions but now I’ve decided to break it down into smaller pieces. So, here’s the first point I want to challenge:
Trackback should be invisible to the user
The argument suggests that Trackback’s workings should be concealed from the user. This is debatable but certainly the existence of Trackback should not be. If you politely list Trackbacks after one of your posts then, I contend, it appears – to those who don’t know Trackback – that you are actively linking to those sites. This causes two problems:
So, this very train of thought means I am going to have to re-design my own site as I have it set up to seamlessly integrate Trackbacks into a post. Maybe I won’t get time to move on to my other thoughts.
2006: Ten Years Of The Palm
2004: Where Was The Colosseum?
Small Screen rendering of musak.org
You know, I am really impressed by the new version of Opera (which has always been a browser I have used). I love many features while others, like the new M2 mail client, I am not too sure about. I think they may have something in the different approach to mail but I may just be too stuck in my emailing ways. Still, if you want to check out how your pages may look on smaller screens (phones, pdas etc.) if the vendor has selected Opera then boot up Opera 7, go to your site and SHIFT F11 for Opera’s small screen rendering. Left is my site as it looked the other day. I think it proved the power of style sheets as the whole thing is still quite browsable (is there such a word) and readable in the reduced format. I may even browse all the web like this!
2008: Not Looking Rubbish