2023.12.27
Usenet really had a good vibe; the idea of bring your own client and use it across a variety of topic rooms, each forming their own community was great - my favorites were rec.games.video.classic, alt.folklore.computer, alt.fan.cecil-adams, and comp.sys.palmtops.pilot. (A friend of mine has a conspiracy theory that Usenet was too distributed and uncontrollable and so was repressed by the Powers That Be in favor of more centralized forms of social media...)
It made me think about social media forums I've lived in over the years. Each tends to encourage a certain style / length of post, has different types of message continuity (threads, etc), makes it easier or harder to recognizing recurring authors, and has different styles of if you rely more on following people or sipping from the main firehose.
I had a weirdly geeky urge to categorize what I've most used over the years... (my current favorite in blue) These are all based on my judgements of how I or most people use it:
Forum | Post Lengths | Crowd Size | Author Identity | Follow or Commons | text vs image |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Usenet | Long | Many Medium Groups | .Sig | Commons (per Group) | Text |
Livejournal | Very Long | Friends List | Avatar | Follow | Text |
Blog Comments | Short | Private-ish | Name | Commons | Text |
Slashdot | Short | Large (Geeks) | .Sig | Commons | Text |
Atari Age Forums | Medium | Medium-Small (Gamers) | Avatar + .Sig | Commons (in Topics) | Text |
Medium-Short | Real Life (+Algorithmy) | Name + Avatar | Follow (+ Algo) | Mixed | |
Very Short | Very Algorithmy | Avatar | Follow (+ Algo) | Mixed | |
Short | Many Medium Channels | Username | Commons (per Channel) | Text | |
Tumblr | Medium | Medium ("Mutuals") | Avatar | Follow | Images |
Short | Private | Avatar | Commons | Text | |
Slack | Medium-Short | Private | Avatar | Commons (in Topics) | Text |
Discord | Short | Private | Avatar | Commons (in Topics) | Text |
I love the community of tumblr and it's my favorite source of stuff to repost on my blog - but I haven't figured out how to get "followed", so it's mostly a read-only medium for me so far.
Slack closed-garden is my favorite community types now - if you find the right bunch of people (that balance of people who post a lot, and maybe some people who mostly lurk but chime in) it's fantastic. (On paper Discord has the same potential, and is a bit more hip, but somehow the UI for threading and private messaging is horribly confusing, and the whole things gives me Reddit-ish "I can't follow things" vibes.
2022.12.27
They just sent me a kind of pathos-laden "hey happy 19th anniversary of starting on LJ!"
For those who don't know, it was a fairly popular (at pre-Twitter, pre-FB, pre-YouTube levels of "popular") site that let people have their own blogs, and you could see and comment on the posts of your friends aggregated on a "feed" page.
I didn't post there, since I had already started my own blog (and had just added a comments board that was the nucleus of its own little community - in fact I had a sidebar microblog for other people to write on the front page...) so my LJ account was for following others and participating in comment threads.
It's notable that many of the final-ish entries of my friends (many in 2010, then more in 2016) mention twitter which is where I assume most of that energy left. Actually, to make a Just-So story: 2010 is when folks who were fonder of the community of folks they know in real life jumped off for Facebook, and 2016 is when folks aspiring to get a wider audience and maybe go viral left for Twitter.
LiveJournal encouraged thoughtful writing in paragraphs; I guess medium now has most that vibe. Maybe substack, but they seem to lean on individual newsletter-y bits. But neither medium nor substack emphasize the "shared feed"/wall/stream that twitter, tumblr, instagram, FB etc have, where posts from a variety of people you find (or The Algorithm hopes you will find) interesting will be on a single scrollable page.
As far as I know LiveJournal was the strongest attempt to encourage longer length writing with entries that were then blended onto feed pages. (Standalone blogs had RSS to collate from sites, but Google embraced and then extinguished the most promising attempts to make that friendly to less technical users. I never got into reading via RSS, frankly, because extracting just the text out of the visual context of its home site made me feel something was lost.)
I think that "are you encouraged (by the UI, or the community vibe) write in paragraphs or sentences" - that's a big part of what separated LJ from Twitter (and also old Usenet (which I used to love) from Reddit, which has never really clicked for me.)
And it's just that short-form mojo Twitter that has, (or a visual, easily digestible image-based approach that Instagram, Tumblr, and even FB) which lends itself to The Algorithm mixing and matching and letting you find new people based on what people you already follow are also digging. Which when I write it out, does sound rather herdish, or redolent of the maddening crowd. Finding new interesting people on LJ was slower, and more organic, generally by following up co-commentators on mutual friends, because going through someone's LJ entries was a longer-attention-span thing.
I've been leaning into tumblr more lately, which (like twitter) I'd mostly been using as an information consumer and not a contributor. Sometimes I wonder if I had started reposting my blog content there years ago like I have been on FB, if I might be have found an even stronger community there (or a set of "mutuals" as they're called). Tumblr has cultural space for both long paragraphs and for quick hit images, and a unique style of additive reblogging that keeps contact with the original post while still getting people to riff.
I was kirkjerk on LJ - Here are the people I was connected with on LJ:
apm, archmage, ayun, bookdork, brooklyngirl, c1, candipox, comicnrrd, felisdemens, halfabee, harveyjames, jimbocomics, katwinx, km_515, littlesam, m0xiee, madamluna, metalweb, mkb_technologie, morecake, munitionsship, pentomino, pfarley, probertson, rhysara, rivqah, sauergeek, snobahr, thehippiespeaks, therosser, towersfalldown, tropigalia, trunkbutt, we_happy_few
And these communities: a_year_to_live, gameclub, grunthunt, thesketchy
2021.12.27
times are starting to feel precedented
I can't think of anyone who has had a better year than the QR code. What a comeback.
Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.(noticed on a sign outside the New Jersey test stop named for him by the meadowlands)
So, School of Honk decided to mandate bell covers for all brass... and I only have one blank cover (currently with me having drawn in School of Honk with washable markers) so I had to use my (Steve-O inspired?) goofball cover.
2020.12.27
2019.12.27
You can see the newspaper pages here or here's a video giving the background:
It Was a Total Lack of Planning That Killed Star Wars -
Some spoilers for the new movie, but overall a measured amount of criticism about the see-saw we got, with the first sequel being a bit of a slavish copy of A New Hope, the second sequel being a rebut of that approach, and the third going back to squash the second. (and honestly kind of just remaking Return of the Jedi) Honestly I wish we had taken that second movie approach from the outset, but putting the whole series under one vision would have been a less whiplash-y trip.
2018.12.27
Was hanging out with Leonard "Robot Finds Kitten" Richardson, he's decluttering and I grabbed his series of "Gamespite Quarterly" Reminded me "New Games Journalism" and specifically "The Gamers Quarter" and how some of the more interesting and creative people I know are from there, namely Anna Anthropy, Jeremy Penner, James Harvey. I'm not saying it was Paris in the 20s but I can't think of many vibrantly creative online communities I've been heavily involved with since.
Got my mom a new laptop for Christmas - the 4 year old HP Stream it's replacing had a pretty good run, but 20Gb (for storage, not just memory) meant she was having a bad time with it. But she's letting me grab that old machine, which for a four year old thing ain't so bad - I figure it might help me get out of the Apple bubble and start testing with IE a bit anyway.
It's funny, just a bit of using it and already long-buried habits of reaching for the ctrl key instead of cmd while back on my Mac are rearing their ugly head.
I honestly haven't used Windows much since 2013. Do geeks looking to ssh still just fire up PuTTY or what?
2017.12.27
Also, the Switch with its "play the same game on a TV or a mini-tablet-with-thumbsticks" is pure genius - I wonder how powerful it is? Mario Odyssey was so impressive, but could it play, say, GTA5? If not, that means it's not as powerful as a 12-year-old Xbox 360 (But also reinforces my idea that the 2001 GameCube was the time when Nintendo got enough power to do most of the games it wanted to make, and 360/PS3 for everyone else, since we had all those PS3/PS4, 360/Xbox One dual ports.)
The Daily Routines of Various Famous and Productive People. Rhythm is key.
2016.12.27
Be Princess Leia in 2017. Fight on the front lines. Strangle fascists with the chains they would have you wear. Be a motherfuckin' general.
2015.12.27
Post from the Future! Using the wayback machine here are some snapshots about the look and feel of my blog:
2002:
2008:
2014:
2016:
2014.12.27
2013.12.27
2012.12.27
So Windows 7 has a "Windows Experience Score". I dig the simplification, but having the aggregate score be the lowest subscore is cheesy.
2011.12.27
(Actually my tastes are a bit eclectic, but still, there's some fun stuff here.)
So, the one five star song in the fall was Might Like You Better by Amanda Blank, an incredibly fun and EXTREMELY raunchy song. Another great one was the cover of Addicted To Love by Florence + The Machine. (It was used on the ad for some TV show.)
Other songs by category:
Energetic Electronic or Mashup
- ABC Jackson 5/A.Skillz Remix. From this brilliant remixer.
- California soul (A.Skillz Remix) A.Skillz.
- No Fun/Push It 2 Many DJ's. cmg showed me a three stooges video that used this mashup.
- Satisfaction by Benny Benassi -- also from the Saints Row 3 soundtrack.
- Enemy Crush Skrip Breaks. That video is a crazy silly finger parkour video
- Queen Dot Kong The Dø. Saints Row 3.
- Think about the way Frisco vs. Ice Mc. Rediculously happy song, reminded of it by watching "Trainspotting" again.
- Make It Take It Amanda Blank. Another Amber favorite.
- The Wizard's Palace Violent J. Recommendation from a friend of a friend of the most worthwile Insane Clown Posse song-- a fun mix of Wizard of Oz and Marijuana, I love the horns sample.
- Ass Like That [Explicit] Eminem. I was reading about the incident that inspired this, the stand off of "Triumph the Insult Comic Dog" and Eminem's crew.
- Floozy The Knux-- from this very odd indie video game teaser video.
- 'Till I Collapse Eminem. Soundtrack to "Real Steel".
- 911 Is A Joke Public Enemy. Remembered from my high school days.
- Fast Lane Bad Meets Evil. Also from "Real Steel".
- No Mo! Red Astaire. From a random youtube video that made it look like it was the music for an Equestrian Dressage event.
- Power [Explicit] Kanye West. From the "Saints Row 3" game credits.
- Loose Lips Kimya Dawson. I think I heard this on one of Amber's playlists, and/or from the movie Juno.
- Video Games Lana Del Rey. Super sweet song that Amber and I really like. At first I wasn't sure if it was sarcastic, but no, it is gently about slow evenings with her boyfriend, even as he played his World of Warcraft.
- Tip of the Tongue The Donnis Trio. Heard in a cafe.
- Pterodactyls Fujiya And Miyagi. Heard this in a Chipotle.
- They Jem. A favorite of Amber's.
- Taken By A Stranger Eurovision song by Lena Meyer Landrut who did my favorite "Satellite", though I couldn't find her version.
- Done Wrong Ani Difranco. A replacement for a bad rip of an old favorite album.
- Just One Look Doris Troy. The Casanova's go-to song in "Crazy, Stupid, Love"
- Mama Said The Shirelles. Just randomly in my head at some point.
- The Clapping Song and Iko Iko The Belle Stars. I heard some version of the first song in a VW Beetle ad.
- Blister In The Sun Nouvelle Vague, from the movie Bridesmaids.
- Fly [Explicit] Sugar Ray. Heard this out shopping, remembered it was a song I liked the sound of.
- Closing Time Semisonic. Andy on the Office was trying to get every one into singing in this song at the end of the day... another song I have to unafraid to admit I like.
- Epic Faith No More. This song was big in highschool (so maybe late 80s?) Heard it recently in Saints Row 3.
- Buck Bumble Theme Argonaut software.
- Moon Patrol Dor-X. One of my favorite basslines in high school, I sought out a good cover of it.
- The Lazy Song Bruno Mars. My cousin Llara pointed it out this comedy to us.
- Banana Boat (Day-O) Stan Freberg. This was on a Dr. Demento tape a friend had made for my dad when he was sick.
- I'm Shipping Up To Boston Dropkick Murphys. Used as the ex-Sox Papelban's theme I think, I was reminded of it by its use in "The Departed"
- Don't Fence Me In (From "The Bachelor") David Byrne. Heard this on Amber's iPod a long time ago.
- Hey Bartender The Blues Brothers. Heard this at a store in Burlington Vermont
- 15 Seconds of Fame Jim's Big Ego. Fun, fun, fun, and Internet-y.
- Drums Live At Ballou Vs. Dunbar Ballou Marching Band Drumline. I'm always looking for good drumline music.
A robot walks into a bar and says, 'I'll have a screwdriver.'
2010.12.27
But they don't hold a candle to what my folks are dealing with in Ocean Grove New Jersey...
(I feel a little guilty that we skedaddled ahead of the storm...)
Still, as Gizmodo explains (and has even more pictures of), Japan might just have us beat:
Man. Admittedly that's like, their Alps, but still.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18929_where-arent-they-now-13-overlooked-deaths-2010.html - surprisingly touching capsule obituaries.
2009.12.27
Open Photo Gallery
DJ Santa at Macy's, Downtown Crossing...Walgreens has, like, WAY too many Giftcards to choose from these days. It's almost like having to pick out an actual gift!
My Mom took this shot proving Virginia is for (Snow) Lovers - who knew?
I liked this self-portrait my mom made as she shoveled.
Amber was NH bound for Christmas, and I headed down with my Aunt and Uncle to our familial place in Ocean Grove New Jersey.
In Connecticut you see these signs that have been defaced by removal of the "SON". I'm not sure what happened to the N on this one, but I think the idea is that "SON" will be a shinier white and it's a religious "Son of God" thing.
Whenever I'm at the shore I kind of make it a rule to taste a little saltwater at least...
People crosscountry ski on the shore in New Jersey!
You know, I decided the Japanese V-sign is fun in photos, if only 'cause it gives you something to do besides stand and smile...
Our little tree in Ocean Grove with all that loot! (Well, there's a table under all that but still.)
My mom got her accordion Christmas Eve (and we actually did a bit of door to door caroling to some neighbor friends...) she seems pretty happy with it!
We had a lovely Christmas brunch laid out...
Christmas Day quote from my Aunt, after being accused of not being in the Christmas spirit: "Whaddya want from me? I'm wearing a pin!" To her credit, it was a very nice pin.
Sherlock Holmes: the rootin-tootinest episode of "Scooby Doo" set in Victorian England ever! (Not bad, actually, but unjelled in parts.)
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/07/mobius-bagel-interlo.html - MOBIUS STRIP BAGLE OMG (Catching up on like, a month of Boingboing)
Saw a guy playing a Hurdy-Gurdy at Harvard Square. Kind of like a mechanical stringed bagpipes - I thought it was just an adjective!
2008.12.27
Driving back from New Jersey, a song from the album, "Maschen-Draht-Zaun", bubbled up on the iTunes dump:
(2019 Update: this video actually gives more of a sense of the background than what I posted before...) Veronika said it meant "Wire Mesh Fence" and that it was kind of hard to explain. But now, Wikipedia expalains it all! A little meaner than I might have hoped, but still pleasingly random. (I have an inordinate interest in regional biases and stereotypes I have never heard of before.... also the German take on cowboys.)
Did the guy who made the sideart for the original Pac-Man arcade game actually play the game? Maybe he assumed was too primitive for "legs"?
Jam bands, like college a-capella, is (possibly) for doing, not for listening to.
Got "Strangers with Candy Vol.2". Great in a "wow they went there" way, but I think my fav. bit is the dance party w/ the credits every ep.
A lot of beautiful and melancholy torch songs are track 12 of their respective CDs.
2007.12.27
I'd like to start paying back some of my usual sleep deficit, but thanks (I think in part) to a cold I'm still getting up at 7.
Bad Comic Art of the Moment
--Bill pointed out The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings- Liefeld was this insanely popular artist in the 90s, but technically he's pretty bad. And cannot draw a foot, and seems to go out of his way to avoid drawing them, like in this example. I admit I wouldn't notice have the gaffs the article points out... maybe some of it works as a "style"? |
Quote of the Moment
I think it's much better to be a good cartoonist than a terrible ministerAnd Rob Liefeld is neither! ZING!
2006.12.27
That concept sounded familiar, and I realized that some of the early TV prototypes also used rapdidly spinning disks. When I first heard that factoid, years ago, the idea of a spinning disk in a television seemed absolutely corny, but it would seem my scoffing was misplaced, and forms the foundation of the lovely big video image I enjoy in my living room now.
Articles of the Moment
I guess I'm supersticious enough to think that if I see two seperate pieces on the same subject in unrelated places, that's a bit of synchronicity that should pop them to the top of my kisrael queue.
So while waiting for a haircut yesterday I read this Time magazine debate between Richard Dawkins, stalwart atheist, and Francis Collins, genetic researcher and Christian convert from atheism.
Shortly before that, Bill the Splut had posted 10 myths -- and 10 truths -- about atheism. I thought they were pretty thoughtful responses to some common complaints about a lack of belief in the divine.
Video of the Moment
--Strangely sweet video of this one guy doing the same goofy little dance all over the world, via Break.com. The one downside is it reminds me what a craptastic taker of vacations I am.
2005.12.27
CNN reports that people are easily fooled by how much more a wider glass holds...I've noticed this myself, a full to the brim "short glass" fills the majority of one of the much taller glasses. No wonder kids are so readily duped by that "Law of Conservation" experiment. (Which is easier than I thought, for some reason I thought the kid had to guess which actually held more, which really would be tough.) (thanks FoSO...she has a better feel than most for what seems like a "Kirk Article")
Poem of the Moment
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.In story, the poem is by Trurl's mechanical poet, after Klapaucius challenges him to compose "a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!!."
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
2004.12.27
Ugh...in retrospect, that's a pretty inane comment, given those horrendous tsunamis in Indonesia...
Game of the Moment
Excellent adicting and challenging flash game...Moebius Syndrome...just click to rotate straight pieces and corner pieces to form loops before the board fills up too much. Good learning curve in this game, at least for the first games (which honestly is as far as I got.)
Poetry of the Moment
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh.Slashdot had an article on the 10th Anniversary of Marathon, a game that is the ancestor of Halo on the Xbox. I missed out on what is considered a terrific and deeper-than-DOOM adventure because I've never been much of a Mac user. Anyway, that article linked to this page covering connections between Halo and Marathon, which in turn led to this page on a message on a computer terminal in the game...though in the game, there are no spaces or punctuation, so this is the easy-reading version.
I have been called a hundred names and will be called a
thousand more before the world goes dim and cold.
I am hero. She has been nameless since our birth,
a constant adversary caring for nothing but my ruin,
a sword drenched in my blood forever, my greatest and
only love. She is the dark. O Lethe, enemy and lover, without
whom my very existence would be pathetic and vulgar!
Our relationship is complex and perhaps eternal.
We met once in the garden at the beginning of the world
and, unaware of our twin destinies, we matched stares
across a dry fountain. And I recall her smiling at me before
she devoured the lawn and trees with a translucent blue flame
and tore flagstones from the path and hurled them into the
sky, screaming my sins. I powder a granite monument in a
soundless flash, showering the grass with molten drops of
its gold inlay, sending smoking chips of stone
skipping into the fog. She splinters an ancient oak
with a force that takes my breath and hurls me to the ground.
She lea%!CONNECTION TERMINATED
2003.12.27
Found it while decluttering, decided I have to share it with all of you. Besides the author's misunderstanding of how standardized tests are graded, I'm kind of amused by that "love to go barefoot" line. It reads like it's from a Playboy playmate profile.With aptitude tests, he's best
Kirk Israel
Residence: Glen Russ Lane
Age: 17
Biggest problem facing teens: Apathy -- kids don't care about getting good grades and don't take school seriously.
Hobbies: Reading, creative writing, video games, computer programs, playing the tuba.
Things no one knows: I'm a compulsive doodler; I hada a Jamaican accent for five years while living on St. Thomas Island in the Bahamas; I love to go barefoot.
By EREN WEBER Staff Writer
Q: What's smart, wears glasses and moves around a lot?
A: Euclid High School student and academic whiz kid Kirk Israel.
It's no joke, though -- even in high school year book pictures Israel, 17, has been spotted wearing glasses. And, as the sone of two Salvation Army church ministers, he's been forced to move from state to state and country to country often.
Although his teachers, family and friends could have told you Israel was a high scholastic achiever years ago, the recent results of national standardized acheivement tests now prove to the rest of the world that this high school senior has what it takes to get ahead.
On the Pre-Scholastic Aptitude Test, Israel answered 1,350 of 1,600 questions correctly. About 52,000 high school students take the PSAT in Ohio annually and, this year, Israel was among the top 100.
He takes the honor modestly and said that, although he's enrolled in advanced placement classes, that doesn't mean he's all that smart.All it means to Israel is that he does well on standardized tests.
"I always thought of myself as being pretty lazy," Israel said. "I guess I get distracted a lot, which means I don't always get my school work done, but I still manage to get good grades."
College brochures and university applications are big distractions these days for Israel, who has set his sights on attending an ivy league school preferably near Boston.
Israel is attracted to the old American traditions that abound on the East coast, the museums and the relatives who live close to the city on the Charles River.
"Over the summer, Harvard sent me an application," he said. "I don't know if it had anything to do with my test scores, but I'm going to send it back anyway.
"Chances may be slim, but you never know."
Since then, however, his chances have improved. On the official standardized achievement test taken by more than half a million students in the nation, Israel upped his preliminary score of 1,350 to 1,490.
With those scores, Israel could be anything he wants to be. For now, though, he's considering a teaching profession, particularly at the high school level.
"The best teachers I've ever had used their creative talents and sense of humor to help me understand things," he said, "There's more to learning than just getting good grades."
Euclid residents may get a glimpse of Israel's talents on an upcoming episode of Academic Challenge, in which he may star as a contestant or be an alternate.
It all depends though, because as Israel put it, "I can't memorize answers -- I just know how to learn them."
What a good kid I was...I'm surprised I didn't get beaten up more often.
2002.12.27
Game of the Moment
Just so the rest of you don't feel left out, here's a game for you: River City Hacky Sack. Based on the sprite style and some of the moves from the NES classic River City Ransom (that link is to a great Seanbaby review, where this guy on the side is stolen from), RCHS is a challenging game where you try to knock little cherubs down with the bouncing volleyball, and then you can kick them like a hacky sack. The more you prevent stuff from hitting the ground, the longer the game lasts and the more points you get.
Quote of the Moment
I'd rather be the king of dev\null than a mere serf in \root !Heh, that's pretty funny (in response to yesterday's quote).
2001.12.27
Quote of the Moment
"A uhhh [hits desktop]... a blow, to the head, you have had such a blow?"I always thought this was a good outlook to have.
"Who hasn't...it was the pills, speed. I'll lay off the speed"
"Yah, do so, Mr. Sutcliffe...and also, do this: slow down. Take your time. Life is..long. You must not be in too much of a hurry."
Another useful quote construction from the same movie:
"You know what it is I like about Liverpool, Mr. Sutcliffe?"
"No, what is it you like about Liverpool, Mr. Lennon?"
"I was hoping you'd tell me."
"Rock 'n' roll smells phony and false. It is sung, played, and written by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiteration, and sly, lewd, in plain fact dirty lyrics...it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned deliquent on the face of the earth."
--Frank Sinatra
"You can't knock success."
--Elvis Presley
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I'm thinking about doing a daily update section on kisrael.com. The trouble is I don't know how it should relate to the KHftCEA. I would like to update the web more often than the palm, with richer media content but with less personal info. Maybe I should make it so that someday they can be merged?
00-12-27
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How odd. I'm on R's list for new cellphone # updates.
00-12-27
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