snowdeal.org > ex machina

3.2.2002

coincidence or not? blogzilla asks where the 0.99 branch is, and then - in "ask and ye shall receive" style - it just appears.

i wish blogger pro would hurry-up and get a cross-browser facelift. it's creating a bad blogger brand experience when i have to open ie just to make a post. and while i'm every-so-slightly complaining, the archiving in blogger pro doesn't really seem to be any more reliable than the old archiving, which is a bummer.

posted by e3 4:21:51 PM

2.28.2002

"The carrier wave has been tuned at huge cost to deliver a single message: you are not free, you desire nothing but the products we produce, you have no world but the world we give you."

posted by e3 6:40:26 PM

2.27.2002

via matt jones i discovered that scott andrew has started a "Google It!" feature that initiates a google search on the topic of that particular post.

it's funny that for over a year-and-a-half, i've had a similar "find related" function on the other sections of my site, which is "powered" by google and it never once occured to me to use the title of the article on a general search, instead of trying to find related things by url. i've tried it with a couple of articles and it's immediately far more fun and useful.

speaking of google - who knew that they've been working on a distributed computing toolbar client? certainly not me. [ via webvoice ]

posted by e3 7:56:17 PM

2.26.2002

i've been making a conscious effort to not add my two cents to the growing mountain of blog commentary on blog commentary on blog journalism on blog commentary. this is partly because i really am not going to add anything more or less insightful than chris locke or meg or jason , but it's also because the whole thing feels like it portends a change that's not healthy.

i like visiting sites that feel personal after days and weeks of reading. i don't enjoy reading post after post after post of navel-gazing that seem like herculean attempts to obfuscate dvorak's "you just don't understand" straw man argument.

so having said that i was trying to stay out of the fray, why did i decide to jump in? because of a coincidence.

just by chance, i had to explain to somebody today what exactly this whole weblog thing was. a co-worker had visited my site and had seen, via my outbound links, that there are a "whole bunch of people doing something similar", which struck him as odd.

"no, actually that's the point," i said in a failed attempt at clarification. "i mean, they aren't exactly the same."

"you know - it's like knowledge sharing and group forming networks and personal branding all rolled into one tidy package." this was getting me nowhere.

so i decided to go with a specific example. "there's this librarian named jenny and she kicks ass. even more than the "rewind librarian" , which is wierd because they are both from chicago. anyway, jenny has a quality weblog and that's what makes it worthwhile. people sharing. with a tool like radio she goes from zero to a worldwide audience in no time flat. it's like this one guy said, strangers and their utterances are the stuff of the web ." as you might guess, i'm only digging the hole of incomprehension deeper and deeper. and that's when i heard the little voice in my head.

"you just don't understand."

"crap." i thought, "i've become blogger moonie."

chagrined , i went back and decided to find a little solice from uncle dave and found two impossibly perfect links. first, i guess i can find some comfort in the fact that no less a luminary than dan bricklin also has attempted to do some explaining of the whole weblog thing to the uninitiated and, not surprisingly, does a much better job than myself. but far, far more perfectly - dave exemplifies the spirit of blogging:

"I gotta say this. Having a librarian in our midst is fantastic. I worshipped librarians as a kid. They are so happy to help, and so damned smart!"

eppure si muove

posted by e3 10:16:02 PM

2.25.2002

blogzilla and forwarding address: osx are two new and interesting blogs. one is about something that occupies a fair amount of my time and another thing that looks like it will likely take up more of my time in the future.

posted by e3 11:20:54 PM

2.24.2002

just in case you're not the observant type, with a bunch of help from matt i've got some snazzy new font action happening on the site. how about that house gothic 23? smooth.

posted by e3 11:07:35 PM

brent ashley's blogchat is pretty interesting and a great example of the type of stuff that can be done with remote scripting. i've thrown up a quick beta blogchat [doesn't work with netscape 4.x], so you might be able to catch me there. i've got a few ideas for some interesting blogchat twists, and if they work out, i may deploy blogchat more widely on the site.

posted by e3 10:57:30 PM