One of my Media English students — I’m not sure which one, though I’ll find out on Thursday I suppose — uploaded made this hilarious trailer remix (link for LJers, the video is embedded below) as a final project in our class. (They’re doing media remixes, as a kind of break from all the studying of Lawrence Lessig we did this half of semester.) Normally, a short trailer remix is something I’d be so-so about for such a big project, but (minor English glitches aside) this is pretty damned good, if you ask me! (Good enough, indeed, that I had …
Month: June 2008
Because the World Needs More Cheese…
… I’ve uploaded the uncut, massive single MP3 version (please right click and save the file, as it’s huge!) of the second-to-last musical performance I ever made in Saskatoon, back in 1998. My friend Mike invited me, my ex (the vocalist on the track), and two DJs I knew from high school (Phil Greer and Keenan Gauthier) to perform at what he was then calling “parties” (because, I think, “rave” was passé by then. We played a few gigs, and on the last one — just before I took off for Montreal in fall 1998 — Keenan got a buddy …
Fsck It
One nice thing about using Ubuntu is that even when things go a little haywire, it’s usually possible to back up all the important files and then just reinstall. Reinstallation is so fast — at least, compared to the plodding installation process on Windows — that it almost always is like visiting the dentist: great dread before, not so bad once you’re there.
Asimov’s July ’08 — Fictionwise eMagazine Edition Up
For those living outside of the English-speaking, American-magazine-distributed world who are interested in reading my recently-published story “Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues” in the July 2008 issue of Asimov’s SF, you might be interested in the Fictionwise eMagazine edition. (There’s DRM, of course, and I don’t usually buy things with DRM myself — though since my subscription copy was sent to the wrong address somehow, and I’m going to have to wait a few more weeks before demanding it be re-sent, along with a couple of other months’ worth of my subscription! But anyway, it’s up, it’s available, …
On The Eyeball Floor
On The Eyeball Floor. It’s a dark, funny, weird, but very human story by the unstoppable Tina Connolly, up now at Strange Horizons. Go read it. And yeah, the title made me think of a certain Howlin’ Wolf song, just like it made you do, right? (Mashed with froggie madness here.)
Creeping Specs
I first learned the expression “creeping specs” while I was living in Montreal. Someone who was then a friend of mine got me a tech-writing job. Well, sort of a tech-writing job, but with more graphics stuff, something I was not then, and am not now, qualified to do. (I could bitch about how the “learning curve” was one I was not interested in climbing, but the honest truth is I needed the money, and didn’t turn the work away. I am only bitter because, while he extended the job for as long as he could, he also didn’t warn …
Why Oh Why Can’t We Have a Non-Schitzophenic Media?
Oh yes, I’m thinking of Brad DeLong’s posts about the American newsmedia. Screenshot from someone browsing Daum today. One side reports that a protester was half-blinded by a water cannon used by police, and on the other side, the headline underlined in red suggests (roughly) that “claims of injuries from water cannons are lies.” (I know, I know, it’s the internet, but this really is what it’s like in the print media too. No wonder nobody I know here who actually thinks on a daily basis trusts the news, especially the mainstream news, and no wonder demonstrators have been ejecting …
The Day the Ruling Party’s Website Went Offline
Why was this image placed on the website of the ruling political party’s website? Why was some hacker logged on there as an admin, and responding to all commenter’s complaints with the same phrase: “Myung Bak is asleep!” What could possess anyone to do something so foolhardy? That’s the question I’m trying to answer in this post. It takes a while to get to, but I hope the read is worth it.