“The Net means personal power in a world of little or no personal power. (Of those other than on the top – who are called powerful because of money, but not because of thoughts or ideas).”

Ok… it seems that I’ve been slightly misunderstood regarding my last rant about students not being interested in digital media. What I meant was that students didn’t seem to be interested in my ideals about the web. I guess they wanted to hear less about hypertext and more about spammed-up interactivity in the form of games and flying graphics. I tried to give my talk a bit of balance, but on hindsight, I’ve realised that 99% percent of interactive media that these kids experience is in the form of Playstation games. So maybe I should have given my talk more of a gaming slant. Tricky.

Enthusing a bunch of 30 half interested kids about the joys of digital media is a definite up-hill struggle. As I was giving a talk to a group of sixth form students in Sunderland today, I realised that trying to shape their minds into my way of thinking about the web was probably the wrong thing to do. I talked about my route into the new media industry, how I got there via a degree in photography and how important it is to maintain a sense of individuality in this deep sea of conformity that surrounds us. Of course, I told them that one of the best things they could possibly do was learn how to get their own site and make it good, after all, someone in this new generation of web designers has to help stop the web from getting squished under the large boot of the Microsoft/AOL monstrosity. Anyway, I expect most of them were not particularly interested in what I had to say, but you never know… I might have plied a neuron in some young persons mind sufficiently to enable them to be a future guardian of the WWW. If so, it was worth it. ::. I am not sure, but I think I spotted Requiem for Dream on DVD for a tenner in HMV today, I was travelling on a downward escalator at the time, hence my slight uncertainty. I might have to go back in tomorrow and check, although after a search of amazon.co.uk it seems that it does not exist yet. I dislike HMV as they usually charge an extortionate amount of money for their CDs, but if Requiem for a Dream is there, and it really is that cheap, I can not really say no.

The Smart Tags Weblog – “Coordinating work to keep the Web safe from Microsoft”. [via Splorp]

Who would have thought my 90 year old grandmother and her sister would make it [the sepia toned picture just above the word ‘community’] into Shift magazine.

Three days and nights roughing it at the weekend was exactly what I needed to snap me out of an long spell of feeling slightly under par. Friday night was spent camping on the beach in Embleton [one of the many coastal towns on the northeast coast]. As we sat round the campfire, we watched the sunset, the stars [some of them of the shooting variety], the tide rolling in and finally, a few hours later, the sun rise above the horizon. The second night was spent at a party in a forest clearing just outside Jedburgh in Scotland – there was music, a huge fire and rather bizarrely a hog roast [not something a vegetarian should witness]. On the third and final night, we went back to the coast [just north of where we were on the first night] and chilled out under the stars again. It was a great trip and exactly what I needed.

Keep it simple – wise words from digital web magazine.

Dean Allen�s applescripts for Tex-edit are really useful for writing blog entries… I take my hat off to him.

If you’re a MacOSX user, I recommend that you browse with Mozilla 0.9.1. It looks just like the dreaded Netscape 4.x but don’t let that put you off. In my opinion, it’s the fastest and most standards compliant browser for OSX.

Doh! – “Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned or that one has just said or done something foolish. Also implying that another person has said or done something foolish”.

Britshorts is a bit like Atomfilms, except that it only features short films by British filmmakers.

It appears that with the launch of Windows XP, us bloggers are going to have to add a line of code to our source which disables Microsoft’s frightening smart tags technology… unless that is, we actually want Microsoft to edit our site for us – because of course, we are all too stupid to decide what should be hyperlinked [I recommend that you read this before you read on here]. It seems as though now that Microsoft has swept away the competition like an irritating fly on it’s Hamburger™, they’re unleashing these new technologies to really start controlling what we see and how we experience the web. I certainly don’t want this site to be altered by new hyperlinks that I haven’t authorised, especially ones which link back to content that I don’t know about on the Microsoft site. It’s us independent content producers that should be most concerned as it threatens our freedom to write what we want and link to what we want. Besides, I consider the creation of hypertext to be a very creative and personal process: once I have written something, I take care in choosing what should be linked and where it links to. I consider this to be just as important as the writing itself. In defending this technology, Microsoft state that the “feature will spare users from “under-linked” sites”. Surely a better way of achieving this is to educate people about hypertext and the importance of creating it properly. In light of all this, it’s important to stop Microsoft taking control of the web, so my suggestion is that you download and try out Opera, iCab or Mozilla if you haven’t done so already.

If you like Tortoise, you’ll most definitely enjoy Mokoondi by Mice Parade… a very nice listen indeed. ::. In an attempt to improve my sense of well being [whatever that is], I’m making a concious effort to consume more fruit and vegetables and less junk… speaking of which, since when did Cadbury’s Boost bars cease to contain peanuts? I had my suspicions when I read this on the wrapper: “Warning, this product may contain traces of peanut”… eh? Further investigation led to my realisation that what I thought were peanuts were actually small pieces of biscuit made to look like peanuts. The worrying thing is that Boost bars still taste like peanuts, which is either a result of some kind of pavlovian conditioning, or they are putting nasty E number flavourings in them. All this goes to show that I haven’t got a clue what I’m eating half the time and I’m sure the same can be said for most of us.

Apparently, the Conservatives have released this in a last ditch effort to win voters.

Bizzare invention of the day.

If you’re using MacOSX and are thinking of installing PHP and MySQL, you might find this article of some use. I’m attempting it myself in order to know more about server side programming because it is something I should really learn. It’s pretty strange being able to do all this stuff on a Mac and it’s only until you start that you realise how powerful OSX really is. In other news: An interesting thread about sentient software at kuro5hin + Fluorescent networks [via Stu – get a website man!] ::. Rik returns… again ::. And… is there an election or something today?

Is this the new iMac?… “The new iMac’s LCD screen… can be removed and used as a Webpad.” – The Register

Many people who use computers all day complain of tiredness and most would put it down to too much time straining their eyes in front of a bright monitor. But how does this expel energy? Well, scientists are discovering more about how concentrating on something drains glucose from the brain. To me, their theory makes sense and would explain the mystery tiredness that I’m sure many people suffer from.

The v-2.org open source redesign project

At around 1am on Sunday morning, I found myself in the middle of a large field, trying and failing to make crop circles with a group of friends [we were at a party and had decided to go for a moonlit stroll]. Without the right tools, circle-making is very difficult indeed, which was a shame because we all had visions of the opening the local newspaper to see a headline like: “They’re here…mysterious circle appears in Chopwell field”. Even though our attempt was completely rubbish, it was still quite exciting to think that someone might discover it and believe that aliens have landed. Alas…it wasn’t to be, and we soon gave up after admitting to ourselves that we were creating not so much a circle, but more of a kind of splodge of flattened grass. Anyway, after this episode, our attention was drawn to the clear skies above us and the bright reddish pin-prick that was Mars hanging low in the sky. We talked about humans travelling there, and what the psychological impact would be on the brave astronauts touching down and seeing Earth as a bright bluish/green pin-prick in the martian sky. This would be the first time a human being would lose sight of Earth [apart from flying around the dark side of the moon, which was only a few minutes of terra firma blackout], and no-one really knows how this would effect the minds of the people staying there. So, tonight, if the sky is clear, find Mars [the brightest, reddest object you can see] and think to yourself what it would be like to stand on its surface and see Earth as nothing but a bright star… a daunting thought, no?