January 31, 2004
Orkustras in the Kiddie Pool
Is your posse on OrKut your orkutstra? (2JJ)
Although of late it has become rather trendy to trash OrKut, and many of the criticism are valid, I think folks may be missing the point. (2JK)
Many people joined the fray, had a frenzy of friend inviting, and then in the pause after the storm wondered: "what now?" The question hangs, "what can I do with an orkut?", as if the thing done already is not important. (2JL)
The value of an OrKut or FriendSter system, as currently configured, is not in what you can do with it once you are set up, but in the signifying you do as you are setting up. You have to take a moment to concern yourself with your public persona. You have to scan your memory and your environment ("real" and "virtual") for the people to whom you want to say, "you matter, at least some, to me, today". A minor refactoring of the soul, a plough, perhaps of only superficial depth, through your heart and mind. And you get the experience of being selected by the others that are there. (2JM)
Because of the limitations (as described, in this case by DanahBoyd) of OrKut, this potentially pretty good experience has the taint of high school upon it. Oh boy, look who is popular; what is the trick so I can be popular too? (2JN)
danah's second criticism (2JO)
Are trustworthy, cool, and sexy the only ways that i might classify my friends? (2JP)
points out an instance of the general problem with these systems: They are flat or close to, totally lacking in the complex multi-dimensionality necessary to adequately express the relationships one has with an individual and communities. An OrKut friends network is a graph of nodes and untyped links. Graphs where the links may be typed are better, more flexible graphs. Better still are graphs where the links are first class describable entities. (2JQ)
Social networking tools are in their infancy, utilizing only the bare minimum of the potential present in hypertextuality. We may as well play in the kiddie pools and help bring the future about. (2JR)
January 24, 2004
RSS Adjustment
Since I've added a comments feed I've decided to take the number of comments out of the titles of the entry based feeds: RSS 2.0 full feed, RSS 0.9? partial and RSS 1.0 partial. (2IW)
I had put them in there because I like being able to track conversations and at the time didn't know how to do a comments feed. The unfortunate side effect of the numbers is that aggregators see the article anew with every comment. (2IX)
If this messes someone up, let me know. (2IY)
January 21, 2004
Eternal Damnation
ArthurSilber offers his personal judgement of damnation to President Bush: (2IL)
When all the other rationalizations are stripped away, what remains is only this: the President and all those who share his views merely maintain that their views mandate this conception of marriage. And their views in this area are inextricably bound up with their religious views, as they constantly remind us (those values instilled in us by "fundamental institutions, such as families, and schools, and religious congregations"). Believe them, and take them at their word. In essence, and in principle, this is the basis of theocracy -- the idea that government is properly utilized to force all men to live in accord withsome people's conception of their God and His commandments. I repeat: the issue at the heart of this debate, and the only issue of any consequence, is whether the state has the right to enforce a particular view of morality on an entire country,entirely apart from the issue of recognition of individual rights which properly ought to be enjoyed by all men. Moreover, the President does all this in large part to appease certain of his constituents -- most significantly, religious conservatives -- and thus hopes to help assure his own reelection. (2IM)
Read the whole thing. It describes one more large step down the slippery slope to a country where diverse thinking and behavior is unacceptable. A land where what you profess to believe grants access to full rights and what you do is irrelevant. (2IN)
January 19, 2004
Broken Images
My step-dad sent me the following RobertGraves? poem. I think it points to one of the fundamental divisions that come up in abstract conversations. (2I1)
In Broken images (2I2)
He is quick, thinking in clear images; I am slow, thinking in broken images. (2I3)
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images; I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images. (2I4)
Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance; Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance. (2I5)
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact; Questioning their relevance, I question the fact. (2I6)
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses; Whe the fact fails me, I approve my senses. (2I7)
He continues quick and dull in his clear images; I continue slow and sharp in my broken images. (2I8)
He in a new confusion of his understanding; I in a new understanding of my confusion. (2I9)
January 08, 2004
Learned Helplessness
DavePollard has yet another fine post summarizing an article by MalcolmGladwell about why American's love the SUV. Dave extends the argument to raise an important point: (2H2)
Gladwell leaves it at that, but the reader's mind cannot. The reality is that this delusion of danger, and the illusion that something can or has to be done, that someone -- British cows, Canadian farmers, Chinese cats, Firestone, Saddam Hussein -- must be brought to account in order to give us back control, is literally making us all crazy. It causes us to believe we cannot let children out of our sight even for a moment. It causes us to wildly change our diets, to avoid visiting whole countries, to fingerprint whole nations of visitors, to suspend civil liberties, to put barbed wire around our communities, to drink only bottled water, to wear masks, to introduce five levels of increasingly hysterical 'threat' to everyone's safety. (2H3)
It is irrational, neurotic, panic-stricken behaviour, a wild over-reaction to a tiny uncontrollable risk while we recklessly disregard risks we could control and which kill and destroy lives in large numbers everyday -- air and water pollution, tainted food from corrupt and underregulated meat packers, drugs in sport and airplane cockpits, drunk drivers, kids with guns, corporate frauds, a prison system that incarcerates the mentally ill and encourages criminal recidivism -- and on and on and on. Unfortunately, it is also in the best interest of the media and governments to focus on the uncontrollable risks, and to pander to public fear and fascination with them. They're more sensational, more visceral. And since there's really nothing that can be done about them, you can do anything, or nothing, in response to them, and not be held accountable, or responsible. (2H4)
Imagine the world we could have if we used the resources spent on the uncontrollable on realistic improvements to our lives. (2H5)
January 04, 2004
Comments Feed
I've added a comments RSS feed based on the information found at Reverend Jim's. (2GC)
It would make me happy if everyone to whom I subscribed had one of these. It makes tracking conversations far easier and it's the conversation that this blogging stuff is all about, yeah? It may creep along slowly, but it is a dialogue of many parties, expanding what we know. (2GD)
The URL for the feed is (2GE)
http://www.burningchrome.com:8000/~cdent/mt/comments.xml (2GF)
and you can also find it down in the bottom of the sidebar with the other feeds. (2GG)
Kitty Coffee
For a few years now I've been hearing people talk about a very special coffee made from beans that have passed through a type of cat that eats coffee fruit. This always made me go "huh" but I never looked into it. (2G5)
Today while cruising for information on bathroom fans (I'd like to install one) I found an entry on Dennis Judd's blog that covers the genesis of the coffee in suitable detail. (2G6)
The cat is an Indonesian palm civet and the coffee is called Kopi Luwak. The name is a combination of local words for coffee (Kopi) and the civet (Luwak). (2G7)
A place called Raven's Brew sells it. (2G8)
Somebody named Chris Rubin tried a cup and found it "interesting and unusual": (2G9)
Is it worth the money? Five dollars for a single cup? Sure, why not? You'll pay more than that in any Paris cafe for a bad au lait. Might as well spend it on something rare and exotic. (2GA)
I would know most of this already if I watched Oprah as apparently the coffee was sampled on the show back in October. Oh the things I must miss. (2GB)
January 03, 2004
Search Box
I've add a new search form field over in the search box on the right. The first box is the same as the old: it runs the traditional MovableType blog search. The other box points to the search function on the wiki uses the modular searching I just completed for PurpleWiki: (2FO)
Pluggable search modules that uses a nice simple object model to all wiki searches to spread out from the wiki to other system. Thanks to David Fannin for the inspiration to do this. This part is woefully undocumented, ask me if you have trouble, several Config changes are needed. Modules can be made for anything that you can figure out a way to search from Perl. Modules are included for: T (2FP)
If you enter a search term there, it will search the wiki, the blog entries, MyArts, and get the first ten results from google. (2FQ)
Update: I've also changed the configuration so that Nid numbers show up. This makes TransClusion easier. (2FR)
January 01, 2004
PurpleWiki alpha Available
I've put together an alpha release of the latest PurpleWiki: (2EV)
http://www.burningchrome.com:8000/~cdent/tools/PurpleWiki-0.9.1.tar.gz (2EW)
This version adds several features that seemed valuable: (2EX)
- Pluggable search modules that uses a nice simple object model to all wiki searches to spread out from the wiki to other system. Thanks to David Fannin for the inspiration to do this. This part is woefully undocumented, ask me if you have trouble, several Config changes are needed. Modules can be made for anything that you can figure out a way to search from Perl. Modules are included for: (2EY)
- Wiki: the wiki itself. This just moves existing code out to the module. (2EZ)
- MovableType. It's very handy to be able to find BackLinks from the blog into the wiki. The blog and the wiki need to be on the same machine. (2F0)
- Arts (a simple knowledge base system. See http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/tools-yak/2003-12/msg00001.html and related threads for more on arts.) (2F1)
- IrcLogger? (see http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/tools-yak/2003-12/msg00003.html and related threads for more on that) (2F2)
- Google (SOAP::Lite and a google key required) (2F3)
- A wiki whiteboard based on Danny's stuff. See it in action at PurpleWiki:WikiWhiteboard (2F4)
- The ability to choose whether nids show up as '#' or the value of the nid. Set the boolean Config value ShowNid? to get this (uncomment it in the config file). (2F5)
- Updates to the bloxsom plugin to support the bloxsom cooluri plugin from Rob Hague. (2F6)
Note this is an alpha release. I'm using it in production environments but that doesn't mean it won't eat your wiki, so try with care. If you do try it, please send comments to the PurpleWiki development mailing list. (2F7)
Coming Soon (2F8)
Things we've talked about for future releases: (2F9)
- A more modular database system to allow pages to be saved in formats other than the current (and sort of difficult to mess with) UseModWiki format. (2FA)
- Template system for more configurable presentation. (2FB)
- Server independent Nids and TransClusion to allow content from wikis and wikitext on different machines to be transcluded. There's some discussion of that in the development list archives. (2FC)
