Harry Potter is Evil

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6 November 2003
1 min read
5 Comments
In Entertainment, Weird
1087 views

I was wandering through the hallowed halls of the Pagan Prattle today and ran across an old article. It was about some loony fundamentalist in New Mexico indulging in that favourite pastime of all nut cases who wish to keep their flock in the dark — book burning. While Harry Potter was the draw card, Stephen King, Eminem, AC/DC and Snow White were also rubbing shoulders on the pyre.

While the story wasn’t news to me, it had featured locally about the same time, the comments it attracted were fascinating.

It seems the title of the post is a magnet for fuckwits from both sides of the camp. Some of them were rabid enough to have required a stern pointing and laughing at by Feòrag, which is always amusing, but most of the mouth breathers proved too stupid to get the humour.

All you can really hope is that the worst offenders are too busy leaving inane comments on web sites that they don’t get around to passing their wit and intelligence onto another generation.

At Home with the Führer

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6 November 2003
49 second read
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In Design, History
926 views

The Green Man has dug up another nugget of web goodness.

Simon Waldman was flicking through the November 1938 copy of Homes & Gardens magazine when he found an article on Hitler’s mountain retreat. Noting that the British interiors magazine described Hitler in glowing terms, as if he were the Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen of his day, Waldman thought the article worthy of observation and posted it in his blog. Then the shit hit the fan.

Game Board Meeting Draws Howls

By
5 November 2003
44 second read
In Politics, Wildlife, World
710 views

Three dozen protesters howled and prowled the sidewalk outside the Alaska Board of Game meeting in Spenard on Monday, hoping to raise enough ruckus to stop the board’s planned resumption of aerial wolf kills. Nevertheless, the Game Board today is expected to authorise the first aerial predator control program in Alaska in more than 15 years, using a new state law that allows private pilots to participate

Wiggly Images, Japanese Punks and Radiohead Experiments

By
4 November 2003
1 min read
2 Comments
In Design, Technology, Weird
747 views

Found an addictive little interactive Java toy via HogBlog. Tease the plague of flea, you know you want to…

Interesting, and very wiggly, fake stereoscopic photos using animated GIFs to rapidly switch between left and right images.

Jon Bower has some great portraits of Japanese non-conformists at Meiji Jingu subway.

Hilarious story about an experiment in which a San Francisco Bay Area 5th grade class listens to Radiohead, then draws what they hear. Some of the resulting images look like they could pass for actual Radiohead album covers.

And who can resist the lads of Thailand who get down with their funky selves by sticking unusual objects through their cheeks.

Credit Card Sized PDA

By
4 November 2003
27 second read
In Technology
610 views

Citizen has unveiled a miniature PDA concept considerably smaller than existing PDAs. The 60 x 90 x 9.3mm 16-colour grayscale PDA is just a bit bigger then a credit card. It runs ITRON4 as an OS, and battery life is rated at 30 hours

Phone Database Abused

By
4 November 2003
32 second read
1 Comment
In Technology
691 views

The telecommunications watchdog is investigating abuse of a huge national database containing personal information on every Australian with a phone connection. They are concerned that companies may be misusing information stored in the database, which is meant to supply data for emergency services, law enforcement and directory services

ACA Raises Alarm Over DIY DSL

By
4 November 2003
31 second read
In Technology
663 views

Consumers and small businesses self-installing ADSL internet services could be interfering with their security systems. The Australian Communications Authority warned that self-installed ADSL could disable to back to base calling functions of some security services, which automatically dial the security company in the event of an alarm

Yes it’s Melbourne Cup day!

By
4 November 2003
3 min read
1 Comment
In Design
832 views

Yes it’s Melbourne Cup day! Yay! My company sweep allocated horsies are Tumeric and Schumpeter. I have absolutely no fucking idea how to pronounce either of them, but they’d better do very well indeed.

On another note, a major-ish web site redesign I spent countless hours designing and coding with clients, project “managers”, programmers and QA people, went live yesterday. I have some very mixed feelings towards it. A lot of my judgments regarding the design were overuled by the powers that be. Countless revisions and changes were made, from small text changes, colour, useability issues, interface design, icons etc. I spent a hell of alot of time working on these but in the end apparently all that mattered was what the client wanted, whether there were more efficient, appropriate approaches, techniques and conventions or not. And what the client wanted, was a rip off of their competitor(s) with their corporate colours slapped in place and rounded edges everywhere.

The aspect of the redesign that I am the happiest with, (but by no means imply that there isn’t room for improvement), are the icons. This project afforded me with a chance to create/illustrate/stylise a small set of icons which are now happily finding their way across this companys’ other sub-sites. Illustration is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I can remember. It’s this interest/passion that got me into design in the first place and is what I want to do.

No the client didn’t go with my preferred design, colour scheme or header and footer treatments, but the icons were the part of this design that both myself, (and my company entourage) and the client, (plus their many, many, many, many layers of red tape and stakeholders) could agree upon. This was the part of the design process that I enjoyed the most, and that kept me going despite the internal politics.

Go Schumpeter and Tumeric!

Hack the Universe

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3 November 2003
50 second read
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In Science, Technology
706 views

Warren Ellis offers a tidy summation on a lengthy Scientific American physics article, Information in the Holographic Universe:

The universe is actually a two-dimensional plane packed with information, and the three-dimensions universe we perceive is nothing but an expression of that information. Matter and energy and life are, in fact, holograms. It leaves something very very interesting open for the future. If the universe is a vast two-dimensional plane of information — then it can be hacked.

Sonny Bono is Dead and Other Copyright Wackiness

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3 November 2003
3 min read
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In Entertainment
666 views

The latest compilation project from Illegal Art is titled Sonny Bono is Dead:

This project is a protest against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which passed through Congress in 1998 and was upheld by the US Supreme Court earlier this year. This act diminished the public’s ability to access older works while granting more control to corporations anxious to preserve a few copyrights from the 1920’s. Copyright law continues to expand and defeat its original purpose of promoting advances in the arts and sciences. These excesses damage the evolution of our culture and only serve corporate interests.

We encourage artists to liberally sample from works that would have fallen into the Public Domain by the year 2004 had the Sonny Bono Act failed. Artists are also encouraged to create new works by sampling Sonny Bono’s output (or other artists who embraced the notion of copyright lasting forever). The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2004.

Cinema Secrets, the makers of a Michael Myers Halloween mask, won a lawsuit against Don Post Studios, who had designed the mask used in the 1978 movie, by proving they took the idea from the movie.

Nosferatu, an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and one cinemas classic films, was almost lost due to copyright law. Florence Stoker, widow of Bram Stoker, sued the producers of Nosferatu for infringement and won. As part of the 1925 decision, all copies of Nosferatu were to be destroyed. Most were.

Over the next few years, any copies that became public were also destroyed. This may have meant the end of the film, except that a few isolated copies managed to survive Florence Stoker’s death in 1937.

Lemming Deaths: The Vole Truth is Out There

By
3 November 2003
1 min read
1 Comment
In Science, Wildlife
545 views

One of the oddest phenomena in the natural world — the sudden mass death of lemmings — has been resolved, according to a trio of European biologists. Unexplained population crashes of this rodent of the high northern latitudes have bred the myth that, whenever they become too numerous for the available food, the creatures band together and fling themselves off cliffs in a crazed suicidal rush. However researchers now say the truth is even more complex. Lemming populations, they say, surge spectacularly and fall just as quickly, thanks to the combined feasting of four predators: the stoat, arctic fox, snowy owl and a seabird called the long-tailed skua

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