Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

I don’t really know how (let alone why) I and others write this stuff – in that I wake up, have no clue, read some places I read every day and soon find myself a bit amazed how even a small review of the day in the life of a handful of people is so startling.  Compared to the seriousness of the news, the weight of things in life, and even the passage of a marker like Kurt’s suicide (not a biggie for me except as a parallel to Lennon’s murder the morning of my grade 11 Christmas English exam), this stuff should be fluff.   While it is not journalism despite how much some pretend, it still, however, has heft or connection.  

Take Ian, who I have praised here from time to time. I have followed him daily (then six times a week) through the writer’s life of thick and thin and now he’s apparently going through the junior apprentice TV writer program at Fox – the kind of thing we BA in English Lit. grads dreamed of (…err…I mean…”of which we dreamed.”) Craig’s in Australia…again…yawn. Rob1 posts an odd graphical representation of what the workplace appears to be like and then edits it but it still looks a lot like Alanis at the Junos. Shelly’s getting published and Mike is on the mend. Ben is looking for work in Georgia and Michael might be able to assist. Like Rob2, I am also following the playoffs and American Idol. I guess my gut feeling when I sit down to do this each morning before rushing out the door is that following the thoughts and experiences of ordinary folk like me must be dull. Then it isn’t.

What is the lesson?   The real news leaves you dislocated.    Heck, they even spend millions to put together Average Joe 2, hooks you in and then he goes and picks the wrong girl, the ditz. That was dull. Pretty much sent my week off on the wrong direction. Watching fake professional reality is nowhere near as satisfying as watching amateur reality. I hope Ian is paying attention.

Having little to really talk about lately, maybe you would like to check out some new sites I am enjoying:

• Fake is the New Real can tell you where the Clarksvilles are, let you know when national holidays fall, shares low-resolution .jpg art,
• Forgotten New York shares vestages of big city past, including a cemetery started before 1700,
• Willson is in Australia being gramps – expect some very good pictures and some of dogs.
• Ian has gone Hollywood.
• …and the 12,297th Carnival of Canucks is up.

Does this uuuuugly site look like a bad
1977 Frampton guitar solo to you? Maybe it will be fixed by the time you see it.
It is strobing.

I love Flash so much. Not because of the same reasons Peter does – I don’t care if
something doesn’t get google indexed as by far the biggest part of the web
isn’t. I love it so much because it is cold fusion, because it is an utter
failure for anything other than pong replicators, I love it because people pay
money for it, put it up in incubators. Flash front pages are like fat men in
clown outfits blocking your way to the store you want to enter. They shout and
jump around telling you how great the store is but they keep you from getting
there.

This site adds that thrill of possible seizure from exposure to strobe.

Despite the hype the world wide web is a pretty crappy place for primary sources. Internet based private space may hold masses of libraries worth of material but the promise of a free and open digital library a click away is a very long click away. It is, then, small chirpy of noises of glee I make when I come across primary sources such as the UK’s National Archives and its one million documents now plunked down for all to see on the web.

Trouble is, you do only “come across” these things. I wish there was a card catalogue of accessible web-based primary sources somewhere available. You know…like an organized log of what was one the web…now what would you call that?