Yearly Archives: 2006

coComment take two

I can already tell that discussion about coComment is going to be rumbling on for a fair bit. One of those things, it’s just seemed to have got peoples attentions.

Anyway, if your curious, I will be merrily tagging away anything I find pertaining to it at http://del.icio.us/brightmeadow/coComment if you want to keep an eye on that.

Ben Metcalfe has already written a great piece pointing out how coComment could lead to semantically forked conversations. He’s not being a nay-sayer, just pointing out that things might not be all as rosy as the hype makes it look.
coComment, comments, conversation, Ben Metcalfe

Sunday Roast: there’s no law about lying to Canadians

It’s not been a bad week all told and, clearly, my more positive mental attitude has rubbed off on the Roast – it’s a biggy!

According to Steven Spielberg, President Bush actually has his uses.

In the UK, new powers over death are being considered.

I think the 40×365 project is a wonderful idea. It’s made me think of doing something similar, but it would probably be on a smaller scale! For a month or something. Hmmm.

Phu Ly has a link to some incredibly beautiful pictures in a photoset classed, appropriately, as “[ æ¡‚æž— – Beautiful China” (warning, lots of big pictures, took a minute or so to open on wireless-broadband connection).

A moving and eloquent essay on ethnicity and science fiction.

I am in awe at the sheer elegance of this three column layout as presented by A List Apart. I suddenly want to redesign Bright Meadow, and I don’t even like three-column layouts for personal blogs!

Because Spooky is a jolly good chap and has done much for me Penguin- (and computer-) wise over the years – The Daily Monkey.

We here at Meadow Towers are not the only ones who are easily entertained by silly things. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame recently spent thirty minutes entranced by a rock impersonating a whale.

When I saw the trailer for “Bubble” I was confused, more than a little freaked out by all the doll’s heads, and left without 1) a clue what the film was about and 2) any desire to see said film. You could infer from that, that the trailer failed (for me at least). I therefore find it hardly surprising to hear that it bombed on it’s debut the other day. This is sad, as Soderbergh is to be applauded for trying new and innovative ways to distribute films, and box-office failure is hardly going to make distribution exec’s go “Oh, yes, we must distribute ALL films like this in the future”. Still, the last paragraph has it right – the film is only going to appeal to a niche audience. A small niche audience, clearly. Possibly not the best film to experiment with, hey?

I found William Gibson’s blog the other night. How happy was I?! (And how geeky to be getting so happy, but 😛 you).

For all you Photoshoppers out there, here’s a quick tutorial on how to create water droplets. Easy, effective, need to find me a reason to add water to things now!

This is just too perfect for it to be true! Indiana police are using robotic deer as a honey-trap for poachers.

Men, if you ever wonder why the women in your life are always sneaking off to the salon, David Seah will not only enlighten you, but he might make you giggle. Ok, giggling might be a bit effeminate, but it made me smile 😀

BBC NEWS: Public unclear over safe drinking. Am I the only one who sees this as a no-brainer? If you’re going to be driving, you don’t drink any alcohol, period. All this faffing around with ‘units’… Not to mention it doesn’t help that the acceptable levels keep changing.

If you’re one of those people who thinks Stowe knows what he’s talking about, the ‘conversational index’, or CI, might be the best indicator of how successful a blog is/will be. Going by the very simple formula (number of posts / number of comments), you find that Bright Meadow has a CI of roughly 0.39 (this is give or take – I’ve only got numbers of comments since the shift to WP back in December 05). On that scale then, Bright Meadow is going to kick some serious butt, and soon!

As a follow-up to this, Don Dodge has his own version of the CI. In this version, BM has a CI of 2.5.

I rediscovered Traumwerk today. Michael Shanks’s work is some I keep circling round and coming back to, time over time. So partly it is the same fascination that keeps you watching car-wrecks even when you know you shouldn’t, but I also have deep respect for the man’s ideas and work, even if I rarely (if ever) agree with what he says. He drives me round the bend and halfway back again, but he always makes me think harder about why I believe what I believe. Oh, and he was a proponent of wikis before most people knew wikis existed, so go Mike 🙂

I’m not a gamer, but the CC is, and he bent my ear often enough about SotC for the PS2 that even I can appreciate it is a great game. So, I bring you an interview all about the making of “Shadow Of The Colossus”. (Translated from the original Japanese).

Brian’s managed to snag himself a coComment invite. Lucky so and so. coComment is a service that claims to let you be able to track all your comments you’ve left on other blogs to better keep the conversation going. As I currently have a bookmark folder with all the posts I’ve commented on (damn people without comment RSS feeds!) this idea excites me. As I don’t have an invite though, I’m going to have to wait and see what other people like Brian and Ross have to say about it.

Liz, as ever, has a great fun find in Button Generator.com.

Again trust the NYT to give me something to end on a suitably bizzare note: Ivan Ivanovitch is dead.

Don’t forget there’s always more where that came from.

My sincerest apologies

I apologize to anyone who subscribes to the comments feed and got subjected to a comment from “Bob” on “Minor Scare” – I was away from the computer so wasn’t unable to catch the highly unpleasant comment. Askimet, whilst doing wonders for my spam, unfortunately isn’t designed to catch racial slurs, obscenities, and personal attacks.

Again, I am sorry that you had to read such things. I’ve deleted it and will do my best to catch such things sooner in future.

cas signature

A good day.

my new boots! I’ve got a list of things I am going to buy when I have money again (i.e., when I am finally gainfully employed). Yes, I am that anal. Well, I forget things if I don’t write them down!

Number one on my list since about October was these boots. I have chunky calves, which makes finding proper boots that fit me is difficult, so when I found not one but two pairs in Clarks, I was over the moon. Sadly, I could only afford one of the pairs. I’m glad I got them because I’ve worn them most days since, but I’ve lusted after the second pair none the less. The pair I bought were sensible. The pair I had to leave behind were just so pretty! I promised myself that I would get the boots when I finished the thesis as a treat, but I couldn’t afford them then, so restrained myself.

Today I was walking past Clarks and noticed they had a sale on… Yup, the boots I wanted were in the sale! A bit of mental budgeting and some judicious usage of discount vouchers later, I am the proud owner of a pair of boots that should have cost me £80. I paid £25.

I also caught every single bus I wanted to today, completed all my errands, and had some very nice emails from people.
All in all, a good day.
(Don’t forget, you can still Name That Penguin)

Some further thoughts on Identity

I’ve just got back from having a tea with Neko up at the lab and, along with catching up on all the gossip I’ve missed in the last few months, she made me rethink my approach to identity. It was one of those moments – I was saying something, and it was only as I finished that I realised it was what I truly believed, even though it went slightly contrary to opinions I professed only a little while ago.

We were talking about reasons the Wiki failed to make the splash we wanted it to and pinned it down to two things: Archaeologists are remarkably anti- shiny new technology; and there was no one prodding the conversation to get it going. We both still feel that wikis are great tools to facilitate conversation, but that’s it – they facilitate it, they don’t make the conversation. Just because you have a wiki, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a great conversation, at least not without a fair degree of input from interested parties.

What continues to excite both of us, however, is the possibility of using wikis in peer-review situations, and in situations were normal open conversation cannot take place. The degree of anonymization inherent in the wiki-engine can be an amazing boon for people who, for whatever reason, want to participate in a discussion, but who fear the consequences of publicly stating their opinions. This potential to democratize academia and discussion gets quite a lot of us jumping up and down going “Woot!”

I made a deal about ‘reputation’ in my previous post, and how this is linked (in academic contexts) primarily to your name. At the time of writing that post, I was coming down on the side of anonymous = bad (at least, = not the ideal), and whilst I still feel this, I am forced to admit that there are situations where anonymity can be a good thing.

For example, in a situation such as a wiki focusing on reviewing new articles (got to escape the closed review-board model of Antiquity at all costs – run away, run away!), you might want to make contributions/comments but you fear the retribution you would get if it was clear it was YOU saying it. Perhaps the author is (a) your supervisor, (b) a god in your field, (c) someone you have to work with, (d) you imagine something. Whilst I am a believer that you should always stand by what you say, there are times when I have only participated in a discussion because of the shield of anonymity given to me by the medium I am using – knowing you can make a fool of yourself and not have it traced back to you (easily) makes it much easier to look your supervisor in the eye!

I still feel that identity, and more importantly truth in identity, is vital, but I’ll freely admit that I missed out a chunk of reasoning for anonymity, or at least pseudonymity.

Endnotes:
(I made the above argument for democratization much better in my thesis by the way 😉 )

identity, anonymity, pseudonymity, reputation, freedom of anonymous speech, wiki, democratization, democratization of academia