So anyway…

I’m processing photographs that I’ve taken recently. This, I think, is proof that aliens live among us disguised as domestic animals

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It’s Australia Day (and my mother-in-law’s birthday). January 26 is the date that the First Fleet landed at Botany Bay (they later moved to a more congenial spot, that which became Sydney Harbour).
Many people feel that this is no cause for celebration, because it represents the colonial, imperialist European White male arriving to do awful things to the land and native people.
Others feel that it’s a good day to have a barbeque or go to the beach, since it’s a holiday and they don’t have to go to work.
We’re having a barbeque. And we may (or may not) go out later and see if we can find a fireworks show.
Happy Australia Day, no matter how you feel about it (and happy birthday, Lyn).

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For some bizarre reason, today I found myself thinking about a person of my and Andrew’s acquaintance from many years ago (when I figure it out it comes to between seven and eight years ago, roughly, but my timeline may be off; it was certainly before the end of 1996, though).

This person, whom I’ll refer to as S, was acquainted with David, Andrew’s older brother, and had apparently had a bit of a bad time with that relationship/friendship (as did many other people, but let’s not go there because I’ve made a personal promise NOT to talk about that sort of stuff in my weblog). Anyway, she learned about Andrew (and Greg, presumably) from David, and also learned about me being friends with Andrew.

This woman turned up at the talker where Andrew and I were administrators and introduced herself to both of us. I talked to her on several occasions, and we shared some information relating to shared areas of interest and experience, I’ll put it that way. She also wanted to talk to Andrew all the time, and while I didn’t especially mind (I’m honestly not the jealous sort), she only wanted to talk to him ALONE, without me present in the virtual room.

Well, she was pretty weird, to put it mildly. She got more and more possessive of Andrew and his time, and more jealous of me. When Andrew finally made it clear to her that although he was happy to talk to her and he knew she’d had a bad time of it, his priority was always going to be me. She didn’t like that at ALL. She tried all sorts of manipulative things to get him to stop talking to me and talk to her, instead (not knowing, of course, that Andrew is manipulation-proof, just trust me, he can’t be budged unless he wants to be and there’s NO manipulating him).

Eventually, she told him that, “There’s more to life and the internet than just one Duchess,” (that’s the nick I used at that talker and which I still use in some circles).

Andrew and I still sometimes mention that to each other, actually, that and mention something else that was said about us, which is that our relationship was “just a net thing” (note that the only “net thing” around here is in the shower, and we use it to apply shower gel).

Well, S, just in case you’re actually still out there or you ever happen to stumble on this (although I quite sincerely doubt that you will), here’s news for you. We’re still friends, still in love, still married.

And, well, there is more to life than just me. There are also a couple of kids these days…

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I’m listening to the director’s commentary for Sleepless in Seattle, and Nora Ephron (the director) commented on the computer technology they used when Annie does the search for Sam. She says, “Looking at it now, it’s almost comical. In those days I don’t even think there was a Yahoo or anything…”

Well, that film came out in 1993, and in 1993 there most certainly was a Yahoo. It was a manually edited directory of site links and it was in the personal homepage site of some guy at Stanford University. In those days, pretty much everyone linked to Yahoo (which is an acronym that means “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”).

This was before Google (that appeared in around 1998, as I recall, but it may have been 1997; I was using Alta Vista back then, so I didn’t pay much attention, and by the way, I had one of those “Top 5% of the Web” sites, uhm, two or three of them, actually, and a Magellan Four Star Site and a couple other oh-so-prestigious “awards” from various search engines, so that says something right there, although I’m not sure what).

Ah, yeah, back in those days we were happy to have a 14.4Kbaud connection (or, if you were REALLY spiffy and slick, a 28.8Kbaud connection!) and Netscape 1.1 was the cool browser to have and you could get interviewed for the local newspaper merely by virtue of having a personal homepage (I know this because I was and I did). You kids today with your fancy PHP websites and your Web Two Point Oh and your broadband connections and your easy-to-use search engines, bah!

You don’t know how good you have it…

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This Flash movie is kinda cute. I found it amusing, anyway.

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Got this caught in my spam filter:

I NEED YOUR ASSISTANT!!!

Yeah, me, too! Whenever you see her, will you send her in here? Sheesh!

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I posted this in a thread at an art-related forum (doesn’t matter which one, so I won’t post a link). It was one of those threads that keep popping up regularly (you’ll work out the context from my comments). I’ve edited slightly for context and clarity. I just liked it well enough to post it here.

80% of EVERYthing is crap, and there’s no use complaining about it or lamenting it.

Just accept it and look for the stuff that’s NOT crap.

I get so damned tired of this argument. Someone strolls in, bitches about how 80% of everything is crap, and a bunch of people jump up to defend their work in various ways (”I don’t care if it’s crap”, “It’s the best I can manage, even if it is crap”, “One man’s crap is another man’s chocolate sundae,” “Who are you to decide what’s crap and what isn’t”, and on and on), and it just turns into a big old argument.

I got tired of this argument ages ago, about the time when I figured out that no matter what, 80% of everything is always going to be crap. You can’t get rid of the crap, so you may as well ignore it, learn from it, or use it as a springboard to something else, IMHO.

That pretty much sums it up, I think….

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But electronics stores have been slow to catch on. Nearly three-quarters of women surveyed by the industry group complained about being ignored, patronized or offended by sales people when shopping for electronics.
 
Forty percent of the women said they were treated better when accompanied by a man. And more than half said advertisements for electronics were confusing — though half the men surveyed felt the same way.

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These anamorphic street drawings are done by hand. Very, very cool, IMHO.

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Peter Ludlow is not just a computer gaming enthusiast. He’s also a philosophy professor, with an abiding interest in the relationship between the real and the virtual worlds. So when the world’s most successful virtual-reality game, the Sims, launched an online version just over a year ago, he didn’t just join in for fun; he also decided that he could carry out research for his next book.
 
And that was where the trouble started. Alphaville, the game’s fictional city, could have gone in any number of directions, depending on the arbitrary decisions of the online game players who make up its people through their chosen “avatars”, or game characters.
[...]
Officially, the reason for Professor Ludlow’s expulsion was that he included links in his inside-the-game newspaper to outside websites, including one that gave players instructions on how to cheat. What Professor Ludlow and a growing band of academics and sympathisers believe, however, is that his efforts to publicise the tawdry fantasy activities of real-life teenagers were becoming simply too uncomfortable for Electronic Arts to stomach.

---

Seems to me that in a virtual community largely populated by teenagers with too much time on their hands and no adult supervision or restraints, you’re going to get a pretty nasty environment. It just kinda stands to reason, at least that’s how I see it…
I’ve never played The SimsOnline, although I do play The Sims still now and then when I want an escape from reality). Reading this, I’m thinking I won’t ever want to play The SimsOnline. I purposely avoid places that are populated with snottty teenagers with nothing better to do than make trouble and be obnoxious.
(DISCLAIMER: I know a few teenagers who are perfectly lovely people and who not only have lives, they’re not the least bit obnoxious. I’m not trying to insult all teenagers. Although, of course, being people, they do suck, since people suck, but that’s just the misanthropic cynic in me…)

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