3d

The language in this is not safe for work, but the sentiments are important: How to Irritate and Annoy People in the Name of Blogging

A lot of people I know or know of are blogging about the fires in San Diego: Sassy, JeSais, MAS, MissEwon, Chuck, and Geoff. Also, people I haven’t met: Raph Koster, Cocky Bastard.

Google is changing their PageRank algorithm? is a question/inference the blogosphere is drawing. The working theory is it’s for selling links. They’re diluting PageRank. I’ve had several offers to buy links here on ArtLung.com—and I’ve turned them all down. Typically the link buyers want the links to be permanent, as in, forever and ever. No. I don’t do forever and ever unless you pay me big big big bigtime.

While we fight fires, China launched a lunar probe. In 2001 I posted a story that they’d have a man on the moon by 2005. They didn’t make that, but a moon probe is pretty good. In 2003 I blogged Bruce Sterling’s Wired op-ed on a China-India Space Race.

High School band covers Zappa. Wow.

GIMP 2.4 is out. I’m going to try it out. The interface is not PhotoShoppish enough though. via Paul Slocum of Tree Wave.

Dorothy (of Cat and Girl)’s computer is broken. Sad.

There are two free songs on http://www.stewsongs.com/ right now: Black Men Ski (previously mentioned here) and Pastry Shop (previously). Also, I moved Stew’s blog to a subdomain a few weeks ago: http://stewsez.artlung.com/.

Jason Scott, who was interviewed by Leah and the BBS Documentary, writes about two subjects which make me wax nostalgic for Amiga: Fred Fish’s death, and The Juggler raytraced animation. That animation was truly magic at the time. It was like looking at an alien spacecraft, and there it was for me to study and think about. I never got to render anything, the programming was too inscrutable for me. I did like to mess with DPaint though. Which makes me think about the fact that I’ve been doing computer graphics for 25 years, since I was 13 years old.

Man, I really do like that Endicott song. Seriously.

Be safe out there people. Onward.

Danah Boyd is surprised to be used as a pack mule for some great marketing. I think it’s the nature of the beast. When something hits your gut, it’s natural to try and promote it. Taking a step back and realizing you’re part of someone’s street team can be a little disorienting!

Via The Beat, Strong Bad takes on Webcomics. Funny stuff. and I used to make watching Strong Bad part of our Monday night ritual. Maybe it’s time to do that again.

Via Jim Bumgardner, a wonderful rant on the state of music available for purchase: Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends.

Via MetroRider LA, apparently some folks in Riverside have fun on their commute: Metrolink train 706 commuters chirp up over Magnolia Bird Farm landmark. Sounds like wacky goodness to me. I sure wish I could grab a train to work.

Jason Scott’s detailed indictment of 2600 and his disappointments with their behavior is actually moving. It reminds me of how I feel about, oh, the record industry. Like, dude! you guys are cool! get with the program!

Raph Koster, of general game punditry, remarks on the interoperability agreement to do with avatars for 3-D worlds. I love the idea of making avatar building a standard as common as GIF or JPG. Let me make my one avatar, then I can import it into any game I want to! Just like making an icon for a message board or online service. But 3-D, animated, and articulated. O’Reilly Radar also covered this yesterday.

Coding Horror talks about programming fonts, and gives “quick brown fox” of code. The biggies for me in choosing a font to code in are: how distinguishable are the braces and parentheses, and how distinguishable are the one (1) lowercase L (l) and uppercase eye (I). They are similar enough to cause cognitive friction and generally mess with you. Based on his article I tried out Microsoft’s Consolas, and I find I like it.

StupidFilter sounds like an excellent project. I particularly like that one of their goals is the creation of a WordPress plugin. It sounds like a complement to Spam Karma. Their intended methodology sounds terrific.

That’s all for today