cyberpunk

This graf from Paul Ford is evocative for me:

In the late 1980s there was a prevalent nostalgia for the 1950s that made its way into collage culture. That was my first exposure to irony proper; I watched Leave it to Beaver and bought zines with collages of men with pipes and smiling housewives. An escape from the metalhead norms of the neighborhood. At the same time cyberpunk was on the rise, science fiction as pure chaos, styrofoam in the bay and VCRs washing up on the beach, brains filled with silicon, empty buildings. I saw the point of these novels as I sat for hours spinning pixels in DeluxePaint, cutting and pasting. It was nearly impossible back then to get an image into the computer: scanners were exotic, audio recording nonexistent. You had to use the images provided or create your own. The only way for the computer to communicate with the larger world was through the printer, or a modem dialed into a BBS (never for me), or disks copied from friends. I remember spending tens of hours working with one image of Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd that I’d found on some disk somewhere, switching heads, adding third eyes, and so on. Just for the process, to see if I could.

I’ve felt nostalgia for DPaint before.

I remember that washed-up VCR —I believe it’s from Islands in the Net, which I’ve mentioned before.

William Gibson: The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary Interview : Rolling Stone

I find myself less pessimistic than I sometimes imagine I should be. When I started to write science fiction, the intelligent and informed position on humanity’s future was that it wasn’t going to have one at all. We’ve forgotten that a whole lot of smart people used to wake up every day thinking that that day could well be the day the world ended. So when I started writing what people saw as this grisly dystopian, punky science fiction, I actually felt that I was being wildly optimistic: “Hey, look—you do have a future. It’s kind of harsh, but here it is.” I wasn’t going the post-apocalyptic route, which, as a regular civilian walking around the world, was pretty much what I expected to happen myself.

It’s a rather nice surprise that I’ve not been consumed by nuclear fire, I’ll tell you that.

Well, we made it out of the cold war and into this one, and sometimes I feel like this line from Platoon:

All you got to do is make it out of here. It’s all gravy, everyday the rest of your life, gravy.

Bonus: we live in a world where we can pull up videos like this anytime—it’s, aptly, a peppy song about feeling sad:

I’m not sure aptly is a word, but I’m feeling thankful this week. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving on Thursday.

Peace to you all.

Blurbomat points to the review of MacOS 10.5, “Leopard” on Ars Technica. Anil Dash has no sense of humor about one icon.

I wish Windows had included Mac networking by default years ago. Sadly, no. Maybe something based on:

I upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.3.1. Bugfixes and an easy transition from 2.3. I’m so glad I chose WP so long ago, and not MovableType. WP is the open source winner. Speaking of WP, they moved Gravatar to their infrastructure which has gone well, the blog High Scalability pointed out Making Gravatar Fast Again. Cool stuff, and will help them avoid “crashing hard” moments. The Gravatar article pointed to Varnish, a tool I had not looked at but which might be appropriate for some projects I’m part of.

Thomas Barnett points out that Bush said he’s relevant. If you have to declare you’re relevant, you’re not. I just wish he wasn’t commander-in-chief. Can we fast forward to the next administration? This one is making me tired.

Philip Greenspun has some new original thoughts on non-profit donations. I wish he did more writing like this. In 2003 I said of him: If anyone can be considered a model for my own experimentation and thoughts on how to put together a personal site, it’s Greenspun. Greenspun has been accused of being an egoiste and of being insensitive in his use of metaphors, and more. Bottom line: he thinks deeply, and I admire him. Still true.

I dug the drawings, I laughed. How can I feel like a flying squirrel? The answer: Sleep Sack!

Heaven and Here is still around. And they are blogging about the best television show ever, The Wire. It’s coming again in January. Yes, I said EVER.

Binary Wolf points to InciWeb and an amazing map of the Witch Fire.

Greg’s Cool Thing points out a post on a Windows utility to check and see what processes are using a DLL. Potentially very useful.

Robot writing out Bible nonstop – this sounds a lot like the The Nine Billion Names of God for some reason. Are you there God? it’s Me, R2-D2.

Japan Probe points out the world’s most dangerous hiking trail. Yikes!

Lines and Colors points to the work of Allan R Banks, Classical painter. http://allanbanks.com/ is a slow site, but worth the load times. I’ve also been meaning to point to this post on the Pre-Raphaelites, also from LaC. Also pointed to there is this very in-depth study of one painting: Millais’ Ophelia.

Slashfilm says “See Blade Runner: The Final Cut on The Big Screen.” I’ve decided to do it. Thursday night at The Landmark. Hit me on email ((( joe at artlung.com ))) if you want in.

Some of you have asked more about my Mom—really, the latest info I have is pretty much contained in this post over here. And for more background on my Mom, check out the magazine article.

Have a great week and be well. I hope all of you affected by the fires are getting back to normal.