linkmachinego.com
11 May 2000
[weblogs] Barbelith reviews top eight weblogs. [Voice in head: Must… find… online… personality…]
[film] newsUnlimited reports that Florence attempts to ban Hannibal [Text Only]
[comics] Marvel to abandon comics for videogames and Movies? “The simple paper medium of comic books just isn’t cutting it in the age of video’s flashy special effects, explosive audio and interactive action.” – The Wall Street Journal. [via Ghost in the Machine] SOMEBODY DIES! BY MARVEL BETRAYED!! EVERY BUSINESS EXEC MY ENEMY… COMICS… FIGHTS… ON! I’M BORN AGAIN! A COMIC BOOK WITHOUT HOPE…. IS A COMIC BOOK WITHOUT FEAR!!! MY… SPLEEN… EXPLODES…
[books] Final extract from Amis Autobiography — When darkness met light
10 May 2000
[mp3] Interesting article on Slashdot about my favorite MP3 Encoder — Lame
[film] filmUnlimited on trailers being released on the internet. Mat Snow, former editor of the mature gentleman’s rock monthly Mojo, once explained how he had fully enjoyed Godzilla without ever having seen the film. For the months of build-up beforehand, he had the pleasure of getting excited about the film, imagining the monster and the movie in his head, getting off on the hype. By the time the film actually came out, he had been reliably informed that it stank. So he didn’t go to see it. But he didn’t feel cheated – he had had four months of enjoyable anticipation at no cost.
[clones] First cloned mouse dies reports BBC News. “Dr Yanagimachi has indicated that Cumulina’s remains will be preserved and mounted in a new permanent exhibit in a new Institute for Biogenesis Research.”
[tv] Clerks [The Cartoon] — it’s times like these I really wished I lived in America….
[ken4london] Livingstone and Labour close to compromise deal reports newsUnlimited.
[my inner turmoil] Do you think your friends, family and colleagues hate you? You can tell! The most common means of doing so were: being reserved by avoiding all intimate topics of conversation; not asking questions, so as to speed up any interaction; treating the other person as a stranger; physically avoiding them; not paying attention to them; and showing excessive politeness. [from newsUnlimited]
9 May 2000
[tech support] It was a bad weekend for technical Support team at Australia’s federal trade commission, Austrade after the ILOVEYOU virus was released last week….
[comics] Entire run of The Invisibles available on Ebay.
[conspiracy?] Has anybody noticed that the Doctor from UFO looks just like the Russian President Vladimir Putin?
8 May 2000
[weblogs] Interview with Jorn BargerPortrait Of The Blogger As A Young Man . “I try to make it my ethic that whenever I see something that I enjoy, I don’t filter. You know, if it’s some silly thing about a TV commercial, I won’t say, well, that’s too frivolous.”
[uk weblogs] UK weblogs I’m currently eyeballing: Blue Lines, not so Soft, SK², Vavatch Orbital and Nutlog along with the old stalwards: Barbelith and The Daily Doozer.
[internet] BBC News looks at real.com’s prospects — competition from Microsoft Napster and Shoutcast seem to be the main problems!
[books] booksUnlimited interviews Martin Amis. [Text Only]
[weblogs] USS Catastrophe — a weblog about comics…
7 May 2000
[web] I’ve been trying to find the best on-line bookmark manager on the web — blink seems to be the best of the bunch (at least for me).
[film] Two interesting links on Kubrick: filmUnlimited looks at Speilberg directing Kubrick’s AI and an interesting website on The Unknown Kubrick — his photography for Look magazine.
[weblogs] Dave goes nuclear on WinerLog. [Update 19.00pm: There’s an interesting thread on Metafilter about WinerLog]
[ken4london] newsUnlimited has an interview with Ken Livingstone — the new mayor of London. “It suddenly dawns on you that all those people have gone out and voted for you, and it was overwhelming and incredibly humbling, and I hadn’t expected to have that feeling…”
6 May 2000
[news] two random, unconnected (but interesting!) links from BBC News: Net sex addiction on the rise and Author [Stephen] King feeling better [after nasty car accident last year].
[games] Midway release many emulated arcade classics on to the net using shockwave.com [via Slashdot] I’ve been using Mame for years… but using Shockwave to emulate arcade games? Pretty impressive!
[comics] Shit! People are still worrying if Dave Sim is a misogynist or not! “If you look at her and see anything besides emptiness, fear and emotional hunger, you are looking at the parts of yourself which have been consumed to that point.”Dave Sim. If you’re interested check out cerebus.org for more details on Sim’s comic….
[dna] newsUnlimited has a good overview of the race to decode the human genome. Beneath the venom towards Venter lies another human emotion – fear. “Everyone is frightened of losing,” said a senior scientist from the Pasteur Institute. “The human genome is only going to be sequenced once and it will never need to be done again. There are Nobel prizes riding on this. It’s a big, big prize and it’s technology driven. Craig is in cahoots with the American makers of the DNA sequencers we all use. He is also a self-aggrandising pain in the arse.”
[mayor for london] BBC News has a picture gallery of the election for London mayor.
5 May 2000
[mp3] “The Man” is watching you if you’re using GnutellaStarting as early as this morning, most gnutella searches also turned up the file “The RIAA is watching you” 0 bytes. If this file is actually being put out by the RIAA remains unknown. This could be a prank, but could very easily be the real deal.
[history] newsUnlimited asks: Did Britain poison Napoleon? [Text Only] …when his remains were brought back to France in 1840 prior to ceremonial burial in Les Invalides, his body appeared perfectly preserved. At the time it was seen as a miracle. Today scientists say the phenomenon is symptomatic of arsenic poisoning.
[mayor for london] “If the Archangel Gabriel had stood with the name Winston Churchill, Ken would still have won.” — Jeffrey Archer. So what does a London mayor do anyway?
[comics] Grant Morrison posts on Nexus: ‘Imagination is the Fuel of the 21st Century. I’ll be right here on and off for the rest of the week at least. Ready to start fucking with the future, padre?’
[mayor for london] The results of the London Mayor election have been held up by “dust in the air”. Did they get British Rail into count the votes? [Updated 12.27pm] Anyway — Ken wins.
4 May 2000
[MP3] The Register points out that the phrase MP3 has been sprayed on statues and walls in Whitehall after the Mayday protest: ‘Quite why these hardened anarchists and eco-twats felt the need to paint a computer format alongside cries for revolution is unclear – is this the first sign of an internet generation, lost and disillusioned and unable to function without a keyboard, crying out for attention? Who cares.’
[virus] When I’m not blogging I do Tech Support… anyway this morning we’ve been swamped with copies of the “ILoveyou” virus. Don’t open any attachments from emails with the subject: ILoveyou UPDATED: BBC News report, it looks like it’s happening all over the place….
[mayor for london] It’s voting day in London. I voted at 7.00 o’clock this morning on the way to work… Here’s a couple of reports from BBC News and newsUnlimited… newsUnlimited is also reporting that a “virtual poll” has Livingstone winning cleanly in the first round.
3 May 2000
[weblogs] British blogs are discussing the vandalism of the cenotaph. Check out: kitschbitch, Barbelith and Blue Lines.
[mayor for london] Susan Kramer sent me a postcard today…. and asked me to download a song called Follow in my footsteps by Sarah Gillies. God knows why…
[tech] Slashdot reports that the Internet goes into orbit after a satellite is pinged from earth. 15 minute ping times, sure. But how the fsck will RIAA stop us from downloading MP3s when the servers are located in deep space? :) :) :)
[major for london] Voting day tommorrow — here’s a BBC News timeline on how the race developed… and a guide to how the vote works.
[ebay] A spooky haunted picture sold on Ebay… WARNING: DO NOT BID ON THIS PAINTING IF YOU ARE SUSCEPTIBLE TO STRESS RELATED DISEASE, FAINT OF HEART OR ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH SUPERNATURAL EVENTS. BY BIDDING ON THIS PAINTING, YOU AGREE TO RELEASE THE OWNERS OF ALL LIABILITY IN RELATION TO THE SALE OR ANY EVENTS HAPPENING AFTER THE SALE, THAT MIGHT BE CONTRIBUTED TO THIS PAINTING. THIS PAINTING MAY OR MAY NOT POSSESS SUPERNATURAL POWERS, THAT COULD IMPACT OR CHANGE YOUR LIFE. HOWEVER, BY BIDDING YOU AGREE TO EXCLUSIVELY BID ON THE VALUE OF THE ARTWORK, WITH DISREGARD TO THE LAST TWO PHOTOS FEATURED IN THIS AUCTION, AND HOLD THE OWNERS HARMLESS IN REGARD TO THEM AND THEIR IMPACT, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
[something fell!] newsUnlimited talks about Space Junk [Text Only] after a large red-hot metal ball falls on South Africa.
2 May 2000
[weblogs / tech] WinerLog — very funny if you visit Dave Winer’s Scripting News. Speaking of disconnects, I got an email from Dave Userland support. It begins “We’d like to stop hosting winerlog.” Weird. We’d say, “Sure Dave, whatever you want, because we love you!!!!!!!”
[tech] Richard Stallman on Metallica: Metallica justifies their lawsuit saying they think it is an outrage that their music has become a “commodity”. Apparently they think music is a commodity when shared between fans, but not when large companies sell copies through record stores. What hypocritical absurdity! Such drivel is normally laughable. But Metallica is presenting it as an excuse to attack our freedom, and that is no laughing matter. I encourage people to write letters to periodicals that cover this story, stating disgust for Metallica’s lawsuit and rejecting their views. [via Slashdot]
1 May 2000
[comics] Whatever happened to Reverso-Brendan McCarthy? [via 2000AD Links Project]
[comics] Comicon reports Alan Moore is to change his name to “Alan Marvel-Vagina!” [second story on that page]
[uk] Coca-Cola plan mini-me Wembley Stadium at the Millenium Dome. Another stupid idea… the dome seems to generate them…
30 April 2000
[uk internet] BBC News is reporting that T-Online wants to buy Freeserve.
[mp3] Another MP3 application I use all the time MP3ext gets updated. Useful if you have a large collection of MP3’s stored on a Windows PC. It enhances Windows Explorer so you get a properties pages when looking at MP3 files. Very useful and free as well!
[comics] PopImage has a fantastic profile on Matt Wagner and his work (creator of Grendel, Mage and various other comics).
[tv] Ali G to star in Madonna video reports BBC News.
[mayor for london] BBC News reports that Ken Livingstone expects to return to the Labour Party after the election next week.
29 April 2000
[tv] Channel 4 have a list of the greatest UK TV ads.
[films] filmUnlimited reports on the state of the British gangster movie. There lies the key difference between gangster flicks new and old: they used to be fully rounded thrillers which, due to the nature of their setting, would inevitably involve elements of violence and black comedy.