Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 11:57 am. 5 comments
It’s funny what catches people’s attention these days. There’s been a lot written about information overload and how we process the ever-increasing amounts of data thrust before us, but who would’ve thought that in the space of just a few days we’d have two examples of how best to grab bloggers’ attention.
First off is Robert Scoble, now firmly ensconced in his new role as “Sir Mix-a-lot” of the blogosphere. For all his high-falutin talk of best-new-site this and that, turns out all you need to do to get into his link blog is post a picture of a cute cat. Meanwhile everybody’s favourite crotchety uncle, Mike Cane, reveals himself to be a quivering, paranoid wreck with a curious “I will screw him in the ass” obsession, apparently.
Reminds me of a piece of spam-filter navigating prose so beautiful that I kept it myself:
“Dude, this is also unenviable, because you might be facing a girl who has all sorts of baggage and she needs to unload it somehow. The project is a collaboration to create an original anime and participants will share in the profits. If you do like it, look at what you found out. All I could think of was the round, firm globes of her megaboobsand ass, and my thoughts were totally scrambled as she licked her glossy lips. Destroy target creature. Do not strap the ‘Groupware’ albatross around your neck! Pantheon High”If I only had super powers. Die nun auftauchenden Karten finde ich unter dem Blickwinkel auch nicht schlecht”
Reasonable advice not to strap that pesky ‘Groupware’ albatross around your neck, though I’d go one stage further and say you shouldn’t attach large birds to any part of your body. Just a safety precaution.
Right now, if you want my attention you’ll post about Tablet PCs. My trusty tc1100 appears to be giving up the ghost, or more specifically the graphics card has decided that on most reboots I’m more interested in seeing red blotches than my desktop. So it’s time to invest in a new PC, and what better than a rinky-dink convertible tablet. The Lenovo X60t is a stunner; shame the UK site doesn’t let you customise. That’s a deal-breaker.
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 5:04 am. 0 comments
At the risk of sounding like some sort of Faustian soothsayer, the world appears to be slightly off-kilter. One isolated incident I’m content to write off as an anomaly, an acid-reflux hiccup in the pattern of our dreary lives, but in the words of the great Bonnie Tyler “oh shit, here it comes again”
First off, there’s Joel Johnson and his anti-tech beration of all the gadget world holds holy over at Gizmodo. Now Joel has been called the grand doyenne of those hallowed pages, putting in a two year stint of biting apathy and growing horror reporting on the fabulous breakthroughs in the world of consumer electronics, and currently runs Dethroner complete with beard and attitude. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that he’s proved himself there a harsh, sarcastic SOB with little time for feckless whelps and dregs, and built an adoring audience because of it.
Continue Reading…
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 4:05 pm. 0 comments
Ah, there’s nothing I like more than to use my Moral Decline tag, especially when tongue is firmly planted in cheek. And with the furore over Catholic adoption agencies and the new UK anti-discrimination legislation, it’s been a whole blizzard of diatribe and vitriol. Tony “does anyone have a spare legacy” Blair has been pushing for an outright ban on any agency, state-led or otherwise, from refusing to place children with same-sex couples merely on the basis of sexual orientation, while the Catholics (as well as a surprising background chorus of other faiths, each with that dear-in-the-headlights look of “maybe I’m next?”) were demanding exemption on the basis that their faith says homosexuality is naughty.
It’s interesting to see the church treat the government as a car dealership. They know what they’re getting in the normal deal - free mats and a full tank of fuel, or the equivalent in tax exemptions and preferential treatment of their schools - but just like you and I when we’re shopping for a new urban runaround, they’re after some freebies from the options list, too. Last year they managed to add exemption for faith schools from having to take non-faith students, primarily by taking the stance of squealing loudly and calling on support from conservative (with a small C) religious politicians. So it’s not all that surprising that they’ve taken the same approach this time round.
Only it looks like the deal has finally been stretched to breaking point, as an incredulous church finds itself without car and distinctly out of favour - the government says “no can do, boys, there’s no profit-margin in that.” And now they’re left bleating about vague impacts on volunteering rates, perhaps all too aware that when you’re responsible for just 4% of all adoptions it’s hard to make yourself sound essential (later the quote was “they placed one-third of the difficult-to-place children”)
It remains to be seen whether this signals the beginning of the end for religious impact on politics, and the way Catholic adoption agencies handle the next 21 months (the period they’ve been given to “get used” to having to treat gays as reasonable parents) will perhaps be key. They can either close - and face being ignored as archaic - or come back to the negotiating table, force a laugh or two about unreasonable demands, and maybe have some hope of swaying future policy.
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 9:57 am. 0 comments
You can generally rely on Robert Scoble to stir up a little discussion in the blogosphere - if I didn’t know better, I’d think he enjoys being the centre of attention! This time it’s about the Big Boys in the tech blogosphere and the perception that they don’t link out to other, smaller sites. Whether or not Robert is right - and his comments are full of vitriol in both directions - it’s good that the topic has been brought up; plenty of people criticise sites like Engadget and Gizmodo for the amount that they do and don’t refer people onwards.
Information crediting is always going to raise tempers. SlashGear is certainly smaller than either Engadget or Gizmodo (though we’re growing every month), and yet we have our fair share of credit upsets. Sometimes it’s because people assume we read news at their site, and yet have pointed the via link elsewhere; sometimes it’s our own content (images or text that’s obviously been lifted from our site) that gets rehashed elsewhere with no link back to us. While I’m sure we get fewer tips than the headline sites do, there’s still a regular flow of links sent in; as Ryan from Engadget says, we all make editorial decisions over whether those submissions should make our front-page. Are the tipsters pissed if we don’t use their ideas? Probably so.
The root of it is pride, I think; pride in the words, pictures and video we produce and pride in the amount of research we have to do beforehand. Anyone who puts their work online is saying “look, this is my opinion” and to be told - through lack of response - that it’s not interesting or unique enough to feature is a slap in the face. I still have a hiccup of pleasure when I see a SlashGear article linked to on another site; the message is that I was either the first to talk about it or that I said something noteworthy enough to get picked up. There are thousands of tech blogs out there and so you need to stand out somehow, whether that be by specialising in a particular topic, getting more news-breaks than anyone else or having an engaging writing style.
Incidentally, did I link to Robert’s video of Intel’s new 45nm chip fabrication plant? No, although I meant to… and then IE7 crashed and all the “blog about this” tabs went with it. Sorry Robert, though if you want to help you could speak to your old colleagues and get them to sort out their missing-in-action Session Saver!
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 5:46 pm. 0 comments
The British press is frothing violently at the mouth with the news that two paedophiles, one convicted of downloading over 200 explicit images of children and the other bailed pending sentencing after sexually abusing a teenager, have been allowed to walk free thanks to prison overcrowding. Meanwhile, in the United States of America a 29 year old man successfully convinced school authorities that he was, in fact, twelve - attending seventh grade for several months before discovery.
The judges responsible blame recent Home Office edicts that only the most dangerous criminals should be imprisoned, a move which has reduced the militant-pure to tearing at their hair (or the hair of whichever profession has been confused with paedophiles that day: pediatricians beware) and screaming blue-murder. Frankly, it looks like the nation’s love-hate affair with cases of child abuse has faded; today’s fast-paced and fashion conscious world equates “dangerous” with “sexy”. And therein lies the issue: paedophilia just isn’t sexy any more.
Look, for instance, to Britney Spears. Once she was the poster-child for inappropriate lusts, all pig-tails and slutty school uniforms; now she gurns drunkenly at paparazzi, falling out of cars and generally looking loutish. You can’t blame the perverts for going off her. Even the guy who almost finished seventh grade doesn’t look happy: is this the face of a man ecstatic of all the close-proximity to the hairless?
No, if ever there was a ‘philia in need of rebranding, child molestation is it. I took to the streets to ask paedophiles what they thought could put touching kids back on top of every parents’ hate-list; being unable to identify any didn’t stop me.
I found a nation confused and belligerent. One man, who begged desperately to be left nameless, told me that, before they met, his wife of thirty-two years was once a 14 year old, and that physical relations with her is, he fears, a form of latent paedophilia. Another woman described an incident at a municipal pool where she briefly shared a foot-bath with a much younger girl while leaving the changing rooms; she feels unable to return to those premises for fear of vigilante reprisals.
The overwhelming consensus was that I should put my microphone away and sod off, you unpleasant little git. Difficult to analyse in SPSS, for sure, but if an edgy public is a changeable one then perhaps we’ll see that sudden tide-turn in attitudes once more.
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 12:08 pm. 2 comments
This poor blog has been neglected recently, what with Bulldog Broadband being tardy with my connection, but I’m back online now and raring to go. It looks like while I’ve been missing in action other people have been getting new toys, as my good friend Judie over at Gear Diary has just posted some photos of her Fujitsu LifeBook T4215 Tablet PC, ordered in the final, gasping throws of 2006 and now in her hopefully-not-too-sweaty little hands.
It’s all hitting a tad too close-to-home, I’m afraid, as my trusty tc1100 is showing signs of vaguely imminent hardware failure (of the graphics card, fact-felchers) and I’m a little anxious that all of a sudden it’ll be time to go computer shopping with nary a pound, dollar or yen to my name.
And why am I currently broke? Well, it has a lot to do with the new contents of my garage: a Smart ForFour Brabus.
177bhp of turbocharged loveliness, oh yes! Expect a review sometime soon, once I’ve managed to get this crazed grin off my face
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 8:45 am. 0 comments
The beaming Mr Scoble writes of his extreme pleasure with Stickam, a site which does legitimately (i.e. you tell it to) what a whole web-worth of voyeurs wish they could do insidiously; namely, it turns on your webcam and broadcasts you sitting there typing/surfing/scratching to anybody who desires to view it. Now while Robert ponders the business model and practical applications for Stickam, coming up with something along the lines of “oh, you’re working from home and the rest of the office want to see your furrowed brow!”, the rest of us nod sagely and mutter “one for the pornographers”.
Success of the chirpy YouTube clone, XTube (NSFW), which picks up the pervert baton where the social video sight left off (or, more accurately, left clothes on), shows that the overwhelming desire to flaunt one’s wobbly bits continues unabated. Whether XTube’s own monetisation plans - to charge for “premium” content from official studios - is working I’m not sure. Ironically, a casual glance gives the impression that many of the pay-per-view titles run along the staged “amateur” theme, as is topically popular among the strokers and the shakers, and so you wonder who exactly is paying for fake-amateur when real-amateur is free?
Of course, the privacy monkeys will get all in a babble about Stickam, likely resorting to tabloid headlines to make their point. “Perverts spy on your kids!” will be the gist of the hype, though whether the sight of teenagers blandly surfing some unseen screen, picking at their spots and munching chips 24/7 will stoke or abate the arousal of the online predators who are, we’re told, in every dark crevice of the information super highway, remains to be seen.
Far more concerning to me is the creeping spread of Reality TV, with every Tom, (hard) Dick and Mary believing them to be interesting enough to consume my bandwidth. The placatory will merely point out that I needn’t visit the site if I don’t want to, but considering Stickam is heavily pushing their external integration I’m bound to come across some random bleary face on my surf-travels. Might I therefore suggest a metaphorical sniper-rifle plugin, which if clicked by enough viewers will permanently delete a dullard’s account and save our aching eyes.
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 3:21 pm. 2 comments
Right, I promise that at some point in the near future the snarky posting will begin in earnest, but for now I want to rant and here’s as good a place as any. Today’s subject is Bulldog Broadband, herein known as BB, and their Crime Against Chris is lethargy in reconnecting my internet connection.
That’s right, suckling chiddles, I’m currently without my sweet, sweet 24Mbit/s ADSL, having moved apartments. The nice people at BB first told me they could expedite the switch, so that I’d experience little to no downtime… naively I believed them. Of course, now I’m told that it’ll be the 17th before my connection is active. And right now this second I’m looking at my modem which is flashing to tell me that ADSL is active but won’t let me log on.
Here’s the deal, BB: I make my money writing for SlashGear, so when I’m not writing I’m not getting paid. That means you’re not getting paid. I’m sick to the grinding back-teeth of your relentlessly moronic customer services lackeys, their rude supervisors and the perpetually delaying, stalling, “I can’t let you do that” tactics continuously rolled out to prevent me from speaking to anybody higher up the BB food chain.
Now BB recently got taken over by Pipex, and they just so happen to have premises five minutes down the road from where I live. So how about I take a trot down there and do a little impromptu SlashGear interview, see what platitudes they can offer me? After all, Peter Dubens, Bless’d Chairman of Pipex Communications did tell us:
“The acquisition of Bulldog brings further scale to the Pipex Group and we are delighted to welcome all the Bulldog customers”
Sounds like an invitation to me, don’t you agree?
Or maybe I should save my ire for the numerous forums and blogs where other dissatisfied souls weep and gnash. Perhaps I should’ve expected such crapness, given the catalogue of errors, lies, faults and missed appointments experienced when trying to get the first flat wired up for the internets. Come Monday I’ll be ringing them again; even if I can’t get my promised connection any sooner, I’ll be doing my bit to make their lives miserable in the meantime.
So currently I’m using a review phone from the good people at T-Mobile to connect via their HSDPA service. You better believe that they’ll get an ace review.
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 10:29 am. 0 comments
So, on the day that Saddam Hussein was hung for crimes against humanity, I was sat in a Manchester cinema watching Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Aside from the unpleasant casting of Dustin Hoffman, some inevitable incongruities with the book (which is superb) and the fact that Grenouille is supposed to be ugly and yet Ben Whishaw is not, it was enjoyable. There were still plenty of close-up nose shots, which I guess is the easiest (if not the most subtle) way of demonstrating a character smelling something on film.
In contrast, video of Saddam’s death is apparently already leaking onto the internet, filmed on somebody’s cellphone. I’ve no doubt it will be as hungrily sought by fans as by foes of the man, and I’m equally sure that neither will be satisfied by the footage. A tenth of a second till death, no flailing limbs or muffled squeals; quite the contrast to the cinematic demise we’re used to seeing on screens both small and silver. Perhaps they should’ve got someone to direct and choreograph it.
Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 5:19 am. 1 comment
These inaugural posts are always the hardest. Perhaps I should start by wishing all my loyal readers and commenters a deeply merry Christmas.
This blog will be a pseudo-continuation of my first attempt at writing online, http://danteshandcart.blogspot.com/, which is where Vincent Nguyen of Aradius spotted me and brought me into the fold. Now I blog for SlashGear and SlashPhone as well as review some lovely pieces of electronic shininess. I’m based in the UK with my partner and our robot cat, where I also project manage a contraception service for young people.
But you don’t care about that, do you. You want to read snarky posts about what politicians are doing, and thinly veiled comparisons between the latest and greatest in the world of tech, life and media and the dark practises that go on behind closed doors. Which is a relief, really, because that’s what I love writing about.
Have yourselves a festive one, chiddles.