Remember how I wrote about how Factory Direct Computer Outlet was selling refurbished 10 gig iPods for CDN$279? From now until November 17th, once you factor in a CDN$40 rebate, they’re now going for CDN$199 (according to xe.com, that’s US$166.17).
Month: November 2004
Categories
Remembrance Day / Veterans Day II
Over at Big Story, another famous war poem: Wilfrid Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. It’s a good reminder that remembering the courage and sacrifice of our veterans and fetishizing war are two completely different things.
(For those of you whose Latin isn’t so hot — or didn’t learn this poem in high school: the title of the poem is derived from the adage dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which is also the finale of the poem. It means “How sweet and decorous it is to die for one’s country”.)
Categories
Remembrance Day / Veterans Day
A Canadian Remembrance Day poppy pin.
Here in Canada, today is Remembrance Day, while in the U.S., it’s Veterans Day. In honour of this day, here’s John McRae’s poem, In Flanders Fields — the poem that is traditionally read here in Canada — in McCrae’s own handwriting:
Here’s a page with more information about In Flanders Fields.
Today, November 10, 2004, is the first anniversary of ther release of Outkast’s biggest single, Hey Ya!, in the UK. While the clever pop magazine Pop Justice hails the song as one of the greatest singles of 2003, they’ve had enough. They’ve posted a page titled ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and are asking all you Beyonces and Lucy Lius and babydolls to get off the floor. They’re asking people to stop dancing to Hey Ya.
I think they will meet with very little success. The song’s riff (build
on top on an infection G – C – D – Em progression) is so catchy that
people will dance and sing to even my (necessarily pared down)
accordion rendition.
Categories
The Sacred 37
Dave “Dave’s Picks” Polaschek informs me that the my age — the number 37 — is sacred in the numerology of the Hells’ Tunas Motorocycle Club.
Categories
Accordionizing the Eschaton
I was busy cleaning up the house and getting ready for the arrival of Wendy and her parents (2:20 this afternoon) when someone came to the front door. Normally, I’m not bothered by door-to-door “spammers”; I’m usually safe from them at the Tucows offices. I’m glad that my house has a front door intercom with which I can screen out door-to-door salesleeches, Jehovah’s witnesses and the like.
I hit the “talk” button and the conversation went like this…
Me: Hello?
Guy: Hi, I was going door-to-door — I tried to reach your neighbours but they weren’t home — and I wanted to talk to you about The Rapture and the Great Tribulation…
Me: I’m very sorry, but I’m on my way out the door. Look could you, er, come by later?
Guy: Sure. I was wondering if you…
Me: Oh, I know about the Last Days. I read Left Behind, see, and I fully expect to be pulled away in The Rapture. I think that with everything the way it is in the world right now, it could happen really soon; the signs are there! Maybe you could come by for coffee later and we cou…
…and that’s when I let go of the intercom’s “talk” button.
He buzzed three more times, each buzz growing in length and sounding more desperate, but by then, I’d started scrubbing the toilet.
To the poor fella out there: Thank you for the opportunity to indulge in a little birthday prankery. Best present so far!
To those of you who were wondering if there’s a Chick tract on the topic: of course there is! You get bonus points for correctly guessing that it contains a reference to the Catholic church as “The Whore of Babylon”.
And to to my Evangelical friends: Real Rapture believers don’t buy green bananas!
[Cross-posted to my professional blog, The Farm]
Clay Shirky has a great
article titled Group as User:
Flaming and the Design of Social Software
in which he says that one of the misconceptions of designers of social
software is that they see the “user” of a piece of social software is
not a collection of individuals, but a group:
When we hear the word “software,” most of us think of things like
Word, Powerpoint, or Photoshop, tools for individual users. These
tools treat the computer as a box, a self-contained environment in
which the user does things. Much of the current literature and
practice of software design — feature requirements, UI design,
usability testing — targets the individual user, functioning in
isolation.
And yet, when we poll users about what they actually do with their
computers, some form of social interaction always tops the list —
conversation, collaboration, playing games, and so on. The practice of
software design is shot through with computer-as-box assumptions,
while our actual behavior is closer to computer-as-door, treating the
device as an entrance to a social space.
We have grown quite adept at designing interfaces and interactions
between computers and machines, but our social tools — the software
the users actually use most often — remain badly misfit to their
task.
Social interactions are far more complex and unpredictable than
human/computer interaction, and that unpredictability defeats classic
user-centric design. As a result, tools used daily by tens of millions
are either ignored as design challenges, or treated as if the only
possible site of improvement is the user-to-tool interface.
The design gap between
computer-as-box and computer-as-door
persists because of a diminished conception of the user. The user of a
piece of social software is not just a collection of individuals, but
a group. Individual users take on roles that only make sense in
groups: leader, follower, peacemaker, process nazi, and so on. There
are also behaviors that can only occur in groups, from consensus
building to social climbing. And yet, despite these obvious
differences between personal and social behaviors, we have very little
design practice that treats the group as an entity to be designed for.
A related entry: Joel on Social
Software.