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2 March 2003
[computers] Maximum Overdrive — Cory Doctorow on PC Overclockers. ‘…for those bent on achieving the highest clock speeds, there’s nothing like liquid nitrogen. Whether the chip survives doesn’t matter, as long as there’s time enough to boot up, launch a benchmark app, and capture a digital trophy of your accomplishment. Purchased in bulk from chemical or medical suppliers, liquid nitrogen can drop a CPU’s temperature below -310 degrees Fahrenheit – though, after being subjected to that kind of cold, the machine’s other components won’t have much life left in them, either. Still, the message boards at Futuremark.com overflow with legends and advice about handling liquid nitro. “LN2 evaporates off your skin instantaneously,” one veteran writes, “but if it gets on your clothes, it will stick to you – instant frostbite. Work naked for safety.”‘
3 March 2003
[comics] Abiogenisis Publishes Moore Tribute — Newsarama previews a tribute comic due in May for Alan Moore’s 50th. birthday. Gary Spencer Millidge: ‘…we quickly got together a wish-list of creators would we would invite to contribute. Our criteria was that they had to be either of significant stature, or they had to have had some kind of relationship with, or interesting connection to Alan. We also wanted to reflect Alan’s influence across the worlds of literature, film and music in addition to his comics writing, and also highlight his influence and popularity across the world of comics, so we have many international comics creators contributing to the book.’ [Related: Press release from Abiogenisis | thanks Stu]
4 March 2003
[name] Your Not Me — find out how many people in the UK share your name My name is… ‘unique like a yeti or some form of Magic Chimp.’ [via Swish Cottage]
[blog] Blimey! LMG is Three Years Old! It all began with a quote (very apt) …

‘I’ve done questionable things.’ — Roy Batty.

[war] The Palace of the End — Martin Amis on the coming war in Iraq … Three quotes:

‘Osama bin Laden is an identifiable human type, but on an unidentifiable scale. He is an enormous stirrer – a titanic mixer. Look how he’s shaken us up, both in the heart and in the head. One could say, countervailingly, that on September 11 America was visited by something very alien and unbelievably radical. A completely new kind of enemy for whom death is not death – and for whom life is not life, either, but illusion, a staging-post, merely “the thing which is called World”. No, you wouldn’t expect such a massive world-historical jolt, which will reverberate for centuries, to be effortlessly absorbed. But the suspicion remains that America is not behaving rationally – that America is behaving like someone still in shock.’

‘We hear about the successful “Texanisation” of the Republican party. And doesn’t Texas sometimes seem to resemble a country like Saudi Arabia, with its great heat, its oil wealth, its brimming houses of worship, and its weekly executions?’

‘Saddam’s hands-on years in the dungeons distinguish him from the other great dictators of the 20th century, none of whom had much taste for “the wet stuff”. The mores of his regime have been shaped by this taste for the wet stuff – by a fascinated negative intimacy with the human body, and a connoisseurship of human pain.’

5 March 2003
[google] Intriguing Search Request … Tidy Version: ‘My brother is disenchanted with his position as an advertising artist and has told you that he plans to leave this job to open a small business. He knows that he has an excellent reputation and is known as an outstanding artist. He also has a friend in the advertising industry who will provide him with a loan to start the business. These three factors (reputation, talent, and start-up financing) are the most important if he is to succeed at is new endeavor. He has asked you for your opinion regarding his plans. Agree / Disagree? Explain.’
6 March 2003
[war] War is Stupid — lots of quotes on war …

‘Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.’ — Winston Churchill

‘I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.’ — Dwight D. Eisenhower

‘It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.’ — Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

[food] How to: Pasta Bolognese — student cookery from Minor 9th‘To make pasta bolognese you will need: small pack of mince, can of chopped tomatoes, an onion, two cloves of garlic, mushrooms, basil, oregano and mixed herbs. Wine optional…’
7 March 2003
[science] You Ask The Questions — Sir Patrick Moore‘Q: Have you ever seen a UFO while gazing into space? Would you be surprised if an alien landed in your garden? A: Yes, I have spotted a UFO. I was in my observatory one night, looking at the Moon. Then I saw dozens of flying saucers swirling around. I thought: “The Martians have arrived!” But then I realised I was looking at pollen slightly out of focus. The moonlight was playing tricks on me! Of course, aliens could visit Earth — after all, there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy. And I’d be delighted if they landed in my garden. I’d say, “Good afternoon. Tea or coffee?”‘
8 March 2003
[joke] Aleister Crowley explains Magic …

”There were these two men, sharing a railway carriage. They didn’t know each other. They just happened to be travelling together. One of the men had, resting in his lap, a cardboard box with holes punched in the top. After some time spent contemplating what might be inside his travelling companion’s box, the other man at last could not contain his curiosity. He said, “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing your box. Does it contain some variety of animal?” The other man, though obviously surprised by this impertinent intrusion from a stranger, smiled politely as he answered, “You’re absolutely right. There is indeed a creature kept inside this box. And furthermore, I may reveal, the animal in question is a mongoose.”

The first man, who’d initiated the enquiry, was astonsihed by this revelation. Spluttering with surprise, he sought some further explanation of this certainly provocative disclosure made by his strange fellow-traveller. “A mongoose? Sir I must confess I had expected it to be perhaps a cat, or rabbit, not a creature so exotic and outlandish. The animal you mention so excites my curiosity that I must beg you, sir, to tell me more. Where are you bound with such a specimen, if I may be so bold?” The other man, who sat with the perforated box on his lap, shrugged wearily as he replied, “Well, it’s something of a personal matter, as it concerns a family tragedy. However, since I’m confident I may rely on your discretion, I suppose I don’t mind sharing my unfortunate account with you.”

“You see,” the man went on, “this sorry tale concerns my elder brother. He’s always been what I suppose you might refer to as the black sheep of the family. He has for many years indulged himself in a predictable and commonplace array of vices, of which the worst is his fondness for strong spirits. His drinking has progressed until he is now in the final stages of delerium tremens. My brother now sees serpents everywhere, which is the reason I am taking him this mongoose, that he may be rid of them.”

“Excuse me,” the other man interjected, looking puzzled, “But, these snakes your brother sees… aren’t they imaginary snakes?”

“Indeed,” his fellow traveller replied. “But this,” and here he gestured meaningfully to the perforated box set on his lap, “is an imaginary mongoose.”‘

10 March 2003
[comics] “A Healing Innoculation of Grime” — Newsarama interviews Grant Morrison about the final issues of The Filth‘The real weird thing about this series is the amount of people who think they don’t get it when they clearly do. What’s that all about? I must admit it’s quite baffling to me – I’ve read reviews saying things like ‘Yes, it’s Art but why should we care?’ and ‘why should I care about an old guy and his cat?’ …and my only answer is ‘why should you care about a fictional character who dresses up like a bat or a man who grows to giant size and abuses his wife?’ Why should anyone care about any story and yet people clearly do, because fiction helps to illuminate life. Personally, I believe that if you can feel sympathy for a ridiculous superhero and not for an ordinary, lonely man tending a sick animal then there’s something desperately wrong with your emotions and your priorities.’ [Related: Crack!Comicks | via Barbelith]
11 March 2003
[film] ‘You need the taste of blood in your mouth’ — interview with Paul Schrader … [Related: Auto Focus Trailer]

‘Inescapability is central to Schrader, as is emotional coldness: think of the slick hustler played by Richard Gere in American Gigolo – inhumanly cold, impenetrably opaque. It is Schrader’s one big commercial hit – and evidence that it’s not his subject matter so much as his treatment of the subject that puts him outside the mainstream. There is no trajectory in a Schrader film that leads to a happy ending or a neat solution. “I don’t believe life is about problems and solutions. I believe it is about dilemmas, and dilemmas don’t have solutions; they have resolutions, which then morph and lead you into future dilemmas.” So he takes his human dilemma, writes it large, abstracts it from the rituals of daily life – his people don’t function in a “normal” world, nobody is having breakfast with their kids, mowing the lawn, or meeting a friend for lunch – and plays out their inevitability.’

12 March 2003
[war] The Pentagon’s New Map — globalisation and the US Military’s view of the world … ‘That is why the public debate about this war has been so important: It forces Americans to come to terms with I believe is the new security paradigm that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam Hussein’s outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence. The problem with most discussion of globalization is that too many experts treat it as a binary outcome: Either it is great and sweeping the planet, or it is horrid and failing humanity everywhere. Neither view really works, because globalization as a historical process is simply too big and too complex for such summary judgments.’
13 March 2003
[tech] How to Make Real One Behave Nicely — a software engineer from Real explains how to make the Real One media player install with sensible default settings … ‘First, regarding the well known bad behavior of older players: Yes, we know! and as developers we were embarrassed. But things have changed. Everybody has realized there are very strong negative feelings about this behavior, and we really want to improve. In that respect, the latest RealOne V2 is better than older RealPlayers, and on OS X, it’s downright wonderful. On Windows you still have to do the following, which isn’t too bad, but still could have been better…’
14 March 2003
[charity] The Let’s Get More Comments Than Wil Wheaton Project — if Mike get’s 235 comments in this posting today he’s going to donate £100 to Comic Relief‘Yes, it’s a sponsored Comments Box Lurk! It’s turning Comment-Whoring into Cold Hard Cash! It’s shameless, but hey, it’s for Char-i-dee! God, I do hope this will work.’
[war] Pentagon hawk at war with his own side — interesting profile of Donald Rumsfeld‘A couple of weeks ago he was addressing a gathering of international officials at the Pentagon. “There are four countries that will never support us. Never,” barked Mr Rumsfeld, before instantly creating his own new axis of evil: “Cuba, Libya and Germany.” “What’s the fourth?” someone asked. “I forget the fourth,” he said, which was probably fortunate. Who knows who else he might have offended?’
15 March 2003
[comic] Evolution Of A Hip, Ironic Catch Phrase‘Everybody Wang Chung Tonight.’
17 March 2003
[comics] The “Synchronicity” Triptych — Dave Sim reminisces about Bill Sienkiewicz

‘…Bill walked up and asked if anyone wanted to see some pages from the new project which he was working on with Frank Miller. And, of course, we all said “sure”. What ensued was the most “jaw-dropping” moment I have ever experienced in getting an advance look at a project in my life (smoking dope in a hotel room at Mid-Ohio Con while Frank Miller acted out a lot of The Dark Knight Returns comes a close second, though). The project, of course, was Elektra Assassin and what Bill had were original pages from (I believe) the first two issues. No word balloons, but fully rendered colour. Fully rendered colour but rendered in every imaginable way. Crayon, acrylic, charcoal pencil, pencil crayon, crayon, oil pastel. And collage. This was years before Dave McKean would define the extremes of collage with his Sandman covers, but — before Bill did it — it was completely unthinkable in a comic-book. Unthinkable.’

[sars] SARS resources and comments — disturbing on-the-spot account from Hong Kong of the new lethal pneumonia called SARS … ‘Note that ICU staff are not going home to their families. As a physician, I find that observation chilling.’ [via Boing Boing]
18 March 2003
[google] How Google Grows…and Grows…and Grows — profile of Google. ‘…the difference between 0.3 seconds and 0.2 seconds is pretty profound. Most searches on Google actually take less than 0.2 seconds. That extra tenth of a second is all about the outliers: queries crammed with unrelated words or with words that are close in meaning. The outliers can take half a second to resolve — and Google believes that users’ productivity begins to wane after 0.2 seconds. So its engineers find ways to store ever-more-arcane Web-text snippets on its servers, saving the engine the time it takes to seek out phrases when a query is made. And it’s why, most of the time, the Google home page contains exactly 37 words. “We count bytes,” says Google Fellow Urs Holzle, who is on leave from the University of California at Santa Barbara. “We count them because our users have modems, so it costs them to download our pages.”‘
[war] Sun sets on Kuwaiti Border Peace — eye-witness report from Northern Kuwait … ‘In the setting sun, the camouflage netting of one British camp looked like a sprawling field of jagged rocks, spreading from the road to the horizon. All these camps are filled with the lumps and spikes of armour and artillery. British tank guns point unblinkingly at the main highway, as if expecting attack from that direction. Yet it is not the weaponry which is most chilling about this armed host, which, with its five divisions, its training, its speed and mobility, its vast fleet of helicopters, its ability to fight at night and its digital technology is probably the most capable killing machine the world has ever seen. It is the industrial scale of the supply operation, and the amount of money which is visibly being spent, which scares. This is a professional army, and it goes at the job like a contractor.’
19 March 2003
[war] Douglas Rushkoff has been talking to Grant Morrison about the war in Iraq‘[Morrison] says he’s decided not to think about the war and all this mess, at all. He’s calling it “what the adults do,” and making a strong case for the idea that “we told them this would happen,” and “they never listen to us, anyway.”‘
[war] Reporters’ Log — BBC News Correspondents are [b]logging the War … ‘The overwhelming feeling among the British troops is a wish to get on with the job they have been sent here to do. As one British commander put it: “It will be tea and medals in Baghdad in a few days time.” And no-one really wants to contemplate the alternative.’ [via Grayblog]
20 March 2003
[war] Steve Bell’s Iraq Cartoons (so far) …

Single-handedly, Jim lad! by Steve Bell.

[war] Iraq on-the-spot Linkage …

  • Where is Raed?‘there is still nothing happening in baghdad we can only hear distant explosions and there still is no all clear siren.’
  • Reporters’ Log: At war in Iraq … Paul Wood in Baghdad: ‘People are very jumpy here. We now know the city of Baghdad was not the main thrust of the air attack. The focus is being described as a “target of opportunity”, where five senior members of the Iraqi government were gathered. It is believed that Saddam Hussein was amongst them. In the last few minutes it appears the telephone system has gone down here.’
  • Suddenly, the War is Very Real — Yesterday in Baghdad … ‘Reality finally came to Baghdad yesterday. Overnight, sandbags sprouted on football fields and roundabouts. In the evening the authorities rustled up yet another peace demonstration. The number of fatal car accidents seemed to surge, with drivers in a panic to get home, or to get out. Chemists sold out of valium.’ [via Words of Waldman]

21 March 2003
[blogs] Q: Is the Baghdad Blogger for real? — Paul Boutin wonders if the Where is Raed? iraqi weblog is a hoax … ‘Salam claims to connect to the Net via Uruklink, the state-run Iraqi ISP, using Web-based email from the British music magazine New Musical Express. Remember the Sex Pistols line, “I use the NME?” So does he. IP addresses in his email headers aren’t sufficient to pinpoint his location, but they’re consistent with his story, being in the same range used by past Uruklink posters.’ [thanks John]
[war] Power Tool — profile of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles‘The message it communicates is not one of brute force, but of sheer, unmatchable technological superiority, enforced from a safe distance. “It’s still seen by many as a somehow unnatural development in the culture of war,” says the military historian Antony Beevor. “We have still failed to realise what an astonishing technical development there has been in a very short period of time. Human perceptions of change are simply not flexible enough.”‘
22 March 2003
[war] Minute After Minute the Missiles Came, with Devastating Shrieks — Robert Fisk in Baghdad. ‘…the symbolic centre of this raid was clearly intended to be Saddam’s main palace, with its villas, fountains, porticos and gardens. And, sure enough, the flames licking across the facade of the palace last night looked very much like a funeral pyre.’
23 March 2003
[war] Iraq Still Online — brief article about the status of Iraqi Internet. (Where is Raed? has not updated since Friday) … ‘It’s not immediately clear, however, whether Iraqis have been able to easily access the Internet since the initial attacks. Repeated checks of the abbreviated log files for Uruklink.net and BabilOnline.net reveal only a few hits from users of SMS and AIT, the two satellite ISPs that supply Iraq.’
[war] BBC War [B]log links …

  • 22 March – Pushing … Rageh Omar in Baghdad: ‘Every sign here is that Saddam Hussein and his commanders have escaped attempts to assassinate them, despite persistent rumours from London and Washington ‘
  • 21 March – Attacks … Gavin Hewitt in Southern Iraq: ‘In the last few minutes we just crossed over the Basra-Baghdad highway. We’ve had several bizarre incidents in the last few minutes of drivers on the highway completely unaware that American armour may be this far north, stopping their vehicles in utter amazement as we crossed the highway.’
  • 20 March – At War … Nick Bryant in Washington: ‘The White House is trying hard to show that things are calm. They’ve put a lot of effort into making the President’s day seem effortless.’

24 March 2003
[comics] Get Your War On — Part 22

Panel from Get You War On

[war] Baghdad Calling — the Guardian’s G2 Section had several pages of recent postings from Where is Raed? today … ‘Those who know Baghdad well, and who have read the diary closely, say there is no doubt in their mind that whoever is writing it is currently resident in the Iraqi capital. The author may display evidence of spending time in the west (possibly Britain, though he does use Americanisms) with his cynical sense of humour and love of David Bowie lyrics, but the reams and reams of fascinating detail about domestic and street life in Baghdad are highly convincing.’
25 March 2003
[comics] Zenith Phase 3 Scorecard — amusing list of all the characters in Morrison and Yeowell’s corruption and destuction of a vast array of old British comic heroes … General Jumbo: ‘…this is General Jumbo. While we don’t see him properly until part 5 “Letter from the Underworld”, he is in this prologue – we see him dead, face down in the sea with his trousers round his ankles. Quite what Grant felt he did to deserve so ignominious a death I don’t know.’ [via Venusberg]
[war] Shock Tactics — interview with Harlan Ullman the creator of “Shock and Awe” … ‘On Wednesday night, after US commanders ordered a smaller strike of Tomahawk missiles at targets they believed included Saddam Hussein, CNN, for one, began running an on-screen alert reading “Shock and Awe postponed”. But “that was classic shock and awe,” says Ullman, who is now strategic associate at the centre for strategic and international studies in Washington. “If you kill the emperor, the empire’s up for grabs. And had we killed him, it would have been a classic application [of the theory]: $50m of ordnance, and we won the war.” After this, the argument begins to get a little circular: the postponement of shock and awe “was shock and awe, too,” Ullman says, because “we were threatening shock and awe”.’
26 March 2003
[comics] Sex in New X-Men #118 — X-Fans get worked up over subliminal SEX in an issue of the New X-Men … ‘When the issue in question was released several months ago, it went by almost unnoticed, but there is a subliminal message inside. Sure, some readers noticed the word SEX being hidden in the background art here or there, but only after an article in Wizard the general audience took a closer look and in fact the secret message has been discovered 17 times — so far.’ [thanks John]
27 March 2003
[war] War Porn — interesting article about the portrayal of War on television and the press … Krista Cowman: ‘Boys are both innately and through programming turned into obsessive collecting from an early age. My son collects Digimon cards at the moment; my husband, though an early modernist, has an anal obsession over first-world-war aircraft. It’s about categorising and sorting; it’s about the way the sexes communicate. Girls talk about their hopes and dreams and fears; boys communicate through the swapping of lists and football cards.’
28 March 2003
[news] The West Pier on Fire — a slideshow from Kevan.
29 March 2003
[blogs] Bloggers’ Delight — Steven Levy on Warblogging … ‘”I’ve got 32 windows open on my browser, the TV is on, and I’ve got the BBC on my RealPlayer,” says the 32-year-old freelance financial consultant. “I woke up to 332 e-mails this morning.” From this command post, [Sean-Paul] Kelley single-handedly creates a Weblog called The Agonist, which tracks and comments on developments in the war with Iraq.’ [Related: The Agonist | via Boing Boing]
30 March 2003
[tech] Compressing Webpages for Fun and Profit — a how-to about compressing pages on the fly with PHP to speed-up downloads and save bandwidth. ‘…what if I told you that you can third your content easily with no work on your part whatsoever? It sounds like a pitch I might get in a lovely unsolicited email. The secret lies in the fact that every major browser of the past 5 years supports transparently decompressing content on the fly.’ [via Neil’s World]
31 March 2003
[blog] The Dullest Blog in the World‘I put a compact disc into the machine and played track 1. I then forwarded it to track 9 and played that and tracks 10, 11 and 12. Later on I may play track 3 and 4 and perhaps 18 depending on how the mood takes me. I will miss out track 2 as I don’t like it that much.’ [via I Love Everything]
[comics] Ebay Auction — Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland … I’m trying to prune back my comic collection a bit so expect a few auctions to show up here. This is an Alan Moore Batman comic from 1988… The Joker: ‘All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.’