linkmachinego.com

21 January 2003
[weblogs] Warming Up — the comedian and writer Richard Herring has a weblog (kinda) … ‘I’ll do my best to eventually have something from every day. Sometimes it is quite hard to think of anything. Especially as much of my day is spent sitting in my house writing, or failing to write. But I figure that there has to be one interesting thing in every 24 hours.’ [via Gas Giant]
7 January 2003
[blogs] William Gibson has a blog‘In spite of (or perhaps because of) my reputation as a reclusive quasi-Pynchonian luddite shunning the net (or word-processors, depending on what you Google) I hope to be here on a more or less daily basis.’ [via Boing Boing]
3 January 2003
[web] Metafilter: Remixed — A collaborative site for rating posts on Metafilter‘The posts you see on this page have been voted on as excellent Metafilter threads. A lot of people find Metafilter a little too unwieldy to read through these days, and a lot of people also wish they had some better way of rewarding great posts other than just commenting “Great thread!”‘ [via Metatalk]
2 January 2003
[web] Jamie Zawinski’s Livejournal is always worth a look‘You’ll often hear cypherpunk weenies with poorly-thought-out philosophies trot out “information wants to be free” as some kind of pseudo-socialist Utopian vision, but the point is, information “wants” to be free in the same way nature “abhors” a vacuum: it’s not some moral view, it’s just the natural state of affairs. It’s the path of least resistance. It is “the sound of inevitability.”’
12 December 2002
[blogs] Interconnected 2002.12.12 — Matt remembers his singularity … ‘If everything about me can be traced back to an ultimate cause, if I’m an expansion from first principles, a condensation of a reality expanded from a single point, a tissue-rhizome of beliefs and values unfolded like a chinese puzzle, then my singularity was when I was ten, fourteen years ago today…’
10 December 2002
[web] Metafilter Wiki — a general guide for Metafilter using a Wiki. [via plasticbag.org]
9 December 2002
[comics] Kookymojo Comics Cupid [Part 1] [Part 2] — Anna is recommending good comics to newbies … ‘It’s [..] interesting to see how David approaches the notion of comics: from the words up only, with little consideration for the immediate relationship between words and images. Many people do this, probably because comics are book- or magazine-like, even though these same people have no trouble grasping the combination of words and images you get in subtitled films. I didn’t find out what kinds of art or movies he likes to look at (though I get an idea from reading his blog), but in comics the art is as important as the words — a bad artist can ruin a perfectly well-written story, but the combination of art and words is one of the reasons why I love the medium so much, and why I’m so keen to encourage others to share it.’
26 October 2002
[comics] ¡Journalista! — the Comics Journal Weblog [via Bugpowder]
24 October 2002
[blogs] Updated UK Weblogs — moves to a new home … Thanks to Jez, Ben and especially to Jen. Tom raises some interesting points after the demise of GBlogs … ‘I can’t tell whether it’s because we’re English or because we’re bedroom-bound webloggers that being part of such a community seems to terrify so many people.’
22 October 2002
[blogs] Biased BBC — a weblog from Natalie Solent‘exposing the left-wing agenda of the British Broadcasting Corporation’.
17 October 2002
[blogs] Will Blog for Cash — a “webby lament” from Andrew Sullivan … [via Nick Denton]

‘I’ve written tens of thousands of words; I’ve made hundreds of new web-friends; I get around 400 emails a day. I have to say I’ve never enjoyed myself as much as a journalist, had as much impact with my writing, or had as much sheer fun as a commentator on things large and small.’

‘Whatever else it is, [webloging] isn’t much of a business model. I pay my mortgage by writing for the old media – for this beloved paper, for the New Republic magazine, for Time, and other outlets that do the old-fashioned thing and provide remuneration for work. And yet, for all its economic dysfunction, the new medium has never been as powerful as it is today. In fact, I wonder if there’s ever been a technological innovation that has combined such extraordinary new power with such dramatically poor financial rewards.’

15 October 2002
[politics] R. Robot is Making Sense — automatically attack the liberal of your choice …

‘LinkMachineGo, what kind of a man are you? “Don’t hurt me,” says LinkMachineGo. Well, duh. LinkMachineGo, what kind of a man are you? It must be obvious to anyone who can think that the charges against the dirty bomber are true. When will LinkMachineGo come clean about the way he criticizes Ann Coulter? Instead of constructing arguments based on logic, the hot-tubbers assume that whatever they want to be true must be. “‘Department of Homeland Security?’ What the fuck is this, Brazil?” says LinkMachineGo. LinkMachineGo’s disgrace was obsessive and even dangerous. It was ad-hominem. It was ideological. But I understate.’

9 October 2002
[comics] Weblogs and Comics: How weblogs can help the comics community — a how-to guide from Pete Ashton‘[Weblogs] essentially allow the artist to communicate and create outside of the usual channels, be they self publishing their own books or being published by a company. They add the human aspect that their readers would otherwise miss out on.’
2 October 2002
[blogs] Bloggers of the Left, Unite! — New Stateman article on the supposed right-wing hijacking of weblogging … ‘…this is the blogger’s way: like raptors, they hunt in packs, gain momentum, pick enemies, vent spleen, and never, ever, hold back. These blogs do not have large direct readerships: InstaPundit clocks only 40,000 readers a day. But many readers run their own blogs; others are political or media professionals. So a growing community is aware of whatever most irritated Sullivan today. This in turn creates what the legal theorist Cass Sunstein calls “cybercascades”, reaching millions of readers with ideas, in this case associated almost exclusively with the right. They are democratic dynamite: private networks of information, unchecked by sensible debate.’ [via Haddock]
26 September 2002
[bbb2002] Guardian’s Best British Blogs 2002 — as many of you know I was a runner-up. :) Congratulations to Scary Duck … [Related: Metafilter Thread]
25 September 2002
[blogs] Blog Drone Unit #0189837 — automatic blogging … [via Dutchbint] …

‘Anyway she was a figure of poise and everything until the registrar told her that she needed an fna. She was a calligraphy enthusiast with a slight overbite and hair the color of strained peaches. In junior high but yesterday he said she was his gf from 7th to 9th grade if they were together the whole time thats a damn long time. One interesting thing about that is that i was working my way through the events of my junior high years when i remembered an old buddy from back then. We went back to dancing and i got my groove on with some fools that were therethis one guy was totally hot :* After the boat we went back to lizs in the limo.’

9 September 2002
[blogs] Lots of interesting comments over the weekend about Best British BlogsMike: ‘I really do hope that the winner is someone that nobody reading this has ever heard of.’
4 September 2002
[blogs] Best British Blogs — I’ve entered, by the way but I’d probably put money on Troubled Diva winning it. Tom, meanwhile, has come up with this:


[blogs] Lying Motherfucker — various famous authors blog, kinda … Frederick Forsythe: ‘Oh, how different it had all been in the glory days, back when Maggie held firmly the reins of a nation and men weren’t afraid to knock a Big Issue vendor into the gutter where it belonged. When the fuzzy-wuzzies knew their place and everyone stopped for a roast dinner on Sunday. Henry fingered the limp white collar of his shirt. A gentleman couldn’t even get a dependable starch anymore. It all went downhill with the Labour government, when they forced the coolie laundries to stop using child labor.’ [Related: Scott McCloud explains LyingMoFo]
30 August 2002
[blogs] The Sri Chinmoy Project — Mo Morgan discovers a sinister cult abusing weblogs.com‘Odd, I thought. But it was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.’ [Related: Metafilter Thread]
29 August 2002
[blogs] Scotblog — A real, live BBC Scotland Blog from Martin at the Copydesk‘Wish you were here, blah, blah, blah… What exactly is the point of postcards?’
[comics] Die Puny Humans — Warren Ellis has a weblog … ‘die puny humans is my newsmine. I wanted a place to put my research that was accessible, searchable, and, crucially, not cluttering up my bloody computer. This is it. Means I can get to my stuff from anywhere with a web connection. Anything I find on my daily trawls around the web that interests me goes up here.’
22 August 2002
[blogs] Haddock Blogs — All the Haddock Blogs in one place … ‘Surprisingly little was written on DMT.’ [Related: Azeem, blackbeltjones.com, Builder of Stuff, Dreadberry, Iamcal.com, Interconnected, Malbec, Oblomovka, Overmorgen, plasticbag.org, Technovia, Webslog, Yoz Grahame’s Commonplace Megaphone]
19 August 2002
[blogs] Living in the Blog-osphere — Steven Levy on weblogs. ‘…most coverage of the so-called Blog-osphere (the name given to the collective alternate universe consisting of all active Weblogs) seems to focus on A-listers like pundit Andrew Sullivan, gadfly Mickey Kaus or former MTV veejay Adam Curry. Even the various computer-generated lists that purport to probe what’s happening on Planet Blog don’t go beyond the 10,000 or so most popular ones, rated by the numbers of links to and from the various sites. But the bigger story is what’s happening on the 490,000-plus Weblogs that few people see: they make up the vast dark matter of the Blog-osphere, and portend a future where blogs behave like such previous breakthroughs as desktop publishing, presentation software and instant messaging, and become a nonremarkable part of our lives.’ [via Scripting News]
16 August 2002
[blogs] You’ve got Blog — another ancient article (2000, from the New Yorker) about blogging … ‘Because the main audience for blogs is other bloggers blogging etiquette requires that, if someone blogs your blog, you blog his blog back. Reading blogs can feel a lot like listening in on a conversation among a group of friends who all know each other really well. Blogging, it turns out, is the CB radio of the Dave Eggers generation.’ [via plasticbag.org again]
15 August 2002
[blogs] Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Man — old (2000) profile of Jorn Barger‘…Barger felt something was missing — a context for his postings, some frame of reference that would fill in the contours of his Net persona, now badly fragmented across the boundaries of his various newsgroups. His Web log, in the end, was born to fill that need. It was conceived less as the quality news digest it has become (frequented by thousands of the Net’s most knowledgeable) than as a portrait of Jorn Barger, rendered in the medium of his own daily, unexpurgated curiosities. ‘ [kinda via plasticbag.org]
14 August 2002
[blogs] Tom reconstructs We’ve Got Blog‘If you were interested in reading – but uninterested in paying for – the collection of articles printed in the book We’ve got blog (which includes an introduction by the esteemed Rebecca Blood), you may be surprised to realise that almost all of the pieces within it are freely available on the interweb. And don’t worry – most of them are just as interesting online as they are squirted onto paper.’ [Related: We’ve Got Blog]
10 August 2002
[blogs] How we’re spending our time at Pyra — what’s happening with Blogger‘Sometime later this month, the first public, large-scale, non-Pyra-run installation of Blogger will go live.’
4 August 2002
[comics] Blogtree.com — Blog Genealogy. Great idea… LMG can be found here on Blogtree and I’m a father already!‘You can register your blogs and record which blogs inspired their creation. You can also search for existing blogs and view which blogs they in turn inspired.’
26 July 2002
[blogs] Swish Cottage rates Great British Blogs … Fine summary of Plep: ‘A staggering array of random links. The Bifurcated Rivets that’s fun to read.’ [via Sashinka]
21 July 2002
[blogs] One last quote about Great British Blogs, from Life as it Happens: ‘What does Anita Roddick know about blogging? And Alan Rusbridger? Granted, something of this response is the idea of the Outside World peering into the blog golfish bowl (“But you don’t understand!” “You’re not one of us!” “You don’t get it!”) Assuming they are reading as everyday readers, why should they not? On the other hand, those who do not blog on a regular basis may well miss the fine points of the game.’
20 July 2002
[blogs] Couple more quotes about the Great British Blogs Competition

  • Blogjam: ‘…the Internet has turned me slowly from an outgoing, gregarious, popular fellow into a shallow, reclusive computer dweeb with very few remaining friends, and blogjam is the nearest thing to a serious relationship I’ve had in some time. In summary, I think blogjam warrents some recognition for putting up with me. It’s the very least she deserves.’ [via Wherever You Are]
  • Blogadoon: ‘I suspect Blogadoon is too strong on cock and spite, too weak on tech and eye-candy to rate well in any kind of mainstream beauty contest.’

18 July 2002
[blogs] As always the conversation around the Guardian’s Great British Blog Competition makes it much more interesting…

FellateTheGuardianMachineGo.com

Meta-Blogging: plasticbag.org #1, #2, Blogjam, Inkiboo, Metafilter, Grayblog, not.so.soft, iamcal.com, Wherever You Are, Venusberg, Blogadoon Troubled Diva #1, #2, #3 … plasticbag.org: ‘if you look at the opinions that matter to people, it’s mostly not celebrities or media figures. In many ways, for a large number of people, they’re almost the enemy! They’re relics from the past where for the most part we are kind of the future – the future where everybody is a superhero! Where we all get a slice of the cake, a bite of the cherry. And more importantly, there’s a real feeling that these people most often don’t understand what we’re doing anyway! We’ve seen people like this for years – it’s all PR blurb and airbrushed skin. I don’t think that’s what the weblogging publishing revolution is about! Make them start their own weblogs!’
8 July 2002
[blogs] Gerard and Dan find each other. From this

‘I’m saying, you simpleton, that to claim that the RSPCA is wasting its time complaining about the welfare of animals while people are dying all over the world, when your own life is so utterly and comically meaningless, is hypocrisy. Or, more precisely, stupidity.’

To this (in about 17 moves) …

‘Mr Dan, where do you live? If it’s London, I’d love to meet up for a (non-alcoholic) drink. You seem like an interesting fellow.’

2 July 2002
[blogs] Barbeblogs — The Barbelith Underground gets it’s own communuity blog site…. ‘We are neither a cult nor a religion. We are a large group of lightly cracked pots, entertaining ourselves by exchanging bundles of electrons.’ [via plasticbag.org]
26 June 2002
[blogs] My Blog, My Outboard Brain — Cory ‘Boing Boing‘ Doctorow on blogging. ‘…operating Boing Boing has not only given me a central repository of all of the fruits of my labors in the information fields, but it also has increased the volume and quality of the yield. I know more, find more, and understand better than I ever have, all because of Boing Boing.’ [via Kookymojo]
19 June 2002
[blogs] London Bloggers Tube Map — stalk your favourite bloggers via Cal’s tube map … [Related: NYC Bloggers]
15 June 2002
[blogs] Don’t Read This — transcript of an Instant Message conversation from Chris at Do You Feel Loved?‘If Osama Bin Laden was gonna drop a nuke into the earth’s core and said “The only way to stop me is… to suck off this monkey!” I’d just be like “Dude, that’s it? Whatever” and go to town.’
7 June 2002
[plasticbag] Tom is doing a survey about Weblogging
[underground] Tube Map — Cal’s been busy again… ‘I know about 374 connections between 272 stations.’
31 May 2002
[tech] A couple of interesting articles from Steven Levy [thanks Kabir] …

Great Minds, Great Ideas — Levy on Stephen Wolfram and Dean Kamen‘“A New Kind of Science” is encyclopedic, a “Ulysses”-like text that applies Wolfram’s ideas to a wide range of subjects: physics, math, philosophy, robotics, economics, logic, even theology. One reason it took him so long is that he kept unearthing new discoveries in various fields. It became a joke among his assistants. “So you’re going to figure out some big thing in this field in the next couple of days?” they’d ask. And Wolfram would say, “Yes, that’s what I’m going to do.” And proceed to do it, at least on his terms.Some scientists aren’t exactly thrilled. “There’s a tradition of scientists approaching senility to come up with grand, improbable theories,” says physicist Freeman Dyson. “Wolfram is unusual in that he’s doing this in his 40s.”’

Will the Blogs Kill Old Media? — Levy on Blogs. ‘…once you’ve created your blog and filled it with links to news accounts of the Pim Fortuyn assassination, snarky criticisms of Bill O’Reilly and witty rants about airport security, how do you get visitors? Judging from the top blogs, the answer seems to be working hard, filling a niche, winning a reputation for accuracy, developing sources and writing felicitously. This sounds a lot like the formula to succeed as a journalist inside the Big Media leviathan. With the difference that traditional journalists uh, get paid. What makes blogs attractive — their immediacy, their personality and, these days, their hipness — just about ensures that Old Media, instead of being toppled by them, will successfully co-opt them. You might argue that it’s happened already.’
26 May 2002
[blogs] Pat Kane.com — the Scottish journalist and musician has a weblog … ‘pop, politics, technoculture…& scotland’
14 May 2002
[comics] Peter David is blogging (kinda) and REVEALING SEASON SIX BUFFY SPOILERS (beware) … ‘Greetings and solicitations. This will be the first of what will ideally be daily updates in this on-line journal. In the near future, we’ll have a regular Q&A set-up, plus we’re trying to figure out how to produce an on-line whack-a-mole.’ [via Neilalien]
1 May 2002
[blogs] The Life Cycle of your Weblog — Sadly, no section on ‘Endlessly Linking and Quoting Meaningless Drivel’. Oh well… must try harder. [via More Like This]
19 April 2002
[blogs] Douglas Rushkoff has a blog‘I’ve always resisted the polarity of a dialectic – those heated, two-sided debates. The process itself seems to entrench us further in specific reality tunnels. Academics and committed politicos hate me for it, but I really am committed, for the timebeing, to avoid getting too stuck in a singular, absolute way of seeing the world. Polar argumentation and the duality it promotes make this harder to do. And this is why fundamentalists enjoy things like the Middle East crisis so much. It throws even formerly “moderate” people back into the more extreme corners of their reality tunnels.’
18 April 2002
[comics] Neilalien — comicblog concentrating on Marvel, the mainstream and Doc Strange … ‘Neilalien of course does not aspire to rise above the noise and crap. Not until he gets interviews with Brian Michael Bendis, anyway. He tries to keep things honest though! For example, he always discloses that he doesn’t own Marvel stock before criticizing President Jemas! ‘
16 April 2002
[blogs] Weblog Bookwatch — it searches recently updated weblogs for links to books on Amazon and compiles a list… ‘For recreational use only — please, no wagering.’ [via Scripting News]
10 April 2002
[blogs] Graybo’s infamous Passport Gallery‘and it was only ever meant to be a bit of innocent fun. that’ll teach me.’Graybo
[blogs] They Have Blogs!‘He’s a punk goggle-eyed performance artist who has the hots for Angelina Jolie. She’s an overweight ambidexterous graphic design artist who writes about her amazing, talented and deeply-loved spouse more often than she writes about herself. They have blogs.’ [via kookymojo]
8 April 2002
[blogs] Feeling Listless Logo Archive — I really like these logos… my favorite‘the best option was to combine the name of the site with it’s subject matter, my life and how I feel about the latest cultural events. And so I struck upon the idea of cultural artifacts which mean something to me (to a greater or lesser extent) also expressing the name of the site. The picture at the top would be as much a part of the weblog and the writing. This is an ongoing record of these logos …’ [Related: Feeling Listless]
7 April 2002
[web] Christopher Walken’s LiveJournal‘have you ever wanted to punch someone square in the teeth, just to see how many fall out? i met ben affleck today.’March 24th Entry. [via Grammarporn]
29 March 2002
[blog quote] Inkiboo: ‘Really think I shouldn’t call this site a ‘blog’ anymore. Two reasons for this. First being that there seems to be a high percentage of male bloggers who are gay. This is all well and good, but it could reduce my chances of getting laid. Second, a lot of bloggers are just self obsessed assholes.’ [more]
26 March 2002
[blogs] Are You A Hit-Obsessed Weblogger?’35 points is in the 20 through 39 precent TYPE C (HIT-CURIOUS). You do the weblog thing for yourself instead of for an audience, but you are aware that you do have an audience, small as it might be. You are often curious as to what other people find so interesting about your weblog. You check your weblog referrers every now and then just to satisfy your curiosity.’ [via Feeling Listless]
22 March 2002
[blogs] MemeMachineGo! — What a great name for a blog! :)
14 March 2002
[blogs] nickdenton.org: ‘People like Doc Searls and Meg Hourihan are to the weblog as Oppenheimer and von Neumann were to the A-bomb. Gentle souls whose creation will be used by others more ruthless.’