Saturday, October 29, 2005

Lose Weight the Hacker Way
Boing Boing included a link to an extraordinary diet book written by self confessed hacker John Walker.

From a cultural studies perspective, I find this fascinating for what it reveals about the hacker ethos as much as for any weight loss tips it contains. Its gets right to the heart of that systems mindset as well as the hacker desire to control events - "Once you possess the power to circumvent limitations, to control things most people consider immutable, you're liberated from the tyranny of events. You're no longer an observer; you're in command. You've become a hacker"

Walker offers this succinct definition of the Hacker, which is the antithesis of a popular conception of a computer criminal...

The word ``hacker'' and the culture it connotes is too rich to sacrifice on the altar of the evening news. Bob Bickford, computer and video guru, defined the true essence of the hacker as ``Any person who derives joy from discovering ways to circumvent limitations.''

There is also a lot of humour to be found too....

"People who thrive on unscrewing the inscrutable--figuring out how complicated systems work and controlling them--sometimes fail to apply those very techniques to maintaining their own health. How strange to on the one hand excel at your life's work and on the other, XL in girth."

Fascinating stuff, here's the link

Friday, October 28, 2005

Flock to this
BBC are running a vanity piece (interesting though) on the new flock browser, that works according to open source principles of sharing information not just pushing it out.

"What Flock represents is the first coherent attempt to write a web browsing programme where all the interactive elements are part of the programme, not bolt-ons... the way we look at the internet is about to change dramatically. And with the open source movement getting further into the mainstream of business, programmes like Flock have a better chance than ever of shaping the change."

Go to article

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

machynlleth signGood to see my home town making the front page of the BBC site yesterday (it is pronounced "Mac-HUNT-leth" btw,). The town is hosting an amateur film festival and to publicise the event Alex Randall, Nicola Arciero, Jenny Hall, John Hedley and Mark Bloomfield, decided to erect their own Hollywood sign on the hillside on Pen'Rhallt Common which can be seen throughout the town - just like the Los Angeles hillside in fact.

This is typical actually of the energy and enthusiasm of local people to create something special about living here, If anyone is around in mid Wales next Saturday (I know this is a stretch for most of you) I thoroughly recommend coming to Mach for the lantern parade and fireworks display. This is where locals march through the town carrying home made lanterns, some of which are quite spectacular



Sunday, October 09, 2005

[[IMMERSIVE]] martin heideggerThe second part of my notes on Heideggers masterwork, Being and Time is now online. Like before, if you have any comments or questions about the text, please submit them by commenting on this post. Note; this is a work in progress and I still intend to add a bibliography and a fully linked glossary.

link: Heidegger's Being and Time, an explication and commentary

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Infinite Escher

Escher Hey, here's a great thing. Someone has created an infinitely regressive/progressive flash presentation, of a fantasy landscape inspired by an Escher-type painting. Go there and enjoy!

Thanks to Rich M for the link...

Saturday, October 01, 2005

sparksSparks are on Blogger
This is very exciting, it turns out that one of my favourite bands are also bloggers. So as a token of my profound respect and admiration for the Mael brothers I urge you both to go there and also to buy their music!