November 2008
2 posts
Outlaw Planet 4 →
Botnets, Humanity+, and the threat of secession.
Outlaw Planet (3) →
Time for a “brain blast”!
October 2008
21 posts
“Hacking, denial-of-service, and “griefing” attacks have increased by...”
– Superstruct, “Internet Superpowers Seek Accord”
A shorter list of inputs (#2)
Following hot on the tail of the last one, this offering is a little less upbeat.
1. “Doomsday’s Coming”, apocalyptic ethnomusicology from RJ
2. a mysterious computer virus, counting down the days … until what?
Ominous.
Outlaw Planet (2) →
More from the front lines.
“What’s more important, the data or the jazz? Sure, sure,...”
– Datatech Sinder Roze, “Infobop”
reBang2019: Turtlcam Footage →
Sinster happenings off the coast of Maine. Assuming it’s real (and, frankly, why wouldn’t it be?), I’m still trying to bend my head round the implications.
From the farmer's point of view →
“[L]ike Moore’s Law in reverse, bureaucracies are being created to deal with problems created by the previous generation of bureaucracy – like some kind of governmental Mandelbrot set, nosediving from partially effective to actively disruptive and dangerous.”
Musical interlude: 2025 by DoKashiteru
The...
A list of inputs (#1)
Borrowing csven’s model for trend recognition (a peculiar methodology, but something that’s really stuck in my mind), here’s the list of “inputs” currently circling the recesses of my brain -
1. “Farmadelphia”, a city planning proposal from waaay back in 2007
2. Subtractive Architecture (‘Less is More’), a superstruct...
Outlaw Planet (1) →
A round-up of the past fortnight in Outlaw Planet. Update the first.
Black hats & bad guys
In last week’s interview with ARK, I set out my position as built on the belief that the Outlaw Planet superthreat wasn’t “simply a matter of weak technology, black hats and bad guys…”
And, yes, I still stand by this statement. I do think that - both in the media and in public discourse - the tendency has been to reduce Outlaw Planet to a...
Flickr Photostream →
Still waiting on server farm back-ups of the photos I lost in the Lifestreamer crash. The compression will have screwed the quality no end, and I’ve lost all the taggings and annotations, but - heck - it’s better than nothing. Should be getting a datastick through the post at some point soon.
In the meantime, Flickr is my friend.
ARK: The Interview →
So, which indepedent journalist landed an exclusive interview with ARK? That’s right - Y.T. :)
Go check it out! They had some really interesting comments and observations, particularly in relation to the whole Superstruct project.
Superstruct →
Go check it out! After their first choice (some Danish tech blogger) got caught up in the whole Stockholm ReDS scare, I was drafted as one of two guides for the Outlaw Planet superthreat. And we’re kicking ass! :)
2nd seminar
The second group were a little less … boisterous, which I can only attribute to the morning timetabling. Again, some good discussions, particularly in relation to the whole “end of the world” saga.
Now, I know there’s been a fair bit of discussion on campus in the past week - I’ve seen posters advertising some ad-hoc discussion groups from the student...
1st seminar
Well, that was interesting. If I’ve learnt one thing today, it’s that today’s student is older, less deferential, and a whole lot more self-assured than their mid-2000s equivalent. Plugged in and switched on.
On which note, I’m finding it a little unsettling to have students dialing in from elsewhere. Of course, I’m relieved that the college managed...
September 2008
18 posts
Futurismic: When 3D spam got old →
“Ever walk through a field and come out on the other end with burrs clinging to your clothes? Well, imagine something like those little burrs spilling out of your home fabber. Embedding themselves in the shag carpet. Attaching to an angry cat. Perforating your foot.”
ARK: Dealing With The Media →
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Shockwaves
Having left my last post on something of a cliffhanger, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to get an SMS from Luke, making sure I’d made it home okay. I know this platform is public access, but it took a while for me to get what he was talking about, poor chap.
So, yes, I made it home safely. Turns out that yesterday’s unreliable tube coverage was the result...
“I think this probably warrants a pint.”
– Mark’s reaction to the news of imminent societal collapse
Update on the college situation
- unoccupied student accomodation to be leased by the Greater London Authority, housing temporary migrants and those participating in welfare-to-work.
- revenue from the above lease to be invested in a major boost to our bandwidth, with the intent of securing a stable telepresence service for the year ahead.
- a new strategic plan for autumn next year, addressing...
Interesting times
Just left an emergency meeting with management’s upper echelons, attempting to deal with the revelation that a majority of this year’s student intake will be attending remotely - almost doubling the total of students off-site.
I would have thought that August’s ReDS scare would have some effect on enrollment but - even so - I don’t think anyone had...
“Bentham’s Nightmare”
– my new favourite nickname for London, courtesy of a heavily pierced gentleman on the Jubilee line
My latest nemesis: the multi-touch interface
Mark was using one of the full-size desks to test our course presentation on some of the associate tutors. It was going smoothly right up to me absent-mindedly leaning on a corner of the desk. Then bam! The first blue screen of death I’d seen in the best part of a decade.
We lost our lunch break to interface hysterics. It seems that even a...
Teaching?
This autumn, I’m taking a break from research (woo!) to help Mark with the first-year digital media & society course. Apparently, we were supposed to have submitted a course outline in time for next week’s pre-registration - a fact we discovered yesterday morning.
Yup. Even with EduCommons at our disposal, I get the feeling it’s going to be a long weekend.
Highlight of the last 2 days:
Encountering a full-size airship hovering over the Sussex countryside! Missed out on a photo, but dad picked up its GML ID on his new phone. Running that through the operator’s website, we identified our blimp as an unmanned (!) freight handler, trafficking a payload from France via Shoreham. Sadly (if unsurprisingly), the cargo was one data point which...
Rural headspace
Heading down to Sussex for a couple of days R&R. Barring some kind of agricultural accident, should be back on the 10th.
Launch
LifeStreamer seems to be down again - and, this time, it’s taken the UoL publishing platform with it. I’ve lost three weeks to the cloud, with no guarantee that I’ll see them again. :(
As a stop-gap measure, I thought I’d dust off my Tumblr account. It may be light on features, but it’s sturdy, and I won’t have to sign a EULA to make a backup of my...