Web

Will we (or rather, will our avatars) wear words when fully-immersive, massively multiplayer, 3d computer environments really start to take off?

Will it look like Matrix green code view? Will future fashionistas argue endlessly about the merits of serif vs. sans-serif? Bembo vs. Helvetica? Bodoni vs. Garamond? Will a future girl flaunting her sexuality wear a top bikini made of nothing but two rings out of the word “perky” barely concealing her nipples¹? Will you wrap yourself in lyrics? In short stories? In emo text? Will I wear Borges’s while you wear Charlie Stross’s? While she wears Melville’s? Will you wear your favorite quotes as bracelets? As necklaces? As belts? Will HarperCollins be the new Gap?

Before you nonchalantly dismiss this idle rumination as the work of a feverishly formist mind, I ask you to pause for a moment and look around at today’s ubiquituous (and perpetually crammed) IM nick-names and personal messages, email and forum signatures, “witty” t-shirts, and the like.

Yay! I just got my invitation code to Google Analytics. What little I’ve been able to see is pretty amazing (mmm… make that very amazing), all the more so considering that it is free (it has always baffled me to no end that I’ve to pay more for stats than for hosting my website itself).

5 million pageviews? Per month? Per… day? That scale is one of the many things about Google that make geeks’s mouths (mine included) water. (I think it’s important to point out that StatCounter, my previous web stats provider, charged me $19 a month for 10,000 pageviews.)

Being childfree myself —well, I’m somewhat young to claim that title for myself but that’s the lifestyle I want to live and I’ve already considered sterilization— it was a nice surprise to find The rise of the ‘childfree’ in Reddit’s¹ homepage today. It was interesting to find out about Mariah, a Swedish girl who was sterilized at age 25; to read somewhere mainstream (The BBC) how much of a taboo the subject is; and to discover that there are actually groups lobbying for equality for people without children² (Kidding Aside is the name of one!). That said, the article itself is quite irregular, too short, and too focused on women (though I may as well be reflecting my own biases).

And I don’t quite agree with most of the reasons put forth in the article (specially not with “I can’t believe the amount of waste that children produce.”). My personal reason for shunning child-rearing is that it is usually a cop-out to the existence question. It’s an usually unthinking way to give meaning to your life, to feel like you’ve “done something”, to achieve transcendence. I respect if you consciously want your children to give meaning to your life and you want them to be your life’s achievement —me, I’d like to explore different answers. (That said, life span is so long these days that one may try to juggle several answers that were of yore mutually exclusive.)

² That’s one group of neurons I never thought would fire…

Have you ever chanced upon someone’s blog only to suddenly fall in love and realize here was someone so similar to yourself (only dazzingly more brilliant) with whom you’re bound to cross paths sooner or later? I have. Today. Twice. Here and here.

Damn! Damn! Damn! I just lost two hours trying to recover a photo in Flickr. It wasn’t that important but it just pains me everytime I lose something great for not saving it. Baka!

Even so, my vagrant vagaries brought me something mind-blowingly useful: Flickr leech Tired of paging? Search Flickr in 200-photo chunks.

And I’m happy I found grace (Parental advisory: beautiful nudity ahead)

If you’ve decided to browse with Firefox,^[1] why not learn to do it gracefully? It’ll make you happier and more efficient.

Before we begin, be sure to have the latest Firefox. As of 28/Feb/2006, the current version is 1.5.0.1 and what follows will assume you have that version or a higher one. You get Firefox from GetFirefox.com.

With that you’re ready. Here is my guide (for non-techies) to using Firefox with flair:

Everything2 is a strange, addictive website that’s been around for almost 8 years now and still feels as disorientingly original as when I first found it. It describes itself as “an online community with a focus to write, publish and edit a quality database of information, insight and humor,” but I just chanced upon a better description: Everything2 is sort of a Wittypedia. No, really. You want something witty about Michael Spivak? About double penetration? About this quote, this poem, or this phrase? About lust? About Ghost in the Shell? About whores? About sex games? About beautiful, cry-worthy things? About language? About orgasms? About flaunting your sexuality? About menstruation? About growing old? You now know were to find it.

Last time a friend asked me what a blog was, I blabbered and gesticulated madly for a long while, only to cap it off, desperate, with the safe “they’re online diaries”. As it often happens, I ended up saying exactly the opposite of what I believe. I don’t think blogs are mere online diaries. Those are a sub-genre, to be sure, but blogs are much more, and it is misleading, stifling, and plain false, to have that as their only metaphor (isn’t it overstretching to call this very blog post you’re now reading a journal entry?).

So that no one finds himself forced to betray his better knowledge again, I’ve tried to find a metaphor that outcharms the prevailing one—one that’s true and yet as simple and catchy. I think I’ve found it: Blogs are open letters.

Blogs are open letters. Compilations of written communications addressed to whoever may want to read them¹. The title of a blog post, the letter, is in fact its address, crafted to route the epistle to its many recipients (though of course Google, the post master, uses far more clever ways to deliver it). A good dose of current happenings goes in these letters, of course, but there’s much, much else: recommendations, reviews, analysis, reflections, advice, criticism, self-promotion, narrative, essays, rants, howtos, explanations, interpretations, confessions, j’accuses, press releases, calumnies, lies, exaggerations, gossip, sobs—anything that would go on a letter.

So now you know. Blogs are open letters. Spread the word (or challenge it in the comments).

Google is life’s man.