Am thinking of possible publication for Summer of Giles. We'll see.
Brief poll: Suppose there's somebody out there writing interesting things whose updates you'd like to see on your page of New Things You Probably Want to Read. On Tumblr it's the dashboard; here it's your friends page. Do you follow that person? Or do you subscribe to their updates?
The pain of writing text for user interface! I've been doing it for twenty years but I still find it sticky. There are no provably correct answers. Mostly it's about choosing a voice and sticking with it.
The world economy is fucked up department: Krugman on third-world wages and working conditions, in 1997. Ponder this as you ponder the conditions in the Foxconn factory where many of the components of the PC you're reading this with were made, as well as your X-Box, your Android phone, and so on. I'm certainly pondering.
Capital moves easily across country borders. Labor laws do not. The lives of the people in that poisonous car factory are better than they were before. What a wonderful world.
Technology looking like magic dep't: Traceroute.im. Ping a IP address and get the usual traceroute output, plus a map of the world showing you how your packet traveled to reach its destination. Blazing-fast global communication, friends. We do live in a wonderful world in some ways.
Today's track: The Field, "A Looping State of Mind". Abstract loops and drones, though the percussion is played by a human. "It's Up There" from the same recording has a killer bass line. That link is to a live performance, by the way.
