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Saturday, 06:10 am, 20 November 2004 Saturday Morning Live Last week and this week, I woke around 4.30am to prepare for WeFunk. Last week they played the Canada/Cuba track - I tuned in live for that request. The show wasn't recorded for the first time in living memory. In 'the industry' this is known as volatile. Volatile things need to be treated with a certain level of respect. If I hadn't tuned in live, I wouldn't have heard my request. It would have been lost to the ages. As I wrote last week, I found an old Funkdoobiest tape recently and it reminded me that WeFunk had never played any Funkdoobiest. A few emails to DJ Static and around UKP30 later, two 12'' vinyls and a CD arrived in Montreal. The internet seems to be the place to pick up records. I knew the CD had arrived already thanks to Amazon Canada. I suspected the vinyl had arrived too. So I had little option but to tune in. It may not be recorded this week either. I'm listening in live as I type - Static hasn't dropped the Funkdoobiest yet - but I got a shout-out at the start of the show. Props for electrons. Welcome to the internet... Future of logtrack Software that works is easy to forget. Writing the Log and doing occasional back edits and links, I forget there are features in logtrack that improve the experience. Reworking the software some of the best features are minimalist. Talking to folks about what goes into the Log - I type text into a word processor - no formatting. Spell check it and then run logtrack. FTP the created HTML. I could automate that part too, but I like the final edit opportunity before it hits the net. The trick with internet publishing - getting logs to work. I making writing a log as easy or possibly even easier than writing an email. Keeping it easy is a double edge sword in many regards. You need to think about what you put online. Search engines will hit your words and anyone can access them. That aspect of writing a log actually makes it a potentially dangerous pursuit. logtrack doesn't produce any RSS/XML or even META information - I have thought about this recently. But the tumbleweeds blowing through the Noble Ape Forum give a good indication of the interactive online experience. I'm going to put this bolus online. Good morning. Friday, 09:39 pm, 19 November 2004 Part of Something Bigger Every Friday, maybe every second, at lunchtime I check the search engine hits for the site. With only about 24 hours of Google linkage, the URL for Errol Morris' site had five search links. In fact, two of the links had spaces in the URL. This struck me as rather strange. Going back to the link - it's no longer there. After the fact, I'm not clear if it was pulled and the searches to Barbalet's Log have come through people looking for the site or through the people that pulled the site. I suspect, because of the sensitivity of the content Apple may have asked for it to be removed. If your looking for a comparable video; http://mindoverpixels.com/anim_monkeystomo.html New Face On An Old Friend It's been a slow email week. The only emails that kept arriving through the week were from my man, Alex 'Gurap' Brooks. One of his recent emails featured an e-Christmas card and a motion image of the man himself. I haven't seen Alex since I left Australia. A pertinent topic in email with Alex - commercial weblogging sites. For a number of months I have been working on an update to logtrack. It is actually a late night, sleep deprivation development. But I'm hoping to have something online around the same time as Noble Warfare is released. Good night. Tuesday, 08:09 pm, 16 November 2004 Digital Footprint I often wonder about the digital footprint folks have who work in the computer industry. If someone works in the computer industry, what will their digital footprint be? I find it hard to believe people who work in the industry won't be traceable through Google. I found this site today through Doug Rushkoff's wife's site; http://www.errolmorris.com/commercials/apple.html (site down) Doug's Apple ad had to be pulled from his weblog when he was filmed for it. In the end Doug's Apple/Bible analogy was clearly too loaded to become a shown commercial. My favourite from the too-hot to handle commercials is the one titled Philanthropy. So true. I wanted to know what green company Gianni Jacklone works for. But I found nothing through Google. I wonder sometimes if Google is the problem or if information just doesn't exist. There is a time component to the digital footprint. You can typically find the information you want if you are willing to spend the time searching. XP RAM On Saturday, we went RAM shopping. Having installed 1Gb in my wife's machine, it's a new computer again. I also picked up Dawn of War and Total War: Rome. As someone who is losing interest in miniatures, Dawn of War was surprisingly good. It is a real-time strategy game. It is one with the genre - that has its own limitations. But to see the Space Marines and the Orks up close and personal is certainly fun. Total War: Rome - like the previous Medieval game - is about finding the hard skirmishes. In general, real-time tactical games turn in an instant. Understanding tactical forces, understanding when to hit with what. Fadhil Badrani I have written previously about Fadhil Badrani's reports from Falluja. His account is unique and insightful. He is the best journalist the BBC has used in the coverage of the war. I would like to know more about the man behind the reports. It reads in stark contrast to the rest of the BBC's Iraq coverage. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4008887.stm Good night. Friday, 11:00 pm, 12 November 2004 Back when I was autistic... For the privileged broadband few, I present a concise version of a talk I gave at NYU in 2000. The film is roughly 20Mb - 2 fps. I'm currently using the circa 1996, Quicktime 2.5 player that also featured save out and wide variety of editing features. One of the best products Apple has ever released free. Quicktime would be the only standard online if Apple had continued to release everything you need to make online streaming video for nothing. But no. Okay, it doesn't do MP3 audio compression or anything post 1996. But it's a great program. Reviewing the video last night, I was initially struck by how jilted my delivery was. The edited version misses the worst sections. But I have a reasonable background of public speaking. I shouldn't have seemed quite so autistic. The video tells a story. It captures a moment. It is sometimes good to reflect. Getting Static Onto the Doobiest I got an email from WeFunk's DJ Static this morning. It was originally about playing the Canada/Cuba track, linked on the Log. But it occurred to me recently, when I discovered an old Funkdoobiest tape, that Wefunk weren't playing the banging sounds of Son Doobie or the Tomahawk Funkster. So I'll put my online searching skills to lining up some Doobie Funk vinyl for 'Stats'. Good night. [ Previous Log ]
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