groc's bloggette: November 2005 Archives

Because from time to time I post up one of my drawings /doodles /illustrations to my photostream and I know a few of my flickr mates do the same - I have concerns about this issue. Is there going to be a time where I post just the one illustration too many for the flickr police and I'll get everything I've done instantly pulled out of the public areas - the tag searches, the 'explore interestingness' areas -etc.

I'm afraid it's these sort of petty and arbitrary distinctions* that are beginning to sour flickr for me. I can see the first hairline cracks are beginning to show in the slow creeping yahoo-ization of Flickr.

Can no one there see just how insulting it is for an artist to be lumped in with the porn and other 'undesirable stuff'.

It’s as if flickr is saying in no uncertain terms: “Dirty, dirty drawings -ew! non photos - dirty, dirty illustrations. Ew - filthy - not fit to be seen by the public. Must be hidden away. Must be made hard to find.” It is essentially relegating a small number of users into second class flickrites. Surely that isn’t fair?

I have to ask: is flickr so desperately scared that people doing a tag search for a subject aren't going to be able to distinguish between a photo and a drawing from the thumbnail alone, and to make the choice for themselves whether they want to look at that picture? So scared that Flickr has taken it upon themselves to make that choice for the casual viewer?

Are they living in fear that overnight absolutely everyone is going to start posting huge slews of non-photographs that are going to swamp out the photos completely? Because let me put their minds at rest right now -that is never going to happen. The drawings/illustration work has always been a very small percentage of what is on flickr -it is ever likely to remain so.

If drawings are so hideously offensive -why is it one of the flickr founders set up a whole group devoted to doodles? Why did the flickr blog dedicate one of it’s posts to handwritten notebook blogs -(some which had -gasp! drawings in them)?

I’m bemused that they should decide to make this an issue when surely there are far more pressing things they should be concentrating on. Like for instance -getting that reset button back - so I know when NEW really means new, etc.

There wasn’t anything broken here that needed this sort of fixing. If they had any sense they’d go back to just letting the drawings/illustrations/whatever back in the public areas and stop making themselves look so woefully petulant. It would save them so much grief.

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*I say arbitrary because as yet no one can say exactly what a photo is. If they going to get only what they’ve decided they want -they’re really going to have to start getting pedantic to the point of ridiculousness. Instead of just ‘photo’ they’ll have to say ‘pictures only ever taken with a camera - a scanned photo print (taken with a camera) is alright but only just - but absolutely and totally no scanned drawings - and no photos of drawings or paintings - except graffiti because we like graffiti - and no photos that have been so overly manipulated in a graphics program that they’re unrecognisable…. (and on and on…)

by groc at 04:19 PM | Comments (3)

after these messsages...

Every since I've been acquainted with satellite TV -I've always been irritated by the length of ad breaks on their channels. Where a good 15 minutes out of every hour is wasted on that inane repetitive drivel. Doubly annoyed by the fact that I'm paying a subscription charge for it too. In fact there have even been occasions where the commercial break has gone on for so long I've forgotten what it was I was supposedly watching. Yes - I know I have a short attention span and this isn't helping it any. You used to have to near break your neck to make a up of coffee/tea/whatever during the adverts, but now it's getting to the point where you can comfortably make a whole three course meal.

But anyway -people have been complaining about the length and duration of ads during Lost, and their complaints have been upheld by Ofcom. Whether or not this will make a difference remains to be seen.

And they wonder why people bittorrent TV programs?

by groc at 06:05 AM | Comments (3)

November 27, 2005

Land of the free?

Here's a little taster of the things we can expect if we get ID cards foisted onto us. A nice example from one of those repressive backwater countries we hear so much about: the USA. Nice to see how well the war against terror is coming along. Them pesky dangerous 50 year old mothers of four will soon know their place and tow the line. Yes sir!

by groc at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2005

K9 on Brighton Beach

the pebbles must've played havoc with his wheels.

by groc at 02:47 AM | Comments (1)

November 22, 2005

yo dude

what's yer flava?

(and yes, I did buy him because he looks kinda gay. He was also kinda cheap.)

by groc at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2005

in case you missed it

(and i had nodded off and missed about three minutes or so of the beginning of it) here online is the 5 minute Dr Who sketch that they showed on 'Children in need' - something that usually I expend a lot of effort avoiding. Ugh, shudder.

by groc at 11:38 PM | Comments (2)

sladek

John Sladek Interview (1982)

by groc at 05:23 PM

November 18, 2005

bastard E4!

can someone tell me whose bright idea it was to put the very last episode of Queer as Folk on at 3.30 in the morning? Which, of course I forgot all about and so didn't even set the video for. Maybe they think that us homosexuals only come out in the hours of darkness? Grrrr. The only damn program that is specifically for us queers and this is how they treat us? Mmmm, things sure have changed a lot since the early days of Channel 4, when they had a Government remit to cater for minorities. What's the last mainstream program they had on that had homos in? Oh yes, the utterly dire 'Playing It Straight'. [sarcasm] What a fantastic show that was. [/sarcasm]

by groc at 06:04 PM | Comments (1)

Sony needs to get a grip.

Real Story of the Rogue Rootkit.

Removing Sony's CD 'rootkit' kills Windows.

Sony accused of leading price-fix cartel to stop cheap deals on web.

What did I say earlier about image being all in the entertainment industry? It counts for a lot in the Technology industry too. The fricking idiots. It's like Sony has a death wish or something.

Dear Sony,

Here's the deal, this is how it works: Make a product - find customers to sell product to. Keep the customers happy - so you get a good reputation and customer comes back for more products, they tell their friends who in turn, buy more of your products, those friends go on to tell their friends and so on. You get rich. BUT: make rubbish no one wants to buy - or piss customers off - they stop buying -and you will go broke.

See where this is heading?

Not hard to understand is it?

by groc at 01:03 PM | Comments (1)

November 16, 2005

game cubes

I waaaaant one - or two

by groc at 02:57 AM | Comments (2)

November 14, 2005

Yahoo goes Flickr-ish

The Flickrization of Yahoo.

Um. I don't know. Somehow the whole 'new' social-networking yahoo thing leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. I mean, this crude plan of getting everyone using Yahoo to do lots of tedious menial work tagging and categorising everything they come across on the web - for... for... well, at the end of the day yahoo’s benefit -all to make Yahoo get seen as the right sort of place to put adverts onto and that in turn the advertisers will plough a lot of money into. But er... um... are those two things even compatible? In some cases aren’t they inevitably going to turn into diametrically opposed things clashing altogether? It's not as if I haven't seen Yahoo destroy something that was really good -such as e-groups - then turn it into their own Yahoo-groups and over time systematically destroy pretty much everything that was really good about the original -only to leave a crappy shadow of the original’s self. Really -it’s a known weakness that in America when corporate advertisers call the tune - hey, watch everyone leap up to dance, and if a few people get trampled into the dust -well, that's too bad.

Yahoo at the moment is very intent on buying up everything they can which encapsulates the social networking ethos -but will they prove capable of letting the geese which lay the golden eggs alone and happy and content enough to keep on laying those eggs? I guess only time will tell. But I wouldn’t ever advise anyone to put all their eggs into one basket - golden eggs or not. A big bubble-shaped basket...

by groc at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

wired news article

on Sony's XCP copy protection debacle.

by groc at 10:17 PM | Comments (1)

Why the modern world is crap

(an occasional series)

Case study one: Walmart.

by groc at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2005

Sony backs down with DRM

Mmmmm. Sony-BMG were told this would happen - that hackers/virus and trojan writers could exploit computers infected with their XCP 'protection' (I'd call it malware). Now they've damaged their image (and isn't image everything in the entertainment industry?) lost sales, all to stop a few stray copies of really rubbish music getting onto the peer to peer networks. As if people couldn't tape it off the radio anyway. Sony must really like shooting themselves in the foot. Just think what a great company it could be otherwise. After all it's been their stupidity that has been the real key to Apple's massive success with the iPod.

In other news: Justice Dept. proposes tougher copyright laws.

As if America's jails weren't bursting at the seams already they're liking the idea of sending anyone who even tries (and fails) to copy a cd or dvd to jail? How seriously retarded is that?

But then once you look at the record of the man (Alberto Gonzales) behind such a deeply stupid and troubling proposal. Links: one. two. three. four.

Well... what can I say?

by groc at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2005

iWipe.

Apple iWipe

by groc at 11:23 PM | Comments (1)

Lost link dump 3

A bit about them there Lost web site tie-ins.

A Lost Notebook (just the facts ma'am -just the facts).

Hanso Foundation has one single new page up. LEP
It's bound to be quite significant in some way.

As is KHR. Hint: think airport codes.

by groc at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

Blah.

Eat, Sleep, Work, Consume, Die.

I've been having thoughts like this for years - so why doesn't Wired pay me to write such stuff?

But then when I was growing up - we were told how technological advances would mean a shorter working week and much more leisure time for everyone - except somehow over the years that lofty ideal got forgotten and instead warped into the current day reality of a ever decreasing handful of people working longer and longer hours for less and less pay, outsourcing to outside countries, increasing more and more poverty-level jobs and mass unemployment (and sneakier methods of hiding and manipulating the jobless figures.

It should be a goal of modern day governments and private companies to rediscover those old ideals and start earnestly trying to impliment them. But instead they seem to be trying to bring back sweatshops and in some instances even outright slavery.

by groc at 01:42 AM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2005

bad weather in Worthing

Worthing? Maybe we're in Worthing. [real player pop up link]

The weather here is driving me crazy, the winds have been blowing relentlessly all day long. The noise is really, really, really getting on my nerves and making me bad tempered. There’s nowhere in the flat to escape from it either.

Screams.

Here’s a picture of the new redesigned cyberman* to help cheer me up a bit. It looks to me like a mash-up of Rog 2000. The stomach from the Batman costume, and the robot from Metropolis. I think it’s fantastic. I’m in love with it.

*I had problems with flash suddenly deciding to stop playing in firefox - an update to player 8 and an update to the adblock extension and things are fine again. Phew.

by groc at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)

Steve Bell's take on

the Sun's headline yesterday.

by groc at 01:12 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2005

oooooh

(pronounced as whoooooo)
I won't be able to afford it. sob.
(BBC DVDs are way over priced.)

by groc at 05:15 AM | Comments (3)