OMG POST POST POST POST a.k.a. Today’s News.
First the preamble:
I use a few Linux distros at home and at work, and being a half-baked nincompoop, I prefer the shiny new ones that end in “buntu”. The 64-bit version of Kubuntu is what I run at the office, and I have installed my preferred web-browsing application, Firefox 1.5.x, with my favorite themes, and a ton of useful extensions, most of which I need for work.
Among these extensions, there is a slick little application called Sage. This is an RSS reader embedded into Firefox, which is almost unspeakably convenient. I am expected to do research at least some of the time because my job demands it. Therefore, I am subscribed to numerous feeds, some authored by unabashed marketroids in Manhattan, others by squirrelly black-leather-jacket types in exotic places like Prague.
Every once in a great while, the workload becomes, um, constipated. Don’t get me wrong, there’s never a shortage of things to do around the place, but lately we tend to hyperfocus on a few high-priority items at a time - as opposed to taking a more holistic view (as in “HOLY FUCKING SHIT WE HAVE SO MUCH TO DO HOW THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO THIS GIMME A CIGARETTE YOU PEEEN-ARSE YES I KNOW I DON’T SMOKE” etc). It might be perceived as inefficiency but our deliberately selective awareness of imminent doom allows us to actually get things done without the embarrassment of pissing our collective pants in abject terror after suffering massive aneurysms.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Slow day at work. Reason: we have a balky cms built in deprecated php. The code is liberally commented in at least one Central European language, but aside from that, documentation is scant. This cms has the quirky habit of eating posts according to some fiendish glitch. Programmatic functionalities combine with traditional meatbag error and really weird things happen to our precious data. We would like to begin serious repair of the website but there is no way to do this, at this time, without using this cms. (By the way, if you want to know what using our cms is like, imagine if Franz Kafka wrote Catch-22).
So, we must wire Switzerland and tell them to put their finest gnomes to work. By tomorrow, we expect these gnomes to be busily engaged in pulling meaningless strings of ones and zeroes from the mysterious innards of the database and weaving them into more or less normal html.
In the meantime, there’s various personal crises and dramas to fill the available time. All this stuff, on top of a two-long-island-iced-tea lunch and a nasty sugar crash caused by socially mandatory birthday cake, makes me stupidly susceptible to opening up the feedreader and clicking links. As a result I am now fully briefed on a variety of current events in the nerd universe.
First, let’s start off with what we already know. At 9pm EST yesterday, instead of deleting forum spam like a good boy, I was glued to my monitor, drinking a beer and watching as Digg rioted. This was absolutely fascinating. I’ve tried to spam Digg a few times so I know what kind of raw power was needed to unleash something like that, and believe me, the power level over there was waaaaaaaaaaay over nine thousand. A few places like the nefarious Forbes.com (more on those assholes later) were Diggbaiting this story earlier today (reposting a similar story at their own url in an attempt to attract backlinks), and earning upwards of 1000+ diggs. If I was into AdSense arbitrage I would have done the same thing. Digg is famous for funneling huge traffic to popular pages, enough traffic to crush a server. Some of those visitors will click an ad or two. Wash, rinse, repeat - voila! There’s your business model.
What was most interesting was Kevin Rose’s attitude. I was really impressed that he decided to side with the majority of Digg users. Unfortunately this flies in the face of all business sense (wherein you are supposed to avoid getting sued and do nothing except increase shareholder value, regardless of the collateral damage). In the more profit-minded areas of the intarwebs he has been damn near vilified, not so much for taking a stand, but the manner in which he took it. However, this issue involves more than just money. This is a matter of ethics. The future is at stake here, and rather than defer to the corporate interests involved, Kevin Rose did what was right. We won’t know the outcome for a while, but a line has been drawn in the sand, and a million computer enthusiasts are loudly saying with one voice “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
But, I’m beating a dead horse with all this Digg stuff. We all know about that shit. What I am really interested in is space.
That’s right, the unfathomable blackness of space. Whether you’re a granola-munching Linux-head or a twerpy Winblows apologist, an overly judgemental social conservative or a crypto-commie fiscal Liberal, a dog person or a cat person… regardless of your personal inclinations and opinions, all that shit dwindles into insignificance when you contemplate the breathtaking grandeur of our solar system.
I have a program called Celestia installed on my home computer. It is a 3D map of just about all known planets, moons and stars, and they orbit in real time. It eats up a lot of resources on my old Dell, and sometimes crashes, but it is nonetheless the source of much fascination. Akin to this fascination was the amazement I felt when I saw some beautiful images from the latest Jupiter flyby. My favorites thus far are these images of Ganymede:
That’s definitely some Dark Side of the Moon shit right there. Leave it to unrepentant nerds to name this beautiful planetoid after some hapless kid who ended up as Jupiter’s bitch. Some things nevar change.
Also in the news: the Vatican Library is scheduled to close for remodeling. The Library houses countless secrets of history. I wish they’d just mail everything to the University of Pennsylvania, where they’re quite capable of handling such items. I am particularly intrigued by the Secret Vatican Archives. Is there really a need for all the secrecy? This reminds me when I wanted to get into the stacks at the Widener Library and I didn’t have a Harvard ID. Hope the church can find a decent contractor, or else we lose our secret cultural heritage forever. The real tragedy: should anything befall these relics, we would never know what we lost.
Some would argue that, in a situation like this, we are better off not knowing the exact measure of what we risk. I suggest that sometimes it is in our nature to be captivated by things that are fundamentally unknowable. Is this what Alfred Lord Tennyson was talking about?
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
There are a number of paranoid theories about the Vatican Library. I will admit to entertaining some of these notions from time to time.
OK, time to make another drink and pass out. Thanks to G for letting me guest blog here (and ramble endlessly). Good night everybody.
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