dietsch ::

I Found Your Life

Here's a blogger who found a camera's memory card in a taxi. With no way to ID the card's owner, he's posting the photos on a weblog, and commenting on them as if he were the owner. It's a funny look at the banality of personal photography. I Found Some Of Your Life [via The Morning News]

Drunk slang

Bar slang

Dammit Jim!

I'm the president, not a very good novelist!

I love the Internet, installment 23

Via the Librarians' Index to the Internet: the home page of the International Dutch Oven Society I'll bet you never even knew such a thing exisited. Off the topic of librarians and dutch ovens, I'll be working on a blog piece about Our President and his religious beliefs. Politics ain't usually my bag around here, and I'll try not be too ranty, but I find Mr. Bush's views too fascinating to ignore and too easy to misperceive and mischaracterize. It'll take me a while to research and write it, though, so don't expect it soon.

Gmail swap

gmail swap, via Metafilter. Hmm... If an invite link ever shows up in my account, this could be lucrative. Also, I'm beginning to think I need a Gmail (or general Internet) category around here.

Gmail invites

A couple of people have asked me for Gmail invitations. So far, I don't have a link in my profile that allows me to invite anyone. I'm reproducing the following page from the Gmail FAQ that I hope will help explain why I can't yet invite anyone [emphasis added]:

How do I invite others to join Gmail?

Because we're currently only offering Gmail as part of a preview release and limited test, we don't have details on when Gmail will be made more widely available.

As we make way for more accounts, we may periodically allow you to invite others to join Gmail. When we do so, you will see an invitation link in your inbox.

To invite someone, click on the 'Invite a friend to join Gmail!' link in your inbox. You will then be asked to provide an email address and a personalized message to your invitee.

The person you invite will be sent a message that includes a link to join Gmail. That registration link will be valid for three weeks and can be used to create only one account.

Should your invitee have problems creating a Gmail account, please let us know by clicking on the 'contact us' link below.

Please note that the link may not always be available. When you are allowed to invite others to join Gmail, the number of invitations that you can send will be indicated at the top of the page after you click on the link. Once you have used all of those invitations, we will not be able to immediately issue more invitations.

We have also created a sign up list for those who are interested in receiving updates on Gmail, but have not been invited.

More on Gmail

David Pogue of the New York Times reviews Gmail, the new e-mail offering from Yahoo. Thanks to Rachel, I've been using Gmail for about a week now, and I think it's a great new service, for all the reasons Pogue mentions. However, I'd like to add a reason he sort of glosses over--search. Since Gmail provides a gigabyte of mail storage, you can archive virtually all of your messages for years without having to delete them. (Google estimates that the average user can go five years without deleting a single message.) This means that you can store mailing-list postings, e-mails from friends, your local paper's daily-headlines mailing, Daily Candy or Manhattan User's Guide reviews, or whatever you choose to store--and you can search all that material later. If, in five years, you want to find specific messages about a particular MoMA exhibit (say, a Times review, the plans you made with a friend to see that exhibit, and an article about a brazen theft of artworks from that exhibit), you should be able to find them all with just a couple words in the Gmail search box. I think it's damn cool. michael [dot] dietsch [at] gmail [dot] com Thanks to Jen for the review link.

Britney: Culturejammed

Another link cribbed from Matt Fraction, Britney Underground is a collection of defaced Britney ads that once littered the New York subways. Cool stuff.

Emergency preparation graphics, from Ready.gov

These are a little like the seatback graphics on airplanes, showing you what to do if the plane goes down.... But these are freakier.            I feel much better now. Don't you?  

Google buys Blogger, redux

Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time. Weblogs are going Googling. Google, which runs the Web's premier search site, has purchased Pyra Labs, a San Francisco company... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

If you're curious, however, about what the Web community is saying about this buyout, scroll to the bottom of Gillmor's blog entry, where he links to commentary from all over the Web.

Google buys Blogger

Google Deal Ties Company to Weblogs. Google has bought Pyra Labs, the creator of software for publishing Weblogs, which is a form of hyperlinked online journal. By Amy Harmon. [New York Times: Technology]

Probably the biggest net-related story out there right now. I really have no meaningful observations to make about what this might mean.

Mr. Beller's Neighborhood

Okay, here's something cool. Pieces of short non-fiction, all set in NYC. Navigate by clicking neighborhoods on a map, or choose stories by theme. Swank...

Manhattan User's Guide

This looks intriguing: a daily e-mail of what's new in Manhattan, from dining to services to entertainment to shopping. Link cribbed from Gawker.

Gawker

Gawker is a Manhattan weblog magazine edited by Elizabeth Spiers, designed by Jason Kottke and published by Nick Denton. It is a live review of city news, and by news we mean, among other things, urban dating rituals, no-ropes social climbing, Condé Nastiness, downwardly-mobile i-bankers, real estate porn -- the serious stuff.

Funny, snarky, and full of stuff I can barely hope to do or see.

Pepys' Diary

Now here's an inventive idea. A blogger named Phil Gyford is posting, in Web log format, daily entries from the diary of Samuel Pepys. This should be fun to watch; I've linked to it on the right side of this page. Much of what we know of daily London life in the seventeenth century we owe to Pepys. And remember, it was during this period that the great fire and the plague swept through the city. Gyford took the text from Project Gutenburg and he's annotating the diary with hypertext links that gloss people and places and events referred to in the diary. This blog uses the features of the Web to brilliant effect. [Geek stuff: Gyford also has RSS feeds for the diary, which means I can add it to my news aggregator, which in turn makes it easier for me to follow the diary daily.]

Find out who's near me!

Jenny Levine ran across the GeoURL ICBM Address Server and blogged it. Sounded like a cool idea, so I updated my Web pages and added my site to the database. If this works as advertised, you can click a link on my page and find bloggers and other Web geeks who are located geographically near me.

More googlism

More googlism: colonel sanders is now worldwide icon
colonel sanders is attacking tokyo
colonel sanders is used in a godzilla
colonel sanders is going to come out ahead in this war
colonel sanders is commissioning a film about his chain of cholesterol filled restaurants
colonel sanders is hysterical?
colonel sanders is the most beloved gentleman in kentucky
colonel sanders is available to be best man at their wedding
colonel sanders is not about to let chickens become extinct
colonel sanders is just a cartoon character voiced by randy
colonel sanders is a pimp
colonel sanders is 6 miles beyond this point
colonel sanders is still alive?
colonel sanders is disenfranchised
colonel sanders is definitely not a welcome visitor here
colonel sanders is synonymous around the world with tasty and satisfying fast food
colonel sanders is ready to join the party
colonel sanders is located in corbin
colonel sanders is getting part of the cut?
colonel sanders is still alive
colonel sanders is now a 20 piece family meal
colonel sanders is now a full member
colonel sanders is the guy from kfc and cap 'n' crunch is the little cartoon guy on the cereal box that dresses like napleon
colonel sanders is dressed as a samurai
colonel sanders is satan
colonel sanders is a personal friend
colonel sanders is chasing chicken little
colonel sanders is on fire
colonel sanders is no chicken
colonel sanders is sympathetic to the plight of chickens
colonel sanders is worried about a dip in sales at kfc
colonel sanders is being courmartialed
colonel sanders is coming on out
colonel sanders is coming for you

Googlism is my newest favorite

Googlism is my newest favorite Web toy. michael is one hot papi chulo
michael is a nice looking boy who is profoundly deaf and communicates through american sign language
michael is very sexy
michael is renowned for his valiant spirit of protective power
michael is missing
michael is safely in rochester
michael is god the father as taught by brigham young
michael is the devil
michael is not only ugly
michael is gonna kick jpm's fat butt on sunday
michael is no longer a thriller
michael is guilty
michael is innocent
michael is 30
michael is a god
michael is out and morgan is in
michael is committed to healthy water
michael is in heaven with god now
michael is surprisingly cheerful after an uncomfortable landing
michael is hottt
michael is laid to rest amid words of comfort
michael is ordained
michael is doing
michael is not about flashy miracles
michael is suffering over human evolution before the time of his earthly activity
michael is the devil i'm disliking him more and more
michael is the kind of guy some people love to hate
michael is playing i am lying on my bedroom floor
michael is magic
michael is excited to finally be combining his talents in the areas of dance
michael is ?
michael is looking forward to her absence
michael is looking to break open the mould that defines christian
michael is he who is
michael is possibly the best ever of this wine
michael is not latoya
michael is factory engraver for high standard
michael is spoken of twice in the old testament
michael is nuts
michael is devastated when nikita refuses to accompany him
michael is selfish
michael is a 38 year old man and former member of the randwick botany cycle club who was run down on wednesday
michael is the kind of guy you love to hate
michael is often depicted as taming
michael is now living on the outskirts of a tiny village near the ocean
michael is a certified public accountant
michael is currently an assistant professor at the university of wyoming
michael is entering the main entrance to the system
michael is bijna niet mogelijk
michael is one of the principal angels; his name was the war
michael is often depicted in christian art as an armor

Abernudies and Fitch

Nerve.com has an amusing feature on the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. (Warning! Naked people! Stay away if you're under 18, offended by nudity, or simply need to remove your head from your...)

Blog linguistics

Some comments on blog linguistics, because several people have asked me what the term means or whence it arises: Peter Merholz coined the term in early 1999. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg defends the use of the word [RealAudio file]. And now there's news that the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary have drafted an entry for the word blog for inclusion in their venerable reference.

Scat

To balance the serious with the scatalogical, here's a link for my beloved friend, Anne Pepper.

Cat and Girl

Cat and Girl. Online comics. Witty and charming, but hard to explain. Just go see. Thanks to Charity for pointing it out.

Surrealist compliments

Madame, your implement is admonishing me! Your fingers are as divine as the pope's nostril hair. Your teeth are as soft as liquid stones poured from an aquamarine vase of solidifying flesh.

NSA propaganda

My love of all things propaganda has a new fetish. AdAge.com reports on a new series of ads from the National Security Agency (NSA), urging military personnel to closely guard military secrets. This is nothing new. A famous poster released during WWI warned that "Loose Lips Might Sink Ships." An entire subgenre of propaganda poster during WWII offered similar warnings. These new posters are definitely pretty, but I'm most intrigued that our new "war" has brought with it a return to iconic imagery and punchy sloganeering. Something else about this intrigues me more, though. Propaganda posters from both world wars are increasingly prominently featured in museums and for sale in boutiques and over the Web. Images from those posters are copied and altered and mimicked by movie posters and book jackets, among other representations. Comparisons between this "war on terrorism" and earlier conflicts have been prominent in political rhetoric since September. These images from NSA seem deliberately designed to recall images of earlier propaganda posters to further cement those connections in our minds. This idea of propaganda as propaganda is not, I suspect, new, but I'm intrigued by this angle of it. Visit the AdAge.com link to view full versions of each poster.

Mindmess

Wow. My fame at Diddly.com is growing. I'm Mindmess #1 or something. Go read.

Sunblock

The insanely talented Andi Watson has a new online comic available, thanks to our friends at Artbomb.net. It's beautiful, funny, and charming, just like all Watson's work. Go see it, even if you're not a comics fan. You'll like it; trust me.

Random diddly

My current favorite thing on the Web is the Random Personal Picture Finder. Actually, considering the guy who runs it name-checked me on the front page, it's probably my favorite thing of ALL TIME on the Web. I have it archived, for anyone who gives a damn enough to go see. You'll note, however, that the archived page doesn't really "work." I did that on purpose. If you want to see random images, use the original site, dammit!

Blimey

Blimey. KICK IN THE GROIN! It's 95% kick in the groin and 5% michael dietsch. So the internet says KICK IN THE GROIN is better. Use this information wisely. Sigh.... That's what the women say, too.

well konguht newy wontif

Aaaaaaand then there's this, from The Digital Bits: I quote:

Jackson Pollocke's is the Greatest living fainter in the uniuec states allres well konguht newy wontif if you are a little boy , you must like the film.Become the film is very beautiful and very tunny. Hope everybody can watch this film quick,since that you maybe find another file, another world,let's go to see quickly!

Unh!

This made my day: The Unh! Project, "a collection of guttural moans from comics." Comics writer Kurt Busiek posted over on the Warren Ellis forum that the panel on the site's opening page comes from a comic he himself wrote. I asked Kurt what made him script a scene in which a young girl whacked a grown woman on the ass with a book. He replied he didn't recall writing it that way. He wrote that the girl was to attack the woman from behind, not on the behind.

Stupid quiz

Take the Which Beatle Are You? Quiz.

Artbomb

Artbomb.net has launched. Artbomb is a nice new site from writer Warren Ellis and entrepreneur Peter Aaron Rose, with design by Brian Wood and content from reviewers Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction. As for what it's about, I'll quote from the FAQ: "So, what's ARTBOMB all about? "ARTBOMB is about broadening the appeal of diverse comic books and graphic novels. We hope to demonstrate that comics can offer an entertainment value that many people currently enjoy in film or television or prose. This a storytelling medium that has a lot of dynamic voices with mainstream and adult appeal. It's our mission to help promote their works to new audiences." So, what does this mean? Artbomb contains reviews of new and backlist graphic novels. A graphic novel is basically a comic book but in an extended format. Think of a traditional 28-page comic as a short story or a serialized chapter from a longer work. Think of a graphic novel as a, well, novel. Graphic novels sometimes collect individual comic-book issues into one place. The Invisibles: Say You Want a Revolution is one example. However, graphic novels can also provide a venue for original works of non-fiction or literature, as exemplified by The Golem's Mighty Swing. Oh yes, and Artbomb provides links to Amazon, where you can run off and buy these books. So there's no excuse, really, is there? Still reading? Go. There's a groovy new Web comic, Superidol, by Ellis and painter Colleen Doran available. Go. If you feel compelled to tell 'em how much you love the site, tell 'em I sent you.

Stupid quiz

This quiz says absolutely nothing about your personality. Take it!

wemadeoutinblahblahblah

Here's an interesting domain name: http://www.wemadeoutinatreeandthisoldguysatandwatchedus.com/

Marie's world tour

I have this online acquaintance, Marie Javins, who is currently touring the world by land. You can look her up at www.mariesworldtour.com. Anyway, she has this sponsorship dealie going where you send her 25 bucks and she sends you souvenirs from the road. The souvenirs are worth less than 25 dollars, because she uses the rest for food and lodging and so forth. I think what she's doing is a cool thing, even though it's something I'm unlikely to ever do. Maybe I'm living vicariously, or maybe I just want to help her do this cool thing, but I sent her some money. So her souvenirs came in today's post. Both things she sent are from either Thailand or Indonesia (not sure) and they's nifty. I got a set of 10 colorful little wooden monkeys, so designed as to be strung together. They're hanging from the lamp in the corner of my living room, dangling over my bookshelf of reference materials. They are the cutest damn things. They have these adorable little cartoon-monkey expressions that are funny to see. I also received a nifty puppet-type thing of this old woman. The arms each have a small rod by which you can move them. They're jointed at the shoulders and elbows, providing hours of amusement. I want to contrive a way of hanging this puppet on the wall. Marie's in Berlin right now, recharging her batteries and planning her trek through Africa. When she leaves Europe in a few weeks, I'm planning to send another check. I'd love to see what she'd send from Africa.

When I am king

Came across a Web comic today. When I Am King is one of the funniest comics I've seen--anywhere, not just on the Web. It also uses the Web medium very cleverly, so if you want to see excellent Web design and innovative use of scrolling and frames, head on over. No Flash, Java, or other geegaws in sight. It's not for the prudish, though, so be warned. Not that I really know very many prudish people anymore, but I'm sure there's one or three lurking about.