Digital Culture Studies

• The Color of My Words
• Silent to the Bone
• The First Part Last
• Romiette and Julio
• The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place

This might be funniest for the Canadians, but Best Week Ever is giving out Alternative Awards for the US and European Figure Skating Championships. I like ‘least spined’ the best, and the discussion in the comments - how is it that, 20ish years after it left the theatres with a limited box office take, the movie The Cutting Edge still has so much pop culture relevance? Well, the Pamchenko, of course - the deadliest skating move ever attempted by a spoiled rich girl and her hocky-player turned figure skater of a partner from across the tracks. This is, of course, the movie being spoofed by Blades of Glory.

If I ever figure out what box my skates are in, I might wander across the street to the rink and throw a few solo Pamchenkos, just for old time’s sake :)

That is me, these days, and having fun. Sorry for the dearth of posts here, lately. I have tonnes of stuff I want to post here on my backup brain (sorry, delicious account, I know you thought that you were my backup brain), but no time.

On the plus side, how cool is it to blog professionally? Many incarnations of new media entrepeneur ago I had some portal-type content management gigs, but really, it is amazing to have a job right now that couldn’t not have existed 10 years ago.

If you are a fan of the Wiki, Wikiality cannot be beat. Make sure to run some searches. I found the “George Bush” entry to be amusing.

Web 2.0 is so 5 minutes ago. Today, those in the know know it is all about CHMOD 777

Ah, Fred….you had me at “breathless conflation.”

Lovely school on the hill, if I had had your templates when I was formatting my master’s thesis, maybe I wouldn’t have spent the night before it was due trying not to cry. And since you have a template called portable thesis, maybe the Very Very bad formatting error that somehow mashed my Excel spreadsheets of data into my Word document formated thesis would never have happened, if I had only used this.

,p> note to self: some day write the saddest blog post in the world about what happened when I took the GRE, what happened to my thesis the night before it was due in hard copy, and why /. saved me and the GRE testing place did not. Thesis: I love computers, but sometimes, computers do not love me back.   

I am typing this with 28.7 lbs of drooling spaniel in my lap. I wonder if keyboard manufacturers take these kind of real world specs into account when they design keyboards?

But I digress. Luckily, these links are always on target:

The Rage Diaries: always a smart take on issues.

Pop Culture Junk Mail: other than her complete obsession with the comic, For Better or for Worse, Gael is Good People!

I am trying to get a widget to work in the sidebar - one that would link to what I am reading - but am having no success. Ah, techonology….I love ya until you fail me.

In the meantime, some fun links rattling around my del.icio.us account.

1. Post Secret updates every Sunday, and it does not archive content, so if you miss a week, you miss a week. I find that a refreshing change to most online projects, even though the OCD in me is peeved that I missed a few weeks and now can never know what I missed. MY GOD! It is like life before answering machines, VCRs and TIVO. Primitive!

2. Enclosures. I spend a lot of time in bookstores, and in used bookstores, and I love blogs that pinpoint one tiny slice of human experience and turn a bright light on it. Myself, I always feel like I have to leave these little slips of paper in the books that I buy, at the pages they have lived between for so long, which is why some of my cookbooks have recipe pages marked with the birth notices and obituaries of people I have never met.

3. One Sentence. True stories, told in one sentence.

4. Bar Camp. Not, as you might assume, where bartenders go to learn how to spin bottles over the back of their hand without breaking them in the ice, but instead a new kind of conference, one that breaks down the barriers between attendee and presenter.

That when we dig holes in our backyards, we end up coming out in the Indian Ocean. Is there ANYTHING that Google doesn’t do? I am pretty sure Google is going to start walking the dog and dusting under the bed for me. It pretty much does everything else in my life.

As a former Vancouver resident, I use the web to keep up with designers and artists back home. I am a fan of this guy’s work, and was not surprised to find other people are, too. However, some people take that fandom a little too far.

What is really fun though, is reading through these comments, especially those from other artists whose work was also stolen. Kids, the lesson here is, if you steal, the People Will Find You. And then, they will publically pants you.

But part of the issue, I think, goes back to the notion that design is supposed to all look the same. When we negate the power of creativity, we empower plagarism.

In honour of getting my thesis bound today, ready to be turned in tomorrow - some links to keep us all organized!

Google Notebooks.

43Folders.

LifeHacker

And…it is never to early to get organized! Organized Christmas and Holiday Grand Plan!