Google Ads Loves All Its Children

Doing the good ol' vanity search on Technorati, I came across a blog linking to my roundup of links regarding bacteria. I won't link to them, for the sole reason that they are a site whose main focus is in drawing ad-link clicks, disguised under a thin veil of fashion content. At first glance, with the clean and pleasing interface and fancy quotation marks, one is drawn in with a feeling that perhaps the blog is maintained by a quote hungry fashion student. Then when one looks at the 80 posts written so far in September, you start to notice things like, well...





Spam, of course - for ads. That's not entirely offensive, although certainly in bad taste -- but I am always fascinated by the levels of bad taste that are reached through odd, and traditional techniques. Cut up spam messages some times strike me as so horribly wonderful that I save them and keep them for later - because somehow in the mad frenzy to sell me vicodin, valium and viagra, the random string of words sets off this chain reaction within me to find meaning within the passages, and consider the possible symbolic significance within them -- even though I know they are impossible gibberish, or generated randomly.

Looking at the spam splattered across the ad-blog, I get this dystopian shudder of a world of content controlled by machines, who cannot fathom the meaning of the work they produce. Today I was digging on Technorati to find information on 'big apple cake'.. And this is one of the first results I found: quote quote. I tried several more searches on 'big apple cake' but after 10 minutes I got tired, gave up and posted this entry to 'Big Cakes'. Still, I think it was an interesting time. A cornucopia of meaninglessness, to reel in mouse clicks -- production under false pretenses, which wouldn't be so offensive to me, only there is the sense of banality surrounding the whole ordeal which makes me grit my teeth.

I think it might be a niggling feeling that, if I was to presume that human beings sense of consciousness is an evolutionary accident, purely a function created so as to avoid getting mauled by lions on an open savanna, we are in a sense like blog fogger used to generate ad-clicks. Perhaps al the meaning we try to install in the languages we use, aural and visual, is ultimately meaningless gibberish. Like the spam generators compiling these linked blog entries next to their lines of ads, we cannot fathom the ultimate meaning of the life-content we produce.

The utopian side of me -- which is for the moment stronger them my dystopian side -- tells me that the very realisation of our lack of understanding ultimate meaning, or the possibility of ultimate meaning not existing outside our consideration for it, facilitates understanding of self-meaning, thus validates the, er, validity of our thinking and attempting to create meaning in the first place. Ultimately, the quest for meaning is meaningless and impossible on a grand scale -- the much more interesting aspect to me, is the thinking about meaning in the first place.

Regardless of my gibberish (which is only slightly more evolved than that of spam...), I start to wonder if the ongoing research in AI leading potentially to synthetic intelligence, will allow for a wider context of meaning. What creates meaning? Or value? Can we make a machine understand meaning, and if we could, would it be ethical for us to force meaning upon that machine?

I am faced with the argument of meaning/value every day at school - internally from within my course, and externally from other factions at my University. A machine can be made to produce a painting in the style of Pollock, but why is one worth a substantially large amount more than another? Meaning we invest in the artist, not the work itself? I'm not sure. Film and fine art students tell me digital medium (my medium of choice!) is less valid, because I am working in a less tangible way - not with the physics of light to film, not with the chemistry of paint to canvas, but the mathematics of binary which have been dressed up fancy with coding and packaged into aesthetic GUIs. We are still in such a position where our physical counterparts, two party interaction between body and objects, are considered pivotal to creating meaning.

When you record a scene in digital format, there are three parties -- the object, the virtual representation, and yourself. In Photoshop, there is the compiled image, the virtual image, and yourself. In synthesised music - the sound, the virtual sound, yourself... Writing on a computer is an illusion of writing - the reality is the words I see are symbolically there, but that doesn't take away from their meaning -- because of the human interaction.

Which makes me feel obliged as a Human to expand my own understanding of general context, connections between things and possibilities things have in relation to one another. If context equals meaning, it might be the thing separating me from being generated spam.

I'm A Single Cell On A Serpents Tongue

The female Beewolf Wasp cultivates bacteria within her antenna, which in turn protect young Beewolf larvae from fungal infection. Cosmos Magazine, April 07

An introductory primer to cultivating bacteria, or; Nutrition and Growth of Bacteria, a practical walkthrough. Todar's Online Textbook of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Bacteriology.

We are rockers, we rock out -- some bacteria love heavy metal, and S. oneidensis get a taste for toxic waste. I guess you could call it cultivating alternative culture? PLoS Biology - Liza Gross, 06.

Bacteriophages in micro-reconnoissance. Nanotechnology detects bacteria, and produces to beat the shit ions out of it for our viewing pleasure. Welcome Trust, citing Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry, March 05

Does Science sell more headlines when it's openly aggressive? Killer clothing destroys Bacteria & Fungi, by attracting negatively charged bacteria/fungi and impaling themselves on a dagger of hydrogen atoms. Unsurprisingly, research funded by the US Army for the Institute of Soldiering Nanotechnology at the MIT. AZoNano, citing Advantage Magazine, Feb 04

Nanotechnology in fashion - student Olivia Ong designed clothes using fabrics that are antibacterial, air-purifying and still, amazingly, rather old looking without any sense of hopeful modernity. Great concept, poor draping, so sad. At $10,000 per square yard, I wonder if the US Army funded the professor and researcher in charge of the textile design. Cornell Conical, May 07.

Flickr & Fairy Cakes

Man, what a drag. I just tried to access my Flickr account, only to find there's no place to log in using the Olde Tyme log-in information - only Yahoo's info. I reckon the last time I used Flickr was around May - but I wanted to change that. Only now I can't log in, and I don't know how to access my old profile and old photos, because Yahoo help as as navigable as driving a phone book in a vat of caramel. Oh wells. I'll get that sorted out later...

I had to do a Mega-Wipe of my Mac, and reinstall OSX again. Woeful, certainly -- all that lost data that had somehow become inaccessible in its partition due to some unknown reason, i.e. my incompetence at backups and the spooky secret flaws of 10.4.10. Note: in 10.4.10 I will be 23 years and 11 months old and out of Uni for a year. Wild.

With the great Information Cleanse of 2007, I lost all my neato additional programs - from nice open stuff like Atlantis (Mu* platform), and nice not-so-open stuff like Photoshop CS. That makes me saddish -- it means I must venture out into the great beyond and find another copy hidden someplace.

I've been looking at open graphics software, such as Xara Xtreme (dudes, poor name choice -- are you making graphics or porn?) - which looks promising, but they're not yet up on OSX due to their lack of Mac developers, which is a drag. GIMP is an obvious choice, and although I have been aware of it for a while now, I am wary of it because... Well, it seems complicated - not as a software itself, but the process to get it running on OSX. Typing that out, I realise what a lame ass excuse that is. Am I really that lame? Apparently. In addition I should note I've been scoping out Ogre 3D, which as the name may suggest, renders 3D graphics.

...

Noting my own lame-ility, I am setting myself a challenge of sorts.
I am going to stop being a lame ass fairy cake, and install GIMP, and use it on a trial period. I will approach it with the open, all caring acceptance of an optimist, and not be too swift to judge it against Adobe's humpty-kagillion pound package bundles. Maybe I will stop being a lame ass fairy cake.

In addition, over the next few weeks I will be putting together things for my side-blog, lets call it Art & Movement (working title) -- it won't have these blah-blah entries, but rather a collection of sound, images and video which I think are relevant and aesthetically engaging and relate or clash with the work I am doing. Hell, maybe sometimes I'll include my own work -- Science knows I've been keeping everybody in the dark about whatever it is that I do.

Of course... I'm not so sure I want it to be on blogger. I would be more comfortable being situated somewhere independent, where I had more control over layout. Anybody got any Hosting space? I'm good for the deposit, I swear! (You take fairy cakes, right?)

Prince is an ancient term // Modern Modernist

Prince is planning on suing YouTube over 'unauthorised' use his music, in an attempt to reclaim his art on the internet (Reuters). He has already caused a stir with music retailers over the distribution of his new album in the UK through the UK newspaper the Mail (Guardian).

From the Guardian:

It's all about giving music for the masses and [Prince] believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible.

Hmm. Am I sensing a little hypocritical tendencies -- or is this man sick of being formally known? I am all aware of any publicity being good publicity, and this claim of a lawsuit has that particular stench of sensationalism I am not keen on.

Are people afraid of new media -- or are they afraid of media whose producers they cannot control? As John Giacobbi said in the Reuters article, they may have taken off 2,000 Prince videos from YouTube, but even when they get that number to 0, the nature of the site allows for users to re-upload and replace those videos as quickly as they are taken down.

As many of you know, the nature of my studies keeps me focused on emerging media technologies, and I have a particular fondness of YouTube and online social networks which cater to communicating media in all forms. It cannot be denied that with YouTube, as MySpace[ship] and DeviantArt and other such sites, one of the most charismatic aspects is the ability to share and promote creative works to a large number of people - both socially and commercially.

I hate to think Prince wants his music videos - be they official or fan created - off of YouTube because he is too old to understand the value of such new media forums. Perhaps it's more accurate for me to say that he is in fact old-fashioned, rather than just an old fogy.

Even some of my most beloved lecturers still have difficulty understanding and accepting spaces like YouTube, Facebook, etc -- to many they are considered limited to social-only situations, or considered naive spaces for juveniles. On my best days I believe sites like them are exciting modern-day salons, and on my worst an epic waste of time. Convincing people that the global village social and media networking sites are more than what they seem is an epic task at times - the virtuality of the spaces seems to lead people who are outside the Internet that they are somehow Less Real than traditional physical realms of galleries, Universities and record company coffee rooms.

All my friends are on the Internet.
Does that make them any less real?
The ones I once knew in MeatSpace seem so much further away.

//

In Other News: I am trying to get back into the stride of things, which is partially why I have been silent. University, and my upcoming Class of 2009 Status is making me worried. There is never enough time in the world, not when I am watching every episode of Heroes season 1 in three days. I have a theoretical hard on for Peter Petrelli - and I am depressed not because he's a fictional character in a fictional universe, but that he's effectively a huge faggy Mary-Sue and huge fucking Twink -- and I am not talking gay slang here people. I'm talking gamer.

Oh. Also. I gave up Mu*ing because I had no time this summer, and I am feeling bittersweet about it. I have played online text based RPGs for ten years running, and letting go without tying off character strings has lead me to be quietly depressed. I stopped not because I found the game I was active in boring -- rather, I found it so interesting and so much fun, that I had to cut it out of my life due to the fact I was focusing so much creative energy in it's direction. While I know Mu*s have been a major influence in the way I command the English language, consider collective co-operitive narrative, and understand social networks (in the abstract sense!!!), I need time to focus on actively improving my programming, theoretical and, fundamentally, my real-life skill base.

That said, I feel like a Modernist giving away her collection of art history texts so I don't get bogged down with physical weight and mental distraction. The people and ideas I've been able to access because of the existence of Mu*s has been substantial. Without them I would have never been able to have these friends - be they virtual text representations of their physical counterparts - in Sweden, the Americas, Japan, Australia, and beyond. I may have never started studying Leibniz and theories of Metaphysics and Monadology. I may have never become interested in Hypermaths, mysticism, Papua New Guinea cargo tribes, Steampunk, nanotechnology, neurochemistry, Digitalism, linguistics as reality modifiers, the question of good and evil, Medieval social structures, and countless other pet interests of mine that have developed over time. All for the sake of convincingly playing a game that mimics a reality that will never happen.

If I could have a superpower... I don't know what it would be.

nature vs nurture

::

I keep floating down the river but the ocean never comes
Since the operation I heard you're breathing just for one
Now everything is imaginary, especially what you love
You left another message, said it's done
It's done

When I hear beautiful music it's always from another time
Old friends I never visit, I remember what they're like
Standing on a doorstep full of nervous butterflies
Waiting to be asked to come inside
Just come inside

But I keep going out
I can't sleep next to a stranger when I'm coming down
It's 8 a.m., my heart is beating too loud
Too loud
Don't be so amazing or I'll miss you too much
I felt something that I had never touched
Everything gets smaller now the further that I go
Towards the mouth and the reunion of the known and the unknown
Consider yourself lucky if you think of it as home
You can move mountains with your misery if you don't
If you don't

It comes to me in fragments, even those still split in two
Under the leaves of that old lime tree I stood examining the fruit
Some were ripe and some were rotten, I felt naseous with the truth
There will never be a time more opportune

So I just won't be late
The window closes, shocks roll over in a tidal wave
And all the color drains out of the frame
So pleased with a daydream that now living is no good
I took off my shoes and walked into the woods
I felt lost and found with every step I took

::

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Such beauties and such feelings, as had been
Most sweet to have remembrance, even when age
Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
On springy heath, along the hilltop edge,
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,
And only speckled by the mid-day sun;
Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge; —that branchless ash,
Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fann'd by the water-fall! and there my friends
Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
Of the blue clay-stone.


Now my friends emerge
Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,
With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles
Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! For thou hast pined
And hunger'd after Nature, many a year,
In the great City pent, winning thy way 30
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend,
Struck with deep joy, may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when he makes
Spirits perceive his presence.


A delight
Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad
As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,
This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd
Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd
Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree
Was richly ting'd, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps
Those fronting elms, and now with blackest mass
Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue
Through the late twilight: and though now the bat
Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,
Yet still the solitary humble-bee
Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
'Tis well to be bereft of promised good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook
Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blessed it! deeming its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory
While thou stood'st gazing; or, when all was still,
Flew creaking o'er thy head, and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

::

Here a Linden-tree stood, bright'ning
All adown its silver rind;
For, as some trees draw the lightning,
So this tree, unto my mind,
Drew to earth the blessed sunshine
From the sky where it was shrined

::

Vrei să pleci
dar nu mă nu mă iei
nu mă nu mă iei
nu mă nu mă nu mă iei
Chipul tău şi dragostea din tei
mi-amintesc de ochii tăi
/
You want to leave,
but you can't, you can't take me,
you can't, you can't take me,
you can't, you can't, you can't take me.
The image of your face and the love from linden trees
remind me of your eyes.

::

Pătrunză talanga
Al serii rece vânt,
Deasupră-mi teiul sfânt
Să-şi scuture creanga.
/
While softly rings
The wind its trembling chime
And over me the lime
Its blossom flings.

::

Am Brunnen vor dem Tore
Da steht ein Lindenbaum:
Ich träumt in seinem Schatten
So manchen süßen Traum.

Ich schnitt in seine Rinde
So manches liebe Wort;
Es zog in Freud und Leide
Zu ihm mich immer fort.

Ich mußt auch heute wandern
Vorbei in tiefer Nacht,
Da hab ich noch im Dunkel
Die Augen zugemacht.

Und seine Zweige rauschten,
Als riefen sie mir zu:
Komm her zu mir, Geselle,
Hier findst du deine Ruh!

Die kalten Winde bliesen
Mir grad ins Angesicht,
Der Hut flog mir vom Kopfe,
Ich wendete mich nicht.

Nun bin ich manche Stunde
Entfernt von jenem Ort,
Und immer hör ich´s rauschen:
Du fändest Ruhe dort!
/
At wellside, past the ramparts,
there stands a linden tree.
While sleeping in its shadow,
sweet dreams it sent to me.

And in its bark I chiseled
my messages of love:
My pleasures and my sorrows
were welcomed from above.

Today I had to pass it,
well in the depth of night -
and still, in all the darkness,
my eyes closed to its sight.

Its branches bent and rustled,
as if they called to me:
Come here, come here, companion,
your haven I shall be!

The icy winds were blowing,
straight in my face they ground.
The hat tore off my forehead.
I did not turn around.

Away I walked for hours
whence stands the linden tree,
and still I hear it whisp'ring:
You'll find your peace with me!

::

Under der linden
an der heide,
dâ unser zweier bette was,
dâ mugt ir vinden
schône beide
gebrochen bluomen unde gras.
vor dem wald in einem tal,
tandaradei,
schône sanc diu nahtegal.
/
Under the lime tree
on the open field,
where we two had our bed,
you still can see
lovely both
broken flowers and grass.
On the edge of the woods in a vale,
tandaradei,
sweetly sang the nightingale.

::



::

Tags: Conor Mullen Oberst, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dan Bălan, Mihai Eminescu, Wilhelm Müller, Walther von der Vogelweide

Don't Pull the Plug!

My MacBook Pro has officially fallen into a coma.

While the feeble flickering of a grey screen inspires hope, the unresponsive OSX load screen, with its calm steel blue background, offers little joy with its spinning colour wheel and empty, unmoving load bar. She wasn't even a year old.

Thank you, System Update 10.4.10 - you took my perfectly functioning and beloved machine, and virtually took a sledgehammer to its ankles. I'm worried that when I open my crippled machine in target disk mode later, I'm going to get VoiceOver shouting at me in a mechanical, Mid-West accent: He didn't get out of the COCK-A-DOODIE CAR!!!

10.4.10 is my number one fan.

//

I've been listening to a lot of Arcade Fire: and you should too.



Haiti and Une année sans lumiere, off of their first album, were also very good -- but I just like hearing beautiful songs in French; even if it's all, you know, Québécoise.

//

I'll note that I am, in part, pissed off that my computers coma is keeping me from my game platform, photography, art & film shorts (I had been compiling a movie on bubbles!), PDFs of countless miscellaneous information, folders of Sci-Fi/Fantasy writing and... The foundations of my entry into using Objective-C for Xcode. Sure; most of what I had written was notes, and most of what was saved was whatever freebee manuals I could get my hands on.

You see, my people; I want to make video games. Not FPS or RPGs; but mind games -- educational games for grown-ups, as it were. At the moment, I am obsessing over the creation of a word game - halfway between Bejewelled and Bookworm Adventures; speed spelling puzzle game. Ideally, I'd like to create it as a dashboard widget and expand from there but... Well, I have no practical programming experience.

Being the only girl in a remedial BTEC ND Software Development course allowed me to experience writing car rental schemes in VBA in Excel. They most likely could not have chosen a more banal way of introducing programming to apathetic North London hoodlums. I learned more about programming from Monadology than I did there. Regardless!

Naturally, I have to teach myself how to program -- when my sweet, sweet Uni grant comes in this September, I am investing in Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan, which has been suggested as a good starting point for my dive into application development for Mac. Would the computer minded concur? Eventually I would like to move towards Cocoa, and then beyond...

But that's all a little besides the point at the moment, seeing as my machine refuses to even turn on; c'est le vie!

Tags: 10.4.10, the big three killed my baby, cocoa, but not chanel, dead machine, misery, OS X, girls just want to have Xcode, bad french

Disconnection of Emotional and Intellectual Self

Le grand précieux

Lately I've been considering how I approach topics I cross in my ongoing 'academic' research. Last year during my film theory class, my much respected Greek visiting lecturer noted that I had a very 'romantically emotional' approach to deconstructing media we were given to analyse -- it was apparently an amusing notion to him and, subsequently my class mates, that my responses were heavily based on feelings I harboured towards the subjects at hand. Apparently I spoke in abstract prose rather than analytic or rational terms, I suppose. I didn't think much about it at the time, but as the new academic year approaches I've been reconsidering what that means.

I like to consider myself to be a thoughtful, rational person -- I like to consider the different ways of approaching subjects at hand. I know how I feel about topics personally and like to consider why I feel the way I do -- but with that, I also typically take the time to put myself in another persons perspective, as it were, and toy with the other vantage points to consider any given topic. Circumstances which alter views on things always enthrals me - different situations, possibilities, intentions on words...

Because I had never been sent to any traditional educational institutions until I enrolled in University, I have never had the opportunity to join a debate team. Oh how that saddens me at times! As I know it'd be an activity I could very well flourish within - having the opportunity to analyse a proposition and argue its points, be it for or against, regardless of the topic and how I personally felt about it. Certainly in my own views, I would be be labelled a liberal -- I am a democratic socialist who believes strongly (for the time being, HAH) in the pseudo-libertarian approach to self governing factions deciding on their own fates socially and politically. Pro-choice, anti-war-for-profit, ecologically-aware, marginally anti-capitalist fiscally...

Yet I am prone, as my stepfather so kindly pointed out earlier, to going wildly off topic. Or at lest digressing widely before reaching my main point.

Regardless of my political/social views, I can disconnect myself from them in sake of conversation and argument. Why? It's fucking fun!

But in an academic setting, when asked to discuss or analyse topics impromptu, I speak from the heart -- and I am aware now that on occasion, my passionate (always passionate) rants, excuse me!, deliverance of personal ideation can, or may be, viewed as horribly sophomoric. I really like how... When I saw this I felt... I love the part... -- how can that at all be considered objective? Is it even a bad thing that when I take to something, I take to it passionately -- or does that limit me to one viewpoint that is without exterior reference to keep things 'in check' as it were? I know one thing; being emotionally involved with the analysis of things heavily undermines an audiences ability to take what you say seriously - instead you come off as; A) like one of those religious preachers who refuse Science for pure faith, B) an airy fairy self involved vacuum-inhabiting poetry student from Wellesley College who refuses to read poetry that doesn't emotionally validate their life.

There is another aspect of this heart-felt analysis I do which irks me incessantly -- when I do not like a person/subject, I mean personally do not like them/it for whatever reason, it dramatically effects the way I approach their/the subject in discussion. This goes as far, in one example, as my creation an entirely factitious doctrine of why painting as an art form - abstract in particular - was a dead medium whose only subscribers would be economically secure idealists who overly romanticised a dead school of art purely to reside within its comfortably established boundaries and, thus, remove themselves from the daunting task of having to create a new and thus risky aesthetic which could potentially alienate them from their market.

Me? Asshole. Because, fuck, I like painters - both dead and contemporary. I just didn't personally like this one painter and wanted to plant a seed of doubt in regards to their abilities. Because I am, yes, an asshole.

See what happens when you can't engage in a debate club?
Honestly.