As Above
Curriculum vitae. Oh yes.
HTML format or Word
Throw me a job, someone.
Brain children. Those that overlap the Internet.
Dvorak
The improvised card game.
Blog Twinning Project
Democratic blog-pairing.
TV Misguidance
Reconstituted TV listings.
The Foldover Game
Blind communal prose.
The Surrealist Link
You are the spikiest moth.
Back on the Orion Express
Interactive fiction.
Generic Nomic Data Tracker
It's a Nomic thing.
Two-Word Guestbook
Sign it.
Online cliques. Trespassers may be welcome.
Upsideclone
Stem-cell fiction.
Hate the Stupid
Because we do.
Mornington Crescent
In outer space.
In the bookpile. About to read, or currently reading, or meaning to take back to the library.
Consider Her Ways
John Wyndham
Emergence
John H. Holland
The Shadows of Sherlock Holmes
David Stuart Davies
Imaginary Magnitude
Stanislaw Lem
Incidental music. Ohrwurmen or otherwise.
English Fool
Carfax
Gubba Lookalikes
Half Man Half Biscuit
Other weblogs. The ones I make a point of reading, at least.
About as Funny... AngryBlog The Blast Blue Ruin Bullet Through the Brain Crummy Digital Trickery Epiblogue Found Groke HumanLint Icarus Says Inside Joke Interconnected Life as it Happens LinkMachineGo Orbyn Qwertyuiop RavenBlog Somnolence Sore Eyes Venusberg The View from Here Wherever You Are Yao's DOT.Home

(Updated UK Blogs)

Supporting cast. That have Web pages. In alphabetical order.
Alice Chrissy Dan Dave Dunx Eperdu John Lori Nik Paul Raven Riana Sandy Simes Tracy Tyrethali Yao
Weeks beginning. All having ended.
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Archive search. You never know.

13.10.01
Bizarre thing in some computery budget-section the other day; someone's done a snazzy 3D-nonsense remake of Jeff Minter's Gridrunner, somehow, somewhy. It's I Love 1997 on BBC2 this week, absurdly. Which can only mean that the world's going to end in one month's time.
10.10.01
Having said that, though, their 32mb-capacity keyring-sized "PenDrive" looks quite splendid, in a fairly abstract and redundant sort of way. Unless you're a spy or something. An Innovations catalogue fell out of something I was reading today, the way they do. It included my favourite consumer object of all time, though; an electric salt-or-pepper grinder with a built-in light that "illuminates your plate so you can see how much salt or pepper has been dispensed". Fantastic. It's just a pity that they don't do cutlery to go with it.
"If every ration pack reached a starving person, then one two hundredth of the vulnerable were fed by the humanitarian effort on Sunday. The US department of defence has announced that it possesses a further 2m of these packs, which it might be prepared to drop. If so, they could feed 27% of the starving for one day."
George Monbiot demolishes the food-drop thing rather thoroughly, although it's good to see that they're actually getting some proper aid sorted out, now, between the bombings, or at least seem to be.
09.10.01
Guardian headline today mentions Iraq as a possible bonus-level target. We're just going to kill this one person. And make sure that his terrorist network collapses, obviously. And depose the Taliban, obviously. And bomb Afghanistan, obviously. Bait, switch, bait, switch. Christ.
I don't know if it's depressing or reassuring that most of what we're reading in the papers is - if anyone's got any sense - rubbish. With modern technology making every shred of news instantly global (I've read that Bin Laden stopped using his satellite phone the instant that the Americans boasted of being able to track it), I'd fully expect the government and military to spread lies and disinformation to the press, even more so than usual. Yes, yes, bombs, that's right. Ignore those men in balaclavas.

Technology tightens the feedback loop - a hundred and fifty years ago, we might not have heard about a government-funded assault on Kabul until weeks after the smoke had cleared, but now that it's prime-time Sunday viewing, we can react and respond instantly. We can answer opinion polls to tell our leaders what we want them to do, if they want to stay in power. 80% of us cheer the fireworks. Carry on.

And our opinions all along, of course, are being based on the reactions of a misinformed media.

08.10.01
Assuming it's not cancelled and that the world's still in one piece by the end of the week, the Loebner Prize contest - a collection of the latest conversation-faking artificial intelligentsia taking the Turing Test for a possible $10,000 prize - is on at the London Science Museum this Saturday, much to my surprise.

Entertaining enough, but all a shade lofty and pointless with human language being what it is - a restricted symbolic vocabulary (try and persuade a judge that you're human, talking only in batches of arbitrary hieroglyphics) would be rather more toothsome. Although I guess that's what Hutchens was getting at with his black-box game thing, the other month, to an extent. Hm.

Worst dream ever, last night; an utterly convincing nuclear attack on London whilst at a suburban party with friends. A blinding crash of light, a billowing dark-orange mushroom cloud far-off through the French windows, and - moments later - the shockwave, the tidal wall of dust and debris, Bush's smirk on a crackly television. A dozen of us sobbing and swearing at the end of the world, in ultra-reality dream-o-vision.

And then I am awake, and a thunderstorm is raging outside, lightning flashing bright enough to fill the world, thunder like carpet bombing. Fear and paralysis, guilt and gratitude.

More or less everything by Kevan Davis.
As Above is part of the Uncertain Organisation.


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