If there’s one big pet peeve of mine, it’s that web advertising designers don’t put more than 30 seconds of effort into each ad. And thought? None.
Look! It’s a pissed-off woman with a cloth-covered cock being shoved in her face!
(as seen on Facebook)
http://thesuperest.com/
You have to check this out. Go to the bottom of the page, and work your way up.
It’s a friendly competition between designers. One draws a super hero, and the other draws one to vanquish him. Back and forth, and hilarity ensues.
I think I’d heard of this before, but it must have been a while ago. Studio 360 this week featured a piece about an “unauthorized” performance of Hell House in Brooklyn. The blurb from their site says it all:
Every Halloween, Evangelical churches across America stage haunted houses that replace the traditional ghosts and ghouls with real depictions of evil: high school cheerleaders getting abortions, gay men dying of AIDS, and secular humanists sipping lattes. Now, for the first time ever, this cultural phenomenon comes to New York City – with the Church’s own script fully intact.
The pastor who created the Hell House phenomenon was quoted as saying he was ok with the production, as long as they promised not to parody or satirize Hell House. He’s fine with the message they’re conveying, ’cause it’s his message, word-for-word.
I just don’t even know where to start. For a long time, I kept my head out of the talk radio and news clouds, and buried my head in the sand so I could avoid shit like this. I don’t want to bury my head in the sand anymore, but I also don’t want to ever hear (or read) anything like this ever again. I’ve grown intolerant of intolerance. That’s a painful mindset in which to be.
I once had a girlfriend who made me feel like this.
Click the image to visit the website. Very good for a laugh, so I suggest subscribing to the RSS feed. Oh, and half the fun of the comics are the rollover alt texts.
I hopped on an iPhone hacking site this morning, just so I could see the current state of the art. I don’t know how all these “dabblers” are able to follow the “leaders.” Maybe functionally illiterate folks can easily read each other’s ramblings, but the inability to cohesively and cogently organize the known information into something that’s usable really just kinda scared me away.
As far as I can tell, the problem is caused by the usual mindset of an open source programmer, the types of dudes who love Linux and spend half their lives in the command line. Sure, they’re able to do what they do really well, but ask them to explain it to someone in layman’s terms and they can’t even begin to put themselves in the layman’s shoes. They know the roads so well, they could navigate them in their sleep, but ask them to draw you a simple map, and they either can’t, or won’t.
This is why Linux will never catch on in the mainstream consumer market. All of the disparate tools that go into building a Linux computing environment are built from the inside out, piling layer on layer to focus on features, when the focus should really be placed on the end-user experience. Usability is the ultimate goal. Making something complex is, well, a big task. Making something deceptively simple is a far more worthy goal, and it doesn’t even take that much longer.
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PS — the thing that got me curious: pictures of people’s re-skinned iPhones.
So, I know a lot about Macs. It’s kinda my job to know about the platform on which I work, and I’ve just always been a little fanatical about Apple computers. My coworker has been working on a Mac for one year, and she’s just bought a Mac laptop. And she has not stopped asking me questions all day about basic functions of the OS, and things that, as a professional web developer, she kinda shoulda had down pat years ago. Things you should know no matter what type of computer you’re developing on.
I’d like to help. I was enthusiastic when we started a few hours ago. But you need more help than I have time to give right now. Can you not tell that I’m uncomfortable right now? Can you not do a little tinkering on your own time? Or is because you’re a contractor, so ALL time is technically “your time?”
People talk about the “brain drain” that’s happening to Google these days, what with all the early employees becoming vested (read: becoming multi-millionaires) and suddenly realizing they don’t have to work anymore.
Has anyone given any media time to the general “brain drain” that just kinda happens on a daily basis for the small internet businesses that surround silicon valley? Because, as far as I can tell, none of the contractors or employees in the companies I’ve seen actually have much knowledge in their field. I’d imagine, since Yahoo, Google and all those huge companies tend to gobble up all the smarties, that all us small companies are left with the dregs. I’ve counted myself among the dregs for a while, but that’s because I was getting back into the swing of things. But now…my peers are holding me back. How can someone be solely in the business of web development and still be stuck with a 1994 skillset?
God, I sound like a cock.
I was listening to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show today, and they had a feature about the Radiohead “pay what you think our album is worth” thing. Brian had a guest on the show, some dude who supposedly was a market analyst and had some valid points to make. Brian asked him if he had downloaded the album, and if so, how much he had paid.
The guy’s response: yes, and nothing. His reasoning: Radiohead offered it to him for free, so he was going to take it for free.
A little while into the show, Brian took two callers simultaneously. One had downloaded the album for free, and the other had paid $8 for it. The freeloader’s rationale was, since he’s paid full price for all their other albums, he looked at it as a “buy 9, get the 10th one free” deal. I can’t really argue with that, but it’s not quite in keeping with the rules.
The other caller, however, blew my mind with his ability to see stupidity and call it out. He said he paid his 8 bucks because he figures the band usually rakes in only two bucks per album when the record companies are involved…he figured he’d double that because that’s more like the amount the band deserves, and doubled it again because he’s proud of what they’re doing.
Then he proceeded to ask the guest to re-iterate what his reasoning was for not paying. The guest said “well, they offered it to me for free, so I thought I’d be crazy to not take it for free.” to which, the caller said “no. You weren’t offered the download for free, the terms were, if you’d like it, please give us what you think it’s worth. You took it for free even though you’ve admitted that you think it’s worth more than nothing. How is this cool?”
Right. The fuck. On.
I was listening to an episode of Radio Lab on my way to work this morning, and was suddenly and unexpectedly reminded of just how unresolved my sorrow is over the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. I remember, at nine years old, sitting in front of a TV cart with the rest of my class, watching the shuttle launch, and hearing those fateful words “Roger, go at throttle up.” Christ, I’ve got tears in my eyes just thinking about it, and I don’t even know why it still effects me so. I have a feeling that, several years hence, I’ll finally be able to look back on September 11, 2001 with the same square-in-the-face frankness that I can now do with the Challenger tragedy.
During the radio program, they were talking about space, and a dozen related subjects, including the Challenger. The show relies heavily on sound effects and sound bites from old recordings. While setting up the story, they played the usual innocuous sound bites of the control tower going through the startup checklist, and I automatically fast-forwarded in my mind, just upon hearing these voices, to the point where mission control gives the ok for throttle up, just moments before the whole thing bursts in a huge fireball and trails of smoking wreckage flies off in a crazy patterned image that’s been stamped into my mind’s eye forever. They didn’t play this audio on air. But they pulled it out of me, and I’m glad they did.
I was gonna stop this post there, but I just want to recognize something about Radio Lab in particular. Not many radio, television, or movie producers are able to grasp this: you don’t have to put the punchline in people’s faces in order for them to react in the way you want. In fact, when you leave it up the audience to connect the dots, you lend a power to your art that just can’t be substituted. At the moment, the only other example I can think of is Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. In the opening sequence, you hear the sounds of people on the NYC streets. You hear the explosions. Your mind fills in the blanks, because we all saw it. We don’t have to see the buildings come down, nor hear the crushing and rumbling sounds of it happening. Christ, I cried just hearing the voices of some people on the street. But if you had shown me full footage, I wouldn’t have cried. I would have steeled myself against it, or even made a decision in my mind that “you’ve gone too far, this is indecent.” By not going too far, you allow me to make the decision myself. And with that level of control, I am thereby empowered to face my feelings at my own comfort level.
Deep.
