Words

« January 2004 | Main | March 2004 »

February 29, 2004

Our walking about Toronto

Yuka and I went for a walk. That is the bunny eating store. Then we went past the bunny bike parts place. which was right next to Dean\'s Britney Spears\' Cocaine Haunt. But that\'s because we took the pink door. "

Posted by jason at 09:55 PM

Birthdaysssss

Yuka and I are off to Elizabeth Miller\'s house for the irregular meeting of the Transylvannian Society of Dracula. Yuka and I joined when we were in Romania last year. It is also Elizabeth\'s 65th birthday, and we\'re also having a housewarming for her new condo."

Posted by jason at 12:23 AM

February 26, 2004

Don\'t Miss Megan

My buddy Megan will be speaking at KMDI next thursday... be there... if you can. Thursday, March 4, 2004 Time: 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. EST Room BA1200 [1st floor] Bahen Centre for Information Technology University of Toronto 40 St. George St. The Body in Cyberculture Cyberculture discourse jokes that \""On the Internet, no one knows you\'re a dog,\"" and offers the hype as claimed in the classic MCI advertisement, \""There is no race/there is no sex/there is no infirmity.\"" What are the implications of the hypes and hopes that bodies can be transcended online? How are bodies represented and imagined in computer-mediated communication (CMC)? In this presentation, I argue that cyberculture has re-packaged Descartes\' dream of mind over body into the \""new digital Cartesianism.\"" I analyze images that represent the \""hypes\"" of bodies in online spaces, and the cyberculture writings that reflects the \""hopes\"" of a gender-queer utopia online. In contrast to these hypes and hopes, I outline the \""reality\"" of how bodies and identities are invoked in CMC, and how stereotyped conceptions of sexual orientation and gender are reinscribed in online communication practices. Megan Boler Associate Professor in Theory and Policy Studies at OISE/UT. She earned her Ph.D. at the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California Santa Cruz, and has relocated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her research and graduate courses address cyberculture studies, media literacy, feminist theory, and philosophy of technology, with specific work in the area of the representation of bodies in CMC and space and place in digital consciousness. She has recently launched a multimedia site called Critical Media Literacy in Times of War (1) that engages users in close analysis of the contradictory narratives offered by contrasting international, domestic, mainstream and independent media regarding anti-war protests and civilian casualties during the United States? invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. (1) http://www.tandl.vt.edu/Foundations/mediaproject"

Posted by jason at 04:03 PM

February 25, 2004

grammar book

grammar book is the blog of an ex-student of mine. Wow. Someone who really thinks in blogspace."

Posted by jason at 02:09 PM

Diana Pashler

My oldest/longest best friend just passed away. Diana Pashler. She was 43, I think. I\'ve known her since grade 7. Here\'s a picture of her, on the right, from my 40th birthday party. "

Posted by jason at 03:57 AM

MovieMartyr.com - Songs From the Second Floor

Tonight, yuka and I watched Songs From the Second Floor After two long years, Songs From the Second Floor, Swedish director Roy Andersson\'s apocalyptic look at the dangers inherent in modern society, finally has opened in the United States, and I think this is one instance where the delay caused by the film\'s inability to get distribution might cause serious harm to its stateside perception. Safely ensconced midway through the year 2002, any millennial tension feels like a long gone fad. Y2K seems about as relevant to our lives as the Pet Rock does, and that\'s a shame, since Andersson\'s movie would have fed off of whatever fears we still had lingering a few years back. Essentially beginning as a Brazil for contemporary times, Songs develops as it continues into a broad and scathing critique of the way we live. Andersson argues here that mankind has become so obsessed with capitalist goals that we simply can\'t be bothered to notice the divine. There\'s really only one good idea in this movie, but the director runs with it and presents it with an unforgettable visual panache."

Posted by jason at 03:36 AM

February 24, 2004

New Blog

I\'m using WordPress (WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful.) as my main blogging tool now. It is Jeremy\'s fault. "

Posted by jason at 06:34 PM

February 23, 2004

Surveillance & Society

The latest issue of Surveillance & Society is (finally) out now! A special on \'Surveillance and Mobilties\', edited by Colin Bennett and Pris Regan, it features many excellent new pieces and artwork too. It\'s all at the usual place: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/"

Posted by jason at 04:04 PM

Interested in Learning?

Please fill out my survey. Joel Weiss and I are working on a plan for an Encyclopedia of Learning with Kluwer Academic Publishers, and Kluwer has put together a survey go get some general information from folks interested in Learning. Here's the raw URL. If you could share it, blog it, mail it to your friends, I'd greatly appreciate it. http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey-intro.zgi?ID=L2233PCDY3U5&PIN=8Y8GBPYDDFCT"

Posted by jason at 09:24 AM

February 21, 2004

coMOOnication theory

Aaron, on of my Ryerson students from last term, has a thing for Cowishness. He's got this list of MOOwords and is looking for additions. Contributions? This is what the internet is all about. Putting people in touch with the collective nature of inner foolishness. And can that ever be a bad thing?"

Posted by jason at 07:38 AM

February 20, 2004

Further Achievements...

It seems as if the once dead http://achieve.utoronto.ca is on its way for a comeback, revenantly speaking as my niece is wont to say. Replaced the powersupply ($45). And then realized the the Fedora Linux can be installed over RH7.2 with not much problem. That's going on now. I think I'm going to move the moos (and projectachive.net) back over to it. Just have to work out a backup schedule without a DDS3 drive... fun... wow! Oh, and the URL of the day is http://www.lares.dti.ne.jp/%7Eyugo/storage/monocrafts_ver3/03/index.html thanks to ken"

Posted by jason at 04:02 PM

February 17, 2004

Rapp Optical Fubar

I love Rapp Optical, and have always bought glasses from them. No attitude, insane glasses, and great work. Not this time. My favorite frames. Old anodized aluminum frames that I've had forever. The rivets holding the arms on came off. So I spent got Ken to drill new threadding for screws. Took him a long time to get the threadding drill too. So, I get my glasses back and they look like they've been gone over by a frigging hammer! Metal flattened. Threadding destroyed. And what looks like rivits. Some the hardware and hinges are crushed, and there's no way they'll ever get to be useable again. Yes, they didn't charge me for the dammage, but geeze. All I wanted was for them to order the correct screws! One more coffin nail on a shitty week. I'm going to make wine now. FOLLOWUP There was a message on the phone from Mel Rapp apologizing for the problem and offering me a substantial gift certificate for a future frame purchase. That's very nice. That's why I never suggested I was going to never go back. Mel's always been reasonable."

Posted by jason at 01:54 PM

February 15, 2004

"Well, if it is on sale..."

Shopping day... Got Pekka Himanen's The Hacker Ethic: and the Spirit of the Information Age, and Wiser's The Twilight Years: Paris in the 1930s. And two cool sweaters. And some sundry dry goods. Somehow everything was 50-70% off. What's with all this consumerism? Oh, the Hacker Ethic is on sale at Indigo at the Eatons Centre for $5, hardcover."

Posted by jason at 08:31 PM

February 11, 2004

KAT! Productions Presents: Hacktivista--The Movie

Full Size version of the cover..."

Posted by jason at 12:19 PM

"Microsoft Windows NT4, 2000, XP and Server 2003 critical vulnerability"

Not again... Microsoft released patches for a critical security vulnerability that affects Windows NT4, 2000, XP and 2003 and can allow remote code execution with System privileges. If you don't use Automatic Updates to take care of critical patches, then look at the following Microsoft web site that has links to the patches for each affected operating system. http://microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-007.asp"

Posted by jason at 10:24 AM

February 10, 2004

Chronic video conferencing...

Ken Emig and I doing video-conferencing in my apartment. We got some great audio distortion happening that ken recorded. Perhaps he'll send it along with me to post. I'm off to set up ken's new domain (emigresearch.com)."

Posted by jason at 01:05 PM

February 07, 2004

THe Mann Proof

Here's some pictures of Ken and I and others over at Steve Mann's Studio playing with a strange projector."

Posted by jason at 10:30 PM

"Too busy to breath... ah, the easy life."

Simsim, Pazuzu, JuliaD over for Za with me and Yuka on Thursday. Ken came in last night for the weekend. Arun's coming in next week to get his 17"" powerbook... Finishing off a book chapter with Rhonna. Oh, and Ken and I are over to Steve Mann's this afternoon for some strangeness... will have pictures, I think. Comments are not working, yet. Some mysql error I've not had time to look at."

Posted by jason at 10:16 AM

February 03, 2004

A new home now...

If you've checked recently, this domain has been up and down. I am retiring my iMac server that has hosted about 7 domains, and I'm moving most of them to aventurehost.com. Just about done with this one. Have a fresh new version of Moveabletype installed on a nice new MySQL database. Should be fun. And will be less work."

Posted by jason at 04:21 PM

February 01, 2004

What it is...

Where to begin. Perhaps with spending the afternoon changing the hard drive in my Powerbook. Jeremy said it was easy. And he was right. One of the easiest swaps. I took out my old 10 gig drive which is full, and replaced it with a 60 gig, that I got when I was in Japan (thanks Larry). Slight problem though. And this is why it is worthy of blogging. You see, you should always back up your data before you do things like swapping drives. And of course I did. I backed it up to the drive I was swapping IN, assuming that I'd be able to plug in the new drive and have it running. Nada. You see, internal drives are formatted like good old unix drives partitions everwhere. External drives do not. So, it took me 3 tries, of taking drives out and putting them back in, but I finally backed up my computer to Yukas, swapped the drives, reformatted the drive, and copied the data over. Server smoked again today too. Edublog.com, jasonnolan.net, yukazine.com, projectachieve.net... Same problem. The computer forgets where the ethernet connection is. So I just have to go up to the office, unplug the ethernet cable, and plug it back in. I'm so so very bored with running my own servers. As well, achieve.utoronto.ca is on its last legs. Tape drive and monitor dead. Powersupply fan grinding something nasaty. Gonna get rid of them both, and just pretend that I don't have any server related experience."

Posted by jason at 06:06 PM