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November 29, 2004
SCO hacked :)
KAT!
told me about this even before Slashdot got wind of it. But SCO got hacked.
SCO is at the centre of an interesting controversy, as they claim to own key parts of unix and are willing to sue the asses of everyone. I seem to remember that SCO was bought out by some company that just buys companies to hijack their intellectual property and use it to sue people. Or perhaps that's microsoft :)
Posted by jason at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2004
One of a Kind
Marie-Josˆ© Danzon (standing with Yuka) is one of the most wonderful artists we know. She and Wojar live in Montreal and the South of France, and comes to the One of a Kind Show to show her work. This year she wasn't selling anything, as they're all commissions. This one piece, I forget it's name, is really astounding. It represents an oasis in Algeria. Oh, and it is a quilt. Sorry that is isn't the best picture, but she uses a lot of metalic gold types of cloth, and it is all old bits of fabric that she collects in France...
Posted by jason at 04:37 PM | Comments (1)
November 26, 2004
Apple canada... finally...
AppleInsider | First Canadian Apple Store confirmed for Yorkdale Shopping Center
Canada's first Apple retail store will touch down in the Yorkdale Shopping Center in Toronto, Ontario, AppleInsider positively confirmed on Wednesday. The store is set to open by the Summer of 2005.
Posted by jason at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2004
Communities of Difference
"This is a collected book that explores and heart and soul of one of the foremost dilemmas of Western culture--the tension between community and individualism--and in doing so, offers a compelling critique of the challenges of communities oif difference facing neo-liberal globalizations. A timely book for unsettling times."--Carlos Alberto Torres, Professor, Univeristy of California, Los AngelesBook Description
This book will look at the implications of educational practices in communities that are differentiated by issues of language, culture, and technology. Trifonas argues that a "community" is at once a gathering of like-minded individuals in solidarity of purpose and conviction, and also a gathering that excludes others. The chapters in this collection will reveal this tension between theory and practice in order to engage the models of community and the theories of difference that support them as a way to teach, to learn, and to know.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Communities of Difference--Peter Pericles Trifonas * Part One: Culture, Difference, Community * Shredding of the Social Contract: The War Against Children--Henry A. Giroux * Tackling Difference in the Conservative Heartland of Canada--Darren E. Lund * Our Political State in an Age of Globalization--John Willinsky * culture, postmodernity, &education: oil_H2O@no.com--Blaine R. Desprˆ©s * Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization--Peter McLaren * Part Two: Language, Difference, Community * The Letter of the Law/The Silence of Letters: Poetic Ruminations on Love and School--Carl Leggo * Metanarratives of Emancipation--Trevor Norris * Freirean Literacy: Difference That Makes a Difference--Carlo Ricci * Crossing the Postmodern Conditions that Divide--Peter Pericles Trifonas and Effie Balomenos * Part Three: Technology, Difference, Community * The Technology of Difference: ASCII, Hegemony and the Internet--Jason Nolan * The Phoneur: Mobile Commerce and the Digital Pedagogies Of the Wireless Web--Robert Luke * Difference and the Internet--Joel Weiss, Jason Nolan, Vera Nincic * Learning the Real, Theorizing the Virtual I--Peter Pericles Trifonas, Paulo Ghiraldelli Jr
Ya, it won't be out until 2005, but I needed to blog it somewhere so I'll be able to find the site later. I'm in it twice, if you didn't notice. :)
Posted by jason at 09:46 PM | Comments (0)
Home Alone...
Anchorage Daily News | Baby dies after her arms are severed
PLANO, Texas (November 23, 4:54 am AST) - With a calm and dispassionate voice and a hymn playing in the background, Dena Schlosser confessed to the unthinkable, telling a 911 operator she'd cut off the arms of her baby girl.
The woman was sitting in her living room covered with blood when police arrived Monday. Her nearly 11-month-old daughter lay fatally injured in a crib in a bedroom of the family's apartment in Plano. The child died shortly afterward at a nearby hospital.
Posted by jason at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2004
PhotoBloofer
Yuka and I spent the day with Elizabeth taking pictures of her for the back cover of the reissue of her "Dracula Handbook". Got some great pictures! Can't wait until she decides to let me blog them.
Posted by jason at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2004
good juju on stopping blogspam
stefanos got me onto this one: David Raynes: Closing comments on old entries
Posted by jason at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)
Peake!
The Official Website of Mervyn Peake, author of Gormenghast: "Mervyn Peake (1911 - 1968), artist, illustrator, poet and author of Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone, Mr Pye, Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor and Boy in Darkness."
Gotta love Peake...
Posted by jason at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)
Blog me, Fly me
Blog backfires for flight attendant | CNET News.com
"In the past, people expected flight attendants to be young and attractive," Simonetti, a 29-year old blonde, said from her home in Austin, Texas. "Maybe I represent the flight attendants of the past."But it is Simonetti's very 21st-century activities that she says prompted Delta management to ground her, suspending her from flying in September and then firing her a month later.
Simonetti has operated a Web log since January, calling it Diary of a Flight Attendant, and said she did not hear from Delta about the site until after she posted a set of provocative photos of herself in her Delta uniform.
Posted by jason at 07:38 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
Derrick introducing David Weinberger
Check out the video: C-SPAN: DIGITAL FUTURE, which has Derrick de Kerckhove, visiting prof at library of congress and our d00d at McLuhan.
2004
Monday, November 15
David Weinberger, one of North America's best known experts on "blogging" and coauthor of the bestselling book, "The Cluetrain Manifesto" (2000). Weinberger is also author of "Small pieces, loosely joined: a unified theory of the web" (2002), a frequent commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and "Here and Now," and has been published in many magazines including Wired and the Harvard Business Review.
[thanks Stefanos for telling me this.]
Posted by jason at 08:03 AM | Comments (0)
Watch out for Dean Brian on C-PAN
Monday, January 31 at 6:30pm ET ¬Ý
Brian Cantwell Smith, dean of the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto Smith, the author of "On the Origin of Objects," combines degrees in computer science and philosophy and is an expert on the interdisciplinary convergence brought about by digitization. His talk is titled, "And Is All This Stuff Really Digital After All?"
Posted by jason at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2004
Rochelle takes on the anti-bloggers
In Diary of an Aspiring Librarian, rochelle takes on an old school gent who has issues with the rabble actually being allowed to write, produce knowledge or communicate publically. I thought it was Matthew Arnold speaking from beyond the grave on how to keep the world British.
Unfortunately most folks don't realize how much shite gets passed off as knowledge because it was published in a book. My favourite example was when I was working on a translation of the "alliterative joseph of arimathea" (Lawton's edition, not Skeat's) for my MA, and found that the previous scholarly edition was so absolutely wrong as to be useless. As my advisor told me, "Those things just happen..."
I like what Rochelle had to say about this kind gent's comment "Knowledge is purely optional." in relation to blogs and wikis, "If all we blog about is ourselves, we're the goddamn experts, my friend."
It is the stories we tell about ourselves that is what writing is about. I don't use wikipedia for brainsurgery techniques but it is better than and paying encyclopedia for sharing information. I don't use blogs as peer reviewed journal articles, but as an editor of peer reviewed journals, I must admit that I see more useful and better thought out content on many more blogs than I see in journals that seem more interested in the tenure wheel than anything else.
Posted by jason at 11:34 PM | Comments (1)
Rogue Volumes
Jeremy saves the day. I had an alien core meltdown volume malfunction and he reminded me what to do last time. When a CD burn fails, sometimes a rogue volume gets created that grows and eats all space and time (i.e. harddrive). You have to find it and kill it before it eats tokyo, and he reminded me of the magic command: du -k | sort -n | tail -150 > /tmp/top50 which lists the 50 biggest files/directories on your harddrive (well you have to go in and look at /tmp/top50). Then you can nuke the bugger with sudo \rm -R /Volumes/[name of offending directory]
Destroy all hardrive monsters!
Posted by jason at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
KMD2003: Knowledge Media Design and Learning
I will be teaching KMD2003: Knowledge Media Design and Learning next summer. It is open to graduate students in any program at UofT, but is primarily targetted to OISE, FIS and students interested in the pedagogy of technology.
Posted by jason at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
QUINCEY!
I just uploaded a short movie of Elizabeth Miller's cat Quincey (3 megs) to her server. He's got something stuck on him. I have a smaller version of the Quincey video (300k).
PC users need to download QuickTime player for OSX, or use any other media player that supports quicktime.
Posted by jason at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2004
Remembered from SXSW
"When I was at SXSW a couple years ago, I struck up a conversation with Jason Nolan about laptops and stickers. He recommended putting a cover on the laptop so I could save the stickers when the laptop died or I wanted new stickers. My wife, the artist, explained to me that I should use Frisket Film as the transparent cover."
Posted by jason at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
The 26th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
[I'm going. It is a great conference...]
GENERAL CALL FOR PAPERS
The 26th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Blurring the Boundaries: The Trans-Real and Other Movements
Wyndham March 16 - 20, 2005, Fort Lauderdale Airport Hotel
Guest of Honor: Rudy Rucker
Guest Scholar: Damien Broderick
Special Guests: John Kessel and Albert Goldbarth
Permanent Special Guest: Brian Aldiss
Autobiography made fantastic. Reality redefined. According to trans-realist Rudy Rucker, it's "writing about immediate reality - or your idiosyncratic perceptions of it - in a fantastic way." At ICFA-26, we look forward to a broad range of discussions examining the trans-real and other movements that blur the boundaries between genres and between worlds, including the New Wave, Cyberpunk, the Interstitial Arts, Slipstream, the New Weird, and more.
And, as always, we also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on the work of any of our guests OR ON ANY ASPECT OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE ARTS IN ANY MEDIA. The deadline for submission of individual proposals is 1 December, 2004. Keep checking www.iafa.org for updated information on guests, registration, and submission information.
Posted by jason at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)
Buzy
Nothing to say. Been working on some projects that I was hoping would be a big whizbang success, but it fell through. But that's minor.
Marking ECE912 assignments... that's major. I'll get around to recounting events soon, but until then... I'm sure that there's something else out there interesting to read.
Posted by jason at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2004
Technology in the Academy...
[This is from Liz Lawley]
Many-to-Many: fear and loathing in the academy
Last month, I moderated a workshop on ’Äúsocial software in the academy’Äù at USC’Äôs Annenberg Center for Communication. The attendees were primarily Annenberg faculty and graduate students, along with a few industry representatives and some academics from other institutions who had experience implementing social software tools (weblogs and wikis, primarily) in classroom contexts.
One of the topics that we didn’Äôt have an opportunity to explore in as much details as I would have liked was the issue of power, control, and authority in higher education, and the destabilizing effect that social computing tools can have in these domains.
Posted by jason at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
Internet-Based Workplace Communications
[Rhonna and I have a chapter in this book on moos.]
Internet-Based Workplace Communications: Industry and Academic Applications. Eds. Kirk St. Amant and Pavel Zemliansky. Hershey, PA: Idea Group, Inc. 2005.
Internet-Based Workplace Communications: Industry and Academic Applications examines the different ways in which online media are becoming a part of and affecting educational and professional writing practices. By overvieiwng how Internet-based technologies affect the communication process, this timely book provides educators with a synopsis of the tools and techniques that could be applied to a variety of educational and professional activities. Similarly, by covering the uses of online media in communication education, this book provides employers with insights related to the Internet-related discourse skills of prospective employees. This book serves as a bridge between educational developments and industry practices, and readers from a broad range of backgrounds learn of different concepts, technologies, and techniques that can affect the online communication process.
Posted by jason at 04:19 PM | Comments (1)
November 04, 2004
Hacking Humans: Social Engineering and Data Mining
RCAT : What's On : Lunchtime Seminar Series
Hacking Humans: Social Engineering and Data Mining
Join Jason Nolan and Michelle Levesque to discuss the anatomy of hacking, and explore the research inquiry and planning that goes into a successful social hack.
Date & Time: Tuesday, November 23, 2004
12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Presenters:
Jason Nolan, Knowledge Media Design Institute/McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology
Michelle Levesque, Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies
Posted by jason at 06:28 PM | Comments (1)
November 03, 2004
Why change horsemen mid apocalypse?
Why change horsemen mid apocalypse?
I spent last night eating pizza with friends, reverse engineering filtering software, giggling at Jon Stewart, watching blogs, websites, TV, talking on Moos, irl, iChat, MSN, and sighing as the election results came in. I went to bed at 5 am, disgusted at the world.
Bush being President again is not the scary part
Posted by jason at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
The New World Order
Thanks for the image, Catsy
Posted by jason at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)
Netporn Conference
In this international Netporn conference we want to investigate different forms of Internet pornography in the dawn of a cruel pornographic imagination and tightening censorship.
Is there any alternative that we can come up with to understand the double-bind of Internet porn?¬Ý We are also interested in a tactical media approach to Internet pornography, i.e. we can see that tons of porn (critiques) and collectives could be produced and distributed with the new affordable, pocket-size digital technologies. And we will focus on the ways in which artists intervene with Internet pornography? This event is produced together with Katrien Jacobs, and is scheduled for October 7-8, 2005 in Amsterdam.
Posted by jason at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2004
via Megan...
Want to know what this image is? It's a picture I took with my cellphone-camera of an electronic voting machine screen. I took it today when I went down to vote for the next President of the Unites States in Santa Clara California. The screen says "Vote Save Error #9. Use the Backup Voting Procedure." A news crew was on hand to film Californians using the voting machines. I pointed to this particular screen and said "There's your story - right there. I just took a picture of the screen and plan to share it with 6.4 billion of my closest friends on the Internet tonight. I suggest you do the same." To my astonishment, the cameraman did shoot some footage of the screen, though I don't know what was shown later on television.
Now that I've told you the story behind the picture, I need not mention the maelstrom of thoughts that go through my head whenever I look at it - the picture is testament enough. The next revolution will not be televised. The next revolution will be blogged.
Posted by jason at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2004
fightin in austin
c u l t u r e k i t c h e n: Video Sousveillers Unite!
Posted by jason at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)
Ross Mayfield's Picts from SSAW
Ross Mayfield (of socialtext.net) has put up some pictures of the event at Annenberg last week: Flickr: Photos tagged with ssaw. I want Danah's Blogger T. How come some of us look so serious?
Posted by jason at 11:52 AM | Comments (1)
Raising Your Kids on Apple
It was my daughter's 2nd birthday a couple of weeks ago and after congratulating myself on another successful year of parenthood, I came to the realization, with great trepidation, that it was almost time to make THE decision. After all she will almost be of the age when I allow her to use a computer. I mean really tinker with one. A computer that she can call her own. And of course, I don't want her to be behind in her tech skills when she enters kindergarten
Posted by jason at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
I want one...
Posted by jason at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
US Election Halloween Costumes
2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes
A Do-It-Yourself Guide to This Season's Quickest, Least Expensive, and Spooky-Ookiest Halloween Costumes
Florida's Electronic Touch-Screen Voting Machines
Give Democrats in your neighborhood the chills with this adorable re-creation of a computerized, touch-screen voting machine! Just like the real ones, our voting machine costume leaves no paper trail and comes with easily hackable’Äîbut totally adorable’Äîsoftware!
To make this costume, visit your neighborhood moving and storage facility and purchase a dish barrel. Cut the box down with a utility knife to fit your child’Äîdon't forget holes for head and arms’Äîthen add a coat of flat black paint. While the paint dries, use PageMaker to print the black-on-white touch-screen display, which can then be affixed to the dried box with spray adhesive. Add tights, an old computer keyboard, and you're set!
Total cost: Under $5.
Total time: Under an hour.
Posted by jason at 07:51 AM | Comments (0)
CCL's web site has moved...
Canadian Children's Literature / Littˆ©rature canadienne pour la jeunesse is a quarterly interdisciplinary journal dedicated to children's literature scholarship, to research in Canadian subjects, and to criticism that examines the increasingly permeable boundaries of "national" literatures in general and of children's literature in particular. In addition to our scholarly articles, each issue contains an extensive review section covering recent Canadian books, drama, and other media for children and young adults.
[The web site has moved from Guelph to University of Winnipeg. FYI, I'm a contributing editor.]
Posted by jason at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)