Archive of September 2004
Google Groups 2
I have to admit, in checking out the Beta of Google Groups, I’ve been a little mystified by the choice to sort of splice (if you will) public usenet content in with Google’s own, Yahoo-like, specialty discussion groups. The way the interface works, you can always switch either sort of group between a threaded tree view, or the default, flat, BBSish “topic” sort of view. This in itself makes the two flavors of group seem different to me, mainly because by now I’m used to seeing usenet in threaded mode, and it looks weird flat. Whereas, with the new groups, I seem to actually prefer the flat mode, for some reason. Probably just a personal quirk of mine—I get that it’s all just messages, so why not put it all in one app?
So, that’s still a little weird, but maybe I’ll get used to it. Because here’s the really cool part: Atom feeds of usenet newsgroups! This turns out to be one of those chocolate-and-peanut-butter things I always wanted, but didn’t even know it until it became available. For any newsgroup you’re interested in following (say, for example, comp.lang.ruby) just go to the URL like http://groups-beta.google.com/groups/comp.lang.ruby/about/ and the Atom feeds are linked toward the bottom of the page. I’m still playing around to see whether the Topic or the Message feeds will work better for me, but expect to see links to (at least) comp.lang.ruby and comp.databases.theory over in my Regular Reads links as soon as I decide what to stay subscribed to.
09:19 | 0 CommentsPublic marking London
Just a cool photo I found while surfing around on flickr. By some cat goes by Ti.mo. I like this kind of demented character graffiti. I have this centered against a grey background as my desktop wallpaper now. It’s part of a photoset called “Spatial memory” that’s well worth checking out.
The Honorable Worm
Best thing lately off the Internet Archive New Releases feed: 123456789 by the Honorable Worm. Sort of lightweight, sophomoric neo-psychedlic pop tunes, with strummy accoustic guitars, el cheapo synthesizer flourishes, and really too much fondness for robotic vocal effects. Fscking brilliant, I tells ya. Arch bubblegum by someone to all appearances an absolute, terminal-case nerd with some very idiosyncratic ideas about, like, self-accualization. Singing from the Jonathan Richman, I-can’t-but-here-goes-anyway school. Go, listen to it all, but standout tracks are “Part the Sky” and “Suffering is Fun” (representative lyric: “Knowledge is Power / but too much can devour). Like nothing else.
10:34 | 0 Comments