General

The Hugo Award results are in! BEST NOVEL (486 ballots cast) The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold (HarperCollins/Eos) American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Morrow) Perdido Street Station by China Mi

Ernie the Attorney made an offhand comment about programmers as artists (original) the other day, which got me thinking, although I half suspect it was meant to be tongue in cheek. Still… artists? I’m not sure; I think the various tribes of computer professionals (programmers, system administrators, network administrators) are more akin to court wizards. We are comfortable and fluent with devices that almost everyone’s forced to interact with every day. It’s a prestigious position; the unwashed are constantly reminded how much they need us. It’s also a set of occupations that until fairly recently has been taught in the medieval style. All the best sysadmins I know learned from other skilled masters. We have no formal apprenticeship system, but the trappings are all there. ...

Coming on DVD in 2003: Animatrix. That’s 7 directors (presumably anime directors) doing shorts in the world of the Matrix. Funky. I dig the trailer.

KCRW has a live Aimee Mann performance (original) available via RealAudio; the date is 8/27/2002. It’ll probably stick around for a while — they’ve got a 3/4/1996 performance (original) archived as well.

Cory Doctorow’s got a story in Salon: “0wnz0red.” (original) Cute title, yes. A sort of amusing story, layered over with a political agenda. The Honorable Computing gimmick is pretty close to Microsoft’s Palladium technology.

I always think I know so much. By way of Patricia Nielsen Hayden’s Making Light, I found an absolutely fascinating paper on a nineteenth century “online community.” It had all the features one expects from an online community, except of course the actual online-ness. But — flame wars, people masquerading as another gender, and identity slippage. Yeah, yeah, Bryant. It’s a new and unusual concept. Tell it to your ancestors.

I know I sound just as goofy when I’m talking about wrestling, but how can I resist linking to a review with a line like “this new series works hard to give Mekaneck the purpose he never really attained in the original; the fact that his neck can bend and twist will aid that goal a lot.” Yes. Twisty necks, the key to all character development.

After about a month, there’s a new post over on True Porn Clerk Stories. Apparently some people bring video store clerks food. I never would have thought of that.

The Internet Archive Movie Collection contains a few thousand digitized films from the Prelinger Archives; the latter is a vast collection of ephemeral films. Newsreels, “Our Friend the Bowling Alley,” instructional films, and the like. Check out A is for Atom today.

I will be flying out of the Bay Area, my stuff on a truck somewhere below me, on September 7th.