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Sylloge Look for the redesign, slated for Q2 2001. More meta information and even a new colour may or may not be introduced.

Keywords: Cognition, urbanism, happiness, internet, design.




  THE INWARDNESS OF MENTAL LIFE: is here.

5k CONTEST: The new 5k site has taken a few more steps towards existence. Everything takes a long time. Meanwhile, view the current site.

Or, hey, this is funny: have a look at the Polish and Danish versions of the 5k. (Now confirmed by a helpful reader, it is a Polish version of the 5k contest.)
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QUICKLIKE
00-6-20

Prohep is tonight. I can't tell you how weird it'll be. If you come, they will probably videotape you. And you'll, like, be part of the art.

I remembered whatever it was that I forgot before, and then forgot again.

But here is the important thing: do you work in media buying or have a friend that does? I need to ask some questions. Hook me up: stewart@sylloge.com

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POINTING OUT
00-6-19

My mole on the inside points out the unadvertised and secretive "fringe section" on Chapters.ca. I wonder how many other ecom joints have secret sections where the real staff picks go.

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Pinkie O'Neil (can we all agree to call her that?) weighs in on Parrotspeak with the provocatively titled "Choose Your Own Heroin". No surprise that I totally disagree with her on the David Koresh and Bill Gates bits, but overall I'm glad I printed it and soaked in the tub and you probably will be too.

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Diagrammatical Interpretation of Intersubjectivity 3 At zero9, Lisa is all over the Donald Davidson thing and has gone so far as to provide diagrams (look right). The third one is probably the closest to what I imagine, but it is hard to diagram: intersubjectivity (according to Davidson) is the basis of objectivity and then on top of that comes subjectivity (makes me think of a pyramid) but then again, what Davidson has to say elsewhere about the relationship between thought and talk applies equally to this triumvirate:

. . . neither language nor thinking can be fully explained in terms of the other, and neither has conceptual priority. The two are, indeed, linked, in the sense that each requires the other to be understood; but the linkage is not so complete that either suffices, even when reasonably reinforced, to explicate the other.
(Thought and Talk, 1975)
She is also writing some snappy essays, like this latest one: six degrees of david carson which takes on the question: "Every society gets the visual environment it deserves. Doesn't it?"

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Eric Costello of glish.com and its magnificent DHTHML magnifying glass points out the Blogger-XML connection. I just might try that, since I am thinking about moving from Apache to IIS (please no stone throwing).

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And while we're geeking out here, the buzz around the W3C is all about XForms. (I was on the XForms working group until I quit my W3C-membership-owning-company job, but I was only there for the data-model portion which I had nothing to say about. My wishes for the UI: presentation-layer binding of captions to form fields for accessibility, the ability to group and make dependencies between fields, greying-out and proper defaulting.)

Anyone involved in developing interfaces for web applications ought to be paying attention, since this is the standards work which is going to have the largest impact on what we do. On the public mailing list you can watch the sparks fly over whether we should be ditching legacy HTML and the XHTML modularization efforts (including XForms) and going with a XUL-like interface language. My own feeling is that we're getting all confused: as long as you're using HTTP, let's stick with what's evolving. HTTP is probably not the best protocol for distributed applications though. XForms on HTTP, something XUL-like on whatever eventually supercedes HTTP for apps.

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And finally: Joe Clark's Contenu.nu Nublog is picking up steam and geegaw's textlog is proving the point. Bang on.

I feel like there's something I forgot.

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SMALL PLEASURES AND ANNOYANCES
00-6-16

Everyone needs a voice. Here are some really strange cries of the urban wilderness I found downtown while walking to the office yesterday and then again today. They are starting to proliferate. (Repent Sinner is inspiring some people.)

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  p r o h e p

http://www.inter-mission.org/prohep/.
This Tuesday (June 20) at 8:00pm.
Western Front, 303 East 8th.
Vancouver, natch.
I'll be there.

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Here is some email that I've received recently.

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And what Rory said here, on Seven Weeks to Madagascar, is really true. Here is the picture to back it up (I lived in W1, he lived in W6):

I love coincidences. (Incidentally, Rory also made an interesting entry into the 5k.)

I went to see the Short Attention Span Film Festival at a local microcinema (I love that term). Here are some words to the wise:

  • If you're like, a goddamn giant, and you really have to sit in the front of a very small theatre, at least slouch a little.
  • If you are the editor or whatever it is called for one of these compilation films, you are not doing your friends or anyone else any favours by putting their crappy films in there. Just the good stuff please.
  • Filmmakers: The credits should never be longer than the film. Even if you worked really hard, and even if all 30 of those people really made a major contribution to your 15-45 second bit of silliness, it is pretentious and very boring to have to look at so many credits.
Overall, believe it or not, I'd still recommend it. Just leave after the first hour, 'cause it is all downhill from there. I can't believe that, with that name, they didn't pay more attention culling the boring stuff.

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What you can't see -- I picture of me when I'm three