Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Ph.D.

I study people, technology, and the worlds they make

Month: November 2003 (page 1 of 5)

The stupidest ants in the world have invaded our kitchen

November 29, 2003 / / 3 Comments

A few days ago, when it turned really cold, ants started showing up in our kitchen. Really tiny ones. After observing them for several days, I now know why they’re so tiny. They’re profoundly stupid.

The first night I saw them they had made a beeline, or should I say an antline, for a pot of Good Earth herb tea. Not the sugar bowl, or the butter, or any of the millions of other rich targets in the kitchen. The pot of tea.

Next, they appeared behind the sofa. Granted, the kids put their sippy cups of juice on top of the sofa, so there’s the chance that there’s a scent there. But still, it’s not the most obvious place to go for food.

Tonight, I go into the kitchen, and what do I see? Ants marching to and from… the battery recharger.

Vacation from blogging

November 29, 2003 / / Comments Off on Vacation from blogging

I hadn’t meant for Thanksgiving to be a vacation from my blog, but since I do most of my writing on my machines at work, it’s turned out that way. But maybe it’s just as well, given that by FDA standards my triptophan levels still qualify me as a game bird. A relatively sluggish and mellow one, but still a game bird.

Lunch blog

November 26, 2003 / / 1 Comment

I love this idea: a blog of kids’ lunches, courtesy of Mimi Ito. It’s proof that, as she and colleague put it elsewhere,

[T]he camera phone makes it possible to take and share pictures of the stream of people, places, pets and objects in the flow of everyday life.

Unlike the traditional camera, the camera phone is an intimate and ubiquitous presence that invites a new kind of personal awareness, a persistent alertness to the visually newsworthy that makes amateur photojournalists out of its users.

Custom Classics

November 26, 2003 / / Comments Off on Custom Classics

Just in time for the holiday season: Customized Classics!

Customized paperback editions of classic novels starring YOU! We offer the largest selection of customized books where YOU and your friends and family enter the story… How does it work? Simply go to the book you wish to customize, click the “Customize Now” button, and a list of the personalizations that can be made for that book will displayed. Type in your custom values, go through the secure credit card payment page and you’re done! In a few weeks a personalized, professionally produced paperback novel will arrive at your door!

Currently we offer A Christmas Carol, Anne of Green Gables, several Sherlock Holmes titles, Romeo and Juliet (“including the happy ending version!” [Ed: What the Hell is this?]), Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Shortly we will also be adding Robin Hood, Tarzan, Pride & Prejudice and The Mark of Zorro and a new line of children’s books.

The trope of personalization is a certainly a familiar one anyone who’s had the misfortune to read stuff on e-commerce. I’m also not unfamiliar with the notion of playing around with literature: Mark Leyner does a hilarious thing with a professor who rewrites the endings of famous books to have the Mossad tie up loose ends- killing the white whale in Moby Dick, for example. I know enough about reader-response theory and poststructuralism to see that, in some sense, we work ourselves into classic texts. And finally, around the house we have a few books that talk or sing, or invite the reader (specifically, Elizabeth) to do one or another innocuous and possible educational activity.

So why does this seem insane to me?

I am curious as to how they handle the personalization. Are the texts marked up in XML, with tags for “main character,” “location,” and so on? If they were, you could then (theoretically, anyway) do a find-and-replace. I’ve e-mailed them and asked. If I get a reply, I’ll share it.

[via Joi Ito]

Timeline: It’s not as bad as Cat in the Hat

November 24, 2003 / / 1 Comment

Timeline, the latest movie version of a movie in convenient text form novel by Michael Crichton, is reviewed in Slate. The review is, ummm, more positive that the notices for The Cat in the Hat:

Richard Donner’s Timeline (Paramount) takes place in 1357, but this isn’t a movie of hoary Sherwood Forest cliches. It manages, through sheer artistic force, to stoop below cliche- to seem both fresh and rotten at once….

Crichton is often accused by his critics of shoving a film treatment between hard covers and calling it a novel. That seems a bit unfair, if only because the film versions of Crichton’s novels usually turn out to be such dreadful bores….

Paul Walker, the blond charmer who rose to fame in The Fast and the Furious (2001)… has been given the heart-rending role of, uh, Paul Walker, and I’m sad to report he’s not up to the task…. When he dons his period togs, he looks a bit like Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), though without the depth or emotional range.

Ow! Ow! Ow!

1-800-201-7575

November 24, 2003 / / Comments Off on 1-800-201-7575

That’s the Amazon customer service number, as Slate reports. (Though I posted it months ago.)

Spamblocking on high

November 24, 2003 / / Comments Off on Spamblocking on high

I’ve reset the spam filter on my e-mail address, so anyone who writes to me might get a slightly hostile- but I wish to stress, automated- response saying that you’re not on the approved list. Basically, the filter is a “whitelist” that only lets through messages from addresses that it knows are okay. Don’t worry, I go through the suspect mail regularly and add people who should be on the list but aren’t.

iPodjacking

November 21, 2003 / / 1 Comment

A while ago I lost the distinctive white earbud headphones that came with my iPod, and have been using various $9 Sony ones ever since. (I have several pair, because I keep losing them and then finding them again; and Sony bundles its earbuds with a nice clamshell-sized case.) But I may have to buy another pair of iPod phones, so I can iPodjack with the other cool people.

Mitchell++

November 20, 2003 / / Comments Off on Mitchell++

Now Matt Jones has joined the fray with notes from William Mitchell’s talk at the Tate.

Update: Foe Romeo also went, points to Matt Webb’s notes from the talk.

Halley on parenthood

November 20, 2003 / / 2 Comments

Halley’s Comment has a well-done post on how parenthood is changing but some institutions- like schools- are still catching up.

But what I really want to know is, how would Glove Girl handle this?

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