Kate Moss bouncing around topless
Is there anything else to say? The original file at showstudio.com has apparently been taken down already, but there’s a mirror at kate.. Pointed in the general direction by Jan.
The whole gawker network has been all over this already (and i missed it! time to resubcribe). As gawker put it:
Life before rehab was fun, wasn’t it?
Just put it in an endless playback loop on your second display, add some nice music (sex pistols worked for me), enjoy.
Adaptive Agents in games
Microsoft applies for “adaptive agents” patent in video games
Microsoft has filed a patent application that covers “adaptive agents” – game characters that learn based on the events within a video game. According to the filing, these AI agents will be “driven by rewards they receive based on the outcome of their behavior during actual game play.”
(via wonderland)
On a more lighthearted note and also via wonderland, wow is a feeling – who needs a social life. No really, that adaptive agents thing isn’t just an excuse for putting a link to that wow video up!
I know this is silly, but still…
My blog is worth $24,275.22.
How much is your blog worth?
Anyone wanna buy?
The Starbucks Challenge
A while ago the starbucks challenge briefly caught my attention before escaping my sieve-like mind again (could someone just toss me a bottle of ritalin already?).
Fortunately Gib brought the challenge to two local starbucks outlets – read about his experiences here and here.
Web 2.0 compliance
This website isn’t (very) web 2.0 compliant. Is yours?
Ironically by mentioning web 2.0 in this post it just became ever so slightly more compliant… Also, you might wanna try to validate the validator itself.
Related: web 2.0 checklist.
What’s going on?
Having spent months in a small and casual guild on my way to level 60, i gladly find myself amidst a guild merger mid-october. This merger aims at making endgame raid content feasible for members of said small guild. By endgame raid content i mean bad-ass dungeons which require a group of 40 well-equipped, skilled and highly motivated players capable of strong team-play. As one might expect, being a trial member in a new, larger and more active guild is quite time-consuming, but also very rewarding and motivating.
So that’s what kept me from writing around here, all in the name of research of course. Don’t believe me that playing a mmog can qualify as research? Then you obviously haven’t come across the likes of terra nova, playon and daedalus project, all of which you should start reading asap because they’re amazing.
And as if gaming wasn’t hard enough work there’s also a busy university schedule and some freelance work to top it all off.
Narrowpodcasting
I never really got into the production side of podcasting, mostly because i can’t stand hearing recordings of my own voice, but lately i’ve been thinking about starting a podcast of my own. To be more specific a narrowpodcast of music i feel like sharing with friends and people i know.
Of course i realize that it’s probably a really bad idea putting copyrighted music up publicly for free download, not just from a legal or economic point, but also a moral point. I’d probably understand if the music industry sued someone for something like that. Nonetheless i believe in fair use and i see no wrongdoing in sharing music you like with people you like.
On first glimpse the technical side of something like this doesn’t seem too challenging: put some podcasting-capable publishing system up (loudblog looks nice), add http authentication (as most feedreaders seem to cope with this kind of authentication mechanism), hand out login-data to friends and you’re good to go. Except that if all my friends started doing this, i probably wouldn’t bother subscribing because handling it all would still be a bit too cumbersome. And if i wouldn’t bother, i can’t realistically expect other people to bother, right?
Using httpauth for this basically fails with insufficient authentication infrastructure on two ends: on the publishing side it’s cumbersome e-mailing around supers3kr3t urls and login data and you’ll have to worry about these leaking out, even if you’re just publishing for a few select friends and acquaintances. If you’re really paranoid you’ll start monitoring traffic patterns and anything out of the ordinary will trigger a reissuing of passwords. On the consuming side it’s cumbersome keeping track of ever-changing urls and login data. Implementing a proper authentication system certainly isn’t an insurmountable challenge, but it’s an extra mile i’m most definitely not willing to go for this vague idea.
Thinking of it, a hosted narrowpodcasting platform with proper identity management mechanism would be sweet – something like livejournal, but with mp3s instead of words and pictures. Bandwidth costs and ongoing music industry sue-happiness might be prohibitive for something like this, but still, anyone knows if something similar is in the plans at the big social networks? Seems like a natural fit, after all.
Even if not, there are plenty established, well populated and working social software services with refined identity management out there already. Thinking back to the ingenious myspace hack (technical details available here) that made the rounds a few weeks ago i wouldn’t be entirely surprised if you could piggyback on the established social networks with some scripting magic, except that the networks are probably shutting down this extensibility now.
Anyway, anyone knows of some community-centered narrowpodcasting platform out in the wild?
One-Star Reviews
The Lord of the Rings (1954)
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien“The book is not readable because of the overuse of adverbs.”
More one-star amazon reviews of books from time’s list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to the present. If i had done this list i would’ve totally added amazon affiliate links and i wouldn’t even feel filthy about it.