Without a Traceroute » Shameless link-bait

The top 10 reasons lists on websites suck

mccollam — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:09:22 +0000

They’re lazy. Formatting a blog post as a list is a really cheap way organize it. It spares the author from having to actually put their thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner because the list automatically imposes an organizational structure on the post. You don’t have to worry about making one idea flow smoothly into the next because you can just throw down the next number as abruptly as you want.
No intro or conclusion. You can get away without these basic elements of writing your high school English teacher wouldn’t shut up about. You don’t have to write an introduction because you just put #1, and you don’t have to write a conclusion because you can just stop writing after the last number. Usually you go for 10, but if you run out of ideas you can always have a “top 6″ list.
They’re an excuse for more ads. Most websites will take a top 10 list with about 200 words of actual content and then split it across 10 different pages just to force you to click through them all so they can show you more ads. If you’re really lucky, there’ll be a “view all” or a “print” link you can use to spare yourself the irritation.
They’re totally arbitrary. Are these really the top 10 reasons lists suck? I’m sure you could think of some others, and they might be even better (worse?). There’s no objective standard for judging the “top (or bottom) X of Y”, so it’s kind of a stupid claim to make.
They’re an excuse to get laughs off other people’s content. Yes, yes, I know that’s sort of the point of the internet in general, and blogs in particular. However, in my experience, list-format comedy sites are especially vulnerable to the Family Guy-brand of “Remember X funny movie? We saw it too!!!” humor.
They build false suspense. This is especially true of “countdown” style lists, which usually ask at the outset, “Which band/movie/potato/athlete/game/celebrity will be number one!??!” Ooh, gee, I really can’t wait to find out which specific example of some general category some website chose to make you click the most to read about. See #4 above.
The comments are never interesting. Every comment section on a list will invariable devolve into a big, pointless argument about the elements which were omitted from the list but should’ve been included, and the order of the elements that were included. Commenters of the world: quit complaining and write your own list. It’s really not hard. (This list was ordered by random number generator).
They rarely tell you something new. Related to #5, lists on websites skew heavily toward referencing things their readers are likely to already have heard of. Video game sites will include mainstream games everyone has played; ditto movie sites; music sites are a minor exception to this rule. Since the number of people who listen to a band is inversely proportional to how cool that band is, a top 10 list on a music site will usually include one or two bands nobody has heard of, just to prove the site’s writers are still cooler than its readers.
They’re written for people with ADD. Another charge that could be leveled at the internet in general, but list-writers are especially guilty of breaking down everything into bite-sized three-sentence bits. If you’re the kind of person who can’t stand ideas or jokes that require more than a paragraph of development, you’ll feel right at home reading lists on the internet.
People frequently try to be ironic by complaining about lists in list format. And somewhat more rarely go for the double-ironic meta-joke by pointing this fact out in their list.

I’m internet-famous!

mccollam — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:58:48 +0000

It’s like regular fame, only without any of the wealth, recognition, or offers of sex that usually accompany it.

So Roboexotica was featured on BoingBoing Gadgets, the recently-launched BoingBoing spinoff which is ~~kind of~~ exactly like Gizmodo, Engadget, Gadgetizer, GadgetVenue, Wired GadgetLab, TheGadgetBlog, and Ubergizmo. Clearly, the world was crying out for a new gadget blog.

Anyway, the photo they chose for the story features none other than yours truly, driving Chassis! His creators were very kind in letting me drive their expensive, awesome robot. He’s fairly simple to control, with a two-joystick tank-tread-style control scheme. But the joysticks are analog, and his motors are actually pretty powerful. It’s easy to push too far and send Chassis careening across the room. Also, one joystick is a bit more sensitive than the other (“He has a limp,” they tell me) so you have to learn to correct for that if you want him to go straight at all. There are also buttons on the remote that make him blink, wink, dispense beer, or rotate the little metal fan on his head.

They also let me try the headset and take a turn doing the voice for Chassis, frightening small children when the robot talked to them (I was nice!) and amusing drunk adults.

Must…write…post…

mccollam — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:14:07 +0000

So I’ve done a few things that merit longer, better posts, but I haven’t really written those “good” posts yet. Oh, my kingdom for a counterfactual computer (where the mere possibility of my writing such posts would mean that they were already written).

In the absence of reality-bending quantum effects, I’m going to slap together a collection of links and brief anecdotes in order to try to keep up my regular posting schedule. Consider this my “really coming into his own as a blogger” post.

Tonight You Belong to Me (ukulele cover) from buriednexttoyou on Vimeo.

Dave Hoffman is awesome and much better at the ukulele than I am—I am still working on it. He’s also not bad at harmonizing with his evil doppelgänger (you can tell the evil one by the beard). I’ve been looking for a good excuse to link to him for some time now, and I’ve decided if there’s one thing this blog is sorely lacking, it’s ukulele musical interludes. That’s as good a reason as any. Anyone who enjoys eccentricity in their creativity should check out his site.

Image courtesy i-hacked.com

In other internet-news, pranksters have been reprogramming digital highway signs to say awesome things like, “Zombies Ahead” instead of really useful things like “Drunk Driving Kills”. I hesitate to call what they’re doing hacking, because according to the instructions, the technical skills required are mainly opening unlocked panels, typing, and running away from cops. Nevertheless, it’s still pretty funny. The first person to throw up a clever XKCD reference will likely be acclaimed Pope of the Internet. I predict a severe law enforcement overreaction in the near future (1-31-07: Never Forget).

Speaking of inappropriate invocations of terrorism, on the Copenhagen metro today I noticed a ten- or eleven-year old boy wearing a ski cap emblazoned with, “Ground Zero: 9-11-01 NYC”
My thoughts went as follows:

What the heck? How dare that little Danish kid wear that hat? Doesn’t he realize how offensive that is?
Wait, I guarantee he bought that hat at ground zero in New York City and some soulless American huckster was the one who produced and sold it. My country makes me sad.
On the other hand, I’ll bet the terrorists didn’t bank on that one. Blow up our buildings, and we’ll just shamelessly sell merchandise for the mass-murder site. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot steal the dint of American commercialism. Take that, Al Qaeda.

Although it hasn’t been abundantly clear in the blog, I’ve been in Copenhagen, Denmark for the past few days. Today, I needed to catch a train back across the river to meet with one of the Swedish hackers in Malmö.

At the train station, I waited in a really long line signed “International Tickets” only to get to the front of the line and be told, “Sorry, Malmö counts as domestic. You need to go wait in that other, even longer line.” I was like, “Excuse me? I think the nation of Sweden would beg to differ. If I have to change currencies to go there, you should sell me a ticket.” She refused to budge, and I wound up waiting in the Domestic Tickets (and Malmö!) line.

Malmö actually did belong to Denmark in the past, but they lost it in the 1658 Treaty of Roskilde. Then in 1677, they wasted 14,000 troops trying to take it back. I have to say, I think it’s time for Denmark to let it go. Their current strategy to covertly reclaim Malmö for the Danish through ticket-counter shenanigans is simply impractical.

The Austrians are coming!

mccollam — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:18:03 +0000

So I’m here to shamelessly plug Monochrom’s USA tour. As previously discussed in this blog, Monochrom are awesome. Anyone in America these days should make an effort to see them. I sincerely doubt it will cost much, if anything, since Monochom’s relationship with capitalism could generously be described as ‘conflicted’.

I was also thinking it would be quite amusing if any of my American friends who attend would bring some sort of small, strange gift to give to Johannes Grenzfurthner. You’ll recognize him as the loud, singing one wearing all black.

Examples of the kinds of things he might appreciate are: Chick Tracts, Burger King body spray, historical memorabilia from the German American Bund, a Kinko’s-bound collection of applied office art works (a.k.a. bored doodles) stolen off the desks of your coworkers, or Sarah Palin campaign buttons. But use your imagination, many of you are more creative than I am. If anyone goes to see the show, be sure to come back here and comment about it.

Right Claw South – The March 2009 Monochrom Tour:

March 7: San Francisco (8 PM @ Soviet Special, Chez Poulet, 3359 Cesar Chavez)
March 11: San Jose (9:30 @ Etech/LateTech, Fairmont Hotel)
March 14: Seattle (8 PM @ Theatre4, 305 Harrison, 4th Floor)
March 18: Chicago (7:30 PM @ Mercury Cafe, 1505 W Chicago Ave)
March 19: St. Louis (3 PM @ Webster University, Dept. of Arts)
March 19: St. Louis (9 PM @ to be announced)
March 21: Brooklyn/NY (8 PM @ NYCResistor, 397 Bridge Street, 5th Floor)
March 24: Boston (8 PM @ to be announced)

Meanwhile in another blog…

mccollam — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:21:31 +0000

I’ve posted an interview I did with one of the Swedish hackers in Malmö a few weeks ago. I was surprised at how demanding transcription is—trying to type quickly enough to keep up with the recording, while still inserting the correct punctuation to make it readable. The word count balloons quickly, too. The formal interview part of my talk with Olle was only about 20 minutes, but it wound up being close to 2,000 words.

More shameless self-promotion

mccollam — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:06:09 +0000

I’ve written up another interview I did for hackerspaces.org. I think the interviews are pretty interesting and I’m glad I’m doing them/contributing knowledge about the greater hacker community, but the actual process of writing, transcribing, finding appropriate links, sorting through photos, uploading everything is really time-intesnsive. I’m wondering if I’d be better off shooting video interviews and just uploading that, or something.

Also, if people reading here find it irritating to click over to the other site, there’s no real reason I couldn’t just cross-post these things here, too. Let me know.

New Continent, New Look

mccollam — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:26:13 +0000

Don’t worry, you’re (probably) not a victim of DNS spoofing. As you may have noticed, the site looks a bit different. To celebrate my arrival on a brand-new continent, I’m relaunching this blog with a brand-new, custom, WordPress theme. All of the design work, and the lion’s share of the PHP/CSS work, are courtesy of Monica Joyce. As you might expect, given the nature of this blog, the theme is GPL-licensed and you can download it from her site if you’d like to use it on your own blog.

I’m pretty pleased with the new design, I think it’s very clean and modern-looking without being too gimmicky. It does have some fancyness like transparency, and rounded corners and so forth, so if anyone out there is running into weird glitches (things overlapping, sections disappearing, etc.) I’d appreciate hearing about them. You can leave a comment, or email me. Please include your operating system and browser, too.

Download Free Buenos Aires Audiotours

mccollam — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:44:54 +0000

Alright, so this post is probably more of a service to the internet at large than to anyone who reads this blog regularly. The local Buenos Aires government has thoughtfully prepared twelve different free audio tours covering various neighborhoods in the city, in Spanish, English and Portuguese. I can vouch that the English-language ones are quite nice, and charmingly accented as well. I’m planning on taking the Spanish-language versions for a spin later this week to practice my Spanish-listening skills, so I’ll get back to you on that.

You can download the tours for free in mp3 format to play on any portable audio player. Alternatively, if for some reason you hate having money, there’s a phone number you can call to listen to any of the audioguides on your mobile phone at the touch of a button. Mobile phone rates here in Argentina are not nearly as obscene as they were in Europe, but a 40 minute call still starts to add up. Plus, if the choice is between “no cost” and “cost”, I’m guessing most people will opt for the former.

However, the BA government has done a rather poor job of promoting their audioguides. If I hadn’t been tipped off to their existence, I probably never would have found them. Google searches (at least on English-language google.com) for Buenos Aires audiotours turn up mostly a variety of commercial sites and blogs, not the governmental site. Consider this post my meager bid to try to improve the Porteños’ PageRank.

One small punch for man…

mccollam — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:08:05 +0000

…one giant hit for awesome.

I don’t usually just post links or youtube videos, but this one is almost too amazing to pass up. Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and somebody pointed me to the above video. How I managed to go this long without seeing this or hearing about the incident is beyond me.

In the 2002 clip, a 72-year old Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, punches a guy named Bart Sibrel in the face. Sibrel is apparently a filmmaker who claims that the moon landing was a hoax. He invited Buzz Aldrin to do an interview for what Aldrin thought was a Japanese TV show, and then started harassing him.

The lesson: Buzz Aldrin is a total badass. He may be old, but he doesn’t put up with crap. Also, he has just rocketed to the top of my Favorite Astronauts List.