tom moody

In a recent post Paddy Johnson considered the merits and demerits of two websites, the Frieze site and the Eyebeam reBlog. I just added a comment re: the latter:

Four years ago when I reBlogged for eyebeam Michael Frumin and Jonah Peretti were still there. They invented the reBlog concept and were actively recruiting a wide range of people to use it, including non-tech people. After they left, responsibility for the reBlog changed hands a couple (?) of times but staffing it with a diverse group and maintaining a certain rhythm remained a priority. Apparently the current group no longer has that interest. When you last mentioned the pruned feed list Amanda McDonald Crowley of Eyebeam said she’d “look into it”–she couldn’t commit to fixing it–and she said that potential reBloggers were welcome to contact Eyebeam, which suggests they are passively but not actively involved in recruiting new reBloggers. I hope I’m wrong about that.

It was an interesting experiment but they never added comments to the blog and as you say reBloggers rarely added their own thoughts to the feeds. You can’t chide an overworked, underpaid nonprofit with volunteer reBloggers too much for not having the “right” priorities but you would think an “art and tech” website would want a feisty, dynamic web presence. Their current feed list is mostly the other “art and tech” sites so you’re getting unironic items about rocket powered personal helicopters again.

The New York Times sends its intrepid reporter out into the wilds of the internet and midtown Manhattan and uncovers a new trend...drumroll...steampunk (subscription may be required on your wood-trimmed computer). The article takes the tried and true "subculture about to break large" angle. Mentioned are goth, William Gibson, and Iron Man (obligatory plug no matter how tangential) but not The Difference Engine (a key text), LARPing, or Renaissance fairs. Mad Max and Brazil are namechecked but not The Wild Wild West or Philip Pullman. Most of the people interviewed appear to be alienated web designers looking to cash in on their hobby. Another relevant precedent, at least as the Times frames the "trend," would be the artists McDermott and McGough, who've actually lived a 19th Century lifestyle, refusing to use plastic or modern plumbing, as opposed to the swell described in the article:

Yes, he owns a flat-screen television, but he has modified it with a burlap frame. He uses an iPhone, but it is encased in burnished brass. Even his clothing — an unlikely fusion of current and neo-Edwardian pieces (polo shirt, gentleman’s waistcoat, paisley bow tie), not unlike those he plans to sell this summer at his own Manhattan haberdashery — is an expression of his keenly romantic worldview.

This is why we buy publications made on quaint old printing presses: to separate the poMo practitioner from the poseur. For the record, "steampunk" as envisioned in William Gibson's and Bruce Sterling's 1991 novel The Difference Engine was an outgrowth of cyberpunk--a noirish story set in a world of steam powered military hardware and punch card computers. The "punk" in the portmanteau makes it ideal fodder for current trendmongering.

Some exquisite Microsoft Paintbrush drawings by drx (Dragan Espenschied) in this online cartoon strip (also in book form). I've said it a hundred times, Paintbrush is so much better than its Microsoft-"improved" version Paint it's a crime. You can actually paint with Paintbrush, whereas with Paint you can't do anything subtle or expressive. I don't even want to know what's happened to Paint on Vista. Paintbrush is even better than MacPaint, I would go so far as to say.

Regarding his strip, drx explains:

For all the people that do not understand German: The two ravers want to go to Ibiza, but take the wrong flight and end up in the desert. They are frustrated and fly back home, only to find out that the biggest rave ever was happening in the desert a short time after they left.

[via Lektrogirl]