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I’m going to start a public weblog again and it is going to be focussed on technical matters. No politics, no religion, no confessional posts. At times I’ll have to bite my tongue, at times I may slip a little in my aims but I will do my best to keep to this goal.Blogger served me well in the past but as well as having a different purpose the new weblog is going to run on different software too. It's at www.timhardy.net/wordpress/. Pop by and take a look some time.
Due to excessive demands on my time, I am dropping certain projects. This website unfortunately has to go. Thank you to my handful of loyal readers for your support. It has meant a lot.
Update: what is this?
This is - or was - a weblog, a site structured around links to other web pages. It used to be updated two to three times a week with the most recent entry at the top of the page. I no longer maintain it and the original email account linked below each post has long since choked to death on spam. If you need to get in touch, you can contact me via =timhardy instead. Just click on the link and follow the instructions: it will ask you to validate your email address first. This is irritating, I know, but it helps weed out the majority of spammers who rely on automated scripts to flood us all with adverts for junk.
Cyril Connolly, an English critic and friend of Orwell's, compared the English language to a stream in which a few patient anglers sit waiting while, up river, pollution is dumped in by Fleet Street and the BBC. That was 58 years ago, and not much has changed.
Robert Fulford joins Martin Amis in the war against cliché. (Via Dave.)
Hip-hop? Turntablists? I was never a fan. But Scratch won me over. The offical site to this documentary tracing the history of scratch music is currently down (cached copy here) but Macheads and other Quicktime users can still watch the trailer.
Scratch is a beautifully paced film that celebrates musical exploration and innovation. The featured artists, including Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Q-Bert and DJ Shadow, are winningly motivated by a love of the music. The documentary proves an unlikely feel-good movie - and deeply inspiring. Beware of letting anyone who has seen it near your vinyl.
Now, as video scratching takes the art of live remixing to a new dimension, expect to see kidults the world over swapping their decks for a pair of PowerBooks and video crossfaders.
HG Wells described Frederick William Sanderson (1857-1922) as "beyond question the greatest man I have ever known with any degree of intimacy." Sanderson was the headmaster of Oundle school in Northamptonshire. His beliefs would have made him a darling of hackers. A fierce believer in intellectual discovery, he directed that the school workshops and laboratories should be left open at all times. Pupils should be able to work on their own projects, even if unsupervised. When a series of mishaps led to this policy being revoked and the doors locked, a group of students - fired with their headmaster's principles - made a study of locks and a cut a set of skeleton keys. One recalls: "It seemed that the head saw nothing; he had a great gift for assuming blindness - until Speech Day came round, and then we were amazed to hear him, as he beamed upon the assembled parents, telling them the whole business, 'And what do you think my boys have been doing now?'"
Richard Dawkins celebrates the memory of a great educationalist.
Tom Tomorrow is one of my favourite political cartoonists. Why not sample his magic with a visit to the Enchanted Land of the Free Market?
| Bookmark this linkThere's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering every thing. Being able to find things is what's important. (Microserfs, Douglas Coupland)
Five years ago, Steve Silberman was seduced by a vision of the net as "an instantly searchable memory of all of mankind's most lucid written expressions", inspiring him to make a modest proposal. The web has grown explosively since then and weblogging tools have lowered the boundaries to publishing online. Is Silberman's vision any closer, or are there just more monkeys with typewriters?
We construct the world by observing it and interacting with it, not just by letting things control us. You can't learn to write only by reading.
Dr Edward Felten, a professor at Princeton University, argues that the “freedom to tinker” - the right to understand, repair and modify one's own equipment - is crucial to innovation, and as valuable to society as the freedom of speech. That right is increasingly under threat. Ignorant politicians in the sway of massive corporations would like to turn personal computers into glorified televisions. The non-technical press tends to miss the point. It's not about teenagers using Napster to swap MP3s. Educate yourself before it's too late.
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