Forecast for 1/21/2000: Friday...variable cloudiness. Low in the mid 30s. High in the mid 30s
Whoa, it didn’t take long to see some major shifts. Yesterday they thought Thursday’s high would be in the upper 20s, now they’re saying “High around 40.”
Some of the recent evolution theory (via peterme) I find fascinating. A funny irony to it all is that we didn’t start studying evolution until we stopped evolving. Since the industrial revolution we’ve had the ability to change the world and our bodies faster than the world can change us.
I sit in front of my computer with my shiny new cable modem, the Counting Crows are cranking away, and I wanna check out something interesting, something stimulating on the web. Where do I go? I check out some commentary (Salon), some music (the Top 100 at CDNOW), but nothing is really doing it for me. I’m am drawn back to linkwatcher to see if my favorite blogs have new posts. (At this point I’m about to make the gazillionth observation about weblogs, since it’s such a self-reflective medium, so I’m self-conscious about it already.)
I think I’m drawn to the people, people I’m interested in. I might be interested in what they’re interested in, and find some great new stuff on the ‘Net. OK, that’s no new grand revelation. But it’s interesting that this is the only place I go for that fix – Jerry Springer doesn’t do it for me. Could we create one site that brought that kind of personal profile point of view stuff together? It could use collaborative filtering to help spot people you might be interested in (blind date db technology? :) Mr. So-and-so just pointed to the same link you did, so you have something rare in common, maybe you’d be interested in checking out their stuff. Must mention this idea to Heather Anne.
The collaboration of Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony sounds, well, interesting. As if your neighbors have their Mussorsky turned up loud next door while you’re listening to Metallica and they happened to blend a bit. As an “event,” it was done live to hieghten the excitement, but Metallica has never been great live, and it especially shows in the vocals here. I remember seeing them live at the zenith of their powers (Master of Puppets tour) and as much as I loved that album, they sucked live. They’ve always been about great arrangements, infectious melodies and rhythm, gorgeous timbres, and – the element that brought it all together and can only be truly captured in the studio – tight, tight performance.
Just discovered Rebecca’s Pocket, a weblog I like so far. Today I noticed a Viktor Frankl quote there; more reason to like that blog.
Is the 5-Day Forecast Bullshit? It seems they overpromise what’s possible. I don’t think we can currently predict the weather with reasonable accuracy more than one or two days into the future. I have to wonder if it was cutoff at 5 days because of some threshold of accuracy, if 5 sounded good to marketers, or whether that’s how many days of weather reports people can “chunk” at one time. By the time the 4th or 5th days role around, we’ve probably forgotten what was reported 5 days ago and only remember what was reported yesterday or the day before. But having a 5-day forecast is expected of our weather forecast providers.
To test this theory, I am running a little experiment here. Each day I’ll note what the forecast is for the New York, NY area 5 days from the current day, and after I’ve been doing this for 5 days I’ll also include the current day’s report for comparison. The reports are from Yahoo, which gets them from Weathernews, Inc., and which advertises they’re from the National Weather Service (which shouldn’t have anything to gain from marketing over-extended forecasts, right?).
Forecast for 1/20/2000: Thursday...variable cloudiness with a chance of snow showers. Low around 20. High in the upper 20s.
It occurs to me that the “extended forecast” – days 3 through 5 – have about half as much detail as the more immediate forecast. There’s “a chance of snow” but they won’t state that chance as a percentage. Still, if it gets significantly colder than 20 or warmer than 30 I’ll note that.
I want to link to this Paglia article for many reasons – her opinion on the symbolism of football, her take on the current presidential candidates and on Hillary Clinton. I also like her reference to the Internet as the “liberation network.”
Just when I had become accostomed to Benetton’s style of alternative advertising, they go and hit me over the head with a profile of death row inmates. At first I laughed a bit, when the interview sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit:
Q: What does that feel like, to lose your freedom?
A: Don’t feel too good. I don’t know how to really break it down for you. I’m not happy about it.
And when I was fifteen years old I started going out in the world. But I got discouraged. I got to thinking that everybody in the world was crooked, there ain’t no honest people in this world. What’s the point of me being honest. So I kind of gave in and started doing drugs and getting into crime.
Q: Do you still believe that?
A: To a certain degree, yes. I believe everyone has their faults. I was looking for a perfect world back then. Now I realize there is no perfect world. I can adjust. But as a teenager, I just couldn’t comprehend that.
I think all the publicity about Elian is an outlet for us to express our pent-up feelings about Cuba. The island is too close to us and too un-American to simply feel ambiguous about, but without a catalyst such as Elian we try to ignore Cuba and silently wait for Castro to die.
Note to self: must be more constructive and inventive when hitting obstacles. Shouldn’t simply bitch like my last post, just find a better way within the constraints, it might be better than I think.
Been thinking lately about how much of an impression advertising can make, in a purely positive emotional way, when done well. The examples below make my point. And I’ve been comparing this to the way we design and present web sites – showing strategy, then a month later schematics, then a month later designs, then finally after another month you see a working prototype.
I think in advertising, as much as I despise the overall superficiality of it all after working there, they GET IT more than we do. They know how to make an impression. We should be showing a working home page at the first big presentation to wow the client and to get the concept straight in our heads. Too much of the passion is lost as we draw the concept through the wringer of the project months.
And the Pets.com – Christmas Time spot is equally hilarious.
Whereas the Wazzzup! commercial is just side-splittingly funny, much better than the frogs.
After his cycling comeback, the very thought of Lance Amstrong would bring tears to my eyes. Sorry to say I’ve lost some respect for him after seeing his Nike commercial. The alternative press has been exposing Nike for over 10 years now, and lately the criticism has been widespread. It’s a shame Lance chose to cash in.
My first post on my new cable modem. Not as fast as I would have thought, faster than my modem but not as fast as the T-3 at work. My computer, a PowerMac 8500, may be part of the bottleneck. The “always-on” factor is something that’ll take getting used to, I always have this sense of urgency and efficiency about checking mail, downloading stuff to read offline and multitasking, trying not to go over the allotted 20 hours per month I skimped on before or tying up my one phone line. Now I can surf at my own pace.
Surfing at a moment’s notice too, rather than booting up and dialing in, is something I’ll have to consciously remember.
Interesting to think about the other things in our lives that have occasional connections and how they would be if always on. Nextel is doing this with mobile phones, integrating 2-way radios (which work very well). As more media becomes digital we can have all music, books, etc at a moment’s notice.