Extra Future

Hi, I’m Phil Nelson, a writer, developer, and audio-visual maker of stuff. I have been making stuff online for over 25 years. I run RetroStrange and Set Side B. Good to see you.

Blog Archives

Month: September 2009

  • Mashup Australia

    [Australia gets on the open dataset train][link], with a little contest. Here’s to hoping it’s contagious.

    [link]: http://mashupaustralia.org/ “mashupaustralia.org”

  • A Concise Summary of Charlie Booker’s Recent Anti(?)-Apple Rant

    [Cleversimon gets to the heart][link] of [Charlie Booker’s strange rambly piece][charlie] from earlier this week:

    >Finishing the sentence “I’ll never buy a Mac because” with anything but “it doesn’t meet my needs” means you don’t get to accuse Apple users of making irrational purchasing decisions based on slavish adherence to an ideology.

    It’s not surprising that Booker’s view is purposefully self-contradictory. He makes his living being a contrarian. For him It doesn’t have to make sense so long as it is rabble-rousing.

    [link]: http://cleversimon.com/post/199236957/microsofts-grinning-robots-or-the-brotherhood-of-the “Microsoft’s grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? · cleversimon.com ”
    [charlie]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows “Microsoft’s grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?”

  • New Shiren the Wanderer Game In The Works

    [My heart leaps][link]. Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer is my most-played DS game by a wide margin (100+ hours, at a guess). It’s probably the best bang:buck I’ve ever gotten with a game.

    If this doesn’t come out for the US I may have to learn Japanese.

    [link]: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3176272 “New Shiren the Wanderer Game In The Works”

  • How To Strip ID3v1 Tags from MP3s

    [The post is Ubuntu-specific][link], but the commands work just fine in Mac OS X.

    [link]: http://xanderx.com/2009/09/16/strip-id3v1-tags-from-mp3s-in-linux/ “Forged Defiance » Strip ID3v1 Tags from MP3s in Linux”

  • Jack Kirby’s Heirs File To Regain Copyrights

    [The author assumes that Kirby’s heirs will probably just end up with rights to royalties][link], which I can’t say I give a shit about it. Jack’s long gone.

    [link]: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/in-wake-of-disney-marvel-deal-cartoonists-heirs-seek-to-reclaim-rights/?hp “After Disney-Marvel Deal, Cartoonist’s Heirs Seek to Reclaim Rights – Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com”

  • Google Chrome Frame

    [A plugin for Internet Explorer on Windows that aims to bring modern HTML5 capabilities to IE][link]. I’m not sure exactly how much this will help web developers: One of the major sticking points that makes IE still so widely-used is that users in large organizations *aren’t allowed to install things*. Not even plugins.

    [link]: http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/ “Google Chrome Frame – Google Code”

  • How Useful Is YouTube’s 5-Star Rating System?

    5-star ratings utterly dominate the distribution of overall votes. 1 star votes are in “second place”, but as the graph shows it isn’t even close.

    Star ratings really don’t work well on the internet. YouTube would be much better off with a simple “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” system, and doing their algorithmic magic on those.

    The short answer to the question in the title of this post: not very.

  • Audio of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Reading “Breakfast of Champions” in 1970

    [I love this. That is all.][link]

    [link]: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/193510085/that-kind-of-machine “kung fu grippe – “..that kind of a machine…”

  • Philadelphia Libraries Saved With Last-Minute Legislation

    [Passed by a vote of 32 to 17][link], just days before they’d have been shut down (presumably) for good.

    [link]: http://libwww.freelibrary.org/blog/index.cfm?srch=3&postid=952 “Free Library Blog”

  • Von Sholly’s STAR SPANGLED DINOSAURS

    [Very authentic-looking spoofs][link] of DC’s “[STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES][star]” from the 1960s, which did feature the odd dinosaur.

    [link]: http://vonshollywood.blogspot.com/2009/02/tales-from-pto-prehistoric-theatre-of.html “VONSHOLLYWOOD: Tales from the PTO Prehistoric Theatre of Operations”
    [star]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Spangled_War_Stories “Star Spangled War Stories on Wikipedia”