onfocus

still here in Austin. not much time to post. lots of people, places, panels, and parties. Too much to do. Great chips and salsa everywhere, even at non-mexican-food places. The best margaritas everywhere, even at non-margarita places. More panel discussions tomorrow. Stay on target...stay on target...

I had a very nice welcome to Austin last night. Erik and I grabbed some tasty food and beverages, and took a walk around 6th St. and the warehouse district. He knows (and reveals) a little too much about my checkered past on his website. (March 8th entry.) Thanks a lot, Erik! :) I finally took a look at his web project today. I like the quote of the day:

"A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are made for."
--J.A. Shedd

I woke up very early this morning to the sound of a thousand monkeys being slaughtered. It turns out it was just a flock (dissimulation?) of grackles. Man, what a racket. I'm not the only one who isn't in love with this bird. Ogden Nash was moved to poetry. You can hear the awful screeching here, then imagine that lone grackle cackle in a group of hundreds.

This time tomorrow I'll be in Austin. If you are going to be in Austin for sxsw and would like to discuss issues of the day, drop me a line. Since I've been out of work for a little while, I haven't been interacting with many people in real life. If I stare blankly while you are addressing me, simply shake vigorously.

News Flash: US marijuana supply to decrease by 0.0001%. Mexico confident it can make up the difference.

So I'm reading McLuhan's Understanding Media. His classification of any medium as either hot or cool is especially interesting. He says a hot medium is high definition, low on interactivity, specialized, and usually limited to one sense. Examples of hot media he gives are radio, film, and books. Cool, on the other hand is low-fi, interactive, generalized, and engages more senses. The telephone, comics, and TV are classified as cool by Marshall. I realize this distinction is a continuum, not black and white. (I think read somewhere that Baudrillard, using this scheme, called all media cool.) But it's still useful for thinking about a system in general instead of focusing on content. So I asked the following question to try to understand this metaphor better:

Are weblogs a hot or cool medium? (there are arguments for both.)

Hot

• primarily text
• one-way
• immediate (thought to publish)
• structured (loosely by time)
• one sense (visual)

Cool

• chatty, spoken word
• interactive
• expressive
• casually constructed
• not usually "packaged" (random observations)
• non-specialized (thanks to weblog tools)

Based on this, I think I would call weblogs a cool medium that used to be hot.

He goes on to classify cultures as either hot or cool, and makes predictions about how temperatue clash can affect them.

I'm still having trouble with the clissifications. Shows like X-Files or ER seem to make TV a hot medium, while talk shows and "reality" TV seem to make it a cool medium. But then I'm missing the point about not focusing on content.

Anyway, great book. :)

secret word for today: somnambulism: an abnormal condition of sleep in which motor acts (as walking) are performed.

I didn't go to the O'Reilly P2P conference. But I feel like I have after reading Graeme Thickins' conference wrap-up. [via Doc] I especially like his list of quotes. One of my favorites:

"All the web logs should be able to work together intelligently."
-Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org