Microlog
Microlog entries posted in May 2012
Wikipedia entry on the Odessa Catacombs
Did you know that Odessa in Ukraine has an estimated 4,000-km network of tunnels stretching out under the city and the surrounding region? Permalink ·
FanEdit.org
An online repository of movies re-cut by fans. Looks intriguing. Permalink ·
The downside of TV’s golden age
“By focussing on series arcs rather than individual episodes, today’s acclaimed series don’t reward the traditional once-a-week viewer. Any given hour — [AV Club writer Ryan] McGee calls them ‘installments’ rather than ‘episodes’ — is judged primarily on how it moves along the bigger storyline.” I love shows like The Wire, but I’ve been complaining about this for the longest time. Permalink ·
Make Your Thing: 12 Point Program for Absolutely, Positively 1000% No-Fail Guaranteed Success
Pop-culture podcaster Jesse Thorn outlines his manifesto for creativity. Permalink ·
Worf gets denied, again and again
But I still love you, son of Mogh. Permalink ·
Burn All the Liars
“An unfinished autobiography and a 1980s biopic turned Frances Farmer, one of the great golden-era stars, into a lobotomized zombie. The main trouble: Frances Farmer wasn’t lobotomized. An investigation to set one of Hollywood’s most convoluted stories straight.” Permalink ·
Entypo - 100+ carefully crafted pictograms
These are lovely — and free under CC licence. Permalink ·
David Yow’s actor’s reel
That’s a pretty impressive acting resume for a guy who once howled with The Jesus Lizard. Permalink ·
Introducing Playfic
“Playfic is a community for writing, sharing, and playing interactive fiction games (aka ‘text adventures’) entirely from your browser, using a ‘natural language’-inspired language called Inform 7.” Permalink ·
Dead Homer Society
“An online home for Simpsons fans who outright despise most, if not all, of the double-digit seasons but revere the old ones the way religious types do their stupid books.” I’m in and out of this camp. Certainly The Simpsons’ best years were more than a decade ago. But I think the writing of late has got better, at least intermittently, than the dark days of the early ’00s. Permalink ·
Wikipedia’s list of sandwiches
For some reason I expected it to be longer. Permalink ·
Dog ad gives viewers paws for thought
Forget the rubbish about this ad being designed for dogs and answer me this: how did the dogs get the pallet out of the van? And more importantly, why did they drag it all the way over to the opposite cliff? Permalink ·
Where are the judges fit for the internet age?
“The web is making what was local global. It makes that evidence of faults, which once would have been forgotten, permanently available to the malicious and small-minded.” Indeed. Permalink ·
Do More With Your DSLR
First in a series of video tutorials, filed for future reference. Permalink ·
The Perpetual, Invisible Window Into Your Gmail Inbox
It’s funny, I know this is a thing that people do, but it’s never occurred to me to allow any third party to have access to my Gmail. I’ve got no problem OAuth-ing services on my public Twitter account. There’s an implicit line between the stuff for all to see and the stuff that’s just for me, and I guess that’s what guides my decisions when it comes to my personal data. Permalink ·
Why Some Wild Animals Are Becoming Nicer
Well it’s only one animal really, the bonobo, which has long had a reputation for its peacefulness. But it’s interesting to see how that nature may have developed from something as simple as the habitat their ancestors happened to find themselves in. Permalink ·
Psychologists fear US manual will widen mental illness diagnosis
It’s more than a bit warped that ‘shyness in children’ and ‘being a teenager’ are somehow now diagnosable as mental disorders. I don’t see how that’s helpful to anyone. Permalink ·
Bus-Tops
“Bus-Tops is a collaborative public art installation across 20 London boroughs. There are 30 red and black LED screens dotted around London, on the roofs of bus shelters. Absolutely anyone in the world can create artwork for them, creating a new exhibition space for the public, and Public Art.” This kind of thinking is completely absent from Irish public services. Shame. Permalink ·
The Hike Guy: My Pacific Crest Trail Moleskine Journals
Six months worth of hiking through California recorded in 850 pages of journals. That’s commitment. Permalink ·
#shitsiskosays
An interesting take on the vision of the future presented by DS9 and how it’s firmly rooted in the early-to-mid ’90s world of its creation. Fair enough, but I think every sci-fi story universe suffers from the same problem to some degree, it’s unavoidable. We never really know the world we’ll be living in before it happens, whether five years down the line or 50 (the last 10-15 years have proved that much). And it’s a bit much to criticise a TV show for never portraying people engaged in relatively unproductive or solitary activities like online poker or wasting time on social media or whatever. We never see space people on the loo, either. Permalink ·
About
This is the personal website of MacDara Conroy, a production journalist, music writer and mediavore in Dublin, Ireland. Read more »
Details
This page is a reverse chronology of Microlog entries by MacDara Conroy published in May 2012. You will find many more in the Archives.
Continuum
↑ June 2012
→ May 2012
↓ April 2012