Posts about 'Life' Category
November 12th, 2008
(x-posted from Tuna Cupcake)
When Kate asked me if I wanted to a review a new Kit Kat flavour, I was initially suspicious. I know that Kate is quite fond of her esoteric Kit Kats, particularly when they’re in limited supply. Plus, having followed her long, tortuous journey through the warped world of Nestle’s imagination, I’ve long been suspicious of an eventual decline into the “regrettable” range of flavours: Decaying Flesh, Childhood Trauma, Poison. Fortunately, it just turns out we’re dealing with Cookie Dough here.
Unfortunately, things went a little awry before I had a chance to dig in. You see, the “first” half of the bar was purloined by Kate before I could sink my teeth into it. You know the half I’m talking about: the half with the initial bite, the bite that is pure chocolate. The bite that cleanses the palette, sets the chocolaty baseline in advance of the complex flavours to follow. Without this half, a meaningful reading of the complete experience is difficult to fathom. For all I know, half of the Cookie Dough chocolate bar could be covered in moss, or filled with rotten teeth. Maybe that sort of thing is big in Asia. You’ll have to ask Kate. In the meantime, all I can do is my best.
My initial impressions went something like this: There’s not much going on here. This is certainly one of the more conservative Kit Kat offerings; it’s quite a ways from the explicit, unabashed flavour of Mint or Strawberry. That doesn’t make it bad, mind you. When you think about it, Cookie Dough flavour is perhaps the logical zenith of the core Kit Kat trajectory; the Kit Kat, after all, is largely a cookie. So if you add more cookie-ness, are you really doing something new? Or are you just lifting the traditional offering to a new level? As a fan of the fundamental Kit Kat prototype, I’m not against this way of doing things. I’m enjoying this Cookie Dough Kit Kat — it feels like coming home to an old friend, who has just purchased a slightly larger house with a pool. It’s nice to hang out with my friend, but it’s even better when we have a pool.
However, upon passing the first draft of this review to my editor (Kate), she stormed over to my desk and demanded to know what kind of hack food journalist considers caramel and cookie dough uninteresting. I informed that all Kit Kats had caramel, and she reminded me that I’m used to eating Kit Kat Caramels. It turns out she was right; and this is an important distinction. The Kit Kat Caramel represents a significant improvement over the basic Kit Kat model — in fact, may represent a local peak in candy bar evolution. To say that the Cookie Dough Kit Kat, then, is a minor improvement on the Caramel, is to say that it is a minor improvement on near-perfection.
There is, of course, the creaminess to speak of. The “cookie dough” in question here isn’t so much dough, as a dubious paste. To some, this may be off-putting. However, if you’re any sort of Kit Kat aficionado, you’re probably used to these sorts of shenanigans. The idea isn’t to focus on the individual textures, but on the gestalt; and the creaminess is, for the most part, lost in the familiar crunch of wafer and chocolate. You can tell it’s there, but it doesn’t interfere. It’s nice, but not *too* nice, like a creepy uncle.
As you can probably tell, I would recommend this chocolate bar. It’s nothing revolutionary. But if you want something revolutionary, why are you eating a Kit Kat? Kit Kats are about minor but solid variations on a consistent, underlying theme. In this respect, the Cookie Dough Kit Kat succeeds marvelously. I give it 8.5 Kits out of a possible Kat.
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October 24th, 2008
EDGAR created his first webpage at the age of 2, and sold it to CNET for five million dollars at the age of 4. At the age of 6, he invented Bittorrent. At the age of 7, he shared a beer with Larry Page and Sergey Brin. However, he is over 100 years old.
EDGAR was the first person to discover the Bonus Stage in Wikipedia.
EDGAR is the actual creator of every single Youtube video with more than one million views.
EDGAR has been to the year 2079. While there, he had a postcerebral actuator chip installed into his hippocampus, and downloaded the entire contents of human knowledge and history into his brain. Currently, he contains more information than the universe itself.
EDGAR owns 68% of the world’s supply of pixels.
EDGAR, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Rose, Caterina Fake and Robert Scoble are actually the same person.
EDGAR has had his body modified through highly experimental surgery. In addition into the normal gastrointestinal system, he has ‘installed’ a secondary system capable of transforming complex data into nutritional material ready for digestion. This modification allows him to consume information at an extraordinary rate, and process it constantly.
EDGAR is formulating a plan. The world will learn more at Edge of the Web. Those who prove themselves resourceful now will be rewarded with greater opportunities within the New Web Order.
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September 22nd, 2008
In the 90s, people like Robert Putnam decried the dematerialization of meaningful relationships as a consequence of the move to online socialization. Today, we know that this is not true. If I were to meet Robert Putnam today, I would take him mini-golfing, so as to the have the opportunity to declare, “Nice putt, Putnam.” Then I would tell him, “You were wrong, Putnam. Online interaction doesn’t degrade the social fabric. That’s because the social fabric never really existed. Everyone was already a lying bastard trying to sell your kidney on the black market; the internet just helps us see it.”
As Exhibit A, I present to you a recent interaction in which I partook, regarding the popular Internet “microblogging” service, Twitter. Twitter lets you add / remove “followers,” and be “followed” by others accordingly. As far as I can tell, this is its primary feature. Occasionally there is also a cartoon whale on the frontpage, and from what I can tell, this is the second most important feature. Truly, the internet is a place where you can make money by giving people lists to add each other to, and showing them a whale. Perhaps we’re all cetaceaphiliacs at heart.
Needless to say, Twitter is very popular. I myself have quite a large list of followers and followees, and have spent many delightful hours observing the whale (sometimes making up stories about him — together we roam the great sea of my dreams.) Occasionally Twitter does something else, though, and this is its tertiary feature: exposing treachery, as it did in this case.
At a recent pub outing, I had a nice chat with a fellow named Jeremy (no real names.) Jeremy was another Twitter user, quite an avid one in fact, so as a matter of course we exchanged Twitter IDs. This is a pretty common exchange amongst geeks these days, and implies a certain level of established trust; to give someone your Twitter ID is to say, “I am comfortable with my ID being on a list you’ve created.”
That night, I went home, and happily tipsy on a few pints, I logged into Twitter and made myself a “follower” of Jeremy. All good, I thought. Society is ticking along grandly. We’re all friends, and by next year there probably won’t even be anymore wars anymore. Didn’t someone just make a website where you can click a link to donate a dollar to not having anymore wars anymore? There you go, problem solved.
The following morning I woke up, and booted up my Macbook. I have an application installed, Twitterizer, that starts up on launch and alerts me about changes to my Twitter status. As a rule, I check Twitterizer religiously. It displays two numbers: the number of people I’m following, and the number of people following me. I have dual monitor setup, so each number is displayed on a separate screen, in 1000 pt Verdana.
On a great day, the difference between my number of followers vs. followees exceeds 5. On a good day, it’s around 3. On an average day, it’s one or two. On a somewhat lame day, the numbers are equal. On a truly miserable day, the difference is negative. On this day, it was negative one. The reason was clear: I had “followed” Jeremy, but he had not “followed” me back.
“You bastard,” I growled under my breath. Suddenly, I was sick to my stomach. I left my bowl of Frosties unfinished.
That day at worked, I checked Twitter compulsively. Surely, I thought, he simply had not yet had the chance to follow me. He would do it any moment now, like the reasonably civil human being that he surely is. Surely he won’t risk a breakdown in social mores. It would be anarchy. Babies having babies, et cetera. At 2PM, I started to hyperventilate. At 3PM, I was a cool brick of composure, an icy ocean frozen to the seabed. Jeremy, I realized, was filth.
But the most agonizing part — the truly unabashed slap in the face of all that is good and decent — would not come until that evening.
For that evening was the evening of the monthly meeting of the Perth Twitter Zeppelin Army, a group of Twitter enthusiasts and the occasional marine biologist. Walking onto the patio, I saw all the usuals — and then I saw Jeremy. He was at the opposite end of the row of assembled tables, speaking to someone. For a moment, as I entered, he looked up at me, and our eyes locked: but instead of the frozen eternity of fiery turmoil I expected, I saw only pleasantness in his gaze. Flummoxed, I sat down. What could it mean?
Surely — surely he added me before coming here, I thought. I pulled out my iPhone, and opened Twitterizer for iPhone. Instead of the two numbers that I expected to see, I saw only the whale. But where once the whale’s mien was mirthful, he now wore a malicious grin. By a deft trick of artistry, he seemed to flipping me the bird with his fin. Atop him a speech bubble read, “YOU DISGUST ME.”
My friend Adam, who had been peering over at the screen, looked up at me. “It’s a new feature,” he informed me helpfully.
Incredibly, I raised my eyes to see Jeremy sitting down before me. He was carrying a jug of beer and a few glasses. As he started to pour, he spoke in that jocular manner to which Australians are so well accustomed, “How’s it going? Dave, right?”
He put down a filled glass before me. Incredulous, I simply stared at him. My blood seemed to drain away. But then it refilled, brimming with vitriol and some kind of extremely hot pepper sauce that’s quite nice if you use just a bit of it.
I stood. I picked up the glass, and in a motion so flawless and graceful I seemed to have been created by God specifically for this moment, I threw the beer into his face, and I shouted,
“YOU SON OF A BITCH, YOU’VE RUINED MY ENTIRE GODDAMNED LIFE.”
There are those would say I went too far. But those people do not understand Twitter.
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May 5th, 2008
Did you know that LiveJournal was cool way before blogging was cool? As an academic in the social media space, it was really interesting to me how the interllectuals vehemently denied the legitimacy of LJ in the post-coital blogging glow of 2003-2006. “LJ is irrelevant,” they told us, “All anyone does there is write Harry/Ron slash fic.” Well, half a decade later, LJ is still around and still cool… but does anyone blog anymore? Hardly.
In any case, the point of this post is to alert my 4 readers that Kate is running for a spot on the LJ Advisory Board. You can support her nomination by commenting on this thread. Of course, you have to be an LJ user. And if you aren’t, what the hell is wrong with you? Seriously.
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May 2nd, 2008
It sounds like the plot of a B-grade American movie: dad goes away on holiday and his teenage child throws a party for 500 people in the backyard. But it’s a crushing reality for Tim Berners-Lee, who’s proginy, the World Wide Web, drew a rowdy and drunken crowd over the weekend for its 15th birthday.
Berners-Lee returned from a business trip on Monday to find his house in ruins, and the neighbours in an uproar. When reached for comment, a distraught Berners-Lee declared that “this time [the Web] has gone too far… this is going to stop.” The Web’s estranged mother, the Internet, could not be reached for comment.
This is far from the first time that the Web has caused turmoil and outrage. In recent years, its juvenile antics have made the news several times, and been a hot topic around water coolers and on daytime talk shows. The controversy reached an apparent boiling point several months ago, when a Youtube mashup featuring a puppy-riding kitten and Japanese tentacle hentai provoked a worldwide outcry. This weekend’s events indicate that the Web has no plans for reform any time in the near future.
“This sort of behaviour is common amongst teenagers with the kind of history that the Web has,” said Dr. Anne Andrews, a child psychologist. “The Web is one of the most well-known individuals in the world. That’s a tremendous responsibility for a 15-year old to bear. It’s the subject of legislation, the cause of both ruined lives and multimillion dollar fortunes. Not to mention the fact that 90% of it is shemale fetish pornography. When you consider how other child celebrities who have dealt with far worse have sunk far lower, it’s remarkable that the Web hasn’t simply overdosed on heroin yet.”
The Web’s storied history begins in 1980, but was officially born in 1993. For a few years it had a relatively uneventful life, content mainly to service a small cadre of computer geeks and their Gillian Anderson fansites. However, the Web exploded onto the world stage in the late 90s, spurred on largely by major commercial successes such as eBay, and niche cultural innovators such as SomethingAwful. Since then, breakaway triumphs such as Flickr, blogging, and the Tron Guy have ensured that the Web is not a name likely to be forgotten for decades to come.
A tearful Berners-Lee told press that for as long as the Web has been famous, it has been causing him trouble. “It just doesn’t even realize… it’s so meta and self referential that it doesn’t realize the hurt its causing for the people who love it. It won’t listen to me, it never goes to school… it just obsesses over the latest fads. Yesterday it was del.icio.us, today it’s Twitter, tomorrow it’ll be Squookee or fiz.zypo.op. It never settles down. Why can’t it be more like it’s cousins, Usenet or IRC? They have nice, stable lives.”
The Web, meanwhile, is unapologetic. “God, my dad is such a hater,” it stated in a recent press conference. “I mean, I’m totally great and everyone knows it. Where else can you get shit like this? Check this out — a Flash animation of Super Mario cruising for hookers to the tune of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” How about 645,000 images featuring dolphins, vaginas and lines from Back to the Future in various combinations? Whoops, hold on, someone just posted another picture of my nipples on Digg.”
Many believe that the Web’s problematic attitude started with the famous dot com bust at the start of the decade. “Before that, the Web was cocky, sure, but still relatively restrained,” said Andrews. “When the bubble burst, though, it was a tremendous blow to the Web’s psyche. Suddenly it was all ’social media’ this and ‘user generated content’ that. Since then, the Web has simply lost sight of any and all boundaries.”
Is there any hope left for the Web? Berners-Lee isn’t optimistic. “I used to think things might turn around as it grew up,” he said, “but things just keep going faster and faster. I just know that one of these days I’m going to find the Web coked out in a ditch somewhere, checking its Facebook wall on its iPhone with one hand, and pirating the complete set of Beavis and Butthead DVDs on its Vaio in the other. And on that day, I’ll simply walk away. It pains me, but I have a limit.”
The Web, on the other hand, has a brighter vision for the future. “Man, you can’t stop progress,” it stated. “Today, I’m all 2.0, right? But you know like, that Moore… uh, Metcalfe… Shir… uh, Shirky Boyd’s law? Yeah, like, everything is doubling, like… every second. So in like two years, man, it’s gonna be like — Web 2.0? Try Web Two Point Million. It’s gonna be all convergence, with dynamically generated sentient memes commenting on themselves, while the Hypersphere injects data fluid into all the media nodes hooked up to your noggin. Dude it’s gonna be great.”
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