>> HARD NEWS <<
down a fashionable mews
Places may be limited at next week's post-Emerging Tech
catchup in London, but the fun certainly shouldn't be, with a
mix of new faces - TOM ARMITAGE, musing "Is Controller Design
Killing Creativity in Videogames?", plus DAN "geobloggers.com"
CATT providing co-ordinated coverage of SXSW Interactive -
amid some old familiars: NICK AND DOMINIC LUDLAM unveiling an
all-new version (and beta-test update?) of their Promise.TV
gigantic hard-drive PVR, and YOZ GRAHAME proudly showing you
round the metaphorical swings and roundabouts of "The Ning
Playground - A Springboard for New Social Software". And maybe
one or two special guests as well, if there's time. It's free
to attend (from 6.15pm Thu 2006-03-23, 01zero-one, Hopkins
Street, London W1F 0HS), making it all the more vital that you
promptly RSVP to the address on the official page. Or, if you
can't make it till later, from about 9pm onwards we'll be in a
nearby pub that offers both "megabytes" and "nanobytes" on the
menu, hopefully around 1,000,000 and 0.000000001 times the
size of a normal bar snack, respectively.
http://www.01zero-one.co.uk/insync_events.htm
- yes, "Technology 2.0" seemed like a funny name at the time
http://www.nanobytebar.com/map.html
- "femto-fries" and "kilopints" would round it out nicely
http://etech06.ning.com/
- stuff they "wouldn't let" Yoz talk about in this one
http://www.savetherhino.org/php/products.php?id=482
- sadly, same night as UKP10 to save Douglas Adams' rhino
http://www.interactiveknowhow.co.uk/events/insync_01.php
- or "Digital Utopias", same time, same place, a week later
Conceivably continuing the theme of "sheltered" soup kitchens
for the capital's cyber-homeless, that OPEN RIGHTS GROUP are
endorsing this weekend's CORY DOCTOROW'S COPYFIGHTERS' DRUNKEN
BRUNCH AND TALKING SHOP (brunch from 11am-1pm at Stanhope
Centre, Stanhope Place, London W2 2HH; "excursion" to Speakers
Corner from 1pm, both free), where you can eat, drink, and
learn how record labels all have "obsolete business models"
and therefore must be destroyed. Our favourite counterpoint to
which is currently inspired by blogger James Boardwell: big
media is a bit like pre-invasion Iraq - famously dictatorial,
sitting on a vast stockpile of desirable resources - making it
the duty of all right-thinking web-users (or "second
superpower", if you will) to liberate these resources purely
by force of technological superiority, despite the lack of any
clear plan for what the old regime ought to be replaced with.
http://www.craphound.com/000615.html
- ORG looking for office space from mid-April; please mail
tips@spesh.com if you have two spare desks and broadband
http://openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/index.php/Main_Page#ORG_Events
- Manchester gets an Open Rights visit, most likely 2nd May
http://www.technogoggles.com/technogoggles/2006/02/tv_to_go_but_go.html
- but with the boogeyman of DRM instead of WMD?
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
Even by their usual enigmatic standards, details remain
sketchy about this weekend's DORKFEST LONDON (8pm-midnight Sat
2006-03-18, 1pm-6pm Sun, Limehouse Town Hall, London E14 7HA,
most likely free). But we get the impression that the Saturday
evening will feature "performance type pieces" from the
offbeat electronic-ish artists' community, then Sunday may be
more of an "open mic" free-for-all science fair, culminating
in a "Guru Nerd's Question Time" between about 2 and 4pm in
the company of James "prawn sandwich clock" Larsson, Mike
"electricstuff.co.uk" Harrison, and NTK's own "Dave Green".
Email tips@spesh.com (with "NTK question" in the subject line)
if there are any matters of contemporary concern you'd like
this maverick "brains trust" to tackle, though please note
that any answers provided will be for entertainment purposes
only, and should not replace the advice of your GP.
http://www.dorkfest.org.uk/
- Electric Mike also demoing "spark-o-phone" on the Saturday
http://www.takeawayfestival.com/31lgiles.html
- Jeremijenko's robots let loose in London, Friday March 31st
http://www.lovebytes.org.uk/2006/
- and next week, the annual Lovebytes festival in Sheffield
>> ANTI-MEMES <<
there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/
"alternatively, to hover over our faces, drop us an email":
http://www.gaffertape.com/hazard.php ... presumably in the
style of Tom Binns' zany "hospital radio" act. Presumably:
http://topicaljokes.squarespace.com/twisted-news-jokes/ ...
this month's ostensibly "e-democracy in action" Google goofs:
http://google.com/search?q=%22results+of+the+ballet%22+vote ,
http://google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22sign+the+partition%22 ,
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2224%2F7+356+days+a+year%22 ,
http://www.google.co.uk/search?&q=%22racial+epitaphs%22 , and
famed for its stories on "Rogue Centurion", lawmakers battling
new kinds of crime on the modern streets of "Mega Londinium":
http://www.google.com/search?q=comic+200AD ... top Photoshop:
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/060302/ids_photos_ts/r3439378870.jpg
... pro-celebrity looky-likey - Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/events/2000-2009/2005/jan/npevent-8fc-5c7-55c
vs skeptical Moonbase Alpha science officer Victor Bergman:
http://web.axelero.hu/arrakis/space1999/alpha/series/ser_bergman.jpg
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
The skies begin to boil; Nature collapses into the screaming
Void. And, finally, someone writes a decent open source GUI
testing and automation library. DOGTAIL is a Python library
for anything that supports the accessibility framework
AT-SPI - which means, um, GNOME. (But KDE soon.) With it you
can use procedural or OOPy Python to drive almost any Gnome
app, plus Open-Office, and Mozilla-based apps like Epiphany
(so you can automate web and test applications too). Driving
code is ridiculously tight: you can automatically kick up a
browser, enter a form, and rip out the resulting text with a
just a few lines. It can drive multiple apps with all your
hands tied behind your back. It can search out applications
based on their package name, not the binary. It can send
keystrokes to anything you damn well want. Your GUI is about
to become posessed with dozens of your own private bots.
http://people.redhat.com/zcerza/dogtail/
- OBEY ME! OBEY ME, my fork-ed children!
http://people.redhat.com/zcerza/dogtail/media.html
- you'd think they'd use this to automate the screencasts too
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV SPECIAL>> We never did get round to making a techno track
that sampled John Thaw saying "That's what's really 'wicked',
Lewis" or "It's The Hallelujah Chorus, conducted by Sir Adrian
Boult!" in Danny Boyle's pre-"Shallow Grave" 1992 rave episode
of INSPECTOR MORSE (3.05pm, Sat, ITV1)... "Who are the real
monsters - zombies, or Christopher Eccleston's power-crazed
army?", ponders Boyle's 28 DAYS LATER (10.15pm, Sat, C4)...
while, half-way through both series, we're starting to prefer
"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers/ Midwich Cuckoos" clone
INVASION (8pm, Sun, C4) over "boy and his monster" nonsense
SURFACE (6.35pm, Sat; 8pm, Tue, ITV2), not least because the
latter clashes with the extended prime-time edition of folk-
probability-analysis foolhardiness DEAL OR NO DEAL (7.15pm,
Sat, C4): http://donduk.blogspot.com/ ...
Over on the BBC, LITTLE SHOPPING HORRORS (8pm, Mon, BBC3)
promises a look at "pester power", apparently as it relates to
video games... despite the efforts of Nick "Spaced" Frost and
and Nick "Nathan Barely" Burns, we confidently predict that
MAN STROKE WOMAN (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2) will be hailed as the
worst sub-"Spoons" sketch show of the decade... and is it just
us, or is THE APPRENTICE (9pm, Wed, BBC2) using all those
outside shots of Canary Wharf to try and create the impression
that that's where "the boardroom" is, though when candidates
finally are fired, they're often seen in front of Amstrad's
Brentwood House, which is obviously in Brentwood, Essex
http://www.amstrad.com/about/location.html ...?
But, although they've ditched "Dream On" and "The Larry
Sanders Show", ITV4 remains our favourite Freeview channel
with a "4" in its name, this week debuting the 1970s live-
action series of PLANET OF THE APES (6pm, Sun, ITV4) -
hopefully in a more rational order than they've managed so far
with UFO (7pm, Sat, ITV4) or SPACE: 1999 (7pm, Sun, ITV4)...
sadly, Kevin Smith's CLERKS: THE ANIMATED SERIES (10pm, Wed,
ITV4) never re-attains the heights of last week's "finished by
the Korean animators" opener - showing in a taboo-busting
double-bill with eating-disorders sitcom STARVED (10pm, Wed,
ITV4), which previously featured the lead character crawling
around the floor of a crowded colonic irrigation waiting room,
with a jet of "water" fountaining out of his, well, colon...
>> SMALL PRINT <<
Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that
happened last month or might happen next month. You can read it
on Friday afternoon or print it out then take it home if you have
nothing better to do. It is compiled by NTK from stuff they get sent.
Registered at the Post Office as
"Mike Butcher borrowed our slogan..."
http://mbites.com/web_2_wave_or_bubble
"...now Bruce Sterling's borrowing it back"
http://google.com/search?q=Viridian+00459+%22stole+our+revolution%22
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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