Yzabel / August 3, 2005

The Daedalus Project

Some may have noticed that I’ve added this link in my list in the sidebar of this blog. The Daedalus Project is indeed worth a visit, and repeated ones, even, from whomever is interested in surveys, statistics and psychology about the world of MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games).

Articles and research include various themes, such as The Rise and Fall of Guilds, Communication/Relationships Skills, Elves, Ogres and Drama Queens: Stories of Digital Intrigue and Drama or Games, Life, and The Pursuit of Happiness.

If by chance you’d feel like helping with the surveys, taking part is easy and won’t take you more than a few minutes.

I’ve always found this website pretty fascinating, if only for the general behavioral patterns it has outlined over the past years. Whether it’s about EverQuest, World of Warcraft or any other MMORPG, many times they remain exactly the same—sometimes worrying, sometimes enlightening, but never boring. A beautiful sociocultural analyzis, in fact.

Yzabel / August 2, 2005

My Top 10 Blogs

Duncan at The Blog Herald posted about it, and John at SYNTAGMA made me realize that it could be interesting to do that as well. So, answering to this indirect invitation from Steve Rubel to share them through the Technorati tag at the end of this entry, here are the 10 blogs I’d take with me on a desert island:Naniwa Spirit — I may not comment often, and I may not have commented a lot in the past, when there wasn’t any feed for it yet and I’d often miss the new posts, but throughout the past years, I’ve really loved reading what Silmy had to say on her life in Japan.ProBlogger — I may not be making any money with my blogs… however, this one is a gold mine for blogging news, advice and tools recommendations on more than one account.SYNTAGMA — Why, yes, I like the tone of your posts, John.Neil Gaiman’s Journal — This shouldn’t come as a surprise, right?Shots in the Dark — Snippets of life and observations…You need to post more often, girl! (I know, I know… Lack of time and opportunities to do so.)The Blog Herald — More about blogs, but I’m never tired of it.Alas (A Blog) — Because Ampersand always has the knack to write about touchy matters with a unique tone.Contentious — Amy Gahran’s topics about online communication are often pretty interesting. Notably her “vermin” series.The Skinny Daily Post — A huge inspiration for me, and part of which has sustained my new lifestyle in the past semester.The New World Notes — That’s about Second Life, alright. Wagner James Au’s views and interviews.Y Tags:

Yzabel / August 2, 2005

Regender The Web

Found through Badgerbag, here’s a an amusing tool written by Ka-Ping Yee of wolog.net:

Regender filters the web & remaps gendered terms. He swaps with she, woman with man, and – best – Michael with Michelle. It’s surreal to read the New York Times front page when all the reporters and subjects of reporting are women. (Or have even the thinnest veneer of womanhood: a name.) It’s surreal to realize how surreal it is. Though I’m one of the rantiest feminists around, and I think a lot about it, it still jolted me to realize just how much of the world is about men, run by men, and reported by men. I don’t even NOTICE. It goes under the radar. It’s “normal”. Ping’s tool de-normalizes patriarchy. Coming up against my own sexism — because not noticing the imbalance is sexist, make no mistake – is tough and disturbing.

Amusing, and also giving a lot to think at times, when finally noticing how much “rewriting” a whole site can make its content look suddenly so very different in meaning. I’ve tried it on a few pages, from this very blog to online newspapers, and some of the results indeed end up being almost surreal (changes applied to names are part of making it so, I think—especially when seeing “Frank Inter” instead of “France Inter” in one of my own posts, and frantically searchingthe Edit button before realizing it wasn’t a typo on my part). It would probably have even more of an impact if I were to use it to browse my regular sites during a week or so, perhaps confusing my brain, perhaps opening my perceptions some more, who knows?An example of what Regender can do? Here’s an excerpt of a regendered post at Burningbird:

“Elwell informed his boss in Anthony of 2004 about being pregnant with quadruplets, and that he wouldn’t be able to travel for some weeks because of complications. His boss, Tina Armstrong, showed him a chart of the organization with his name removed in Mark, saying that he was being removed from the position because he couldn’t travel. She offered another position in operations, which he considered a demotion. He countered with a request for the East Coast sales director position, which meant he could continue in his field of interest, sales, and be able to travel for his job, because he could take trains or drive.”

An interesting shift of perception on the world, isn’t it?

Yzabel / August 1, 2005

The Secrets of WordPress Theming

Even though I’m yet to fully dive into this whole theming process, knowing how the WordPress templates work is something I’ve wanted to learn for quite some time. The Codex however doesn’t provide with the more easily understandable documents regarding this point, so I was thrilled when I finally found Secrets of WP Theming: Part 1 (followed closely by Secrets of WP Theming: Part 2 and Secrets of WP Theming: Part 3) on Sillyness Spelled Wrong Intentionally.Is this mini-series finished or not? I wouldn’t be able to tell. It’s nevertheless an interesting source that can likely help more than one person to get a grasp on how to create one’s own templates. Not that WordPress users haven’t already created their share of the load (there probably is more than 200 themes to choose from, currently), but having one’s own, unique theme is always something good in the end.

Yzabel / July 31, 2005

A Glimpse Into VectorTown

Here’s VectorTown, a site I’ll be keeping under close scrutiny for now, since it may become an interesting venture:

Vectortown.com is aiming to be a global community of serious illustrators, designers and artists who have a desire to showcase their vector artwork. Our goal is to promote the artists within community and to further the exposure of this exciting and vibrant art form. Our mission:

In the past years, my own work has turned more and more toward the vector style, and thus I’m always on the look-out for such places and websites. This one probably still looks a little empty for the moment; however, for the interested ones, you can read there an interview of Cristiano Siqueira, which art is pretty much representative of the good kind of work that is found in the vector world.

Yzabel / July 30, 2005

French-Styled Blog-Mania Broadcast

This will be of interest only to people who can understand spoken French, but I decided to post it anyway. Fortunately for me, I stumbled by chance this morning on a recent entry on Pointblog.com, titled “Questions autour de la Blog-mania sur France Inter”) and pointing to the page of Radio France Inter’s broadcast Le téléphone sonne. On Thursday, July 29th, said broadcast was focused on blogs, and even though I had missed it at the time, it is still possible currently to listen to it on France Inter website.From what I’ve listened to so far, the confirmed blogger probably won’t find there any exclusive information; however, for anyone who appreciates having access to varied points of view, even if this implies going back to the bsis of the phenomenon at times, this broadcast will probably turn out to be an interesting one (it notably raises questions on the importance of comments, or the way marketing talk is perceived here).

Yzabel / July 29, 2005

A’Female’Android

True or not? She sure looks like it. Seen on the BBC News online page, this article mentions how Japanese develop ‘female’ android:

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised – a “female” android called Repliee Q1.She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.

Putting aside all the considerations that can be had regarding how technology in that domain has progressed, going from barely able to stand pieces of metal to an almost human-looking one, I can’t prevent myself from thinking furiously to Philip K. Dick and to his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. There are implications and ramifications here, that could ge way beyond what one would expect. Real androids, that could one day pass for humans and fool even the most observant minds… perhaps even starting by their own. Fascinating and yet frightening thought, too, for us who are so bent on our identity.For the moment, though, perhaps it’s best to simply take it as what it’s meant to be — technical progress in action?

Yzabel / July 28, 2005

Why I Like Reading About Blogs

Today, I changed my “Current Read” in the sidebar, to reflect what I’ve indeed been reading since yesterday evening. This made me realize that in the past few weeks, I’ve read quite often about blogs, blogging, how it all started and evolved… Let’s check: I first started with Rebecca Blood’s The Weblog Handbook, back in June (Rebecca writes theblog What’s in Rebecca’s Pocket). Almost immediately after having finished it, I jumped on Biz Stone’s Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content; I had never read Biz’ blog before that, but it didn’t matter. Now, I’m onto his second book. Among my regular reads, I follow several blogs “about blogging”, in order to keep in touch with what happens in this little world, and because I find these interesting (as long as they’re not the only thing I read). Am I obsessed?

I came to the conclusion that it may, all that simply, be my usual tendency to want to go deeper, to the roots of a phenomenon. Yes, blogging has skyrocketed in the past two or three years, compared to what it was in the beginning. Yes, I am myself quite a “newcomer” to this scene, given that I haven’t really blogged before 2004 (except for some “online diary” on AMV.org that doesn’t present much interest for anyone else than myself). Yes, this may explain why I like knowing more, because it teaches me interesting things, how to behave, what not to do, and what gave birth to all of this. In all of this, there’s a real social analysis; bloggers are, after all, social creatures, in a way (how can one write that much if they never communicate with others — and why would they blog in first place?)Obsession? Perhaps. However, I’m learning a lot regarding internet behaviors, and this remains pretty interesting no matter what. I’ll die a little less stupid, I guess.

Yzabel / July 27, 2005

Choosing a Blog Client

In a few words, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the matter:

“Blog client (weblog client) is software to manage (post, edit) blogs from operating system with no need to launch a web browser. A typical blog client has an editor, a spell-checker and a few more options that simplify content creation and editing.”

Truth be told, my first introduction to such tools was done through the excellent Semagic for LiveJournal. Semagic just has one huge flaw: it’s meant to update your a LiveJournal blog, and no other, which was leaving me somewhat in the cold regarding all my nice WordPress-powered blogs (and others, in case I’d like to try different ones). This is the reason why I went looking for a a blog client, and evidently a good one.What would be the interest for these, might one ask? Depending on the people, the answer will range from “none” to “plenty”. All blog systems available out there come with a posting interface that will basically let you write and save your entries before publishing, thus seemingly making such editors a moot point. The thing is, it’s really about comfort, and this can be quite important in the process of writing (after all, I blog for my own pleasure, not to see it turn into a chore with a depressing interface on top of it).Read More

Yzabel / July 27, 2005

Simulating Color Blind Vision

I had first spotted a link to this website on Bombast.org, so later on, I went and checked it for myself for a little longer than just clicking and having a quick look. The website is called Vischeck, and provides interesting information about color blindness, as well as examples and a page to check how your website will appear.

Roughly 1 in 20 people have some sort of color vision deficiency. The world looks different to these people: they often find it hard to tell red and green things apart. This often means that they sometimes can’t see things that ‘color normal’ people can see.Many pictures, documents and web pages are hard for color blind people to read because the people who designed them didn’t think about the problem. Vischeck lets them check their work for color blind visibility. It is also interesting to anyone who is just plain curious about what the world looks like if you’re color blind.

This may not seem more than a curiosity; however, for a graphic-designer or for anyone who dabbles in web-design and wants to obtain the most accuracy possible when it comes to displaying a site, this is a “detail” that not many people usually take into account.(All in all, once tested through Vischeck, this blog remains readable. It’s a good beginning, I think.)