For some bizarre reason I go away for the weekend and return to find that the only web site in the world that I cannot access through ADSL at home is http://www.greenflame.org. Yet I can when I dial-up with the same ISP. Very, very annoying. But why? And why now after almost 3 years of using ADSL to access the site?

It’s not the iBook because the WinXP Acer and Kim’s Win2K HP laptop also have the problem, and I’ve tried various browsers too. It’s not the server because it’s visible on dial-up and I can FTP in to the site and ping it. Just web connections.

Can’t see any restrictions in the ADSL router. Why on the 24th Nov did it work and then on the 29th die a death? Web server logs don’t show my IP traffic even getting there.

Argh!

Update: Well, it’s definitely just me. Others can post comments (thanks, Paul) and a variety of other people using different ISPs have viewed the site just fine. And it’s only port 80 by the looks of it. I can view pages if I use ports 8080 or 443 (SSL). Bizarre.

Nice summary of a talk given on the influence of Google (and like) upon the identification of critical and helpful knowledge, particularly within the academic world, over at planet telex » Blog Archive » The University of Google – Speed Searching and the Killing of Knowledge. A problem that I come across regularly when marking essays. Seems that the essay question is typed into Google and the first few web sites retrieved crop up in several essays. Darren cites a list of criteria that the speaker, Tara Brabazon, gives to students to constructively educate them in using sources like Google. These include:

• Who authored the document?
• What expertise does the author have?
• What evidence is provided?
• What genre is the document, is it a journal piece, academic paper, polemic or a blog post?
• Is the site funded by an institution?

I talk about the use of internet/electronic resources to students whenever I teach but on the whole it doesn’t seem to have that much affect upon a significant minority. Even citing Internet resources is poorly done. Now however, I think I’ll develop a more constructive strategy.

See also: Greenflame: Google Sociology.

I’ve been a big fan of Doctor Who ever since I learnt to hide behind the couch and I really enjoyed the recently rebooted series. So when I saw that Damaris have just published Back In Time: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who I was intrigued. The sample text they have online looks like it has possibilities so I’ll add it to the following list of books to acquire at some time:

• What would Buffy do? The Slayer’s Guide to Spiritual Life by Jana Riess (Jossey-Bass, 2004).
• Finding Serenity: Anti-heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly by Jane Espenson (BenBella Books | Smart Pop Books, 2005).
• Interacting with Babylon 5: Fan Performances in a Media Universe by Kurt Lancaster (Uni. Texas Press, 2001).

Any suggestions to add for Star Trek, Stargate and others gratefully received. (See also: Greenflame: Battlestar memories and Greenflame: On the bookshelf)

The Slouch!Buster looks interesting. I wonder if anyone imports them here?

The Nadachair and Slouchbuster are based on the ropes that Tibetan monks use to sit upright for hours on end when meditating. The monks use these ropes between their knees and back to help them stay upright. The Slouchbuster is a small, much more elegant version than ropes. The Nadachair is a larger version.

Tim finally publishes his thoughts on the interaction of RSS and commenting on blogs. Namely that the more RSS and its analogues (e.g. Atom) are used to “consume” blogs the less one is inclined to comment directly on the blog being read. A quick skim and if it’s interesing a link from your own blog to it. Thus Tim asserts a “death of comments” theology, so to speak. See SansBlogue : Web 2.0 and the Evils of RSS. (I’m sure I’ve talked to him about this before but it’s nice to see him put it down in some concrete form.)

One of the things that initially attracted me to blogging, both as an author and reader, was the interaction based around comments and trackbacks. Now spam dealt to the trackbacks on this blog but the comments are still there because I think it’s important for the opportunity to add another voice to be there. But with the advent of RSS aggregation I think that’s a thing of the past – so many blogs, so little time. Software such as Carnglas Software’s iFeedPod only increased the point of aggregation being getting the information/data down to me not creating a two-way or multi-way network.

Personally, I think things like RSS are brilliant at getting subscriptions to content like news and podcasts, but I’m still not convinced that it’s the best way to read blogs. There’s something about going to the front page of a blog and seeing what else has changed (comments, polls etc) apart from just the next post.

Anyway, over to Tim’s blog to post a comment…

Was writing up a section on immersion as one of the distinctive approaches to VR (one of the seven that Michael Heim identifies) and came across these articles. Love the VirtuaSphere (but not sure if I could carry off the Lycra body suit). The VR small and taste articles are also interesting but I think I’d need to see and try out the taste one. Anyway, here are the links:

• gizmag Article: The VirtuSphere: full body immersion Virtual reality at last.
• gizmag Article: First human robotic arm implant.
• New Scientist Breaking News – Smell cannon targets virtual reality users.
• New Scientist Breaking News – Virtual reality conquers sense of taste

Saw this a while back in my copy of Robo Sapiens but there some interesting comments here on robot-assisted surgery. See : American Heart Association: Robotic surgery-stenting combo opens coronary arteries, speeds recovery.

Robo Sapiens robot surgery photo by Peter Menzel here.

Kevin Kelly compiled a list of his 100 must see documentaries and documentary series which includes “Hell House“. The latter being a documentary about a church that creates a “virtual Hell” to scare people into the Kingdom.

Full list at Kevin Kelly — Cool Tools — True Films.

Emergent Authorship: Player as Co-Creator by Celia Pearce on interactive computer games – especially massive multiplayer online games and “God-games”.

From a cultural perspective, the ramifications of these new forms of entertainment is nothing short of revolutionary. Through these experiences, the consumer is thus transformed into consumer/producer and consumption itself becomes an act of production. Where previously there was a clear boundary between producer and consumer of content, this boundary continues to become more blurry. The role of the “author” in this context is, rather than creating content, to create context. This then invites the audience create or co-create the content, in essence, to entertain each other with their unique way of “playing the story.” Karl Marx said “seize the means of production.” What is interesting here is that not that users are seizing the means of production, but that in a sense, capitalism has found a sort of compromise in the production/consumption hybrid.

Published in a more polished form in: Celia Pearce, “Emergent authorship: the next interactive revolution”, Computers & Graphics, Volume 26, Issue 1, February 2002, Pages 21-29.

Related to that last post some more commentary on religion and gaming – hopefully the author will draw out his assertion of “a strong relationship between consumption and faith.” See both Water Cooler Games – iBelieve – social commentary goes meta and the related Serious Games for Religion and Religious Institutions.