The Latest from Boing Boing

Automated "robot" information booths in the London Underground, 1933

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 05:27 AM CDT

Proof that the London Undergound has been in decline since the 1930s: today, automation in the tube is about Oyster Cards, which track riders without their consent or control -- but back then, tube automation was "self-service robot information booths" that looked like carny tintype machines.

Twirling a dial helps subway riders find their way, at a self-service information booth just opened in London, England. To inquire how to reach any point in the city, the traveler sets the dial according to a printed list of instructions. The device then informs him of the place's location, the exact fare required, and the number of the platform from which the appropriate train leaves.

Robot Guides Subway Rider In London (Jul, 1933)

Plushie Kali goddess

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 02:21 AM CDT

BB reader Sanjay Patel says,

"You kindly mentioned my dorky book (Little India) on Boing Boing a while ago. Thank you! I thought you might be interested in what me and my old art school friend Leeanna cooked up. Hopefully it makes you Ghee Happy."

Kali, Goddess of Death (Leanna's Thread)

CCTV wall-decals

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 01:50 AM CDT

WallFor's "We're Not Watching" CCTV wall-decals are a nice little commentary on ubiquitous surveillance. We're Not Watching (Thanks, Liam!)

Update: Liam sez, "I created the coupon code, 'BOINGBOING' to give people 10% off their orders."

Could official Beijing 2008 Olympics screensavers contain malware? (update)

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 02:49 AM CDT

(UPDATE: In two words, probably not. It appears that the files currently being served from the Olympics 2008 website likely do not contain malware. However, one aspect of the testimonial below still can't quite be explained. Detailed findings at the end of this post, from a security researcher who kindly looked into this for us. -- XJ)

Continuing in the thread of China/Tibet/malware-related posts, Boing Boing reader Bruce Satow tells us:

I'm a Systems Administrator at a large university and I think I may of found something important, but not sure, but I think it is worth reporting. One of my friends said that it would be a good idea maybe to post this information somewhere that is popular, like boing boing.
I'm a big olympics fan so I often check the official Beijing 2008 olympics page.

One of the sections is called the "fun page."

This page has wallpapers and screensavers for your computer. I have reason to believe that the screensavers are keystroke logging programs hidden inside the Flash animation.

On my Windows XP workstation, I run Symantec Corporate Anti-virus, Zone Alarm Pro, as well as Spybot manually. I do many scans and security checks to make sure that my computer is never infected or compromised because of the type of work that I do.

Today I put on a wallpaper and installed one of the screensaver. The one I installed is called "The Spring of Beijing". It is a flash based screensaver.

I set my screensaver to autolock the console so when it is running, you have to type in a password to unlock the screen. I had left my workstation unattended to do some work on another computer and when I came back to my computer, the screensaver was active and running. Normally, I just hit a key or move my mouse and the screensaver stops and then the login prompt appears requesting for my password. However, this time the screensaver was still running, but I could not interrupt it. So I did a cntrl-alt-del to stop the screensaver and I noticed that my Zone Alarm had gone off. A message balloon came up saying that the FlashForge Screensaver has a keylogger type program running and it had blocked access to the internet.

Then I thought -- how clever. You have to type in your password to disable the screensaver, so basically it was sending the password and other information somewhere.

I did an anti-virus scan with the latest defs and a spybot scan with the latest updates, but it did not detect anything. I am not a Flash programmer so I really can't validate my findings. I figure there are probably thousands of people who have downloaded this screensaver, and if they are not running some type of security program such as Zone Alarm Pro, it would go completely unnoticed and undetected. I am hoping that you guys might know someone who could dissect the screensaver and validate my findings. I hope that I am wrong about this, but somehow I feel that my finding is correct. I just don't know enough about Flash programming to investigate it further.

Someone with some time might be able to setup a computer on an isolated network and to monitor packets coming from a Win XP pro computer with that screensaver installed to see what the heck it is doing. I normally don't get excited about things like this, but I thought it maybe too important to just ignore.

Regarding the broader trend of malware and trojans which are attached in some way to politically-charged memes or spoofed origins, Infowar Monitor editor Greg Walton (whose related account I just blogged here) adds:

Such tactics are not only political weapons. The start of the Beijing Olympics last week kicked off a slew of malicious internet activity. Some are relatively indiscriminate – using malicious software embedded in innocent websites, often of news organisations with audience numbers boosted by their sports coverage, which then infects the visitor's computer. Some are more sophisticated.
MessageLabs, a security company, detected a bogus email sent to at least 19 national sporting organisations that purported to be International Olympic Committee information on media plans for the Games, but was actually carrying a trojan which takes control of the PC and scans all files and networks to steal information.
See this related news story in the Independent.

UPDATE: Security researcher Maarten Van Horenbeeck, who is based in Belgium, looked at the file and website in question for us, and says:

Actually, after a Flash is converted with FlashForge, it is turned into a regular binary with SCR extension, so it's not really Flash anymore.
I downloaded the screensaver from the URL Bruce listed, and installed it on a test system. The file itself does not appear to contain anything malicious. What I believe has happened is that because the binaries themselves are packed (the installer with a really rare program, and the screensaver itself with Armadillo), the behavioral detection solution he used triggered "earlier" than usual on the key logging code. Generally, these solutions maintain a score per process, and if a minimum score is exceeded, alerts start getting triggered. Packed binaries generally increase the score quite a bit. The key logging code itself may as such have been relatively benign and consist of a typical screensaver function call.
What I cannot explain, though, is the blocked connection. The binary which I received when downloading The Spring of Beijing at about 23h00 PST this evening, did not make a connection out at any point in time. Either this was caused by another process, or Bruce may have received another binary (for one or the other reason, which can include just about anything from the site having been compromised to DNS spoofing at his ISP or just a false positive of his anti virus, ...).
The screensaver as currently served from the site is not malicious.

Architecture generated from spam

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 12:52 AM CDT

Alex Dragulescu's "Spam Architecture" project designs virtual houses by mapping the content of incoming spam to structural and decorative elements: "he images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures." Spam Architecture (via Cribcandy)

HOWTO Tap a phone line

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 12:49 AM CDT

This Wired How-To Wiki article on tapping phone lines is a good primer on what actually happens when someone puts a physical tap on your line. Of course, there are lots of invisible ways to virtually tap your line: in the US, the Federal CALEA statute mandates that phone-switches have tapping back-doors that only cops are supposed to have the passwords for (yeah, right), and the digital PBX in your office is just as likely to have a vulnerability as the PC on your desk.

The Tap: With an access point in mind, you should have an idea of the necessary equipment. Using an old lineman's handset (also called a "butt set") or building a "beige box" are the best starters. In short, the lineman's handset is a tool used by repairmen to test a line for activity. It's little more than a trussed up wall phone with a small dialing pad and alligator clips for tapping directly into a line. A beige box is just the DIY, 133t cousin of the lineman's handset. Of course, if price and jail time are no concern, there are a number of other options -- but for the sake of ease, we'll stick with these.

Tap a Phone Line

(Image: Trussell)

Update on China/Tibet cyberattacks (and Russia/Georgia), and call for testimonials.

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 12:45 AM CDT

Earlier today I received my first-ever bona fide piece of fake-Tibetan malware, which appears to have originated in China.

Perhaps my name is on some list somewhere of journalists who've covered stories related to the Tibetan human rights movement.

Screengrab at left, and click for larger size which shows the message in entirety.

Also on this same day, I received an interesting update from Greg Walton, a SecDev Fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto who also edits the Infowar Monitor.

He's currently in Hong Kong doing pro bono work for the advocacy group Human Rights in China, briefing them on security issues and monitoring systems during a sensitive time -- the Olympics, recent unrest in Tibetan and Uighur regions, and other factors.

Greg has been observing some interesting, troubling malware and internet-attack trends of late, related to the Tibetan independence movement.

He tells Boing Boing:

Later today I head to Dharamsala, India to work with the Dalai Lama's I.T. staff. Both HRIC and the Tibetans have been subjected to sophisticated targeted malware attacks via email attachments on an industrial scale, particularly this year. Attacks on the Tibetans spiked during the uprising in March (increases of 300%) and Chinese human rights NGOs have witnessed an increase in the run up to the Olympics. We've also seen defacements of websites and the injection of malicious code into Tibet.com and press freedom organisation ,Reporters sans frontières web assets in the last few days.
To give you a sense of my client's day-to-day struggle with targeted attacks, I'd like to relate the details of the case I'm investigating today.
Yesterday, at 1000hrs GMT, Human Rights in China released an important press release including an open letter from Beijing house church activist Hua Huiqi (华惠棋) concerning his abduction and intimidation because he wanted to attend the same church service that the Chinese government invited U.S. President George Bush and his family to attend.

At 0150 GMT - 16 hours later - the following morning, a hacker circulated a slightly altered version of the press release to C-POL [an elite polsci listserver where China-watchers hang out) with a MS Word document attached, the Word document was in fact a trojan, that I identified as Trojan-Dropper.MSWord.Agent.cn [according to FSecure's database].

HRIC contacted SANS researcher, Maarten Van Horenbeeck who promptly analysed the trojan to identify the control server. Maarten found that the sample will drops a trojan that connects to the following control servers: 60.250.139.52, 210.177.225.209 and 58.147.1.42, all using HTTPS.

Although we have found that in 70% of the cases the control server is located in mainland China, in this case the first server was based in Taiwan (Chunghwa Telecom), whereas the second and third were in Hong Kong and Thailand respectively. The last server, hosted in Thailand was also used in previous attacks.

To date, we've kept these attacks to ourselves, but we'd now like to raise awareness about them in the wider Internet community - hence sharing this with Boing Boing.

If you have any information that you think might help our investigations - we'd be very happy to hear from you. If you or your organisation find yourself under attack in this manner, plese get in touch. More updates to follow.

Meanwhile, I'm coordinating monitoring of the Russia-Georgia cyberwar for IWMP. We have tech experts at the Citizen Lab verifying reports of DoS attacks and our research partners on the ground in the region are sending us hourly reports.

(Thanks, Oxblood)

Old time record enthusiast rips and posts thousands of 78RPM tracks

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 12:18 AM CDT

Wired's Listening Post blog has a great feature on Cliff Bolling, a 78RPM record enthusiast who has digitized and posted nearly 4,000 old vinyl tracks, complete with cartridge hiss and pops.

Like the early US recordings, many of these are fairly noisy. But to clean up the hiss and delete the pops using digital techniques would lessen the impact and appeal of hearing such old recordings played over a global network through tiny, great sounding speakers.
Tn450_rs_stylus As for the equipment he has used for this formidable project, Bolling told us his approach was decidedly old school, in fitting fashion. "I have an old 1950s Gerard turntable that I bought at an estate sale for two and a half bucks, and it's got a GE (General Electric) VR cartridge in it, which is just excellent for playing 78s."
The copyright situation surrounding some of these songs is as murky as their sound quality. But as with the music's political content, Bolling said he has yet to receive a copyright-related complaint about the recordings being online. Everyone who has come across the recordings seems happy that they've reappeared, or at the very least, doesn't care one way or the other -- somewhat refreshing, in these times of copyright lawsuits and name calling.

One Man's Quest to Digitize and Publicize Rare Vinyl

Grateful Dead lyrics cannot be quoted in children's book

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 12:11 AM CDT

Kembrew sez, "The blog Poetry & Popular Culture just covered a copyright conflict involving the Grateful Dead and J.T. Dutton's young adult novel 'Freaked,' which HarperTeen is publishing early next year. The novel is about a 15 year-old kid obsessed with the Grateful Dead."

In her original manuscript, Dutton had opened every chapter with a quotation from a Dead song, titling each chapter with the title of the song being quoted from. When it came time to publish, though, Ice 9 Publishing—which somehow owns the rights to all of the Dead's songs—wouldn't grant permission to Dutton to use all of the lyrics she wanted to use. Ultimately, Dutton was allowed to quote from 'Dire Wolf' and was given leave to use brief phrasings from the songs here and there within the text (as with 'She can dance a Cajun rhythm...' in the preceding passage).
So in short, because of the exigencies of copyright law and the concerns of Ice 9, the 'Freaked' that you'll see at the store is not the 'Freaked' that Dutton had in mind. But never fear! Yours truly has managed to acquire what is now believed to be the list of quotations Dutton wanted to use as chapter epigraphs in the original book but was not allowed to use in the final version. Here they are. And remember, you heard it first here:
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung . . ."

J.T. Dutton's "Freaked" (Thanks, Kembrew!)

Traffic cams bring in $250,000/month in a town with a $4.6 million budget

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 12:09 AM CDT

Why do towns install speeding cams? Is it because robotic, inflexible, perfect enforcement of every single infraction of the speed-limit makes the streets safer? Or because they can raise $250,000 a month in fines for small town budgets?

In Chevy Chase, for example, where speeding tickets brought in about $8,000 monthly before cop cams, "We are routinely bringing in approximately a quarter-million dollars per month," Geoffrey Biddle, Chevy Chase's village manager, told his Board of Managers in February.
For a community of 2,000 with an annual budget of $4.6 million, that's a bonanza. What's more, because locals know enough to evade the cop cams, the village's new revenue mostly comes from outsiders, rather like a commuter tax.
Nor are Chevy Chase's big gains unique. Washington's dozen cop cams have taken in more than $200 million since 2001. Scottsdale's six freeway cameras took in $17 million in 2006.

Cop cameras don't just catch speeders, they raise cash (Thanks, Marilyn!

Deported from China for documenting Free Tibet protests -- IOC censors YouTube videos of protests

Posted: 13 Aug 2008 12:00 AM CDT

Fred sez, "My friend and fellow-NY-techer Noel 'No-Neck' Hidalgo was deported from China last week. He got rounded up as one of the people documenting the 'Free Tibet' protests in Tienanmen square. His Facebook regarding his deportation have also been censored. I've just posted his video and information about his Facebook updates and also a discussion about the IOC censoring YouTube videos recorded in NYC of the Free Tibet protests." No-Neck, The Peoples Republic of China and Fair Use (Thanks, Fred!)

R. Kikuo Johnson poem comics

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 07:21 PM CDT

Fantagraphics' Eric Reynolds says:

R. Kikuo Johnson and the Poetry Foundation have teamed up to produce a two-color rendering of A.E. Stallings' poem, "Recitative." Lovely.

R. Kikuo Johnson is the author of a wonderful graphic novel I read last year called Night Fisher.
R. Kikuo Johnson poem comics

Photoshop cloned trees in Google Maps

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 07:05 PM CDT

From Google Maps, here's an obviously manipulated photo of some trees next to a golf course in the Netherlands. Is it common for the company that licenses its satellite photos to Google to alter images this way? The discussion in Photoshop Disasters offers up some theories. Google Maps: Unusually Similar Trees = Black Helicopters (Photoshop Disasters)

BBC documentary maker compares injections of THC and cannabidiol

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 06:47 PM CDT

From Mind Hacks:

I've uploaded a fascinating video clip where a TV presenter is intravenously injected with the active ingredients of cannabis as part of the BBC documentary Should I Smoke Dope?.
It's part of an experiment to compare the effects of intravenous THC and cannabidiol combined, with intravenous THC on its own. The mix of both gives the presenter a pleasant giggly high while THC on its own causes her to become desolate and paranoid.

Both are these are known to be key psychoactive ingredients in cannabis but the video is interesting as it is a reflection of the fact that THC has been most linked to an increased risk of developing psychosis while cannabidiol seems to have an antipsychotic effect.

Mainlining the active ingredients of cannabis (Mind Hacks)

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 05:37 PM CDT

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets we discovered Toastabags, designed to make grilled cheese in the toaster; a handy online calculator to help you determine your roof's solar energy harvesting potential; a clip-together lamp that looks like a T-Rex; a strappy underwater case for your iPhone or other MP3 players; Yet Another Netbook, the ECS G10IL; an iPhone/Touch dock that flips on its side for movie watching; a Corona typewriter bent into a waffle iron; and Lenovo's garguantuan W700 laptop that includes not only a quad-core processor but a built-in Wacom tablet. It gives me the vapors. Then, bastards: states wanting to tax digital downloads; donating to the EFF as an AT&T sin tax; Apple's refusal to refund App Store purchases/a> that they kill. The Olympics were pirated heavily. Two industrial robots were locked in a pantomimed melee. Bell Canada got a new logo. (It's nice.) Someone hides a flat-panel TV behind a two-way mirror. (Also nice!) Lifehacker's Adam Pash explains how easy it is to set up a multiroom music system using Apple gear. Someone invented a device that blocks the C-word. (Well, not really.) A forest-clearing stimpank tank carved spokes in the Tunguska impact. Deals were sorted. And most of all, Stephan Hawking was memorialized on black velvet.

Little Brother camerahead papercraft from Cubeecraft

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 03:06 PM CDT

Christopher from Cubeecraft (purveyors of fine cubic papercraft people) was so impressed with the poster that Pablo Defendini made for my novel Little Brother that he whipped up this fantastic little papercraft feller based on it.

I love that Defendini poster -- and this is the second awesome thing it's inspired (the first was the Camerahead protest in Seattle against the CCTVs in public parks). It's really turning into quite a little muse for a lot of peoples' creativity. Cubeecraft: Little Brother

Nostalgic look at old paperback anthologies of comics and humor mags

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 01:12 PM CDT

Derrick Bostrom writes about the vanishing joy of finding old paperback anthologies of comics and humor magazines at used bookstores and junk shops. He also links to a terrific set of cover scans from his collection.

I remember when I was twelve years old, finding a coverless copy of Kurtzman's "Trump" Number 2 from 1957, for probably no more than a dime (ten comics for a dollar, no doubt). The following year, when I became a Kurtzman fanatic, I was astounded to realize what I had. The same goes for the odd paperbacks I'd pick up during a dull summer vacation day, or inherit from older friends and family. Years later, I'd realize that the poorly printed black and white paperback of sci-fi comic stories was actually reprints from EC's "Weird Science!"

Things I Can't Throw Out: Mass Market Paperpack Reprints Of Classic Comics And Humor Magazines (Bostworld)

Errol Morris on "Photography as a Weapon"

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 01:02 PM CDT

Documentary film maker Errol Morris has a fascinating piece in the New York Times about "Photography as a Weapon." In it, he interviews Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and expert on digital photographic fraud.

Errol Morris: [D]octored photographs are the least of our worries. If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don't need Photoshop. You don't need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don't need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.
The photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 provide several examples. Photographs that were used to justify a war. And yet, the actual photographs are low-res, muddy aerial surveillance photographs of buildings and vehicles on the ground in Iraq. I'm not an aerial intelligence expert. I could be looking at anything. It is the labels, the captions, and the surrounding text that turn the images from one thing into another. Photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003.

Powell was arguing that the Iraqis were doing something wrong, knew they were doing something wrong, and were trying to cover their tracks. Later, it was revealed that the captions were wrong. There was no evidence of chemical weapons and no evidence of concealment. Morris's mockery of the sweeping interpretations made in Powell's photographs.

There is a larger point. I don't know what these buildings were really used for. I don't know whether they were used for chemical weapons at one time, and then transformed into something relatively innocuous, in order to hide the reality of what was going on from weapons inspectors. But I do know that the yellow captions influence how we see the pictures. "Chemical Munitions Bunker" is different from "Empty Warehouse" which is different from "International House of Pancakes." The image remains the same but we see it differently.

Change the yellow labels, change the caption and you change the meaning of the photographs. You don't need Photoshop. That's the disturbing part. Captions do the heavy lifting as far as deception is concerned. The pictures merely provide the window-dressing. The unending series of errors engendered by falsely captioned photographs are rarely remarked on.

Photography as a Weapon (New York Times)

Help dress the set for the next season of The IT Crowd

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 12:35 PM CDT

Graham Linehan just delivered the season three scripts for The IT Crowd, the hilarious, ultra-geeky Channel 4 sitcom about sysadmins. He's shaved the script-delivery a little close and is looking for your help in coming up with set-dressing ideas:

How would you like to help in designing the look of series 3? Specifically, you'd be helping us choose the stuff that litters the main set. I'm talking about posters, comics, fanzines, T-shirts… anything you've seen in the last few months that you think is pretty cool or captures the spirit of the show or a particular character. By now, most of you know the kind of things I like…weird toys, indie comics, sci-fi, geek references, internet memes, boardgames…normally I'd delight in tracking down the stuff myself, but as I say, it's just not going to happen this time round.
In the very first draft of the show I described the set as looking like "a cross between a comics shop and the batcave". I wanted it to feel like a geek Shangri-La, and in each series I've felt we nearly got there. Maybe this time, with you guys involved, we'll finally nail it.
Please send your suggestions to ~~ben.catel@talkbackthames.tv~~ ben.capel@talkbackthames.tv

I vote for the XKCD Map. Be my hive brain!

Wal-Mart: you can't scan century-old photos of your ancestors because copyright lasts forever

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 10:18 AM CDT

Tstamps sez,

I was in Spring Hill, Florida visiting my grandparents, who have all the family pictures of great grandparents and great-great grandparents. Doing the good familial thing, I decided to take the albums and scan the photos so that the rest of the family could see them. I only had one day to do this, and the only place near them was Wal-Mart (the Supercenter by highway 19). So I take the (sometimes) 100 year old photos to Wal-Mart and begin scanning them on their machine.
After a while, a Wal-Mart employee accosts me and tells me that I can't do that because those images are "Copyright to the studios that took them." I look down at my pictures. The picture she is pointing to is one of my great grandmother, taken about 1925. She has been dead since 1998. The photography studio (assuming it was taken by a studio) is not marked, and is long out of business, and the person who took the photo is long dead, as are, likely, his children and all of his business associates. The only known copy of the photo is the one I'm holding, which is owned by my grandparents, who gave it to me to copy.
In disbelief, I point out that the photo is almost 100 years old and the people are all dead. Undeterred, the Wal-Mart employee informs me that "Copyright lasts forever. It's the law." My scans up to that point are deleted and I'm free to leave the store with my old photos unscanned. I guess I should be thankful they didn't have a portable shredder on hand to seize my photos and do away with them right then and there. Is that in the next set of magic federal laws?

100 years old

A Boy Today…A Man Tomorrow: 1972 sex-ed manual

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 10:08 AM CDT

Weird Universe is hosting a complete scanned copy of "A Boy Today…A Man Tomorrow," a sex-ed manual for boys from 1972. As you might expect, it's a comedy goldmine. Snicker snicker. A Boy Today…A Man Tomorrow (Thanks, Paul!)

BBtv - WWII Retro-tech: USS Pampanito sub with Todd Lappin

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 03:37 PM CDT

Boing Boing tv's retro-tech correspondent Todd Lappin of Telstar Logistics submerges us in WWII history on the supersized submarine USS Pampanito.

This Balao-class ship was built in 1943, and today one of her younger volunteer caretakers schools us on all the gadgets, gizmos, and old-school technology that kept this baby cruising to Pearl Harbor and back.

Did you know that subs like this couldn't submerge for more than 24 hours back then, because they'd run out of battery life? Think of it like this, Gen-Y-ers, that's like when your iPhone 3G slides into "red" mode, because you've been twittering too much. Only -- with people inside. And big guns to shoot bad guys.

Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with discussion thread, downloadable video, and podcast subscription instructions.

Pampanito trivia: she's named after this little fishie, prized as a seafood delicacy. Wait, a sushi ingredient? Doesn't sound like a great idea for a WWII military ship!

Shot for BBtv by Eddie Codel, during the Long Now Foundation's Mechanicrawl.

Previously:

* Multi-millenial Mechanical clocks (Long Now Mechanicrawl pt. 1)
* WWII Boatpunk: Aboard the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, with Todd Lappin (pt. 2)

(PS: extra-special thanks to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid for hooking BBtv up with Eddie Codel!)

Your Own True Self (video)

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 09:38 AM CDT

On Youtube, in 5 parts: the 1993 documentary by Paul Athanas & Jay Rooney about residents of a Boston nursing home who became the stars of David Greenberger's wonderful Duplex Planet magazine. The film is a gently funny series of observations on our cultural fear of old age, documented in the course of interviews with 12 residents of the all-male Duplex facility in Jamaica Plain, NY MA.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. You can purchase this on DVD too. (Thanks, Coop!)

Walking Dead 8: Made to Suffer -- zombie comic keeps hitting it out of the park

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 09:19 AM CDT

The eighth collection of the long-running zombie adventure comic The Walking Dead is called "Made to Suffer," and it proves that the creative team of Kirkman, Adlard and Rathburn still have plenty of capacity to scare the shit out of me with grisly, relentless adventure stories that grab hold and don't let go until you've turned the last page.

The Walking Dead is your basic zombie story: zombies roam the land, survivors try to avoid them. Over the past several years, the story has had the plucky adventurers move from cities to campsites to a prison to a walled city governed by a retarded sadist of a mayor who uses blood-sports to keep the population in check.

In volume 8, we see the first major post-zombie war of the story, in which two bands of survivors go all-out to destroy one another, on a battlefield filled with biting zombies who pose a grave threat to both sides. There's some interesting stuff about human nature, mob mentality and so on in this volume, but that's not what I read it for.

I read it because it is so goddamned well plotted that I can't stop reading it. It's the kind of adventure yarn that gives you just enough characterization to get you caring about the people so that you won't be able to look away when they are plunged into disastrous combat. If you're looking to have an afternoon swiftly and mercilessly ripped out of your life, sit down with all eight of these collections and get scared and sweaty. The Walking Dead Volume 8: Made To Suffer

Link to Volume 7, Link to Volume 6, Link to Volume 5, Link to Volume 4, Link to Volume 3, Link to Volume 2, Link to Volume 1

Anyone got a good text-parser for tagged text?

Posted: 12 Aug 2008 07:31 AM CDT

Hey, Lazyweb! I've been making tons of notes from the various books I've been reading in preparation for writing my next novel, For the Win, which is about kids who work in special economic zones as gold-farmers forming a global trade union. Now I need a tool to help me manage the notes, and I figure someone out there must have already built it, though I can't find it.

The notes look like this:

Tuile a house -- knock it down, without the occupant's permission, as when the government takes down a house in punishment for violating the one-child policy. River 354. @china @idiom @corruption @authoritarianism

The form's simple: a note with the book and page reference (this one comes from Peter Hessler's excellent River Town), followed by some tags. Each note is separated by a double carriage-return. All the notes are in a single text file.

I'm looking for something that'll parse out the tags at the end of the lines and then make a tag-cloud out of them, and let me click on tags to retrieve them, as well as searching the fulltext of all the notes.

This is such a bog-standard way of using tags that I figure there must be something on the web that can handle it. Do you know of one? Discuss it in the comments below. Thanks!

In a lifetime

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

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