__ __ _2007-01-08 _________ __ | \/ (_)_ __ (_) \ | |_ _| |/ / o Subscribe via the beauty of | |\/| | | '_ \| | \| | | | | ' / o http://lists.ntk.net/ | | | | | | | | | |\ | | | | . \ o Website (+ archive) lives at: |_| |_|_|_| |_|_|_| \_| |_| |_|\_\ o http://www.ntk.net/ "One of the major problems that I've always had with Christ Anderson's reading of the so-called 'Long Tail' theory is his consistent mis-understanding of what media is all about in the 21st Century..." ...2nd time Ian's called him "Christ" in the past 6 months http://www.ianbetteridge.co.uk/technovia/?p=1006 http://www.ianbetteridge.co.uk/technovia/?p=345 - all together now: He's not the Messiah, he's just *a very naughty boy* >> BARELY NEWS << time to carouse As some of the more punctuality-obsessed of you will have spotted, NTK is on more of an extended hiatus than we previously anticipated, while we rethink some of the near- decade-old technical and editorial infrastructure. Heaven forbid that too many of you were relying on us for updates about what's really going on, but - on the plus side - our recent slackness may have prompted several NTK readers to produce their own tech-event calendars, to help keep track of which fashionable bars *aren't* currently hosting web- professionals' networking nights under some combination of the words "social", "geek", "beers", a day of the week, and - of course - "2.0". http://upcoming.org/group/1928 - Nicole Simon: Upcoming.org highlights for non-Americans http://jigsawuk.org/index.php?title=Events_and_conferences - Colin Donald: "wiki for young British digital media companies" http://www.bluedust.com/tla/ - London round-up by Steev Goodwin, "Geek About Town" http://open-lecture.net/ - vs Steve Cooke, doing his own http://lecturelist.org/ ? http://barcamp.org/minibar - Friday Jan 26 London freebie we didn't spot elsewhere http://2lmc.org/spool/id/5501 - bubblier than a Coke bottle full of Mentos >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering CVS may be history (a history from which Subversion is trying to awaken), but if you really want to tag a forked branch of version control as "cool", we'd gump not for Hg, Git, and Bzr, or ny f thse othr nw mthrfckrs, but for MVS. Nothing as outre as a distributed version control system, MVS is a CVS-alike command line interface for MediaWiki. "mvs login" to your favourite Wikipedia clone (including Wikipedia), check out the pages you'd like to have around as text files in a local repository, and then update them, change them, run diffs, edit them offline and commit them with comments whenever you want, wherever you want. Perfect for armchair trolling, or maintaining your mastery of the Wikipedia Chicken page. http://search.cpan.org/~markj/WWW-Mediawiki-Client/bin/mvs - CPAN! Remember that, kids? http://wikitravel.org/ - Mr. Bad's boy, all grown up http://www.everytopicintheuniverseexceptchickens.com/ - This article or section does not cite its references or source >> ANTI-MEMES << there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/ not "because you demanded it" so much as "because you kept sending them in" - double-URLtendre backlog from the last year: http://BurningAhole.co.uk , http://www.BritMilfIT.com , http://les-bi.org , http://TheirPastyOurFuture.org.uk ... along with a selection of superficially sporting-themed Google goofs: http://google.com/search?q=%22goat-scorer%22 , http://www.google.com/search?q=%22eye+of+the+ball%22 , http://google.com/search?q=%22conversation+of+momentum%22 , http://www.google.com/search?q=%22golf+of+mexico%22 (see also http://www.google.com/search?q=%22guff+of+mexico%22 ) - plus http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22cola+miner%22 , and the more salacious alternative to NTK 2006-07-14's "worhip": http://google.com/search?&q=house+of+whorship ... http://computashop.com/pc.html imitates Police Squad's "For some reason unknown to scientists, the Earth cooled, forming a crust, a hard igneous shell, we scientists call rock": http://www.xs4all.nl/~mrrob/policesquad/i-l.htm#pslab ... yet no ban on the use of obfuscated phonetic Glaswegian? http://www.west-dunbarton.gov.uk/forum/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=7448 >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less QUICK TV>> now the end of BBC4's smug "Science Fiction Britannia" season has reduced the risk of turning on Freeview and catching Kim Newman and/or spods from Future Publishing, ITV4 pays proper tribute to the late Nigel Kneale with repeats of his 1979 "Children Of Men"-esque Brit dystopia QUATERMASS (8pm, Sun, ITV4), co-starring Simon "Manimal" MacCorkindale... falling ratings may doom it to a future of direct-to-fanservice DVD releases - http://www.geekmonthly.com/news/2006/12/28/ - but we like to think of the remade BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (9pm, Tue, Sky One) as a long-overdue spinoff of the retro "future war" chic of "Genesis Of The Daleks"... plus, over on the audio- only channels, NTK reader (and current star of the Florette salad TV ad) BEN MOOR appears as a "reluctant beekeeper" in Laura Solon's TALKING AND NOT TALKING series of "Absolutely"-style comedy monologues (11pm, Wed, Radio 4)... READERS' SITES>> We've always wondered if you could synthesise some sort of ersatz NTK from the RSS feeds of staff solo projects - with news from Danny's EFF Minilinks http://eff.org/deeplinks/archives/cat_minilinks.php (with added podcasts http://eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004982.php ) original linkage from Lee http://del.icio.us/lee/top , and semi-humorous screenshots from http://dohthehumanity.com/ , which Dave says he'll clear the comment spam off once he's finished "redesigning" http://snackspot.org.uk/ ... Then if you could aggregate it all together with the neo- brutalist courier .css from http://valleywag.com/ , so much the better. For digital injustices closer to home, there's always the Open Rights Group http://openrightsgroup.org/ , now under the capable custodianship of BECKY "Upon My Signal, ReleaseTheMusic.org" HOGGE - while, on a more environmental tip, reader GAVIN STARKS aims to harness the power of the GPL, Pledgebank.com, and pop stars such as Eric "Call On Me" Prydz to help replace global warming with "Global Cool": http://www.global-cool.com/en/act/diy/ ... On a lighter note, Why Not Try - reviving the rhetorical recommendations from Lee and Herring's 1995 Fist Of Fun book http://www.fistoffun.net/book/32.htm , with the help of LEILA LOVEMAUS' all-new http://www.whynottry.org site? But try not to get as cryptic as SIMON CROSS, who mailed us last August requesting "Go on, help pimp my site/ You know it's a good one/ Even if its not on Google", but neglected to provide any clue as to its URL - we know "alternate reality" puzzlers are supposed to be popular nowadays, but really this is taking the mickey... >> 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 "well, you wouldn't want to pull teeth too often" http://ukresistance.co.uk/2006/10/hear-actual-voice-of-richard-jacques.html NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe or subscribe at http://lists.ntk.net/ NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntkmart.co.uk/ (K) 2007 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Full license at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0 Thanks for reading!