23 Jul 2005
I know there’s more than a few emerging weblog hosting services out there, but I just discovered Squarespace via a text-based advertisement in Opera’s banner (I’m astounded how unintrusive they are… I think I’m actually appreciating them, which is amazing!), and was instantly impressed by their website’s interface and copy.
Apparently it’s been creating some noise in mainstream media, too. I look at it and I don’t see another content management system people are trying to sell — the website looks, feels, and reads as though it’s a small community project. Which it probably isn’t. I’d imagine they’re making loads of money off this thing. And good on them: it appears they’ve jumped on the Cluetrain, come up with a killer offering, and it’s worked for them.
“Killer offering”, by the way, is not just weblog software. It’s also not just managed weblog software or even web services… it’s commerical, managed, web publishing services that people are crying out for. Six Apart have sort of leant in, but they’re first and foremost a blogging company, whilst Squarespace positions themself in a broader market: they’re a publishing company, that lets you do blogging, if that’s your thing.
I’ve observed all this in the course of about ten minutes, by the way. I haven’t even tried the service yet: this is all in response to their presentation and promotion. Incidentally, Squarespace also have their own blog — part of that whole Cluetrain thing — and have content on it available to anyone under a Creative Commons license. What a cool tech company…
23 Jul 2005
Davide Bocci pointed out in a comment that there’s an easy solution to the problems with Ubuntu’s Firefox 1.0.4 package that can be accomplished with apt-get.
Through specifying package versions, it’s possible to rollback to something that’s not quite cutting edge. In Firefox’s case, observe:
sudo apt-get install mozilla-firefox=1.0.2-0ubuntu5 mozilla-firefox-gnome-support=1.0.2-0ubuntu5
Thanks Davide!
23 Jul 2005
Tori pointed me to some music on this website today and it’s surprisingly good quality… at least, so far as I can judge — which is confined to “well produced” and “that sounds good/nice”! At least some of it is under Creative Commons licensing, which is interesting. Good stuff.
Oh, and a tip: Personally, I think the best way to listen is to go to a genre you’re a fan of and start a player with all tracks and just keep clicking “Next” if you don’t like a particular track. Of course, you can download all the material as well, but if you want to use it like streaming radio then that’s the way to go.
19 Jul 2005
By German poet, Georg Heym, written at some point in the early 20th century (or maybe very late 19th C.), that doesn’t appear to be anywhere online (despite being on several university reading lists).
The midnight cities cower underfoot;
The demons trample through the urban graves;
Their skipper-beards, a sprout of smoke and soot,
Bristle like chins of Charons needing shaves.
Creeping on fog-shoes where the pavement drowses
And crawling forward slowly room by room,
Their shadows waver over waves of houses
And gobble street-lights in the black gulps of gloom.
Their knees are kneeling on the city towers,
Their feet make footstools of the city squares,
And where the rain strews down its bleakest flowers
Their stormy pipe of Pan rears up and blares.
Around their feet each city’s dark refrain
Is circling like a rondo of the waters.
An ode to death. Now faint, now shrill again,
The dirge ebbs into darkness till it falters.
The stream they stroll on is a snaky glow,
Its dim back speckled by the yellow glimmer
The lanterns – blanketed in the black-out – throw.
The melancholy reptile wallows.
Their weight falls heavy on a bridge’s railing
Each time their hands fall heavy into swarms
Of urban flesh, as if some faun were flailing
Across a slimy swamp his outstretched arms.
Now one stands up. He hangs a ghoul’s black mask
On the white moon. The leaden heavens spill
Down darkly from a heaven darker still,
Crushing the houses in a jet-black cask.
A snapping sound. A city’s backbone splits.
A roof cracks open, reddening its rent
With arson. Demons squat on it like cats
And ululate into the firmament.
A spawning mother bawls where midnight billows;
The steep crescendo of each labour pang
Arches her brawny pelvis from its pillows;
Around her the enormous devils throng.
She’s tossed yet anchored. Overhead, her bed’s
Whole ceiling shakes with howlings of the tortured.
Red furrow – redder; longer. Now the orchard
Brings forth the fruit. It rips her womb to shreds.
The devil’s necks are growing like giraffes’.
The baby has no head. The mother lugs
It with her till she faints; a devil laughs;
Her spine is tickled by cold thumbs of frogs.
Tossing their horns, the demons grow so tall
They gash the very sky for blood to plunder.
Through laps of cities roars their earthquake-thunder
While lightning sizzles where their hoofbeats fall.
Another version reads thus:
They wander through the cities night enshrouds:
The cities cower, black, beneath their feet.
Upon their chins like sailors’ beards the clouds
Are black with curling smoke and sooty sleet.
On seas of houses their long shadow sways
And snuffs ranked street-lamps out, as with a blow.
Upon the pavement, thick as fog, it weighs,
And gropes from house to house, solid and slow.
With one foot planted on a city square,
The other knee upon a tower, they stand,
And where the black rain falls they rear, with blare
Of quickened Pan’s-pipes in a cloud-stormed land.
About their feet circles a ritornelle
With the sad music of the city’s sea,
Like a great burying-song. The shrill tones swell
And rumble in the darkness, changefully.
They wander to the stream that, dark and wide,
As a bright reptile with gold-spotted back,
Turns in the lanterned dark from side to side
In its sad dance, while heaven’s stare is black.
They lean upon the bridge, darkly agog,
And thrust their hands among the crowds that pass,
Like fauns who perch above a meadow bog
And plunge lean arms into the miry mass.
Now one stands up. He hangs a mask of gloom
Upon the white-cheeked moon. The night, like lead
From the dun heavens, settles as a doom
On houses into pitted darkness fled.
The shoulders of the cities crack. A gleam
Of fire from a roof burst open flies
Into the air. Big-boned, on the top beam
They sit and scream like cats against the skies.
A little room with glimmering shadows billows
Where one in labor shrieks her agony.
Her body lifts gigantic from the pillows.
And the huge devils stand about to see.
She clutches, shaking, at her torture-bed.
With her long shuddering cry the chamber heaves.
Now the fruit comes. Her womb gapes long and red,
And bleeding, for the child’s last passage cleaves.
The devils’ necks grow like giraffes’. The child
Is born without a head. The mother moans
And holds it. On her back, clammy and wild,
The frog-fingers of fear play, as she swoons.
But vast as giants now the demons loom.
Their horns in fury gore the bleeding skies.
An earthquake thunders in the cities’ womb
About their hooves, where flint-struck fires rise.