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Friday, January 31, 2003
pb's handy snapGallery is really wonderful. If you have a bunch of jpegs you've been meaning to get online quickly and easily, this is the solution. It creates all the HTML pages for you and forces you to caption your stuff.
My dad is still in the hospital. His condition worsened earlier this week but now he seems to be making a recovery.
[0 comments]
pb's handy snapGallery is really wonderful. If you have a bunch of jpegs you've been meaning to get online quickly and easily, this is the solution. It creates all the HTML pages for you and forces you to caption your stuff.
My dad is still in the hospital. His condition worsened earlier this week but now he seems to be making a recovery.
[0 comments]
Thursday, January 23, 2003
alexking.org has some nice php-powered web apps (I'm downloading "tasks" right now) as well as javascript snippets. Nice looking page, to boot.
[2 comments]
alexking.org has some nice php-powered web apps (I'm downloading "tasks" right now) as well as javascript snippets. Nice looking page, to boot.
[2 comments]
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Don't know why I haven't mentioned it before, but Real Live Preacher is a damn fine read (heads up: strong language).
My father is in the hospital tonight. The doctors think he's going to be fine, but they've been running a full battery of tests to make sure.
[0 comments]
Don't know why I haven't mentioned it before, but Real Live Preacher is a damn fine read (heads up: strong language).
My father is in the hospital tonight. The doctors think he's going to be fine, but they've been running a full battery of tests to make sure.
[0 comments]
Sunday, January 19, 2003
showlister, my latest open source web app, has left the building (initial release, .01b).
[0 comments]
showlister, my latest open source web app, has left the building (initial release, .01b).
[0 comments]
There's are lots of good poetry, fiction, and non-fiction selections at salon.com/audio. Lots of new stuff. Some good classics as well. I'd never heard of Joe Wenderoth before, but his "Letters to Wendy's" is histerical (heads up: strong language). Jeremy Iron's reading of Lolita is so good I'll have to buy it soon. The David Sedaris selections are not to be missed (heads up: if you didn't like the Wenderoth piece, you won't like this either). See also, Cary Tennis' rant on postmodernism.
[0 comments]
Monday, January 13, 2003
ferryhalim.com has 36 beautiful flash games and nine flash experiments that will amuse you and warm your heart. Some of the best flash work I've ever seen.
[0 comments]
ferryhalim.com has 36 beautiful flash games and nine flash experiments that will amuse you and warm your heart. Some of the best flash work I've ever seen.
[0 comments]
Saturday, January 11, 2003
It's already started. Every day I see another article from someone claiming that The Two Towers is 'really' about racism. If I learned one thing while I was studying to be an English professor (I finished a master's degree in English before jumping ship), it's that that point of interpreting literature isn't to get at the 'real' meaning of it. There's no such thing as the 'real' meaning of any significantly complicated work. Can you look at The Two Towers and do a facile mapping of men, elves, dwarfs, hobbits, and orcs to real-world counterparts? Sure you can. Is that evidence of your literary-critical acumen? I certainly hope not. Racists in the real world assume that people from certain ethnicities are sub-human. That's a grave mistake, and one founded on fear and hatred. In Tolkein's imaginary world, orc really are a different (and sub human) race. Tolkein said his own work wasn't allegorical, but I'll offer an allegorical reading: races in The Lord of the Rings can be seen as representing different aspects of (real-world) human nature. The elves represent intelligence and cool reasoning. The hobbits represent good natured familiarity and community. The dwarves represent mechanical skill. And humans represent a mixture of all these things plus a good dose of Hamlet-esque self-doubt thrown into the mix. Together, these races represent different aspects of the human psyche. Opposite these, you have the orcs and their kin, along with their evil leaders. These represent (real-world) humanity at its worst: as brute power and desire untempered by love or intelligence (in the case of the orcs) and as intelligence turned to selfish, evil purposes (in the case of their malevolent readers). This could be fleshed out, but that's my basic take on it, useful for those days when you can't just loose yourself in the story and enjoy it as a story, rather than as a roman a clef. But we'd all do well to get rid of the idea that a story (or a movie or a novel or a painting) is a secret waiting to be told rather than (what more progressive critics have always maintained) a box of possible (possibly infinite) meanings waiting to be detailed and presented backed up with argument. The key in literary criticism, as in science, is that all conclusions (all readings) are hypotheses. None is ever the final answer.
[2 comments]
It's already started. Every day I see another article from someone claiming that The Two Towers is 'really' about racism. If I learned one thing while I was studying to be an English professor (I finished a master's degree in English before jumping ship), it's that that point of interpreting literature isn't to get at the 'real' meaning of it. There's no such thing as the 'real' meaning of any significantly complicated work. Can you look at The Two Towers and do a facile mapping of men, elves, dwarfs, hobbits, and orcs to real-world counterparts? Sure you can. Is that evidence of your literary-critical acumen? I certainly hope not. Racists in the real world assume that people from certain ethnicities are sub-human. That's a grave mistake, and one founded on fear and hatred. In Tolkein's imaginary world, orc really are a different (and sub human) race. Tolkein said his own work wasn't allegorical, but I'll offer an allegorical reading: races in The Lord of the Rings can be seen as representing different aspects of (real-world) human nature. The elves represent intelligence and cool reasoning. The hobbits represent good natured familiarity and community. The dwarves represent mechanical skill. And humans represent a mixture of all these things plus a good dose of Hamlet-esque self-doubt thrown into the mix. Together, these races represent different aspects of the human psyche. Opposite these, you have the orcs and their kin, along with their evil leaders. These represent (real-world) humanity at its worst: as brute power and desire untempered by love or intelligence (in the case of the orcs) and as intelligence turned to selfish, evil purposes (in the case of their malevolent readers). This could be fleshed out, but that's my basic take on it, useful for those days when you can't just loose yourself in the story and enjoy it as a story, rather than as a roman a clef. But we'd all do well to get rid of the idea that a story (or a movie or a novel or a painting) is a secret waiting to be told rather than (what more progressive critics have always maintained) a box of possible (possibly infinite) meanings waiting to be detailed and presented backed up with argument. The key in literary criticism, as in science, is that all conclusions (all readings) are hypotheses. None is ever the final answer.
[2 comments]
Thursday, January 09, 2003
Haven't done a movie round-up in a while, so here goes: Stir of Echoes, The Two Towers, The Ring, Unfaithful, The Outsiders, Trapped, Signs, plus most of the Mr. Show DVD that my friend Page loaned me.
[0 comments]
Haven't done a movie round-up in a while, so here goes: Stir of Echoes, The Two Towers, The Ring, Unfaithful, The Outsiders, Trapped, Signs, plus most of the Mr. Show DVD that my friend Page loaned me.
[0 comments]
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