The New Year is nearly upon us and so, even though this blog has been up-and-running for a mere four months, I am presenting a Best-of as something of a year-end wrap-up, in case you missed some of the coolest stuff.
Check them out, and if you have a favorite that I missed, be sure to leave it in the comments for all to see.
Thanks for making Frivolous Motion part of your daily(weekly, monthly) web diet. I have a lot of great stuff in mind for 2007 and beyond, and hope you will join me for what seems to be shaping up to be a killer year for technology, art, and the world, more generally.
And now, sorted by month, are some of the most popular posts of the year (along with some of my favorites that didn’t quite make it big, but are worth another look).
P.S. I am fully aware how egotistical this makes me seem. I probably am. You might be, too.
Hey there loyal (and first-time) readers of Frivolous Motion.
As the new year approaches this blog has been undergoing some subtle (and some drastic) changes, and I appreciate your continued support and comments. One semi-major change that I just made is switching to FeedBurner for serving up the RSS subscription feed for this site. For those of you who already subscribe to Frivolous Motion, I would like to kindly ask that you update your subscription to the new feed so I can begin tracking subscriptions. You can do this by deleting the current feed and re-subscribing using the link at the top of the sidebar. Some services might let you type in the URL of the new feed.
For those of you wondering what the heck I am talking about, RSS feeds are a way of distributing all the newest content on a webpage as it is posted. You simply need to get an RSS Reader (Google Reader is the one I use, and it is awesome), enter the site’s URL or click the subscribe button on any page, and you automatically get served only the freshest content in an easily-scannable, customizable interface. This way you don’t have to manually visit each site that you read regularly just to check to see if they’ve added anything new since your last visit (In my experience this can get really overwhelming). I have found RSS to be incredibly convenient since I started using Google Reader consistently, and right now have 73 sites that I receive updates for, and am always adding more.
If you like what Frivolous Motion has to offer (and I hope you do - if not, definitely leave some comments with suggestions for the direction you’d like to see me take in the next year), please consider subscribing to the feed by clicking the link in the sidebar. RSS will make your life easier, and isn’t that what technology is all about?
The FDA today declared that food (meat, milk) from cloned animals is safe to eat, despite the major flaw of being a little weird to some people. It also might not have to be labeled, though the final decision on that is some time forthcoming.
"The bottom line is, we don't want to misinform consumers with some sort of implied message of difference," Glenn said. "There is no difference. These foods are as safe as foods from animals that are raised conventionally."
I am excited. Or rather, unmoved - could care less. Much less, in fact.
Of course, there are some detractors:
Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, said the FDA is ignoring research that shows cloning results in more deaths and deformed animals than other reproductive technologies.
But psh! What does she know? Besides, most of the food itself would come from the offspring of the cloned livestock. The cloning is simply a way to keep desirable traits (fast-fattening, full of milk) in the breeding pool. (Yes, I am fully aware this doesn’t refute her claim. Too bad.)
Think of it this way: Wouldn’t the world be a much prettier, happier place if we were all children of an infinite number of clones of Heidi Klum and Seal?
I, for one, can’t wait to taste my first cloned steak (but not genetically altered one bit - which is an improvement over current meat). Of course, if the food’s not labeled, I will never know. And neither will you. So who cares either way, really?
Chris Andersson, a friend and former professor of mine, is studying travel blogs for his final project in a graduate-level class on blogging at Trinity College, and he’s asked for readers to contribute stories about their first trips. Check out his blog here, and leave a comment with your stories to keep the discussion going and give him some good material to work with. I’ve left a comment there, and will also use this post to more fully flesh out the first trip I took - a road trip from Las Vegas to Disneyland and then further south to Tijuana, Mexico before returning home.
I was very young - a child, even. Five, maybe (though my parents might dispute this). And thinking on this further, I couldn’t have been five, unless my brother was only two years old. This means that the experience I am about to describe could not possibly have been my first trip. Because I know for certain that I traveled to Cape Cod when I was actually five (during winter break from kindergarten).
So, well, I guess what I am saying is I find this trip down memory lane to be problematic.
How can I know what my first trip was? By accepting that I couldn’t possibly remember details from the real first trip, I am accepting the fact that whatever story I tell will ultimately be something of a lie. I end up picking a trip that I remember a little more clearly, or one that is to a more exotic location, or has a funnier story that reinforces some interesting and admirable aspect of my personality - which could even be humility or self-deprecating humor (telling a story about diarrhea, for instance. For the record, I am not calling Chris’s story out as a falsehood, just using it to illustrate this last point).
It’s the same with other “firsts” - first kiss, first sexual experience, first movie, first concert experience (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Coming Out of Their Shells Tour is always my answer to that even though it happened in 1990, and I had definitely been to concerts before then).
Even when we ask others the question, “What was your first...?” we tend to qualify it with, “Well, it doesn’t have to be the first, just, you know...”. Because on television, in movies and books and plays, the characters DO have these memorable firsts - these transformative, memorable, hyper-real experiences - and we think we need them, too. And so, in the interest of constructing a perfect narrative out of the chaotic tangential truth of our lives, we pick and choose memories to turn into events and highlight as important. Sometimes we will combine a couple events, change the years, add even more famous people or incredible happenings, in order to be able to share a story rather than something as mundane as the following:
My first trip was when I was one and a half years old. My parents took me from New York, where I lived at the time, to Massachusetts to visit my mother’s parents. I don't really remember it.
Instead, I choose to tell about a trip to an exotic location (Tijuana), that conveniently is also cool to laugh about in popular culture because of its decrepit-ness-osity, right after a trip to a really magical place (Disneyland) that actually sucked (because it was raining), so I can say how (surprisingly!) I liked Tijuana better because Disneyland was just standing in line in goofy trashbag ponchos, and Tijuana was fully of people that smelled bad and cab drivers that ripped you off and Tequila and scorpion-filled lollipops and little children (I guess even younger than my five years!) trying to sell Chiclets. And then I would tell about how, even though my parents spent a bundle on souvenirs from Disneyland (including a photograph from the Space Mountain roller coaster - which I hated! - but somehow was allowed on even though I was five!), the best thing I brought home from the trip was a cheap (mere pesos!) marionette I named Pedro Hernandez (just this second), and which I immediately destroyed by tangling the strings past the point of no return.
All of which is extremely interesting and funny. Some of which is true. And my memory of this trip is complicated by the fact that I have a very strong recollection of watching Captain EO (starring Michael Jackson, who I adored at the time) in 3D, which was released in 1986 (I was born in 1983).
I should say seems to complicate things, however, because the “truth” is, this movie was shown at Disneyland until 1997. And now, in the interest of bringing this story to a close, I have embedded Captain EO at the end of this post for your viewing pleasure.
Of course, this is not to say there is anything at all wrong about lying to people and to yourself to make your life easier to comprehend, but isn’t it all a bit curious?
And isn’t it a little, well, peculiar that in a post entitled “My First Time,” Chris writes about pooping on an airplane.
I mean to say, what if that story is a metaphor.
I mean, really. What if?
Perhaps these stories hide more truth than is first evident, after all. Hmm.
As promised, Captain EO (3D glasses not included, sorry).
Following my tradition of posting some of the cool Google Doodles that make it on their site, I present this rather nice series about some kangaroos during the holidays.
Now we demand a chance to do things for ourself We're tired of beatin' our head against the wall And workin' for someone else We're people, we're just like the birds and the bees We'd rather die on our feet Than be livin' on our knees...
Merry Christmas, James Brown. The world will miss you.
The above design (and site it links to) is my work-in-progress for the CSS Zen Garden website. It is a major challenge but is definitely improving my coding and design skills. I have no illusions that this will end up being picked as an official design on the site, but it is a lot of fun to work on and has mucho educational value.
It is also important, as the site stresses, to follow web standards and separate content from presentation, and create flexible, accessible websites that are somewhat future-proof.
Check out the website to see some of the incredible designs other people have made. And keep checking back for my progress on this design. At some point, I will post an in-depth article about my process designing and coding this stuff, so be looking for that. I would also love some feedback as things continue to change. There’s still a long way to go before this is finished, so don’t hold back the comments. (P.S. I know this design looks HORRIBLE in IE6 right now because the PNG images don’t display with Alpha transparency. This will change soon, honest. In the meantime, I think you might want to Get Firefox).
Thanks, and again, have the happiest of happy holidays.
In honor of Christmas, and in awe that the big red jolly ape-man is able to travel the entire globe in one night delivering presents to all and restoring joy and peace to the world for perhaps a moment, I present what I am calling “Santa Across America.”
This is a one time, never-to-be-replicated event wherein I have collected the top Google Image Search result for "santa + stateName" for all fifty states (arranged alphabetically - admittedly not his actual flight plan). They are displayed below, with apologies to the copyright holders of the images (please contact me and I will remove your image if you wish, or link to your site from the photo - but don’t worry, I make no money from this blog whatsoever and definitely won’t pretend that I took these photos). I won’t link to each one, primarily because it is too much work, but also in the interest of fostering curiosity. Like one in particular? Do a similar search and see where it leads you. Christmas is a season of discovery and surprise - live it up! Do your own crazy Google searches this weekend. Search for “Santa + Coke + Satan” perhaps, or “Why is Baby Jesus sad on Christmas?" If you find anything amazing, odd, festive, freaky, or whatever - point me to it in the comments and if there’s an image, I’ll be sure to find it and add it to this post.
And now, without further ado, I present “Santa Across America 2006” because if he can make it around the globe in a night, surely Mr. Claus can breeze through the United States of America in one blog post.
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Merry Christmas everyone (and truly, Happy Holidays, no matter what you celebrate). May Santa treat you all very well. Especially those of you who read my blog.
EDIT: These have been sent in by my good friend, Emily Tucker. Amazing.
