Nigel's Not Well: A Blog

But is no one worried about the day he gets out? He'll be 221 years old, hardened by a century and a half of imprisonment. That's not a guy I want on the streets.

Today marks the last day that broadcasters can transmit analog television in the US. Get your jollies while you still can, analog enthusiasts.

I spent a few hours today struggling to implement Asirra on this blog to ward off the frumious spambots, but I got confused by the inner workings of Nucleus and couldn't get the PHP backend working. I already had a CAPTCHA plugin installed, but while the jumble of letters seemed to cut down on the spam, it didn't stop one obnoxious WoW gold farm from breaking through once a week or so. Asirra is a much cooler idea, and a lot less annoying: you're shown a few images of cats and dogs (real ones apparently eligible for adoption) and asked to click on the cats. Simple, elegant and still well beyond the capabilities of image recognition software to circumvent.

But since I couldn't get it working, I decided to try again later and to set the blog back as it was - with the exception of the CAPTCHA, which I had already uninstalled. I figured I'd have the Asirra thing figured out in a few days or so. I can make it that long without any comment defenses, right?

Well, in the space of three hours the spam hounds were upon me and I was overloaded with junk comments. Once I waded through and deleted them all, the CAPTCHA went right back on. I have a newfound respect for that little plugin; it must be deflecting these lame attacks all the time.

My new fixation: 5secondfilms.com. Somehow these guys manage a new film every single weekday. Even if it's not funny (rare), it's over too fast to complain about it.

The Chicago Tribune reports that they're changing the name of the Sears Tower.

I have no particular affinity for the Sears brand, but the Willis Tower? Really?

I've been skeptical about the viability of e-readers for a while now, and Amazon's recent introduction of the Kindle 2 has got me thinking about the supposed future of publishing again.

I'm still not sold on the idea; today, however, xkcd made a comparison that just might be the best possible pitch for the Kindle.

1. I'm a writer.

2. My first point is a bit misleading, because I don't get paid to write, even though I'm trying. I guess as long as I write, I'm a writer, but that also makes me a breather and an Indigo Girls-singer-alonger and a whole bunch of other labels that are technically true but not particularly meaningful.

3. I'm also a pianist.

4. I think my second point shows part of why I'm not published, e.g. a lack of succinctness. But many writers spend their whole careers trying to say more with less. In other words, it's hard to do.

5. "e.g." actually means "for example" (exempli gratia). I should have written "i.e.", which means "that is" (id est).

6. The previous point was only tangentially about me and should have been excised.

5. Hey, fuck you. Good writing means taking the time to make sure all your words and phrases are used correctly.

6. All I'm saying is, point 4 should have been corrected, and that would have made point 5 unnecessary. You have to trim the fat, like point 4 said.

4. Don't drag me into this.

5. I'm not trying to get into an argument here. Let's just keep this moving, shall we?

6. Hey, you started it. You can't start a dialogue with a direct insult and then insist that everyone else be civil.

12. Can we move this along please? I'm almost up. Oh crap, I'm up now! Wait, I'm not ready ye

13. Jesus, I thought it was bad enough when trolls were just in the comments.

5.6. I'm not a troll!

24. Hey, I'm just going to take off early, so you guys settle this on your own.

6. Okay, 5, you just brought what should have been an incredibly simple piece of writing down in flames because you're a prissy know-it-all who can't leave well enough alone.

5. First off, name-calling is childish. Second, you should spell OK in two capital letters, because it's an abbreviation.

82. What's going on here?

5. Nothing.

6. You don't belong here, 82, please stay out of this.

82. Don't talk to your elders that way.

5. Look, I've said my piece and I stand by it. Just do your English homework and we won't need to have these arguments.

6. Just keep your mouth shut and we won't have to talk at all.

5. Go to hell.

25. I am a writer, and I'm still seeking representation.

I think I've finally thought of a definition for "art" that satisfies me (yes, I actually spend a lot of time thinking about things like this, and yes, I need to get out more), to wit:

Art is any form of expression or craft in which the expression or craft itself is more focal than the ideas and emotions being expressed or the practical value of the craft.

So, if I tell someone "I feel sad," I'm using plain, simple communication because I want to make sure they understand what I'm expressing. If, in my sadness, I write a sad song, I might still convey sadness but it's the resulting song that people will pay the most attention; the core expression becomes secondary to the experience of communicating it. The same thing applies to adding gargoyles to a building; the gargoyle itself is the focus, not the gargoyle's practical value of shunting water off the roof.

This could still use some verbal smoothing, but I think it covers the bases. Most of the semantic awkwardness, interestingly, comes from the seeming dual nature of art: communication of emotions and ideas on one hand (which we see in narrative, poetry, painting, music) and the act of constructing something on the other (sculpture, fashion design, architecture). Naturally there's plenty of overlap here. I think this has something to do with humans exercising our evolutionary skillsets of symbolic communication and toolmaking, and deserves further examination on its own.

I first started thinking about this when I read the invaluable Understanding Comics, in which Scott McCloud posits even more broadly that art is anything that doesn't directly relate to the two core human impulses: survival and reproduction. I liked the broad scope of his definition, but I felt it was a little bit too unfocused. It also leads to some questionable overlap: say you order a fancy dish at a restaurant. It's cooked to perfection and laid out attractively on the plate. You need to eat to survive, but the food doesn't need to taste good or look good for you to live on it. So is the food art? Is it both art and not art at once? I had to add the part about "craft," as opposed to just "expression," to my own definition in order to deal with this.

Mirriam-Webster has several definitions but the closest to mine is "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects." This is a pretty good working definition, but in contrast to McCloud's, it's a little too narrow. After all, what is an "object?" Would dance count? And who says art has to be conscious? I would argue that if a painter got angry at their canvas and smashed it in rage, but then decided the smashed version was a more powerful piece than the original painting, that would still constitute art - even though the conscious choice would be retroactive.

Feel free to vigorously disagree with me; I think this is a subject worth debating.

Today is the last day of George W. Bush's presidency.

That is all.

The funniest, and most horrifying, commercial I've seen in a while: