We Feel Fine

my friend Bayo just sent me a link to this great project We Feel Fine. Its a fantastic applet that scans blogs to find post that describe how people are feeling. It then compiles the information in six interesting and interactive ways.

madcap mimesis map

This is a flow chart that I made in attempt to relate mimetic strategies with ontological perspectives. I'll explain this project further sometime soon. I just thought I'd throw this out there.

blogger widget

There is a blogger widget created by google. You can download it here. I used it to make this post, so I guess it works.

retrievr

In a panel discussion at CAA someone mentioned this project called retievr that sounded interesting. So, I checked it out yesterday and found it to be (though not quite perfect) very cool. Using a simple drawing tool on the retrievr web page, you draw a simple image. Retievr then searches though the archives of flickr and finds images that roughly match your drawings. You can also search according to an image that you upload or link to. Not only is that just sweet in and of itself, I can imagine it actually being useful as well.

GIMP

The GIMP is a free open source "fauxtoshop" program. I downloaded it yesterday, and I am kinda digin' it. The interface is not a slick as our familiar Photoshop, but I might be able to get used to it. One thing that I like is the "script-fu" menu that includes little scripts that others have written. One that I tried wrapped my image around a sphere and made a spinning animation out of it. Neat-o.

Diaspora of the Self

The "post-modern condition", by way of existentialism and social phenomena, seems to have created a kind of diaspora of the self. Now is an important time to reflect on this migration, particularly regarding the aspects of the self that have moved online. There is a culture there/here in which we, like any immigrant, are enveloped and which we often take on. This self is influenced by social exchanges including the sharing of music, art, information, and political views. It is also influenced by and in some ways determined by commercial interests. Market research, browsing patterns, psychographic profiles, and database construction contribute to a new phrenology that tells us who we are, what we need and, who we should be. In a sense, many parts of me live in a database. This, in itself, is not frightening to me. What is disconcerting is that I do not know what portions of myself where left at the gates of that database, and I do not know the ways in which this truncated or aberrant version of myself will return home to me. It seem that many of the forces that construct the online self remain invisible. Uncovering these influences, whether they are strategic or passive, is essential for maintaining some sense of personal agency.