Tuesday, February 11, 2003

TV news: 24 and Angel/Buffy. A Final Farewell for Buffy and Angel Although Boreanaz -- whose WB spinoff series Angel is also bouncing on the renewal bubble -- wouldn't confirm that he's headed back to Sunnydale, he did concede in a recent interview with TV Guide Online that "fans would enjoy that. It would be really nice for them." UPN's response? "We don't comment on rumors." The Buffy/Angel reunion news comes on the heels of the recent announcement that Buffy's Alyson Hannigan will be jumping networks to make an appearance on the March 26 episode of Angel. Kiefer's New 24 Mate Speaks! I'm pushing for us to get together," she tells TV Guide Online. "I keep nudging him. I'm like, 'Come on Kiefer, hurry up! [Your wife] died a year ago!' Enough time has past for a little looky-looky." Laughing, she adds: "That's looky-looky, not nooky-nooky." I knew there was something going on there Also, I'm watching ABC now (at 12:49) and there's some talk on some soap about vampires and slayers. Weird. I'll take Buffy over this any day. [Keith's Weblog] 7:36:55 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Client-side Sorting with the DOM. I'm amazed at how easy it is to sort an HTML table with the DOM and JavaScript. I whipped up a quick modification of Porter's Sort Table Rows demo. The basic enhancements I made where removing the <a>'s from the table headers, and just adding an>checkout the demo or download with the relevant HTML, .gif and .js files. I've also included it below for your convenience. I'd love to add this sort of capability to the display tag library. [Raible Designs :: We Build Web Apps] 7:34:40 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Resistance is futile. Film at 11. One of the recurring themes of science fiction is the cyborg, the human brain implanted in a machine. Generally speaking, this is a nightmare vision -- the rapacious Borg of "Star Trek," and any number of science fiction stories featuring disembodied mad once-human brains used to operate weapons of mass destruction. William Gibson did a riff on the theme of the cyborg in "Neuromancer," the prototypical cyberpunk novel, where hackers plug jacks directly into the cerebral cortex and interface with the network via direct brain-to-machine interfaces. "Neuromancer," published in the very early 1980s, was a bible to many of the pioneers who developed the Internet as we know it today. Gibson writes about cyborgs in his weblog: The physical union of human and machine, long dreaded and long anticipated, has been an accomplished fact for decades, though we tend not to see it. We tend not to see it because we are it, and because we still employ Newtonian paradigms that tell us that “physical” has only to do with what we can see, or touch. Which of course is not the case. The electrons streaming into a child’s eye from the screen of the wooden television are as physical as anything else. As physical as the neurons subsequently moving along that child’s optic nerves. As physical as the structures and chemicals those neurons will encounter in the human brain. We are implicit, here, all of us, in a vast physical construct of artificially linked nervous systems. Invisible. We cannot touch it. We are it. We are already the Borg, but we seem to need myth to bring us to that knowledge. I've often felt that way, but never really fully articulated it -- certainly not as well as Gibson. When I'm on the Internet, I feel *connected*. Doesn't replace real-world human connectivity, but then again, why should it. I work physically alone in a home office, but I work with people all over the United States, I am in contact with them several times a day, by phone, e-mail and instant message, and I feel I know them as well as I would know them if we worked in the same office. I'm not saying that the Internet replaces true physical presence with people you love -- but then again, how well do you know the people you work in the same office with? And when I'm done with a hard day's work, I feel as tired as when I've been out in the world. Indeed, being out in the world is often more relaxing than a day spent pounding the keyboard racing the deadline to chase down news (physically alone, but with the phones ringing, IM jingling, and e-mail coming in). I thought about this essay when I was talking to my brother Adam on the phone today -- my nephew Eric is about a year and a half old, and Adam and Jamie are trying to limit his TV watching. Gibson also relates his reactions upon finally seeing "The Matrix," a film which was strongly influenced by "Neuromancer." Surprise: he seems to have loved the movie. [Monkeys In My Pants] 7:24:42 PM    trackback []     Articulate []