Thanks Time Warner Cable!

For three years I have been able to login to my webhost over ssh without a problem.
Now that Time Warner Cable has swooped in and bought Comcast, I can no longer connect to my server.
Earlier this week I couldn’t send SMTP mail. Hopefully the current problem is just a temporary glitch.
(Time Warner Cable technical support doesn’t seem to understand the concept of an “internet connection” as anything more than a web browser and email.)

ISEA 2006 — Jour quatre

Things are winding up — or winding down, depending on how you look at it. There is going to be a summary later this afternoon, and then I think a summary of the summary after that.
The wife and child and I are off, however, for the journey back home.

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Remember to Be Afraid!

Terrorists are planning to kill you using only a cup of coffee and a jar of acne cream. If someone approaches you in what appears to be an aggressive manner, simply slap the cup of coffee out of their hand.

ISEA 2006 — Edge Conditions

Written on the wall:

Cutting edge, bleeding edge, leading edge. These are all familiar catch-phrases that suggest we are glimpsing the future of contemporary art, today. Edge Conditions, however, is most emphatically not about the “next new thing.” It presents works of art in a different context, at the intersection of creativity, choice, and what might be called “technology” but what is arguably the world we live in, whether it is devices such as pencils and chisels, or ubiquitous aspects of modern life such as electronics, phones, or computers and the Internet, technology is simply a set of tools that is more less familiar at any given time.

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ISEA 2006 — $.25 a minute

I found a F-dEx/K-nk-s where I can access the internet for 25 cents a minute. I can also use M-cros-ft Office. Even at today’s prices, that is more expensive than gasoline (unless you are going a steady 60mph in an SUV with 12mpg).
Late in the afternoon I spent about an hour at the San Jose Museum of Art. On the ground floor is a retrospecive of light-based works by Jennifer Steinkamp. It had been a few years since I last saw one of her installations, so it was nice to see some of the work I had missed. However with so many pieces it is hard to spend time contemplating each one individually.

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ISEA 2006 — Information design

There are some serious problems with information design here. Part of the problem is that the ISEA program is localized for a specific audience, alongside the larger and more public aspect of the ZeroOne San Jose festival.

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ISEA 2006 — Second Class Citizen

[Save early, save often]
It is around seven pm, and although there are still some ongoing events I am pretty much done with day one of ISEA.
Without a laptop and a WiFi connection II am pretty much a second class citizen here. There are a number of projects which require either an internet connection, a mobile phone, or a bluetooth device to fully engage the work.

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ZeroOne San Jose and ISEA2006 Symposium

Seven Days of Art and Interactivity in San Jose starts in just a few minutes. We’re getting ready to head up for the ISEA symposium portion of events which start on Wednesday. As I don’t have any sort of wireless setup at the moment I won’t be able to blog directly, but hopefully I will be able to find a stray terminal somewhere and post some notes when I can.
Perhaps I will take a prototype of my as-yet-unfinished Semantic Trumps game.
So, if you see me, say hi. (I’m the guy who make an indrawn “sss” sound when the presenter makes a highly questionable remark.)

Submachines

I have just discovered two new games in Mateusz Skutnik’s Submachine series, Submachine 2: The Lighthouse and Submachine 3: The Loop.
(Here’s a link to the original Submachine)
While the atmosphere of a Skutnik’s “escape” game is often gloomy, the gameplay itself is friendly — there are no dead ends which require you to restart. They do require some cultural knowledge, however, such as English color names.

Choose Your Own Adventure — Now on DVD

View the trailer for The Abominable Snowman here. It claims there are 11 storylines, which maybe means there are 11 decision points, I don’t know.
Did I mention it features the vocal talents of William H. Macy?