Tumblr is on Acid

I was reading this story on Hacker News about how awesome Tumblr is. 

It’s kinda fascinating.  It seems like lots of people on Tumblr is extremely rah rah about Tumblr itself.  You don’t really see people on Blogger or WordPress yattering on about the platform.

But I created a tumblr myself a while back to post even randomer pictures and stuff.

And the sign-up process is a complete mess that I still don’t remember how I got through in the end, involving emails that contained links to nowhere.

And the user interface is a total clusterfuck.  As illustrated in the picture above, if I want to post a picture to my tumblr, I have about one pixel where I’m able to click to upload a picture.  (Granted, this is from a pretty weird laptop with a 1600×768 screen, but still…)

And after I’ve uploaded it, there’s no easy way to get a direct link to the post itself.

So it’s all very confusing.  Are the rah rah tumbler people on acid?

Either I’m missing something, or the entire UX is totally eww.

Perhaps I’ll give hipstagram a try…

1995: The Mark of Merlin

I bought this book at an SF auction thing at the University.  I remember a bidding war broke out between me and some woman over this book.

I’m not sure why.  I was just caught up in the excitement.

And then it sat on the bookshelf until now.

I used to read a lot of the Anne McCaffrey sf/fantasy stuff.  She’s not a good writer or anything, but her books are…  relaxing.  They’re just there.  Things happen.  Dragons fly by.  A spaceship rebels. 

This isn’t a fantasy book, though.  “Merlin” (he of the title) is a dog.

I mean, literally.  He’s a dog.

So is this book.  This books is literally a dog.

It’s an uneasy mash-up between a gothic romance book and a spy adventure book, and it fails pretty much completely in every conceivable manner.  The plot is moronic and the romance is icky.

Rating: Twaddlelific!

Papp László Budapest Sportarénában

Who knew that Dead Can Dance had so many fans in Hungary that they had to play a sports arena?

I thought the sound was gonna be pretty iffy, but it was the last place in Europe that had tickets available.

The sound wasn’t iffy — it was horrible.

As Concert Goer Guy would say: Worst.  Echo.  Ever.

It was still ridiculously beautiful.  It’s Dead Can fucking Dance, innit?

1995: Tourists

I do remember why I haven’t read this one.  I thought it was a short story collection.

I hate short story collections.

No, that’s not quite true.  I love short stories.  It’s just that they take more energy than novels.  They’re so compressed.  You have to start caring about these characters in a couple of pages, and then ten pages later, they’re gone.  And then you start on the next one.

It’s less than relaxing.

So I thought this was a short story collection for some reason or other, but it isn’t.  Instead it’s an sf/magic realism mash-up.  Sort of.

It’s quite original and fun, but it didn’t really make me want to run out and buy ten more books by Lisa Goldstein.  It’s quite good.  Quite.  Kinda.  Yes.

Rating: Ambivalific!

1995: Homo Falsus

Do you remember back in the mid-80s where all books dealt with writers who were writing the book you were reading, or were they?

The post-modernity of this book is pretty staggering.  And perhaps not in a good way.  But that’s just what virtually all literature was like in 1984.

This one has not just one author, but two, and one or both of them is writing the book.  So freaky!  Yowza!  Zzzzzz!

Oh, I guess it was fun at the time.

And reading the in-depth descriptions of Oslo in 1984 was amusing.

And look at that book design!  Zing!  1984!  Nothing says 1984 more than that book design.

Rating: Shruggerific