June 20, 2005
July 12, 2004
Friday Slashdotting
Wow, igargoyle got slashdotted on Friday. I've been keeping slashdot as a goal for this site since it's a major blogosphere hub, but it didn't occur to me that the renowned "news for nerds" had linked igargoyle when the hit counter skyrocketed, but the flood of comments (44 total!) was a clear giveaway. 27,000 hits in one day, approximately 4 times as much traffic than igargoyle has seen in the past two months. Thanks everyone for stopping by, and to those of you who have subscribed to our full XML syndication, I hope you enjoy the ad-free cyborg and wearable computing feed.
June 22, 2004
June 21, 2004
Giveaways and Posthumanism
In the past month igargoyle has seen over 3,500 page views, not including our full rss feeds. Thanks for your patronage, it's been fun publishing (mostly) every day this past month. As a reward, the first three people to email me at tomlong zat g mail zot com get accounts on google's amazing new gmail. I also have one gmail account for whoever emails me links or leads, or plug you shamelessly if you prefer.
On another note, I thought I'd share this disturbing short story from Warren Ellis of http://diepunyhumans.com/ that was published a while ago. I was reminded of it by a friend talking about wanting to write, and a robotic suit article I saw on engadget. Exoskeletons are great, but when will we have cybortenticals?
Update:
"okay...that story creeped me out. thank you very much nym..." [Rich_Gibson]
Warning: This story is pretty graphic.
She used to have eyes I could lose myself in, and then she had them replaced with laser pointers. Little red dots jumping up and down on the bedroom wall as I took her from behind. I could live with that until she had the animal voice import. The cheetah purring was okay, but the dingo noises just killed the mood. The combination of the red eyes and the gorilla sounds when she jerked off was horrible. A few weeks later, things were moving down there that shouldn't have. Don't be scared, she said, as stuff pumped like organ stops under her skin. Something extended itself and waved at me.
I threw up between her legs and she didn't talk to me for a week. Which I suppose you can't really blame her for, but still.
I knew it was over when she cut her legs off.
Had them hacked off at the knee and came home with a suitcase full of modular replacements. The stumps had little Firewire ports that plugged into the new lower leg units. She fitted what she called her Sex Legs and flexed artificial toes, feet fixed in a perfect arch to accomodate the welded-on six-inch heels. Apparently there were Segway gyroscopes in the calves to keep her upright when she walked.
I came home one night to find her in a red latex minidress and sixteen legs. Spider things were sprouted from her knees, eight legs each. She paraded on the plastic kitchen floor for me, swinging her hips. Clackclackclackclack on the floor. Clackclackclackclack.
She stuck her tongue out at me when I started retching. There was what looked like a DC power inlet on the tip.
After that, it just got ugly. I had to go. I saw her again a couple of weeks ago. She introduced her new boyfriend as Spin. His skin was cold and shiny, like white plastic coating over steel. He had a revolving drum in his stomach. She leant against him and grinned.
I'm living in my car now. My car loves me. I mean, it wouldn't have grown a real vagina for me otherwise, would it?
Rich also gave me this link about future shock levels. "I thought I was a big singularity guy...but then, actually thinking of firewire ports in my leg stumps seems, well, a bit off putting." [Rich_Gibson]
May 20, 2004
PayPay against Free Speech
Due to PayPal's recent stupidity and blatent disregard for free speech, I have removed the paypal donations on this page and have replaced it with a google adsense ad. Hopefully this will give me some real feedback on how the site is being recieved, and produce some cool contextual links.
Below is the release from the Freenet Project, an open source project which relies on donations to pay for it's anti-censorship software development. Please consider donating to them if you are able to.
17th May, 2004 : Paypal suspends Freenet donations account
Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy", which suggests that someone at Paypal took a dislike to the goals of our project, since I have never used an anonymous proxy to access Paypal (this being the activity I assume they sought to prevent). It is fortunate that Johann Gutenberg did not rely on Paypal to fund his work on the printing press, which also allowed anonymous publication of information, since his account would probably have been frozen too.
If you are concerned about whether your account might be at risk due to your political opinions you may wish to speak to their PR contact Hani Durzy at (408) 376 7458. If you are an investor and you would like to see what other political opinions Paypal doesn't like, you may want to speak to their Investor contact Tracey Ford at (408) 376 7205.
[ Picture from Robot Protest found via boingboing]
January 22, 2004
Site Update
I've been very busy recently with personal projects, and haven't had time to really write articles for igargoyle recently. I would love to get some other editors on here, but it's still such a small area of emerging technology that I haven't really had any offers.
In the meantime while I prepare for the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Confrence in San Diego (Feb. 9th-12th), here's a few pictures from jeffbots.com (thanks lemonodor).
November 11, 2003
Updated Design
Hey everyone, things seem to be moving a bit around here, and I finally fixed up the templates with some new design that works on IE and Moz pretty well. I also added a full RSS feed to satisfy the newshounds out there. Hopefully this feed will include all our images. I added a donate button to the site, as it would help me allocate time to interview people, and write more articles for infogargoyle.
Hope you enjoy the new site design!
May 06, 2003
Desires and Motivations
Infogargoyle came out of two of my desires, to collect information, and to build a community around the subject of high tech information gathering. I began with things like wardriving, and wanting to collect more information like geospatial wireless access points. This desire led me to research, the research led me to the fundimentals, and from that I've gained a lot of insight about my personal goals, in regard to igargoyle.com and the world. This site began as a pseudo blog, into a dynamic full fledged one, and in time is likely to become much more. Part of my aim to find and build the systems to support both effective data aqusition, as well as effective data storage.
April 13, 2003
movable type up and running
Thanks to Dragoon of hardsun.net, the blog engine Movable Type is up and running on our server. Pretty good web application really.
August 14, 2002
Web Site Design Evolving
For those new to the idea, a gargoyle, a term used by author Neil Stephenson in his book Snow Crash, among other authors, describes "a person who is decked out in computer gear such that they are able to catalog all data collected through their senses as well as get data that is useful to whatever goal that they have". This article describes my original goals and desires behind infogargoyle.com.
I love the idea, but for those outside the slashdot crowd, the term requires some explanation. Thus, I created the term infogargoyle, or for short, igargoyle to describe a roaming high tech indivdual who collects data. Why would someone want to become an igargoyle? Personally, I'd like to be able to be able to see visual time lapse from a first person perspective at the end of a day, maintain a wireless blog, and be able to act as camera man and reporter all by myself.
"Your mistake, ... is that you think that all mechanically assisted organisms - like me - are pathetic cripples. In fact, we are better than we were before."
-Snow Crash
My main goal of this site is to create a hub for all the information gathers around the world, as well as a place with articles and documentation on setting yourself up with equipment to gather information. If you have a mobile camera, or would like to upload the contents of a digital camera you carry, please contact me, nym at [email protected].