blogosphere-1.txt.swl.blogger

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<ns0:entry xmlns:ns0="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><ns0:id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3618780804544792727.post-7728669792411721545</ns0:id><ns0:author><ns0:name>Kris Kowal</ns0:name><ns0:email>cowbertvonmoo@gmail.com</ns0:email><ns0:uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/01443956999129365941</ns0:uri></ns0:author><ns0:content type="html">
&lt;p&gt;When I moved my blog over to &lt;a href="http://askawizard.blogspot.com"&gt;askawizard.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;, the quickest and easiest way to give my page a unique look was to make my own banner graphic.  I decided to make a depiction of the "blogosphere" as I envisioned it based on the mimetically virulent &lt;a href="http://xkcd.com/239/"&gt;xkcd 239&lt;/a&gt;.  Randal Munroe stakes claim to a literal interpretation of the popular term "blogosphere": a layer of the atmosphere where free speech enthusiasts convene aboard various flying platforms and hawk their ideas in a sort of aerial or ethereal bazaar.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;tt&gt;xkcd&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;a href="http://craphound.com/"&gt;Cory Doctorow&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href="http://www.eff.org/"&gt;EFF&lt;/a&gt; is the only blogger who actually wears a cape and goggles.  I caught a certain implication that he's the only person crazy enough to dress up when they passionately jotcast.  This is not true.  I put on my robe and wizard hat.  Don't take that the wrong way.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So, I drew a &lt;a href="http://cixar.comhttp://cixar.com/~kris.kowal/ask-a-wizard.gif"&gt;depiction of the blogosphere&lt;/a&gt;.  Over the last few weeks, I've taken some time to characterize more of my web neighborhood.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://onecreativeblog.com"&gt;Ryan&lt;/a&gt; and I are in the foreground in the guises we took for our web comic, &lt;a href="http://punnished.com"&gt;Punnished&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Cory Doctorow occupies his &lt;a href="http://xkcd.com/497/"&gt;ironclad&lt;/a&gt; balloon on the opposite side of the scene.  &lt;tt&gt;(?:T)?ron&lt;/tt&gt; Paul lurks behind in his blimp.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Like the wizards and witches of Harry Potter, in this metaphysical representation of the web, microblogging is facilitated by sending flocks of &lt;a href="http://twitter.com"&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt; bird messengers from balloon to balloon.  I called out &lt;a href="http://blog.joshlewis.org"&gt;Josh Lewis&lt;/a&gt;, a prolific blogger in my network, by putting him and his family in a balloon the same &lt;i&gt;initial&lt;/i&gt; color as his old blog, emanating a halo of tweety birds.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://arstechnica.com"&gt;Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt; is heralded as one of the largest "blogs" on the Internet.  My long-time MUD project partner and friend, &lt;a href="http://arstechnica.com/authors.ars/segphault"&gt;Ryan Paul&lt;/a&gt; edits the Ars &lt;i&gt;Open Ended&lt;/i&gt; journal.  While the blogosphere is not quite high enough to qualify as "orbital" in the sense of Ars's purported "Orbital HQ", I decided to put Ryan in a nearby balloon emblazoned with a likeness of the Ars logo.  Ryan is wearing a cloak of Roman imperial purple.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;One of the earliest bloggers, &lt;a href="http://www.quirksmode.org/"&gt;Peter-Paul Koch&lt;/a&gt; flies in the dark-blue Quirksmode balloon, from which he provides a steady hail of browser compatibility tables.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Zeppelin enthusiast, &lt;a href="http://simonwillison.net/"&gt;Simon Willson&lt;/a&gt;, flies a &lt;a href="http://www.djangoproject.com/"&gt;Django&lt;/a&gt; themed zeppelin.  He is trailed by the &lt;a href="http://code.google.com/p/django-pony/"&gt;mimetically&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://hackety.org/2008/09/15/documentsRevealDjangoPonyTailOfLies.html"&gt;unstoppable&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://avalonstar.com/blog/2008/sep/9/web-framework-ponies/"&gt;Django Pony&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;A man I believe saved JavaScript from horrible doom, &lt;a href="http://www.crockford.com/"&gt;Doug Crockford&lt;/a&gt; occupies a balloon in his blog's colors.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;As a nod to all the fabulous people who participated in &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/wotw2"&gt;#wotw2&lt;/a&gt;, a Martian Unpowered Inter-planetary Attack Cannister falls through the scene on the left.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I've posted an &lt;a href="http://cixar.comhttp://cixar.com/~kris.kowal/ask-a-wizard-who.png"&gt;annotated version&lt;/a&gt; of the current banner as a larger image, including a version in the original &lt;a href="http://cixar.com/~kris/ask-a-wizard.svg"&gt;Scalable Vector Graphics format&lt;/a&gt;, wherein the annotations are a hidden layer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I plan to add to the scene every once in a while.&lt;/p&gt;
</ns0:content><ns0:updated>2008-11-08T22:02:56.613-08:00</ns0:updated><ns0:published>2008-11-08T20:56:00.000-08:00</ns0:published><ns0:title type="text">Blogosphere</ns0:title><ns0:link href="http://askawizard.blogspot.com/feeds/7728669792411721545/comments/default" rel="replies" title="Post Comments" type="application/atom+xml" /><ns0:link href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3618780804544792727&amp;postID=7728669792411721545" rel="replies" title="0 Comments" type="text/html" /><ns0:link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3618780804544792727/posts/default/7728669792411721545" rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" /><ns0:link href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3618780804544792727/posts/default/7728669792411721545" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><ns0:link href="http://askawizard.blogspot.com/2008/11/blogosphere.html" rel="alternate" title="Blogosphere" type="text/html" /><ns1:total xmlns:ns1="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</ns1:total></ns0:entry>