A themed issue on mapping and visualisation of the net, something I’ve been thinking about recently.
An atlas of cyberspace categorised into sections such as conceptual, artistic, usage etc.
Mappamundi map of the month some of the best visualisations of both cyberspace and net usage.
Mapping Cyberspace image gallery
Twurled world map of Information Warfare, Terrorism, and the U.S. Critical Infrastructure.
NIMA.mil US military National Imagery and Mapping Agency Geospatial engine

The Washington Sniper’s gun, you can buy it online
What’s going to happen on 8th March 2003?
The UK shamed again - not even done by an Irish person.
Download some Sigur Ross MP3s
Stina Nordenstam has yet another new site which includes some of her photography which is pretty good.

Announcing the launch of the Stunned Net.Art Blog
It seems that there is so much new net.art these days that it’s really hard to keep up with what’s happening. This net.art announcer uses Moveable Type blogging system which will let net artists post information about their new work themselves without any editorial input or delays. The system will be restricted to announcements about new work and requests for feedback on works in progress so we hope it’ll become a quick stopping of point whenever you want to check out some new project links.
While we felt this would be a useful tool we can’t say we’re 100% sure so this is a trial run, if it proves useful we’ll keep it, if not it’ll go the way of so many other bad ideas.

Reverse Side
I was in the 2nd hand bookshop recently and bought a book from 1942 which had this bookmark with an appeal for the Over-seas League Tobacco Fund

A photo blog from Antarctica via Smoke Signals

Is the Arts Council waging a campaign against artists? The second application date for bursaries has been abolished for this year which effectively means only half the bursaries will be given out this year. If you’ve been spending time getting together an impressive application, spending money on professional slides of your work – tough!
Bursaries are, in effect, the only way the Arts Council actually gives grants of any reasonable amount directly to artists. Arbitrarily axing the October deadline is worrying, add to this the closure of The Artists Association and Arthouse two institutions which provided practical support to working artists and you’d be forgiven for thinking that The Arts Council is waging war on artists.

The Observer has a Kurt Cobain special with pages from his notebooks in his own handwriting and a chance to win a 1969 Fender Competition Mustang in Lake Placid Blue complete with a 24-inch scale length, vibrato tailpiece and unmistakable competition stripe, just like Kurdts. With all this fuss you’d think he has a new record coming out

I voted in the Nice treaty referendum on Saturday electronically for the first time as Dun Laoghaire constituency has been added to the pilot scheme. Quite frankly I was shocked at how badly designed the polling station was especially in a simple yes/no scanario. The booth consisted of two buttons, yes and no, which when you pressed them had no tactile feedback so it was hard to know if you had registered a vote, once I had made my choice I then had to press the cast vote button which again was similar. The fact that the vote was cast was confirmed by a very small LED screen which changed it’s message to ready for next voter - maybe it had another message before this one but I missed it so it must have been very brief. The text on this screen was small and, due to the physical size of the machine, quite far away making it very difficult to read for anyone with bad eyesight.
I hope they do a bit more work on this machine before the next general election where the situation will be a lot more complicated.
My suggestions would be; good old fashioned clunky buttons that stay pressed when pressed, a decent size high contrast screen and reintroduce the curtain – it’s still a secret ballot after all!

Donna Tartt interview in the Guardian.
Interestingly the interview seems to take everything she says or has said at face value when there are obviously bits where she’s pulling someones leg. For example this segment quoted from a Harpers Interview
she wrote a beautiful, and very intimate, memoir of the time for Harper’s magazine. It presents the story of a bizarre childhood. She was, she wrote, “too small to wear regular baby clothes”, so was instead dressed in doll’s clothes. “There exists a hilarious photograph of me lying in a crib and wearing, for an infant, an oddly sophisticated career-girl outfit,” she writes.
if you know anything about dolls or babies (expert in both) you know this isn’t true.
Still it’s nice to see a made up anecdote slipped into a respectable journal.

RTE is reshowing sampler which I reported on previously which means another opportunity to see the informative documentary on the rising tide of anti culchie racism in Dublin and the Culchie Control Platform. See the real video here.