Because the internet is made out of people: this was The Friday Telescreen 2009. These are the readers of warrenellis.com.

Thanks to all who sent in photos, and especial thanks to the three hundred people whose photos I just couldn’t fit in. Sorry. Next year I’ll do a weeklong thing again, and get everybody in.

Have a good weekend.

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next hour or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next couple of hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Ariana got the shouting out of her system in re: whining about how making stuff and showing it to people is too hard.

Now she’s moved on to: how to start thinking about making a project.

…if the feedback I’m getting is any indication (and I’ve got comments disabled here because they don’t suit me, but I do pay attention to Twitter and I read everything on Whitechapel) — there are a LOT of you right. on. that. cusp. of taking the first step. So look, I know I’ve been giving you lot a hard time about “just getting it done,” but before I get into my list of Stuff What I Learned Working With POD sometime tomorrow, I wanna back up a step and talk to you.

Here’s what you need to do, right now, tonight. No, NOT tomorrow morning, or this weekend, or once your work rush has let off a little, or after the holidays, or sometime in the New Year: Right. Fucking. Now….

And from there to book-specific notes and observations about working with a POD system:

…how you go about putting your book together is completely up to you, and what you’re comfortable with. The Lulu templates will give you a bit less control over what the finished product looks like, but it’s a really good place for the people that are just starting out. Do you already understand why your inside margins need to be a titch wider than your outside? If that question just kinda terrified you: that’s all right, but you probably want to start with the templates. Trust me, your book is still going to be lovely, the important thing for you is just getting your content into a pretty and readable format.

And, today, the begininngs of how we run FREAKANGELS the way we do.

Wil’s been all over Ariana’s THIS IS HOW WE FIX SHIT WITH WRENCHES posts during this week, and has a distillation of what he’s taken from them at this link here:

This is incredibly inspiring to me, and I hope that it’s just as inspiring to indie artists everywhere. Why not take a creative risk and see if it works out? Unlike the old days, when we had to purchase a lot of stock ahead of time and hope we could sell it, we can just Get Excited and Make Things, knowing that the very worst that can happen is that nobody likes that thing we made as much as we thought they would…

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

In which things start to break apart.

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

• IBM Makes Supercomputer Significantly Smarter Than Cat
  "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at IBM have presented at paper at the SC09 supercomputing conference describing a milestone in cognitive computing: the group's massively parallel cortical simulator, C2, now has the ability to simulate a brain with about 4.5 percent the cerebral cortex capacity of a human brain, and significantly more brain capacity than a cat."
  (tags:tech computing neuro )
• Cabell cairns pique archaeologist’s interest
  ""On the summits of nearly all prominent bluffs, spurs and high points of this region are heaps of large, angular stones," according to a survey report published in 1894. "Unlike the loose cairns of the Plains and the Northwest and elsewhere, these appear to have been systematically constructed for some particular purpose.""
  (tags:history )
• Gang ‘killed victims to extract their fat’ | World news | guardian.co.uk
  "Peruvian police have arrested a gang which allegedly killed scores of peasants, drained their bodies of fat and sold the liquid abroad as an anti-wrinkle cosmetic."
  (tags:crime )

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 20-odd hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Knock John, like Shivering Sands, was a Maunsell Sea Fort in the Thames Estuary. It still stands today. All its ladders have been prised off to ensure it can’t be used as a smuggling stage… although it’s worth noting that the big guns weren’t taken off it until 1992. In 1965, it was taken over and used as a pirate radio station.

(We like our pirates around here. The creeks of shoreland Essex were the byways for pirates all the way into the 19th century, after all)

Radio Essex broadcast for a little over a year. They may have been the first British radio station to broadcast the likes of John Lee Hooker, I’m not sure — I know they played a lot of blues and R&B that wasn’t getting much attention elsewhere. I’ve read that Radio Essex was in fact criticised for being "weird" in 1966. Roy Bates, who set Radio Essex up, later decamped to the sea fort Roughs Tower, which you may know better as the principality of Sealand.

SHIVERING SANDS was my first POD book. A year from now or thereabouts, KNOCK JOHN will be the second.

(Superb image of Knock John by Richard Brown, found on a Flickr search)

So every year I do a thing where all the readers of the site take a photo and send it in to me, and I run as many as I can. It started off as World Wide Wednesday, and last July I did a World Wide Week just because of the volume of shots I get. I just realised today that I haven’t done one of these stunts this year. And that I don’t have a clear week between now and New Year where I’m actually at the keyboard every day. So I’m going to bring back the iteration from 2008, I think. Tomorrow will be The Friday Telescreen 2009.

Take a picture of yourself, email it (not a link to it) to warrenellis@gmail.com and I’ll run as many of you as I can here during Friday.

Why do I do this every year? I dunno. Kind of a tradition now, since the days of the WEF and Die Puny Humans. I have this idea in my head that the internet, like Soylent Green, is made out of people, and it doesn’t hurt to see the people you’re with when you come here.

It begins.

I’m off in my head today, in story-hunting mode. In lieu of actual content, let’s see what some people I know are up to.

Jamais Cascio is practising his stance for the day he takes over the world:

Katie West is… god, I dunno… pink?

She’s also in Matt Sheret’s PAPER SCIENCE, which I’m going to need a copy of, young man, if you’re reading this…

Zo is Zo:

Templesmith’s new book is looking good:

Bruce Sterling’s laptop:

(Bruce lives out of his laptop, and it accrues memetic furniture as it rolls around the world with him.)

Ellen Rogers photography for the Dec 09 issue of i-D:

The Twitter account of industry magazine PRODUCTION WEEKLY just posted on teh twittarz:

The CW will again try to adapt Warren Ellis’ comic book "Global Frequency," this time Scott Nimerfro will script the pilot.

Which I discovered because half a dozen people retweeted it at me within about thirty seconds of it landing.

I haven’t been cleared to comment yet, so I can’t really add anything to this. I’ve spoken briefly to Scott Nimerfro — by which I mean I threatened to have him stabbed, and he thanked me and told me a funny story about how he’s had worse threats — and he is Okay.

Anyway. Yes. Shouldn’t say any more until I get the nod from the studio. But yes.

(Also, yes, I did tell John Rogers. But John, you know, has his own hit show LEVERAGE these days. One of his temple houris told me that John, from the depths of the bed made of golden vaginas that they wheel him around in, wishes me luck.)

(whom you know better as comics creator D’Israeli)

(is living in Greece for a while)

(and these are his photos of his time there so far)

Excellent article from Julian Smith for New Scientist about wingsuited skydivers trying to cut the last cord from old-style jumping, and effect chuteless landings. Excellent quote therein:

Von Egidy sees her suit as a step towards a grander vision of people soaring like birds, not just gliding. "There could be nothing more challenging on Earth than to explore the limits of direct human flight. We are in fact far better suited to flight than we believe."

Ben Templesmith is wandering the UK, watching re-runs of THE SWEENEY and peering through your windows at night. These are the details on where to see him, how to commission a piece of art from him for dirt cheap, and exactly what he’s prepared to do to you sexually under the current exchange rate.