Owen Massey McKnight ([info]addedentry) wrote,
@ 2003-10-16 23:00:00
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Bachelor's degrees of separation
In my second year at university I moved to Jericho, a cramped and trendy corner of Oxford, to share a house with other wets and weeds. One of them observed that we were doing everything wrong. At university you should make 10 friends each of whom introduces you to 10 friends. Instead, we knew 3 people each of whom knew 3 other people - us.

Now the key to tracing your six degrees of separation is identifying someone of the first type. Link up with them and their contacts come free, one step away. Thanks to an LJ Friends-graphing tool, I've confirmed my suspicions that the people for whose acquaintance I should pay are [info]j4 and [info]verlaine - and above all one of their intermediaries [info]jiggery_pokery. All hail the Oxford mafia diaspora!

So I'd like to revive a popular LiveJournal virus and introduce two Friends. The effervescent [info]j4 and the urbane [info]verlaine, or at least their entourages, are scheduled to meet at Stay Beautiful on Saturday night. I expect a result like the meeting of Drs Teller and Anti-Teller.

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[info]thomppw
2003-10-16 03:35 pm UTC (link)
i've made no friends, each of which being theoretically very popular indeed

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I have been invoked here and accordingly must reply, but I don't really know what to say
[info]jiggery_pokery
2003-10-16 08:09 pm UTC (link)
an LJ Friends-graphing tool - you mean, you don't pronounce LJ "lidge"?

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Re: I have been invoked here and accordingly must reply, but I don't really know what to say
[info]venta
2003-10-17 03:03 am UTC (link)
you don't pronounce LJ "lidge"?

Good grief, of course not. You mean you do?

It's ell-jay. Clearly.

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Re: I have been invoked here and accordingly must reply, but I don't really know what to say
[info]addedentry
2003-10-17 03:11 am UTC (link)
...which is Pig Latin for 'jell'. Hm.

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[info]lnr
2003-10-17 02:58 am UTC (link)
My graph ends up being a text file with the words "bad username:)" in it and nothing else.

You might also find LJ6 interesting. It can do similar sorts of graphs, but based on gossip which you can contribute to yourself.

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LJ6
[info]addedentry
2003-10-17 03:11 am UTC (link)
What a tangled snogweb we weave!

We seem fascinated with making connections explicit. Do you think this goes against the nature of gossip?

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[info]gnimmel
2003-10-17 03:26 am UTC (link)
I think mine's been generated, but every time I try looking at it Mozilla crashes. :(

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[info]lnr
2003-10-17 03:33 am UTC (link)
Hmm, mine didn't crash mozilla, but mozilla couldn't display it, and I had to save it and look at it in notepad to actually see what it said inside. Which version are you using?

(This will be because the server said it was a PNG file and it clearly wasn't so Mozilla was right that it was broken, but in those cases it does sometimes help to display it as text instead, as IE does, and it appears Mozilla doesn't do this)

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[info]ewx
2003-10-17 12:21 pm UTC (link)
No biscuit.

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[info]j4
2003-10-17 08:50 am UTC (link)
The effervescent j4 and the urbane verlaine, or at least their entourages, are scheduled to meet at Stay Beautiful on Saturday night.

Except I'm not going to SB any more. Simon Gilbert has cancelled his DJ slot because Suede are playing a gig in Dubai instead, and in the absence of a particularly good reason to go to that particular SB night I've decided I can't really justify the expense. Or the late night, given how badly I've been sleeping recently.

Sorry, [info]verlaine.

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[info]verlaine
2003-10-18 04:37 am UTC (link)
Well, maybe another time! Anyone who is good enough to meet with [info]addedentry's approval is good enough for me. Many would say far too good...

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[info]the_heiress
2003-10-17 01:17 pm UTC (link)
I am an 'entourage'! I've never been called that before.

I like to think of myself as one of [info]verlaine's cultural hareem.

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[info]verlaine
2003-10-18 04:38 am UTC (link)
Wait a minute - I thought I was your entourage!

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[info]jiggery_pokery
2003-10-18 03:11 pm UTC (link)
ALL YOUR ENTOURAGE ARE BELONG TO </a></b></a>

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