peteashtondotcom

Blawgistan - interesting.

Good ol’ Hammers wrote a nice little article in today’s Guardian Online section about the WikiPedia and the general joy of all things Wiki. A nice place to start if you’re wondering what I’m on about with the BugWiki project.

Yesterday Atsushi came to stay. Atsushi is Lucy and Jeff (sister and bro-in-law)’s friend from Japan who wanted to see a bit of London before going on to stay with them. But the poor chap had to chose one of the coldest days to wander around London. When I let him in this evening he was frozen to the bone but he enjoyed himself by all accounts. Shame I wasn’t able to do the grand tour due to work. As well as visiting the National Gallery he managed to get lost in Elephant and Castle, not the most salubrious area of London, so I guess he’s seen both sides of the city. Here’s him trying to avoid a photo:

He also brought with him cool chocolate…

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I was just typing a post for BugPowder and did a typo. It occured to me that the <o> tag looks really cool. Shame it doesn’t do anything. Maybe in the next HTML version? Purely for aesthetics of course…

Just down from Waterloo Station, opposite the Old Vic, is a square where some homeless people hang out. They quite often have a fire going by the wall. Sometimes it’s been hosed down, but often it’s just left there. As I was walking back the last night it there was the remains of a pallet smouldering in the smoke. I took three photos of them, all of which are as good as each other and nearly identical, so I’m posting the lot.
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Blogcritics

- A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, and technology - updated continuously.

Interesting collection of 200 bloggers that seems to operate in a totally non-automated manner, which bucks the trend of RSS-fed aggregator sites somewhat. Or it is just a massive community blog?

Postbloggerism - something to read at a later date, and either discard or thoughtfully chin-rub. Or both.

Bought a very big book today. It’s the biggest techy book I’ve ever bought. It’s very impressive and worrying and got some “blimey” comments at work when I bought it, but flicking through it, it should let me do what I want to do. I hope. Eek.

Wandering around town with Anna on Saturday we passed a gallery/shop on Museum Street which had these mad photo-montage things in the window. I was so taken with them I got the camera out and took shots of every one, on the off chance they wouldn’t be on the net. Of course, they are. The pictures remind me a lot of Wouter van Oortmerssen’s (fixed link) compositions and I really do admire this kind of work a lot. One of these two people is inspired by French cubists and sells his prints for hundreds of pounds. The other did it because it seemed like a good idea and stuck it on the net. I like them both.

Realised I hadn’t seen mate Kath for a while so I texted her. She came in the shop today and we shared news. She’s off to Spain for all of Feb, staying with friends and bumming around learning Spainish, and she’s keeping her rented room on the go while she’s away. 2+2 later, I’m room sitting for her. So no need to jump around my mate’s sofas. Yay!

Now all I need is an army of mates to help us move the stuff. The usual suspects are considered enlisted unless they say otherwise. You know who you are.

Big news I can’t write about. Yay! Damn! Yay!

When I first met my good friend Brett whilst working in a bookshop in Birmingham four years ago he had just graduated from the University of Lampeter in the middle of the nowhere of darkest Wales. Whilst there he had spent a long time in pubs. When the beer money ran out he taught himself HTML and wrote about spending a long time in pubs. The end result was 500 reasons why you might be a Welsh landlord, all based on actual experiences of drinking in said establishments. It was one of the funniest things I’d ever read and marked Brett and someone I should get to know a tad better

Unfortunately, someone complained to Angelfire, the free hosting service, that Brett’s site was racially offensive to the Welsh and they removed it. At this time Brett’s PC had died and with it his copies of the pages. For a while you could get it on the Wayback Machine but it’s gone even from there and neither of us thought to make new copies.

Then, magically, Brett found it archived on the website of The Plough And Harrow, a Welsh pub the landlord of which had recognised the earthy truisms in Brett’s work and decided it was too good to lose. So, thanks to this great and good man we can one again present to you the genius that is
The Amazing Welsh Landlord Site by Mr Brett Tremble.

Brett is also the mind behind the The World of Mayonnaise - where condiments collide!

Just spent a lovely half hour reading the surprisingly-but-not-actually-that-surprisingly excellent anthology Rosetta while listening to the surprisingly-but-not-actually-that-surprisingly excellent Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. Bliss. Rosetta is a cool book and marks something of a turning point in comics I think. The punky kids who a few years ago were doing angry mini comics are settling into a groove and there’s a nice international feel, mainly provided by Lat whose comics I grew up with as a kid in Singapore. YBTPR is a cool album and reminds me a little of Cornershop - not musically in the slightest but in the way that the current single is very mainstream friendly while the album is weird as fuck with certainly the heaviest bass I’ve heard on a non-dance album. I wonder how many “straights” are going to buy it and be freaked out. Always a good thing.

Reason I’m chilling is we’ve got a flat. A very nice flat. Within our budget, ten minutes from the tube, back (for me) in Mile End, overlooking Victoria Park, furnished with decent stuff and not too much of it, with a dishwasher, and a novelty corner bath. It’s super tops and the kind of place I can see myself living in for a good number of years. Definitely doesn’t feel at all transitory. And it’s OURS!

Here’s the view from the living room window.

Keen or what!

The only complication is we can’t move in until the 1st March and we have to move out on the 10th Feb so it’s sofas for me and a double move (all the stuff to Anna’s mum’s). But this does mean no rent for a fortnight which’ll help my finances no end. Consider this an early call for help with moving (Sat 8th Feb and Sat 1st March - pizza and beer provided) and a beg for sofa space!

The Spaced thing from yesterday had been on my brain all morning. As Anna and me left early to view flats I felt we should strike a pose from a cult movie or something, and as she rambled on in a tired, slightly stressed manner I couldn’t resist the urge to demand she “cut to the end”. I think this could get tiresome. But not quite yet.

This weekend, then, will mostly be spent doing fuck all. And enjoying it.

Sitting at the computer I saw something large and dark fall past my peripheral vision followed by a dull thwack. People in the flat opposite on the 4th floor are moving out and are throwing large bin liners full of (presumably) clothes off the balcony. Very wise.

A top-tastic link from Brett, and this time it’s not stupid or dumb or about condiments. It’s the Earth and Moon Viewer on John Walker’s Formilab site.

You can view either a map of the Earth showing the day and night regions at this moment, or view the Earth from the Sun, the Moon, the night side of the Earth, above any location on the planet specified by latitude, longitude and altitude, from a satellite in Earth orbit, or above various cities around the globe.

Images can be generated based on a full-colour image of the Earth by day and night, a topographical map of the Earth, up-to-date weather satellite imagery, or a composite image of cloud cover superimposed on a map of the Earth, or a colour composite which shows clouds, land and sea temperatures, and ice. Expert mode allows you additional control over the generation of the image. You can compose a custom request with frequently-used parameters and save it as a hotlist or bookmark item in your browser.

In addition to the Earth, you can also view the Moon from the Earth, Sun, night side, above named formations on the lunar surface. or as a map showing day and night. A related document compares the appearance of the Moon at perigee and apogee, including an interactive Perigee and Apogee Calculator.

What Joel Rathergood did next.

Only £300 per week…

(mirror)

What is it with pictures like this? They’ve been slowly creeping in everywhere over the last few months and now you can’t move for grinning idiots looking up at you. It makes one feel like one is on the balcony of life, looking down at the Prozac nation. It’s especially affecting Estate Agents right now.

Yes, we didn’t get the flat, despite getting there at 8.45 this morning and handing over the holding desposit, the landlord had already got an agreement through another agency. Fucksticks. And there was me all impressed that I’m managed to find a really nice place in one day. So back to the drawing board. It was a cool flat, too, as you can see.. Onwards, then. Ever onwards.

Masturbate for Peace: Using Masturbation to End War. Check out the bumper stickers.

Walking up Kennington Park Road I saw my name…

Not often you see your name on a storefront. Even less often in this line of work…

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Had the camera, saw stuff, took photos of it.
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Might have found somewhere. Anna’s going to see it tomorrow morning then we make a decision. If it hasn’t gone by then. Ooh, the tension, the tension…

Flat hunting has definitely moved with the times since the last time I hunted a couple of years ago. After starting on the traditional traipse this morning I thought I’d see what the web had to offer, and it appeared that most agencies had their lettings lists online. It also seemed they mainly used a service from Vebra to host their listings and you can search across a number of estate agencies directly from the Vebra site, then go to the agency in question. Simple, logical, and it worked for me. Even if you don’t find a property through them you can use them to find which areas are in your price range these days.

And from my side of the fence, I took loads of pictures, uploaded them to the site in five minutes and was talking Anna through them to the stage where she was pretty much ready to make a decision (though she still wants to physically see the place).

Could it be the Internet is coming of age?

Flat hunting this morning. You can’t beat having Lemon Jelly on your walkman when treking from one estate agent to the other, especially when everything is over your budget. I found myself thinking “can I afford £500 a month?”, doing the calculations and realising, no. Actually I could at a push, but I don’t want to. Anyway, early days yet. On the way back to the flat the above lyric came through the headphones from Spiritualized’s The Twelve Steps which made me grin. So true, though I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sentence is a new comics anthology I was involved in the conception of and will be involved in the promotion and selling of. It arrived from the printers last week. My copy came through the post today. It’s going on sale in a couple of weeks. It seriously kicks ass!

You will definitely hear more about this soon.

Something weird’s going on with the stats for this site. The hits on this page are normal, lower than last week even, but the hits for the site as a whole are already higher than last month and I’ve used a quarter of my bandwidth allowance. Normally I use about 3% in a month. I noticed some comments being posted to the Trebus page but that’s only had 63 hits this month. The mp3s in the library have only had 6 downloads so far. Nothing else, like the webcam, is obviously attracting attention and there’s nothing odd about the referrers. It’s got me well confused. Anyone shed light on my bemusement?

WeenRadio streams nice music 365,24/7 and all that, and looks pretty intrestin. (via boingboing in a roundabout way)

On Friday I thought I was a computer genius. Today I think I’m a dunce. Fact is I’m on a road to knowledge but I’m not sure exactly where I’m at or how I got here or what I’m going to use to get further along. It’s all bits and bobs of knowledge which, on the face of it and compared to what I knew 6 months ago, are quite impressive, but when it comes to the crunch are just bits of knowledge that haven’t been glued together properly. Once again I find myself wanting a teacher but I’m the most experienced person I know in the local area. I could pay to go on a course, but I’m not sure which course I should be going on. And I sure don’t have the time or energy to do one right now. And yet I want to know more. I’ve tasted a bit and now I want it all.

It’s all gone Luke. Where’s my Yoda?

(continuing this analogy, because I like it, Jez is my Obi-Wan - was there at the start but now he’s a long way away and all I get are ghostly emails prompting me in the right direction. Anna is Leia - a princess in the republic of Blogistan fighting against the evil empire. Andy Konky Kru just has to be C3PO, though not in a bad way. This is a web game in the making - if you’re Luke, who are your friends?)

Going through the referrers I come across this page from the LiveJournal RSS group. It seems someone (I suspect Jo…) has described me thus: “Pete is the maintainer of BugPowder and a grandee of the UK small press comics community.” A grandee? Moi?

First up, here’s a picture of me and the subject taken by the subject’s boyfriend, Alister.

Since the digicam means you can snap away and not worry about the cost of developing useless pictures, I’ve been toying with the professional technique of taking loads of shots of the same subject and then picking the best ones. Here’s the six (of 31) that came out well…
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