Archive for March, 2007


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Meg’s got a new job as “the Guardian website’s head of communities and user experience”. Congrats Meg!

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Google Maps directions from New York to Dublin. “Step 23 - Swim across the Atlantic Ocean: 3,462 miles” (via Kottke)

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Buckminster Fuller (Wikipedia). Fascinating chap. Particuarly intrigued by his notion of “recycling resources into newer, higher value products” which ties into a lot of cultural / artistic ideas I’m interested in (skip diving, modified cameras, potentials of junk, that kind of thing).

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Observer interview with Andy Goldsworthy. Haven’t read it yet but anything about him is always fascinating. There’s an apparently massive retrospective at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield happening this year. (via D’log)

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Corner

March 25, 2007 Comments (1)

Touch wood, but I think we may have crossed a line. Today I made it to Sainsbury’s to buy food. And then I made it back.

Still coughing intermittently and snotty but my head is clearer. I think I’ve got “just a cold” now, which is something I can deal with.

My vocal chords are shot to fuck and the muscles under my ribs are still bruised but at least I can think now.

If this progresses overnight I may well start dealing with the absurd backlog of email and rss feeds, of which there are a lot. Eek.

Rhapsody In Blue, the original analogue 78rpm recording in two parts from 1924. The sound of this almost makes me cry. (via Anil Dash)

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Fight Firefox resizing with four simple steps. For those annoying sites that seem to think they know what size your browser should be. Strikes me the advantage of Firefox is how it lets you stop websites do stuff as much as anything else. (via Gordon)

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Things that work

March 22, 2007 Comments (3)

Chicken Soup is rather remarkable. Especially when combined with the restorative powers of DISCO!!!

More tips are welcome. I seriously need to start kicking this now and my diet has reached a nadir.

Also remember it takes a hell of a lot of effort to make toast right now.

Yoshimi the Musical. Wayne Coyne: “There’s the real world and then there’s this fantastical world. This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It’s almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that.”

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Day Ten

March 21, 2007 Comments (5)

Day Ten

After a couple of nights with the most violent, dry-retching cough along with the gooiest snot my nose has ever known I went back to the pharmacist again. Is this a problem yet? Nope, apparently, not. Gimme some of that Night Nurse then. Anything for a decent night’s sleep.

And yes, the lovely chemicals in Night Nurse do indeed keep you asleep. But while they do their best to deal with the mucus they ain’t so successful at that and I found my self waking up with a distinct inability to breath and a need to cough like none other. So while I may have gotten 6-8 hours I then spent the rest of the day paying for it.

The sweating is the weirdest. Not a fever so much and it comes and goes. Why?

Anyway, in-amongst all these thrills I managed to take the above self portrait. Don’t fully remember doing so but there it is.

Feel a bit more lucid tonight, but then I felt a bit more lucid over the weekend so I’m not reading anything into it.

Persisting

March 17, 2007 Comments (4)

On the side of the bottle of Benylin I’ve been chugging from since Tuesday it says “consult your doctor if symptoms persist.” And I’m wondering how long “persist” is in symptomatic terms, those being a hacking chesty cough, nose streaming red goo, a sore dizzy head and a complete lack of energy let alone being able to concentrate on anything.

(Actually, the one thing I can do is play Mario Kart, which is kinda odd. It must be using some buried primal part of my brain…)

So I’m thinking maybe I’d better go see the doctor on Monday, just in case, but then Andy informs me he had it for a fortnight. And Alex says she’s still got the headaches. What I’ve got is normal.

See you on the other side…

Trailers for Grindhouse, the double feature from Rodriguez and Tarantino. I was a bit jaded with Kill Bill but this looks super.

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Shopping for Glasses

March 11, 2007 Comments (7)

Shopping for Glasses

Reference photos taken in Specsavers.

As you may have noticed but been too polite to say anything, my glasses were getting to be a bit fucked. Getting on for nine years old the lenses were scratched, the arms were padded with duct tape and they had a tendency to sit wonky. But then four years of farming, decorating, refuse collection, gardening and misc manual labouring will do that. So it was time to bite the bullet and go get some new ones. Andy and Alex were on hand to help with the trauma of deciding, helped by the realisation that there aren’t a lot of hidden costs in your modern optician these days (unlike dentists) and I now have two new pairs.

Interesting to note that the style I would previously have jokingly called “new media wanker glasses” (thick black rectangular) is now the norm. In fact I now have a pair (not pictured), which is fair as I’m pretty much a new media wanker these days. The other is a rather distinguished pair of wire-frames (bottom row, 2nd) that compliment my balding head in an Uncle Pete kind of way. Both are thin rectangles which is messing with my head as I adjust to the different field of vision The top bit has vanished while the sides are all wide-angle. Also of note is that my prescription had barely changed in the last decade.

Getting new glasses has a strange psychological aspect. I’ve now changed my face is a subtle but definite way. And thanks to the 2 for 1 offer I can switch faces at whim. I’m not sure I welcome this new daily choice in my life, but I’m sure I’ll deal with it.

New glasses!

Portishead in a pub playing a haunting version of Wandering Star. Could there be new material soon? (via Kelptones)

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That blogmeet in Nottingham is this Saturday. Troubed Diva has the details.

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Momus talks about The Trap, Adam Curtis’ new TV series following on from The Power of Nightmares which looks to be super. Also of note is that his earlier series Century of the Self is on Archive.org in four parts - 1, 2, 3, 4. Haven’t watched it yet though as Archive.org is so slow these days. Great resource, shame about the bandwidth…

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Duck

March 7, 2007 Comments (5)

Duck
Bournville, March 6th

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I might be putting 2 + 2 together and coming up with 20 but has anyone else noticed the torrents for certain American TV programs that are usually broadcast on Sky in the UK are massively oversubscribed at the moment, and when you do find one that’ll let you join it fair zooms down the pipe?

Could it be that customers of Virgin Media, who let’s not forget used to be NTL / Telewest, a company known for their broadband as much as their TV, are getting their Lost / 24 / Battlestar / etc fixes through other means? And could it be that when this squabble between Branson and Murdoch is over they’ll be quite happy sticking with a system that doesn’t have adverts and is a significant number of weeks ahead?

Sky’s figures for 24 are down 175,000 while Lost is down 96,000 (via). I wonder if they’ll come back?

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Went to see Hot Fuzz last night - first time I’d been to the cinema in ages come to think of it. Very entertaining though didn’t quite have the impact of Shaun of the Dead. Recommended, though director Edgar Wright really needs to calm down on his multi-fast-jump-cuts. There’s barely a shot in there that’s over half a second long.

What colour should crisp packets be? Diamond Geezer has his finger on the pulse of society asking the questions that matter.

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Items on Amazon.com that you cannot (or at least should not) buy. Exploring the far far end of the long long tail. (via Waxy)

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Green and pleasant land? Very insightful article by Jeremy Paxman on litter. “‘Outside’ belongs to someone else. Or, more likely, to no one. So the litter issue is about more than the uglification of Britain. It tells us something about the sort of nation we have become. People, like animals, do not generally foul their own nests. But they feel free to throw rubbish around for much the same reason morons feel entitled to vandalise bus shelters, smash park benches or use telephone boxes as urinals: they do not feel the public realm is theirs.”

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Charlie Brooker gets a new phone. You instantly know where this is going… “The whole thing is the visual equivalent of a moronic clip-art jumble sale poster designed in the dark by a myopic divorcee experiencing a freak biorhythmic high.”

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Sorry, I just need to get this out ov mi systemz

March 5, 2007 Comments (8)













And just for the hell of it

That’s better. Normal service will now be resumed.

All taken from the legendary cats page.

Lunar Eclipse Photography. A very comprehensive guide which I wish I’d read last week. Still, there’ll be more eclipses. (via Kottke)

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An animation of the lunar eclipse taken from this composite which kinda puts mine to shame.

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Music That Time Forget: 1997. Nice little memoir about the micro music and zine scene that emerged around Bis and Kenickie. (via Warren Ellis)

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Last.FM Free Downloads. I didn’t even know Last.FM did downloads. Here’s a bunch of mp3s with a few gems in there. (via Plasticbag)

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The Lunar Eclipse

March 4, 2007 Comments (8)

The Lunar Eclipse
The Sky, March 3rd

There’s something zen about watching an eclipse for an hour and 15 minutes. It was definitely worth it though. Magical stuff.

This photo is better bigger and much better much bigger.

This Vicious Cabaret. The second book of V For Vendetta opens with a song which was later recorded by David J. This video combines the music with the original panels by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. (via LMG)

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Fantagraphics Books have started a legal defence fund having been sued by Harlan Ellison. I’ve never really understood why Sci-Fi authors like Ellison are connected to comics. I guess it’s a hangover from the 70s fandom days. Still, whatever the merits of Ellison’s case, and they are few and far between, Fantagraphics are a vastly important publisher who deserve to survive this. (via Bougieman)

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How to speed up Mail.app on a Mac. From what I can tell this command simply tidies up the Mail database, rather like defragmenting a disk. And it works. Boy, does it work. (via Plasticbag)

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