Category: Random

I had this really good idea for something to do on the site, but unfortunately I can’t implement it. I was going to dig up my teenage diaries and see if I wrote anything for these dates and run them in parallel. But I can’t seem to find them anywhere. Which is probably a good thing, considering how embarrassing they probably are. I know that at times they lapse into porn-novel territory. So I am thinking instead of doing a “History of Tom in Pictures” thing, which will have a number of sizeable absences in it as I refused to have photos taken for years at a time in fits of post-adolescent grumpiness.

You can perhaps imagine how cheerful I was this morning to check my regular dosage of post-Katy kitschbitch, only to discover a horribly unpleasant photograph of myself scanned in by the evil Mr Cornwell, who managed to capture me looking particularly long and moose-ish. I can’t remember the last time I have cringed with such horror at a photograph. Please god let me not look like this: Moose/Man.

The picture, incidentally, was taken at the recent house-warming of Toby, an old friend of mine, who – perhaps incongruously – does not live in a huge mansion full of suits of armour and secret passages, but in a rather nice little flat off England’s Lane in Belsize Park.

Sourground has redesigned. It’s so … simple. There’s a good portion of me that is quite jealous of him on this one – it looks so simple. It makes plasticbag.org look so overcomplicated – which really wasn’t the intention at all. I wanted it to be clean and clear and different and cool. Maybe I haven’t succeeded. I must think more about this.

What does this mean? [publog]

“Blog on for an ego trip. Ich dachte immer, in Weblogs geht es um kommentierte Links. (So kommt es auch in dieser Sendung im ˜sterreichischen Rundfunk r∏ber.)

“Inzwischen kñnnte man fast sagen: “Ein Weblog ist eine Seite, die mit Blogger oder einem îhnlichen Tool erstellt wird.” Auch der Begriff “Blogger” ist auf dem besten Weg, ein ganz normales Wort zu werden (wie “Walkman”). Ist das ein cleverer Masterplan vom Pyra oder passiert das alles zufîllig?”

Found through referrer logs – Another intelligent & able Brit-Blog spreads its wings: will.tryonline.net.

I have been informed today (by the same person) both that I am a self-important puffed-up egotist and that I look like Timothy Olyphant. Talk about mixed signals.

When I designed plasticbag.org I decided that I wasn’t going to pay any attention to the restrictions of the web-safe pallette. I mean – it’s a personal site, right – I’m not selling anything – to an extent it doesn’t matter if a few people find the site visually offensive. Jason Kottke seems to have taken a similar approach – that the personal site is an arena for a certain amount of experimentation that one can’t make when one is designing for a company, and hence the web-safe palette is less important.

I’ve just read an article over at Webmonkey called: “Death of the Websafe Color Palette?”. The two authors performed some experiments on different platforms between 256 colour displays, High Colour displays and True Colour displays – to see if it was necessary to still design within the web palette at all. [If you don’t know what the web palette is, then the article will explain all.] What they found was alarming.

Apparently only 22 colours actually remain completely consistent cross browser, cross platform and cross colour depth [The Really Safe Web Palette]. Every other colour renders improperly when placed next to a .gif of (in theory) the same colour on one or more system.

I’ll provide an example: the curved tab-like shape that forms the top of this column of text. If you look at this page using anything other than a true colour colour depth, that image appears to be a very different colour from the text background. It is errors in rendering like this that are supposed to be avoided by using the web safe palette.

It looks like we have a long way to go before we can cheerfully mix images and cell backgrounds using any colour over every colour depth. At least these figures are relatively reassuring (even if they only represent a general trend in the right direction):

“The most recent numbers we’ve seen from StatMarket put True Color (24- and 32-bit) at about 38 percent of users; High Color (16-bit) at about 56 percent; and 256-color users are at about 6 percent.”

Right. I have decided I am actually quite irritated about having plummeted twenty-two places on beebo.org‘s ratings, even if it is completely irrelevant (<aside to camera>”My fat arse”</aside to camera>) so I’m going to stoop to actually demanding that you people out there with weblogs 1) Make sure you have your site listed (e-mail metalog@beebo.org) and 2) Make sure that you have plasticbag.org in your permanent links section on the page.

Without wishing to compromise my journalistic integrity in any way whatsoever, I can reveal myself to be a shameless linkwhore and self-publicist who will not allow any such selfless act to be unrewarded. I love you all. Each and every one of you. Or should I say I will love you, just as soon as you do the decent thing and bloody link to me.

Ever your obsequious bitch, Tom.

Adapted plot synopses (thanks to: Rob’s Will & Grace Page, using my names for the main characters (I find this inordinately amusing and could have put about a thousand of them up):

Pilot:
Poof’s poker night with his buddies gets interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Slag, who has once again broken up with her boyfriend and arrives to spend the night–much to the displeasure of Poof’s friend Queen, who was planning to move in temporarily while his own apartment has new flooring put in. Poof talks Slag into finally leaving her boyfriend for good, she marches off to confront him, but when she returns to announce that she has accepted a marriage proposal, Poof risks their friendship by telling her what he thinks.

Where there’s a Poof, there’s no way:
Slag claims that the reason she’s not dating is that she’s having too much “fun” with Poof–so she proposes that they try their best not to have fun. Meanwhile, Queen is seeing stars over seeing an IRS agent, so he enlists Poof’s help.

The truth about Poof and Dogs:
After Slag defies Poof’s wishes and brings home a puppy, Poof can’t resist the pooch and begins to treat him like a newborn baby. Meanwhile, Queen and Bitch worry about the dog’s effect on Poof and Slag and insist that the new parents go out for a night on the town.

So Mel gets evicted from the Big Brother UK house with a whopping 69% of the vote. My flatmate Mella rings me from the studio straight after the TV program and says that everyone in her family is really glad to have her coming home, and that the atmosphere in the theatre was pretty strange. Two hours until the full interview…