Category: Random

Just a reminder – first things first today is the last day that you can vote for this year’s Bloggies. And secondly, I want to put in a bit of a plug for daily dose of imagery in the Best Photography category, because (despite the fact that the site suffers from one of those appallingly truncated taster-only RSS feeds* that drive me absolutely barking) the images are simply and regularly beautiful. Particularly recommended is today’s snowy car-lot in Toronto. Extraordinary.

* Other plasticbag.org regulars / favourites that don’t get read as much as they should because of this fetish for miserable little RSS-dribblings: Zeldman, Oskarn.org, Worlds of Waldman, Wish Jar Journal and Paranoid Fish. I know that you all have your reasons, but really…! Lots more people would hear what you had to say if you’d just be amenable to how we’d like to read your sites…

In the Daily Telegraph today is an advert/petition paid for and signed by many thousands of BBC staff asserting the fierce independence of the BBC and talking about Greg Dyke’s leadership as Director General (see Guardian article). I don’t have a lot to say about it except to say that unfortunately my name and those of many other people I know couldn’t fit onto the page, but that shouldn’t in any way be read as a lack of support. It was signed and supported financially by many more people than could fit onto that page – myself included – and its impressive scale should be viewed as just a slice of the even larger genuine ground-swell of sentiment throughout the organisation.

What a strange, frustrating day. Loads of reporters lurking around Broadcasting House all day, TVs blaring out from all over the building as they report live the responses to the Hutton Inquiry, e-mails all over the place, anxious preparations for meetings that were doomed (before they began) to end badly, lots of snow (plus a couple of snowball fights), the sensation of slowly sinking beneath an ocean of political intrigue and my repeated uttering of at least two sayings which seemed almost impossiby iconic and important to me today: Never get involved in a land war in Asia and An atheist is a man with no invisible means of support. General crapulence eased slightly by long conversations with good friends over AIM and the viewing of insane low-key televisual masterpiece Director’s Commentary on (weirdly) ITV1. Sleep soon to come. Reassuringly, this too will pass.

Dan Hill’s idea for a profoundly useful iPod accessory – as explained in greater detail in his post iPods and the wireless – is rather cheekily presented below. I want one.

I love it when technology creeps from innovation to ubiquity. Or – more to the point – I love that very first set of transitions, when you’re watching a movie or a TV show and suddenly for the first time they’re actually using e-mail or talking about Googling someone. In analysing the sensation, I keep coming back to a mingling of a few different experiences – one is of a private world becoming public, one is of elation and approval and one is (weirdly) a sensation of vindication (even if the technology has been around for years). I suppose there’s something profoundly reassuring about seeing your strange habits and vocabulary represented to the world as being totally normal – exotic or cool even – particularly when it’s done in a form that hundreds of thousands of people might encounter. Maybe it’s a bit like being accepted at school or something.

Here’s an example of one of those moments, from a medium (rock song lyrics) that isn’t exactly known for its take-up and referencing of breaking technologies:

My phone’s on vibrate for you
Electroclash is karaoke too
I try to dance, Britney Spears
I guess I’m getting on in years

My phone’s on vibrate for you
God knows what all these new drugs do
I guess to have no more fears
But still I always end up in tears

My phone’s on vibrate for you
But still I never ever feel from you
Pinocchio’s now a boy
Who wants to turn back into a toy

So call me
Call me in the morning
Call me in the night
So call me
Call me anytime you like

My phone’s on vibrate for you
For you [Vibrate by Rufus Wainwright]

I swear, if someone doesn’t put a bloody save-state function into a browser with tab-functionality in it soon I’m going to snap and murder everyone around me. Even Safari – probably the most stable browser I’ve ever used – still crashes every eight or nine days or so, taking with it about forty or fifty open tabs full of carefully filtered, “I really must talk about that at some point” potential weblog content. Now I know I should be impressed that I basically never have to restart my laptop (current uptime according to Terminal is 5 days and 22 hours since I last shut down) and goddamit I am but allowing me to build up a massive amount of stuff in my browser over such a long period of time and then not giving me simple ways of grabbing all the stuff I have open and putting it somewhere safe – well it’s just nuts. So please, please Apple/God, will someone please do something about this!? Before the blood mists start?

From an entry on Barlowfriendz about the death of Spalding Grey comes this paragraph:

“Among the beliefs that he and I shared was a conviction that making public the intimately personal is a revolutionary act in an atomized society where many feel compelled to play so close to the chest that they can’t read their own cards. Being emotionally naked before strangers extends to them a permission for self-revelation they badly need if they are to loosen the shackles of their own quiet desperations. It is a blow against the pursuit of loneliness.

I don’t care whether or not I sound like some kind of self-indulgent old hippy, but to me this reads like a profound manifesto for weblogging – in which every single post is a tiny act of revolution, a sputtering light that draws others closer for warmth and companionship.

Compare and contrast: (1) Me making a funny at Google’s expense a couple of years ago: Google Pornfinder and (2) The site recently launched to help the world find porn (as reported in this Boing Boing entry): Booble. What next? Should I expect someone to genetically engineer Fifty-foot cat-killing laser-eyed chickens?

From an entertaining post on an interesting Metafilter thread:

The BBC is best when it’s at its least domestic and condescending: its radio and web output is better than its TV news (BBC World excepted) and the World Service is best of all. There’s a reason why people who work at Bush House feel superior: they are superior.

For the record, I work at Broadcasting House, which is kind of like the BBC’s version of the Lost City of Atlantis.

I’ve been meaning to get this up online for the last couple of weeks but keep getting distracted. While I was up in Norfolk for Christmas it started snowing insanely hard and I almost accidentally got about fifteen seconds of it on video. So for your total lack of interest, here’s the view from my bedroom window as the snow comes down (.avi 3.9Mb). I find it strangely soothing.