plasticbag.org

• CNN commentary on the new series of ‘Alias’
  Alias never did terribly well in the UK – they’re now showing series three on ‘five’ around 1am in the mornings on Monday or Tuesday nights. Which is a shame cos it rocks…
  (categories: tv television alias sidneybristow spy spies drama adventure jennifergarner)
• The Rumour Mill says that Six Apart is going to buy Live Journal
  “I have learnt exclusively that Six Apart, the parent company behind hosted blogging service TypePad, and Moveable Type is about to acquire Live Journal, for an undisclosed amount. The deal is a mix of stock and cash…”
  (categories: livejournal sixapart weblog weblogger blogger blogs weblogs blog acquisition rumour textpad movabletype)
• Around 2,000 controllable webcams from around the world, discoverable by Google
  Click on an image of somewhere interesting, and you can move the camera, change resolutions – all kinds of neat stuff. Except you probably shouldn’t, because it’s bad…
  (categories: google search webcam cam cameras securitycameras security exposed clumsy interesting cool)
• Every programme page on Radio 3 created by the system I worked on…
  So basically this is me playing with the ‘inurl:’ string that I noticed on the webcam URL. Not noticed it before, and lets us do all kinds of neat stuff…
  (categories: url google pips programmeinformationpages bbc radio3 spidering)
• The shape of my brain as of January 2005
  Make sure to check out the shape of other people’s brains by visiting the group (bottom right of page)
  (categories: visualisation delicious flickr map mindmap brain stuff erm tags folksonomy fauxonomy folksonomies tag folktag)

What else is going on? Er… Well, The Bloggies are up for nominations again – of all the weblog awards these are the ones that I think most accurately reflect the community that I know and understand, even though I’m a bit fatigued by even these least dodgy and most attractively low-key of community awardages.

Normally I would be standing up here and making a passionate case for why I deserved to be queen of blogworldia this year, because it’s fun to be queen, it’s trivial as all buggery and because certain categories are basically really fun to be nominated in (the gay category is always a shit-flinging bitchfight to the death, even though Ernie always wins it each and every year). Realistically, though, I’m not sure that I could stand up and say hand-on-heart that my site’s been terribly interesting or useful or fun this year. I think work’s kind of colonised my life a bit and my site’s suffered. But nonetheless, if you’ve taken a few too many diet pills this evening and are feeling particularly buzzy in the mind, then you could always nominate plasticbag.org for ‘Best British or Irish Weblog’, ‘Best Computers and Technology Weblog’, ‘Best weblog written by a gayer’ or whatever. Lifetime achievement would be nice too, except realistically someone needs to give that one to Haughey or Blood already….

To be honest, if there’s any value in these competitions whatsoever it’s in weblog discovery – helping people out there find some new unexpectedly awesome people to read about, interact with and hang out with online. So whether or not you want to participate in the damn thing, can I recommend at the very least you go and acquaint yourselves with some of the following sites and services:

• Trash Addict for best written and best homo
• del.icio.us for best web application
• Gyford.com (creator of Pepys Diary) for Best British / Irish
• Ultrasparky.org for best poof
• Trabaca for best poof
• flickr for best web application
• Mugwump for best poof
• City of Sound for best British or Irish
• Interconnected for best writing
• Online Blog for best computers / technology

So I’ve been a bit low-key on the web recently so I thought maybe I’d post a few updates around individual themes. First up, old news about the Innocent Smoothies-inspired Tiny Hat Project. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here is the description I posted on the second of December:

“Concept in a nutshell: buy drinks with hats, give money to charity, wear tiny hat, get someone to take a photo, look dumb, get dumped by your partner, embrace the fundamental pain of existence. You know, for kids!”

The next thing that happens after we’re all rolling around from how funny we are with our tiny little hats is that I get a phone call from Innocent Smoothies, who are duly excited about the whole thing and want to send us free smoothies. Dumbstruck I agree delightedly and tell everyone around us the story of free smoothiedom. We all wonder to ourselves whether the drinks will have the requisite little tiny hats. Perhaps they’ll have new flavours or something…

The days pass and no tiny hats arrive. Increasingly mortified, I become embittered by the world, and – to try and feel better in my desperate isolation – turn to drugs and murder and the humiliation of children. But still, nothing arrives… Until finally I get a phone call from reception – or more to the point Webb gets a phone-call from reception. Apparently the drinks have been sitting in the post-office for several days now uncollected, have gone off and fermented, exploded a little bit and ruined a bit of the carpet. They are thrown away…

Consequence of which is that my faith in Innocent has been restored, which makes me feel better. On the other hand, my faith in the communications around the BBC has been dented a bit. And I have no more little hats, or health giving smoothie-related vitamins. But I have a vaguely entertaining story to tell, so in the end everything worked out okay. Or so everyone will believe until I die of scurvy…

• Preshrunk weblog about cool t-shirts
  Neat, niche and dripping in goodness, the Preshrunk weblog reveals the best in T-shirt design. I wonder if Cal’s seen this yet. He has like 500 t-shirts…
  (categories: tshirt tshirts design weblog blog weblogs blogs imagery e-commerce)
• Wikipedia on the Marshall Plan
  ” It is acknowledged that the United States was acting in its own self-interest by aiding western Europe, but most believe the plan had an immensely beneficial effect on both Western Europe and the United States.”
  (categories: marshallplan usa america worldwar worldwar2 ww2 europe reconstruction)
• Halo 2 rankings reset over the New Year
  The rumour was that this was because of people using cheats involving ADSL modems or routers, but it looks like mit was just a bug…
  (categories: halo2 game halo console consoles xbox xboxlive bungie multiplayer)
• There’s a new beta of NetNewsWire 2 out
  Which includes a more polished interface which feels more responsive and support for podcasting and the like
  (categories: netnewswire rss rssenclosures enclosures podcast podcasting ranchero application osx mac)
• Novel calendar system creates regular dates
  “A US physicist is lobbying for people to adopt his novel calendar in which every date falls on the same day of the week each year.”
  (categories: calendar time timekeeping usa year month)
• A previous attempt to rationalise the calendar meant my birthday was on the 1st of Thermidor
  “The French Revolutionary Calendar or French Republican Calendar is a calendar proposed during the French Revolution, and in use by the French government for 13 years from 1793. It was abolished by Napol√©on partly to appease the Catholic Church”
  (categories: calendar time timekeeping france frenchrevolution frenchrevolutionarycalendar thermidor year month)
• Playing with iChat Status in more depth, I notice that it can do a whole variety of things other than just display what you’re listening to
  I’m currently playing with it displaying my current application, because I was kind of freaked by it telling everyone that I had 22003 unread e-mails
  (categories: osx application presence ichat ichatstatus preferencepane plugin)

• Gotta Get My Stuff Done
  Awesome animation about procrastination that pretty much sums up what I’ve been doing since Wednesday when I got back from my parent’s place in Norfolk
  (categories: procrastination video quicktime animation fun humour entertaining)
• Mr Biddulph doing his stuff at the latest Radio 1 “Ten Hour Takeover”
  Bow down and worship, World. Mr Biddulph – champion of geekdom – is busy changing broadcast radio forever!
  (categories: bbc mattbiddulph awesome radio1 tenhourtakeover sms textmessages textmessage)
• Another block of separatist right-wing inhuman libertarian bullshit from The Ayn Rand Institute: U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims
  Which – as usual – misses the fact that in the long run, we all benefit from living in a stable and humane world in which people help each other out in times of trouble…
  (categories: assholism arsehole aynrand tsunami bullshit libertarian america usa)

• Halo 2 for the next generation Xbox
  “The Voodoo Extreme site is reporting that the Bungie team may work on a project to port Halo 2 to the next generation Xbox, adding in additional content and improving overall gameplay and picture quality.”

• Expo rumours continue – competition for Office? Garageband 2? Screenless super-cheap iMacs?
  “Apple will launch its new iWork ’05 productivity suite at Macworld Expo, Think Secret has learned. The software, code-named Sugar (as alluded to in our previous Expo report), will include Keynote 2 as well as a new application, Pages.”

Wow. Dude. 2005. That’s fucked up right here. Two thousand and five years into the Common Era. Which is like only a hundred generations or something. One hundred tiny links in the enormous chain that includes my mum, her gran, some weird hairy ape-like ancestors and a few {large numbers} of protozoa. It’s not really any time at all really. And yet in that time so many dumb ideas have been thought up and discarded. Probably more dumb ideas than in any time in human history. I think we should be proud of this achievement. I mean, god knows what amphibious proto-future-humans might have thought about on their slow evolutionary path to hair-growth, but whatever it was, I reckon we’ve probably topped it fairly nicely. I mean some of the stuff that’s come out of my mouth alone – woah, mama!

At the moment of course it’s 2005 in Europe and it’s 2004 in America, which means that for the next few hours we Europeans get to enjoy our flying cars and jetpacks and stuff before the Americans collapse the wave-function and leave us with Desperate Housewives and Pot Noodle. It all brings new meaning to the William Gibson (?) quote (misquote): “The future is here. It’s just
not evenly distributed yet”. Damn right, mister. There’s another 105 minutes before it even comes close to you people…

So anyway, it’s nearly 3.15am in the morning here. It’s nearly 3.15am and it’s the first day of a brand new year. So I’m thinking about how I’m feeling about it so far. Feels a bit sluttier maybe than last year? In aspect if not in action. Otherwise, what am I feeling / thinking? Well, I’m a bit bored. And kind of hungry. My scalp’s a bit itchy. I’m concerned that my flat isn’t as tidy as I’d hoped it would be. I’m thinking maybe I want to know whether you get loads of parasites from eating take-out and going to restaurants all the time. I bet you get lots. I’m wondering what’s on TV, if that’s any insight. And I’m thinking a bit: Are we there yet?