plasticbag.org

…and the winner is ScaryDuck. For those of you who came in late, the Guardian have finally announced the winners of the Best British Blog competition. Congratulations to everyone who was shortlisted – particularly the winner Scary Duck and my particular favourites: LinkMachineGo, Anglepoised, Blogjam, Gina Snowdoll, Interconnected and Minor9th. Over at Metafilter there’s a thread to discuss the resutls, where I promise – I will try to behave. And if you want to explore the range of weblogs that didn’t enter (and some of their reasons for not doing so), then you should investigate The “Not the Best” Project.

As those of you who aren’t reading this site through the medium of NetNewsWire have probably already noticed, plasticbag.org has gone through a bit of a redesign. This one, for perhaps obvious reasons, is called kottkesque and is pure CSS once more. Unfortunately, despite me having worked on it for the last eight hours, it’s 2am and it’s still incomplete. I decided – against my better judgement – to do quite a lot of the building on this one while the site was live, because I hoped I’d work faster and get the damn thing done. And that has mostly worked.

Known bugs at this stage include:

• Form elements on the top right of the page don’t sit right on the page on most Windows browsers.
• Sometimes links in comments and in list elements aren’t formatted correctly.
• There is no gallery section yet, merely an empty directory listing with some old-style pages within it.
• There are no permalinks yet (this is a difficult one to fix, but I’ll see if I can enlist Cal).
• The links use a border property in CSS rather than the normal text-decoration – and as such don’t appear as intended in some earlier Window’s browsers. This will be fixed shortly.
• The search results page is still formatted in the site’s old style.

If you’ve noticed any errors on the pages that aren’t part of the above list, then mail me (including details of the error and a screen-cap if possible) and I’ll endeavour to sort them out as quickly as is humanly possible – ideally within the next twenty-four hours. I know this isn’t the most professional of behaviours, but hell – it’s my personal site, I can do what the hell I like. I’ll also be undertaking some general tweaking over the next few days, as well as (hopefully) putting up a gallery of screenshots from previous incarnations of the site. If you’re one of the people who found the old site unmanageable, then welcome back. And if you hate it and it makes you cross, then find someone who you don’t like in real life and give them an earful on my behalf. I’m off to bed. Good night!

So Buffy returns with its seventh, and potentially last, series. And as usual Americans will see it now, people with cable or satellite in the UK will see it in January, and the rest of us will have to wait until the box sets come out or it comes on terrestrial. Which will probably be (at the earliest) next August. In the meantime, the only scraps of information that we can get over this side of the pond are stories on sites like Whedonesque. It’s a cruel, cruel world we live in…

I hereby declare my intention to read through the British Government’s much promised dossier on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, which is freely available from a number of different governmental and non-governmental sites. [Download the PDF (428kb)] This document is supposed to clarify why some kind of action against Saddam Hussein is of the utmost importance. However, I’m about a third of the way through John Pilger’s The New Rulers of the World, and am increasingly suspicious of Governmental motivations (both in the US and UK) with regard to this conflict. I’ve downloaded the document, and will be posting my ill-educated and worthless opinions of it as I proceed.

Foreword: The document starts with a two page foreword by Tony Blair which details the particularly unusual circumstances surrounding the release of the document. He states that the document is based on the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The material it collects is normally secret, and it is apparently “unprecedented for the Government to publish this kind of document”. The introduction further states that Mr Blair believes that it demonstrates without doubt that Saddam Hussein (referred to regularly as simply “Saddam”, which seems odd to me – as if he’d refer to the US’s government as “George”) has continued to build weapons of mass destruction. But he also states:

“I believe people will understand why the Agencies cannot be specific about the sources, which have formed the judgements in this document, and why we cannot publish everything we know. We cannot, of course, publish the detailed raw intelligence.”

This is both totally expected, and utterly frustrating. Because at heart it leaves the document as inevitably a set of assertions. Assertions presented without substantial back-up or evidence. And although of course everyone understands why such information can’t easily be published, it unfortunately leaves the door open for doubt and suspician over its validity.

Finally, a comparison from the introduction. Tony Blair: “Saddam has used chemical weapons, not only against an enemy state, but against his own people.” American researchers John Mueller and Karl Mueller (from Pilger’s book): “Economic sanctions have probably already taken the lives of more people in Iraq than have been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history.”

From the Executive Summary: When it comes to summarising the position of the document, the Executive Summary is brief, clear and startling reading. Whether or not it accurately represents the situation is of course inevitably a matter of faith in the legitimacy and accountability of our leaders. If it is accurate, then it is fairly chilling. The first three points detail what presumably amounts to previously public information about Iraq’s continued development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The fourth point outlines what are perceived to be his attitudes towards these weapons, while the fifth asserts there is evidence that the regime is covering up new developments in them.

The sixth is the most startling point. It outlines a set of judgements or predictions about Iraq, which include that they have a wide range of protocols, mechanisms and military arrangements for the use of chemical and biological agents, developed mobile laboratories, tried covertly to acquire materials for nuclear devices including attempts to get “significant amounts of uranium from Africa”, illegally kept and further developed long-range missiles and learnt how to conceal sensitive equipment and documentation from inspectors.

The seventh point is merely a statement of the source of these judgements, the eighth a statement that Iraq are breaking the law, the ninth a statement that declares the risks of keeping Hussein as leader, and the tenth declares that Iraq funds its programs via illegal activity with an income of $3 billion in 2001.

Today the new Beck album was released. It had multiple covers. But which one to buy? Which is the right one? Which is the authentic cover and which are knock-offs? Which one expresses my desire for authenticiy most effectively? Which one declares, “I’m not interested in posing, I’m here for the music”? Which one is the most ostentatious? Because I don’t want that one. Which one will date the most? Which one is iconic and which are ludicrous? How do you make these decisions, these simple decisions, when there’s nothing to choose between them? How long can you stand in front of the counter in HMV paralysed by choice? At what point does indecision, does the inability to act at all, become legitimately frightening?

Matt Webb never links to weblogs. Ever. Except when they’re talking about some ludicrously complicated piece of where-RSS-will-be-in-20-years-ery, or something ludicrous-mac-rumour-with-a-utopian-edge-ish. He certainly never links to any funny weblogs. That, it seems, would miss the point.

Aside (1) on the rhetoric of webloggery. You know full well I’m about to say something to the effect of “Matt Webb has just linked to this really funny weblog”. Bear with me. Go along with the pretence that I’m about to do something so revelatory that you’ll implode with pleasure and surprised. It’ll make me feel better. I promise.

Aside (2) on being facetious. When I was about eleven I said something really really similar to the line above in an essay about something or other at school. And my teacher read it out in front of the whole class and said I was facetious. And none of us knew what that meant, and I’ve carried it with me as a scar for the rest of my life and it still brings pain to my heart when I think about it. So let’s pretend for a minute that I’m not being facetious, and maybe in that way I’ll get over that minor childhood trauma.

Aside (3) on what facetious means. Definitions of facetious according to dictionary.com include, “cleverly amusing in tone”, “characterized by wit and pleasantry; exciting laughter; as, a facetious story or reply” and “playfully jocular; humorous”. In retrospect, I don’t think he was using the word correctly, as it seems to be quite a good thing to be. Learn this lesson well, children. Teachers know jack shit.

So anyway, against all the odds, Matt Webb has just linked to this really funny weblog. Or at least he claims it is funny. I haven’t actually looked at it and don’t intend to either. Because this whole preamble was a way of excusing the fact that I’m about to link to a really funny weblog. Didn’t see that coming, did you. Ha.

Unbrokenglass.com is about the institutionalised dating misadventures of a young Jewish woman – and she’s had many. I’m not entirely up on my Jewish dating practices (or indeed any dating practices), but it appears that there’s some kind of precursor to computer dating that forms a significant component of Judaic cultural life. Without fear or shame of being pointed at down the pub for being the saddo who put the personal ad in the paper, you are set up with a variety of men or women (depending, note, on your own gender – and not your personal preferences) and then experience the wonder of eating food, chatting amiably and surrupticiously chewing off your own arm over the course of the evening. Eating food, chatting amiably and chewing off of one’s one arm being the only three components of the dating experience I’ve as yet experienced. And your Rabbi helps too, which is nice.

Here’s a choice quote from unbrokenglass.com: “I have to say that the guy who approached me had a phenomenal likeness to Bart Simpson. Very American-like of him really. I mean, he was short, blond, his hair was exactly like Bart Simpson’s, big round eyes complete with squeaky yellowish voice and manic smile. I wanted to make a joke about it but I very tactfully decided to shut up.”

God what an awful, overwritten post this is. I’m turning into a right hack.

Today’s top classy search that led to the door of plasticbag.org: What to do in London when you have a bored girlfriend that doesn’t know what she wants to do…

Apparently I turn up quite high in the search results for grumpy users of Alcatel’s Speedtouch USB ADSL modem. That would probably explain why, when they released a new version (2.0) of the driver for MacOSX (where previous drivers have – at best – a spotty record), I received an e-mail informing me of the fact, and asking if I’d publicise it. I’m delighted to, of course, but I’m too nervous to actually install it just in case I lose my connection again. Has anyone out there in not-a-big-wuss world installed it and run it with Jaguar yet? If so, e-mail me and tell me how it went and I’ll then inform “the world”. WARNING: Tom’s world may be smaller than yours.

“What’s the problem, HAL?”
“I think you know the problem, Dave. I’ve gone nuts.”

Micro-linkage saves lives. Remember that. And this mighty micro-linkage comes from the massive mouth of the Minor 9th. From monkey bone to lunatic space computer, you need to see the epic: One. A Space Odyssey [filmed entirely in Legovision].