You know what’s weird? That after decades of weather forecasting, one of the most amazing things on the internet remains that you can check the weather forecast for any part of the world. And for free! And on the BBC! I mean. That’s impressive and useful.
Round One: Ninjas refuse to tell Pirates where game is to be held. Pirates raid Ninja coastal town, burn it down, get drunk. Ninjas sulk, hiss. Final Score: Ninjas 1, Pirates, 3. more
I don’t know whether this is something to be proud of or not, but I now appear to have a site that doesn’t work perfectly in any browser. Sigh.
One of the most fun and interesting little sites I’ve seen in ages, whatsbetter.com allows you to rate things in pairs, constructing by association a hierarchy of the best things in the universe. At the moment all your contributions are only added together, so you can see the world’s favourite things – but there are a huge number of interesting things you could do with this kind of interface which tie into some ideas I had about a year ago. I really need to talk to Cal.
There’s a hell of a lot of simmering resentment pouring out of America at the moment towards Europe and Europeans. Large portions of the right-wing media are full of it, but it’s not only there. There seems to be resentment about the temerity of ‘Europeans’ to dare to comment on US politics or US foreign policy. I’m not going to comment on any of those things except to say that this idea of a one-nation Europe which shares an ideological position is complete bunk. Scandinavia have some of the most highly taxed and yet progressively left-wing politics in the world. Some European countries are incredibly poor comparatively. Some seem naturally right-wing, some left-wing. Many wounds still exist from hundreds and hundreds of years of co-existence. My mother still refers to the French as ‘our natural enemy’ (however much I beg her to stop). All the national stereotypes still exist. All the old enmities and alliances remain. All the individual national prides and ways of doing things – all the different senses of what is ‘naturally right’ as well. Referring to ‘Europeans’ as an unqualified mass is like referring to ‘Americans’ in the true sense – and intimating that the USA, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and all the other Central and South American states share a clear and unified view of what their continents should be moving towards. The difference is that Europe is gradually moving together, as the Americas move apart… For good or ill, only time can tell…
Oh no love! you’re not alone
You’re watching yourself but you’re too unfair
You got your head all tangled up but if I could only make you care
Oh no love! you’re not alone
No matter what or who you’ve been
No matter when or where you’ve seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain
You’re not alone
Just turn on with me and you’re not alone
Let’s turn on with me and you’re not alone
Let’s turn on and be not alone
Gimme your hands cause you’re wonderful
Gimme your hands cause you’re wonderful
Oh gimme your hands.
Another day, another piece of gloriously creative work. You know how it is. You’ve been there. We’ve all seen the creative trenches. I love the smell of Adobe Photoshop 7 for Mac OSX in the morning.
And several days after sending the e-mails to Blogger, my mail-to-blog entries finally appear. And have to immediately deleted. Of course.
There’s lots of new dumb stuff around the site today that I assembled last night and ‘made live’ this morning. I’m not going to actually point you towards any of it though. I’m not sure some of it is very good or appropriate reading. So I thought maybe you people could just wander around the place and read stuff and mail me with your comments, bug reports and the like. In order to pre-empt some of your criticisms, the new plasticbag.org now comes with slightly frustrating permalinks that don’t quite work right and are a bit of a fuck-up on Macs, which is depressing. But still. Permalinks. See how cutting-edge I am. Sigh.
I can’t imagine why anyone would be even vaguely interested in reading this again, but I found it online in an old rather badly transcribed form and decided to make it all plasticbag.org style sparky: Matthew Ford writes Read my diary.