Author: Tom Coates

“It seems strange to talk about it now — to take something so private and place it in such a public place — particularly since keeping it secret was so important when I was younger.”

Breathe in, breathe out. Personal writing – écriture verité – is very much in the air at the moment. So I’m issuing a challenge. A couple of years ago there was this site called Ember.org. It contained ‘tales of first love’. I don’t think you could find a more difficult subject to write about. However, I put together a piece and sent it in. Reading it now, it seems almost immpossibly badly written, but my heart is there (displayed for all to see online) and I suppose that’s what counts.

My challenge is this. All of you who maintain personal sites – who write about your lives – put your money where your mouth is. Write your story of first love as honestly and openly as you possibly can. And to ‘celebrate’ this challenge, I’m putting my piece up permanently on plasticbag.org in a new ‘personal’ section of the site.

Evhead is back online finally, along with the rest of the team. It’s very satisfying to have Metafilter back with us as well. [The Kaycee thread remains.]

I’m actually slightly horrified by the last link I’ve posted, so don’t go there. Whatever you do. I’m English for god’s sake. Proper old-fashioned, doesn’t-respond-well-to-compliments, get’s-all-sheepish, self-effacing, English. Turns a bit purple, assumes the other person is lying and then gets an itchy back and sweat symptoms. Like someone had just revealed his deep childhood incestuous desires or something. Squirm.

“In Barbelith did Thomas Coates a stately underground decree,
Where Ganesh, Grant, and Cherry ran,
Through topics measureless to man,
for all the web to see.” [Mazarine]

Least favourite question of the moment: So what are you doing at the moment? Second least favouite question of the moment: So, you having a good time recently? Third least favourite question of the moment: Do you want fries with that?

News of the day is that I have discovered what Grant Morrison looked like with hair, and he was really quite hot. Extraordinary sudden collisions of hero and fit bloke in head are causing me dubious sideways-on insights into this ridiculous world we live in.

The BBC’s Arts channel is a surprisingly fine and cleanly put together part of the site. There’s a fascinating feature on reality tv, that made me think about Kaycee again, albeit indirectly. And it’s got some fascinating digital arts on display as well.

From a design standpoint, I only have one problem: the rollovers on the right hand side of the screen. When I read sites, often my mouse pointer follows my eye around the screen. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, with the movements of the pointer guiding my eye. With the rollovers on the right hand side of the screen, I found that whenever I focused my attention on one of them, it changed colour and removed any indication as to what it was linked through to. The semi-radical head-shift that I had to go through to uproot what had become such a second-nature practice for me was fairly severe and I suspect would drive a usability expert close to tears…

“Image is everything; life is one long party; and saving the world is just a pain in the arse! Meet Zenith—everything a good super-being shouldn’t be! Out of print since 1990.” [They’re reprinting Zenith]

Dear Santa, This year to celebrate the fifth month after Christmas I would like you to find some way for me to get a small Blogger T-shirt without me paying $25 for shipping across the Atlantic, and the Buffy Season 2 DVD boxset off my wishlist which I just can’t afford and it’s killing me.

Virulent Memes posts a screen cap of an article on blogging that mentions the Kaycee debacle, cites a post on Metafilter and says nice things about NotSoSoft. This is why we like the media. Because it’s good to us.