Author: Tom Coates

Via Blogger I’ve stumbled upon nagportal.com – which appears to be some kind of Icelandic weblog / weblog portal. The most interesting part of it for me is the pulldown menu at the top left of the screen. It appears to contain the full replicated content of the weblog, and it’s placed in a slim frame that allows one to move between the various blogged sites which appear nested beneath it. It’s very well thought out.

It’s inspired me to think about my old ‘consumption’ feature in a different way – perhaps this isn’t stuff that people need to actually see on first arrival to a site – maybe it’s more useful for people to be able to gauge at a glance, by clicking on a pulldown, the range of one’s interests. Blogging entirely to drop-downs might actually be more useful for certain types of site as well – you could form a kind of rolling-directory site for example. Worthy of consideration…

“We do not have to go on the way we’ve been going. For instance, if you like shaving cats, try shaving crayons; it’s as good a way as any to practice shaving.” (What the Fuck?)

I’ve just stumbled upon the first site that I put together with any degree of care – or at least what’s left of it. It looks like I put up a holding page for it many many years ago and completely forgot about it. Nonetheless, I have salvaged this interesting little design item from it, which really reminds of of my first heady days on a cheap Photoshop clone playing with gaussian blur and layers and fudging it all together with a bog-standard animated gif machine. Oh how far from these heady days…

Today I spoke to Stinky Parker [ï].

Right. That’s it. Whatever the hell is wrong with my gut is being resolved right now. I haven’t been feeling right for a while – it’s like there’s a nest of eels in my abdomen sometimes. Anyway, over the last twelve hours or so this has got profoundly upsetting, causing me difficulty sleeping, general anxiety and now slightly less vague and formless symptoms have started to appear. I’m not bloody having this. [Note: this post is a bit gross and may shortly be deleted. ]

[Added bonus post: This morning, free with every restless night involving going to sleep at 3.30am and being woken at 8am by builders hammering on the roof directly above my head, comes an extra post borne from frustration, exhaustion and general distaste for the world. Post begins: EVHEAD! redesigns again. We hate him. It’s too good. Post ends.]

It can’t just be me and my current disinterest in all things sexual that maintains that it is untrue that there is “Scientific proof that the only difference between a straight and a gay man is six beers”?

Aspects of the Weblogger?

P) The Self-Aggrandizement as Art Form Aspect
Q) The Self-Flagellation as Art Form Aspect
R) The Self-Aggrandizement Disguised as Self-Flagellation as Even Higher Art Form Aspect
S) The Self-Canonization Disguised as Self-Destruction Masquerading as Self-Aggrandizement Disguised as Self-Flagellation as Highest Art Form of All Aspect
T) The Search for Support, a Sense of Community, If You Will, in One’s Peers, in Those One’s Age, After One Looks Around and Realizes That All Others, All Those Older, Are Either Dead or Perhaps Should Be Aspect.

[‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’, Dave Eggers]

I call this particular piece, “Cheapskate Klu-Klux-Klan”. It’s from one of a series of not-particularly amusing, bitter, twisted (and poorly illustrated) cartoons I assembled a while back on a rainy day when I was grumpy at work. Note that the hoods are in fact Gap branded paper bags. That’s why they’re funny, you see. Get it?