Category: Random

Lots to get through this morning – all the stuff that I’ve meant to talk about in greater depth but haven’t had time to do so… Apologies to all concerned for trivialising your hard work…

• My favourite new kind-of-weblog is definitely 2lmc.org. I’m a particular fan of the design, but also the really funny geek humour;
• Giles Turnbull – esteemed British web enthusiast – has written a piece called Camino and Safari Compared for O’Reilly. Good sensible stuff;
• An annoying article for Adobe compares the performance of After Effects on the PC vs. After Effects on the Mac and comes to the conclusion that Macs are half the speed. I’m not going to dispute the results, only that people should bear in mind that it’s equally possible that the two versions of After Effects might not be of the same speed or quality;
• My co-worker Dorian’s stunningly cute and gorgeous little baby boy has started doing little early-morning exercises. Aw…
• Sex in the X-men? Maybe not in the movie, but certainly in the comic book – Sex in the X-men (via The LinkMachine);
• Is Nick Jordan – esteemed British weblogger – also Nick Jordan – esteemed provider of penis-enlargment pills?
• Joho the Blog’s piece on Links with Value is a better version of what I was trying to say in my piece The Responsibility of Linkage;
• I just bought this Tucano Second Skin case for my iBook – and it’s much recommended. The only way it could be improved is if it zipped fully open so you could leave your computer sitting on it;
• Jason’s finally given in and kottke.org is now syndicating full posts through .rdf. Frankly this is delightful and means that my daily NetNewsWire browsing experience is better than ever;
• Found on textism..com – a neat way to clean up Word HTML. This works pretty well, but also seems to strip out several special characters rather than encoding them (later note – oops – should read the instructions properly);
• Lance talks about coming to London – it was great to finally meet him and I hope we showed him a good time.

This probably couldn’t be any more trivial, ridiculous or infantile. But – just occasionally – OSX’s Mail.app’s tendency to truncate e-mail subjects and place an ellipsis at the end of the line has unintentionally funny side-effects…

There’s a page on this site that’s recently been getting a fair amount of traffic. It’s a page in the gallery which includes pictures of an establishment in Norwich, Norfolk called the George Bush Funeral Home. I don’t know how I feel about this. I took the pictures a couple of Christmasses ago after September 11th but before any massive pro or anti-war demonstrations were happening – and way before Iraq was even back on the international agenda. I’d seen the building years before of course – on my way back from school when I was a kid – only suddenly becoming a source of black satisfaction when George Bush the first got into power and when the first Gulf War was underway…

I don’t get that feeling any more. People linking to those pictures in ‘approving’ terms’ seems cheap to me. Tacky. Glib. It’s not an image that helps people think in different terms about anything. It doesn’t give people any more context or an understanding of any larger issues. It’s too easy an image to be ‘decent’ (in the moral sense). I feel more and more that a grasp of this issue must be fought for, worked at. What’s black humour in times of dissent becomes propogandist in times of war.

A couple of weeks ago I went to visit a friend in Primrose Hill. On the way over the bridge across the train lines I saw a beautiful sky. I like skies. You don’t get to see them enough in cities.

The site for the Text E-mail Newsletter Standard is a well-intentioned and intelligent attempt to develop some standards for plain-text e-mail newsletters. It only falls down because the accessibility-conscious design strategy they’ve taken doesn’t seem to be actually very easy for the non-visually impaired to read. I’d be really interested in the opinions of the b3ta and popbitch crews on this subject – they’ve made readable plain-text e-mails an artform (although screen-reading the ascii logos must be excruciating). cf. Stef’s comments on screen-reader browsers.

Noise. Where would we be without it? Trapped in a sensory-deprivation tank, perhaps. Maybe – at a push – in space (although we’d have to not have any air-tanks or helmets or anything to experience the absence of noise, and I don’t know what the auditory effects of boiling blood, near-absolute zero temperatures and explosive bodily decompression might be)…

• The Sound of Things to Come
  Through the magic of transmitting sound to directionally precise co-ordinates the HyperSonic Sound Amplifier (which has got to be about an hour and a half away from being usurped as a band-name) enables really specific and clearly defined parts of the 3-D real-world to be exposed to noise in such a way that people a couple of feet away can’t hear it at all. The most depressing part of this otherwise fascinating story is that the best thing they could come up with as an early application was a Coca-Cola machine that suggested you buy one when you went past… “Wouldn’t a Coca-Cola feel pretty good about now?”

• Babel Fish on the Horizon?
  A company is working to produce a device that uses text-to -speech software to take something someone says to you in French (for example) and then run it through a translation matrix of some kind (like Babelfish, but presumably not as funny) before speaking it out again. Essentially a portable computer translation device. In all likelihood, it’s going to work like a dog strapped to a badger in a big bowl of custard.

I’m slowly and systematically working my way around plasticbag.org, sorting out the weblog sidebar. I’m trying to find the best ways of helping the site to explain itself on each and every page – without compromising cross-site and inter-post navigation. It may sound naff and unremittingly tedious to you, but I’m finding it intensely satisfying. As a side effect of this process, I’ve decided to have a hack at the part of the sidebar that deals with my favourite weblogs. This is now almost a direct copy of my NetNewsWire subscriptions, which means one of two things – either everyone’s getting an RSS feed, or I’m gradually ceasing to read people without them…

Now, somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago, I was a singular fan of the Bangles. I had all three of their albums, from the weird and vaguely unlistenable first one, through the poppy second album through into the lush soft rock third album. I hated Eternal Flame (still do), but loved songs like “Following”, “Glitter Years”, “Crash and Burn” and “Be With You”. I will make no apologies for this. I get pleasure from them still.

Last night I went to see The Bangles in concert with friends Francesca and Es. I went to see The Bangles in concert and not only was it really good fun, it was also a really good concert. Of course my initial assumption had been that it would be a vaguely tragic occasion – some kind of ludicrous nostalgia-milking exercise for the nearly-middle-aged. But while there was no shortage of the middle-aged in the audience, the band themselves didn’t look in any way out-of-place, out-of-fashion, self-indulgent or flabby. No – they were clearly a sharp and capable band up for having a very good time while rocking like pop-rock bastards…

When I was a kid, it never even occurred to me that I’d get to see them live. And when I booked the tickets it never really occurred to me that the whole experience would be so full of resonance and weird, trashy, idealistic, teenage emotions. Now, having seen them live, I realise that I’ve fulfilled a teenage dream that I didn’t know I had. And while it’s not without a hint of embarrassment, I feel bloody wonderful. If you get a chance to go and see them in concert, then go. I think you’d be surprised how much fun you’d have…

Two nights in a row I’ve left work with a burnt-out grey headache. Desperate-need-for-a-holiday time is here, and thankfully Actually-going-for-a-holiday time is rapidly approaching. But more on that later. More rested today – my head spinning a little, but with bits of brain no longer oozing from my ears – I can start to bring sense to the memeworld around me. Panic no longer. For I am back…

• Steve Bell’s Iraq Cartoons [via LMG]
• A word about your mobile phone [via Dan]
• iPod updater 1.2.6
• Old but entertaining sexuality questionaire
• Cal’s favourite bash.org quote du jour
• Weird irony: Missing Bill of Rights copy recovered
• Simon likes IV chords
• Interesting Google functionality
  (but their labelling and nomenclature sucks ass…)

For those Americans amongst our company who may not know who he is, Robin Cook was, until this morning, Leader of the House of Commons. He was a high-placed member of the British cabinet, and an ex-Foreign Minister. Today he resigned in protest at what he believes to be the inappropriate rush to go to war without the support of our international allies. He gave a rousing and intelligent speech in the House of Commons that has been circulated on all the UK TV stations, and which received a standing ovation from his colleagues. I can’t as yet find a transcript online, but I’ve found a RealAudio version from the BBC. I advise everyone to watch it. Addendum: Here’s a transcript of the speech from the BBC.