Category: Random

This has got to be my fetish of the moment – ever more pseudo-Apple product designs – some weird, some awful, some truly beautiful. The mistake that is made a lot – particularly in the renditions of the potential new design possibilities of a flat-screen iMac – is that the iMac has to be a friendly looking computer – a computer that has removed all the ‘computery’ bits that worry people. Some of the projected designs look like flash-backs to 1990, or earlier. Or they look like sleek designer products for people with very urban, stark sensibilities. Where’s the ‘cute’ appeal that the iMac has?

Wired is reporting that the new device from Apple is a portable music device called the iPod. This doesn’t sound that impressive – but we shall have to wait and see.

Lots of weird pseudo-Apple product designs, entertaining to look at… here.

Five links illustrating that even in the midst of calamity, the net remains full of variety, news and weirdness – in almost equal measure: The Smoking Gun has images of the envelopes that contained anthrax. Apple is to announce a breakthrough digital device – no one knows what it is, but it’s not a Mac. Derek’s going to be battling Heather – boyfriend versus girlfriend in photoshop tennis tomorrow. A Russian newspaper claims that all the evidence for Taliban involvement in terrorist attacks on the US is a farce. And a student teacher has swallowed her own toothbrush. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Despite my vast daily consumption of Coca-Cola, I have to say that I’m weirdly drawn to the Save Harry campaign to keep Mr Potter off cans of fizzy sugar water…

Damn you, Simon, I don’t have time to play worm games all day. You wait til I get my hands on you, young man…

I love Gina Snowdoll.

I was on the tube this morning from Maida Vale to Farringdon, on my way to work. I normally change at Baker Street, so when I arrived at 9.15am I disembarked and started walking across to the Metropolitan line. Very quickly I became aware that something was wrong – there were raised voices from staff on a couple of platforms around me, and people were starting to move. A message came over the tannoy, “Due to a reported emergency, would all customers please leave the station immediately.” A couple of months ago, I’d just think it was a hoax bomb threat or something from the IRA, but suddenly you start thinking if it’s related to current events. And of course it probably is. Everyone left, no one got excited – it takes a lot to panic Londoners who are used to being pushed around by the vagaries of the metropolis – and pretty much everyone seemed to assume it was some kind of anthrax-related incident. And pretty much everyone thought it was probably a hoax. But if you step back a couple of feet from the edge of the neurotic precipice that Londoners live on all the time, you have to ask yourself – how on earth did we find ourselves here? And why are we all so comfortable with it?

Anyone involved in website creation and the structuring of information and informational spaces should probably go and read Matt Jones piece on Rulespace.

One of the things I did at work yesterday: