Category: Random

I’m delighted to report that Neonlit, which I have been running for Time Out, has just been selected as a Pick of the Week by Yahoo. And it’s a particularly good week to visit as well, as it includes a feature about Martin Amis.

I’m really interested in Atesque‘s redesign – it’s got that wonderful ordered madness feel to it. Feels like an punk or metal album cover. Something with a lot of energy in it…

Quotes from my current favourite threads on the Barbelith Underground:

• Manifesto
  “It seems to me that it is indeed this action of destabilising categories, proliferating categories and generating diversity that will produce a more interesting world. In a sense I want a revolution continually on the brink of orgasm which never comes and slumps back temporarily satisfied. I am interested in a TANTRIC revolution, that lasts continually and generates a completely different way of being…”
• God’s Name is Pi
  “Consider this: the 16th letter of greek is Pi- hence the equation,and is related to the sun the 16th letter of hebrew is ayin and related to the suns and its rays(16 of em) and the runes 16th stone (predecesor to latin) the rune is related to the sun…”
• Revolution Is Bad
  “Individuality is over. From here on in, crazy freethinking hipster revolutionaries are strictly impersonal, free-flowing mutant energy fluxes. Like Deleuze said, “Felix and I, and many others like us, don’t feel we’re persons exactly. Our individuality is rather that of events, which isn’t making any grand claim, given that [events] can be modest and microscopic”…”

The shower in my flat has gone wrong, leaving us with dubious water pressure, occasional scalding heat and quite a lot of icy cold. Showering is now nigh on impossible. We have a bath instead, but that isn’t the point. We asked our landlord’s maintenance company to come around and look at it while we were at work. They came. They checked. They decided that there was nothing wrong with it. They left. They e-mailed me stating that I should clean the limescale off it, but otherwise it was fine. It looks like we might be in for the long haul on this one…

I’m not normally an unfaithful person, but recently I have been having urges. Strange ungodly urges. The object of my current affection and I have been together for seven months now, and we’ve never even really had an argument, although occasionally we have both been slightly frustrated with each other. I still don’t know if it is love or not. But suddenly a couple of days ago, a newcomer wandered into my life. I know very little about them, and they may be really unreliable and flaky (and they sure do have a stupid name), but the assets on display – well I don’t want to sound like a boor, but WOW. When it comes right down to it though, I think my current relationship will probably be more long lasting and bring me more returns in the long term. Perhaps we can grow together… Love you, blogger…

• Cannot find server The most interesting thing about this design is the amount of times you might glance at it before you actually notice what’s going on. It’s not a design that will get you read a lot – our self imposed web programming makes us blot out such things, as if we had some self-censorship software running in our heads at all times – but it is a gutsy (and astonishingly clear) move
• Yahoo A Yahoo redesign is never going to push the envelope, but it happens so rarely that it is always going to be worthy of comment. The new top buttons are clearer than ever, and more space has been allocated, so that the site presumably no longer sits as well on older, mainly defunct screen resoutions. More interesting conceptually than visually.

• gaylery.com has been redesigned (I am probably the last to notice this fact). Basically, it looks amazing. Very clean, intelligent design complements the already sharp content.
• A great quote from eod.com: “This whole external male genitalia thing is really badly designed. I mean, do I have to carry a VCR around with me all the time just because I watch a movie every once in a while? “

I’m continuing my quest to discover whether Netsol is selling information on the domain name searches performed through its service. I’ve had a few e-mails from people who are divided in opinion as to whether I am being paranoid or not. However I stumbled upon a figure that slightly alarmed me. In an article at CBS Marketwatch there was this statement:

“In the first quarter, we saw astounding acceleration in ‘.com,’ ‘.net’ and ‘.org’ domain-name registrations worldwide, as total new market registrations grew 120 percent from the previous quarter,” said Jim Rutt, chief executive officer [of NetSol]. “In fact, more than one-third of all existing ‘.com,’ ‘.net’ and ‘.org’ domain names were registered in the first quarter of 2000.”

So I suppose the race is on. If you have some names you want, buy them now. You may not get another chance. [Discuss]

Katy quoted Fire Bad, Weblogs Good a couple of days ago. He said (about our recent stint at riothero):

“Now, I came around when Tom and Katy were Accidentally Rio Theros, because Goddamn those two are witty, smutty and vile. I love them. Like a stream of bat’s piss, they shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark”

In the meantime, since we have parted company, both Mark and I have slipped savagely down beebo.org’s weblog ratings. I only say this in passing as I am too exhausted to draw any conclusions from it.

1. I drank far too much caffeine last night, so even though I was exhausted when I got home at midnight, I couldn’t sleep until nearly two in the morning.
2. Around three in the morning I had an appalling nightmare, the details of which I can’t remember. The worst thing was that I only half woke up, and was stuck in that sleep paralysis mode where you suddenly get nervous and paranoid and then outright terrified as you lie in this kind of quasi-dreamstate, unable to move, with perceived movement around you. It took a while to get back to sleep.
3. At which point the nightmares returned, leaving me sleeping fitfully until 8 in the morning, at which point I got up feeling physically numb but edgy – as if I had some kind of reptile coiling and recoiling around in my head. People seem distant and slightly unfamiliar. I want to go back to bed.