Today began with a very sad event – a direct result of my vagrancy – somewhere in all the move I crushed one of the pairs of sunglasses I bought in LA. If I was of a more morbid disposition I would say it was symbolic.
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I'm still at Chris' place…
I’m still at Chris’ place which is nice because he doesn’t expect me to go out and entertain him all the time and he likes watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is ultimate escapist entertainment. Tomorrow I’m on the move again though, which is exhausting – this time to Camden to stay with Liz. And of course I have my meeting with my new flatmates. The sooner I get a flat, the sooner I get my computer back. The sooner I get my computer back, the sooner I can finish the site (and the sooner I can get a good night’s sleep).
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Weird queries…
One thing I really need to know – does Darren of timemachinego go to the EasyEverything on Tottenham Court Road? Because if he does, I’d like to wave to him one day from the balcony at Time Out. Which reminds me – the website is currently running a online drugs poll which I worked on.
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I respect honesty in reviews…
If there’s one thing I respect it is honesty. But it’s a dangerous thing – particularly when the question you are answering is loaded. Take for example Oh Messy Life’s DLOG (presumably is to Designlog as blog is to weblog [although surely that’s the less pronouncable NLOG]). Barbelith was featured there a couple of days ago, in a generally complimentary fashion (and I quote):
“Everyone’s favorite self-doubting, nomadic Brit Tom has voiced doubts over whether or not he, being self-trained, has the skills to compete with the college-boy designers. After looking over Barbelith, the obvious answer is that he’s a natural…” [Overall grade – B]
He continues to make some very valid points about barbelith.com being continually under construction – which of course is the biggest sin in the whole web world (although he omits to mention that I am homeless and mostly computer-free which makes finishing the site rather difficult). All of this is more than reasonable. I don’t have a problem with it – in fact I am flattered that barbelith was considered worthy to be reviewed.
I’m a little less sure about his more scathing reviews. He says of regular barbelith link, riothero:
“I know he’s only 15. At that age five years ago, I’d barely begun using email, much less learned HTML. Still, though, I must pull no punches! I must be a bastard and speak the truth as I see it, and the truth as I see it here is that Riothero.com is a boring site to look at.” [Overall grade – D+/C-]
I think that this really exposes the flaw in his approach – is he going to review the personal sites of web-designers who have been building sites since they were invented (kottke.org, powazek.com – both favourites of mine). Or is he going to review the personal sites of the rest of us, whether we are 45 year old bank managers, 15 year old students or 27 year old journalists? And if he really is going to analyse both, is it fair to use the same criteria? And what about content? Popularity? Would he be as “brutally honest” if it was a twelve-year-olds first site? Because we all know how crushing these comments can be…
Although having said that, jish seems to be taking it quite well…
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On the epic saga of The Well…
Any regulars to barbelith are familiar with the nexus – the anti-establishment post-counter-sub-cultural discussion forum. Recently there has been rather more in the way of conflict and flame-wars than normal – so much in fact that I have been sent a really interesting article from Wired about The Epic Saga of The Well (May 1997). The well was one of the first and most significant online communities, and it was – at times – wracked with conflict and crisis.
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Temporary plateau of weirdness reached…
Temporary plateau of weirdness reached. Things remain weird, but have ceased to get increasingly so. Chris has said he will put me up for a couple of nights, which is really decent of him and means that I can now slide through into next week courtesy of him and Liz. I am getting increasingly worried about my new potential flatmates however – not in terms of whether I will get along with them, but about when we will actually find a place to live in and what compromises will have to be made in the process. Hopefully I will have resolved this by Friday night.
Most attractive new weblog of the day definitely goes to Fifty-Five.
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Guide to Planetary…
Trash culture purists only: A comprehensive and interesting site on the comic book Planetary.
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A bitchy question borne of frustration…
Can someone explain to me how it is possible that I can cross the world and crash on someone’s floor in LA for nearly nine days, but when I return to my home country and home city, almost none of my friends are prepared to house me for even a couple of nights. Has anyone got an answer for me?
As ever the best way to cope with the many disappointments and injustices of life (and people) is to ignore it completely and muck around on the net for hours. Which is what I intend to do.
I am delighted to report that vitaflo is back on the air at last. Not a lot seems to have changed, although the site is altogether more … green … The HREF section is still the best guide to the best design sites on the web – a constant source of inspiring work.
Here all about Grant Morrison’s appearance at the DisinfoCon from the site itself. And I quote: “I probably shouldn’t admit this here, but I’m not familiar with ‘The Invisibles’ comic, so I had no idea who Grant Morrison was, but he was very funny, very drunk, taught us Magick, and sure that he had been on a ride with aliens in Katmandu, so he had my attention!”
And I am probably the last person to notice this, but Epinions has also finally launched it’s full version, complete with clean and elegant design and cheery little smiley things. The only slightly depressing thing is that I have spent so much time running around like a headless chicken in recent months that I am in imminent danger of falling off the bottom of their Most Popular Movie Reviewers list.
“Hey Tom, there’s a really big party going on in Austin, but you can’t go.”
SXSW fever is running rampant through the webloggers. And those of us stuck five thousand miles away can only pine for what might have been – and of course check out SXSWb, images by pb (day 1, day 2, day 3) and metafilter, and the commentary from powazek, prehensile tales and riothero.
Still it’s not the same as being there.
I feel bad for not talking more about my LA time – so here are a few sites for the minor celebrities I bumped into: Loren Dean [at party with him – he wore lots of plaid], Tyne Daly [wandered around the pier in Venice Beach], Gina Gershon [sat behind us chatting away during a showing of Wonder Boys].
Needless to say I have found a place to stay (take a bow Evil Nick). Bed finally located around 7pm GMT. My luggage arrived this morning at work more or less intact as well. Everything seems to be coming together. I went to see The Insider so that I wouldn’t fall asleep too early. It was a pretty strange film – only in America could people be surprised by the news that cigarettes are addictive. The most interesting part of the film (the media politics and strategies/counter strategies) were unfortunately the bits without the most interesting character/actor/performance. Russell Crowe is a god.
And before I forget – IF YOU DON’T ASK YOU DON’T GET!
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Radio Barbelith is back…
Radio Barbelith is back on the air. Every day over the last week that I haven’t been able to update the site I have felt more and more anxious – what if everyone got bored and wandered off? I mean – there are thousands of wonderful weblogs that are updated every day without fail. They wouldn’t let something as tiny as a holiday interfere with their duty to their readers. (I am thinking of stable barbelith links like kottke.org, riothero and megnut)
Well, anyway, it’s back and not likely to go away again in a hurry. And that’s even considering the difficult situation I find myself in. Regular readers will know of my homelessness – a couple of weeks ago I moved out of my flat in Hampstead and took all my stuff up to my parents’ place in Norfolk – and then of course I embarked on my epic voyage to LA. I am now back in London, only to find that Virgin have mislaid half of my luggage, my mobile phone has run out of energy and I can’t contact any of the people who said that they might be prepared to put me up for a couple of nights. Tom Coates – homeless, without any clean clothes or means of communication…
But of course I must not dwell on such concerns (shit shit shit shit shit shit shit), and instead must talk about my time in LA. I can’t even begin to talk about everything, but a few images really stick in my mind – flying over the lights of Las Vegas at night (able to pick out individual casinos and roads), half naked men bouncing up and down on coffee tables, the sun setting over Venice Beach and the madman with the bubble machine. And of course, my ever gracious and hospitable hosts, Kerry and Sean.
Quite a lot has happened on the web while I have been away as well. blogger has been redesigned (by none other than powazek himself and even riothero has reached some kind of design plateau after the frantic changes of the last month. More later, as and when I get the chance…