Projects
Dvorak
The improvised card game.
Back on the Orion Express
Er, coming soon.
Bookpile
The Inheritors
William Golding
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami
Worldwar: In The Balance
Harry Turtledove
The Origins of Virtue
Matt Ridley
Incidental Music
Human Slaves in an Insect Nation
Bill Bailey
Frankly, Mr Shankly
The Smiths
Other Blogs
Found HumanLint Interconnected Wherever You Are [UK Blogs]
Friends
Alice Chrissy Dan Dave Eperdu John Lori Nik Paul Raven Riana Sandy Simes Tracy Yao
Before
As Above at Stormloader
Banner-advert-ridden drivel.
Weeks Beginning
20.11 27.11 04.12 11.12 18.12 25.12 01.01 08.01 15.01
20.01.01
This evening I have mostly been playing Breakout clones, taken from a pleasingly odd "CD of shareware stuck to a large piece of cardboard" I found nestling amongst unreadable computer magazines in a newsagents last week.

Both of the best have Web pages - Wilkanoid has a nice cartoonish solidity and a healthy twist of gimmicks and powerups, while DX-Ball 2 goes for suave, shiny graphics (an absurdly raytraced ball skittering off a vast array of textured bricks) and has a nicely fluid feel to it. Both worth a download.

Magnificence from John Hegley at the Corn Exchange last night; two hours of poetry, music and line-drawing, with surprise assistance from no less than Simon Munnery. With a caption competition to occupy us during the interval, and the man breaking-off mid-poem to bless a sneezing audience member, it was one of the most relaxed and engaging man-on-a-stage thing I've seen in quite a while. Applause. I must buy his new book.
19.01.01
I've always been a bit amazed and impressed that these WikiWiki things aren't constantly covered in 30pt bright-red graffiti. Someone's set up a Nomic information one, which seems to be evolving nicely. A pity there doesn't seem to be any complete and precise change-logging, though - such would be immensely useful for the self-updating game-data things that Nomics tend to thrive on.
Person scared and confused by Mornington Crescent. Our work here is done.

It's not all Crescent, though - the MCiOS server hosts a range of other games of wit and style, many inspired by Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, including Limericks and Complete Quotes. It's even got a bit of a communal weblog going. Highly entertaining stuff.

18.01.01
An interview with one of the founders of the International Time Capsule Society, whose pages include the nine most wanted time capsules, those which were stolen or mislaid or simply couldn't be found again when the time came.

Passing mention of the Internet (more than just, ahem, AOL) is quite sobering, though - I wonder how much of its content will still be around in a thousand years' time, cached or relocated or whatever, and what future generations will make of it. Will schoolchildren be forced to read early 21st-century weblogs as part of their history lessons? Will people have to wade through a millennium of obsolete technical information, and personal home pages of the dead, when searching the Web?

Commons vote to ban hunting by something of a landslide, and pro-hunting activists are suitably pathetic and whiney about it. I hate all that "destroying jobs" drivel they come out with, of these mysterious dog-handling people who'd be completely unprepared for a different line of work (such as, I don't know, running boarding kennels), of the beagles who'd just be kicking their heels without hunts to attend, of the obvious inability of the upper-classes to get together under less violent social pretexts.

"We are still confident that the Upper House will do its constitutional duty and protect the people from the exercise of parliamentary prejudice." said Richard Burge of the Countryside Alliance, although independent polls showed that the majority of 'the people' actually wanted hunting banned. Damn the parliament, being prejudiced towards the will of the people like that.

17.01.01
Credit cards really should have a number you can phone to report that you might have lost your card, or may just have left it at home this morning. Then they can cancel it for twenty-four hours, and you can take appropriate action the next day, possibly saving both you and them the bother of replacing a card you nervily asked them to blacklist which was on your kitchen table all the while.
A lot of nonsense over the greengrocer refusing to put metric pricing on things; if he's not prosecuted, does that set a precedence for being able to sell fruit and veg at 30p per Babylonian shekel or tuppence per proton mass? Hm, I never realised that the magnificent Mark Heap provided the voice for Stressed Eric...
Excellence from Untitled Document as Straw-clutching Hague Calls For US-Style Election - "Do they concern themselves with matters of policy, or political experience, when electing a leader? No! They have an out and out popularity contest where the candidate with the highest-quality television advertising and the best comic timing scrapes to victory with a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent. And that, my friends, is the kind of election that I can win!"
Hm, very strange to see some 19th-century-ish photos of Lewes, including one where my flat's quite visible. I'm not even sure how long the building's been there - at least another hundred years before that, I expect. Eerie to think of the uses the room might have seen in its time, humbling to consider how little my residency will impact it on its way to the 23rd century. (Unless I accidentally set fire to it or something.) Decent Things is rapidly turning into a list of things I'm attending locally, which I suppose is useful to anyone who lives around here. John Hegley's at the Brighton Corn Exchange on Friday, but I can't seem to find out whether he's touring properly or not. Tsk.
15.01.01
Foolish; a Bill Bailey Web site person emails me saying that they've sold out of medium-sized T-shirts and would I like to change my order? I respond by pointing out that their Web site only sells medium-sized T-shirts, which may well be why they've, er, sold out. And I prefer the vagueness of oversized T-shirts anyway. May not be too late to change your order, or, indeed, place one. I'm sorry, but every time I read the name "Consignia", I just think "Con Insignia". I couldn't even remember if it was the new name for the Post Office or the Financial Times people, until I checked the Web site. What on earth is the point?
Finished Playing the Moldovans at Tennis over the weekend; a nicely quirky travelogue, giving insight into the culture and condition of the titular eastern-European country as author Tony Hawks (to win a bet with Arthur Smith) seeks out its national football team for eleven games of tennis. A bit clumsy in its heavy-handed similes, though, and Tony's alarming persistence in writing down every single joke he thinks of, irrespective of context, often comes across as facetious. But it's reasonable enough light reading.
Sharp insight from Dan, on the finer points of HTML; "Bold is easy, you just press the keys really hard. Italic is trickier, you have to strike them at an angle and it's really hard to get them all going the same way."
More or less everything by Kevan Davis.
As Above is part of the Uncertain Organisation.

kevan@somethingorother.com