|
|
| Also via LinkMachineGo (I'll stop now, you can just go there
yourself), a beautiful, absurdly-artificial-looking photograph
of an iceberg, as above and so below.
| A sleek and curvy Flash-written Tube map.
I can almost see the Mornington Crescent pieces gliding around on it.
[via LinkMachineGo]
|
| "To Hell In A Handcart is racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic trash.
Now, Richard Littlejohn should be satisfied. He said recently that if
the Guardian dismissed it in those terms, he would put
it on the cover as a recommendation."
|
"I don't have slogans, I have reasoned opinions and I am sitting no
more than 2ft 6ins away from you, Richard."
Will Self vs Richard Littlejohn,
rather astoundingly, in a disorganised radio discussion of their
recently-published books. [via AngryBlog]
|
| Ringmer has a terrifying new postbox, a swervy urban design
looking out of place on the leafy main road. I half-expect it to
revolve and track me as I pass, an orb of red laser-light gleaming
in its eye-slot as a long-necked metal skeleton climbs out from the
soil.
| Comedy "Sim Babylon 5" game Startopia
earns extra oddness points for having a solid Radio 4 voice (its
owner's name eludes me; he often reads the quotations on Quote
Unquote) as that of its supercilious onboard computer. I wonder
if he gets to do his American accent.
|
| It's a "revolutionary new way to search the Internet", kids.
A graphically-based thing that draws lines between connected results
to give you some idea of what links to where, and who's worth
listening to. It requires Java runtime gubbins and hefty download,
though. And looks quite ugly, really. Feh.
| Odd English-designer-having-a-laugh dodginess
in that
Dr Seuss ABC thing; an over-excited cartoon
hobgoblin leaps onto the fifth letter of our alphabet and cheerily
proclaims "Look at me! I'm on E!"
|
| God, I hate shopping. Buying a new mobile telephone today, a
young Vodafone lizard continually tried to coax me into
paying twenty quid a month line rental on a "free" phone
worth a hundred and twenty, slyly suggesting that this was
a deal he shouldn't really be letting on about. A cheap,
boring phone which I'd barely press a button on was what I
wanted, and what I walked out with. (Although it does seem to
have Sokoban on it, curiously.) Cross out the relevant bits of your
address books, people who know me well enough, and email me
for the new number.
|
| A fascinating non-verbal dictionary,
discussing and interpreting all manner of unspoken communication
signals. Social/genetic evolution and everything. Thought food of
the highest order. [via Interconnected]
| ATTENTION POLLEN. Robyn
attempts to induct us into the
League
Against Histamine, but I'm unafflicted enough to be
indifferent, personally, and quite like flowers. And wouldn't
want the word "fuck" on my page, thankyouverymuch.
|
| And while I'm in an ask-the-audience sort of mood, can anyone think
of an easy way to mute and unmute a computer at the touch of a key?
I bought Jack an amusing piece of pseudo-Seussian edutainment the
other day, but it insists on repeatedly shouting the names of the
letters, rather than (as they seem to teach at school these days)
the sounds they make. Which doesn't help much.
It staggers me that people who write this sort of stuff can't be
bothered to add simple "lower case only", "disable quit-to-desktop",
"skip bizarre American words" sorts of configurations - such would
be one of the mightiest advantages of CD-roms over books, and
would barely take any effort at all. Feh.
|
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK-- Timothy McVeigh's death by lethal injection Monday
has made everything perfect in Oklahoma City, his 168 victims' loved
ones describing themselves as feeling "100 percent better."
Good to see The Onion back on fine form. Elsewhere on the
Internet, a photo of someone who might be Robert Thompson is
apparently circulating,
with the Justice for James campaign
being pathetically reluctant to speak out against it, to discourage
people keen to lynch anyone who looks sufficiently like him. If it's
even him. Maybe after a dozen ill-informed firebombings they'll happen
to murder him back, and make everything alright again.
|
| Woke up with a fearful cough at 4am this morning, and my tired brain
spent a good half hour hazily contemplating the chaos theory of it all;
coughing and sleeping as separate strange attractors, my throat and
consciousness skittering warily along the fractal boundaries.
It's glorious when a book
or an idea can have that much impact on how you perceive the world.
| I resigned from my
increasingly erratically-paid and generally infuriating job yesterday,
and am currently clearing
my desk. Expect fairly sparse updates for the next while. And offer
me employment should you have any spare in the Brighton area.
|
"What did they do at the end?"
"They stopped."
Kids are great.
|
| DocNomic - previously a rather horrific game of
drugs, plague and psychosis in a hospital of fluid hierarchy - has,
after a few months rest, wiped its slate clean and returned to a fresh
basic ruleset for Round Two. Which looks to be heading towards an
office paperwork theme. (Doc / document - do you see?) The excitement.
| This I like; an infinitely bifurcating choose-your-own adventure
story which you're asked to contribute to when you reach an unsketched
plot fork. An instructive example of good surrealité versus bad surrealité.
|
|
