This just in from Billy:

Finally, Kiloh discovered that Boris's full name is Boris de Pfeffel Johnson so we came up with an ad campaign based on the Dr. Pepper approach: 'Boris de Pfeffel, what's the worst that could happen?'

Doctor Pfeffel, I like it :-)

I love it that The Lecture List is still running (thank you thank you Chris) and that people are still posting this kind of event: Did we really land on the Moon?

In this talk, using real Apollo video footage and a series of simple demonstrations, we will take a closer look at the science behind "moon hoax" claims, and ask whether we really did land on the Moon.

Well, I don't know about you but I'd sure like to find out :-)

Complete Video of the SIPA-World Leaders Forum with the President of Iran from the Columbia World Leaders Forum

Apparently the campus got pretty heated but ultimately everyone did the right thing...

This just in via twitter+gtalk:

twitter: bbcvideo: Hundreds of people in Peru are reported to be feeling sick after an object from space crashed to Earth. http://tinyurl.com/2kp6er

...I have four fivers in my wallet. When was the last time anyone actually had one--let alone four--fivers in their wallet?!

You know, I was gonna comment on the Skype blog Heartbeat (no, not on the bit where if they had decided to use computers equipped with a proper operating system their crash and subsequent total meltdown wouldn't have happened in the first place) (and no, not on the bit where for the same reason they can't manage a reliable single-customer view grrrr) no, I was going to comment on the email I received earlier today:

As a goodwill gesture to all you faithful Skype Pro, Skype Unlimited, SkypeIn or Skype Voicemail customers, we're adding an additional seven days to your current subscription, free of charge. And even if you didn't miss out on using Skype last week - you can still have a week free on Skype, on the house!

So my first reaction is that

1. customers that aren't those listed above can just fuck off
2. a customer worth building a relationship with is one that commits to a financial transaction with your brand. Gosh, how 80/20 nineteen-eighty-seven of you...

But then I thought to myself, you just nicked the nine quid I had in my account three weeks ago. True, you did explain that you had to, and you did make it theoretically easy for me to protect my dosh while giving me ample and repeated fair warning.

But you know what, if you clean out the balance in your customer's accounts that's all they're gonna see.

Come on, this is sooooo not a modern approach to marketing. Your empty gesture has left me with exactly the same balance I had just before your meltdown--zero.

Niklas Zennström, you're a smart guy, my guess is you can do a lot better (and you can start by giving me my money back)

Do you work in an office? Look around your floor, on any given day, how many of those sharp-suited and VO5-ed younger people are interns. Or roughly, what percentage of your co-workers are contractors, interns, apprentices or full time employees?

This is a poster for a big French building society which is blowing it's trumpet and claiming that its employment practises are going to build a richer, healthier, more stable society.

The claim that they are so proud of is that last year they signed up more long-term interns (under-paid, over-qualified young people who work without job security sometimes in rolling internships that can last years) than they did full-time employees.

Last year the bank took on almost twenty-thousand cubicle-fillers of which only seven-thousand got a full-time contract. And they're proud of this!

Talk about legislation back-firing. The charges sociales imposed by the French government have created a company culture where the long term strategy is to shift all risk on to individual contractors and get rid of all employees.

Can you say sustainable?

Supporters like Loic are pleased as punch about Sarko, but it'll be interesting to see if he can make any kind of difference to this. Being a card-carrying member of La Gauche Antilibérale I am naturally suspicious of big business and my guess is now that they have collectively tasted freedom from any kind of social responsibility it seems unlikely they will return to the old days.

mmm not sure what's going on here... why does the guy who reads the weather on RAI Uno wear a military uniform?

Terrible pictures but astonishing transport system. The docking kiosk allows individual or subscription payments using your oyster card--get out of the metro and hop on one of these:-)

So you know how us whitey westerners travel in the tight confines of buses trains and tubes? You know how the position of a foot or a leg, the degree of but-brush and so on can really make a difference in the personal-space stakes?

Well, I had a first on Wednesday's eurostar, a women drooled on me;-) We were sittin there all prim and propper, each trying to pretend the other didn't exist until I felt her go all loose and flop over...

No biggie of course, it's just I was a little surprised, I've had a jillion guys spilling into my personal space, mostly by accident but also by dogged territorial nastiness, but it's never happened with a woman.

Good to see Serge the Concierge doing his bit to promote the Alex James talk on Thursday.

Remember, get those cheese names to Billy before midnight tomorrow to grab your tickets:-)

You know, Billy and I have been really struggling to keep The Lecture List afloat for some time now, and we're doing it because we believe in it (the problem of course is it's impossible to get funding for a thing with no revenue stream...)

Anyway, people keep signing up and we know a bunch of people use it which is of course great. I mention this because every now and then (like when Billy got very drunk and bought Madona's tights) something fun happens that gives us a wee boost.

One such boost came our way just now when we were shopping for stuff for Clementine's birthday treasure hunt in Ceret and Billy checked his mail in the local internet café. To cut a long ramble short, Alex James told Ohna, Billy's wife that we could have some tickets to a thing he's doing next week and we just got confirmation from the publisher that it was OK to offer the tickets as a competition on the Lecture List.

So there you go, if you want some tickets, get yourself over to the Lecture List and answer the question:-)

Alex James | a bit of a blur is at Blackwells next week. The competition for free tickets is on the home page

Billy claims that Issy-Les-Moulineaux is the star of a famous example in pragmatics.

Of course, in classic Billy form he hasn't actually told me what the example was. Is this a test of my Googling skills?

Her name will forever live on in the halls of justice for her victory in the landmark Supreme Court case Marshall v. Marshall, which struck a blow for the rights of millions of young widows of elderly billionaire husbands.

From Jon Swift: Anna Nicole Smith: America's Princess Di

(Thanks James)

Total fabulousness, now that's what I call a desktop.
(get yours at shilpa-shetty.com)

• Her forearms are long and thin, and the sleeve of her floppy jumper keeps dropping as she fiddles with her empty teacup. She is reading Tolstoy.
• The sun is rising over Sidcup.
• I have padded plasters on my ankles as a preventative measure. Lots of walking today.
• Joel Stein doesn't want me to be his pen-pal. I have to say, I like his take on 'community'.

So Chirac's dream of a 'French perspective' on world news has finally launched. Part of me sniggers but fair enough, why should CNN and BBC24 get all the coverage... For the launch the channel commissioned some animated ads. The concept is the same as the old Guardian ads that used the line "get the whole picture" (remember the one with the skinhead running) but they're quite heavy-handed. The one above is different, the balance of story, visual (you can feel the smile when the kid kicks the ball) and music work well, and the emotional content does resonate (what boy hasn't had a similar day-dream). Is it a French perspective... dunno, I guess the kid is Vietnamese but what is F24 saying exactly, pick your post-colonial nightmare? Still, beautiful little film.

Just got this in the mail--sounds good in a kind of burning-man kind of way...

It's amazing what you find on the shelves at Tesco. For starters, "security protected?" I wonder if the guy putting that sticker on the box saw the movie... And how the hell did they get Tarantino to approve the game (I mean what's the gameplay, sit and watch your mate bleed to death for eight hours?).

There is currently a spider hiding in my keyboard. He's wedged under the white panel the keys stick out of and is moving from beneath key to key. No amount of shaking or blowing seems to be able to convince him my keyboard is not a good home.

In fact, as I type this, if I hit a key he is under he simply scampers over a few and settles in again.

OK... This is slightly freaking me out here...

Always partial to a good shaving story me, well, here's Alex B's first encounter with the MP3Power shaver thingy...

A nice lady at work was sitting across from me this afternoon. In a flurry of note taking, she generated this fabulous post-it portrait. Thanks Katie:-)

• When did IT become IS?
• The bad guy from Goldfinger apears as the prince of Vulgaria in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang
• I interviewed a guy who worked in a bottling plant the other day and he keeps a blog, uses a Symbian cameraphone and keeps his photos of rally cars on Flickr--citizens media isn't the voice of the elite it would seem:-)

Leslie Harpold's advent calendar is up.

It's 11 o'clock.

I just learned a new word:

Inukshuk

What an absolutely fantastic word, check out the album cover as well...

Winston Churchill whups Shakespeare two sets to nothing... it must be the BBC's Tardis Tennis

I've been spending quite a lot of time looking at the British Museum website these past couple of months. I've nicked this graphic from Compass, their editor-selected presentation of 5000 significant pieces from the main collection.

Maputo, Mozambique, 2001

I love this thing, it's called Throne of weapons and it's made by "Transforming Arms into Tools", an artists collective from Mozambique. In particular, I love this quite voyeuristic drawing created by the Museum to support the presentation of the artwork. By labelling each item of millitary hardware, this presentation graphic adds an extra dimension to the original. Apologies for gilding this particular lily (as the original is very sensible black and white)...

From the Compass TAE page

The throne is a product of the TAE project - Transformaçaõ de Armas em Enxadas (Transforming Arms into Tools) - whereby weapons previously used by combatants on both sides are voluntarily exchanged for agricultural, domestic and construction tools. The project was established in 1995 in Maputo by Bishop Dinis Sengulane of the Christian Council of Mozambique with the support of Christian Aid.

The British Museum website
The Compass section
The Throne of Weapons page

Thank you Nicki for the lovely coffee flask I've got on my desk (brought all the way Nanlong Corporation's factory in Shanghai courtesy of Mr Ikea). At 90p a cup, I'm already saving a fortune ;-)

And in response to gahjr2000's question, yes it does sort of look like a dildo, albeit a somewhat more 'boy-on-boy' size of dildo...

I know I do overdo it on the baby content, but I just this minute received this email:

Morning,

Everything went fine, Isobel Daisy Holmes was born yesterday at 12.09pm, 6lbs 11 ounces.

Mother and daughter doing well, however, invevitably, Father still in shock.

Cheers, Jon

I want one of these

Just read this nice little emotional roller-coaster from Wil Wheaton's blog.

Just had my first roast potato in I don't know how long.

I woke up at four this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. I've got a fairly intrusive cold and managed to leave the house without eating breakfast. Oh, and I managed to forget my wallet.

Ok, I guess I was feeling sorry for myself.

Oh, and I had rhubarb crumble and custard.

And an expresso.

(For those not familiar with the church of Atkins' dictates, all the above are big no-nos...)

So yesterday, as the train was about five minutes out of Basingstoke...

[intercom:] Is there a doctor or a nurse on the train? If there is a doctor or a nurse on the train, could they report to the last carriage immediately?

...and just now, on the platform in Andover...

[intercom:] If there is a young person called Felicity Mason on the train could she please leave the train now. Felicity Mason should leave the train in Andover.

I hope yesterday's heart attack survived and that Felicity was just held up at school.

(15:57, three stations later, another call for Felicity Mason--the guard is going to walk the train--God I have no idea who this person is but i really hope she's all right. I can imagine her Mum waiting in Andover and slowly falling apart as she waits for news...)

Just overheard in Waitrose

Do you have any heart-shaped boxes of chocolates?

All the Valentine's Day stuff is down the end of the store where all the packaged cheese is

So I had to wonder, is this simply a helpful direction or a commentary on the rampant mercantilism of our consumer culture;-)

Well, Nicki got me the box set of Star Trek (The Original Series) for my birthday and it's been sitting on the shelf ever since... Anyway, I'm here on my own and have just watched four episodes in a row :-)

On a side note, the box set (and dig that groovy packaging) has the episodes divided among the disks in a seemingly random order. To complicate matters further, there is no indication of episode order on the disks themselves, the liner notes or anywhere else in the packaging. To get the episode sequence, you have to load each disk and look at it's menu. I'm still trying to work out if this is a very clever editorial layout (similarly significant episodes grouped thematically or something like that) or just a major cock-up in production?

Just dropped my tax return off at Euston Tower. It closes at 20:00 and there were queues of people snaking around the building. Kind of a funny atmosphere, a bit festive, a bit like first day at school...

It's two o'clock and I've been shuffling around the office in my socks. I've stepped into my open-back Birkies a few times and joy oh joy, my legs are not acheing :-)

This is great, I can actually function normally...

So I'm contracting at a place that requires a bit more polish in the old dress code than I'm used to, so I've been dusting off my lovely old leather shoes. I've got a gorgeous pair of French ones that still look great but have a hole in the sole (soul) and getting them fixed requires sending them back to France (the soles are tripple-welt and the taps are forged and seamlessly fitted with steel screws--these are some very serious items of footware).

Anyway, in an effort to make those ones last a few more months, I dusted off a lovely pair i picked up at Church's a few years ago. They were still like new and I seemed to remember that they didn't fit terribly well and never really wore them in. So to cut a long story short, I brazenly wore the damn things last Thursday (the day I became 42 years old) and by the end of the day, both my ankles were raw flesh and my socks were filled with blood (which may have explained why I couldn't keep my mind on the gig I was at that evening).

Since then, I've compounded the problem. I have to wear formal shoes to work, so even with two plasters on each ankle it's agony. My bloody commute includes about 45 minutes of brisk walking and a further 30 of standing still (tube). The picture above was taken a few days into this process, my ankles are swelling up like I'm pregnant and parts of my calf are developing welts, scarring and bruising. I just cannot believe a pair of shoes could do so much damage.

So today i've instituted a one-man dress-down Friday and am walking to the bank in my Birkenstocks:-)

OK, I do seem to be posting a lot of links to Gail's Openbrackets but this one cracked me up...

In fact, I’d say that we spend more time looking for decent porn then we do actually watching it.
— B Jan 5, 4:26pm

I've just discovered that James (Cherkoff) is in Sri Lanka and he's OK. He normally checks in with a nudge to get a move on the day he's back after Christmas, but this year, silence--Turns out Liz and James arrived just as the wave was hitting. They were in a restaurant high up on a hill when it happened.

Nicki's sister lost a relative in Thailand, positive ID from dental records:-(

I would just like to put my 2¢ into the indeterminate gender thing. I think alternating between 'he' and 'she' more or less at random through a text (I've been reading about babies and this is done A LOT in these texts) is both annoying and unnecessary. I'd be happy for indeterminate to default to feminine. If that doesn't work, we could have a year on and a year off, so 2004 could be "she" and 2005 could be... no, wait that's even more stupid.

Anyway, I'm sure there are good reasons for the practise, I just think the end result isn't working...

...and go here now.

thanks billy

The French have a wonderful knack for keeping it simple.

(This is a diagram of the correct stroke sequence required to shave a man's face.
No, really.)

I love this post by Chris, and because I can easily post a link to it, I shall;-)

The stuff that I think several people out there get a kick out of reading on Donkey tends to form in my brain like scum on pot of soaking chickpeas. When I first started posting, the system was so fast that it covered its clunkiness and I merrily skimmed stuff off the top of my brain and dumped it in these pages. Very often, the best stuff wasn't fully formed stories or reports but little quirky fragments and the best way to whack these online was in the form of lists, only for reasons too dull to explain, making html lists on the old Donkey engine sucked.

So to enjoy my mouth's new-found freedom...

1. I've wanted to comment on the James Bulger trials for some time. Some of the reports that were not heard in the original case but came to light after the fact completely changed my attitude (due in large part to my having a Clementine).
2. If a two-year-old pitches backwards off the big-girl swing she doesn't thwack her head as long as her dad holds her legs
3. If a two-year-old wants to impress Dad by swinging standing on the big-girl swing, it's a bad idea for Dad to point a camera at her and say "wave to Mommy"
4. Gail
5. Must continue formulating thoughts on new agency / agency creative
6. I'm currently extremely unemployed. Will do usability consulting for food (+44 78 81 91 74 89)
7. Did I mention I'm unemployed?

Have just struggled through another hummaniteinenglish.com translation. A very interesting piece about the effect on left-wing parties of forgetting one's left wing. I worry a bit, the French is pretty pompous and poorly written (imho) and the guy in charge hasn't got the resources to do a lot of editing...

If there are any lefties out there with good English writing skills, the editor might welcome a volunteer editor/reviewer to hammer the texts back into English:-)

Yes way

Pantograph is a lovely word:-) Thank you Gail

So the England team's practice sessions are being spied upon by "Zoom lenses hidden in golf carts" and celebrities sunning sans clothes are violated by zoom lenses that "literally reach in and pull the image out".

What ever happened to the good old telephoto lens?

Does it now sound too quaint, too much like talking about a card reader or a Telex machine or some other not-quite-up-to-the-minute technology? I'd settle on "long" lens--as the term refers to the focal length of the device, and a zoom lens could after all, be a 21-55mm (not very useful for pulling out celebrity nipples).

Oh, and in the seventies, there was some talk about the French government making it illegal for French film crews to use zoom lenses and being forced to use "objectifs de longueur focale variable" instead (at which point someone mentioned that it was a couple of French guys, Roger Cuvillier and Richard (Jean) Cornu. that invented it in 1949)</pedantry>

So Billy and I went to this Alexander McQueen bash last Thursday night and drank way too much champagne and then Billy raised his paddle and bought Madonna's tights...

Which kinda meant that we had to talk to the Christies mob who were managing the auction which in turn meant we sorta got to meet the MD of American Express Europe who we asked to support The Lecture List by signing up to one of our fabulous whitelabel lists (which is how the Guardian is going to be getting their content).

So now Billy and I are wondering if anyone's going to ask us to pay for the tights ;-)

Now this is just silly ;-)

Did my first translation for L'Humanité in English last night.

Got a last minute email from the site coordinator in Quebec and had something more or less idiomatic ready in under three hours ;-)

Not sure how I feel about this though as the item in question was an editorial re torture in Iraq, and the tone was horrendously pompous. I tried to tone it down as much as possible, but I'm still in two minds about seeing my name next to it (even though, of course, I am incredibly pompous...).

On the plus side, I've learned a new French word: "la gégène" (the hand-cranked telephone alternator used to make the old telephone bell ring, as used by the French on the toes and testicles of the good people of Algeria). I don't think I'll be teaching this one to Clementine just yet...

The trucking of illegal immigrants into the U.S. leads to prison at a small, liberal arts lock-up. There, we meet Jones, the huge, black king of the penitentiary and his white slave warden, Farrington. Eventually, an escape to Mexico leads to the spiritual anointing of Jones.

http://joefrank.com/news.html

In cheap black suits and unpolished DMs sit at a reception desk.

I was there (the BMW service centre in Battersea) from 9:30 til 16:30 and they didn't budge. I hope they get paid enough, though on close inspection they both had screens to play with and spent most of the day drawing funny faces in a photoshop-alike programme. I guess this is why The American Right want prisoners to not have access to television or the internet, I guess a screen is just enough freedom to not go mad?

But anyway, I'm feeling better (but you couldn't tell from that introduction).

Just had a lovely drive (my first sunny day driving through London in a while) from the Dogs Home, past Vauxhall bridge and along the south bank to Waterloo, then through the lovely old Kingsway tunnel which has been open for a while now but I never seem to use...

Did the whole drive chasing a shiny new KTM. Very shit-off-shovel big four-stroke single with a lovely thumpa-thumpa sort of rythm, sort of looks like a wasp -- black and yellow with a waist. He'd get me at the lights and I'd catch him on the straights (just). Anyway, this reprehensible behaviour gave me a nice warm glow inside, so i should get through my all-nighter in one piece :-)

I think i really need a nice long bike trip, maybe Morocco, get some soft-sand practice and some sunshine...

Is filled with darkness right this second.

...the Association of Photographers' rights negotiator and European Pyramide representative and end up without her email address, but with the knowledge that if I want to I can see my chakras spinning :-)

http://www.auraphoto.com

Currently on hold (Billy Joel "Uptown Girl") at the HP online store ("order by phone 0845 270 4215"). I called to ask which models in the Colourjet series are Postscript, networked etc etc.

The guy (an HP employee) replied "what's Postscript?"

This is funny and sad and shocking and made my heart sink in so many ways I can't begin to describe;-) I replied "Postscript is a language used to describe raster images for the purposes of sending them to laser printers. It was written by Adobe and first used in anger by the Hewlett-Packard Development Company in their very qualified laser engines. These were made famous by the first generation of Applewriter printers in the early 1990's"

The guy said "oh." and put me on hold.

90 seconds later a chirpy sales rep comes on (Angela Dickson x2219). After a five minute conversation, she states that she is unable to confirm or deny whether the HP Color LaserJet 3500n printer (Hewlett-Packard part number Q1320A) is or is not a Postscript printer, or indeed if it were a Postcript printer, which version of Postscript it would be.

In the end, she kindly offered to call me back tomorrow (she needed to talk to her manager about this) with a "resolution"

I write because this is like a baker not knowing about flour, a children's television producer not having watched "Sesame Street" or the president not knowing the constitution (ok, maybe not that last one). This is just plain wrong...

As I mentioned before, a nice UPS man took my iBook away to be mended under Apple's iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Programme

It came back all shiny and new less than a week later :-)

It blew up again a week after that :-(

We've just been through the bipolar UPS man circuit again (the circuit, not the UPS man) and are currently hoping if it does go wrong again, it'll happen under the 90 day repair warrantee.

Fingers all very crossed...

…arothmel

Can you imagine what the world would be like if the US was run by Vaclav Havel?

Yes!

The joy of imagination :)

So I have this theory…

Now that the USA is the world's sole superpower, and given that the USA uses up most of the world's resources and spews most of the world's greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, I think it might be time to change the way we elect the person in charge of this mess. In a nutshell, I think the President of the United States should be elected by an electoral college picked from the all the countries in the world.

Essentially, the President is now so powerful, it doesn't make sense for the American people to elect him anymore. In fact, it/05/make sense to pick a candidate from the whole world, not just from native-borne American citizens. Can you imagine what the world would be like if the US was run by Vaclav Havel?

Actually, not exactly--it's just that I can't remember the actual term that describes how the virtual representation of a "folder" behaves like a real-world folder in the way it respects Newtonian physics (i.e. it can't be in two places at once, and if you view it closed, it can't be open the next time you look at it unless you've specifically opened it in the meantime).

Many really smart people have criticised the Aqua Finder for the lack of this behaviour (and many others). I know it pissed me off and it made the whole experience of navigating my content that much less intuitive. Well, as a recent Panther upgrader, I can happily report they've fixed it--sort of.

I had by now totally retrained myself as an Aqua user--no more Apple-N keystrokes etc. So imagine my surprise when switching the toolbar off (Option-Apple-T) actually changes the behaviour of the windows as well as their appearance.

So now that all this is in place, what would make this a nicer place for new users would be an "Emulate OS9 Finder" checkbox in the Appearance control panel. Anyone fancy writing the Applescript to do it?

Nick and I are always being amazed that the moment we have a good idea for something, bang--someone else does it :-)

Congratulations to 37Signals (w.a.n.w, w.a.n.w.) for getting the natural progression from TypePad right.

I guess this means we're going to have to move a little quicker…

Have you heard of The Annoying Thing?

He's a thing on a bike. Well, actually, there's no bike but the sound track makes me scream:-)

Just wanted to let you know that nine (9) letters and five months later, Orange has finally come clean.

They agree that their terms and conditions are unfair--they agree that it is ironic for them to be running an advertising campaign called "Fair"--and in consequence, they agree to fix my bill. They also agreed to review their T&Cs and are having an internal review about customer handling.

I'll package the correspondence up nicely for those letter-writing voyeurs out there when I get a mo.

Just tried to join the Yahoo Group of a project I'm working on.

You know how there are a jillion Yahoo users, well, try finding a username that isn't taken. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous, why can't Yahoo switch to an email-based handle, or allow handle duplicates as long as some combination of other data is unique?

"yahoogroups@safs.demon.co.uk" was taken (they suggested "yahoogroups@safs.demon.co.uk2000") -- "bozo" was taken (of course), but "bozobozobozo" was taken as well! And, I have to say, the suggested alternative "bozobozobozo2000" really pushes the envelope… You'd think that a company as big as Yahoo could use some sort of clever language-based suggestions?

In the end, the wordy-but-mnemonic "dugathumaniteinenglish" was also unavailable, so either Yahoo Groups is broken or Satan is in charge of the user registration.

Robotron anyone? (double-joystick arcade machines really were mmmm)

http://www.cepophan.com/atari/</ a>

http://www.zugakousaku.com/

It's amazing how right Apple gets it when it gets it right :-)

UPS guy arrives the day after I call. He's clutching a bundle of special Apple paperwork, complete with printed instructions. He knows all my details and has brought me all the documentation I need to safely send my iBook AND the most awesome specially designed packaging, specifically designed to safely guard Powerbooks and iBooks in transit.

He fills in the paperwork…

He packs your computer for you…

And closes and seals the box.

It's like you've time-warped to 1958--OK he doesn't salute you when he leaves, but pretty darn close.

Just fantastic :-)

Like more specifically how the video card seems to have died one month out of warrantee (grrr). While it is almost amusing how entirely disabled I've been since loosing the little thing, I thought y'all might be a little bored of me moaning about big nasty corporates screwing the little guy with their onerous contracts and dodgy, overpriced products.

So instead, the good news

Looks like the logic board fault is an acknowledged Apple manufacturing fault and they're mending it free of charge :-)

And while I'm posting, I just wanted to add that after almost two years of me speaking not a word of English to her, little Clementine has finally starting saying a few words of French...

"chapeau", "couteau", "murs", "pâtes", "yaourt"

Ok, so not the most useful vocab to have for when she parachutes behind enemy lines to hook up with the French resistance, but it's a start :-)

Oh, and yes I've taken loads of great pictures of her over the last nine months but no, you can't see them because my scrapbook application is crap (so sue me I'm not a programmer). Still hoping to get Moveable Type up soon, at which point lots more pics.

Cause I know that really, the only reason anyone reads this thing is to see picture of Clementine ;-)

So I was reading this blog and the woman behind it had a coat of arms on her contact page. This coat of arms was created by some crazy enthusiast who is carrying on the lions rampant, balls bezant argent and c. He offers to make you one--you simply have to fill in an online form--so I did (o vanitas)

Quel est votre devise?
Ne pas éssayer c'est con.

Vous êtes plus métal, fourrure ou minéral?
Fourrure.

Quel est votre principale qualité?
Patience.

Quel est votre principal défaut?
Orgeuil.

Quel sont vos rapports avec la gente féminine?
Marrié a la belle dame Syminton d'Edinbourg.

Etes vous pacifiste ou belliqueux?
Pacifiste.

Que ce passe t'il si on vous cherche?
L'environement se transforme en un mélange relevé d'échapement enduro et épices proivrées, le tout arosé d'un bon Bourgogne.

Vous sentez vous attirer par les armes?
Comme par le péché. Je lûtte, je lûtte...

Que pensez vous des coutumes et des traditions?
Drole de question. Sans coutumes il n'y aurai pas de révolutions et sans tradition, pas de révolutionaires.

Quel animal (oiseau, mammifère, reptile) vous caractérise le plus? Et pourquoi?
L'âne ou l'ours
L'âne parce que je me sent perdu mais je m'obstinne quand-même,
l'ours par ses qualités physiques.

Citez moi le nom d'un chateau?
Dunnottar Castle.

Votre mois de naissance?
Janvier.

A vous la parole, que souhaitez vous ajouter?
Je suis typographe.
C'est a dire que je suis amateur des entreprises humaines qui investissent le plus grand effort dans les plus petittes chose.

A vous, citoyen ;-)

Dug

The WFMU playlist composers best of 2003 is out

Dear Friend,

Thanks again for your purchase. To grow into a company that can take on the big brands we need to find a few more folks like you. At least 10,000 by January. Know a few? Of course you do. Do friends let friends buy from sweatshops? No way. If you will lift one finger to forward the text below we can keep slugging it out.

Venceremos,
The No Sweat Gang

----------------------

Sick of supporting sweat shops every time you buy clothes? Now you can fight back with every thread you buy. No Sweat Apparel.com has created the first casual clothing brand that fights sweatshops 5 ways. Come now and see how you can help us clean up the garment industry. No sweat.

http://www.nosweatapparel.com

The ever helpful Mr Chris Carline wrote to me yesterday to remind me of the good old fashionned way of getting one's site listed on a search engine. When was the last time you heard the phrase "search engine registration"?

> On Thursday,/01/15, 2004, at 20:36 Europe/London, Chris Carline wrote:
>
> http://www.google.com/addurl.html
>
> It takes the hit and miss out of google indexing your site :-)
>
> Chris

So that was yesterday, and today James' site is indexed :-)

Still, I'm curious as to why the normal crawlers didn't pick it up… But maybe that's just the conspiracy theorist in me.

As I mentioned earlier, James has joined the ranks of the online ranters;-)

He is maintaining an interesting typepad blog over at http://cherkoff.typepad.com where he spends time wondering about how the digital consumer is shaping what he calls Modern Marketing

He's been writing everyday since September and by now, Google should have indexed his pages. But for some reason, the query "modern marketing" cherkoff (the quotes around the first two words should only match the exact title of his blog) returns no results? The same query over at MSN returns the expected result.

So my question is, has Google stopped indexing bloggers? Do they filter out Typepad sites?

Just thought I'd mention that the music files on your iPod are not hidden or copy protected. To download them, you can use the terminal to navigate to the right folder, and then issue a "ditto -rsrc" to copy them to your hard drive.

The music files are stored in a directory format that the internal iPod database uses, as opposed to a human-friendly album/artist hierarchy so really, the only really useful way to use this technique is to download all the files in the "F" directories to a folder on your hard drive ("ditto -rsrc /Volumes/your_ipod_name/iPod_Control/Music/F*/ ~/my_new_ipod_files/") and then drop them on iTunes which will sort and file them nicely.

Of course you could just use Drew Findley's iPod Access (though I've not tried it yet so no idea about performance)

Found this on Billy's iPod (I can't believe I hadn't heard this before--have spent the last hour laughing out loud)

(chorus)
she is pretty well
with fiends from hell
but lately we can tell
that she's just going through the motions
faking it somehow

Steve Allam is a maniac who has ported the VNC client to the Symbian os (P800 screenshot) which is both completely pointless and very very cool :-)

He says he's looking into a port for the Nokia 6600 in the near future, so my fingers are crossed. You can read more about the product at the imhotek website and if you've never played with VNC, you should definitely check out the main support site

Alex,

I worry that compensation for crime and the increasingly popular idea of "victim's rights" are fundamentally wrong, and harm our justice system, undermining our unwritten agreement to abide by an equally unwritten social contract.

Victims do have rights--exactly the same rights as everybody else--whether a citizen be a victim, a perpetrator or a witness to crime. Among others, these include the right to face your accuser, be tried by a jury of your peers, and have the certainty of your guilt established to a high standard.

I worry that as more and more noise happens around issues of compensation, we move away from the idea of an impartial justice system and back to the bad old days of family vendettas that last for generations.

Anyway, with that off my chest, and in the spirit of the Creative Commons license, please feel free to use my code for http:// www.compensation4crime.com

All the best, Dug

Jed writes about life as a Devon councillor

Dear Douglas, I'm honoured to be on your blog, but to encourage you to take out the old stuff and put in the new, I've done another quick para.

You don't get to see much movement in local government. To try and get something done is like watching a glacier move. But tonight, as I write this, we are all celebrating--the glacier--and the Earth--moved!

Working with my fellow ward members in tonight's meeting, we actually convinced East Devon District Council to build a Skate Park in Budleigh Salterton.

A Skate Park!

For those of you unlucky enough not to have visited this part of Deepest Devon, I have to point out that this is a town of retired Lieutenant Colonel, Admirals, Colonials and such, where 50% of the residents are over 50 (Or is it 70% over 70?).

These gentle folk were behind the avalanche of letters of objection that were read out before I could say a word. I represent these residents as well as the non-letter writing youth. So I tried to balance my respect for their views with my personal conviction that we should do something for the younger set. The skateboard set more than helped their cause by raising an incredible £10,000 towards this--so it was certainly not my oratory that won the day.

When the vote was called ( suspense! suspense! ) we won an almost unheard-of unanimous vote. That's every single Councillor--Conservative--Lib Dem--Independent, all voting YES! And the icing on the cake is that it's going to be built NOW, not in some far-off political future.

I am elated it's true, but I promise you I will write of some of the bad days too, but not tonight…

Unanimous!

Cheers!
Jed

This material ©Jed Falby 2004

"Sola" is 12 minutes long. It's the last fragment of Pucinni's Manon and I still find myself crying at the end of it. I'm not normally partial to romantic nonsense, but Callas--in mono--in mp3--on shitty computer speakers--wow.

Nick and I took Clem to see the Turner Prize show at the Tate yesterday. Much fun was had all around, in particular by winding up guards by pulling on exhibit ropes and by attempting to eat the Chapmans' worms (which were v. securely fastened, thankfully).

Discovered that the central banister up to the first floor makes v. exciting slide :-)

Just one more thing...

The thing about eating home-made chocolate brownies is that when you drop a crumb in your lap and can't find it, you know--no matter how carefully you try and wipe off all the bits and pieces around your chair--that you're going home with an embarrassing stain on your trousers.

(gets up, starts brushing furiously...)

James just handed me an FT article about the nursery chain industry.

Turns out the company that employs teen-agers with no formal state qualification on minimum wage to look after my daughter three days a week made 33 million pounds in sales last fiscal year. On those sales they secured a profit of 5.5 Million pounds.

Not sure how I feel about furthering the wage-slave industry :-(

I suppose at least we have a minimum wage, some of you/05/remember the last Tory government's position on it--that minimum wage would cripple business and sink the economy--nice one, Margaret.

Now might be a good time for Bliar to re-introduce free milk in schools.

OK, I'll stop now.

One of the things you get used to when you become a parent is having dribble down the front of all your clothes.

Later on, as you become more experienced, you can spot the age of a person's child by the type and position of the stain.

As Clementine drifts towards the big tee double-u o, she is leaving very characteristic marks just below my left knee. All my trousers now look like I spend my time trailing my left leg in a bucket full of slugs...

Am sitting here of a Thursday afternoon listening to the conversation at the Scarlet tea party happening in the adjoining desk-space. I don't know when people stopped talking about sex, real-estate or even the weather, but the conversation has centred almost exclusively on eBay for the last hour.

Cool, well written and very useful. If you're as in the dark as I am with RegEx patterns, this will help:

regular-expressions.info

Don't know if this was always the case and I just missed it, but the new version of photoshop has a nice refinement to the "Hue/Saturation" dialogue. When you click on "colorize", the hue you start with is based on the foreground colour. This means if you're making a bunch of tinted background graphics to match a site's colourways, you don't have to fiddle with the "hue" slider anymore (much).

Which is nice:-)

My struggle with France-Telecom continues apace. A couple of people expressed an interest in seeing the whole correspondence. I'll post links to the files here once the dust has settled and we have some sort of result.

In the meantime, I am without mobile phone, which is quite enjoyable really...

A related post (poor blog form but heh...) which struck me as I have the same problem explaining what exactly I do for a living.

...so you design logos yeah?

In particular, I like the interesting way of describing the 'thing' that one designs as existing only in the presence of those who use it.

Thanks anti-meta

Displacement activities...

Actually, I'm writing an affidavit to take to the courthouse for fact-checking which is almost as absurd an activity as taking silly on-line quizzes.

Those of you who might of had the pleasure of attending a new-business pitch with me might think the text from the above sounds a bit familiar

Prototype Item: Dancing Janet Reno action figure

previous item: cup of tea
next item: deep-fried apple
Description: This is sold somewhere in Soso. This is bought somewhere in Soso.
Dancing Janet Reno action figure is the kind of thing you can nebulate.
Weight: 200
Base Value: 170 shekels

A Dancing Janet Reno action figure is the kind of thing you can nebulate: effect on subject: energy -200 "The figure glows with mystical energy and slowly morphs into a space man robot!"

(results in: space man robot)

I've loved Photoshop since I first played with version 2.5--it did stuff you could only do at expensive post-production facilities on an old all-in-one Performa. Version three came along and wow, layers. Before you know it everyone had two gig of ram installed as every layer contained all the file's data so we were routinely working with 100meg+ files (on an already rusty 8200 tower in my case).

So anyway, I've watched Photoshop grow up and my hard drive has kept up as best it could. I've queued at the door to buy every upgrade or new version, but to be honest, once you've got alpha channel manipulation and layer compositing along with a reliable and easy to use selection tool, what else do you want? I've been living happily with version 7 and no doubt only using a tiny fragment of the app's awesome functionality set for a while now...

It seems to me a lot of the OSX ports have been excuses for major version upgrades. I mean Suitcase X11 (or whatever it's called) is a rough and ropey fix of bugs that shouldn't have been in version 10 in the first place. Illustrator stopped being stable after version 5 and to be honest, the version currently on my machine is labeled version 10 but should probably be more like 7.8 and now Adobe wants me to buy CS versions of all my software.

This is really getting silly, Adobe InDesign 2 is a barely acceptable bug-fix from 1.0 that just about does what Quark can do on a bad day and I'm supposed to pay full whack for it? I vote we cool it on the version numbers, try and stabilise the software and develop some sensible upgrade pricing policies.

So in the end, just for fun, I've put a copy of Photoshop CS on an iBook. The main difference with v.7 as far as i can tell, is that I can no longer find the Photoshop icon in the dock or on the desktop as the bold and colourful graphic has been replaced by an empty white box with a dirty feather in it. This is no doubt some clever in-crowd reference to the fact that all releases of photoshop have had cat code names and the feathers must be the remains of the big cat's dinner...

I guess I won't be upgrading anymore for a while :-)

1. Go here

2. Check the box marked "click to vote for this vision" next to "muf architecture/art with Rosetta Life"

3. Scroll down, fill in the text boxes and click on "SUBMIT YOUR VOTE"

Of course, if you're not in a rubber-stamping frame of mind, you should read the proposal, and view the very cool film (and its transcript) before you vote.

About finally finding a bug and sending it off to the place from whence non puede salir.

In this case, the animal was a call to Javascript's .length method, a harmless little tool for extracting the length of a variable (dug = 3 or donkey = 6) such a small thing, but the incorrect value returned was being disguised by a much more complex and much guiltier-looking function that was doing unspeakable things with cookies.

Anyway, two weeks and 437 alert() calls later, I finally found it.

I feel lighter, younger, richer, more beautiful and overall more Zen about this project now :-)

Jayne Iceton
Executive Assistant
Orange Communications PLC
Birchwood Drive
Braken Hill Business Park
Peterlee
Co. Durham
SR8 2RS

26 November 2003,

Dear Jayne,

Thank you for your letter dated 17 November in which you reply to my letter to Cynthia Gordon dated 17 October 2003.

I appreciate your quoting my comments back to me and addressing each of them in turn, which was very thorough of you.

If I/05/be so bold, I would like to ask you why you did not address the only explicit action point contained (in the last paragraph) of my letter:

\t Please arrange for me to talk to a sensible,\thelpful person about this matter\tand let's salvage our relationship.

If I had been in your shoes I would have at the very least replied:

Why not dial 150 on your Orange handset?"

Finally, it seems to me that your note states that I want Orange to provide telecommunications services to me free of charge.

As I am not a registered charity, I don't really understand what you mean by this?

For the record, I shall assume that you are suggesting I am either terminally misinformed, inexperienced, uneducated, naive, or just plain stupid.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to reply.

All the best, Dug Falby

Muzac this week...

At Companies House dissolutions department : Madonna licking Britney's ear
Abbey National payment centre: Gregorian chants
Corporation Courthouse helpline: Hits of the Eighties

Jed writes about life as a Devon councillor

Wow! We just won one! That's so unusual I thought I'd tell you about it:

When you are lucky enough to live in a good place, you would like to keep it that way.

Developers, however, make their money by building new things--not by protecting the old. And they make a lot of money doing it, so they tend to be much more persistent than your average resident / protester.

In this part of the world, if the building project doesn't "fit in" (and most don't) The Town Council gets first vote--and in this case they refuse it. So it moves up the planning ladder to The District Council--who also refuse it.

The Developer (who wasn't expecting anything else) now takes the last and most expensive step--he appeals to The Department of The Environment.

Now that's a wonderful title ("Environment and all..") but what it really means is "John Prescott" who, in his office of Deputy Prime Minister, is in total control of all local government (stop and think about that for a moment).

Now, continuing the amazing magic trick of our Labour Government being more Conservative than ever the old Conservatives would have dared, John Prescott has decided that if it is a building application, it should not only be approved, it should be encouraged.

So, appeals, though costly to the applicant, mostly lead him to the approval he was seeking.

I have very few arms to fight this. But in this case, I was able to get the hearing moved to our local Town Hall rather than the Inspector's Offices miles away. Some judiciously planted local Press stories generated a large public turnout (40+ ain't much to you, but for a planning meeting here, that's a crowd!)

The Building plans (large block of flats on coast) had been discussed to death but by forcing them to look at the plot and not just the building I was able to show that they intended to tarmac the garden completely and provide parking for twelve cars--which would change completely the street scene from the small town tree-scape it is into an urban parking lot.

I thought we had lost it.

But just this week I got the notification--the appeal (against our refusal to allow building) was dismissed! Jubilation in Budleigh Salterton!

But the builder will, to paraphrase The Governor of California, "be back". Yes he will, but his next bid will be more in keeping with this funny town.

Cheers!
Jed

This material ?Jed Falby 2003

So about a month ago we had a miscarriage. We were going to have a second child and then we weren't. Say like that and it's quite simple really.

I've been composing an ever expanding post on the subject since then, and it's grown and morphed in my head over the passing weeks and in the mean time I didn't want to say anything about all the other trivial little nonsense in my life.

Nicki had a miscarriage before having Clem. At the time I was disappointed, but in an abstract sort of way. I don't think I was very supportive of Nick at the time either... not by design or lack of care, simply that until you actually have a child, you don't truly understand the scale of the loss.

Also, and this is no insignificant thing, while I understood the reproductive thing in principle, I hadn't really stopped to consider the physical implications of a miscarriage. Essentially, once the baby dies, the mother still has to give birth to it. This can range from heavy bleeding for an early one, to something called a d&c which is euphemistic way of describing an invasive medical procedure where the cervix is chemically forced open and the contents of the uterus are scraped out--not something I would wish on any woman.

So I did my best to be a bit more help this time round (not sure how well that went but...) and have spent more time thinking about the event as well as talking about it.

As I write this, I realise that I've worked out in my head exactly how and what I feel about the loss, but in many ways, I still don't know what Nick makes of it.

The whole thing sort of spread over the course of a week, from bleeding, through to hospital visits, through to waiting for her to go through final birth stages at home. In the end, her body was able to get through it on her own, avoiding the surgery, which was a relief.

On the down side, I think the process of waiting for the 'birth' to happen (the whole cycle of dilation, contractions and birth in miniature) was very scary. She remembered the pain of Clemmie's birth but was sitting at home with no nurses, drugs or doctors present, just waiting for it to happen with the consultant's assurance that it would be ok... Frightening stuff.

We lost the baby just before our first dating scan was due, around 10 weeks. When Nick went to seek help after the bleeding started, we were given a scan appointment soon after. This scan was pretty horrific, and it's at this point I started to feel the full impact. The scan showed a tiny, empty bubble.

I've personally coped with this by imagining a little person--Probably a guy--in my head the same little Viking called Haldane that I had imagined would be joining us before Clem arrived. I can think about him and his very short life, even going so far as transferring his trip down the toilet into some sort of Viking burial involving a burning drakkar being sent out to sea...

OK. Seeing the above in print does make it seem weird. But it is exactly what went through my head. My point, is that by giving the little guy some sort of 'identity' I can feel sadness at his loss but not regret at his having tried and lost. He went for the struggle and didn't make it.

Nicki is pretty sure she knows the exact date and time he went on his way, but not of course the exact time of death. At first, I thought I would try and remember this date, in order to have a thought about that life that never quite got developed, but now I hope that this time next year Nick and I might be back in a maternity ward trying to help the next little guy into this world :-)

Verisign, believe it or not, has actually managed to find a further way to mess up the internet. This is verging on comedy--what do these guys do all day? Anyway, here's a petition site: http://www.petitiononline.com/icanndns/ (thanks Jeremy)

Sitting in the Office working on a new site design and it just occurred to me that I'm doing three people's jobs in a four day week and being an available and supportive superdad in the hours in between.

We're talking about moving house again (third time lucky?). Do you think I'll navigate myself into the same crazy situations if I switch to being a cheese-maker in Dorset or a furniture designer in Suffolk?

mmm...

Oh, and I've just got a £600 phone bill from Orange. How outrageous is that?

So I have this recurring fantasy where I design a simple 12 volt grinding tool using a starter motor with a ferrous metal cutting wheel bolted to the axle. In my dream I have long, coiled, power lead from the motor to a cigar-lighter plug so the tool can plugged into any vehicle's socket by running the cable in the window.

Anyway, I've never actually gotten anywhere with the project, but this guy has :-) Thanks to londonblog

Mark from Bristol has pointed out to me that there's a link on the scrapbook that can be read in such a way as to give access to nudie pics of a fat hairy guy in the bath (me). I hope he hasn't also written down my credit card details if indeed they were also visible.

Which reminded me of a similarly unsettling moment where my mother-in-law was scrolling through my iPhoto library looking at pictures of her daughter and granddaughter and came across the extreme close-up pictures of her son-in-law's spotty penis (I came upon the idea of using the camera to examine a rash in my crotch--works well, but you have to remember to delete the pics from the iPhoto library).

Now that's embarrasing;-)

This, from Hanan Levin a week ago and not sure what to do about it...

Wow, doug,
Thanks for linking to grow-a-brain, and wow, couldn't imagine that my approach got you to suspect that i am affiliated w/ Microsoft?#*?!
Now i have a question: how can i remove the forever quote acusing me for spamming? not the best thing to pop as # 3 when people google growabrain?...
Anyway, i found some cool links on your blog & will link to them this weekend (w/ credit)...

He's referring to an earlier post where I questioned the 'purpose' of his site. This is increasingly a fine line--the site does has some quality links and is frequently updated by an enthusiast, but then there's this heavy referring to his real estate business and the separation between them is a bit unclear.

In any case, there's not a lot I can do about my post's position on Google, but I'd welcome thoughts on where that line is and whether this guy is a respectable blogger or a sleazy salesman, or indeed if it's even possible to make that sort of distinction. Or, in other words, what does he mean by 'his approach'?

I'm all the more concerned as I've just added a Paypal "donate" button...

Funny taking her back to the hospital where she was born, kind of a return to the womb (that word should so totally have two 'o's)... She was there with Nick from 15:00 to 23:30 yesterday. When I got there Nick was shattered, but today being my childcare day I got to have quality time with doctors.

To cut a long story short she's fine. We've been given antibiotics, she's eating well and apart from looking like she hasn't slept in a fortnight, she's on the mend.

Clemmie's been running around the Royal Free's pediatric A&E for most of the afternoon. I'm stuck at work, so Nick's had to deal on her own. As of 20:00 Clem had had her first X-ray and was waiting for results.

She's had a bad fever on and off for a few days and hasn't been sleeping. Nick called NHS Direct today when the little girl got the shivers (and her feet and arms turned blue!) and was told to head straight for casualty. Clemmie has been looking pretty awful with very dark circles under her eyes, but I fear that this is just one of many long nights to be spent waiting for doctors :-(

She's only 16 months old but she's already been prescribed three courses of antibiotics. I have a sneaking suspicion that hers is the first generation of post-antibiotic western children that are going to be spending a lot of time in bed fighting off infections with the strength of their little bodies. My guess is that when she's in her twenties the Victorian workplace practice of isolating the sick will have returned, replacing our current culture of taking a pill and showing up sick...

Of course much of the above distress is probably (at least in part) down to her molars pushing (cracking?) through her jaw. This week saw the appearance of a number of whopping teeth the size Lego bricks. I've got her all day tomorrow so this should be fun ;-)

So I've become a bit of an ebay hound...

Recently, a nasty little troll has left negative feedback. Amazing how that spoils your day. Am weighing up ignoring him and getting on with it or completing the defamation form...

Have just completed tax returns going back to April 1998.

Which was nice ;-)

Interesting thought by Tim over at stealthisbrand. He ponders what would happen if corporates were subject to the same restrictions as governments in dealing with their customers (CRM--discrimination by another name?).

Which kinda got me thinking, in the years since companies started spending large amounts of money on CRM products (my finger - in - the - air estimate reckons it started getting harder to get a human response or indeed any response to a customer service query about ten to fifteen years ago), quality of service to the end-user has consistently gotten worse.

Now seeing as this hasn't resulted in said companies going out of business due to loss of customers, and seeing as I'm not getting good service from anyone, this must mean I am being discriminated against--I must be a bad customer, the 20 to the 80, a time waster, a troublemaker.

Right, so time to burn my bra and chop up my Tesco ClubCard--or better still, time to ask Tesco for a transcript of all the data they hold on me under the data protection act;-)

Just had to say that I changed Clemmie's nappy this afternoon on a bleacher in the Piazza del Campo in Siena with pre-Palio mud on my shoes. The Palio is this crazy horse race they have here, and the central square where it is run is covered in earth and watered three times a day in preparation for the hooves...

Most excellent shortcut to the pool through the guarded truffle-picking field. Unexpected 4WD fun actually, a very steep hill with tight s-bends on loose shingle and clumpy (is that a word) earth. I haven't had to use high ratio yet but the car actually stalled in first. Had to roll back down in reverse while switching to hi--fun. And at the end of it you come out of the woods at an old farmhouse with a gorgeous pool--am liking this :-)

Right, just off to Pisa to pick up the girls so I think I'll stop posting for a couple weeks.

Finally got here this morning. The girls fly in to Pisa tomorrow--am off to pick them up so might have a look at the tower first :-)

Orange can't figure out why my gprs connection isn't working so am posting via old-style (expensive) gsm. Looking forward to sleeping in a proper bed (just had two nights in the Jeep) and not waking up with little Italian kids looking in the window, watching the drool on my cheek...

So I was happily listening to a worthy program on Inter on the way through France the day before yesterday and was surprised to hear the following comment:

I wouldn't throw Anne Frank's diary in the Seine--it's illegal to chuck garbage in the river

Now, I personally think that giving racists, bigots, maniacs and idiots the same airtime as left-of-centre moderates is important to guarantee a number of our key freedoms, but this stuck in my throat.

The program was a classic NPR, Radio 4 type human-interest piece about the 'bouquinistes'--the people who man those quirky little bookstalls along the banks of the Seine. We had just heard the story of a woman who had done this for twenty-odd years, working her way up from a miserable plot right at the end of the 'quais' where business was tough, eventually landing herself a prime spot in front of Notre-Dame. It's a good story: hard work, early mornings trawling the 'puces' in search of rare finds to fill her stalls and many tales of the eccentrics that make the work interesting.

And then, in the middle of all this mister let's - put - the - jews - back - on - the - trains rears his ugly head. I'm shocked that the producer didn't edit it out. I'm not suggesting auto censure--this really isn't political correctness--the comment was totally unconnected to both story itself and to any specific context within it. The editor could have cut it the same way he might have cut a poorly recorded passage, if anything it would have improved the program...

So now I'm trawling the franceinter.fr website looking for the duty officer's email. I just can't believe--it I mean did they sit down and talk it through? Was it left in for a reason? I want an explanation.

Well, GPRS seems to be missing in Germany, so I'll post this whenever I get network.

Crossed the Rhine on a small bridge north of Strasbourg. I had forgotten exactly how huge it is, that is one major waterway. It's kind of funny, I moved to France before the common market happened and it still gives me a strange feeling to go driving across borders with no check. Particularly bridges on the Rhine.

Tomorrow morning off to Italy, but for now I have two very large and not particularly nice sausages to digest along with two pints of warm pilsener...

Drove through France today, even with air-con I had to stop for air every 30 minutes, at one point the dial read 107 Fahrenheit!

Hopefully, there'll be water in the pool and no forest fires when I get to Tuscany

On the eight o'clock boat to Calais. Left home at quarter to five and got to Calais fourty-five minutes early grrrr (could have slept more...). Our little clan is heading to Italy for the next two weeks--Nicki is flying with Clemmie and I'm driving the 'support vehicle'. Interesting drive ahead I hope...

Name the artist--ok, just this once as I'm gonna here all night ;-)

...bakers make bastards
...newpapers are printed
...workers are depressed

Back to work...

Oh yeah--for those of you curious about the last lyric, it's from "Lemon Incest"

Right, a few days later and a few items underweight I've got some more feedback...

1. The 'disgruntled' community has a high percentage of members who would probably be disgruntled anyway. You know the type, they spend most of their online life posting complaints to newsgroups about how so-and-so didn't read the faq and use words like "immature" or "unbelievable" when trolling their fellow usenet user... Many are complaining about the listing fees (Ebay charges on a sliding scale according to the value of your item and collects a percentage of your sale if the item goes). I have to say that while the percentages/05/well be a bit on the high side given the numbers (somebody is making a lot of money with this thing and it ain't the listers), the price seems fair as Ebay lets you take the part-used 50¢ Elvis pencil-sharpener you bought on your last trip to the States and instantly put in in front of 200,000 Jananese Elvis fans (say). That has to be worth something, it sure beats trying to sell to the fifty people in an Oxfordshire saleroom...
2. Ebay feels like messy software. It feels like it expanded so quickly, it got a bit out of control and is currently being mended on the go. That said, it is very complete, very feature-rich.
3. The search engine is more than a bit ropey (ok, that's a bit unfair as the system is under huge constraints so compromises have probably been made). You/05/remember my kitchen sink collapsed and I had to instal new everything--as a result, I had a set of brass taps sitting around. I listed them as "Victorian brass kitchen mixer tap set" figuring the system would match "kitchen taps" "brass taps" and so on... Unfortunately, for Ebay's search, a person looking for "brass taps" doesn't want to see a "brass tap" which is a bit crap really...
4. You could bid on my junk
5. No item too sublime, or too humble (dirty socks, really)
6. You can waste a seriously large amount of time with this thing :-)

Finally, re the setting up a seller account, David Fromant writes from Melbourne

re. ebay
just a "me too" i'm afraid. have had exactly the same experience trying to set up a seller account on ebay australia. decided in the end it was far too much hassle and didn't.
my advice: don't give them the chance to make you a disgruntled customer. there are alternatives. vote with your $s (or pounds :)!
:)
david

Well, first the technical--the problem with Ebay's seller registration is to do with pattern matching. Essentially, the sellers address has to match exactly the address on your bank account. This is normal--this check happens everytime you use your cards online (well, not exactly, but you know what I mean). In most cases the match is intelligent enough to manage slight differences (differences that should be ignored like case matching, line-breaks etc), not so the Ebay system.

Secondly, try as I may, I couldn't find another auction site to use. I called around a few including one very professional-looking one that it turns out is run by two guys out of their Brighton bedroom (I telephoned the 'help' line and got a sleepy person), a few that didn't let me sell what or how I wanted to and finally a whole raft of auction sites that are in fact white-label re-badges of Ebay (so same banking system).

If anyone out there has had a positive experience on an independent site, send me the link.

Just got an email which looks like a lot like spam asking me to publish a link to www.growabrain.net which claims to be a blog but looks a lot like like a 'viral' from a California estate agent? Anyway, funny link on 'his' page, a Big Lebowski quote generator...

In case you'd forgotten the masterful milk-drink:

Smokey, this is not Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.

Or even

"How're you gonna keep them down on the farm when they've seen Karl Hungus?"

Anyway, you get the idea (I'd be grateful to hear your opinion on the growbrain thing--is it Microsoft in disguise or just a particularly enterprising salesman).

Name the artist :-)

the love we'll never make is the most rare, the most troubling

Right--stop downloading mp3s and get back to work mister

The man in the off-license on Haverstock Hill has just pointed out to me that no matter which way I stand in front of the security camera, I still look fat.

Bastard.

...and have discovered a few things (and no, I don't have OCD):

1. There is no telephone number anywhere on ebay.co.uk
2. Companies House lists several Ebay (UK) Limited, including one which is an estate agent on Lavender Hill in South London who is tired of people telephoning him about Ebay the auction site (but who was courteous throughout the conversation) and has offered to sell the limited company to Ebay (on Ebay?) on several occasions with no success
3. Ebay have disabled "support@ebay.co.uk"
4. The expert system that replaces it isn't
5. The help pages don't cover problems with setting up seller accounts
6. There is quite a large community of disgruntled users out there (see http://www.ebayexodus.com/ as a starting point)

I wonder, as Ebay is now such a large marketplace and that is it a de facto monopoly, should it be nationalised? Anyway, this post was prompted by this one

I was reading this post about the Qur'an and it got me thinking, how cool it is that Muslims get their text in version originale (or is that wrong?). I've never been a big Bible reader, but if I were, I probably wouldn't want to read it in translation...

Just thought I'd post BT's customer care number here for use by any and all switchboard-jamming anarchists and angered housewives whose membership of 'Friends and family', 'BT Value plus' or 'Triple-Talk' have driven them to take action :-)

I cancelled (well, am currently still trying to cancel) my BTOpenworld ADSL account (because it is shit) and in the process have discovered that after a year of fighting with the installer team, the engineer, the billing people, technical support and customer services, spending hours of what should be billable time queuing on their various automated call systems (including the openworld business line which directs you to the website then hangs up on you) that when you finally crack and send them a written notice of cessation a very nice lady called Alita calls you and gives you a phone number (an 0800 number no less) that gets you straight through to customer care--no queue, no delay, no option-3, just straight through to the nice lady.

So got a problem with BT? Need to vent? Here's the number:

0800 800 871

That ends this public service announcement.

Chris writes:

That's a dating service isn't it?
I'm basing my answer on two pieces of evidence, one of which I feel carries slightly more credence than the other.
1: Firstly, the telephone cords form a heart motif between the two models, signalling a possible romance between them. 2: THE MESSAGE IS A FRICKIN' SPAM!
;-)
Chris

Well, what can I say in my defense, I used to attend the Nuit Des Publivores

OK, so everyone is going to link to this, but I liked it--so here goes: http://www.internetisshit.org (posted at Costa's via the T68)

So I've been feeling a bit un-blogged this past couple of weeks. I'm constantly thinking of stuff that i want to say, but when I get to the keyboard I get all blue and decide not to post--not sure what's going on, but hopefully I'll get better soon.

Just wanted to say for all family members out there that Clementine is now walking proper. Not one for transitions, she pretty much gave up crawling altogether over the space of a week when Nicki spent the week away in Bordeaux. Andrew and Peter have sent us a cd with loads of lovely pictures of Clem so I'll try and post those soon.

If I can get my shit together and move Donkey over to Moveable Type (am running a test version, so it couldn't be that far away) I'm hoping I'll be able to find a lovely integrated scrapbook tool to make keeping the pictures up to date a whole lot easier.

And while I'm on the subject of ads and advertising, I've been soaking in the Charlie's Angels "Full Throttle" poster campaign. The photography is fantastic--as you'd expect from a big Hollywood number--but the art direction is so sensitive. The creatives have managed to find the 'soul' of the Charlie's thing in a big way.

I grew up a million miles away from California in Paris and never worked in a car wash, went surfing or drove muscle cars (though I did make it to a roller-disco in LA in 1979 which was a very strange summer indeed). Even so, I can look at that poster of Drew Barrymore sitting on the bonnet of a soapy caddy in her red jump suit and all sorts of funky associations come swelling up, the hot summers of '75 and '76 when Alain Brouillaud brought his little slice of LA to the Lycée de Sèvres and had us all buying Ohio Players albums (remember the three-gate fold-out "Honey"), or the incessant switching between Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" and Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music White Boy (as I type the ellipse I can hear Tom Paulin's voice fade)…

So yeah, so I haven't seen the movie (baby, work etc) but the advertising has to be better that the film itself;-)

Got this piece of spam yesterday and I've been staring at this image ever since then. The expression on the models faces just grabs me. Not sure what's going on--is it a dating service or a mobile ISP? I just know you'll want to download the full-size version…

I recently lost a couple of people's email messages--they were eaten by my spam rules. Please don't put "dug" in your message subject (though that is my name) as messages with my name in the subject get deleted automatically.

I wonder who (or what) comes up with new subjects for spam. I mean, merging the part of the email address to the left of the "@" sign is just plain lazy. Some clever spammers are composing ever more meaningful or intriguing message subjects which (particularly when getting mail on the mobile) cause me to read the messages.

I would have to say congratulations to those writers of micro-copy (or to their programmers).

Tim Kitchin is now online over at Blogspot. He can be completely hermetic--obscure beyond the black-holian point of bending light--and very funny. I shall be visiting often:-)

Happy 14th :-)

I was reading about a new campaign by a small 'hot-shop' that claims to 'own' the feeling of excitement. These guys reckon that their client's cars are just so 'exciting' (and conversely, our lives so dull) that the emotionally starved masses will flock to the showrooms to snap up their latest 4×4.

I think their core concept could be a valid one in the sense that we do have a bit of an unholy relationship with our cars (I'm reminded of my own early relationship with the 4×4). This relationship can sometimes go to some pretty strange emotional places. I'm not equipped to do the Freudian on the whole thing, but I had this idea that maybe people (probably mostly women who are more creative in this department?) have integrated their cars into their sexual fantasising?

I was thinking about fan-fiction, all those amazing pages of text lovingly written about Seven-of-Nine and Katherine Janeway or Josh and Donna--they're so intense, so involved--I mean it must take ages to write all that stuff. So is there 'carfic' out there to match the 'fanfic'?

How long before Jeep starts posting to usenet (alt.death.sex.cars.erotica anybody?) with an army of imaginary advertising agency copywriters pretending to be single thirty-something females?

Several of you requested a translation of Plastic Bertrand's "Ça plane pour moi" (is that cedilla right?) after I posted the lyrics a few months back. Being a helpful sort of chap I said 'sure' but as is so often the case ended up never finishing the damn thing.

So up to the plate steps the fabulous Gail Armstrong freelance translator extraordinaire and generally nice person…

Thank you Gail :-)

(Disclaimer from Gail) Howdy,
I'm afraid I'm swamped these days, so I can't give you a masterpiece, just a quickie.
Here she be.
Gail

Wham! Bam! My cat Splash
Flaked out on the bed, yacked on
Drinking down all my scotch while I
Dog tired, feeling ragged, pissed off
Had to sleep in the gutter
Where I had flash
Woo woo woo woo
In Technicolor.

Off you go! One morning
This fine babe came on by
Perfect doll in cellophane
Hair done all Chinese a plaster
Hung over drank my brew
In a great big rubber cup
Woo woo woo woo
Like an Indian in his igloo.

It's going fine, it's going fine
It's going fine fine fine fine fine
It's going fine
Woo woo woo woo
It's going fine

Off you go! That babe what a piece!
What a rush! Getting laid
On the doormat
Whacked, gone, emptied, slaked
You are the King of the sofa!
Said she as she went by
Woo woo woo woo
I am the King of the sofa

It's going fine, it's going fine
It's going fine fine fine fine fine
It's going fine
Woo woo woo woo
It's going fine

Off you go! Butt out mind it keep your paws off my planet
It's not today
That the sky is going to fall on my head
And that the booze will run out
Woo woo woo woo
It's going fine

Off you go! My girl cut out
Took a hike, pissed off smashed up
The sink the bar I'm left alone
Like a raving asshole
Woo woo woo woo
A total loser

It's going fine, it's going fine
It's going fine fine fine fine fine
It's going fine
Woo woo woo woo
It's going fine
It's going fine, it's going fine
It's going fine fine fine fine fine

Made my morning that did :-)

more warm feelings about netsol at http://www.publicfiles.com/--I particulary like the sound loop;-)

Just thought I'd share with the world that I am about to be fucked up the arse by Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

I'm feeling fairly outraged having just had a very circular conversation with the duty manager at their call centre. Basically, Easycar isn't easy and it certainly isn't cheap. So my advice would be read the terms and conditions very carefully (as they will be quoted back to you when you complain). Right, am off to write the ombudsman if I can find one.

Have just spent the morning hanging a twenty-thousand-dollar sound meter off the edge of a top floor balcony at the Docklands Hilton. Not exactly "fun" but definitely interesting--I was helping my mate Ben who is in town record the noise of a Eurocopter ec145 (as it landed on top of the Docklands café society). In the end, it was surprisingly quiet, not that I'd want a heliport in my neighbourhood...

Moments I'll remember forever--16:00 sitting on a bench in the courtyard of the Royal Academy having just taken Clementine to see the Summer Show, her on my left knee seriously focusing on the bottle of milk I'm holding for her, the late afternoon sun peeking through the gaps in the plastic awning we're under, and people walking past and smiling, men in particular, me humming my little milk-drinking mantra...

And after that she bought me a latte and played with the fire and water sculpture further out in the courtyard.

On the whole, Clemmie reckons that the show was ok as it had a lot of pictures of cats and one or two good ones of dogs, mostly hung at a good height for her to see clearly (you take her to art galleries and she squeals aloud when she sees a picture of a cat--v. cute) as well as lots of kids playing on the floor (the RA supplies craft kits for kids, a wonderful idea) and finally a lot of large and amusing 'animals' like a chicken with human fingers as wings.

She can confirm that the skyscraper expo was rubish as she couldn't play with any of the models even though she lunged as hard as she could towards them (v. delicate). I wanted to spend more time reading about the individual projects in the darkened East West room but that would have been a pause too far for a little girl, so/05/have to return to expo at a later date...

Got this lovely note yesterday (I know, I know. I need to enable comments--I've just been too busy. I should have Donkey on Moveable Type soon)

Just wanted to drop a line to let you know I really appreciated your blog entry today on your website. My grandpa was a young US Army private in the Normandy invasion. There was nothing I loved more as a child than to sit and listen to him recount tales of World War Two (he was also at the Battle of the Bulge). Your entry today brought back lots of really fantastic memories and again leant appreciation for the efforts of the free world on that fateful day.
Damon

You know, I've been so busy today that I totally forgot that it's the 6th of June. I spent a lot of time on the Normandy beaches as a child with my family (I grew up in France) collecting shrapnel, bits of cartridge casings and so on. It's a testimony to the intensity of the combat that metal artifacts were still on the ground thirty years later...

I've often spent time imagining what it would have been like to have to get out of one of those landing crafts, and am grateful for the people who did. I think it's worth remembering if possible. The Guardian has had a couple of good articles on the subject recently, in particular a piece on June 1 about Company A, 116th Infantry landing at Omaha--very very few survived that first wave.

Today's piece is an Obituary of Doon Campbell, the first allied war reporter ashore on D-day who died on/05/26.

Not only was Doon, who has died aged 83, the first war reporter of any allied nation to make it ashore that day, at the age of 24 he was also the youngest. One-armed from birth, he struggled out of the water and across "a sandy cemetery of the unburied dead, where bodies lay scattered with arms or legs severed", and dived into a gash in the earth to begin a dispatch famously datelined: "A ditch 200 yards inside Normandy". Doon's reports were rushed back across the Channel by navy dispatch boat, and from that time his determination to be first with the news started to make him something of a legend at Reuters.

Got this interesting comment in the post today re the Sony shock and awe story from outlaw.com

hi dug--re your post on sony withdrawing application for 'shock & awe' line--what i find offensive is that a modern-day president would use such a flippant, sensationalist, rabble-rousing phrase about his plans to invade another country. And that's whether you agree with the war or not - let's have a little decency and respect for the soldiers & civilians on both sides, eh, and treat the subject with the solemnity that is due?

sony using it? i have no problem with. it's the kind of phrase I would expect from a company making games. shame the media didn't focus on the original use of it, rather than the rehash.

catherine.

I couldn't agree more. I had started writing a post about the Salam Pax article in The Guardian but found myself getting all frothed up again so decided to stop. In a nutshell, the interesting point of the article isn't so much that Salam is gay, or middle-class or even a geek--the beauty of the piece (and by extension his blog) is that it reminds us that Iraq is a proper country with decent, ordinary people who care about the same things we do and go about their lives in a broadly similar way to us. We invaded a sovereign nation, and there just isn't any way around that. Finally (as I've drifted a bit here) I just wanted to add that Catherine/05/not agree with me here and it isn't my intention to speak for her--her point was about the behaviour of the US executive, not the right-or-wrong of the war itself...

Catherine has also reminded me that I need to fix the picture-uploader as I have no recent pics of Clementine in the scrapbook--Thanks Catherine:-)

Have just moved Pumpernickle into desk space at an architecture practice called muf. Their web site has this to say about them:

muf is a collaborative practice of art and architecture committed to public realm projects which embed enduring and unexpected interventions in the physical and social fabric of the urban environment.

The office is very cool and makes a welcome change to some of the other nasty places Pumpernickle has lay its hat. In particular, the workers seem to happily coexist in a superficially chaotic environment and there is little emphasis placed on computers--nice to be someplace where people stay up late cutting, pasting and gluing bits of paper.

I quote the muf 'mission statement' above as I find that--curiously--it resonates nicely with what Pumpernickle would like to be doing, where the 'architecture' is 'digital production'. In a sense, the Lecturelist project that we are currently developing for Billy aims to be an "unexpected intervention" into a virtual urban lifestyle--an attempt to trigger some change of pattern in the behaviour of the urban millions (it's a cool project, check out lecturelist.org) and thus make a lasting impression on the cultural environment.

Now all James and I need to do is find some lovely government lolly to fund the next couple of big not-for-profit ideas ;-)

On Saturday (31 May) little Clementine was one year old. I can't believe how quickly this year has spun by, seems just yesterday Nick and I were holed up in a room at the Royal Free, me trying to give her good news as I watched Clem's head come in and out of sight.

I got all blubbery this morning--Clemmie is going to nursery so Nick can go back to work and I'm beginning to feel like I'll never see my little girl again. I've just moved out of the house and into an office in Clerkenwell so I won't have much time in the morning or evenings to be with her. That said, I'll probably still be making her food and bathing and putting her to bed a couple of nights a week so I guess it's not too bad. If only Nick were able to earn enough to support the three of us, I'm pretty sure I'd be happier chucking my job and being a full-time dad. Of course I say that because Nick has really done most of the work until now and I'm pretty sure I would struggle to keep up all day every day, but still, being with the little flea is magic:-)

The accident group went belly-up today after sacking its employees by text message(?) I mention this not because it's good news--I feel for those thousands of unemployed--it's just that I find it encouraging that an ambulance-chasing outfit didn't manage to survive in Britain. AG was the first of its kind to offer 'no-win-no-fee' legal work in the UK. With any luck, Britons won't catch compensation fever;-)

...who got here searching for "koran osx". As Barry Norman claims he never said, and why not?

If you wanted to find out what you call a naked pirate in a room with a wolf you'd have to read this page at ftrain.com

Except this time round it was UK nul points. Has to be the first time--not a single point...

So Riga looks like a laugh, Turkey wins (strange song), the local presenters are exactly as suntanned, plastic and shiny as the last time I watched (1979 I'm guessing) oh, and Terry Wogan sounds pissed the whole time;-)

Strange entertainment...

Sony withdraws "shock and awe" trade mark filing

Sony has withdrawn a trade mark application for the phrase "shock and awe" which was used by US forces to describe the initial bombing campaign in Iraq. Media criticism made Sony abandon its plan to use the term for a PlayStation game.

Read the article at outlaw.com

More awesomeness on WFMU:

New York Burlesque Fest webcam special
Friday,/05/23rd, Noon - 3pm

Join Monica for a live WEBCAM bump'n'grind blowout celebrating the first ever New York Burlesque Festival. A cavalcade of demimonde D-cups from all over the country will be coming by WFMU's Love Room to ply their ecdysiastical trade on stage and discuss the history of burlesque. The link to the video feed will be at available at www.wfmu.org when the show begins.

The Apple store has just confirmed that they are not offering an upgrade path for owners of OS X Server.

I bought a full version of X server when it was version 1.2 and essentially little more than a re-packaged NextStep. I then foolishly paid good money for the OS X public beta and finally spent £400 on getting 10.1 Server. After almost £1000 spent on unfinished software I am now at the point where I am seriously thinking of going illegal.

Apple, get your shit together. I'll 'happily' fork out another £100 or so for an upgrade if you insist, but you're asking me to buy another full-whack license. That's just crazy.

So here we go: does anyone out there have a copy of 10.2 server (the cds that came with your new machine) they'd be happy to lend me? Anyone?

If not, I'm switching to Windows, at least they keep your expectations low.

So I just this second deleted the latest edition of the Nigerian scam letter and was about to go back to work when I was struck by the depth of the narrative. This particular one goes on in depth to describe the players--their age, their families, their roles in the community...

I then started wondering if these scams are created by aborigines or immigrants? I just can't imagine a western con-man painting such a vivid picture of the personal tragedies befalling the late president so-and-so or his private secretary who is now writing. Never mind the contradiction that he says he escapes with his son in one clause and that he lost his two children in another. The resonant image the reader is left with is the steely eyes of young Patrice, barely a man and yet already scarred by terrible tragedy.

He was aged 66 years. I managed to escape to South Africa with my son Patrice, aged 17 where I am presently residing as a war refugee shortly after the capital city Kinshasha was overrun by rebels. I lost my wife and my two children, and all my possessions during the rebel onslaught on the capital city.

I guess I'm just an old cynic who hasn't been properly conned in a while. Actually, that's not true, I was conned recently by a squeegee-bandit on the north circular with an ingenious sleight-of-hand trick designed to keep me handing over pound coins...

To misuse a phrase from Blue Velvet, ...why are there people like Frank in the world? Read the papers this morning and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The sheer Orwelian-ness (is that a word?) of the Iraq situation, combined with the unstopableness (now that can't be a word?) of the American machine have sapped my will to argue. I've spent the last month composing and re-composing posts to this blog, but in the end never posted them as I used to foolishly think I might just get one or two readers to reconsider their position on the issues but have now lost all hope.

In the end I find this debate is a cruel rock. The opposing camps go over the top and human rights, humanist values cherished for centuries pile up in body-bags while the fucking front line doesn't budge an inch. Frankly, it makes me sick.

The two faces of Rumsfeld
2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea
2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change

Randeep Ramesh in The Guardian, Friday/05/9, 2003

Under the US proposals, a new body comprising Britain and the United States - known as The Authority - would decide how income from the sale of Iraqi oil would be spent.

Does "The Authority" not suggest "Oceania"? From the BBC website

Hiya, I'm after a quick fav. My mate has just starting up a new website that needs a bit of advertising. Could you please forward on this address to as many people as you know, and ask them to look at it and pass the address on to as many people as they know etc..

the site is still quite basic at the minute but will be updated and added to on a regular basis. the address is:

http://www.lovespuds.com

the creator says it's like Jamie Oliver meets FHM.

Well, it's about twenty to five in morning and I've been working all night:-(

On the plus side, I can now hear birdsong outside my window--the combination of sleepless night, birdsong and that particularly lovely smell of summer you get in the city combine to make me feel like a student on a hot new York summer night in 1985 when I've spent the whole night slumming around cbgb or the mud club and have come uptown in time for breakfast...

Major Jonathan Richman stuff;-)

Do you ever get the feeling that the bloggosphere is turning into Hemingway's A Moveable Feast ? The more I read blogs the more I get the impression everyone is talking about the same ten people. We've all started name-dropping like nobody's business and it's made worse by use of first names only as in:

So we were in San José for ABCX when Ben mentioned to Cory that his new book sucked. Turns out Tom was there too, so we shared sushi with him and Cal...

I find myself doing this more and more and I've never met these people (ok, so Tom was at the RMS talk on copyright at the LSE). (arrrgggg!)

...and you've had grief from Verisign, read this news now. (thanks anil)

Billy has this to say about that :-)

My father, Jed is living testimony that if you don't have a go, you'll never know how well you could do. The man is unstoppable:-) He sent me this two minutes ago. Go Jed!

Just a quick note when there is so much to say...

Jed Falby (Independent)
1108 votes Yea! Yea! Yahooooo!

Ray Franklin (Conservative)
1075 votes

Lesley Rodin (Independent)
975 votes (confirmed at 01:00 this morning after recount)

There was a recount for third position. (There are three seats on East Devon Council) It was ( and I think ,at this time, still is,) a Conservative Controlled Council but we have sure shaken that arrangement up.

I will send you fuller notes later.

I hope I don't turn into a Politician...

Much Love, Dad

I seem to remember being aware of Mena's liking of Yéyé-girl music from reading dollarshort.org but had stored that information someplace hard to get to. So I decided to have a go at installing Moveable Type on my iBook as a mobile development thing, as so far I had always got an engineer to do it for me (yeah ok, ok). Figuring which httpd.conf file to edit was a bit tricky, but Ben's installation instructions are very good (two confusing bits but still, I'm so not complaining) and I had the thing up and running in an hour or so. Imaging my delight when the default username/password combo pops up as "Melody Nelson".

MN was a major Gainsbourg concept album and I just wanted to mention it here as the song lyrics below on their own are a bit cryptic;-)

Oh, and while I'm at it, Ben has asked for a translation of "Ça Plane Pour Moi" so I'm working on that one (trying to find good seventies French slang reference is a bit difficult but I'll cobble something together...)

...an amazing bug (OSX 10.2.5) spotted while rummaging around rentzsch.com

There's an interesting article over at rentzsch.com (thanks daringfireball) outlining his theory of how Apple has defeated the credit card handling charge on their music store. In essence, how can they afford to sell tracks for 99¢ given the transaction charge of 50¢. The man is offering this up as a theory--any Visa experts out there?

Oh! Ma Melody
Ma Melody Nelson
Aimable petite conne
Tu étais la condition
Sine qua non
De ma raison

In London, and the bike is good:-)

More fantastic spam, this time, from Italy, home of the longer-lasting Channel No5. Is it just me or are these people cheeky in the extreme

We would like to take this opportunity to offer you our fine selection of Italian crafted Rolex Timepieces.You can view our large selection of Rolexes (including Breitling, Tag Heuer, Cartier etc)

So they sell luxury watches right? So what does "Italian crafted" mean?

As we are the direct manufacturers, you are guaranteed of lowest prices and highest quality each and every time you purchase from us.

Or, in other words, they manufacture counterfeit goods:-) I've had a look at the site and found the IWC copies very convincing, and at $60 a pop i could just be tempted...

OK, Chris reckons a blog that passes the hat is cheap, dirty, rude and pointless, but Caroline likes the idea of helping the little guy publish against all odds.

If this offends you please let me know, but in any case, here goes nothing...

When you live in the country trees matter.

When you live in a town full of bricks, concrete and tarmac, they matter even more.

We have seen recently many noble and beautiful trees destroyed in uncaring developments to build ever more ugly blocks of flats... There are laws to protect certain trees by applying Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) but as in so much government, it's not the lack of laws--the laws exist, it's how you choose to apply them.

Here in Budleigh Salterton the developers follow the letter of the law--asking permission of the District Tree Officer--but since these Officers spend almost all their working days dealing with developers they start to see their job as one designed to help the developer. "yea, that's OK Frank, go ahead and cut 'em down". We, taxpayers, who pay their salaries, and we, the local elected councillors, are not consulted even on the most visible and sensitive sites. The latest brutal felling caused so much local upset, we now have the heads of local government coming to a town meeting to see how we can handle this better.

When you live in the country trees matter.

This material ?Jed Falby 2003

14:50:10 - Nick and Clem kiss me goodbye and disappear out the front door.

14:50:30 - Twenty seconds later hear sickening skid followed by loud impact.

14:50:32 - Rush out door in bare feet.

It wasn't them. Phew, my heart hasn't gone like this since I was mugged in New York ten years ago...

So does anyone else find it absurd that the framers of the DVD standards decided it would be 'versatile' to have every crummy little post-production house design human-computer interfaces? I mean, I was amazed when when my new telly just set itself up automatically with a clear and helpful on-screen menu. Let's see... oh it's just taken about fifteen years for the VHS makers to get the interface to video recording right. You'd think someone at Sony might have twigged and suggested that there might be interface guidelines to help the lowly film company get it right, or even better, why not just have a standard interface?

I'll tell you, it doesn't feel very 'versatile' when every time i put a DVD in the machine I have to work out some bloody cryptic interface (and you thought the web was bad) just to play a damn film.

My Pa is running for office(?!) for the town council of Budleigh Salterton and the East Devon District Council (the seat of power in the region). All a bit last minute and sudden (the election is in May) but if you live in Budleigh, or someone in your family lives in Budleigh then please mention the FALBY and RODEN ticket, two independents standing against the Conservative Party.

If you know anyone who blogs and has any concern for what is happening in Budleigh (and towns like it) please take a moment to ask them to link to this post or simple to vote FALBY and RODEN on 1st May.

Small-town politics/05/seem pretty trivial, but some seriously nasty shit is happening down there involving land owners. FALBY and RODEN are trying to oust the standing Conservatives who have done nothing to prevent building on or near areas of outstanding natural beauty, planning officers ignoring their own policy guidelines and profit seeking landowners harming the housing fabric of the community.

If you blog, spread the word, here a few links relating to those property and development debacles. Unfortunately, a lot of this stuff isn't traceable online. If you do find either evidence of any wrongdoing, or useful community discussion resources, please let me know, and I'll post them here...

Plymco's Ethical Policy and Development at Chittleburn
Architect drawings from the Elvestone project
Six two bedroom flats

Took Clemmie to the National Portrait Gallery yesterday to see the Julia Margaret Cameron show. She wasn't impressed, but liked the more colourful portraits elsewhere in the museum...

I thought the show was fantastic. Most of the prints are original XIX century carbon or albumen prints and are truly beautiful. I've never had the chance to see her stuff in the flesh, so this was really a bit of a treat. In particular, I was impressed with the full-size compositions, some prints, presumably made as contact prints from 10 × 8 glass negatives, look 'cropped' in that the composition's elements fit tightly into the frame. I can understand managing light intensity across a face, but I'm guessing her rudimentary camera had a very unclear ground glass, she probably composed the images upside down and most likely couldn't see the edges of her compositions, more likely just a central circle of light in the centre of the screen.

Anyway, I guess it's just that the beauty of her work seems like a fluke at first, until you stand in a room surrounded by it:-) Well worth a visit.

I didn't know that as well as the aliases the Prince, the Emir, Abu Abdallah and Hajj, Bin Laden sometimes goes by the alias the Director. Cute, I thought...

And I quote...

Speed Stacks, Inc. is dedicated to promoting the sport of cup stacking around the world.

Have just compiled Lynx from source on my server. Brrr, scary (but strangely satisfying as the power of the command line finally reaches me...)

While I'm at it, just noticed that Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. have changed the copyright notice on the Raging Cow blog. When they started, their identity was obscured behind a cryptic little © symbol at the bottom left of the page. They have now changed that to a full ©2003 Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc.

Flog, flog, flog...

I just wish large companies spent a little less time pissing their marketing crap on the internet and a bit more time paying attention to its culture. Companies like KPMG think they can move in to our spare room and start organising the kitchen roster. Doctor Pepper Seven Up had all the information at their fingertips, but decided to go ahead and try and subvert the medium with their

Raging Cow

blog subversion campaign. Never mind that the net or blogs in particular are not particularly well suited to shifting FMCG, they just didn't think. Their big idea was more about using the net than participating in it.

If you're an FMCG marketer and you're reading this, here are the rules, it's simple, really. If you advertise your mayonnaise client's products with big graphics and pointless flash animations no one's buying pattern will be changed. If, on the other hand one of your mayonnaise client's employees genuinely cares about something and wants to talk about it, we'll listen. If he's engaging, curious or interesting, he might even build an audience.

I'm sorry to get all preachy about this, but the main rule hasn't changed since the dawn of the internet. You have to give to get.

Or, This icon says more about me than it does about my web page. Quite an amusing selection of under construction signs. I particularly like the one that goes:

"Make no mistake! I am a MAN! This page is my territory! Please withstand the stench of my body odor long enough to look around and appreciate how utterly incompetent I am at web design."

What were they thinking...

If you haven't checked out bombich software's CCC you haven't lived;-)

Got some simply unbelievable(?) spam from this company today

The world didn't change on 9/11, but it sure as hell did at midnight. This is truly depressing. If the voice of millions (and 139 MPs) can go completely ignored, this means that for the first time in history, the President of the United states now has both the will and the power to act entirely on his own to redraw the map of the world.

US forces invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with the expressed and explicit aims of changing the government and protecting assets (oil field contracts have been in negotiation for some months and it looks like the US, as occupying power, gets the lion's share, with France and Russia grabbing the rest).

So what next? What country is soon no longer to be in charge of its own destiny?

Wey hey, Donkey is now number two in Google for a search on Raging Cow thank you semantic relevance.

Now, all I have to do is find something intelligent to say;-)

And while I'm on the subject of Raging Cow, the agency that ran the teen bloggers' indoctrination has an application form. I was wondering if I should put the Donkey in? I could sell Reagan to black America?

Raging Cow is great, and while I'm at it, here's another link to KPMG

So go out and buy more Raging Cow

(from dpsu newsroom)

Raging Cow Hits the Shelves in Select Markets
Cheered by a rowdy mascot, Dr Pepper/Seven Up executives announced the rollout of Raging Cow new milk-based product served cold in single servings, with an array of five alluring flavors. Packaged in plastic bottles, Raging Cow will hit store shelves in select markets, eventually expanding to national distribution.

Raging Cow

More serious info about dpsu (Dr Pepper seven Up) products. This is clearly the most semantically relevant page for Raging Cow on Google;-)

and have been doing some reading on GUI usability. Came across this site about the Humane Environment Project. An interesting read from Jef Raskin, the guy who brought us the Macintosh (among many other things).

Dr Pepper is good. Raging Cow is tasty stuff, my friends and I drink it all the time. We give Raging Cow Milk Drink to our babies because they like it so much too. In fact, Raging Cow is the new breast milk.

"Marketing is crap" should really be my new mantra;-) Tim Ireland is number two in Google with his Stop Raging Cow mm.

These from his site:

I Support The Raging Cow Boycott

What's the worst that could happen

Raging Cow

Not that I have too much Raging Cow time on my hands (and due to the way this blog Raging Cow engine paginates, the above H1's will break this page's validation).

OK, it's pledge week. pony up (or call 800-989-9368)

animal on speed attached: escuchar

a voodoo doctor being punished (for drinking vodka) at a very quiet but well attended flogging attached: escuchar

(Andy sent me the link to the very fabulous Groovelab 47)

Right, all the entries are in and I have to say I am very surprised how crap most of them are. Having not entered myself, I should really keep my trap shut, but we're talking a (admittedly hypothetical) redesign of the W3C site. This is a contract to redesign the Louvre, the World Trade Center, the pyramids, you know, the Alpha and the Omega, the fount of all knowledge, the club founded by TBL himself...

Check out the entries, most either just plain broke in my browser (IE5) or perhaps more seriously, made no attempt to think of the w3c site as a key information application. Anyway, if I had to pick one it would be this chap

To be honest, I'd rather they scrap the entries altogether and start again with some serious designers on board. What would 37 sigs make of it?

OK, so I haven't commented on Flash in a while. I have just had to struggle with a site that was determined to conceal the information I wanted to find, and as I struggled past the beautiful, smooth animated typography, an analogy sprang to mind...

Imagine you're finishing up on the bog and you reach for the paper, but that every time you try and rip a sheet off, the roll winds up, and slowly tells you about how Nouvelle respects both nature and your bottom to the sound of a crap techno loop, and that to get a sheet, you just pull down towards the floor... By the third time, you'd be using old newspaper.

I got a telephone message from a woman in America wanting information about a client and was simply trying to confirm her email address. You'd think a company's website might be a good place to look for an employee's email? Unfortunately, the site is completely static and is un-editable by the company, so contains no such current info.

Oh, but it is pretty;-)

Considering a partial downshift in the property ladder game. We've seen this gorgeous converted barn on three acres smac on the Norfolk Broads. I can build a solar-powered studio and have a boat (nice dream, anyway). Now all we need to sort is the small problem of east Anglia drifting under the North Sea...

Saw Jane Birkin at the Barbican last night (she was also the subjet of my first blog post). I love the way events select their crowd. I don't think the Barbican has seen this many Gitannes smoking ex hippies, crusties, mods and son-of-sartre wanabees in a long time.

In theory, the music could have been good, but Djamel Benyelles' Maghrebin lounge sounds were just that little bit to crappy French pop music (lots of reverb on the violin). A great sound in the bar at Costes, not so hot for two hours in the Barbican. That said, the show was magic. Two thirds of the audience was French and there was a palpable feeling that Serge was somehow in the room with us.

Halfway through the gig a frumpy woman in an ankle-length tweed skirt freaked out and ran on stage to hug Jane. Groovy as ever, she stopped the two security chaps from chucking the woman off and instead gently guided her down the steps at the side of the stage herself (this probably happens everytime she does this gig).

Wow, George Clooney picked William Shatner's Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds in his Desert Island Disks. George, you're so groovy:-)

Great series of pictures from the peace marches all around the world. Nick and I were standing about 1cm North East of the bright yellow truck to the left of the picture (it was impossible to get into the moshpit with Clemmie's pram). I mention this because on the day it was impossible to get a sense for the numbers. This is one seriously large crowd. (thanks Caterina)

I understand this link is down until the owner finds a new host—keep checking back

It's moments like this where my heart swells and I'm proud to live in a democracy (the feeling fades fairly quickly, but hey...)

The Guardian had this to say

Parliament's history books record great rebellions of times gone by, but, in sheer weight of numbers at least, none match up to last night's defiance by 121 government backbenchers, all voting for an amendment describing the the case for war as 'yet unproven'

Read the whole piece

Got the following in the post this morning. I'm always amazed to find out that my Mom isn't my only reader;-)

RE: An American Replies

Hi Dug,

I don't think you have any responsibility or obligation whatsoever to present a 'balanced' point of view. You are writing in what is (in effect) a personal diary, it is published and public yes, but still personal nevertheless. Do you have ambitions to turn Donkey into the Grauniad? I think not. And what is this 'well-balanced' thing your friend refers to anyway? ;)

Some people go on marches. Some people write in their weblogs. Some people choose to nothing, and that is fine. My respect goes to those that take a stand. It is (imho) very much a time in which to do so.

Regards (and respect),

David Fromant
Freelance web, writing, & project management

Thanks David. I think the well balanced thing was actually something I said, but I wholeheartedly agree that it is time to take a stand. However great or small your contribution, do something.

Also, Ben has now written back several times and we have argued long into the night (the triple-quoted emails would be impossible to transcribe here as-is). He was surprised to find his letter published, as he says, if he had known, he/05/have phrased things differently. We're going to try and work on a position and we/05/edit his earlier post. More tomorrow about this I think:-)

My friend Ben has been reading my various rants on the war and has sent me a long note pointing out how I am not presenting the argument in a well balanced way. He is probably the best person I know (best, as in to be a good man) so I value his opinion. He is also naturally good at managing conflict and is not afraid of confrontation should it be necessary (yours truly will tend to shy away from pain unless really prodded). Here is what he had to say:

I looked at your donkey edge site. You're really writing up a storm. The war bit was interesting; a bit too easy, but still interesting. You should at least acknowledge the uniqueness of the situation which certainly has no parallel in the world wars. Back then strong countries were strong, and a few innocent deaths were nothing to worry about, what with millions being slaughtered. I haven't had any desire to defend the bushy one lately, but I guess I have to now.

A nuclear bomb exploding in the US was only a tired hollywood script until 9/11, then it seemed ridiculously possible. So you are the leader of the most powerful country by far, and the possibility of a nucular explosion suddenly snaps 20/20 into focus, and you are literally the only dude in the world with the ability to do anything about it. It doesn't seem so far-fetched that you would try to prevent a nutcase who will eventually make a bomb from finishing it. I think you've got it wrong that the US wants to show severed heads to prevent an attack. The two motivations are Bush finishing his father's legacy (sadly) and prevention of Iraq getting nukes.

Nevermind that there are another dozen or so potentially equal or worse threats out there than Iraq; there is at least a pretext and ability to go after Iraq. Britain's fun with the IRA, and Israel's continuing fun should be some indication that you can't do a hell of a lot to stop terrorists. We can only hope to prevent terrorists from having a nuclear device. The worst negative that I can think of (besides enfeebling the UN) is provoking animosity in arab countries.

Most americans would like to go to war only if the sentiment is shared by a reasonable majority of our allies, but Bush is not really helping with his heavy handed rhetoric. Unfortunately I think Bush feels he needs to talk that way to the american people (and maybe he's right), but it creates a backlash with the allies and makes them want to be the counterweight.

btw, there are no ministers in US govt., and also, the US is not the axis of evil together with Israel.

There you go. Am considering my reply:-)

Quick question sparked by the The Pianist winning best film—does Roman only do acceptance speeches in countries that do not have an extradition agreement with the USA?

Watching the BAFTA awards in the background while catching up on some work for Monday am, it always amazes me what good A-List attendance the show gets. The Audience was packed with Hollywood's finest and it occurred to me that this is what the Oscars ceremony used to be like.

Where else do you get good old-fashioned 10 minute thank you speeches? I think a guy with a headset pulls you off the stage if you go over your alloted 10 seconds of fame at the Oscars.

The night even ended with a BAFTA Fellowship to Saul Zaentz which generated a good 15 minute speech (close-ups of people looking attentive and serious during interminable thank you) ending with an inspiring condemnation of America's slide into darkness. You rock Saul;-)

I had meant to post a proper comment re the demonstration as I only had time for the flippant post below on the day. There are hundreds of reasons to worry right now, but the one thing that keeps coming back to me is how Orwellian the whole circus is becoming.

I think I first picked-up on it when the US announced their "Ministry of Homeland Security". How did America go from being a beacon of democratic checks and balances—the nation were a president can be impeached—to Black Shirt country overnight? I can understand how 9/11 might have been a Lusitania moment, but there is no Kaiser. Essentially, the President is supposed to use appropriate force. Instead, Bush has decided to get Biblical and do a lot of "striking down". In essence, pursuing the creation of an imaginary 'Pax Americana' where and US citizen could walk to the end of the empire unscathed, protect by the knowledge that should any harm become him the response would be swift and terrible.

In occupied France, if one villager struck at a German soldier, the whole village would be executed. This is the kind of thing that is necessary to enforce this kind of Pax. I suppose we've started along this road: you bomb two of our buildings to shit, we will bomb somebody-near-to-you's country to shit (as I write this, I realise this is a crude over-simplification, but my heart tells me that the US should be bigger than that—in victory magnanimous as Churchill said...).

I would really appreciate someone explaining to how this is a viable long term policy. In particular, if the nation doing the bombing to shit happens to hold most of the world's wealth and consume most of the world's energy, I don't see how this scenario could build a world I'd want my daughter to grow up in.

So we need to re-claim the language. Next time someone tells you it's appeasement, tell them bollocks, that has nothing to do with it. Spurious comparisons to Suez or Poland just won't do. As responsible world citizens, we need to step back, think, and look at the big picture.

Is it appropriate to make adherence to a UN mandate a fulcrum of the debate? How can this be justified when the whole world knows that Sadam is far from the worst offender in town (I believe the US and Israel hold the two top positions in the sin bin). Can it be right that we only make a big deal out of the resolutions that suit us?

I can only hope the American people see the error of their ways and chuck out the monkey. This is the most God fearing nation on earth, but they still manage to execute more citizens per year than anybody else. If they can fiddle the commandments, maybe they could compromise on George Bush...

Well, we're still all coldy (Clem coughing in the middle of the night via monitor is just sooo pitiful sounding) and Nick and I are still at each other's throats, but we had lovely day yesterday. We took a long walk (Esther Ranzen shops in the O2 centre Homebase) and had a good chat which felt really good in the end. Hopefully the new office will be sorted soon and out life will get slightly more back to normal.

Last night Clemmie had very major tooth pain and essentially screamed bloody murder all night. Nick and I took turns squeezing, bouncing and singing until the wee hours. She finally went to sleep after breakfast for her 08:30 nap. Boy, no fun, the worst part is you know she's hurting but you can't do anything about it.

On the topic of all night stress and distress, if you're a young parent and want help, check out NHS Direct (0845 4647). They are fantastic. It works like traditional 'expert systems' were supposed to work. Your call is filtered by an initial call-centre handler, you then hang up and a specialist calls you back almost straight away. Very impressive, and publicly funded too:-)

I was introduced to the silent operation, brilliant colours, high resolution, piezoelectric ink delivery printing system of Epson's printers things started to go wrong. Since then things have gotten gradually worse as I spend more and more cash on pointless ink cartridges all the while kicking myself for not buying a laser printer as I listen to yet another ink-gobbling head-clean...

Anyway, got this lovely note in the post today with a fantastic link to Epson sucks Joy for Epson-haters everywhere...

A day of down-and-dirty muddy protest

14:20 Pile wife and baby into SUV

14:50 Arrive at Marble Arch, one block away from anti-war protest—park legally on meter

15:15 Walk over to Hyde Park and listen to Tony 'God' Benn (who should have been prime-minister since 1960 but wasn't) speak to assembled marchers in hide park

15:30 Listen to Charles Kennedy except that the guy with the megaphone by the "Mecca Cola" float is drowning out the main-stage pa system...

15:45 Bump into 5-month-pregnant Georgia and Stefan who have cycled over from Islington between the footie and the rugger

16:00 Head back to car via Belgian chocolate boutique on Seymour Place

16:20 Swing by Panzer's in St John's Wood for watercress

16:30 Home

I can't believe the day turned out like that... it sort of just happened;-)

Am currently a little tipsy as have just returned from dinner with Piers and friends to celebrate his fortieth birthday. Will attempt coherent post tomorrow am (seeing as the entire UK blogging community has already posted I/05/as well take my time...).

Just got a note in the post asking me to register for the 2003 ADC in San José, California. For the first few seconds I actually considered using up some air-miles and spending two days in the sun to catch a glimpse of Steve Jobs in action in the flesh. Then I saw the price...

WWDC 2003 E-Tickets are also available a la carte at the "Early Bird" price of US$ 1295.

This is clear proof that Sadam has weapons of mass destruction all software developers are millionaires. One thousand three hundred dollars to go to a trade show? And this is the cheap early bird price?

The following received at 23:07

Dear Network Solutions® Customer,

As a courtesy to our customers, we are sending this summary notification of the domain name that is due to expire in the coming year. When you renew today, you can take advantage of our best savings. Your registration for BIGSAUCER.ORG will expire on 08/12/03. Act now.

And then, an hour later (60 minutes in which to renew my domain)...

Dear Network Solutions Customer:

We take every effort to protect you against unauthorized or fraudulent changes to your account. Therefore, we wanted to let you know that we have received a request to transfer your domain name, BIGSAUCER.ORG, to another registrar.

If this is not a valid request, no action is necessary. Your domain name registration will not be changed.

It's bad enough they still hide the renewal confirmation with a double negative, they are now sending out automated renewal notices just before the confirm notice. Why is Verisign not in court? How can this be legal under American law?

I forget if I mentioned this already, but those of you using an iBook by accident (as in you really need to be on a Powerbook but tricks of fate etc etc) might want to modify the Open firmware to kill mirroring. Instructions to re-enable the "arrange" tab in the monitors control panel are here

If you have no idea what I'm on about then no need to worry really;-)

Btw, I tried this on a recent (32meg vram/800) iBook, but it appears to work well on several generations.

Just got home from seeing the Leonardo vehicle (thank you Grandma Symington for looking after Clementine). It's quite liberating having a 'date' with Nicki, I guess that'll be the second film we've seen since the arrival of bairn.

Just wanted to say that CMIYC reminded me of classic 70's caper movies like "The Hot Rock" or "The Taking of Pelham 123" in the sense that they have a 'proper' plot, bit of tension, bit of comic relief, bit of a statement (political, emotional or otherwise...) just good clean fun, really.

The thing that stays with you as you walk to the car park is the extreme sadness of LDiCap's character. He plays this amazing con artist who is little more that a teen-ager looking for love, or at least a clear explanation of where he fits in in the world.

Great performance by Walken as his father and a surprising, older, Natalie Baye breaks the boy's heart...

Feiss + Penguin + iPod + Slashdot (not necessarily in that order)...

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=52749&cid=5222245

So I guess if I'm designing a brochure at this time of night I need to take a look at my time management;-)

It snowed last week and Britain ground to a halt. The weather forecast was timely and explicit (large animated snowflakes covering the whole map of the country, what more do you want) but it seems everyone still thought they'd have no trouble driving home from work. This/05/be in part due to the total lack of coherent public transport in the UK or simply down to dogged stupidity...

In any case, I came home later than intended and ended up wiping out (well, slow-mo falling over...) and lost a passenger peg casting (grrr) but ordered a new one from a nice chap in Hull with a regional accent so intense I had to give him my credit card as his trustworthiness was unquestionable.

Fun driving—I usually take the bike into a park (Hampstead Heath in this case) and drive like a maniac in the virgin snow. I say usually, but as a good covering of snow only hits London every seven years or so it's considerably less than usual. So I was out in this mess on purpose. It took six kind strangers, all of us slipping and sliding, to pick me and the bike up and slip the lot of us off the ten meter sheet of black ice I came unstuck on.

The walk home was long but great. Walking past piled up cars (every hill in London developed a sheet of black ice from idiots spinning their wheels and most acted as traps, collecting stacks of helpless cars). I stopped in a pub half way, had a triple Jack Daniels and a smoke. Great mood in the pub, one guy was trying to get food for his kids who had been trapped in their car for five hours. The bar was full of folk like me getting ready for an all-night trudge through the snow, and all seeing the funny side of it.

Looked like snow earlier today :-) but it didn't stick :-(

Oh well, another seven years...

Douglas Fairbanks has a Bacon number of 3

Spent Sat eve and Sunday on the Suffolk coast. Beatiful big sky on the way up. The flat landscape, half reclaimed fenland and half North Sea make for some serious oil painting vistas. Had fish and chips for breakfast on Monday before driving back to London. Unfortunately best fish and chip shop in world closed Mondays. Best pub in world was open for business but I figured Adnams not a good combination with driving.

Stopped by abandoned WW2 airfield at Glemham Hall on way back. Radio mast has fabulous "approaching, entering, etc., a prohibited place" sign usually reserved for serious cold war relics.

Lots of work and no play. Big fight with Nick over Pumpernickle offices:-(

I hate having fights with Clem around, you try and shield her from these things but she senses how upset everyone in the room is and it really freaks her out. Nicki reckons she makes her little gurgly noise when we argue as a sort of reconciliatory "hey aren't we having fun now" kind of thing which is of course even more distressing...

On the plus side, Pumpernickle shipped a whole lot of work this week and a guy who was in school with Richard, Pliny and myself at the Ecole Active Bilingue in 1974 (I think) has got in touch, which was nice. I've got a number in New York, so will call next week. He sent a copy or our huitième class photo, which I knew I had kicking around somewhere but hadn't looked at in ages. It's amazing how much Nicki looks like Miss Glover my teacher

Today. Fuck:-(

I am grateful for Virgin Atlantic's in-flight entertainment, and in particular, their natty disposable headphones;-)

I remember (OK, turning forty tomorrow—so lots of irritating reminiscing on the horizon...) when you had to pay for your peanuts and the 'stewardess' (remember those? they preceded the 'flight attendant') would do the rounds on landing and collect these cheesy headphones that were no more than rubber hoses. Not of course, that they would have had any use outside the plane but anyway...

Ok, so I guess Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose got tired of learning new tricks. To be fair, Kaleidoscope was (and is) one of coolest Mac OS hacks. It allowed people to completely change the look-and-feel of their machine by using themes.

Kaleidoscope won't be upgraded to OS X which in a way is to be expected as since the two desktops use completely different methods to describe stuff—it would be a rewrite from scratch and the guys are probably busy with their day jobs.

So getting to the point already, I wanted to say thanks to conundrum software for sorting out the theme thing on OS X and letting me use the super functional Pez theme that I used to run under Kaleidoscope. Give it a month or two, then download (and pay for) version 4 of Duality. It'll be the first theme switcher on X to catch errors and prevent you messing up your system. Also, it will ship with a companion app that cleans up old themes, so the choice available should grow considerably at a stroke:-)

Their site is pretty slow and often down unfortunately (popularity?). Finally, if somebody knows of an OS X version of the "slibber" theme (you'll know it if you use it) I'd be mighty grateful for a url.

...But enough about that. the real news is that we have a new arrival in this world.
Zora Wilde Bissell was born on Saturday, 9 pounds, 1.2 oz, 20.75 inches. Caroline's water broke at one pm, I tore home from the office, and we were at the hospital by 1:25 pm -- and Zora was born at 3:05 pm. Fast and furious, all natural, a beautiful birth, with Caroline alert and inhabiting the moment. Mother and babe are doing well. we're in that rush of newness, of fierce joy and tiredness, theo is doing great and we all home now.

Congrats Bill and Caroline :-)

I just wanted to post a public note re the ALA article. I've had lots of feedback and many requests for site debugging. I just wanted to apologize to all those who wrote with CSS questions: I debugged the first few, but after three days worth of CSS debugging I had to stop. So please don't give up on your layouts, guys, and don't think I don't care—I do and the flood of mail has been fantastic. It's just I'm way too busy right now:-(

Also, if you're calling from a company with a CSS problem, please contact me through work, at pumpernickle and James will book your job through the proper channels;-)

So are there any gaspards out there who might search for Has ultrà metas requiescunt beatam spem expectantes and find themselves here? If so, I'm trying to find the origin of the term "gaspard" as used to describe the people who live in the subterranean tunnels of Paris. None of my French dictionaries define this term.

I thought it loosely translates to "sewer rat" but my Petit Robert doesn't list it which is very odd as I thought it listed 'mature' argot. I think the word shows up any time history books report people hiding underground (political rebels, criminals etc) in the French capital?

Some wee health risks for those of you trying Safari use with caution...

I had major problems with Illustrator on my workstation yesterday (screenbuffer/mouse/drag manager type problems) making Illustrator almost unusable (as I struggled to get ready for a three p.m. client meeting grrrr...)

Then in the mail this morning I get the following:

I can duplicate this problem without too much effort. If Safari goes to site a that seems to overtax it, it shuts down, but takes with it part of the Quartz Engine, including most 2D rendering with exception to the windowing environment of Aqua. Anything that pulls resources directly from the Quartz rendering engine will most likely have lost most of its abilities.
All it takes is one site and you lose the ability to save any of your documents in Illustrator / Photoshop / Flash MX / InDesign.

So there you go...

Jed, (my Pa) designed this Bob Dylan poster in 1967, which is nice;-) Billy had this to say about the missing apostrophe...

Sitting at my desk in London listening to Hebrew a capella music on WFMU in East Orange New Jersey while the snow is building up outside my window...

Got this in the mail this morning

The new Network Solutions embodies the fundamental changes we have made to our business in the past year including improved customer service, upgrades to our product lines, and simplified customer account management along with the promise of many more improvements to come. We have made these changes because we want to improve the level of service we provide to our customers and make doing business with us easier.
Network Solutions remains a wholly owned subsidiary of VeriSign. Be assured you will continue to experience the stability, reliability, and trust you've come to expect.

I particularly like the "stability, reliability, and trust" part. I can't pin down exactly when it happened, but it seems to me that companies have decided to take a new approach to customer service.

The first step was to rid organisations of the infrastructure to write a letter. This actually takes a lot of resources, you've got your legal department, your typing pool, and don't forget the manager who actually composes the missive.

Nowadays, you can write as many letters as you want to as many people as you want in a given megacorp and you won't get a reply. Basically, if your business doesn't fit into what are no doubt defined by process managers as "communications objects" and therefore doesn't match any associated form letter, you just don't get a reply.

What's a little bizarre, is that this process has slowly happened during the 90's while at the same time the growing business of customer relationhip management (CSM) systems has matured. What it looks like, is that the more resources companies pour into CSM systems, the less the end customer benefits:-(

Go figure...

Both useful and fun, from the Public Internet Project

Overall Statistics:
1) 13,707 unique nodes within Manhattan
2) 4,038 (29.46%) WEP enabled
3) 12,533 (91.44%) nodes below 96th street
4) 8,251 (60.20%) nodes below 59th street
5) 3,758 (27.42%) nodes below14th street
6) Approx. 1,000,000 data points collected.
7) EACH DATA POINT COLLECTED CONTAINS:

Longitude & Latitude,
  · Date
  · Time
  · Signal
  · Noise
  · Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)
  · Channel
  · SSID
  · BSSID (MAC address)
  · WEP on/off
  · Vendor NAME (manufacturer)
  · Beacon Interval

Should be interesting to see how far this goes.

And can I just say, we've finally got a radio again. I can't believe I lived so long without the Donald Rumsfelf quote of the week...

The message is that there are no knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns, that is to say there are things we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns—things we do not know we don't know

- Donald Rumsfeld

Ok, so this is a bit self-referential, it's just that I had never heard myself described in quite these words

it's clear that his fervor comes from a moral/aesthetic sense/desire rather than from purely pragmatic considerations

Welcome to the church of CSS, pass the plate;-)

We noticed a tooth today :-) Clemmie's first tooth! It's just a little slit in her bottom gum, but this means less screaming for teething...

What were they thinking...

Picked up the new GS last night. It's heartstoppingly beautiful, somewhere between Mad Max and Julianne Moore (ok, so that makes no sense, it looks great ok?). Pointless fact of the day for the bikers out there—it has a 40 litre tank.

Thank you to the ever in-touch Zeldman for pointing to the Creative Commons project. This is a great idea which hopes to build the public domain while making as many patent and copyright lawyers unemployed. In a nutshell, cut out the middleman by defining in legally recognised terms exactly what usage rights you wish to grant in your work.

So here goes. As of right now, this site is licensed under a CC license...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Now, I hope the chaps at CC won't be cross with my modifying their icons, they were just a tad on the big side;-)

http://www.coconino-world.com/

From a list I'm on—the post started with commentary on scripting the EIMS mail server and finished with this. Quite encouraging I thought...

But I WILL NOT log their activities. Traffic stats to their websites are calculated and the original logs deleted. Email activities are not logged at all, beyond whatever shows up in the current activity windows.

If somebody shows up with a subpoena, I can truthfully say that I can't give them what doesn't exist. Or am I violating yet another obscure Federal statute I've never heard of? Seems to me that we (Americans, mostly, but not all...) have been busy throwing our hard-won liberties overboard in a misguided attempt to keep the ship afloat, and I won't be any part of it. Rather the ship should sink than live aboard without them.

I'm curious at what point exactly when reading an otherwise perfectly sensible text (brief Tesla biog) one notices something a little unusual...

All of this triggered past life memories I had since my childhood. I have always seen myself as a male physicist during WW II Germany - working in an underground lab with noted scientists of the day on the time travel experiments. Since age five I have always stated that I was here to do something connected to time travel and the Great Pyramid.

The domain "crystalinks" should have been a clue;-)

OK, one more post and then back to work...

Yesterday, Clemmie started forming the bababa syllables for the first time. Nick and I were getting a tiny bit concerned as Clem wasn't saying much and at six and a half months, wee'uns are supposed to be babbling.

So now she sits there, looks straight a me with purpose and starts "blaublaublaublau..." kinda like she's saying "blue" in german. In any case, another growth milestone reached:-)

Just ordered a gorgeous specimen book from Fountain and got a lovely message back in the post, whereupon I replied for no reason convinced that a truly great e commerce brain was at work whereupon I realised it wasn't a form letter whereupon i realised it was too late so i carried on...

hahah thank you missus ;) /p
>You're a very well written bot;-)
>
>8=}
>
>x
>d
>
>
>>> >Hi Dug,
>>>>thank you for ordering from Fountain.
>>>>The books will be shipped first thing tomorrow.
>>>>
>>>>best regards
>>>>
>>>>peter bruhn
>>>>[fountain]
>>>
>>>Woohoo!
>>
>>
>>hahahaha :-D
>>/p
>>
>>>
>>>x
>>>d
>>>

Ok, it's a little early for this kind of nonsense and I'm supposed to be working, but do check out Fountain:-)

Logged on to amazon.fr to buy Clementine some French DVDs. Go to "children's DVDs" and review listing: 95% of the items on offer are American. What ever happened to the French protecting their language?

Mmmmm... alarm set for 05:00—at desk 05:31 after pouring cold water into coffee instead of kettle grrrr...

Oh, and last week I stepped on a plug which was laying prongs-up. For you Americans out there, a British plug has a brass slab about the girth of a pencil as an earth lead. So as I say, I stepped on one of these things and the big ol' brass thing carved its way into the sole of my foot to near the heel on the right hand side.

Never mind that it hurt like shit, as I've said before, after seeing this photo of Dave's leg, I decided I would never again complain about something being sore...So the interesting thing is that while the puncture didn't get infected, the whole right side of my body started to ache. My back started spasming (is that a word) and most bizarre of all, my right knee almost seized up.

So Nick has been reading reflexology books and pointed out that the puncture on the sole of my foot was right on the appendix spot. You could say that the brass shaft cut right through the appendix point and in a way, what happened to my body felt an awful lot like what would happen if toxins were released from a punctured appendix...

Well, Gunter, my big yellow R11150GS is gone.

(boring bike-geek post this one I'm afraid...) I handed him over to the lease company yesterday and picked up a loaner (as surprise surprise my new GS isn't ready). I used to get really attached to my bikes, giving them names and lavishing tremendous amounts of man-hours and cash on their maintenance. Baby in particular lived with me from 10 October 1985 until I finally said good-bye to her in 1994, her engine broken and in boxes (minus some valve guides). When I picked her up from deepest Jersey one wonderful starry night and drove her back to Manhattan with just a whiff of chilled sea air creeping into my helmet. Before baby, I hadn't ridden anything bigger than a Bultaco 350 Sherpa, so handling a half a tonne 80's Japanese litre-bike (she was a KZ1000J2 for those who care...) was always going to be interesting.

With hindsight, I'm surprised I never crashed Baby. The early eighties big Zeds where just not up to handling the power of the engine. The Z1000 could be pushed over the 200bhp mark and many made it into the nines at the drag strip.

Anyway, I digress, what I wanted to say is that though the GS I've just collected is 99% identical to the old one I've just surrendered, it feels completely different. The suspension is completely different. The bike is taller by about 20mm with a more forward tilt and feels faster and more alert. The engine is miles torquier (this can't be possible, but it sure feels like it) so much so that I accidentally wheelied the thing on Park Street.

As much as I hate BMW GB for their shit service and total lack of organisational skills, I am simply speechless about the performance improvements. The beast now feels a good as a 600 Ténnéré and just as light :-)

More people with far too much time on their hands...

This from Jed, my Dad, who directed television commercials all his life, and who had the opportunity of being part of American advertising's class of 1959, the folk who brought you Avis trying harder and Volkswagen thinking small. He moved to France with his young familly in 1968 to set up Television production for Young & Rubicam Paris and never looked back. He is now retired and lives with my mum in Budleigh-Salterton, which is in Devon which is a county in England...

The film clip (video?) is so damn small and so damn fast and shot from the wrong angle that you can't see my handiwork on the right rear quarter.
In the far off past I did films for Gulf Oil. TV Commercials at Daytona and at Sebring ( The 24 hours at Sebring then). Gulf had sponsored the Fords earlier (Le Mans!) but were now backing Porsche in their colours of Blue and Orange.

...this colour scheme is sooo zeitgheist that the last time I was in mothercare looking at car-seats, I even spotted a LeMans Gulf-strip baby seat complete with 'fireproof' four-point harness...

When you are directing films of races like that with six (count 'em 6!!) cameras with all their attendant crews, you would think you've gotta lotta help. No. Not so.

Gulf had an old ad idea we were supposed to give new life to - a pair of Orange horse's hooves on the hind quarters of the car promised " extra kick " ( I didn't write the stuff, I just directed!)

The race is about to start...I have all my cameras poised and positioned to shoot the bloody horse shoe logo... and, down in the pits what do I see? You guessed it. No bloody logo! So me, Mr. Director, starts screaming and finding a spare set , go running through the track marshals and - Yes! - stick the bloody things on!! As they hustle me away - the Race/05/begin! I still have one great photo blow up of the car in a high speed turn, belching fire, and proudly showing two orange hoof prints stuck on it's backside.

End of story.

Thanks Dad :-)

Went to see Richard Stallman do his talk "Copyright vs community" at the LSE last night. Andrew's co-worker Anthony spotted the gig and sorted tickets (thank you Anthony).

Stallman didn't disappoint. I now wish I had brought a pen and paper as the examples he gave seemed potent from his mouth but not quite fully formed when reported to Nicki back at home. One of his main purposes is to challenge the large set of assumptions surrounding copyright legislation.

Under the guise of protecting the artist for the good of the community as a whole, legislators in both the UK and the US have enacted draconian rules that ultimately do not serve you and me.

He describes copyright as a social contract, one we entered eyes-open many years ago because at the time, we were trading a freedom that as individuals we could not use for enforcement that we could. Specifically, most individuals probably did not have access to printing presses and so could not exercise a right to share their assets with their neighbours. Instead, early copyright legislation restricted printers from copying works. This early law regulated industry for the benefit of us all—an equitable trade.

This initial trade however is no longer fair. We can now easily copy and share the assets we have payed for, so it makes sense that we/05/no longer wish to be held by the terms of the initial social contract. What was a good deal for our great great grandfathers is now very much not one.

Stallman goes on the mention other assumptions we have been trained to accept as axiomatic. For example, all copyright must be equal the same rules must cover all copyrighted items. This part of the law lets asset owners (let's put this in Marxist terms just for fun...) protect 99% of the copyright they shouldn't have by finding one rare exception that they can convince the courts that they should.

Instead, Stallman propose a tiered system of copyright based not on the author or the media but on the purpose. It's at this point that memory fails me as his three-part structure seemed very lucid at the time, but I can't remember the exact details (I must be getting old) so tonight (he is talking about patents tonight) I'll bring a pen;-)

Chris' iBook has arrived:-) I now look forward to lengthy exposés about a Unix hacker's life on a Macintosh. Oh, and for those that know Chris, don't y'all think we should put him forward for a "switch" advert. I can see it now:

So there I was sanding down the little bit of conductive goop that I bought at Maplins in an attempt to repair the keyboard that I had previously buggered with a piece of coarse sandpaper while trying to repair the thing that shouldn't have gone wrong in the first place...

I say move over Ellen Feiss

Off to see Richard Stallman speak at the LSE tonight:-)

So last night, two guys show up with our new Jeep. All a bit unceremonious. I was particularly unimpressed with the fire extinguisher dumped in the boot—a token gesture that doesn't quite match up with the "fire extinguisher and glass hammer installed in the cockpit" that I had verbally agreed with the folk in Kingsbury.

Anyway, as I handed over the keys to the loaner, I couldn't help thinking how we had 'trashed' it. It's amazing what a couple of babies, bottles of water and muddy shoes will do to a leather interior;-)

And while I'm petrol-heading, the new bike is due to arrive in a couple of weeks. All very exciting (giant tank, knobbly tyres and the enduro gearbox—funfunfun) but I am chronically let down by BMW. They are so good at raising your expectations, and sooo crap at delivering. The last time I picked the GS up from service, the handlebars were loose (could have been nasty...) and while I was sold on an integrated lease package (BMW Select, BMW Insurance etc) it turns out that to get the new machine, I have to go through the credit rating process again and that what on the surface looks like one company under one badge is just the same old re-purposed shit from dodgy old GE Capital:-(

But that said, the R1150GS-A is just the sexiest thing, so I guess I'll get my hoop-jumping shoes on again...

Well, to paraphrase the old Honda ad, you meet the nicest people at Zeldman—ever since J published my article on CSS grid layouts my mailbox has been full of friendly notes congratulating or even thanking me:-) It's nice to know that others out there are struggling with the same pressures and challenges that I am. Makes me want to write another...

So it's just coming up to midnight on Friday, I've been taking time off this evening, half an hour of storming around the Haiti gravel circuit in my Lancer Evo Tommi Makinen edition (can't seem to beat the AI driver in the last race of the series), turning off the telly and getting stuck into the final half of Pennac's La Petite Marchande de Prose which unlike his other books takes forever to get started, but has finally buried itself deep in the surreal, confusion and wonder I am used to from him.

We're off to see the family for thanksgiving diner tomorrow, bringing the carry-cot for Clem to bunk out in. Ruth, my mother, was recently in hospital with a heart murmur. She of course decided not to tell anyone up front, I indend to get as much info as possible out of her tomorrow evening.

Bless their cotton socks;-)

Dear Sir/Madam,
From Databank of World Importers, we have obtained your name and address and understand that you are experienced importers of Canned Mushrooms.

Now, if only I could work out which of my canned mushroom suppliers has sold my data...

Is due to arrive today. Which is good, always nice to have high-tech Unix geeks enjoying the benefits of superior hardware;-)

The thing I find a wee bit surprising is that Chris intends to write applescripts... shurly shome mishtake...

Yes, I was a teenager in the 70s, and yes, I was a motor racing fan growing up in France, so the Le Mans 24H race was a fairly big deal. Anyway, this might explain my feeling of joy as I came across this fan site of the porsche 917 including videos of the real machine in action (was doing some research re Aston Martin for work, lots of listening to engines-vroom).

Ok, this made my day:-) It's a proper Newton web server

No, really.

Ok, you know that sound that goes with the pentium 4 or intel or whatever, you know the one. Well, I thought aural branding was supposed to work by creating a familiar feeling, a bit like smell (ahh, I know this place, I'm happy here etc.) so I'm seeing the Intel We - can - do - what - apple - does advert for the millionth time and I can't help feeling how stupid it is to interrupt the mood-setting music (is it Moby's "We are Made Of Stars"?) to play their stupid bloody aural branding jingle&mdashand then cut straight back to the normal background track. It sounds like shit, it's disruptive—it's like trying to have sex with someone interrupting you every two seconds...

And decides to join Brigham Young University, though I haven't seen Austrian soil since new year's eve 1970 (I still remember walking through people's legs in this major apres-ski party).

Bloggers out there who struggle with <textarea>-based editing tools might want to check this out. It's a little script that converts your standard ascii into marked-up entities:-)

Oh, and on a completely unrelated point, can you say department of homeland security with a straight face? I know I can't...

Last night, Piers (Piers and Cally had come over for dinner) suggested I try this. As I seem to remember thinking it was a good idea at the time, I can only assume the wine at dinner was good...

Those readers with web-designey bent might wish to have a look at a list apart this week as <shamelessplug>your's truly has written an article about grid systems</shamelessplug> which is either the most boring topic ever, or really pretty cool...

Hi Dug

Just read your latest blog entry, and I think you're needlessly worrying. In fact, I think that the faster processors get, the better it is for perl. Especially with version 6 coming out in the next year or two (they're aiming for a minimum of twice the speed on the same operations in the worst case).

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Perl isn't particularly memory intensive, yes, it likes RAM but it's not the be all and end all. It depends what you're doing. All programming languages are the same in that in most cases, you're IO bound. Doesn't matter if you're coding in assembler or Visual Basic when you're waiting for data to arrive before you can start to process it. The phenomenon is language independent, especially when you're dealing with a lot of data. As perl apps, generally, are wont to do.

If you're looking to run an analysis on a tiny amount of data that'll fit into the processor cache, then yes. Perl probably wouldn't be a good option. But in those instances, it's never been a good option, and it probably never will be. Code in assembler or C if you absolutely need raw performance on a small amount of data. Code in perl if you're processing lots of data, and you'd like to minimise the amount of time you actually spend developing the application in the first place.

At the end of the day, perl is a rapid application development (RAD) tool. A custom C program will always beat a perl program running on the same hardware. It's just that 95% of all computing applications (a) don't really need that kind of raw performance and (b) you want to spend as little time as possible developing your applications - after all, time is money.

At the end of the day, if programs are waiting for data more than they are actually processing that data, then it's good news for perl as it closes the gap between itself and the "performance" languages on the same task as it gets a chance to catch up during the waiting parts. 8)

An over-simplification, I know, but that's the gist of my argument in any case!

cheers,

Chris

Have just read that ram speeds are increasing more slowly than processor, bus and disk speeds. The implication is that apps built to use ram (like Perl) will begin to loose favour.

This I find quite distressing as i like Perl (not that i can actually programme in it) or more specifically, I like what it does. So Nick and I are off to Baker and Spice to buy a delicious pie for dinner tonight.

Oh, and i just took a lovely shot of Clem in her bath, but because i have no computer, it'll have to wait a wee while before hitting the scrapbook

Just got this in the mail...

Dear Richard Nixon,
For many of us, Christmas is the only time of year when we catch up with old friends and family...

I can't remember how many sites Dicky has registered at, must be many by know;-)

Wow, a press ad and a web site and it took a good 30 minutes to figure out what it was about.

Turns out Atom40 make these really cool tables cut from blocks of sandstone. Now, all I need to know is what this has to do with an anorexic model in her pants.

Absent-mindedly pick up the Nov02 issue of wallpaper that Nicki left on my desk and start to flick...a piece about Stavanger, the town in Norway my gran came from, oh look, an interesting looking ad...it says to go to a web address...mag in left hand keyboard in right, the site pops up...yes, it's flashturbation but wow, it looks exactly the same as the print ad, mmmm.

How did we live before the internet;-)

p.s.I don't buy wallpaper, honest.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a 'server' and a 'workstation'? You know, you need to buy a machine and are flicking through those little Dabsdirect catalogues that seem to multiply on you doorstep and you wonder...

Anyway, apparently, the core OS is different, something about managing large amounts of file connections over a network (yawn). So after last month's lightning strike (three surge-protected workstations buggered) and this month's fabulous dying powerbook (the machine I use to post to this blog—excuses, I know...) I find myself working on our staging server:-(

And this is bad. Something you're not supposed to do. But I haven't got an alternative while I wait for the insurance to sort it out. But I have to say, this thing is running my entire design environment (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, 1000's of fonts etc) on top of a busy file service which not only serves Quicktime Streaming video and Appleshare/Samba/nfs file services but is also serving busy web-based applications running in Apache/Perl. Or in other words, I'm sitting at a computer that actually works better than expected:-)

I've found this page helpful.

I had a discussion with my Dad when I was down in Devon a couple of weeks ago. He was questioning why I don't wear a poppy at this time of year.

As I write these words, it is 150 minutes to 11:00. I mention the time because I personally mark this moment every year. While I don't wear the little red buttonhole, I do drop coins in the many tins and boxes doing the rounds. I guess the exact date and time is important to me. Of course exact is the wrong word, as 11:00 in that restaurant car in Compiègne is most likely 10:00 at my desk in West Hampstead. For me, the date and time are important as they help me connect with the events of 1918.

The minute of silence was made institution in 1919 on the first anniversary of the signing of the armistice (for you young 'uns out there, the document officially ending the Great War was signed in a converted restaurant car in Compiègne, near Paris, France on the 1tth of November at 11 o'clock) and has continued since then. I make a point of pausing at that hour, every year, and thinking about what it all means.

Today, the (now two) minutes silence is to commemorate the fallen of both world wars, as well as all the others since then. I can't help thinking that if this continues long enough, the eleventh will almost become a commemoration of war itself. When Mary Falby, my granfather's sister-in-law (well, his cousin's wife, I think), grieved those first years, she was mourning her husband Edward who died in the Somme in 1916. The armistice was not just the end of a war, it was the end of a very specific type of war—a wake-up call to the world that our way of life had gone horribly, terribly, devastatingly wrong and that we owed it to the dead to not do it again. If Mary respected that first minute's silence, I'd like to think that it was not to commemorate the dead of the Napoleonic wars, the Hundred Years war or any other, it was to say that this time, we mourn our dead with our eyes open. In a sense, those thousands fell for a higher purpose, that their sons and grandsons not also fall.

Generations of people have been marched off to their deaths by their rulers. I try to remember that this is not some abstract heroic event, but more the consequence of politics and business. We can control politics, and we most certainly can control business. Please support the veterans with as much as you can in the collection box and please spare a thought at 11:00 (whether or not it's a Sunday)

dear all, it has been mighty quiet of late on Donkey. If I carry on like this I'll end up on deadsites.com, a combination of total IT meltdown (no workstation, no powerbook), freakout over building works (my dodgy builder claims he is taking me to court, which should be interesting), and trying to take care of my wee family has meant that the few minutes I can grab at somebody else's keyboard have had to be spent on work work work (and now, a full-stop—halleluya!).

Anyway, I just wanted to let people know that my life hasn't stopped, and there is still a never-ending queue of bugbears for me to complain about, the most recent being London cyclists, Westminster Council's attitute to motorcycle parking, the shitty quality of Dell keyboards (as I feel my wrist siezing up) and the way legal departments manage to make simple things take forever...

For tea yesterday. Roasted them whole on a bed of garlic, chilli, parsley and plums. Added liberal quantities of delicious French organic butter, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Very tasty, except that the bulletholes in the breasts were a bit unsettling...

To think about the really important things like why, in American Pie II is the band-camp so close to the beach house?

I mean I understand that the shuttle craft serves no physical purpose and is really just there as a plot device to get Kirk off the Enterprise...

Finally, I spent today wondering if white chocolate mini-magnums are better than their full-size brethren and whether the almond coated ones were the best overall:-)

So I'm sitting at a table at the Welcome Break just up the M1 working on the actionscript Andy sent me last night and I go to paste it back into his file when tarnations, I realise I've only pulled the .swf off the server before leaving.

No probs, I whack the ericsson gprs on the table, turn on irda, connecting... woohoo, we're online. So, I go "connect to server", mount the main Pumpernickle job bag server and I'm away.

Except that Andy's file is about a million levels deep and for each re-draw of the Finder window, the server is trying to pump full-size Appleshare data (you know, pretty icons etc) through the micromini irda port. Double-click, wait and wait. Double click, wait and wait...

And then my brain actually wakes up—I don't need the finder at all. I remember that my OSX powerbook has a command line and start typing. One cp /Volumes/HD22/Sharepoints/job_bags/Andy_development/Andytest.fla wip/ and voilà one lovely .fla file ready to go:-)

As much as I hate Steve Jobs for making me pay over and over for the same product and for his overall shitty attitude to older customers (read all about bronze DVD problems later) I must admit Unix powerbooks are a very, very good thing:-)

Came across the website of an airport's chapel while searching for airport advertising billboard specs and was amazed by this description. Part of me thinks PC a step too far, while the rest of me is still trying to work out how they do the logistics...

...The Interfaith Prayer Room also features a specifically designed hand-made sideboard for religious appointments. There the visitor/05/find prayer rugs, talitot, kipot, rosary beads and other items that are important to the prayer practices of the various religious traditions. Spiritual books including Bhagvad Gita, the Tanach, the Koran, and the Old and New Testaments are also available.

Well, got home last night and had a very therapeutic cry. I've been letting things stack up recently and really need a break. Faiq, my evil scumbag neighbour manages to add his two cents of pain and frustration to the mix. We've just finished a very expensive bathroom rebuild and last night Nicki heard water trickling into the ceiling. The bastard refuses to properly mend the bath upstairs, so every six months or so water starts to leak into our flat—OK—I wasn't gonna get all riled up again, the purpose of this post was to say normal service has resumed:

Western political consultants should take a pointer from Sadam as The Guardian informs me he was returned to office with 100% of the vote.

A shitty day

...a copy of the Wall Street Journal (hotel bars never keep The Economist), a double measure of Talisker with water (no ice) and a Hoyo De Monterey double corona (clipped) as soon as you like...

Once upon a time in a land far far away, I read a review (Gault et Milliaut) of all the finest restaurant in Paris. The idea was to walk into all the (five or six I think it was—the Tour d'Argent and the Grand Véfors were among them) three-starred restaurants in town and order a glass of tap water and an omelete. The results were enlightening, the Td'A was clearly not a place you wanted to try it on (nor Maxime's at the time) and on the whole the three-star establishments didn't fare terribly well. I seem to remember two (2) restaurants met the challenge and they were the best ham & eggs the reviewer had ever eaten...

Cut to the Churchill Hotel cigar bar, Portman Square, London, 17:18 on Wednesday, 16 October 2002. The nose-feel of the H de M is good—peppery but light, the tobacco equivalent of a good Saint Emillion except that since I'm a pleb I couldn't name a good St E vintage—but you get the idea—all manner of good things rushing through your body, well balanced and a step closer to Heaven.

Victim of the sniper

Our trusty barman has met the challenge, I suppose the London Evening standard isn't the WSJ but hey, it's the thought that counts.

At the door of this place I paused, and thought you're feeling sorry for yourself and figured I should go home to Nicki and be a man. Ok, I'm fallible, I'm a sucker for comfort—I went for the Talisker even though it doesn't appear on the Atkins menu. But six O'clock is rolling along and I should head for home (as I cook meals)...

Apologies to readers, I'm using you guys as my personal Loraine Bracko—normal service to return any second now:-)

Dear Faiq,

My daughter, Clementine is 18 weeks old. She has never heard her father raise his voice, and I hope she never does so again. This morning, after saying goodbye to you, I had to do my best to calm her as she sensed the tension in the air, shattering her otherwise perfect, loving environment. It took a good ten minutes to convince her that the world was a safe place and that her parents were going to be ok.

I can only conclude, Faiq, that you are a malevolent person, an evil man who will take his place to the left hand of the lord when he dies. I hope I am mistaken in my appraisal of your caracter, and I must urge you, one more time, as we are unfortunately attached, until one of us sells our share in 117 West End Lane, to reconsider your attitude and to take a more helpful, cooperative and collaborative aproach to your relationship with Herbfords Residents Association.

Every time we talk, you tell me you are a businessman. I tell you this: this building is my family's home. 117 West End Lane is not a slum for you to lord over, it is a structure housing four independent families who care about its upkeep and ongoing. These people do not approve of the remote, rent collecting landlord in their midst.

If you were a businessman, you would have payed me for organising a builder to repair your abandonned masonry. You would have payed me a contractor's fee to supervise, manage and otherwise daily involve myself in the works. You would have payed me to be vigilant, and to immediately call the police when it appeared someone might be climbing the scaffolding. You would pay me for finding a cleaner and for providing her with a hoover, bags and other consumables. You would pay me for keep my kitchen stocked with the necessary odds and ends of day to day buildings maintenance. This would a business contract make.

Are you prepared to pay me for all the work I have done for you?

On the phone this morning, you accused me of being a terrorist, of supporting or condonning terror tactics. If I had said the same of you, you would have called me a racist. What are you saying Faiq? Are you unhappy with the US's treatment of prisonners in it's Guantanamo Bay Camp X-Ray facillity? Perhaps some day you would like to explain to me were you stand on civil rights issues.

You ask me how long I have lived in this country. What do mean Faiq? Are you asking me which team I support in cricket, you evil biggot? Is that it? Am I somehow not as English as you, by coincidence of birth or geography? What are you saying Faiq? Spit it out, would you?

Damndamndamn...

My mother used to say never send a letter until the following morning. Actually, it was my friend Bill Bissell's mum, and as with most things, she was absolutely right.

Nonetheless, I had a phone conversation this morning with a man who has made it his business to make my life hell. It's tough always doing the right thing, always turning the other cheek. It's tough not just pummeling the bastard, not just taking his balls of steel and ramming them down his cheeky little throat.

So anyway, I started a letter to him this morning but you know, it's one of those letters you really can't send. So instead, I'm going to inflict my otherwise innocent blogosphere readers and post it here. I/05/edit or even delete it tomorrow as I can't remember the last thing I did in anger that benefitted anyone;-)

So...

Not sure what reminded me of this song. (Lyrics reproduced without permission)

Peace & Love

I got high last night on LSD
My mind was beautiful, and I was free
Warts loved my nipples because they are pink
Vomit on me, baby
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he's blind, it's erect because he's blind
Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he is blind

Let's make love under the stars and watch for UFOs
And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs
You can fuck them
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis
And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles
Ramona's titties died in hell
And the Nazis want to kill everyone.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind ... etc.

Spam with added Flash—a little bandwidth borrowing from a spammer:-)

Very tasty lunch at Liz and Stu's. Liz prepared jambon persillé the proper way (boil pig's trotter with aromatics etc.). I haven't had home made meat jelly in a long time, bit of a treat really. She followed that up with a bœuf bourguignon and a selection of english cheeses. Pudding involved a smooth vanilla scented custard, crumbly pastry and apples.

Thank you Liz:-)

Tuesday evening...

19:00 leave house excited to be seeing two great actors do their thing on the West End stage.
19:25 Arrive at Comedy Theatre Panton Street and find my seat (center of front row stalls, best seat in house etc.)
19:30 Realise that both my legs are occupying the seats on either side of me and remember why I can't go to a West End theatre without Nicki who always cedes her legroom
19:35 Stand up and walk out of theatre
20:00 Get home and feel very depressed

Not a good evening:-(

Well, it had to happen, on Wednesday night I grabbed a bag and ran out of the house leaving a pile of smelly dishes and the cat behind me. I got to Dunblane (that's a place in Scotland, which is not next to Mexico) at 02:30 which isn't bad really, something like a seven hour drive.

Thanks to the modern miracle of cruise control ('ha' I hear you snort but no, really, cruise control rocks) I was able to do Scotland and back without any negative side effects. Normally my right leg seizes up and it takes me a day to recover. Anyway, I'm sold on large comfy automobiles.

I spent the rest of the time squeezing little Clementine, so on the whole quite a good week. Yesterday, she managed to push herself along on her knees, which was quite a milestone, except she hasn't quite mastered her front half, so in this instance, she slid along on her nose;-)

On a wholly unrelated topic, here's a link to KPMG

Once again, proof that New Yorkers have far too much time on their hands...

They don't keep their software up to date in a way that is useful to the user, but I won't go there…

If you are an OSX user and need updates to Illustrator (the Pantone data that shipped with 10.0.1 was woefully inaccurate) you are now asked to register. In particular, the download sequence requires a postcode, which IMHO is downright cheeky as this ain't no shareware shit honey. I've shelled and shelled again (imagine my surprise when I spent hard currency on Acrobat 10 only to discover that Distiller only runs in Classic) and have also registered my copies of Adobe software. I'm sorry, this is a hustle, and it pisses me off (yes I know, I could put a fake postcode in but it's the principle of the thing)

So I thought I'd post the following:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/

this takes you to the public ftp server at the level of application listings, follow the links to your desired update at your leisure:-) Now, let's see how long they keep public ftp going…

You know, there's nothing more pitiful than an empty cot:-(

Clementine's little bed has been living next to ours—they say babies shouldn't sleep alone until they're six months old—and I've gotten used to looking over and seeing her through the bars. I'm toying with the idea of chucking work in and heading off to Scotland to be with my girls...

There is no way this really works, is there?

...Place the radio on the tinfoil, as shown in the picture, and use the rubber bands or string (E) to fix the radio onto the board. At this point, both antennas should be vertical to the board. The radio's antenna should be extended fully while the second antenna should be slightly lower that that of the radio's.

Your system is ready to use.

On the theme of selfish pleasures, I picked up a Playstation 2 a few weeks back. The replays in Gran Turismo are just too gorgeous for words. Take your Tommy Makinen Evo VII around Tokyo special stage 11 in the middle of the night, then sit back and enjoy:-) There are flashbulbs going off in the audience, amazing atmospherics, reflections, lens flare and lighting effects are everywhere. This has to be one of the most well designed pieces of software ever :-)

And where else can you tank around a test track in a 600bhp Nismo Skyline at 320kph (that's three hundred and twenty kilometers per hour) in perfect safety?

Am off to see Woody Harrelson and Kyle MacLachlan in 'On An Average Day.' Reviews are good—will report back:-)

Also, if anyone has tickets for Simon Rattle on Friday that they can't use, I'll happily buy them off you (but what are the chances of that happening)

I was catching up with my newspaper reading this evening, when I came across a story which describes in coherent terms what I was talking about in the earlier post re Baader-Meinhof, Carlos et al.

I love the comments about young'uns wearing crush velvet flares and Ray-Bans à la Andreas Baader

...an extraordinary revival in Germany of 'Terror Chic'. The catwalks are full of the crushed velvet flares and Ray-Bans favoured by Baader, the red RAF star adorns T-shirts, and one fashion designer has even adopted the provocative slogan 'Prada-Meinhof'

I came home from the train station with a secret plan to smoke a gorgeous cuban cigar in the bath while reading the newspaper cover to cover with no disturbance but in the end I already miss little Clemmie:-(

I sat next to her in the train before it took off and nibbled her little feet (she giggles now, which along with smiling is just one of those things you need to have a lot of before you die) and rocked her in her car seat. I sort of felt like I was going to cry but I thought that might upset her. In the end, she looked a little upset anyway, but this could easily have been due to poop in nappy as much as hunger, boredom or tiredness...

But I will get a lot of reading done this week. Bought Simon Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem, plan to finish Daniel Pennac's La Petite Marchande de Prose (not as rewarding as his other books for some reason, but am determined to give it a fair shake) and plan to re-read all my Dawkins, starting out of order with The Blind watchmaker. You've got to love a guy who claims to know what the meaning of life is. Of course, now that Clem is here, I think his theory is pretty bulletproof;-)

breast pads
bra
birkenstocks…

Nicki and Clementine are off to Scotland for the week. Hopefully, in time, daughter will travel lighter than mother;-)

mobile
monitor…

News for Clem fans and followers...

Thursday 3rd October Clem had her first 'solid' food (baby rice, which is breast milk mixed up with cooked, ground rice) and 26 September was the day she first rolled on to her front. She has been grunting and huffing a lot lately as she struggles to sit up (goes slightly pink in the face in the process). She can now roll back on to her back but hasn't quite mastered getting her arm clear. six out of ten times she rolls over onto one of her arms, gets stuck and sort of lies there grunting, although it looks like she'll be working that one out any day now:-)

Have never watched Parky til now. Saw Bowie and Hanks a couple of weeks ago and am currently listening to Fry and Williams. I think I can safely say that Parky is the daddy.

Have just watched the twenty-two episodes of West Wing's first series. I have to say, DVDs of favourite televisions shows rock. Now if I could only get someone to buy me the whole Star Trek collection I could fester on the couch forever;-)

Well, haven't posted much recently, I've been working like a dog—sleeping three or four hours and getting straight back to the computer. No fun (Jack dull boy)...

Yesterday took Nick down to Chelsea to see Bobbie Joy, her acupuncturist. Both her wrists have gradually seized up since having Clem. At first she thought it was a residual problem from the drip, but it now affects both left and right sides and the pain is completely debilitating (she can't pick up Clem without wincing).

She's just had x-rays of her wrist as the nhs attempts to give her some relief. It occurs to me at this point that the x-ray machine probably costs a fortune, the floor space at the Royal Free were it lives probably costs a fortune and if it weren't for the chronically underpaid nhs staff that operates it, the machine would be unusable.

Anyway, the good news is that Nick's acupuncture treatment appears to be working, and at a fraction of the cost of the x-ray technology.

So I drove her down to Chelsea and then took Clemmie for a stroll in Hyde Park. This is my favourite part, I stick her in the Bjorn (a harness-type-thing) and she faces frontwards so she can look at the world(which is all new to her). I can then walk around talking to her about plants, trees cars and whatever else we bump into.

So there we are, the two of us walking past the French consulate, through the gates and across the horse track, except at the last minute a police BMW pulls up right in front of me and stops us. I protest, pointing out that they can't just stop pedestrians on a whim and the man tells me it's Brenda and Phil.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, the royal limo shows up and Clementine gets to wave at Her Britannic Majesty. At point blank range:-)

I've been getting news of display problems. Apparently, these pages are not completely rendering in IE5 mac and IE5Win98. I'm having a hard time isolating the problem, so/05/have to revert to a cheesier stylesheet that I'm pretty sure works ok...

Before I do, if anyone out there can reproduce the bug in a consistent way, I'd appreciate it if you dropped me a note.

Just ordered Adrian Frutiger's l'Homme et ses signes in a rather delicious edition by Atelier Perrousseaux. I believe he wrote the original in German, but this edition from 2000 updates and refines the French edition of 1983 (and I suppose he would have written in French rather than English...)

I ordered it from amazon.fr and when I got to the checkout and saw the familiar logon, I assumed that I'd have to create a duplicate account for the French company. But woohoo:-) my .co.uk user/pass work fine, all the customer database details (inc. credit card) are pan-national (odd, as SKU data does not appear to be shared by the main application). I don't know if this is even legal? In any case, it makes ordering French books for little Clem a breeze:-)

Just wanted to extend some sympathy to Tom, who has been burglared. It happened to me in New York and I know exactly what you mean about the camera, Tom.

It's one thing being violated. You can still feel the presence of the other person in the building. It's quite another experiencing what that stumbling, brutal act does to the peaceful network of emotional connections that live, unnoticed in our homes. Tom, you can't have your thirtieth birthday back, but hopefully, you still have many of your friends.

As I write this I am reminded of another emotion I hadn't felt since the day I walked out of my house to find my bike had vanished. On that occasion, I stood there for a few minutes, pitifully staring at the empty spot of road where baby had been parked (my black, 1981, z1000J2) and Lenny Henry walked past carrying flowers and followed by two little girls in pretty dresses, he was off to a friend's wedding at the church at the end of Brook Green. Our eyes met and I think he understood what had happened to me...

...but I was describing the emotion—it's like having your stomach removed in many small sequential operations. I had woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of a loud bang in the basement. I was sleeping in a room on the top floor of the Upper West Side brownstone and cursed my flat mates. The next morning I went downstairs and didn't notice any of my stuff had gone. It took a good 45 minutes before I completely realised what had happened.

All my worldly possessions were packed up ready for my move home and some shit had hacked through all the bags and boxes searching for valuables, leaving the odd pile of stuff here and there on the ground floor (it was a big brownstone). I hope I never have to go through that series of negative revelations again:-(

It sounds like Tom has some things to help with his recovery—The Met have actually fingerprinted his flat and it looks like he might have been able to ID the chap who came through the window.

Tom, I hope they nail the bastard.

Saw a piece on NTK about a site which had been shut down at the request of a Jim Pearce from the met's Obscene Publications Unit (though the fax header seems to say "clubs and vice" whatever that means...). All that Jim had to do to shut down this site was send a fax.

Nobody was charged, no warrants issued, nobody arrested. In other words, no crime committed.

The site's publisher is understandably pissed off that his host shut him down without a warrant. Whether or not the whole incident is a scam, a hoax or a publicity stunt, it does raise some important questions about freedom of expression.

From the author's open letter to the police:

...If you seriously believe that thinkofthechildren.co.uk is likely to incite violence or public disorder then I would be grateful if you would do me the courtesy of attempting to prosecute me for the offence. Proper legal channels exist for this purpose and I'm sure you know how to use them. You are also welcome to apply for a warrant to close the site pending a trial, subject to the Human Rights Act 1998...

All that, and while 'heavy-handed' the site is undeniably funny:-)

Not entirely sure what this has to do with donkeys really. But check it out anyway (with your sound turned on).

Where do you want to go today? Try typing "go to hell" into Google.

Thank you Sashinka

(dug adds:) It would appear Bill Gates has the power to change search engine listings at a stroke. As of Sunday 29 Sept, he no longer makes top billing...

Have just downloaded the Iraq dossier. While the body of the text is rather crudely set in workmanlike Times Roman, the title page has been worked up by some anonymous designer at the HMSO.

I can sympathise with the designer—I can see the briefs coming in: "Her Majesty's Government's Response to EC Agricultural Legislation" and so on. Then one day he gets this brief and his boss tells him, "have fun with this one, let rip, let those creative juices flow..." (ok, so they don't really say shit like that at the HMSO but you get the idea).

So what does he do? He sets it in Goudy. Is this a coincidence? A subliminal message? Does the special relationship include implicating American type designers in our government's warmongering?

Ok, I'd like someone to explain what the robot or crawler or whatever it is that keeps searching for "quaint or donkey or prosodic or compels or counterbalance" is doing? Is it a component of some large web-cataloging device, is it using the results to generate some incredibly clever semantic maps of our virtual world, ¿che pasa? here...

Or is it just some smartass giving me a hard time;-)

Have just re-discovered a photo library I used when I worked in New York. They're called IBID. They were the first to organise photoshoots with the specific aim of producing one-half of an ad (the other being the headline, of course).

People have been asking about Nicki's car. The news so far is that Clive Sutton, the UK dealership has replaced it with apologies and we are waiting for the official response from Daimler-Chrysler. If I had polls enabled on Donkey, I'd ask what sort of position I should take. I mean, they could have killed my whole family.

What if the thing had flared up in traffic?

The imobiliser would have come on, the electric doors and windows would have been locked and Nick and Clem would have both been dead in seconds. I'm trying to avoid thinking along those lines as it is freaking me out a bit, but I'd still like to hear from anyone out there who has had a similar experience. Anyone?

I was thinking about Orwell's Ministry of Information again today and started trying to find some bad guys to focus on. I'm showing my age a bit here, but it seems to me that Carlos, Andreas and Ulricke and even young Yasser, made very credible enemies. It might be to do with the degree of definition of their belief systems or their politics, but it was generally possible to pin-point this threat without their cause being extended to cover a people,race or religion.

O'Connor does a reasonable job of classifying the terror groups of my youth:

Nationalist terrorism is "traditional" terrorism, also called revolutionary or ideological terrorism. It is practiced by individuals belonging to an identifiable organization with a well-defined command-and-control structure, clear political, social or economic objectives, and a comprehensible ideology or self-interest (Hoffman 1999). Their target selection is highly selective and mostly discriminate - ambassadors, bankers, dignitaries - symbols they blame for economic or political repression.

In his piece, he moves on to define a few more classes, ending with ethno-nationalist terrorism (ethnoterrorism). I guess old Bin Laden falls into this category. His article is extremely dry and perhaps a bit over-confident (I always wonder about the principle of understanding by putting things in boxes) but is worth reading if you're going through a process of trying to understand how we got where we are.

Specifically, when we add the suffix "terrorism" to a word (agro-terrorism) we instantly define the person or group so labelled in a way which prohibits negotiation or diplomacy. When the Red Brigades Kidnapped Aldo Moro or the IRA bombed Mountbatten, it was crystal clear that these were the actions of mad, sub-human, crazy nutters who could under no circumstances be dealt with other than by force.

Mountbatten's death was the first incident that struck me as a young boy. I remember my father trying to explain what it meant and why he was so angry about it. If we are to grow as people, then the very least we can do is try and learn from our mistakes. Ignoring history just doesn't make sense. From where I'm sitting, it's beginning to look like the Catholics of Northern Ireland might of had a point.

Clearly, there can be no moral justification for bombing people, but surely the peace process in Northern Ireland is a more preferable outcome than the bombing of Iraq or indeed the classification of the entire Muslim world as our mortal enemy.

Congratulations to Scary Duck for taking away the Guardian BBB. I'm embarrassed to admit I'd not read the duck before, but in any case, there's five-hundred pounds headed for the pub:-)

Piece in the Guardian today with editorial commentary re the countryside alliance march.

As I read about this ragtag bunch of tweed-wearing rebels, I am reminded of the disjointed mob marching for States' rights in the USA. They are similar in that they cannot express a united political position, but are clearly united in their dislike of central government. Could this be the beginning of the Unites States of Great Britain?

Maybe what we'll get when the dust settles is a federal Britain with urban 'city states' on the one hand, and large 'farm states' on the other. They can all vie for influence in Westminster while running most local government issues locally...

Salam'alicum, today is officially Iraq dossier day. The dossier is a document in which the Ministry of Truth Tony Blair attempts to explain to the nation why we should invade Iraq, topple the government and supervise "regime change".

As a pleb, I understand the need for a clearly defined enemy and appreciate the difficult work the Ministry has to do to ensure that I properly understand who to hate, and to make sure I send my as yet unborn son the front. All I ask, is the answer to a few questions.

a) Since when are sovereign states only allowed to possess weapons of moderate destruction?
b) When did Tony Blair stop giving a fuck what voters of my ilk think?
c) If the Americans want to act unilaterally and aren't ashamed of it, why do I need to support them?
d) Why isn't anybody upset at Israel going for the final solution to the Palestinian question?
e) How can the people of Iraq be expected to think and act, if they can't even eat or read?

Anyway, happy dossier day.

Man I am getting sick of supporting Apple. I mean it's one long lonely road, you know? I used to believe my box was better than the other guy's windoze machine, but now I'm getting really bored of paying for the same thing over and over. There has to come a point were I just stop.

Nope, I don't need an upgrade.

Really.

I went 'pro' (large fries with that?) by registering my copy of Quicktime three years ago. I would go out of my way to evangelize Quicktime over Realplayer, in several cases, getting QT media included in sites that were just going with Real. So I bought the 'pro' upgrade.

Then when I upgraded to QT4 I had to buy another license.

Same with QT5

Now, having bought two QT license off Apple (you're welcome, S.J.) I'm looking at OSX 10.2 and the built-in Quicktime 6. I have to say, the fact that I am now supposed to buy a third, for the same product if I want the damn 'shareware' notice to go away? I would expect that of Bill Gates, but Apple?, why?

I keep getting punished for being an early adopter and frankly, it's getting to me:-( I mean, to compound the Quicktime license problem, I own a once-top-of-the-range powerbook G3. And guess what, my model shipped with a dodgy DVD unit (see the class action in the making) which means I can't boot from CDROM which means the likelihood of my successfully installing Jaguar (stupid name given to OSX10.2) is pretty much nil anyhow.

arse:-(

Damn it Steve, you should be sending me a copy of 10.2 with a big fat thank you note for my paying talented perl programmers to go overtime creating applications on your unfinished server OS. Why did I take the extra trouble? Why didn't I just go with openBSD? Tell me why Steve? It's not for Aqua, my servers don't use monitors.

Steve, I bought OSX 10.0 beta (which felt pretty darn cheeky - I mean charge for a beta?!?) and then I bought the first proper version. I bought OSX server when it was 1.x (ie a slightly repackaged NextStep). And then, I bought it again when it went to version one. Finally, I shelled out for a copy of 10.1

What do I do now Steve? What advice should I give my customers?

Came accross this site (in French) as a result of searching my referer logs. Some assumption-challenging stuff here, from the perspective of a Muslim living in a Western country—things like problems with what they teach our kids in school, becoming a Muslim as well as a number of interesting personal histories.

I won't remind everyone of that ancient and venerable gag's punchline, it's just that this reminded me of it;-)

Good Guardian today. Nelson Mandella reckons America is a 'threat to world peace' and something we already suspected about the Tories (they make you want to kill yourself, apparently)

Chrimble has just pointed out that the London Fire Brigade looks just like Automan when photographed at three am

Ok, in a week where it looked like nothing unusual was going to happen, something finally did.

At exactly 02:44 (Nicki watches the clock all night long) I hear a horn that might be Nicki's car, go out in my jim jams and find our jeep on fire surrounded by firemen trying to get the bonnet open. Apparently, there's no sign of forced entry so they reckon it's a fault with the car.

I was reminded of that awful scene in Fight Club:

Two technicians lead jack to the burnt-out shell of a wrecked automobile. jack sets down his briefcase, opens it and starts to make notes on a clip boarded form.

Jack (v.o.):
I'm a recall coordinator. my job is to apply the formula. it's a story problem.

Technician 1
Here's where the infant went through the windshield. three points.

Jack (v.o.)
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 miles per hour. the rear differential locks up.

Technician 2
the teenager's braces around the backseat ashtray would make a good "anti-smoking" ad.

Jack (v.o.)
the car crushes and burns with everyone trapped inside. now: do we initiate a recall?

Technician 1
the father's must've been huge. see how the fat burnt into the driver's seat with the polyester shirt? very "modern art".

Jack (v.o.)
take the number of vehicles in the field (a), multiply it by the probable rate of failure (b), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement ©.

a times b times c equals x. If x is less that the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

It would be good if this didn't happen when Nick was driving :-( Have you got a similar jeep? Do you know of this happening to a friend - let me know

Well, letting the side down again I'm afraid—things are getting a bit frantic at work (which is good). Just crankin away at my "to do" list... Ok, I'd better provide a link: just had a slightly surreal conversation with mo via icq:

mo: you're not the bloke down the road from me who plays hip-hop very loudly at 3am are you? ;)

dug: actually, there are a couple of german chaps upstairs who like to test the structural integrity of my ceiling...

I can't believe this was posted almost a year ago and I never came across it. There's fourteen pages of it too:-)

...Oh my God, this War On Terrorism is gonna rule! I can't wait until the war is over and there's no more terrorism!

I know! Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore? It'll be just like that...

And from the same author, check out all the great posters.

My uncle Jim stayed in Paris for a year and came out with a new mantra, "where are the lawyers?"—he would spend hours watching crazy French game shows where contestants performed acts that fear-of-lawsuit would ban from American television. I was reminded of this earlier this evening at Homebase.

This has nothing to do with this post, I just found it at a page by Micah Wright and loved the art and wanted to squeeze a link in. My only problem is that technically, it's impossible to re-elect George Bush as he wasn't properly elected in the first place (see Richard Dawkins' pertinent comment) but where was I...

Oh yeah, the lawyers;-) Anyway, I popped into homebase to buy sheets of MDF (tropical hardwood forests burnt, mashed, pulped in horrendous chemicals and shipped to the west for morons like me to make bad furniture with) to finish the bench in the hall. Now, if you've ever done this before, you'll know about those giant machines they have in the back of the store—these machines will cut a 4×8 piece of MDF into millimetre-perfect chunks of wood making assembly almost as easy as an IKEA bookcase (in some cases easier). Except that in 9 out of 10 trips to the diy store the machine is either out of order or the operator is out to lunch, and even if all is well, the spotty teenager operating the thing tells you to bugger off and be happy with only one cut per sheet to allow you to fit the stuff into your car.

Which explains why I was so gobsmacked by the MDF guy at Homebase Finchley Road this evening. I mean it was late—pretty near closing time—but this guy was professional, courteous, helpful I just don't get it? He cut a jillion slices of all different sizes and thicknesses, didn't charge me for off-cuts, I mean if I didn't know better, I'd of thought I was in a Frank Capra movie:-)

Oh, and about the lawyers... I just wanted to add, I have just spend 30 minutes playing with that giant cutting machine. That's right, I was behind the counter, chewing the fat with guy, helping shlep the timber, inches away from the giant cutting jaws, I mean, where are the lawyers;-)

Good to know donkey is not being filtered out by Chinese censorship (thanks, Tom)

Have just been interviewed by Aline Pestana, a very nice lady from the International Herald Tribune TV station (from Rio, actually) - she's interviewed Tom Coates and now me! (we are not worthy, grovel grovel) - am at present drinking pint with James at the Crown in Victoria Park and am about to tuck in to fantastic smoked mackerel:

Makes me want to take off all my clothes and do naughty things:-)

well, if you are in the UK and you read blogs, you'll have heard about the Guardian's "best British weblog" competition. Well, the competition closed last Friday, so the judges are hard at it right now.

In the spirit of healthy debate, I thought I'd add Tom Coates' little javascript of those who chose not to enter. I tried to enter both because I'm a mercenary shit out for glory, but he wouldn't let me...

As a friend used to say years ago while fiddling the rules of tournament four-hand tarot, a rule is a rule;-)

(ed: had to cut the js call, it was breaking the template for pc users)

If you want to post this pod on your site, the code goes something like this (mind the line breaks, the whole lot should fit on one line):

<script language="javascript" type="javascript" src="http://www.plasticbag.org/files/ misc/bestbritishblog.js"> </script>

Finally, if any of you UK bloggers feel left out, confused or just plain bored with our new found celebrity (I'm sure we're due to drift out of the zeitgeist any second now...) why not comment on the judges blogs? Here are the three that are posted on the Guardian site...

http://www.bowbrick.com/bowblog/
http://www.anitaroddick.com/
http://www.evhead.com/

Answers on a postcard, please:-)

Took Clem to her first swimming lesson yesterday. Nick walked up and down the pool with her in various positions and she seems to like it. Keep this up and we'll have a wee swimmer in no time :-)

Well, it's just gone midnight here in London and I thought I'd scribble few thoughts about 9/11 before going to bed.

Today, let's mourn the dead. Let's pay our respects, and by giving each victim a name, respect and celebrate the value of human life. I suspect most readers were probably going to do that anyway, without this soapbox's prompting.

This note is targeted at a particular fan of donkeyontheedge, George W Bush. George is a keen reader of history?an intellectual, moral and ethical giant in the field. So George, here are a few fragments of text and links from America's history for your edification.

First of all, from http://www.oz.net/~cyu/internment/main.html

...May it serve as a constant reminder of our past so that Americans in the future will never again be denied their constitutional rights and/05/the remembrance of that experience serve to advance the evolution of the human spirit...
From a plaque at the Poston Relocation Center

Now George, for our next exercise spot the difference between the two following passages:

Following the Al Quaida attack on New York in September 2001, the United States was gripped by war hysteria. This was especially strong along the Atlantic coast of the U.S., where residents feared more Al Quaida attacks on their cities, homes, and businesses. Leaders in California, Oregon, and Washington, demanded that the residents of muslim ancestry be removed from their homes along the coast and relocated in isolated inland areas.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States was gripped by war hysteria. This was especially strong along the Pacific coast of the U.S., where residents feared more Japanese attacks on their cities, homes, and businesses. Leaders in California, Oregon, and Washington, demanded that the residents of Japanese ancestry be removed from their homes along the coast and relocated in isolated inland areas (like Guantanamo).

Of course the text refers to Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in 1942, but it's surprisingly easy to replace 'Japanese' with 'Muslim'—I don't know about you, but this worries me. Forgive me for bashing this point to death, check out Ansel Adam's portraits of the interned Americans. And repeat after me, "Muslims are people too".

Finally, I'd like you to read an address by President Dwight D Eisenhower, one of America's greatest Commanders in Chief, regarding American foreign policy in a global, post-conflict situation (not too dissimilar from the feel of your own boots right now I should think...)

I notice the White House website lauds "The Spirit of Freedom". I ask you to not be the instrument of its corruption.

doesn't mean you can't be an evil swine. Billy discovers this (with full history and gory details re Blunkett)

Dear family members, Clem is now officially too big for her carry-cot. Her proper cot was moved into our bedroom yesterday, and her carry-cot has been folded up and put away (for the next baby?)...

well, I'm not sure what Clem made of the Rubens... I still can't get over how bright and clean it is. In some sense this makes it seem more of a fake, but the Delila figure is so obviously his, I'm going to side with the 'authentic' camp. Anyway, it was good fun, and seeing as we had made it all the way to Trafalgar Square, we figured it would be rude to not check out the BP portrait show at the NPG.

The BP show was surprising in that it lacked a single arresting, original or interesting image. Ok, I'm exaggerating, there was a set of works looking at tensions inherent in immigration/culture clash in the Asian community (I'm guessing) which managed to be both beautiful and funny (a portrait of Mother Father and Son is hung next to portrait of two gay skinheads, lots of pcs in uniform sitting next to their parent on the couch - this sort of thing), but on the whole the show left the three of us cold.

On the bright side, the NPG also had the Kobal retrospective. This is a show which is approximately 34% up its own arse, but the remaining 66% make it a must see;-) I used to enter the Kobal award when I was a photographer (spurred on by having a print in the Victoria and Albert for being short listed in another competition). Every time I entered, I lost, but every time I was stunned by the winners. The judges have consistently picked winners that are truly challenging. In fact, most years my initial reaction is "god, how did that win?" only to come round shortly thereafter kicking myself for not "having understood" the work in question. Anyway, the NPG is free, so get your ass down there.

We're off to the National Gallery to show Clementine the disputed Samson and Delila. Recently, a work was attributed to Rubens and sold for a huge pile of cash. Ever since then, the experts have been haggling about the attribution. Personally, I think The Massacre of the Innocents looks nothing like Rubens - some of the compositional aspects (the figures at the rear-left-hand-side) don't look too well worked out. Rubens made extensive oil sketches before finalising a large work, I don't see any sign of that experimentation or research. Another giveaway (tho I've never had anyone agree with me on this one...) is that PPR couldn't paint breasts. His women look like men with two oranges pasted on their front. Now, at the time, the life-models were all men, it's just that most artists of the time could interpret the different body. Hell, most of PPR's women have adam's apples;-)

Anyway, I've always thought the Samson looks like a 'real' Rubens, and what a nice way to spend an afternoon:-)

And on the topic of airport, this is unbelievable, a piece of software with security by obscurity actually built in

Scaffolding is gone (woohoo). What a week... am at this mo typing via 802.11 on a blanket amongst the weeds in the garden :-) I'm chewing on a very moist montechristo number two (the torpedo roll) and have just cracked the seal on a bottle of jack...

mmm...

...of course, the weather is shit, but if you waited for the sun in this country, you'd never get outside. And of course, if anyone wants to sit on the stoop and use the airport, go for it )(

You know, when I got my first job in advertising, Mike was being asked to sell Reagan to Black America. When Mike starts a small new media business, I was starting a small new media business, and darn, now that I've just bought a SUV this happens

I thought should stick around for a couple of minutes before disappearing down the cronological listings:

Verisign
ICANN strikes
Blood from a stone
Leslie Harpold
Hoopla.com
Leaving Verisign
Fuck Verisign
The value of trust is $35
Say goodbye to NetSol / Verisign
Let's put NetSol to death

Earth summit
Good clean fun, not
New car

Ian Robson
Stupid design rip-off (2/2)
Stupid design rip-off (1/2)

I'm going to experiment with readme.txt and favourites.html as they take up way too much room. This listing/05/move arount the page in the process.

This from the MGI-Talk list (Thanks, Joe) this guy is invoicing Verisign for his wasted time:

Put together lamely, but for those that regularly deal with the registrars, the following might be enjoyable for you:

www.deepskytech.com/registrars/

Cheers!

I am so incredibly busy today so why do I keep posting this nonsense? And dude, you have to read this. It' s like, totally.

Woo hoo, I've just donated twenty bucks to Leslie's fund I say "woo hoo" as I've never used my paypal account before. It was kind of exciting (yes, I will get out more)...

It's funny, I was thinking: God I'm glad no one wants me to do javascript rollovers anymore. For some reason, I've just stopped using them—they're a nasty, cheesy hack and I'm desperately trying to stay away from cheesy hacks in my design work. Basically, if there is a "hover" event handler (onmouseover) in a piece of browser software, why not use CSS to do your effect? It's lighter, cleaner nicer, goes to church and brushes its teeth...

And thank you Jason for reminding me of this:-)

Leslie has put together a legal defense fund and is going to try and reclaim her hijacked domain hoopla.com. Find out more. And yes, I am about to make a donation.

Ok, so I never thought it would ever happen to me.

I could never work out what people thought was so great about cars? My bike has a catalytic converter—yup, it sacrifices lovely horsepower to reprocess unspent fuel molecules so that when I do doughnuts in front of the little kids outside the Seven-Eleven their little lungs aren't hurt. Even with my bike hobbled, it still runs the pants off anything on four wheels and is just plain fun to drive. Not only that, it's personal, I/05/not remember my wife's birthday, but I remember picking up Baby, my 1982 Kawasaki Z1000J2 on the evening of october 10th 1985. I remember walking over to her (large, black, shiny) body as she rested in her seller's garage. I put the key in the ignition, turned the tumbler and fell in love.

So anyway, getting a bit side-tracked there—my point was that I couldn't see any fun at all in car ownership. Not only that, I've always thought those big american SUVs were just plain silly, and burned way too much fossil fuel (never mind the fact that they obliterate any other car in an accident...) and I couldn't see the point and you'd never get me in one of them, and if you did, I'd give it up no trouble for the right reasons if I had to.

So I walk out to the new Jeep, get in (air conditioning), slot Fox Base Alpha into the CD player (not listened to that in years but what a classic album) and floor it down Woodchurch road. I'm tooling down the road with the CD cranked all the way, the aircon going and I'm hitting the speedbumps at high speed, not quite bottoming out the massive wishbones, I get to Waitrose and dive into the underground car park at high speed (slippery floor, lots of lovely tyre squealing) missing the concrete pillars by a hair (this beast is big) and finish up parked right in front of the lift.

Or, in other words, I was driving like a cunt.

Now, normally I wouldn't. But I'm embarrassed to say it was fun, very fun. A particularly selfish, non-inclusive nasty kind of fun. I think at this point, we're going to need a bout of legislation to get me out of that car;-)

Hey dug, the Guardian likes your 'whimsical personal/tech blog'

B-)

Billy,
Yeah, I know;-)

well, next step on the long and rocky road to university admissions: teething. Of course Clementine is only 13 weeks old (her birthday was yesterday) so by rights shouldn't be teething yet. It's just that she's started chewing more actively and (more distressing, this) has started drooling like Bavarian blood hound.

So we're off to buy a chewy toy on Finchley road.

On a completely different note, I wonder what percentage of UK bloggers are Guardian readers (I can see the headlines now Boris Johnson secret blogging Guardian reader). So that'll give me something to think about, chewy toy, Boris Johnson, chewy toy, Boris Johnson...

But seriously, have all the participants in the Guardian's Big Blog Push come from bloggers reading their regular paper or have they simply followed links from other blogs?

Permalinks have been enabled on this blog. You know what to do.

I noticed this link on Jon's site.

Thank you thank you thank you :-)

Just had a latte at Costa's on West End Lane. I can't believe I used to drink Starbucks coffee. I'd tried it the world over and no matter how many italian-ish words I used, no matter how I attempted to explain how the foam or lack of foam was supposed to be, the number of shots (catches breath) no matter how much milk, sugar, hot water, juju beads—whatever—I added or subtracted from that liquid they call coffee it was always shit.

More fool me for trying over and over again?what was that Chinese proverb about a man falling over a log?

Those bloggers out there who list west hampstead as your tube station you know who you are try this simple test. Get a single expresso from Starbucks and a single expresso from Costa, sit down in Costa (the more comfortable shop) and try them side by side. It should be blindingly obvious which one is burnt and which one isn't...

Apparently, this is a whimsical personal/tech blog (guardian blog guide)

mmm... whimsical:-)

Nick and I took Clem to The Osteopathic Centre for Children this afternoon. There's nothing wrong with her, it's just that as she was ventouse (French for suction-cup—sez it all) delivered, the word on the street says you should get her skull looked at.

She was treated by a couple of really good people and I think she quite enjoyed it... The whole operation is fantastic — old Dianna arranged for the Centre (which is a charity) to get this building and they've converted the entire house (that';s an entire house on Harley Street) into a wonderful child-friendly space. The receptionist sits in a tree house, the walls are all different colours and the treatment rooms are huge open spaces with tables made out of giant slabs of oak.

The whole experience made me want to be the one getting treatment:-)

Hadn't checked my search engine referrals in a while. It's always interesting to see what's on peoples' minds. In order of popularity:

breast feeding pics
crazy donkey
deborah lizard
evil donkey
breast feeding in public pics

I'm almost tempted to try that last one myself (the search, not the breastfeeding)

Just got a note from verisign telling me the pumpernickle domain was about to expire. This is interesting because I've now started the long slow painful migration away from the servants of Beelzebub and towards the light of an internic recommended registrar.

As of a few days ago, the whois db updated and pumpernickle.net is no longer with Verisign (woohoo!). Which of course doesn't answer the question of why they're still warning me about expiry dates.

And for those who missed the earlier post — I'm leaving verisign and you can too. Go here to find a list of internic accredited registrars and make your move today:-)

I recently bought Nicki a new car. Or more precisely, some faceless financial institution is letting me keep a car that Nicki uses as long as I promise to give them money every month for the rest of my life;-)

I've never owned a car before, I've been a motorcycle person my whole life. I've heard so much about that new car smell and about the experience of taking the plunge and buying one of the beasts and expected to take part in this emotional journey populated by Ivy league looking boys with brill-creamed hair and white teeth. I expected shaggy dogs to bark at fire engines and lots of friends with big white smiles to cheer me on as I got the sponge and bucket out on the first weekend to give the thing a clean.

Now for some reason I've always struggled to participate in a certain type of mythology. I want that happy summer afternoon with whitewall tyres and choc-malts but instead I just feel like shit about it.

mmm...

Anyway, I am now safe in the knowledge that my wife and child are tooling around town in a comfortable world of airbags and tension regulated seat-belts, and you know, even though this takes us one step further up the great cliché ladder of life, knowing the girls are heavily armed makes me feel pretty good...

Just thought I'd better tell Dean that there is an unmissable film on Canal Jaune at 22h45 (quarter to eleven) \t It's Claude Lelouche's unmissable Un homme qui me plaît which showcases the talents of Farah Fawcett and JP Belmondo.

And just to flog a dead horse, the music is by Francis Lai (he of Un homme et une femme's shabadabadap, shabadabadap, nos cœurs qui battent etc etc)

I know you'll want to know the story so...

Françoise, actrice, se rend à Hollywood pour un tournage. Là, elle rencontre Henri, un compositeur de musiques de films d'origine française mais naturalisé italien. Un soir d'ennui, elle devient...

So let me get this right, Belmondo is playing Lai and so that makes Fawcett Anouk Aimée?

mmm...

I was going to say I'm now back at work and describe hols etc etc but i just found the following in my inbox from Jed, my father and I thought it kind of did the job:-)

...summer's rollin' on in Devon and we have the kids out every day playing Croquet ("Croquet is O.Quet!"). The miracle is that each day has been more sunny than the last...Full Moon reflecting off the warm calm silver sea and the remains of the fire for the Bar-B-Q on the still warm pebbles. These last few days have been like the remembered summers of my long gone boyhood. Of course I know that Memory lies, but humans have the great skill of forgetting the bad bits (whole summers of rain!). If we didn't have this skill of forgetting no Mothers would ever bear children...

I recently started listening to WFMU again thanks to the miracle of adsl. Can somebody tell me what it is about Alan Watts that make his lectures so impossible to switch off? I know nothing of Buddhism and am not normally drawn to Eastern Mysticism but this guy delivers his wisdom in a particularly funny way. In fact, large parts of the recordings are him chuckling...

Right, am off (in Nicki's shiny new car) to Thorpeness for part II of our family summer hols:-)

Robbie Bushe is a life-long friend of Billy and one of the most amazing artists I've had the pleasure to know. Of course, he makes his own websites and his navigation is as rich, complex and textured as his work in oils;-)

In the interest of instant gratification, here is a direct link to his new Cyprus paintings (thank you Billy for pointing these out).

Right—watched 23 last night and have just finished watching 24. I just have to say I still think it's rubbish. ...don't let them connect you to Germany oh so Nina is working for some shadowy organisation in Germany? Didn't Victor Drazen order Nina to be shot? If Bauer hadn't put the bulletproof jacket on her she'd be dead? Why can't the writers just take the time to construct (mastermind?) a proper conspiracy where even the darkest events can be understood with enough digging. If the X-Files can hold it together why no 24 (or should I say 12pm)? Or the Manchurian Candidate, or...

Mike comments:

>heyup Dug,
>
>just read your posting re 24 ... IIRC, the
>shooting of Nina was a result of a 3rd party
>contractor (chappie who fscked up in the first 11
>or so hours), rather than Drazen directly. I
>could be wrong of course, it's all got to be a bit
>of blur now ...
>
>cheers
>
>Mike ~~~~ Just when you thought I'd finished ...
>
>...http://www.mikespace.net
>

An open letter to Ian Robson, the guy who put his name to my work. He has apologised and wishes to make amends. Here is his note and my reply.

>Dug,
>
>"This fucking idiot has grabbed large chunks of the Pumpernickle site
>(including the basic XHTML template)"
>
>i was only mucking about with it and god knows how you found it, i don't
>think it's linked to. i was experimenting with the xhtml.
>
>the last thing i would want to do is cause offense so i've removed the site.
>
>please/05/i retrospectively ask permission to use it from you, if you are
>the original creator, in the future??
>
>fond regards
>
>ian
>

Ian,

Thanks for getting in touch. I just want to make a few basic principles absolutely clear if that's ok with you.

1 - The net is an open, free and public space. My websites are in the public domain so you should feel free to use all or parts of them any way you please as often as you like.

2 - At its best, the net is a collaborative space. This means if we all give a little, it benefits all of us a lot. The open source movement is a good example of this as is the web standards movement. In the case of standards, this means making that extra effort to get your page right so that the web as a whole is improved.

3 - Our ability to generate original thought, whether it be a line of code, a photograph or an 800 page novel is a big part of what makes us human. The moral right to be identified as the author of one's work is an important, universal human right.

So what does this mean?

In a nutshell, take my code, make it better, and then send it back to me. If you want to use my design components, go ahead, just don't put your name to them until you've put enough of yourself into it to make them yours.

Finally, if you don't want to credit me, that's fine too. Just don't credit yourself instead.

All the best,
Dug

Billy has chimed in to the 24 debate;-) The offshoot of this email correspondence is that I'm kicking myself for not having sat through the penultimate episode. I guess I'll just have to pay attention when the "previously, on 24" starts...

And another thing — digital clock countdown to 24:00:00 (midnight) so why is the time displayed in am/pm format for the "these events happen between" mmm?

Just re-read this blog page... Yes I am going to get out more, yes I will up my hypericum levels and yes I'll consider anger counselling from Ren and Stimpy;-)

Am now in countryside on hols.

Well, it had to happen — Verisign has handed over one of my domains to some nasty little cybersquatter:-( I'm trying to go on holiday (since yesterday) and shit just wont stop hitting the fan...

This fucking idiot has grabbed large chunks of the Pumpernickle site (including the basic XHTML template) both code and design and has 'pre' dated the stuff and claims it as his own. It's unbelievable, he's so bold, he's even left my style calls and comments in the (renamed) stylesheets!

I don't know wether to laugh or cry grrrr

Compare:
my file

and:
his file

He has now taken down his js file. However, I thought I'd post a copy of his file for posterity.

I'm gonna lynch the little fucker:-(((

That Google is now configurable. It allows you to store useful preferences such as language. Google now reports my results in "Ewmew Fudd".

Now let's see what those linguabloggers make of this...

>
> (snip)
>
> But the preposterousness of the series is part of
> the fun... Some of it I agree goes a bit too far
> (that whole memory-loss thing for one) but on
> the whole it knows what it is and sticks with it.
>

To be fair, I am sort of missing the point. It's just that every time I start getting into it (enjoying the 'fun') I keep getting snapped out of it... This/05/be a disability on my part;-)

>> I'm hoping Nina is the mole and that Jamie
>> didn't kill herself but was 'helped along'
>> by her. Guess I'll have to watch the last
>> episode after all;-)
>
> If only you'd watched to the
> end of the episode... ;)
>

AAAAAAARRRRGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

darn darn darn. You're messing with my head right;-)

Best,
Dug

...................................

dug falby

creative director
pumpernickle.net
http://www.pumpernickle.net

was: "Re:24"

On Mon,/08/12, 2002 at 01:30:20PM, dug falby wrote:

> I have watched 24 right from the start, never missing
> an episode (in fact last night's was the first one I
> haven't watched). At first I had high hopes - a talented
> cast with interesting newcomers, a complex conspiracy
> at the highest levels (because all the good ones are)
> exotic art direction and a novel narrative structure.
> My popcorn was ready.

OK 8) Shame on me for jumping to conclusions based on a single weblog entry!

> Over time, none of the characters have deepened.
> Senator Palmer's wife was Lady Macbeth from the
> get-go and continues to tow that line without surprises.
> Teri was always going to be an interesting part - a
> woman torn between the search for her own happiness,
> the responsibility of supporting her family and her
> destructive relationship with her desirable but dangerous
> husband. Imagine Isabel Huppert or Gina McKee playing the
> part, their performance would hurt and delight at the
> same time...
>
> Of course this brings me back to my original point that
> the writing is poor. In the case of Leslie Hope (Teri
> Bauer) I really wonder if she could do much better
> (I understand she's also a director - perhaps a
> better avenue for her talents?).

To be honest, I mostly agree with you... But for me, it's always been a high-octane thriller rather than something deep and meaningful. Eye candy, brain-switched off entertainment. Yes, a lot more could have been done with it, and it's possibly a shame that it wasn't, but that doesn't really diminish that much from what it actually is...

> Without yacking on too much, I tried to enjoy the show
> on several levels. Nice looking Apple computers, the sexy
> Nina, lots of interesting hardware and some nasty Balkan
> bad boys should have made an experience at least as fun
> as playing a video game? Every time I thought I was
> getting into it, some absolutely ridiculous plot twist
> would yank my disbelief out of suspension.

But the preposterousness of the series is part of the fun... Some of it I agree goes a bit too far (that whole memory-loss thing for one) but on the whole it knows what it is and sticks with it.

I imagine that much of the inconsistancy was more due to the fact that the original series only had nine episodes commissioned (I forget the exact number, but it was up to the point where Bauer rescued his family)... Not an excuse, I know, but something that might be fixed in the next series.

> For instance, "that's impossible" cut to Denis Hopper
> staring into cctv camera (*shudder*) - two minutes later
> he opens his mouth "ahah! I yam zee evill mann" unbeleivebly
> cheesy accent! Nobody listened to Sean Conery who pointed
> out that he never did accents - he's far more
> effective as himself. A case in point with Denis
> Hopper, who could forget the chilling "Suave, man.
> You're so fuckin' suave."? In fact, comparing Frank
> Booth and Victor Drazen (is that how you spell it)
> really points out the different tension levels
> - I'd be happy for a six-year-old to watch 24,
> but Blue Velvet? I think I'd make it over 21 only:-)

Yep, I'd agree with you on that. 8)

> Ok, so now I am yacking... just a couple more questions:
> Who were the gunmen that killed Jack's boss in the hotel
> car park working for? I'm going to watch the last episode
> where I hope this will be explained. How bad could the
> conspiracy be? We've already implicated senior
> democratic party personnel... Ok, so running for president
> in the US is a dangerous, high stakes game - I think we
> knew that, but why involve some minor central European
> bad guy when the meaty stuff is right there at home
> in Washington?
>
> I'm hoping Nina is the mole and that Jamie didn't kill
> herself but was 'helped along' by her. Guess I'll have
> to watch the last episode after all;-)

If only you'd watched to the end of the episode... ;)

Chris

--
Chris Carline

chris@carline.org
http://chris.carline.org/
GnuPG: 1024D/57B5CB20 | 5E85 207A 89D8 E097 0C0F FD4C 871A CE15 57B5 CB20

was "Re: heresy"

Hi Chris,

Mmmm... Ok, I should probably clarify;-)

I have watched 24 right from the start, never missing an episode (in fact last night's was the first one I haven't watched). At first I had high hopes - a talented cast with interesting newcomers, a complex conspiracy at the highest levels (because all the good ones are) exotic art direction and a novel narrative structure. My popcorn was ready.

Over time, none of the characters have deepened. Senator Palmer's wife was Lady Macbeth from the get-go and continues to tow that line without surprises. Teri was always going to be an interesting part - a woman torn between the search for her own happiness, the responsibility of supporting her family and her destructive relationship with her desirable but dangerous husband. Imagine Isabel Huppert or Gina McKee playing the part, their performance would hurt and delight at the same time...

Of course this brings me back to my original point that the writing is poor. In the case of Leslie Hope (Teri Bauer) I really wonder if she could do much better (I understand she's also a director - perhaps a better avenue for her talents?).

Without yacking on too much, I tried to enjoy the show on several levels. Nice looking Apple computers, the sexy Nina, lots of interesting hardware and some nasty Balkan bad boys should have made an experience at least as fun as playing a video game? Every time I thought I was getting into it, some absolutely ridiculous plot twist would yank my disbelief out of suspension.

For instance, "that's impossible" cut to Denis Hopper staring into cctv camera (*shudder*) - two minutes later he opens his mouth "ahah! I yam zee evill mann" unbeleivebly cheesy accent! Nobody listened to Sean Conery who pointed out that he never did accents - he's far more effective as himself. A case in point with Denis Hopper, who could forget the chilling "Suave, man. You're so fuckin' suave."? In fact, comparing Frank Booth and Victor Drazen (is that how you spell it) really points out the different tension levels - I'd be happy for a six-year-old to watch 24, but Blue Velvet? I think I'd make it over 21 only:-)

Ok, so now I am yacking... just a couple more questions: Who were the gunmen that killed Jack's boss in the hotel car park working for? I'm going to watch the last episode where I hope this will be explained. How bad could the conspiracy be? We've already implicated senior democratic party personnel... Ok, so running for president in the US is a dangerous, high stakes game - I think we knew that, but why involve some minor central European bad guy when the meaty stuff is right there at home in Washington?

I'm hoping Nina is the mole and that Jamie didn't kill herself but was 'helped along' by her. Guess I'll have to watch the last episode after all;-)

was: "heresy"

24 the worst-written show on tv?

Poppycock!

24 is a brilliant, albeit extended, caper series. And you've seen it without the context of the previous 22 episodes. It's like coming into Star Wars just before Han Solo rescues Luke from Darth just before he destroys the Death Star. I daresay you'd be less than impressed (and immersed) at that point too. "What's going on?", "That's likely" and "You've got to be kidding" comments would also apply.

I'll lend you my DVD box set after it arrives next week. 8)

Chris
--
Chris Carline
chris@carline.org
http://chris.carline.org/
GnuPG: 1024D/57B5CB20 | 5E85 207A 89D8 E097 0C0F FD4C 871A CE15 57B5 CB20

Started watching tonight's episode and just decided on the spur of the moment that this has to be the worst written show on tv.

So I turned off my tv, came over to the computer and sent this note instead.

(snapshots from my in-tray)

Dear Friend,

As much as this hurts to do, I have to ask for help.

Let me explain !

Im the poorest excuse for a human being ever.Im unemployed, uneducated, and uninsurable.In addition you wont look at me for very long Im unattractive actully down right ugly.I try every day to get a job but at 48 with no skills and no personality all the doors shut.For 35 years I tried to drink myself away, and almost succeded,but even at like the rest of my wortless self I failed. now the Doctors say I have to start cheomtherapy for the liver but I have no insurance.Im not a bad person I dont drink anymore or do bad things. I have thought of things like chain letters and such but I know its wrong and I wont do bad things, but I need help could you please send some money!! anything !! It would help I dont know what else to do but ask.I cant promise anything in return I dont have anything nor does it look like i will .

At least its honest im not promising anything or lying !! Please reach into your heart! you will really be helping just one person. here is my name and adress.If you like,include your E-mail adress and I do promise to tell you how much money is sent

Thank You For Listnening

Chuck Mangold
P.O box 300671
Chicago IL, 60630-0671

I've just had a few shitty connectivity days. First of all BT cut off my adsl line (yes, my payment was late, but I'm on a 'business' tariff and you don't just cut off business users without a) a phone call b) an email) at 17:00 friday night. By the time I had figured out that the line was the problem, I called them and tried to settle my outstanding bill. Turns out they go home at 17:00 on Friday and are closed over the week-end (*fume*).

Anyway, I bollocked the tech support manager and they re-connected me, but then the network went down on wednesday in a thunder storm (we actually had a lightning strike blow some stuff up - v. rare in London) and I've just spent the last two days repairing and replacing bits and bobs.

But on the bright side, in the process, I figured I/05/as well get the router flashed so drove up to the Hertfordshire countryside just north of the M25 to the little shop that sold me the router. Now, while-you-wait didn't mean quick, so I ended up spending a large part of the day parked at a little pub by a stream drinking warm beer and smoking a Hoyo de Monterey double corona (yumm) while reading the Guardian.

Richard Dawkins, an Oxford science don, suggested Mr Bush was just as much of a danger to world peace as Saddam Hussein, adding: "It would be a tragedy if Tony Blair were to be brought down through playing poodle to this unelected and deeply stupid little oil-spiv."

"unelected and deeply stupid little oil-spiv" I just let the words roll around for a while. Go Dawkins, go get 'em boy. So when the router was ready to collect, I decided to take the shortcut across the stream (it was a proper ford, no problem for the trusty GS) which while fun, was also very wet, as I totally miscalculated the depth of the thing:-)

When i was a little boy of about seven or eight (I'm guessing) my father sat me down with his sample books and started teaching me letterforms. The one I remember most clearly was Poster Bodoni Italic. I loved the slanted shapes and learned to trace, then draw them freehand, eventually lettering lowercase forms between two lines to mark the x-height.

I now have my own collection of sample books, most of them from type shops now gone the way of the steam engine. Some day I'll scan some pages and say some words about Fred, Ed, Eric and Adrian, but that wasn't the point of this post.

I had forgotten about sewwrong. I regularly visit Mena Trott but only infrequently stop by sew wrong. It's a sewing blog, with howtos, projects and pictures posted by a small community of seamstresses. I couldn't sew on a button if my life depended on it but the sheer industriousness of the whole project fascinates me:-)

I might even test drive a thimble one of these days.

When a registrar gives away your name to a fraudulent applicant and then refuses to do anything about it, it's time to change registrars. I believe I put it like this in an earlier post...

Talk about a fucking meltdown — this is like santa coming 'round on boxing day to take your presents away

Internic maintains a list of accredited registrars. Go there now. Find a new friend and transfer all your domains.

For buying me the most stylish shaving mirror I've ever seen. Ok, so she did it to prevent me installing my grotty old one in our lovely new bathroom, but is it not the most amazing thing you've ever seen?

Kinda like the Imac of shaving mirrors...

I hadn't heard this in ages. When I was a kid we used to try and learn all the words...

quite a tongue twister;-)

Yam! Bam! mon chat Splash
Gît sur mon lit a bouffé sa langue
En buvant tout mon whisky quant à moi
Peu dormi, vidé, brimé
J'ai dû dormir dans la gouttière
Où j'ai eu un flash
Hou! Hou! Hou! Hou!
En quatre couleurs
 
Allez hop! un matin
Une louloute est venue chez-moi
Poupée de Cellophane
Cheveux chinois un sparadrap
Une gueule de bois a bu ma bière
Dans un grand verre en caoutchouc
Hou! Hou! Hou! Hou!
Comme un indien dans son igloo
 
Ça plane pour moi ça plane pour moi
Ça plane pour moi moi moi moi moi
Ça plane pour moi
Hou! Hou! Hou! Hou!
Ça plane pour moi
 
Allez hop! la nana quel panard!
Quelle vibration! de s'envoyer
Sur le paillasson
Limée, ruinée, vidée, comblée
You are the King of the divan!
Qu'elle me dit en passant
Hou! Hou! Hou! Hou!
I am the King of the divan
 
Ça plane pour moi ça plane pour moi
Ça plane pour moi moi moi moi moi
Ça plane pour moi
Hou! Hou! Hou! Hou!
Ça plane pour moi
 
Allez hop! t'occupe t'inquiète touche pas ma planète
It's not today
Quel le ciel me tombera sur la tête
Et que l'alcool me manquera
Hou! Hou! Hou! Hou!
Ça plane pour moi
 
Allez hop! ma nana s'est tirée
S'est barrée enfin c'est marre à tout casser
L'évier, le bar me laissant seul
Comme un grand connard
Hou! Hou! Hou! Hou!
Le pied dans le plat
 
Ça plane pour moi ça plane pour moi
Ça plane pour moi moi moi moi moi
Ça plane pour moi
Hou! Hou! Hou! Hou!
Ça plane pour moi
Ça plane pour moi ça plane pour moi
Ça plane pour moi moi moi moi moi

Someone else comes along... This person really needs to get out more;-)

Well, in just two weeks, our grotty hell-hole has become a beautiful designer bathroom — In fact, it's so posh I keep thinking that a guy is going to hand me a towel and expect a tip every time I take a slash, it's that posh. Oh, and a free pint if you can name the photographer on the wall.

None of the builders disappeared and so far nothing has gone too drastically wrong.

Now for the bill;-)

Yesterday I had a pint in Kilburn for ?1.20 and a pint in Kentish Town for ?1.45 — so how come I've been drinking in the West End?

Got some good news yesterday re work and taxes (more and less in that order).

Well, the bike leasing guy (Paul Preddy) has gone off to make some calculations re my lease... posting from his desktop (is that rude? one needs to use all the connectivity one can). So in a few weeks, the big yellow beast, becomes an even bigger black and yellow beast :-)

Updates to follow if I can get my head round it :-)

OK guys, this isn't that complicated. There's a Macos X port on the go complete with binaries to download, and the chaps in charge are doing their best to make it understandable and usable for plebs like myself who wouldn't know were to start. Also, If you're a designer and want to make a difference, esp. by making the PGP apps look good enough to use, check this out (If you want to participate, email the man):

seems the last news post has excited interest in designing icons for Mac GPG, I'm pleased to say. So, the icon contest is back on, only not as formally as before.

It's not a competition in the traditional sense, just some geeks desperately in need of a helping hand in the graphics department. Following on from yayhooray's w3c icon project, let's see what we can do for privacy :-)

Good opening editorial from NTK — I'm hoping for a grass-roots reaction. Might be time to finally figure out how to use gnuPG. I wonder how much it would slow things down if we encrypted (almost) every that left our machines?

First, a big hello to all new listeners. Since yesterday, every ISP with more than 10,000 subscribers has been obliged to provide an interception capability to the government, permitting Approved Types With Non-Judicial Warrants the chance to sniff all traffic from IP addresses.

Sorry reader, I've been playing and the result is that the lovely barebones template now includes a goofy background image.

I love the rule effect... I was thinking I might actually use this background as a site development aide — to assess column widths and so on...

Thank you Zeldman for pointing to this script by kryogenix.org:

aqTree2: explorer-style trees from unordered lists. What it is: Below is an unordered list, which will be converted by the included JavaScript library into an explorer-tree structure if you've got a browser capable of doing it...

This way I'll have spent my whole day thinking about ways for DOM manipulation to use standard html constructs in funky new way :-)

Oh, and by the way, the earlier example isn't real code, so don't go telling me how it should be using the GetElementByID method ok?

Had a little chat with Eddie Traversa over at dhtmlnirvana.com this morning and we got to talking about how some nice dom manipulation can give you Flash-like effects without the plugin. Or, in other words, how many people even notice the dhtml cross fading on pumpernickle.net I think most folks either just experience it without noticing it or assume it's a Flash effect...

Right about the same time, Andy sent me an email asking if the dom could be manipulated to render the "open" state of a select list. I said no, as the browser uses the os's widget library to draw it but he could probably hack something in dhtml. So I got curious and have just spent the last hour playing with a formatted html definition list

Why in the world would you want to complicate a page like this when the plain vanilla select statement does the job? Answers on a post-card — still, it looks nice (and works well in Lynx, of course)...

Thank you enigmatic mermaid for pointing me at the aria database — perhaps not the net's most useful resource, but fun, and v. cool :-) Try this text file for the aria that's been eating me up most recently. Which reminds me, must go shopping for more...

Had a back-up :-) So all is well in deathmatch (trying to get enough to buy the warp drive).

Yes, intellectually I know this is sad, but hey...

Had a very nice day yesterday kicking around London in the sun with Andrew Keith Ward

We met up in Borough Market (fantastic - I alway say i should spend more time down there...), drank far too much wine whisky and beer (not in that order) and ended up roaming around the south bank.

At some point we got to convince the woman at the Tate ticket desk that Andy and I are art students who not only must get in to Tate Modern to see the Matisse show forthwith, but that even though we forgot our student cards we should still get the concession.

Enjoyed show v. much :-)

After Tate we tried to squeeze another pint in at the Blackfriars, but it was closed (I've always wanted to go in and check out the amazing pseudo-gothic interior) so instead decided to get sensible and head home :-)

arse. deathmatch has been hacked. As much as I like the idea of a secure internet with no open relays and exploit-resistant boxes those silly hackers (you know the ones, the ones that shouldn't be calling themselves hackers in the first place coz hacking has nothing to do with messing with people's stuff and use that really annoying STUpidZ4U upper-and-lower HkkkerZZ typography grrr) shouldn't do the own thing.

Particularly if they did a rm -R as root thereby deleting everything (including my little alien avatar I had wasted hours getting to level 600 more grrr).

Bastards.

I have been sleeping days all week. It's the only way to be 'fresh' for use of the broadband connection without workmen hammering and drilling... I've developed a rash and am wondering when The West Wing's Sam and Ainsley are finally going to have their earth-moving sexual encounter. Spent most of today over at Billy's house. Sat in the bath for an hour and then slept on the grass getting sunburned for two or three.

It's amazing how debilitating not having a bathroom can be.

I was about to hit the "send" button (these notes are posted via email) when I remembered the Seven-of-Nine and Janeway love stories... I'm guessing it's mostly women who write this stuff, so Aisnley and Sam sounded like a good candidate. A quick Google later and voilà

I love you, Ainsley Hayes. I love that you never let up, I love that you're passionate about what you believe in, I love how you were with Theresa and Paloma, how you and Mom are with one another.
Sam, People are staring at us. I think they want us to board so they can take off.
They're staring?
Uh huh,
Then let's give them something to look at. Sam grabbed her and pulled her close for an earth shattering kiss.
There's going to be TALK, Sam, she said when he broke the kiss.
Do you care?
Let's give them something to talk about. Ainsley grabbed his tie and pulled him in for another tender kiss. Eventually, they boarded the plane to thunderous applause.

Ahhh...

with poorly framed art-historical references, here's Pat the plaster hard at work in the bathroom. He does look fairly Herculean, no (or am I thinking Atlas...)? And what a smooth surface — months of practise and I can't get anywhere near that - I'm beginning to wonder why I did the back room myself ;-)

our bathroom designer is sitting in the kitchen weaving silver thread. I half expect her to pull out a golden fleece or pose with a six-legged lion (or was that five-legged, must check my Assyrian art history ;-)) She's making some sort of tiara-type thing with little incrusted bits of glass (I'm guessing) - she's got a box full of little hard things that shimmer...

But if you have adsl http://www.spent2000.com/2002/ works well. I liked "It's good to be here" (I would have provided a link, but hey, the whole site is a big swf so no links).

No wait - I am trying to say I like this site, yeah?

Clearly old Chrimble has too much time on his hands. His power rating in paranormal deathmatch (and he could afford the magic wardrobe) would indicate that the man has fought 4,761 opponents, taking an average of two minutes per fight, that's 9,533 minutes of fighting, or 158 hours (the equivalent of twenty (20!) workdays) of metaphysical bloodshed ;-)

Lessee...

03:00 put computer to sleep
03:30 put dug to sleep
05:15 paper boy hangs satchel on front door
06:30 builders climb scaffolding out front of house
07:00 kevin + andy arrive to gut the bathroom
07:20 paul knocks on door (he's kev's boss)
07:30 paper boy retrieves satchel
08:30 nadinne (the designer) arrives
08:45 wake computer up

Darn, and I thought I'd catch a few zeds with Clem in Scotland ;-)

Is it just me or did the 5k disapoint this year? This year for the first time, most of the 'cleverer' entries don't work on my machine. The fact that these same entries are often highly rated worries me. Mebbe next year we could have a "web" category instead of the current "device dependent" category :-(

They're off to Scotland for the week as the bathroom builders move in this week. On the way home I dropped in on the Odeon and saw Minority Report - interesting film.

Just spotted two muslim women with three kids outside the mosque in St John's Wood trying to flag a cab. As I sat at the lights I saw no less than four (!) empty black cabs refuse to pick them up.

(Friday 2 August-- works still in progress) I was making some moodboards in illustrator the other day and hit "outline" ? which got me this groovy background pattern of random boxes...

Ok it's 19k but sure looks nice on a 21" monitor ;-)

Hadn't seen the man in years (literally). It was strangely reassuring - he hadn't changed a bit, still the same high-energy unstoppable force of nature :-) He has moved on from being London's top celebrity photographer to television director which is pretty darn exciting as this is basically his life-long dream. Sven's wife Mandy (Amanda Burton, the actress) and girls are good too - his wee baby is now a teen-ager (shudder).

I did say I wasn't going to focus on memory or reminiscing, it's just that the sun was shining and we talked about people we worked with together (Jen and Will finally managed to reproduce and have two lovely kids) and it all got me thinking.

I can't believe I missed his Stay Still ten year bash - it was apparently a major drunken and glittery (in that order?) affair and he had one of my prints for sale (a 45 inch close-up of Jack Dee's right eye). His picture editor handed me a huge bag of outtakes which I went through when I got home. It is quite bizarre looking at transparencies and not even remembering shooting them.

In among the dross was a little snap I did at Barnsdale, Geoff Hamilton's garden, for the Christmas issue of the Radio Times (1995?). What an amazing day that was. I drove for miles to get to his place up North with Gemma Day (who is now a fully-fledged photographer) to photograph Geoff's flower arrangements. When I got there, he walked us through his (giant) garden, cut a few tons of greenery and left it all in a big pile. He then fucked off to choir singing leaving gemma and me to turn it into a styled interior shot of beautiful flowers.

It was bloody frightening, but we fudged it ok in the end and drove home our hands full of thorns. Geoff died in 1996.

Hi dug,

I think you must mean 'whingeing'. The 'h' is constantly dropping from words like this because English folk pronounce 'w' and 'wh' in exactly the same way, which always jars for Scots who pronounce them differently.

btw, Margaret Thatcher (remember?) started pronouncing 'wh' the Scottish way after she went for elocution lessons. John Wells, the phonetician at UCL, pointed out that the 'wh' became the same as 'w' in England long before the 'r' dropped out of words like 'cart', so it's interesting that the elocution teacher still perceived this regression as worthwhile.

The 'e' is there to make the 'ng' sound different from 'winging', 'singing' etc.

B-)

(thank you Billy grin)

What is going around here? Can you believe the British government wants to remove the double jeopardy rule, make previous convictions admissible in court and do away with jury trial in some cases. No legal student, I couldn't tell you why the double jeopardy rule exists, only that without it, a government can simply keep locking up and trying dissentors.

Does anybody else find the thought of Israel building walls around Palestinian enclaves disturbing? Can you say Warsaw? I guess the next step on the road to a peaceful settlement will be the mandatory wearing of yellow crescents? Anyway, here's a more considered response

Ooops... Tell you what, kextunload is intense. Imagine editing the kernel via an ssh conection. It was fun til I killed the usb bus completely (no keyboard no mouse)

from dack.com - the cellphone theatre mini movies (originally designed for viewing via mobile).

nato davos enron wto chechnya milosovic afghanistan cyberterrorism network terror waco oklahoma suicide bomber iraq iran ngo gmo homeland security ashcroft cia nsa fbi saddam hussein chemical weapon mass destruction bush cheney reagan hemp opium bin laden al qaeda andersen cocaine ecstasy anthrax bolivia black helicopters dirty bomb arafat khaddafi taliban (textism.com).

From Simon Willison via Zeldman

...On second thoughts, if you have a blog - blog it. Enough blogger interest leads to mainstream media interest, and the more bad press this gets the better. Sites like this can not be allowed to go without comment, and the more comment the better. Let's humiliate these people in to never, ever creating something this bad again.

okydoky, here's what one million pounds buys you (except, after Dr Evil, a million doesn't seem like that much...):

I'm sure Blogchalk is a just silly trick to get people to publish this sentence (must be an evil backstory somewhere...): Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United Kingdom, London, West Hampstead, Dug, Male, 36-40!

So there you go...

Very impressed with Tomy UK (the people who make those funny radio powered baby monitor things). I thought mine was broken as its flashing light morse code alarm was doing what I thought was the wrong thing. I checked out the web site looking for a plain and simple tech spec on the alarm codes but couldn't get anywhere. The site is all Flash and content free - a real load of poo but to my surprise, when you fill in the "contact us" form (why nasty comments about the site from concerned parents etc etc) they then call you back soon after submitting the form

So much for Mr Ecrm ;-)

Mmmmm... Clem had her first colic last night. Not fun :-(

I remember preparing for Halloween when I was in 3rd grade at the American school in Milan. One of the kids had a real Bell helmet and a driving suit painted black with a white skeleton all over it. I couldn't believe how cool that was (even though I'd never heard of NASCAR). Stock car racing does hold a particular spot in the American subconscious methinks...

Nicki and I were on holiday in the land of Ben and Laura last year, when we stopped for lunch in West Virginia. Food was fantastic basic southern stuff, served with those large brown plastic glasses full of home-made ice tea. I can't remember what we had, but it probably included bbq pork, corn and a sloppy joe (for Nicki's edification).

Anyway, this particular restaurant was pretty much dedicated (all walls covered with tributes, number three on the front door where the "licensed to sell spirits" sign on a pub normally is) to Dale Earnhardt. None of us had ever heard of the man and just chalked it up as another "meeting Elvis" southern experience (I'll tell you about the visit to the prison gift shop some other time).

Anyway, saw this on the illuminated donkey and it reminded me of Ben and Laura

The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the Intimidator. During my trip it gradually dawned on me that the near-ubiquitous #3, in commemoration of Dale Earnhardt, had almost entirely replaced the cross as the pendant of choice in the South. Now, in the long tradition of Virgin Mary sightings, an Earnhardt miracle has occurred.

(yes, allrightallright, I was vanity surfing

Hi dug, Here is the site favoured by academics who are involved in the fight against plagiarism. Its quite a big project about electronic detection, and does mention plagiarism.org

What do you think of their logo?

B-)

playful, retro, unpredictable, jazzy (occasionally, and not in a good sense, I'm afraid). But definite potential overall.

Billy serves beer :-)

apparently, and these people want to help students avoid it. You'd think that a site called Plagiarism.org might try and make a more unique logo. I mean it's a logo with a swoosh(!):

The ultimate reference for swoosh logos is probably swoosh no more and of course the seminal enormicom created by 37signals who brought us that imortal line Complete sentences are so Q4'99. That's why your new brand includes its very own three word tagline.

Finally, v-2.org have a lengthier piece on the subject of the march of the swoosh (but lots of goofy flash navigation).

More strange and wonderful stuff from Cal. Check out this icq conversation

Now, this is silly :-)

The world is made up of wires and stuff. Just scratch away the skin on your arm and look what's there. Wires! The Internet uses wires too, mainly for stuff.

(from Tim Ireland's bloggerhead)

Funny article in the Guardian this morning. Barbara Ellen remembers the hairy hippies of "The Joy of Sex". She laments the passing of said hippies as the new edition has replaced the daft drawings with (no doubt very earnest and tasteful) photos of models.

I was reminded of sneaking a peek at my parent's copy as a little boy. Just for the record, I hope the new edition removes a lot of the original's nonsense or there is going to be a whole new generation of eight-year-old boys who believe men are gay because they fear the vulva. I seem to remember reading that the vulva would jump out and grab the poor guy. This was actually supported by an illustration of what looked like a large pink garden trowel sticking out from between hippy lady's legs - scarry stuff ;-)

Right, I'm sure there were some other pearls in there that I've forgotten. Anyone?

Gosh, you learn something new everyday on the web. The following from a Stanford U paper

In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext. Google is designed to crawl and index the Web efficiently and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems.

If only I had done something useful at school ;-)

Found this while reading the tasty Textism.

Spread the word, wear the dot http://trusted.resource.org

Darn, it's been a whole week - getting sloppy. Piece in the Guardian today theorising about what will happen when punters become able to apply professional-grade special effects to video. The suggestion is that video news will eat itself as we all retreat into home-made news dissemination.

It's a nice idea to think that bloggers might be creating some form of accurate transcription of history as it happens. Personally, I don't see how anything new is happening. In a sense, information has been mediated right from the start. Whether it was a journalist filling via a telegraph wire from Congo, a photo-journalist in Vietnam or just plain-vanilla television news, reality was never guaranteed. We simply agree to consume what we feel is the most likely candidate, according to our own personal belief system.

You could argue that you have to be there ? to see the bullet, hear the explosion to get reality. But even then, without any grasp of a bigger picture, a bit of background, some sort of history or context, how real is your experience?

I seem to remember Faye Dunaway finding a work-around to this problem (I think she was coming on top of William Holden at the same time) with the Mao Tse Tung Hour...

Maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, hijacking 747's, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd open each week's segment with that authentic footage, hire a couple of writers to write some story behind that footage, and we've got ourselves a series... Bosch: A series about a bunch of bank-robbing guerrillas? Schlesinger: What're we going to call it - the Mao Tse-Tung Hour? Diana: Why not? They've got Strike Force, Task Force, SWAT. Why not Che Guevara and his own little mod squad.

So what's next for the television companies?

Anyway, Nick is still not getting enough sleep, but it's for a good cause: Clem is five weeks old tomorrow and has almost doubled her birth weight! She weighed in at 10lbs 1oz at the Solent road health center this morning. The fuel for this amazing trick is of course coming out of Nicki's nipples (she says that sometimes they feel like atomic raspberries).

I've been real busy this week on the work front, lots of meetings, coding and quarking. In the middle of all that, I've managed to have my first ever acupuncture session.

I confess I was slightly dissapointed by the experience as I had been led to believe that I would be a changed man. In the end I left the health place the same man except with a sore left arm...

This cracks me up and this makes me want to shoot myself. Fantastic stuff from Patrick Farley at e-sheep comix and while I'm browsing memory lane, remember air guitar? this was the same year that motion-control techno-dancing baby started doing the rounds...

great gig, if bite-sized (here's a few seconds of "Babies" grabbed with the cannon ixus). Perhaps more small-but-perfectly-formed. Billy and I hooked up with Ian, the painter who is doing Andrew's house. This is a good thing as walking through the forest at one in the morning drunk and armed only with a garmin etrex gps seemed like a good idea at first but in the end the back of Ian's truck was a far more realistic way home.

Billy and I couldn't quite get our heads around a walk in the wilderness to see a band sing about trees ;-) In any case, I just had to snap the beautiful plastic flowers at my B&B bedside (they even have paint splatters - fantastic).

Satisfying gig. Apparently, they're breaking up... (sez billy)

3 mile walk through forest with gps - have arrived at gig:-)

Clem is three weeks old today and my Dad sent me a father's day card (no, I didn't send him one...) which is a really nice lino cut based on a photograph taken a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks Dad :-)

Mom, Dad and other family folk, there's a great shot of Clem having a bath over in the scrapbook :-)

Never have I met anyone more capable of taking a piece of gorgeous, ground-breaking industrial design and turning it to useless rubble in seconds...

I somehow managed to toast a g3 powerbook i was running some tests on over the weekend. macintoshes don't like me very much.

From Chris' icq log

What is it with everyone these days, first KPMG hassles Chris for linking to them and now NPR (no, that's the NRA - the NPR is the well-meaning public braodcasting lot) are demanding that people complete a form to request the permission to link to them. How can we have a hypertext-based medium without the hypertext?

We are rapidly heading towards a two-tier internet. Luckily, the one with the all the money is generally less interesting (except when they're being outrageous). This sort of thing brings out the student lurking inside ;-)

Well, it's Friday, and Nick and Clem have gone off to visit young Gulia, one of the nct babies. It's been quite a week, Nick's parents came down to stay with us, Clem discovered the fun of staying up all night and I can't seem to focus on my keyboard enought to finish anything. To top it all off, we lost to Brazil :-( Don't know why, but I was sure we were going to do well this time. I wonder if Andreas' theory linking sporting performance with national trends like GDP will prove to be true. If it is, we're in for a rocky ride...

But the sun is shining for the first time in ages, and this Sunday I'm off to see Pulp in Thetford forest with Billy, which should be a major laugh :-)

I've just downloaded the new version of netscape — it has all the down-to-basics functionality of Communicator, but with the added extra of a (largely) standards-compliant rendering engine. Also, my parents should be able to upgrade from 4.73 without losing their profiles, mailboxes and shortcuts (ie without pain).

While Moz 1.0 candidate is nice, there is a Moz branch dedicated to getting interface right for OSX. It's known as Chimera and I have to say it is nice to have aqua integration on top of Moz rendering. It's only a pre-release version 0.3, but it appears to behave quite well :-)

Now if only the chaps over at icab could get their CSS2 implementation finished I'd have a choice of 'perfect' browser.

A story I can believe, and one I can't

I've modified the generator script so that the selection of links (over there on the right) automatically extracts my bookmark file and chops out links using a seeded number. This happens every sixty minutes. "Cool" I thought, and then I realised that I don't edit this file, it just grows in a more or less free-form way.

So I just wanted to say that some of the links/05/well be broken and if something a bit dodgy should appear, reload the page and it might go away...

Just a quick grin of thanks to Mr Raettig. His cutdown version of OpenBSD has been powering mum, the pumpernickle intranet box for the last 16 months and his configuration has proved remarkably robust.

 [dug@mum dug]$ uptime 1:35PM up 129 days, 20:22, load averages: 0.39, 0.26, 0.24 

129 days (and that was a power failure, not a crash), and just look at those load averages - we really must try and stress this machine ;-)

...Eager not only to point out rotundity,
He does math too, and shows, with air of profundity,
How much more destructive are sweet, fatty snacks
Than militant Islamic terror attacks...

From Will Warren's Unremitting Verse

emoglen.law.columbia.edu

Moglen teaches law at Columbia in New York. His publications are well worth looking at ...

has been in the house for a week now. She now sleeps in her carry-cot during the day and in bed with Nick and I at night. In between, she is learning to poo and fart at the same time while having her nappy changed, and likes to engage in nipple battering with her mummy. Breast feeding is going well (sez he with no milk) but Clem has a funny thing about Nick's right breast (which personally, I've always found very acceptable) whereby she needs to have a little argybargy with the nipple before latching onto it for her dinner.

Her cord-stump fell off on Saturday which was exciting, but her belly button seems so thin ? it's like you could poke your finger into her tummy, which is a little weird...

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank London-based Evel Knievel Dave Smith for his wishes, and wish him well through the next round of physio, x-rays and general physical pain and suffering — this is a man who knows about epidurals :-)

Been visiting the iamcal network a lot ever since Billy decided to download Cal's metalinker script. Sites like these cheer me up big time.

Also, Cal has been responding to calls for help re debugging the osx version of his script. Way to go Cal :-)

The final word in response to Billy's query — native english speakers/05/address mademoiselle as

Clement - teen

which is close enough ;-)

Also, I just wanted to say "thank you" to all those who emailed congratulations and have not heard back from me individually - please forgive me but it has been a bit of a crazy time

in the history of our little planet. There appears to be an increasing lack of clemency. Anti semitism is working its way back into acceptable middle-class culture, as are other traditional phobias - resentment and distrust are given a body in "the arab", "the asylum seeker" and the expressions of our darkest side are increasingly public - I recently saw a sign saying "no Albanians" outside a social club on my street and this morning's guardian headlines with "India alert as nuclear war looms".

Through the five days of labour that Nicki worked through, I read this book to her. Reading out loud calms her, and can even get her to sleep if she is in pain or worrying, so I picked up a selection of books at random in a bookstore on Haverstock hill near the hospital. It is "The Talmud and the Internet" by Jonathan Rosen.

The story resonated with our own experience as Nicki felt pain and suffered but eventually brought a little Clemence into the world. It looks at how a man can reconcile joy and suffering and find a way to be happy where he fits in to the bigger picture by accepting the impossibility of knowing anything and the responsibility of being a perpetual student. It hints at the necessity of evil and hatred as a way to undestant the need for love, suggesting the value of everything is better understood when seen in a conituum with its evil twin and its not-quite-so-evil distant cousin.

As I write this I realise I've just completely failed to describe the book. It is beautiful because of its humanity and as I think of my little daughter and her mother I hope for humanity in these uncertain times.

As Nick and I were reading our way through hours of labour, two other couples from the same NCT class were also at the RFH. Sam and Ben now have a daughter called Georgia, and Michela and Andreas have delivered young Sophia.

For the benefit of other NCT folk who/05/have been reading this (as i email Akiko with the details) here are pics of Sam with Georgia and Michela with Sophia

A beautiful little girl called Clementine. I have to say, this experience has been beyond intense, as wonderful as it is to hold your little girl - I held her for a couple of hours this morning as Nick had a shower - having to watch the woman you love suffer like that at close range, all the while knowing that there is basically nothing you can do to fix it (fixing it is what us men like to do with problems) is very, very upsetting. Try doing it for coming on five days, a guy could burn out.

But back to Clem, she had the cord wrapped around both her body and neck, which means her heart rate slowed when Nicki pushed (which is bad) and was lying in the wrong direction which made it impossible for Nick to push her out. When she was pulled out via ventouse by the obstetrician, she was blue, had a crazy stare and for a second I worried she wasn't going to make it.

As it turns out, she was completely fine :-) She's a tiny thing at 6 pound 11 ounces - a wee girl. She can almost fit entirely on my forarm.

Nicki is currently sleeping in post-natal and is going to stay in hospital for two days to make sure all is safe and well. She was epiduralled up for almost twelve hours and had not been able to eat beforehand, so she is feeling happy, but weak. Sleep and food should help.

Right, just a quick one as my batteries are almost dead. It's a girl :-) her name is Clementine Luz and she finally joined us at 13:23 this afternoon (Friday 31/05/2002). Pics in the scrapbook

8cm, the landing lights have appeared in the distance

Syntocinin drip, contractions 3mins, transition soon:-)

03:55 - epidural, sleep, poss induction in the morning

4cm dilated - off to labour ward soon

Well, still no baby. But I've uploaded some snaps from the inside of Nicki's ward and great news for Sam and Ben - they have a (not-so-little) girl called Georgia. She is the prettiest thing I've ever seen and Nicki held her for a while in the hopes of tweaking the right get-a-move-on hormones. Needless to say, no dice.

Also from the NCT mob, Michela and Andreas Staab arrived earlier in the labour ward. Michela was doing the water birth thing at the Edgeware, but when her waters broke, they found evidence of meconium so had to ship down to the Royal Free, just in case. So if only Junior Falby would get a move on, we could have a party in the neo-natal ward;-)

11:20 Thursday - still no news.

07:52 having a piece of toast and am about to head in to RFH. Our friend Julie in Dhaka has asked a few questions

However, it looks as if things are improving and hotting up? There's some dilation? Nick's been able to get some rest (couldn't imagine how tired she must have been getting). Presumably, if the labour's not happening, then they must be getting close to inducing or something more radical?

which I thought I'd better answer as others reading this/05/want the information. There is some dilation. At least when Nick was examined at three am yesterday morning, the midwife "could get one finger in" (not the technical of appraisals, but hey).

Labour has been happening, it's just very slow, and when Nicki gets relaxed and sleeps (codydramol, two tablets once or twice a day depending on the pain) the contractions slow. Yesterday evening, Nick woke after being in bed all day and found the contractions were very far apart and not too hard. In the 90 minutes I spent with her on the ward, contractions picked up.

The baby was 'posterior' - it had its back to Nicki's back. This position effectively means that your uterus can push for England, but juniors head has nowhere to go - obviously both frustrating and exhausting, not to mention painful.

The plan as it stands is that we are going to start walking around and bouncing on the ball and see if we can't get junior to move. We are at the point of induction, and Nicki isn't against it, but we're going to see how it goes today.