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Collateral Repair: How to Win the War with Peace. by George Monbiot.
Go to gotomedia.com and checkout the brilliant flash presentation vision 101. Amazing. I can see clearly now. Gotomedia was founded by Kelly Goto, co-author of Web Redesign: Workflow that Works, which I will be reading just as soon as I get a chance. About time I got a bit of process and methodology into my life.
I went to karate class last night with Adrienne, and I am pleased to report I didn't suck too badly. Unlike most karate websites. There is always an honourable exception, and 24 fighting chickens’ Shotokan Planet is a very good karate website indeed. Now all I need are some katas in Flash so I can see how they are broken down bit-by-bit. My limbs get confused.
Mario Kart Super Circuit on the Gameboy Advance is horrendously addictive. My thumbs! My thumbs!
I watched the all-star tribute to those who died in New York. It was amazing watching Chris Rock trying to be sincere. It was disappointing that ultra-anodyne Canadian twig-girl Celine Dion was wheeled on to belt out whatever she belted out. It would have been so, so much radder, in my opinion, if the netowork had had the balls to get her countrymen Godspeed You Black Emperor! to perform The Dead Flag Blues.
The car's on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel…we're trapped in the belly of this terrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.
Or Tool would have been nice. The Rush it is okay to like. Good to see Neil Young in a cowboy hat, rocking back and forth like he does. And apparently Mariah is out of the nuthourse. Bless.
I for one am convinced that if the government introduces compulsory ID cards then all would be terrorists will realise the futility of their continuing and simply give up. Yeah.
My favourite story in this week's inspired Onion: God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule.
Given that Osama bin Liner's [ooh, my sides are splitting] organisation Al Qaeda translates as 'the base', it is surely only a matter of time before some wag with a copy of flash and far too much time on their hands updates the 'all your base are belong to us meme' to comic and propagandistic effect. I'd do it myself, but I find I can't be arsed. You, you do it.
I guess we should keep our eyes peeled for flash-propaganda in general; anyone spotted any yet?
Update! Stuart of t-melt points me helpfully to exactly what I was on about.
You might find it amusing to call the world's biggest bastard™ Osama bin Liner, if you are English. Apparently Americans call them 'trash bags', so it won't work for you, sorry.
Hurrah, after a few weeks of shell-shock, the onion is back with a vengeance! And at Salon.com: Irony is dead! Long live Irony!
That's the spirit chaps, get back to work! We need you now more than ever.
Ah Paris, city of romance, legions of rollerbladers, insane traffic and orange dog poo. No, really, bright orange. Not every dog poo, but a significant proportion. Adrienne and I were in Paris last weekend, and it was very pleasant, thankyou for asking. However, it was grubbier than the last time I was there, partly because all the poubelles had been sealed up to prevent terrorist bombs from being planted, presumably, but also due to the presence of aforementioned canine fecal deposits. Back in 1995, when Chirac was Mayor, specialist teams of green-overalled dog-mess eliminators roamed the city, vacuuming up offending deposits with their special 'poovers'. While this was admirably anal, it has obviously proven prohibitively costly, as the dog eggs have reappeared with a vengeance, the shit squad nowhere to be seen. BUT! A lot of the poops I saw were bright orange, which maximised their visibility and minimised the likelihood of daydreaming pedestrians, or rollerbladers, being caught unawares.
You have to wonder, if you are me, is this a deliberate strategy? Have the new socialist/green alliance in Paris City Hall pass a byelaw requiring all Parisian dog owners to feed their beloved pooches carrots, and other food rich in beta-carotene, in order to maximise its visibility? If that is the case, which, I accept, it probably isn't, but if it were, why stop there? We could design dog food seeded with bioluminescent algae which would quite literally glow in the dark. It might even look rather pretty, dotted the broad boulevards of the capital, like mystical mushrooms in an elfin otherworld.
I've probably had too much caffeine this morning, whaddya think?
The Pompidou centre was very impressive, I might add.
Eric Meyer is strutting some funky CSS compositing stuff [via camworld] over at meyerweb. If memeblog used the same trick, it would look something like this. [only works properly in IE5 Mac, NS 6.1 and Mozilla]. Pretty fly, eh?
No challenge to US. A good editorial from the Daily Mail & Guardian, South Africa.
So it was absolutely belting it down this morning, I guess summer is over. But hey, I'm alright Jack, as I have my trusty Mountain Equipment Co-op Gore-Tex jacket, eh? MEC is a Canadian institution, and if you walk the streets of Vancouver you will notice that every third person is wearing at least one MEC garment. While we were there I stocked up. Prices are ludicrously low, about half of what you would pay in the UK – my GoreTex XCR jacket was about £150, and similar ones cost around £300 here in Blighty. My top tip for today is that if you are thinking of investing in any outdoor gear, head to www.mec.ca [a mecca for outdoor types, geddit?] and check out the prices before you blow a wad in Blacks or YHA. You may be pleasantly surprised; even after shipping costs you will save a packet. The site is nicely designed and easy to navigate, and the stuff they sell is of high quality and very thoughtfully designed. It being a co-operative you will have to join, but it is just $5 Canadian for a lifetime membership.
I’m going to get me some Bernoulli Gore-Tex Cycling Pants for Christmas. What are you waiting for? Go check it out.
I wish they sold NBC suits. They might come in handy in future…
"Islam is Peace" Says President.
There have been a lot of useful infographics helping to explain the events of the past week. In the wake of a number of horrible assaults on innocent people, such as a sixty year old Sikh man who was beaten by a gang of five thugs, I thought I would join in and make one:
Feel free to use it if you want it. Or even better, make your own!
I can't vouch for the truth of this, but I am told by a little birdie with connections that the footage of Palestinians celebrating and cheering which we are repeatedly seeing on the TV news dates from 1991. D'ya think it might be so?
I've replaced the shoddy dreamweaver rollover code for the logo with more elegant JavaScript, but it still flickers like a mad thing in NS 6.1. Arse. Not much I can do, I guess…
Toggle CSS and view stylesheets with the click of a menu-bar (IE) button, thanks to Tantek’s fabulous favelets! [you can toggle style sheets on this very page if you like, see menu bar above]
Another classy, minimal, grey blog joins the ranks of same: t-melt.com.
My Name is Red by Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk has been acclaimed as perhaps the best novel published this year. You can read the first chapter here.
That clichéd phrase is really starting to bug me. I just want to clarify that I think the Taliban are murderous psychotics who have fucked-over the people of Afghanistan, which people would probably be very glad if the Taliban were eliminated forever. Lets just not forget that these are the same 'folks' who were funded and trained by the CIA and MI5 to the tune of several billion dollars to fight the evil commies. Dragon's teeth.
[ justice, not revenge. ] – Salon.com
So Bush has declared war on “these evil folks” [“folks!” again!], which is exactly what the terrorists wanted. I fear things will not go well. We need a wise king and we have an idiot dauphin [nominally] in charge. An Afghan-American speaks: You can't bomb us back into the Stone Age. We're already there. But you can start a new world war, and that's exactly what Osama bin Laden wants.
It seems an impossible leap for the US administration to actually consider why they are so hated by so many people, and to mention the manifold dubious, cynical and indeed murderous activities of the US government is tantamount to treason. The first casualty of war is truth. But this time it is different. The truth is out there, on the internet, and they cannot censor it all. It is tragic that these people died so needlessly, but no less tragic than the thousands who have died in Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Serbia and so on due to US missile attacks.
Of course we need to eliminate terrorism, and the organisation which planned and perpetrated this must be eliminated if possible, but we also need to eliminate the symptoms of terrorism, which requires a critical mass of people to be informed of how the world really works, to understand that often governments are no better than terrorists. Some good things have come of this tragedy, and I hope that one of them is that the American people and indeed the British people, [for we are equally guilty of gross hypocrisy (East Timor, anyone?)], will take the opportunity to inform themselves about our foreign policies and to form a counterbalance to the dogs of war, the loyal patriots who take it upon themselves to kill the first Arab they find, or indeed anyone of a different ethnicity. Information is power, as they say.
They can't see why they are hated [Guardian comment]
We are all in this together. I wept for the poor people who died in the tragedy and their families. I didn't weep when I heard that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died due to sanctions and military actions, and I feel pretty shitty about that. This has been a wake-up call for anyone with half a brain, and it is our duty to counterbalance those who bay for blood and revenge, whatever the cost. This is a small planet, and we really DO have to get along.
Peace Love Unity Respect, as the hippies say. Hum. Just as soon as we have had a prolonged ground war against the Taliban, I guess.
On a lighter, but tangentially related note, I bought Derek Powazek's very excellent Design for Community over the weekend. I have seen many online communities really come into their own in the past week, and I want to be a part of it. It's about time there was a British equivalent to Metafilter or Slashdot, yes? [please let me know if there already is and I am being a halfwit].
Ooh, I think I'm turning into a radical dissident windbag…enough already.
Words still fail me. Try to love one another.
This is really, really bad. I think you know what I mean. There is no way I'm doing any work this afternoon. I almost can't believe what is going on. Shit. Shit shit shit…The World Trade Centre is gone! A plane has crashed into the Pentagon. HOW? Apparently there has been an explosion on Capitol Hill. And George W. Bush is the President. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm seriously worried. Two more hijacked planes on the way to Washington. I guess they will crash into the White House.
Yes, I've added another evil flash banner, for the film Seven, which I didn't really like, but the credits were good, yes? In case you don't know, they were by Kyle Cooper of Imaginary Forces. Well, when I say I didn't like it, the problem was that I was in the front row of the biggest screen at the Warner Village and as such had to continually pan back-and-forth while simultaneously attempting to somehow suck my eyes back into my head in an attempt to work out what the heck was going on. The general impression I got was that it was dark and wet and gratuitously nasty, but maybe I missed something? Any film that ends with Paltrow’s head in a box can’t be all bad.
Last night I had an amusing dream that I was having a pint in the Tram Depot with Martin Sheen. People kept looking over to us, and I was thinking "wow, I can't believe I'm mates with Martin Sheen, that is so weird." And this is not the first time I've had a friends-with-a-famous person dream. Oh no. Recently I was on John Malkovich's yacht, and on numerous occassions in the past I was the bass player for Mercury Rev. Oh, and I was married to Linda Evangelista once; that was quite a dull dream, we were shopping in Sainsburys for the duration. Am I very sad? Or is this not uncommon? All this relentless exposure to mass media is bound to have an effect, I reckon. Anyone else had any amusing celebrity dreams? And are yours as relentlessly banal as mine?
Lynne asks:
tell me rikki, how are you making the world a better place? this is my only concern. we ARE the chosen few after all, and it's all very well having a website dedicated to reviews of new minidisk players, but what about social conscience and universal responsibility? or is that not cool anymore?
Erm. Well. Good point, well made. Actually, this is a spookily prescient email, as only last night I was moaning to Adrienne that I am far too superficial and should get politically engaged and try to make the world a better place, yadda yadda yadda, rather than just, you know, *consuming* like a fat mindless drone. Regular readers may have noticed an almost complete lack of any reference to politics or current affairs on this site. This was largely a conscious decision as I feel that there are many people more qualified and more eloquent than wot I am who can fulfil this function, and I wanted this blog to be 'entertaining' and not get sullied by the depressing hideousness of the real world. But that seems to be an increasingly untenable position.
So, breaking the habit of a blogtime, from now on I will occassionally make reference to events 'out there' in the world, with particular reference to this godforsaken and pestilential isle upon which I am currently situated. You have been warned. It will also hopefully give a slightly more rounded picture of yours truly; I'm really not so very superficial. Honest. I am engaged with the big issues of the day, and can often be found ranting in disgust at whichever mealy-mouthed Labour stooge or insane, quasi-nazi tory ugly woman with a scary new hairstyle reminiscent of Zelda off of Terrahawks and a face which looks like it caught fire which was beaten out with rakes, mentioning no names, is currently spouting lies, disinformation or vile hatemongering propaganda on the idiot box. And don't get me started on 'reality TV'. Or taxi drivers, Posh Spice, being unable to walk the streets of Cambridge because there are just too many goddamn people, evil corporate fatcats getting million pound payoffs even after totally shafting entire corporations through gross incompetence, leading to the loss of thousands of jobs, but fuck it, take the money and run, eh? you deserve it…you see, this is the problem, once the pressurized canister of righteous indignation is opened it is hard to keep under control, before you know it my blood pressure is so high that BOOM! Massive aneurysm/embolism [what is the difference?] and brain matter all over the laptop. So when I do occassionally attempt to 'get political' I will endeavour to do so in a reasoned, intelligent and informed fashion.
For your edification:
an·eu·rysm also an·eu·rism (ny-rzm)
n.
A localized, pathological, blood-filled dilatation of a blood vessel caused by a disease or weakening of the vessel's wall.
em·bo·lism (mb-lzm)
n.
1. Obstruction or occlusion of a blood vessel by an embolus.
2. An embolus.
Glad we sorted that out…
Episode 2 of Apocamon [a retelling of the book of revelations in manga comic-book style, natch] is up at the ever-brilliant e-sheep.com. Yum.
Boy oh boy there are some cool movies coming up this autumn. About time too, after the appalling [Shrek excepted] summer season. I'm looking forward to Battle Royale, Amelie, The Man Who Wasn't There, Gangs of New York, and most of all Waking Life, the innovative new film by Richard Linklater and Bob Sabiston. Linklater filmed his screenplay on DV cameras, and then the entire film was painted over using Sasbiston's revolutionary "Rotoshop" rotoscoping software, giving it a very dreamy, surreal look and feel. Sabiston's brilliant short film Snack and Drink, made using the same technique, is in the permanent collection of MOMA New York. You can read about Waking Life at res.
I've just downloaded Pillars of Garendall [all 148MB of it!] from those wonderful folks at Ambrosia software. I'll let you know if it is any cop. That's enough media for one day.
Bit of a hiatus there, while I took time out to be ill in bed for a day or so. Which was nice. I slept a lot and had a great dream about being a jewel thief. Back to the grind, now, I'm such a brave little soldier.
Adrienne and I signed up last night for an evening course in AS-Level French. As I type this, I am listening to French radio, streaming over the web, in an attempt to get a head start. I figure lots of useful vocabulary will be absorbed subconsciously. I was very crap at French at school, largely as I made no effort to learn it, ever. But I hope I will be okay now that I am quite keen. I'm sick of being a monoglot. I'm not doing pas mal, I understood that “Pistol” Pete Sampras beat Andre Agassi…Alors! Tant Pis! Le Cyber-Gibbon triomphe!
In big news at work, we have bought the domain www.play.com, and will probably be rebranding soon. So we need a new tagline, as “24 hours, 7 days” is getting a bit tired. Not that it was ever very descriptive or original in the first place. So, any ideas? It has to be short, descriptive and memorable. And preferably free of jargon. My own "leveraging earballs for e-funtertainment" suggestion was not popular. Oh, in case you don't know, we sell DVDs, and CDs, and video games. And we are cheap. Taboo word in marketing, but there you go. A bottle of wine or Belgian chocolates for the best suggestion. Let the brilliant suggestions flood in!
On saturday I was working on my powerbook in Ponti's café in Covent Garden when an elderly lady, probably in her 70's commented "That's a lovely machine, I was just watching the beautiful colours, amazing what they can do these days [I was mucking about with the visualiser while ripping a CD in iTunes. Then this morning in Borders [yes, I like to sit in cofee shops, posing] a group of four senior citizens became fascinated with my toy, one of them asking "Is that one of those new Apples?" I said it was indeed, he said how much he liked it, and said "we're silver surfers, you know!" with a wry grin on his face. This really made me happy. I mean, I am only 32, and I am consistently amazed by the insanely cool stuff we take for granted nowadays.
Sometimes I like to imagine taking stuff from today, like my powerbook, or my Minidisc walkman, or my Visor, back to my 13-year old self, hunched over a hot ZX Spectrum playing Chuckie Egg (probably) and saying “Hey, look at the stuff you will have when you are an adult. How cool is that?” I like to think I would be suitably blown away, but maybe I would be disappointed. When I was 13 I probably thought we would all be 'jacking-in' by the year 2001. Heh. Anyway, for those people born during the war the current exponential acceleration of technology must be quite something, it reassures me that at least some of them are taking in their stride. And have such good taste. Old people are cool.
Idea for niche advertising slogan for the Canadian tourist board, to be used in Russia: 'You can't say Canada without saying "da!"'
Or, for the Croatian tourist board: "Hravtska way, a-ha a-ha, I like it, a-ha a-ha!".
You should really expect this level of nonsense from me by now…
I was in the gym today, trying to work myself out of a jittery caffeine psychosis, and I was happy to see that the guy who reads Nietzsche while riding his exercise bike was in there again. He always makes me smile. One day I will go up to him and say “what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, eh?” or something else suitably witty. Maybe. Only in Cambridge… The gym is becoming an interesting little microcosm now that I am starting to recognise some familiar faces. And the great thing is that nobody else EVER uses the sauna, so no need to sit in embarrassed English silence, or to make embarrassed English attempts at conversation. One time a girl talked to me in a sauna, but she was Venezuelan, so there you go.
So we totally beat Germany in the football. I was determined not to be interested, as I find all the fuck-wittery, racism and violence that surrounds such events a bit crap. Our tabloid newspapers excelled themselves as ever, with the Daily Mail reprinting a 1935 photo of the german team giving nazi salutes to that silly little Hitler fellow. How embarrassing it is to be English sometimes. But 5-1. Wow.
I just went to visit The Onion, to read the jolly amusing “Helvetica Bold Oblique sweeps Fontys” story [via little green footballs]. It did make me larf, but more amusing to me was the choice of keywords in their meta tags. Go and view source. Mind you, I’ve been using ludicrous meta tags for ages and nobody seems to have noticed. Go on, have a gander.
zap back to the top in a blink of the eye. no tiresome scrolling required!
Read Chomsky…
[available now at play.com]
Manufacturing
Consent
Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky
My
Name is Red
Orhan Pamuk
Libra
Don DeLillo
Design
for Community
Derek Powazek
DHTML
and CSS
Jason Cranford Teague
All Is Dream
Mercury Rev
Solid Ether
Nils Petter Molvaer
Exile
Geoffrey Oryema
Pause
Four Tet
click above for andalusia photos.
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