Your Furniture And You
Your choices in life reflect upon you in a myriad of ways. These choices are picked up as subconscious clues by your peers and they coax judgements upon your character subliminally. Well, I’m not your peer – I’m your better – and there’s nothing subliminal about what I’m about to tell you: your furniture gives you away! Let me tell you about you … Tennis Ball Chair The Tennis Ball Chair by Will Holman is constructed from a chromed steel frame, MDF, oak veneer plywood, and fifty tennis balls that may or may not have been hit at Anna Kournikova. If you buy this chair … You’re fun, you’re quirky. You’re sporty. You’ve probably got a dartboard toilet seat and a fridge constructed from a bowling ball lane. You like those car seat covers made from wooden beads. You have no idea how much I hate you for that. You like to be different. Oh, you’re different, all right. You like the feel of balls pushed up against your buttocks. No, you really like the feel of balls pushed up against your buttocks. Mod Quad Coffee Table The Mod Quad coffee table is a modern – and by "modern" I mean "beige" – table that hides four compartments ideal for keeping vibrators out of view when the vicar turns up. Or for surprising your vicar with a vibrator when he turns up. Depends on the vicar of course. If you buy this table … You are determined to eventually overcome your accidental catapulting of coffee cups across the room. Spin System Seating The Spin System seating is a private commission piece created by Jim Hannon-Tan. The seating rotates out from a central column to seat up to 8 people at a time. 8 people who enjoy being in close proximity to one another on white plastic indoors. If you buy this seating system … You’re anal about cleanliness. You need to put things away if they’re not being used. You like surfaces that wipe down. Yeah, just why is that then? You like the colour white. White looks clean. You don’t like being dirty. Or do you? You hang around hospitals and sniff the ammonia in janitors’ buckets. You have seven friends with differing leg heights and/or social standing who will gladly accept being sat on the smallest section of seating and looked down upon if that is where you deem they must go. You’re not concerned that someone might close up two of the seats at once and sever you in half. But now you are. Amaka Contemporary Chaise Longue The Amaka-style chaise longue, created by Casa Nova,...
Road Charging
The government wants to introduce road charging on the roads (as opposed to, er, the trees). On the face of it they cite noble goals: to reduce congestion which will reduce pollution and stress and make Mother Nature and your own mother happy at the same time! Labour hopes that by implementing a charging rather than taxation system (eventually, maybe; initially it’ll be a taxation and charging system) towards the roads then we, the people, will decide to share transport, use public transport, and cut out unnecessary journeys. Let’s take a look at those three decisions of ours in some more detail: Transport Sharing I don’t know about you but I don’t live near anybody I work with. In order to share transport with them I would need to add to my travel time and distance significantly. For two people alternating the transportation duties this might work out marginally more fuel-efficient (but not convenient) overall than two separate journeys but it’s incredibly unfair on whoever lives nearest the workplace since that person will pay more to travel to work. Sharing a car would punish those who currently do not commute large distances. Thanks Labour! Use Public Transport I live 8 miles from my home. Getting to work involves a 15 minute drive in my car. To use public transport I have two options: bus or train. To travel by bus I would need to walk to the bus stop on the route towards my work; that’s 15 minutes right away. The bus travel time is approximately half an hour and stops about 15 minutes walking distance from my work. At best, an hour. Assuming the bus is on time. Using the train is worse. The train station is half an hour’s walk from my home. Twenty minutes travel with twenty minutes to walk at the other end. That’s an hour and ten minutes. Unless a twig falls on the line and causes a cancellation. Setting aside the time and pain-in-the-arse experience added to during inclement weather we still have the joy of the exorbitant costs of public transport to add in. Plus – far worse – they allow pretty much anybody on public transport. Smelly people. Violent people. I’m far more picky over who travels in my car. Cut Out Unnecessary Journeys Now we get to the crux of the problem: unnecessary journeys. Of all the people sitting in their cars in congestion, how many do you think woke up and thought "You know what! I fancy a trip at rush hour! Hoorah!"? A few, perhaps, but I’m not one of them. I travel at peak times in the...
I Want To Be An Astronomer
I – for the record – do not want to be an astronomer. The title of this article is for those who do. I’m not saying I’ve never wanted to be an astronomer, though. When I was young I did want to be an astronomer. That was before I realised that astronomers and space pilots were different things. Once that happened I wanted only to be a space pilot. Looking at the stars was okay – television was awful when I was young – but I had my sights set on destroying them or using them as slingshots to break the speed of thought. But you – since you’re here – probably do want to be an astronomer and that means you’re not one now. First off, what’s daily life like for a typical astronomer? Algernon: Hi Percival! Doing a spot of astronomy? Percival: That’s right Algernon! That’s why I’ve got my telescope under my arm and a thermos of oxtail soup. And you? Have you just come back from astronoming? Algernon: Yes I have. I astronomed from the field beyond the farm. The trees keep light pollution down and I’ve been keeping an eye on the super cluster of black holes in Virgo for a friend who’s worried about them. Are you heading to the field too? Percival: Oh no! I like to astronom from the hill beyond the magic forest. The extra altitude means I can see the pulses from the pulsing pulsar in Pollux so much easier. Algernon: Well, have a happy astronoming Percival! Percival: Thankyou Algernon. Astronom well, yourself. A life under the velvet blanket of night, staring at the universe, with all the oxtail soup you can consume may sound as perfect as you’d always imagined but to be an astronomer you’ll need a couple of other qualities too. Easily Excitable In ye olden dayes of astronomy excitement occurred when a new planet was discovered thanks to the milling of a new, larger, smoother lens to fit into some rich playboy’s large, sparkly, brass cylinder. "Huzzah! A new planet just beyond Jupiter! I shall call it Georgeworld after the King and I’ll be knighted and … what’s that? Herschel’s already spotted it and called it what? He called it my what? That German fucker!" But the solar system is more-or-less mapped out now and the optics needed to spot a planet around another planet are unwieldy and leave no room for carrying a thermos. Subsequently, everything these days is pictured by computers, cleaned up by computers, and displayed on computer screens. Excitement, therefore, has been reduced to The Thrill Of The Pixel. Dedication An...
The Solaris Bug Situation
Guest article by Brent Murphy. Follow some of the links in the article to grab some free MP3s Back in high school I was with a bunch of guys and we decided to see if the rumors were true: if indeed you watch The Wizard Of Oz with the sound off and listen to Dark Side Of The Moon, will there be a symmetry? We figured weed would help in our scientific explorations. It did. And yes, there is. Well, fast forward to 2006 and a friend of a friend gives me a CD-R of one of my favorite band’s not-yet-released new albums (actually it’s one of the solo projects of my favorite band: The Speakers; the solo project is Brian Miller’s "The Lightning Bug Situation.") Anyway, I liked it. It’s definitely better than the first Lightning Bug Situation, which I thought was kind of disappointing especially considering it followed on the heels of one of my favorite all time albums, The Speakers’s "Yeats Is Greats." So. The new album is good. I really like it actually. But there’s something weird about it. A couple of weeks previously I had rented this one movie I thought was really excellent; so excellent that I had actually watched it twice: the 1972 original Russian version of Solaris. It’s a great movie, pretty tripped-out, very moving, and a very beautiful and visual movie. Anyway, while I was listening to the new Lightning Bug Situation it kept reminding me of Solaris. The lyric "outside with your blue jacket on/green trees and the sea" appears during the very beginning of the album, and in the movie, the first scene has the main character outside, wearing a blue jacket! Later, the album references driving in black and white just as the movie changes to scenes of one of the people driving … all now shot in black and white! And a lot of the scenes seem to change with the songs too. I could go on and on but I’ll spare you. Suffice to say there are a lot of symmetries. Could it be we have another Dark Side Of The Rainbow? Albeit one with a very obscure movie and an even more obscure band? So I decided to be like my old high school self, rent Solaris again, play it, turn down the sound, play The Lightning Bug Situation, and smoke tons of weed. Well, it took a couple of tries (actually about a half an hour; no, not the weed, the movie and CD symmetry). The whole process was pretty fun actually, like breaking a secret code. And, well, ladies and gentlemen, I...
Danny Boyle Movie: Sunshine
For my intarwebfriend Gia … and to promote the new movie Sunshine by Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, the official website of which Gia has been maintaining during the last year … and because I – like bishops – love sci-fi … and because I can’t remember the last time I updated this site twice in one day … and for your viewing pleasure … Embed This Video | Visit Fox Searchlight Update New trailer released 9th March 2007...
Redesign
It’s been a long time coming, it’s later than planned, and not everything is ready … yes, if proof were needed that I am a software developer by trade then here it is! So, what’s new? Light background, dark text, larger font » Requested by Sal as he’s old and his eyes ain’t what they used to be, this style change also means my monitor won’t flicker annoyingly as I switch between coding at work and checking my site making it less obvious that I’m not working. Sections, sections, sections » Yes, the old design had sections too but these have been revamped. New for this design are the Music, Style, and Politics sections. Web is a general purpose section that supercedes the Link Of The Day and some of the various feeds of the earlier incarnation. Plugs » The old system of Picture, Video, Game, and Link of the Day have been changed to a less rigid plug system broken down by section. This means less work for me with the potential for more relevant and longer exposure for plugged content. To Do … Section padding » Some of the sections have no content in them at the moment but it’s coming. I figured I’d wasted enough time tweaking the code and decided to launch half-ready. Hey, who doesn’t? RSS » At time of typing the site is only reading from a couple of video-sharing sites to retrieve their feeds and aggregate them. More site feeds will be switched on in the various sections shortly as they are checked for quality and parsing issues. Older content » Old content from the previous design will be coming across as soon as it’s converted to fit in with the new code. This includes previous pictures, videos, games, and links of the day. Links and resources » Each section will have relevant links and resources added as soon as I get around to it. I.e. MP3 blogs in the music section, photo-related sites in the pictures section, etc. Other users! » I’m prepared to let other people add content to this site. I already have a couple of contributors lined up but the content-submission pages for them are not complete. Optimise CSS » It’s a bloody mess at the moment. So … still loads to do. Expect a few days of fleshing out the various sections and then … a real update!? Really?!...
Recent From Retro
-
The Women Of Kilobaud Computing Sep 26, 2016 -
-
-
-
-
Recent From Entertainment
-
Dance Music Triple Nov 19, 2016 -
-
-
-
-
Recent Comments