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16:28:58
Monorail society - do they have a one
track mind? I think that their statement that monorails are a "proven transport
alternative" is highly debatable. Not that I have anything against monorails, I
think they are great. Check out also the Elevated Transportation Company, though probably
only if you live in Seattle.
15:44:56
Find a party in the UK....
Amazingly useless site. Probably wonderful if you live in London.
14:33:59
Half Life - nothing to do with the game:
"This is the first draft of a full-length play intended specifically for
presentation on the Internet. It takes up to three hours to read".
13:13:29
Art form or form art? (via gmtPlus9)
11:52:51
Bought Half Life cheap this weekend and spent a lot of time playing it
yesterday. My son and I make a great team - he's great with the controls and I
can hack the tactics. (Mind you, he's pretty hot on the tactics too)
11:51:19
Ah, misterpants - that's
what my life has been missing for a while.
10:15:58
Ebiquity looks good if you are interested in
news from the whole ubiquitous computing front. (Which I am.)
09:35:51
Sheesh! What a lot of spam in my mailbox today. Someone must have sold a few
lists to bozos again.
07:57:29
Went to see Phill Jupitus last night. He was very funny indeed. The support act
(Richard Morton) was also very funny. Doesn't have a web page.
07:26:11
I'm sure everyone else will have logged this one too, but it is very funny. Interview
with a Search Engine. (I must admit to being wary of pages that include the
word "satire" or "joke" in their URL - it usually means that it isn't)
14:31:01
Want to buy J-pop and stuff? Try DeoDeo.
No use if you live outside the USA though.
14:27:39
Some Japanese artists and some
of their work.
14:27:00
National Museum of Art, Osaka - poke
around and you will find some interesting pictures.
13:01:55
An interesting privacy
hole in the web protocols.
12:35:49
Myreadinglist - looks like a good idea.
I'm going to sign up and see anyway.
12:27:19
The Stray Sheep
products. I assume the Stray Sheep is a TV program.
12:24:55
I also watched an edition of Nomura & Company which I can't find a link
for. It's one of those quiz games where you have to guess which is the correct
answer to a question from four that you are offered. I can't work out if the
people doing the guessing are "celebrities" or not, but the prize appears to be
a cartoon drawing of all the people on the show, so it isn't worth a lot to
win!
12:17:15
Last night I was watching a tape of this rather odd Japanese music program
called Hey Hey Hey Music Champ.
Very strange with machine gun speed Japanese and text flashing across the
screen at high speed. Perhaps the oddest segment was them trying to interview
Britney Spears who stood there looking lost whilst the manic presenter leapt
about, presumably making fun of her. (baka na gaijin!) They kept cutting to
shots of this rather large guy in the audience who I presume was her minder who
looked a little distressed and kept edging nearer and nearer the stage. There
was an interpreter but she didn't seem to do anything much.
11:59:29
Since you ask, I have very short little fingers.
11:04:56
RIP Anthony Powell - I read Dance to the Music of Time when I was
a student and loved it. (Though when I tried to read it again more recently I
couldn't get on with it at all for some reason)
08:59:18
I'm just cutting a Redhat 6.2 CD - the file took many, many hours to arrive and
I have no idea if it all came. Soon find out though.
08:57:51
There's a lot of non-updating going on in the weblog world at the moment. Me
included of course. maybe I should start doing long pieces like Brig. Of course
if I formatted the page into long, thin columns it would look like there was
more of what I do write....
12:28:26
RIP Alex Comfort and Ian Dury. I'll read the Joy of Sex whilst listening
to the Blockheads
11:36:45
I have been ftping (from a mirror I hasten to add) the ISO CD image of Redhat
6.2 for nearly 3 hours and I have less than a third of it.
11:29:20
More elephant stuff.
11:27:54
Elephants in
Thailand. Elephants in
Finland...
11:24:16
Ghost walks in the UK.
Never seen the attraction of these myself.
09:04:15
DaveBoy.com - a good case for mandatory
use of national domains if ever I saw one. None of the links work for me
anyway....
07:46:27
This morning I had a conversation with one of those people who thinks my name
is Lesley. They fall into a class of people who know me but not very well. They
remember that my name is something that begins with an L and can be used by
both men and women. Into their brain pops Lesley. Of course, I'm used to it
now, just as I am used to half the world thinking I'm a woman, but it used be a
little disconcerting.
12:14:16
Ancient Scripts of the
World now has a new home.
09:07:12
Barflies.net - music magazine (Thanks
George)
09:00:04
The Journal of Mundane Behaviour
- looks as though it has potential to be very good so long as it avoids too
much sociology speak. The paper about Japanese elevator
behaviour is excellent - very readable and interesting.
10:14:25
Learn Shiatsu. What a good
idea.
10:14:02
The Dull Men's Club - lots of snippets of
fascinating information. And a test!
13:07:23
Dalriada Music
- they have some good music, but what a vile site! It's slow and very
clunky.
12:41:13
My head feels like it's stuffed with steel wool at the moment. Ugh.
10:12:13
A nice history of Hillbilly
Music.
10:11:59
I was thinking about Gid
Tanner and the Skillet Lickers this morning . Is it my modern sensibility
retrofitting things or is this name clearly intended as innuendo? (Think of the
song "Keep your skillet good and greasy"). They were a wild bunch by all
stories so it seems very likely - perhaps it is a deep cover, musos' joke, like
the Wallochmor Ceilidh Band - Wallochmor means "Big Willy" in Gaelic. (Strange
that Amazon USA has no Original Skillet Licker recordings available!)
09:51:33
Hey, I just wrote some HTML that used the <blink> tag!!! Am I now banned
from decent society?
09:34:28
More Armenian stuff - Virtual
Ani. A nicely done site. (Thanks Peter)
15:23:30
They are returning the Lindisfarne Gospels back to the North-East. About time
too.
14:59:32
Good grief, google has 157,996 hits on Joined Up Thinking.
14:55:29
Stuff (though not a lot) about One Way Pendulum -
one of my favourite movies of all time. You've pr.obably never heard of it. We
have a family catchphrase from it though "Fifteen stone, ten pounds" . None of
you have any idea what I am talking about have you?
14:20:35
Can you tell the difference between porn stars and my little pony? Take the test.... (By
guessing I managed 8 out of 12 - I am not familiar with either my little pony
or porn stars, I really did guess)
13:06:49
Lovely American Pie parody.
(Real Audio) From Brendan's American Pie
Archive.
09:46:30
Austin Osman Spare archive.
A strange man indeed. He looks like Hitler in the painting on the front
page.
09:41:49
I came in this morning meaning to look for Ernest Dowson pages, and then
serendipitously found a link somewhere else. Sadly it proved to be dead. But here's another one. (It has a link
to the other deceased page too)
09:39:15
Here's an Alexander Technique
webpage. I can recommend it highly to you, very life enhancing. Not the
webpage, which is reasonable, it's the technique I'm recommending.
09:36:58
Information about the Armenian
Church. (There seems to be an Armenian theme developing here).
09:35:51
Some pages about Bohuslav
Martinu. (Note that HTML does not define a reprsentation for the accented U
at the end of his name)
09:34:03
Yesterday, whilst walking round the campus, I happened to notice that all the
women around were wearing trousers. When I was young this would certainly have
been unusual. So I looked some more and all day I only saw six women wearing a
skirt on the campus, one of those was wearing traditional dress and one other
was in a nurses uniform. I also so 4 women playing football (two in skirts)
together, and when I thought about it I realised I had never seen a
kick-about football game in which the only particpants were women. How the
world has changed since I were a lad.
09:29:14
A site about the conductor Sergiu
Celibidache.
09:28:41
Ahah, a Perec webpage. In
French though and no detailed analysis of the intricacies of L:AUM that I can
find.
09:23:06
Looking for a Perec web page lead me to this site of Strange and Unusual
Dictionaries. Wonderful. That lead me to the Foolish Dictionary.
09:19:58
I've been reading George Perec's Life: A User Manual and enjoying it. Surprising
as I am not a great reader of fiction and certainly not challenging post-modern
fiction. Also surprisingly I cant find a web site dedicated to the book as it
is just the sort of thing that I would have expected someone to do!
09:14:02
Listening to JD Crowe this morning. Stunning
stuff. What could be better than 5-string banjo, mandolin and pedal steel
guitar? (Don't answer that) Anyway it's great playing and fantastic driving
music.
09:10:51
Oh dear - BillyJack.net
09:28:52
Half the net seems to be dead today.
09:28:42
The Lowry Gallery on the web. I
wonder if they will have on show any of the "sadistic" pictures that he painted
and which were written up in the papers at the weekend?
16:22:30
Edgar Rice
Burroughs pages.
16:14:21
Keanumundu - the Online
Virtual Temple of the Society for Keanu Consciousness.
16:10:12
Gay? Live in the Country? ruralgay is
for you then. They don't realise that not everybody runs Windows though.
15:55:56
INTELNET - "an experimental
site for the communication of creative minds, and an intellectualn response to
the challenge of the expanding electronic universe"
15:48:18
This page sounds
like a poem, but is in fact part of a concordance.
15:46:49
Talking of Protestants, you can discount reformation books at Still Waters Revival Books. Just what we need,
people being encouraged to read Calvin and the like!
15:44:32
I tried reading another Christopher Brookmyre book - same problem. Good plot
idea, just overwritten. He did raise the interesting point as to why, in
Scotland at least, Catholics are always described as "devout" whilst
Protestants are always "staunch". I had never noticed this phenomenon, but it
is quite true.
15:40:30
How to determine the time of salat.
13:54:12
Cló Iar-Chonnachta - Irish music/books
etc.
13:14:03
Appliance shooting page.
The mind boggles.
10:05:26
Topix have a horrible website but
sell the most amazing stuff. Check out the angel flashcard, and the portable
hyper-baric oxygen chamber! How could I live without them? (sorry no direct
links as the URLS are horrible!)
09:58:25
Congrats to brig on
the new look - at last I can read it without strain!
09:19:37
This morning, I have mostly been listening to Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass
Boys.
13:01:07
2000 World Championship Punkin'
Chunkin'
12:58:05
Gaslight - "Gaslight is an
Internet discussion list which reviews one story a week from the genres of
mystery, adventure and The Weird written between 1800 and 1919."
12:33:15
Sulphur in Beer
(Thanks Gavin)
09:25:00
Brain functioning not properly.
13:41:39
The Contemporary A Cappella Society.
13:27:07
Whilst in this rhyming mood in the watches of the night I realised how
desperately we need the new top level domains:
4am, and its cold, its wet
insomia.org, insomnia.net
If you want to rhyme with domains you have restricted choice (especially if you want scansion as well)
13:24:39
Still not sleeping properly. I keep having a weird dream about apples. And
making strange verse in my head:
Once more unto the beach dear friends
And fill the strand up with our English beds.
13:20:10
A site devoted to Mikhail Bakhtin,
who I am told I should read.
10:18:50
Underground! A website
about underground military sites in the UK.
10:17:09
John Speed
Maps.
10:11:58
I tried reading the most recent Christopher Brookmyre because people keep telling me how good he is, and
I didn't like the first book. The idea behind it is excellent, but the way
things pan out is never quite believable enough for some reason. The worls
simply isnt over the top in the way that he describes. I realised what really
annoys me though, and it was the same with Trainspotting - I can't abide things
written out in dialect. For goodness sake, I already read with a Scottish
accent anyway!
09:57:32
Eric conveys an emotion. Bizarre
09:15:41
Information about the January UFO
sighting in Illinois. This one is very strange - it's pretty clear that the
people involved something odd. You can read a transcript of the police
radio transmissions. Almost certainly one of the mystery aircraft that fly around.
09:08:21
Interesting article about the
medieval recorder.
09:06:19
The Labyrinth project -
Resources for Medieval Studies. A great index. It lead me to this site with reproductions of the first
Scottish books.
09:03:58
There is supposed to be a recording of the oldest playable musical instrument
on the Nature website but the URL I have
doesn't work and the search engine reveals nothing.
12:48:36
Dan mentions Omniedit, but doesn't cover the horrendous
security implications! This is just about the most insecure way of dealing with
your personal files that anyone could come up with. It may be useful, but it's
badly thought through. (Pak-o's weblog tool is going to be addressing these
issues I hope - that's right isn't it Pak-o?)
12:11:15
SPEBSQSA
09:54:37
I was also sent a copy of the SPAMku book which is entertaining
(and I used the Ex-word 2k to translate the single Japanese poem in it). The
package also had two tapes of iron Chef episodes and other US Japanese
television, so I am fixed up for a while!
09:52:35
I was just given a Casio Ex-word 2000
by a friend. It's designed specifically for Japanese speakers so it is a little
hard to use at the moment, but it is the most fantastic unit. It is light, and
really easy to use.
09:45:34
Want to know about dispute
resolution?
09:43:44
hmmm. ingenuous.net.
15:51:00
insomnia.com
15:49:28
Wide Aperture Suction Torque Expander
Or Forced Turbulence Intake Manifold Enhancer.
14:41:22
Blast, gorjuss has gone
listified.
14:39:37
A fairly unexpected frontpage at Prozac.com. I'm sure they could have sugarcoated
the pill a bit more. I mean does it work differntly in different countries?
Sure the regulations are different, but there must be some general stuff they
could say.
09:45:06
I don't like the new look Go Gaga at all.
Very ugly and far too busy.
16:24:46
Oh, I got a name check in the Guardian
Online section last week. They had an article about online memorial sites, and
actually remembered that I was there first! They did suggest that my site was
somehow not "slick". However, I must admit that I don't actually think that
slickness is an attribute that people require or look for from cemetries!!
16:21:56
Grrrr, I can't get gdbm support to work properly in PHP.
08:18:00
Getting up to speed with php has made me
realise how utterly awful computer based documentation systems are at helping
you learn. I have all the documentation installed locally and can browse it
using the KDE file manager. It works fine when I know what I am looking for,
but when I all I want to do is skim over something, get the gist of it and then
follow some ideas it is totally useless. I can't think of a computer based
system that would let me do it either - what I need is a paper copy of the
manual.
14:35:02
phping.....
16:56:53
Spent today installing php, learning how to
use it and converting one of my systems to use it. It's all right but it is
missing a couple of things I'd like to have.
09:16:10
Failed to sleep again last night.
09:11:57
*Sigh*, Brig links to a some Sony
noise-cancelling headphones. I have been after some of these ever since my
friend Ole bought some similar ones when I was with him in Tokyo. They are
fantastic, except that I've never found anyone that sells them here and also
they are way, way out of the price range I can afford. *double sigh*
09:05:00
A nice looking page about Budapest.
09:01:01
Ingres painted a famous picture of a
Turkish bath. It was not like that last night I can assure you.
08:54:38
Newcastle has one of only 4 purpose built Turkish Baths that are left
in Britain. I went there for the first time last night and I will now go
regularly as it was a fantastic experience. Enormously hot and very
relaxing.
If you happen to be in Kusadisi in Turkey and are Behind the Post office, you can have a genuinely Turkish bath. You might want to take the Sydney Gay History Homoesexual Walk and see the turkish baths there. The association of Turkish baths with homosexuality seems to be the probable cause of a rule that you have to wear shorts or trunks in the baths here - there are no mixed sessions, so I assume that is the reason anyway.
08:40:05
Leonard pointed me to "The Machine Stops" by E.M.
Forster. Thanks! (Warnning the page does weird things to your window with
javascript) Oh, and he and several others had more success with the New
Statesman search engine than I did and found the
link I was looking for yesterday.
15:53:30
Why is this site called the narrow
road? And who is Jimelle?
15:51:26
Want a dendrobatid? You can buy them on the web of course....
13:50:44
I was going to try and link to a good article about e-commerce will not be the
next big thing in the New
Statesman, but the website is such a mess I can't begin to find it! There
was an article
in the Guardian on the same subject inspired by the New Statesman article. They
both use this quote from Keynes:
"The inhabitant of London could order...sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages."
This was written in 1900. There was a fatuous response to the article in the letters column on Saturday which went on about business to business e-commerce and managed to miss the point completely.
09:26:32
This handyman site
has some duct tape ideas on it.... (Thanks George - by the way your e-mail
address always fails when I try to reply to your messages!!!)
09:00:53
Thanks for all the mail about Duct tape. The Duck company have a website. Several people pointed out the usage of
"gaffer" in the tape probably refers to the film industry use of the word to
mean an electrician, rather than a boss. I assume there is a relationship
between the two meanings though.
08:54:08
I watched Harry Hill last night and for some reason found it very funny - in
the past he has done nothing at all for me. The Horse Whisperer joke really got
me. <whisper>horse</whisper>.
Talking of television and comedies reminds me of a musing I was going to muse last week about Friends. It was the episode where Rachel moves out and Chandler moves in. What is wrong with these people, or is it just a US thing? What's with all this "roomies" bit? I don't know anyone, not one single person, who ever thought of someone else as a "roomy". Sure people shared flats, but that was pretty much a guarantee that after a year you never spoke to that person again. (I discount so-called "partners" in this BTW) Do people really behave like that in New York? I wouldn't want to share a flat with Joey or Chandler! Note that Phoebe (the only sensible person in the program) does not have a roommate, not does Ross. What does all this signify? Nothing probably.
(Oh, and Channel4 really need to get their act together about updating their website which is a week out of date on its schedules)
08:39:53
Scribble (one of my favourites) has
a great selection of
yodelling links - they s
08:30:54
The Yopy looks a lot like a
Nino that runs Linux. I still want one though. A Quartz
might be fun instead of my crappy mobile, but I really cant see me wtching
streaming multimedia on it.
08:26:44
New Ghost Sites
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