Bizarre "days" (via Will) I note that the 27th of May has no day associated with it. Maybe it should be International no day day or something.
Sex and the Umma Prayer is better than sleep? Hmm, I think not when extended periods are involved!
Stephen Newton's weblog - he wangled a mention of the URL into a letter in the Guardian Weekend today, which is nice.
Hey Hey 16K - none of this has any resonance for me since I was using "proper" computers at that time....
The 7th Fire - bad poetry and other bollocks alert! Allen Aslan heart indeed - I bet his parents were hippies.
Blast and damn, I missed this weblog's 5th birthday which was on April the 30th! And nobody else noticed either. This ought to be an excuse to rerun lots of old links, but it's just as easy to go and browse through the earlier editions yourself. Astoundingly, all the links for the first day still work apart from one (to lileks), which is still around but has just moved.
May pre house the seamy side volitation!!! (just in case you didn't explore the previous site properly....)
Why on earth would someone build a camera obscura into their roof? Let's face it, they are not exactly common and I bet the optics cost a bomb.
The Big Pull - another TV series from the '60s that nobody but me remembers. I was utterly terrified by this and was extremely reluctant to go upstairs alone after watching it. All I remember is the character Anderson who never spoke and never blinked. *shudder*
Oh stupid me, I didn't read down the page on the original link about "Quick before They Catch Us" - yes, there was a camera obscura in her attic room. So that settles it, and, yes, that is the theme tune. What a shame it's lost - though it was probably complete rubbish.
Track 1 on this CD may well be the Quick Before They Catch Us theme. It sounds vaguely familiar, but, again, it sounds like a lot of '60s songs.
Ogöplex - be honest, have any of you ever heard anyone use the term "the ropes"? I suspect the entirely bogus o with an umlaut and the reference to the European underground are an attempt to make this product sound sophisticated.
There is a billboard ad for the Discovery Channel which has just gone up on my route to work. It says "Real Bikes, Real Fights, Real Men-Hugs" - what on earth is that about?
Ah ha, The television programme I am trying to dredge up may be "Quick before they catch us". The description of the first story line suggests to me that they may have built a camera obscura which, apart from the theme tune, is the only thing that I remember about it. The actors do look familiar, but then they look like every British actor in the'60s! Hmmm, it is listed at TV Cream (go to PQ and scroll down), where the theme tune is clearly not "catch us if you can", but I can see why I might be confused about this, since they are nearly contemporary songs. I think this might definitely be the one. Of course it has been wiped so we'll never know will we? I think that the line that it was based on a book by Mark Timlin has to be wrong since the Mark Timlin book of the same name appears to be published in 2000 and he looks way too young to have been writing in 1966. But I suppsoe it may be a reprint and an old photograph.
Isn't the good old IntarWeb great? I decided I needed to learn how to play Willin' and there it is.
I'm trying to find out about a television programme from the sixties that I vaguely remember - its theme tune was "Catch us if you can" and was about some people who lived in a camera obscura. I thought it was called after the song but TV Cream has no entry under that name. (Mind you TV Cream has no entry for the Big Pull which is another series I remember from my childhood and I know that one existed)
Oh, good grief, what nonsense. Mind, they don't do a very good job of persuading me why the law shouldn't apply!
You can use http://rivets.notlong.com to get here now if you want to type a small number of characters fewer than the full thing (via Red Ferret)
Planted out some calabrese and some PSB that we were given today. I am running out of space and I wanted to get in some broad beans, spinach, leeks and maybe some dwarf french beans. We usually have some runner beans in too, which we grow because they look nice - we don' actually eat them. I may have to unplant some onions. *sigh* And of course this isn't including lettuces and radishes and maybe a couple of courgettes.
The cherry blossom at the top of our street was at its peak today. If we were in Tokyo there would be hundreds of people sitting just looking at it it's so good. As it is there is just a kebab van with no customers.
Body Piercing Glossary - so now you can find out what all those terms mean that you were too embarassed to ask about. Assuming you can make sense of the definitions of course, which is not that easy.
Who is that with Jerremy? I hope ad has pre-booked Jeremy sessions with a shrink for when he is older.
Got up this morning to go for a bike ride for the first time in ages. Pumped up my back tyre and found that had perished so had to buy new one. *sigh* Bought some semi-slicks which should be easier to ride than the huge chunky ones I had on before. I fought the rear tyre on and found that I had screwed up the direction of rotation so had take it off again.
I just got a message about my Amazon.com referral fees - these are miniscule and in fact I have not yet accumulated enough to actually get them paid to me. The truely weird thing is that the only referral item bought using my code last quarter was a clear blue easy fertility monitor.
Take a ridiculous idea for a "sport" and add sexist nonsense. Great. I still haven't got over hearing that Wpmen's Beach Volleyball rules specify the maximum permissible size for the player's costume.
The Sharpeworld Scopitone of the Week appears to feature Ginger Spice and a young Mick McManus (a wrestler from the 60s in the UK). BTW it's called Sado-Maso and is in French
You touch my tralala I got this from Popbitch so you you know that means that it is pretty stupid and probably NSFW....
Unmissable - do I want to go Advanced Spanking with Uncle Larry or possibly Solo Tatntra Lite - Preparing for Kundalini. So much to pick from!
Looper's Delight (Not sure they have the apostrophe in the right place - surely there is more than one looper involved?)
Damn it, there is a photograph of Steamhammer playing in Edinburgh in 1971. How the hell did not know about that then?
Junior's Wailing - great stuff! Classic British blues band sound. I wished I'd seen them live, I can imagine exactly what it would have been like. *sigh*
Gosh, there is a whole Steamhammer site! That is obsessive - almost nobody has heard of them.
I just read something that mentioned IMing, I couldn't for the life of me work out what an i-Ming was.
mdeath - I have to assume there is something called mlife or else this makes no sense at all (which on the good old intraweb may also be the case)
"Cellphone when my old car dies, The Internet to show me where, GPS to get me there, Everywhere there's satellites, but still I life a simple life" - great line from "The Simple Life" as performed by Ricky Skaggs. Don't know who wrote it, good song apart from some coy religiosity in it.
Grab A Book Game
Instructions:
"No, all that we know and all that we need to know is that truth is asolute, definite, unequivocal and as sure as a waterfront."
(via Gaijinworld)
Hah, I hadn't heard the Lemonheads' version of Amazing Grace before. (It's on Hate Your Friends) and that went straight into Tito Puenete with Oye Como Va! and it sounded great.
I am entirely speechless at the inanity of this. (Also via Sharpeworld) But if anyone wants to hire me then I am available. (Oh, and when I am a music consultant/DJ/conman^h^h^h^h^h^h I only use my middle name : Forsyth)
I think it's something to do with the cranning that makes Iggy and Squiggy so appealing. If you catch my drift. Also the swingy New England style accompaniment rather than a stodgy Irish oompah.
I am repeat playing a fantastic pipe track by Jerry O'Sullivan from an album called the Gift. It's a set of tunes finishing with a stonking reel called Iggy and Squiggy - one of those tunes that lifts the spirit, makes you smile and want to dance.
The Peeps Challenge - of course, I have absolutely no idea what peeps actually are. Some strange US -only sweet I presume. Like Candy Corn (bleurch)
I would have expected that the HHGTTG would have been updated rather more recently than this. (see bottom of page and reference to Netscape 2.0)
As requested, you can see the animated brain. It's 5M though - you have been warned. (I might to do quicktime version which ought to be smaller)
Huh? - must be based round a TV sketch but I don't get it. I could see myself laughing at someone doing exactly the same with UK placenames though. I wonder if there is some significance to the accents?
Ahhh, the Procrealligence site and it lives up to expectations - 100% flash, and so poorly designed that they have to put instructions in big letters to tell people how to navigate. That's procrealligence in action!
Adriana Bertini - condom artist. Only works in Internet Explorer and took over my screen, but it's interesting.
Which reminds me of an advert I saw on television in Kazakhstan for a company renaming itself as procrealligence which was supposed to be a combination of proactivity, creativity and intelligence. Sounds more like birth control to me. (all the domain names are taken but all point to a hosting company)
Would you employ this company? Adding together the twee name, the goth styling and the all flash interface I certainly wouldn't.
There is a thread on slashdot about a replica of the "Back to the Future" car and someone has made the comment "Imagine that: stepping out of that car in your brand spanking new spandex Tron suit. The girls would be over you like bees on honey...!" I actually did LOL.
The breedster egg is gone - but let me know if you are interested in case I breed again....
Well, I have one egg on Breedster so can invite one person to join. Anyone interested? Mail me.
Al Lowe's Humor Site - humour is of course a personal thing, but I hadn't seen this before and that is funny
We were staying just above here - good apartment/hotel, though not recommended if you have teenagers as there is not a lot for them to do (at least at Easter time anyway)
I'm off to Portugal for a week so once again updates will be none to sporadic: if the place we're staying has cheap net access there might be some, if it doesn't there'll be none. Quite simple really.
Those last two via Red Ferret Journal which just gets better and better - definitely the best gadget log around, especially since Gizmodo now has all those ads and has dropped serious descriptions of things.
Shock news - Hanami is just an excuse to get drunk! (Also note the strange ideas that the interviewees have about foreigners - I don't know anyone who thinks hanami is weird : everyone likes cherry blossom! And parties....)
Read the midnight ministries stuff about False Ministers - ranting madness. I keep reading Ministries as Mini-series.....
Whoa, I just noticed that the Midnight Ministry (previous link) is in Aylesbury - where the rivets used to be made. That has to be deeply signifcant (or not)
Card Throwing - note that he describes himself as "Christian" yet has a section on the vulnerable parts of the body. I will never understand.
Not that Robert Rankin (read the reviews, and note that if you look at the next Robert Rankin to be published this book is being paired with it. Ooops)
You'll have noticed the new search box at the top. If you enter part of a URL into it you'll find all the places where URLs containing that text were linked. (If there is only one, you get taken to the place where the link happened) Let me know if this is useful and how it can be changed to make it better.
Oh, someone asked about the weather in Alamaty - it was really warm, much warmer than here (but it had been snowing the week before)
So, back from Almaty. Tasted fermented mare's milk and fermented camel's milk. Went to the Russian Baths and got beaten with bunches of oak leaves. Drank vodka. Had a meal in a yurt. Drank vodka. Went to the opera to see Tosca. Nice people. They like toasts (in vodka).