Jonathan Sanderson’s weblog, since 2001.
Just so those of you who haven’t been paying attention know: comments here are down. Disabled for (shared) server performance reasons; I was getting hit by so many spam-bots, the comment script was nailing the server. Not that the spam was getting through – the filters were taking care of that – but it was still driving 100+ threads to reject everything.
I haven’t had chance to work out a solution yet. Sorry.
I like things like this: a bull (called ‘Derek’), in a field, wearing a GPS receiver and location transmitter. Guess where in the field he’s going to be at 3pm daily, and win tickets to Glastonbury, care of sponsors Orange.
Nice. Whimsical. Not even the bad puns annoy me.
(via Iain Tate’s crack unit)
I just woke up my venerable workhorse Power Mac from its overnight slumbers, and it made extremely worrying graunching sounds. A few minutes’ warming-up and it seems to have settled down, but still… eek?
Please don’t die please don’t die please don’t die.
I bought it on 18th September 2002, and it’s been rock-solid since then. True, I have swapped out the hard drive for a larger one, fitted more RAM, and… actually, that’s about it. The video card took a beating when an old LCD monitor blew, taking out the card’s VGA output, so I’m down to the one (ADC) screen now. But it’s a real trooper, this thing. Still runs everything I need like a champ.
Wibble.
The votes are in (sorry about that, David…), and the winner is announced. Apparently no two judges voted for the same first choice, so it all came down to ranked lists and single transferrable vote. Which is pretty darned cool, actually.
Great work from David Colarusso on all this, and congratulations to the winner. Fun!
Great critique of the London 2012 logo, from Coudal Partners. I’m particularly fond of:
It’s simple. When we hear “my kid could have done that!” we think “success.” Some of the greatest logos of all time involve two lines (the Christian cross) or three lines and a circle (Mercedes). Your kid COULD have done that, but she didn’t. Nor did she design the graphics standards manual that goes with it. So give it a rest. Or send us her resume.
The beta of Movable Type 4 is out. Damn, and I was so close to moving The Daily Grind to WordPress, too.
Swap sardines for whitebait, and Portuguese conference food would closely parallel North Yorkshire’s. Though somehow I suspect Bridlington might struggle to accommodate a conference of 850 science centre and museum personnel and associated hangers-on. But I digress. Daily staples included roast potatoes and rice pudding – thankfully not served together – and coffee breaks were enlivened by these things. Which are basically egg custards, but sweeter and with more vanilla and a whole lot less nutmeg.
And very fine they were too, usually running out within seconds. On the last day of the conference, however, somebody had obviously been totting up the last cents, and great heaving plates of the things appeared. The coffee tables groaned beneath their weight, and under the pressure of bodies as we unceremoniously elbowed each other aside.
We ate every last one.
Since people seem to be liking the N95 comments, a few more:
Strangely, I’m still enjoying using the N95. Mostly because in places it’s so bad it’s plain entertaining. I’ll be fed up with it long before the contract is up, but we still have six months before the iPhone arrives in the UK (longer for a 3G version?), so I guess it’ll have to do for now.
800 people who run science centres and museums, in one conference venue, in Lisbon, for three days. Weird, but fun.
I’ve been hovering around the periphery of the science communication world for years, and it’s rather fun to stand in the middle of this group and watch them as if from outside. I’ve never worked at a centre, and I don’t really understand them, and that’s quite interesting. I’m a storyteller, and while some installations tell stories, they’re using very different techniques. Most of the time I’ve no idea what they’re talking about.
Highlights today were Stephen Foulger of “The Science Of…”, a joint venture between the Science Museum and an investment bank. Stephen described the somewhat radical multidisciplinary approach they take, and I’m impressed that it works. Not because it’s inherently risky, but because creative management is rarely straightforward, and they seem to have a firm grip on what sorts of groups work. ‘Pragmatic’ was a key word.
Also Andrea Bandelli, a freelancer/academic from the Netherlands, who completely pulled the rug out from under my ‘dare I say this?’ talk for Saturday by… er… saying essentially the same thing in the first session this morning. Nobody died. Which gives me something of a problem to solve before my presentation.
Aside from that, I was particularly impressed that his brief discussion of my much-hated phrase ‘user-generated content’ noted that our approach to such stuff should be ‘humble.’ Good word, ‘humble’ – and well-used in the this context.
This afternoon I found myself writing a couple of neat lines about SciCast, spurred by things people said in different contexts, then not learning much about Framework 7, a European Union projects initiative, beyond:
I’m actually quite serious about that last one. It’s a worry.
Meanwhile: good to catch up with some chums, and make embarrassing small talk with people I don’t know. In the latter category: the charming woman from Paris who was obviously horrified to think I might be trying to chat her up, when in fact I was trying to ascertain if the jug she held bore coffee or tea. But hey, misunderstandings happen at the European level.
I’m off to the Gala Dinner, probably for some sardines.
Airports exist in some odd netherworld, trapped between where you were and where you’re going, oscillating gently between ground and sky. They can be interminably souless places, devoid of character or locale – Glasgow after 9pm on a Sunday night springs to mind, when the bar shuts and any trace of distinctiveness flickers out along with the light over the Tennant’s pump.
Sometimes that atmosphere is freeing, like staying in an empty room remote from one’s possessions, when the mere act of entry lifts an unsuspected burden of materialism. But sometimes it’s plain bleak. Glasgow, of a Sunday night, is usually bleak.
Other airports take on entirely different characters. I write from Schiphol, for example: a vast and heaving cathedral to travel, piled high with people from all places, going to all places. Perhaps if we all wrote our destinations on a pin-board we’d be able to trade, and all go home instead.
It’s an odd place, Schiphol. Not least that it feels vastly larger than should be warranted by a few canals and a thriving sex industry. Perhaps not. All around, the hubbub of a hundred tongues, punctuated by the gutteral rasp of Dutch… and yet all the signage is in English.
For a time, I sat and watched the ways in and out of the airport. As countless peoples walked this way and that, only a tiny percentage passed in or out. Did they mean to? Perhaps they took the wrong door? Maybe they were heading elsewhere entirely, but recognised their folly and elected instead to stop here?
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, en route from Glasgow to Lisbon. As Flossie noted, a Netherlands Nether Land.