Category: Uncategorized

I’d be hopeless in an American prison: I’d eat the unit of currency.

(via Kottke)

Today: the BBC News site. Front page, no less.

Of course, once you’ve seen one article pointing out how ubiquitous Trajan is, you’ve seen them all.

Flossie’s way of asking, from the other room, if I’d like some tea, was to send me this:

It’s a wordle composition of some of my posts here that feature the word ‘tea.’ Apparently, I mention tea rather a lot.

This is, I think, exactly what YouTube was built for.

Interesting and thoughtful article at El Reg about some odd attitudes appearing around the government’s new Council for Child Internet Safety.

I need to read up around all this, and actually read the Byron review. Thus far I’ve only dipped into the deluge, but I’ve an unexpected observation already: everything I’ve seen makes the assumption that children are consumers first, with their value as contributors a distant second if it’s considered at all.

This worries me even more than nonsense about premoderating content.

See also: Tim Davies. I’d point you to the UKCCIS website too, but as far as Google can tell, there isn’t one. Read into that what you will.

It’s unusually good tea, this.

I’ve never understood that. I use the same tea supply, day in, day out. The same water, from the same tap. I’m reasonably ritualistic about the process, warming the pot (pottery, not metal), two bags, sloshing in water at a running boil, and all that. The milk is very carefully quality-controlled, doubtless. I aim for a regular shade of old-fashioned warehouse-worker’s coat beige. Same small set of mugs from which I make a daily selection (current favourites: SF:MOMA and Bernard Shaw Penguin)

Yet, some days my tea is subtly more pleasing than others.

It’s hard to define. It’s the difference between ‘Mmm, tea’ and ‘Ooh, tea’. I’ve never managed to work out the details.

More experimentation required.

Regarding today’s xkcd, Flossie just emailed:

Did you see the note that said ‘interestingly, on a true vertical log plot I think the Eiffel tower has straight sides’?
If I didn’t already love you, I think I’d be mildly in love with him.

‖ ulp ‖

Iron. Taken at Blist’s Hill open-air museum. I’m using the large version of this (click the picture to find it at Flickr) as a desktop picture at the moment: it’s rather nice.

I’ve never managed to make it to The Tuttle Club, which is a crying shame since they’ve outgrown their first home and are about to move to the ICA. There’s lots of excitement about this, and quite right too.

However, I can’t quite get past my initial impression of the ICA, which is relevant in the context.

See, back in 1994, shortly after the first ‘cybercafé’ (remember those?) Cyberia opened, the ICA held a new media/art/technology crossover event called ‘Terminal Futures.’ It was, frankly, a thoroughly ghastly event surrounded by people who thought the internet’s sole purpose was to serve as a canvas for their own egos.

I do hope Tuttle avoids the same fate.

Over the weekend, I had problems upgrading installs of both WordPress and Movable Type. The latter you may have noticed if you stopped by here at any point.

I find the implications troubling, so I’m going to indulge in a bit of an essay. The non-web-geeks amongst you should probably skip this post.

Continue reading “Blog systems” →