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Small objects of desire
a Chicago Metra ticket

I went to see Peter Saville being interviewed earlier in the week. Listening to him reminded me of my own passion for design objects, which quietly lurks at the fringes of my consciousness.

When I am in Chicago I often have recourse to use the Metra, the train service that connects downtown Chicago to its greater suburbs. If I am very lucky, when I buy a ticket it will be one like the above. Its far larger than most UK train tickets, less spare and far more colourful. But at the same time no space is wasted the thick serifed fonts are just a joy to look at and put you in mind of a Victorian handbill.

The ticket above has since been pressed into service, by me, as a bookmark.

a question of trans pregnancy.
Just wanted to check with those far better informed than I - Matt Rice, Pat Califia's partner was the first pregnant man - but was he also the first man to give birth? Did he have a C-section?

Snowday!
Ten inches of snow and London is paralysed! Other cities are better prepared, but other cities have to cope with this sort of thing more frequently.

My boss has emailed me telling me not to bother coming in unless I really want to - I've suggested just reading through PDFs and he's more than happy for me to do that.

Yay!

I think I'm going to suit up and head to my local shop (and I, like the good Doctor, like a little shop) and get essentials like newspapers and comics and maybe even a little booze...

It's time to party like its SNOWING!

Are you linkedin?
I've recently been tagged by a former collegue on linkedin the social networking website that is supposed to have a pro-work bent. Are you linked in? Is it useful? A perpetual hassel? Has it bitten you on the ass?

Auto da Fay
I have just learned that Fay Weldon's autobiography is entitled Auto da Fay, a title so brilliant it makes me want to read it immediately.

Reasons to be cheerful...
I'm not good at this cheerful lark, as some of you may have noticed when i tried my hand at 10 things that make you happy and found it full of acar accident (I didn't realise I was supposed to be focusing on happy thoughts at the time).

Thus the great joy at Obama's election is somewhat tempered for me by the fact that Michelle Bachmann, she of the outrageous "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? " statement looks like she has retained her seat.

And as much as it cheers me to see Elizabeth Dole, she of the "There is no God" attack ad, kicked to the kerb, things are not looking good for the prospects of gay marriage in California.

I realise this probably sounds like "to every silver lining, a cloud" and that's probably exactly what it is - so I'm going to pause for a moment and savour the good news of Obama's election and hope there is still a little bit more to come in the form of a Senator Franken.

One for design lovers...
The fine folks at I Love Typography bring you the appropriately named really rather difficult font game.

Work stress.
A quick request for some advice on ways to cope with stress.

Work is pretty stressful at the moment and is only going to get more so over the next month, so I'm looking for ways of coping with work stress heavy drinking and teeth grinding.

Over to you guys, my lovely audience...

Happy Birthday Munt!

An image search on gloria munty brings up images from your lj... so I went for this

A birthday breakfast is in order, I feel.

Disguised as mimes...
My favourite story of the week has to be one that was born out of background research on the woman who payed to have her dog cloned 5 times. Turns out she had a bit of a past... details here.

My favourite part is where she jumps bail and escapes the country by being disguised as a mime...

It's how you count that counts
It seems that MSNBC and the BBC have different methods of tallying the medals table for the Olympics...

MSNBC appears to give position on the medals table on the basis of number of medal won, regardless of what colour those medals are whereas the BBC's table appears to give pre-eminence to the number of gold medals, with the number of silvers and bronzes having a secondary importance.

It's all a question of metrics, I suppose but that method would you use to determine the Olympics medal table?

Design stuff
via Ironic sans

And for all those who found that funny or just like design, here are some links

Smashing Magazine, a lovely blog highlighting lovely and inspirational design and design tips.
I Love Typography. If you love, or even just notice typography, this is the blog for you.

Both are available with RSS feeds.

Official: Wales is like another planet
In a report that is likely to vindicate generations of Dr Who produces and particularly the crew behind the most recent reincarnation of the series it comes to light that the private equity backed British weapons and technology research organization Qinetiq has been using parts of Wales to simulate the surface of the moon for rocket tests. (details here).

hmmm

Actually, thinking about it, I'm not sure this is a story about the producers of Doctor Who being vindicated in their assertion that random quarries around the UK look *exactly* like the surface of an alien world or whether its a story about the researchers at Qinetiq being so lazy that they saw Doctor Who doing it and thought that if quarries were good enough for Doctor who, why the hell not used them too...

OMFG It's Jenny Everywhere!
So I'm feeling a bit hung-over, waiting for the new Doctor Who and vaguely thinking about last week's episode when it suddenly struck me.

The Doctor's daughter is totally going to become Jenny Everywhere. After she regenerates, of course...

Lesbians fight over name
I can't believe so few of you have picked up on the news that a man on the isle of Lesbos has decided to take legal action to try to prevent a gay rights organisation from using the term "lesbian". Details here.

A bit strange and doomed to failure, I think...

Portishead
There is a new Portishead album out later this month. It is the first album for a decade and first new album since 1997's eponymously titled effort.

I haven't bought a CD for years, but I'm seriously thinking about buying this.

London Irish Vs London Wasps
Went to see the rugby today, a local derby between two london sides, so obviously it was played in Reading, outside of the M25 and resolutely outside of London. But what's in a name? A quick look over London Irish's squad revealed a number of player with negligible Irish ancestry (tm The Wire) and London Wasps contained not a single member of the order Hymenoptera whatsoever...

Yes, the match was fun. London Irish dominate the position in the first half and got an early try, but failed to convert and didn't manage to make more of their possession, enabling Wasps to edge ahead by the break on kicking alone. After the break, Wasps held the Irish back, scoring and converting. Despite a spirit fight back, London Irish never looked like snatching a victory, and the score ended London Irish 16, London Wasps 22.

Soliciting advice
So, I had an interview for a job I really wanted this week. The interview seemed to go well. Unfortunately I didn't get the position. I got a fairly standard form rejection letter.

Then, the next day, I got a personal email from the woman in charge giving lots of encouragement. Actually re-reading it there isn't much in the way of encouragement in there, but she did make the effort to contact me with specific feedback on the area where the other candidate was stronger and underline the fact that this was not a form letter, which I knew because I had already received the standard form rejection.

So, my question is where do I go from here? I want to reply to acknowledge that she didn't have to write to me at all and that it was appreciated and that I am still interested, but what is the best way to do that?

"If you change your mind, I'm the first in Line..." ?

les-bi
So, I was looking for a picture of astronomer and science promoter Heather Couper. I did a google image search search and found this and noticed the top two pics were from a a domain entitled www.les-bi.org.

Upon further investigation i discovered that this is not in fact a website pertaining to all things related to lesbian or bisexual experience but to the Licensing Executives Society - Britain and Ireland, an organization for all those interested in the licensing of Intellectual Property Rights and transfer of technology, you can check it out here here.

I wonder if anyone has ever told them that their acronym might have different connotations to some people.

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