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| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 |
douglasnoble
|
9:00a |
Complex 4.02: The Stairs
I’m glad the lifts are out of order. There’s nothing I hate more than people who take the lift up for just one floor. Lazy, lazy people.
Originally published at Strip For Me. Please leave any comments there. |
| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 |
squirmelia
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11:45p |
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budgie_uk
|
9:21p |
Well, it's an original response... I think.
This is from a blog at the Jewish Chronicle, the blog in question being that of Miriam Shaviv: Where antisemitic comment is not free
By Miriam Shaviv
January 5, 2010
Damian Thompson, Blogs Editor of the Daily Telegraph, has come up with a revolutionary plan to combat antisemitic trolls on his site, which - as far as I can tell - is perfectly serious:One answer would be to approve all posts before they appear – but why should the rest of you have to put up with a delay just because a couple of nutters are so obsessed with Jews that they can’t join a supermarket checkout queue without scanning it for Zionist secret agents?
So here’s my plan.
For every anti-Semitic comment that appears on this blog, I will make a small donation to a Jewish charity. Hope he's paid well...
But seriously, nice to see that at least one of our dailies actually cares enough to have a plan. Well, it's... different. |
kerrickadrian
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12:20p |
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assmonkeydiary
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9:41a |
sleep
Normally I function pretty well on five to six hours of sleep, and when I was a little heavier getting much more than that meant a sore back in the morning. So I'd inevitably be up late each night playing around on the computer and watching cable. I always swore I was going to convert those hours into writing time, but the old brain's pretty foggy by those hours. In the past week, however, I've been feeling the need for almost the full eight hours. I think the extra rest is definitely having a good effect on me mentally, and frankly I don't really miss the extra tv watching. Maybe getting more sleep will be my new year's resolution. It can't hurt, right? 
Current Music: Comet Gain - "A Film By Kenneth Anger"
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| Monday, January 4th, 2010 |
assmonkeydiary
|
10:16a |
the new year
Wow, my 2010 had been very sleepy and lazy so far, although I did win rave reviews for the mac & cheese I made for a potluck yesterday. Would write more but it's year end statistics time and I am oh so behind.... 
Current Music: The Shins - "Saint Simon"
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budgie_uk
|
10:53a |
Substance Over Form
Bear with me a moment, eh? There's a little thing from my day job that I've been thinking about the past few days entitled ‘substance over form’; in other words: what’s actually going on as opposed to the strict legal ‘form’. The easiest way to explain it is to imagine you're a company and you've taken on a hire purchase agreement. You've bought a car, say. And you pay the monthly payments quite happily and you own the car, and... whoa. No you don't. You don't actually own the car - according to the agreement you've signed - until the final payment is made. But it would be crazy not to show the car as an asset of the business, so despite the inconvenient fact that you don't own the car according to the terms of the agreement, you still show the commercial reality, that the company does in fact own it. Well, the same thing applies, in my mind, to the debate about when the decade ends. Yes, of course there was no year zero. The first year was - had to be - year 1. (And if anyone argues, ask them about the first DAY, or do they believe that the second day was Day One?) So if the first year was year 1, then the tenth year was year ten. And the hundredth year, the year 100... and the decade we're currently in won't end until about another 360-odd days have finished. You know what? So what? Substance over Form, my friends. Substance over Form. Andrew Wheeler, that sage, nailed it for me when he asked whether you're happy for the "90s" to exclude the year 1990 and yet to include the year 2000. It doesn't make sense. Of course the 90s ran from 1990 to 1999; of course the noughties (or whatever you're calling them) ran from 2000 to 2009; and of course the new decade started from 2010. It just makes... sense. |
ms_bracken
|
10:36a |
happy working life dudes
Hey everyone! I'm back at work! I'm doing testing! It's really cold in the office and my ability to do the things I have become used to doing and enjoying in the last two weeks is really restricted! Business cards by MOO.COM |
douglasnoble
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9:00a |
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| Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 |
budgie_uk
|
11:59p |
Thank you, Perry Cox.
With apologies to the writers of Scrubs for stealing their lines, here is a list of things that Perry cares I care as little about as Celebrity Big Brother: Lemme see, uhh... Low-carb diets. Michael Moore. The Republican National Convention. Kabbalah and all Kabbalah-related products. Hi-def TV, the Bush daughters, wireless hot spots, 'The O.C.', the U.N., recycling, getting Punk'd, Danny Gans, the Latin Grammys, the real Grammys. Jeff, that Wiggle who sleeps too darn much! The Yankees payroll, all the red states, all the blue states, every hybrid car, every talk show host! Everything on the planet, everything in the solar system, everything everything everything everything everything everything - eve - everything that exists - past, present and future, in all discovered and undiscovered dimensions... Oh! And Hugh Jackman. |
ms_bracken
|
4:41p |
Vincennes Review of Books 2009
I read a total of 36 books this year - 32 new, 4 re-reads - which is slightly disappointing. For those of you who think that this is not a bad total, here is a graph to illustrate why I am slightly disappointed. New books are pink, re-reads are blue.  This year, I re-read The Great Gatsby, Lolita, and Wonder Boys, which are the books I would describe as my three favourite books ever. And The Complete Yes Minister, not in my top fifty but always fun. Last year started with one young adult book - Twilight, a plague and a pox on society and all it touches - and ended with another - Holes, which is essentially My First Prayer For Owen Meany and which I enjoyed a great deal. (Technically, the last book I read in 2009 was Freakonomics, so imagine that I am talking, here, about the last book with content that I read last year) 2009 was the first year since 2005 that I have read three Iris Murdoch books in a single year. This is a lot of Iris Murdoch books. The last one I read, The Unicorn, felt sort of monged off, which might be an unfair judgement based on the fact that I was pretty in tune, by that stage, with how the plot was likely to unfold. This means that I have now read exactly half of the novels she has written, so let's take a look at the Iris Murdoch runrate to see when I am likely to have finished reading the complete works.  You will note that doing this before I am 30 will involve reading five of her books this year, working up to six next year, and then one before my birthday in 2012. There is no way I am going to do this. It would be a fairly miserable exercise. 2016/17, based on current averages, seems reasonable. I finally read Metamorphoses, and do not know why I delayed that so long - it is terrific fun, way easier than I thought it would be, and made me want to read more Ovid. On the other end of the spectrum, I did not expect to like The Devil Wears Prada as much as I did, although that was me literally judging a book by its cover - I love books that are set in offices and moderately well written, and this is both of those. By contrast, I expected to love Possession, and it ended up being a bit of a slog - I think the turning point was when it is noted that the "bad" character's numberplate was [something] 666 ( why not just give him horns as well, AS Byatt) and it ended very, very abruptly given the 475 pages of what was, basically, just buildup. Also worth noting is Nabokov's Laugher In The Dark, which works superbly as a precursor to Lolita - if you have not read the latter, read it and then read Laugher In The Dark, if you have, re-read it and then read Laugher In The Dark (I can lend either or both, obviously). It's a lot like reading the story of a minor character in Lolita, specifically the prostitute with whom Humbert sleeps at the start of the book - Margot's story in Laugher In The Dark could easily have been Monique's backstory in Lolita. It's good in its own right (Nabokov didn't think so, but ignore him), although more interesting as part of the canon that also includes Pale Fire and Pnin. To read this year - i) 2666 - I enjoyed The Savage Detectives a great deal! I am told this is better! ii) Moby Dick - because I haven't read it before. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) awesomewells and slightlyfoxed - both of whom have read it - screwed up their faces like socks when I stated my intention to read this, but I own it now and should not wuss out. iii) More Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square was great. iv) More Lee Child, I've let that slip recently and could, actually, read all the Jack Reacher books before I'm 30 if I want to. v) Also, sort of want to reread Anna Karenina, it is lovely and it's ages since I last read it. |
blahflowers
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9:36a |
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| Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 |
budgie_uk
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8:37p |
Neil Gaiman wishes you all a happy new year...
Neil did an unbilled appearance at Amanda Palmer's gig on New Year's Eve, during which he said the following, which I commend to you all: May the upcoming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness.
I hope you read some fine books, kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art. Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can.
May your coming year be a wonderful thing, in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.
I hope you make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return.
And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and wisdom in the world, I hope that you will - when you need to be - be wise, and that you will always be kind.
And I hope that somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. And since there's nothing like the original, here he is: |
slightlyfoxed
|
11:24a |
Feeling Constructive
I've an unexpected enthusiasm for minor DIY! I've installed blinds, raised the bed by 30cm to store the comics archive, and put fitted storage into an alcove. I like sawing, drilling, standing back from things and going 'yep', and laying hands on a structure I have created and giving it a good shake to demonstrate its solidity. I particularly like the balance between precision and botching - that I have to do it properly or it won't work, and it's hard and tedious but gives me a sense of Pride in my conscientiousness. Then sometimes it still doesn't work, and I have to cover it with No More Nails*, hit it with a hammer and not tell anyone. Hammers! The ability to concentrate the force of muscle and momentum into a single spot! Awesome. Today I will be getting even more low-tech than hammers. I've put up a set of the antique bookcases I bought on eBay. Without bracing, bookcases tend to go like this: /_/ or like this: \_\ Mine are so slightly, subtly out of true that it is invisible to the naked eye. However, when I try to stick on the doors (which are, predictably, like this: |_| ) they reveal the skew and don't fit. The top half of the bookcase is screwed to the wall already, to prevent toppling and crushing, so I need to shift the base of the bookcase over by about three centimetres. How will I do it? I will put on my steelcapped boots, wait until everyone in the building is awake and hope they're not hung over, and I will stand to one side of the bookcase and kick it. The craft! The artistry! *There are several generic brands of No More Nails called things like Forget Nails and Who Needs Nails and Don't Mention Nails In My Presence, They Are Dead To Me and What Did We Call Those Pointy Things We Used To Use To Secure Stuff? Oh, Who Gives A Toss, Pass The Lethally Powerful Glue. |
| Friday, January 1st, 2010 |
blahflowers
|
11:03p |
The End of Who? - The End of Time Parts 1 & 2 (SPOILERS)
It would be interesting to know the health of Doctor Who right now. None of the kids I know are particularly concerned about Doctor Who, preferring instead the sparkly passive-aggressive stalker or the grumpy werewolf, so I've got no idea whether the presumed target demographic that this entire Christmas effort has been aimed at, the seven-year-old with ADD who doesn't follow the stories but likes pretty pictures presumably, walks away pleased. However, while I think that, with the end of season 4 arguments could be made either way, the end of this so-called 'season five' was utterly and incontrovertibly shit. There was, if not a great story then at least a passable story, but it was buried in layers of wretched toss that suggests that RTD has one of those contracts that means no-one gets to edit his work or tell him to go away and come back when he's written a proper story and so they are forced to put on a brave face and tell Doctor Who Confidential about how they think this is Russell's best script ever while they die inside. When the Doctor gets that fatal blast of radiation I looked at my watch and realised we were still a good fifteen minutes from the end. And I thought 'what the hell?' Little did I know what horror was going to follow. The Doctor has enough time to invent a machine to save his life, or visit one of the millions of places in the universe that could save him. Instead he travels round all the characters RTD has created, including chipmunk Billie Piper and her new Esther Rantzen teeth. She looks at him clearly, yet somehow never puts two and two together during her time with Ten to point out she met him before. Bad RTD. Unnecessary RTD. It goes to show that Tennant and RTD should have both left a year earlier as, if a big reunion was needed, then everyone flying the TARDIS was the last time many of those characters should have been seen. Finding a new boyfriend for Jack after he had to experience his previous partner dying horribly and then being forced to sacrifice his grandson was an insult. What the hell is a Sontaran doing running around on Earth while the Master and then Time Lords invade? Praise to John Simm for taking a bad script and making it almost work. The scene where Ten tries to sell him yet again on the idea of them travelling together is very well done as both Tennant and Simm have to try and make us believe there's a possibility of something we know won't happen happening. The whole thing about the Time Lords being responsible for the drumming in the Master's brain doesn't bother me as much as I would have thought it would, perhaps I was largely numb to the car crash on screen by that point. That no explanation is given for the mysterious woman that speaks to Wilf and who the Doctor recognises is a flaw. I think RTD doesn't name her because she can only be one of a few possibilities, the Doctor's mother/wife/daughter, Susan or Romana. But if the Time Lords can only just imprint the child Master with the drumming signal how is she merrily able to project herself into Wilf? I genuinely feel that the major fault with this last two-parter is that RTD just doesn't care any more so is happy to throw any nonsense on screen. Such as the Doctor's fall from the shuttle-craft. I know that all it took was a knock on the head to turn Doctor Six into Doctor Seven, but this was a fall of Logopolis-like distance, plus velocity, and the Doctor gets away with minor abrasions. Would it have taken much time to have the cactii give him something to break his fall? And to bring Donna back and do absolutely nothing with her, what a waste of time that was. She remembers everything, has a brain storm and is then fine and her pre-Doctor self again. I kept expecting her to metaphorically swoop in and help the Doctor, as it is I don't see how things would have been any different if she'd been turned into another of the Master clones. I don't have much of a problem with the Time Lords, as they were a minor ten minute thing, they come back, Gallifrey appears in the sky, the Doctor destroys a machine, they and Gallifrey disappear. Big fucking deal. That Timothy Dalton was apparently Rassillon is another issue but, again, numbness. In many ways this two-parter seems nothing more than a calculated 'fuck you' from RTD to Auntie. Heavily and exhaustively trailed, then turns out to be a two-parter with long pauses where nothing much happens, I do wonder whether RTD wrote this so that children in Spring decide they don't want to watch Doctor Who any more as it got so boring and it dies again in a year or two. I did feel a twinge when the Tenth Doctor said "I don't want to die" or words similar, even if that was a lie, but hopefully Moffat will take steps to make clear that Doctor Toddler is different in temperament to Ten and Nine, Toddler's gurning and checking out his body being pretty much a direct copy of the Ninth Doctor in that Children in Need special. I know that Comic Book Guy has helped to mock the fan that feels that program makers owe them anything, but I do still believe that, and that this was a slap in the face not just to the adult fan, but even the young child watching. Worst episode ever? Definitely. Current Mood:  disappointed |
mordantcarnival
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9:54p |
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budgie_uk
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5:27p |
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miss_annersley
|
5:16p |
NY resolutions 2010
1. Sit up straight 2. Take the stairs (already broken this one, but never mind) 3. Lose weight, be more healthy, do more exercise, finish PhD, find out how to be happy 4. Stop burning the onions |
douglasnoble
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9:00a |
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| Thursday, December 31st, 2009 |
budgie_uk
|
7:28p |
'Appy 2009+1
I was right, you know. A year ago, I wrote: I know, I know - it only seems twelve months ago that we were changing the year from 2007 and now they're doing it again?
And what’s more, you just know that in a few hundred days they'll be wanting us to change that year thing again. I call conspiracy! And now, less than four hundred days later...? So, anyway, to anyone reading this, I wish you and yours all the best for next year; may it be everything you hope for, may you get everything you wish for, and may you only know joy during 2010... See you on the far side... |
budgie_uk
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7:26p |
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budgie_uk
|
12:12p |
The 2009 Meme
Only amateurs need the questions, so here are the answers to my 2009 meme. 1. Yes. 2. No. 3. Yes. 4. Yes. 5. No. 6. No. 7. No. 8. No. 9. No. 10. Oh yes. |
| Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 |
budgie_uk
|
9:40p |
Sounds familiar...
"Everything that has a beginning has an end. I see darkness coming. I see death."Strangely enough, not spoken to the Tenth Doctor, but to Neo in The Matrix Revolutions. Just found that interesting. Hopefully, the second part of The End of Time won't be as disappointing as the aforementioned movie. |
| Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 |
budgie_uk
|
7:34p |
e-book readers
Just curious - how many people reading this have e-book readers? Am considering - only considering - releasing The Fast Fiction Challenge as an e-book; almost certain it's not worth it, but a few friends have been raving about their e-book readers... |
assmonkeydiary
|
9:36a |
mask of the winter ninja
Phew.... strong winds battled me almost to a standstill on the bike ride to work today. Definitely a good workout. Fortunately I bought a sort of thermal ninja mask yesterday to keep my face warm during winter rides and I like it quite a bit except for how much moisture my breath generates inside it. Must learn to breath drier. Learning to regulate my body temperature has been a challenge overall. If I dress properly for the weather, I start overheating about halfway through my ride. But that jacket I got for the Iceland trip a couple years ago has come in very hand, because I can leave the thermal part unzipped, but the anti-wind and anti-rain shell fully zipped, and stay pretty comfortable for the whole ride. 
Current Music: Magnetic Fields - "I Think I Need a New Heart"
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