Gorgeous soul from the first laydee of Brockley. Paul Weller liked Why so much he played on it.
Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 22:54Wednesday
03Sep
The Incident Of The Stuffed Dead Cat
For years I’ve been telling friends, people and anyone else who’ll listen about possibly the funniest moment ever broadcast on British television. Everyone remembers That’s Life (oddly-shaped vegetables, Cleo Rocas in a wheelbarrow holding a plate of jelly - if you don’t actually remember, don’t ask - and dogs that used to drink from soda syphons) yet nobody ever seems to remember the Incident of the Stuffed Dead Cat. Some people even thought I was making it up, and even Helen, who used to work on the programme and does just about recall it, couldn’t provide any hard evidence of its existence.
However, thanks to good old YouTube, it’s online and I feel a little vindicated. Enjoy.
Monday
01Sep
Page 123
“Pick up the work of fiction closest to where you are sitting right now that has 123 pages or more, turn to page 123, find the fifth sentence, then post it and the next three sentences” (via Clusterflock).
I like things like this, so here’s mine:
The House Of Whacks by Matthew Branton
He was cold now, deep cold, the chill wedged into his bones as unyieldingly as it lodged in the bricks of his Boston rooming-house for six months of the year. The food sat in his belly like a block of ice. There were thirty-six hours to go, and he was tired. He had no feeling in his hands and he slapped them together, rubbed them hard, forcing blood back into the wooden slabs they’d become, then dug around in his pack for his address book and a stub of pencil.
Friday
29Aug
Guardianwhacking
If you’re familiar with the term Googlewhacking then you’ll already know the concept of entering two search terms with the aim of producing just one result. It’s harder than it looks. The Guardian tags its reports and has challenged surfers to find their own Guardianwhacks.
I found this on my very first attempt.
Thursday
28Aug
PT 6: Only Fools Rush In
I had my 6th personal training session at the gym today. And, disappointingly, it was quite difficult. The thing is, I haven’t been to the gym very much in the five or so weeks since my last session and, despite training at work which involved quite a considerable amount of physical energy, stamina and guts my overall fitness has decreased and my general gym-morale has plummeted. I have even begun to call into question my motivation for taking a personal trainer in the first place.
But, putting all of that to one side I threw myself into the session wholeheartedly; which is where my trainer and I think I might be going wrong.
I tend to push straight into something, especially physical activity, and ‘go hard’ without any thought or pace-setting that might help me get through the whole thing. It’s been said to me before and I do recognise it myself. So, when I found myself unable to work at the level set for me today I began to become even more frustrated and dejected with my training. Helpfully, Simon saw what what happening and adjusted around me which is, for me, a good sign and a reason to be glad I’ve booked him and not any of the other trainers I saw.
But it is also possible that I might be starting from a disadvantage and have low blood pressure or low blood/glucose levels and Simon has booked me in for a free Vi1 health assessment to measure these things tomorrow. if nothing else, it will put my mind at rest and may even give me a few exercise pointers which will boost my fitness self-esteem.
Tuesday
26Aug
Some Great Self-Portraits
The self-portrait is something I’ve never attempted, which is why I enjoyed seeing this article on Wired about their competition, and I have to admit, somewhat wish I’d seen it when it launched so that I could have tried my own chances.
(From top to bottom, my favourite photos by drBenMonkey, Patrick Taschler and Kevin O’Mara.)
Monday
25Aug
On Photography (And Blogging)
From Clusterflock, a nice quote from John Szarkowski, a photographer who only died last year.
One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others … The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.
I agree with the thought expressed that it applies as much to what I try to achieve on this page as much as it does here and here.
Sunday
24Aug
1433 Days To Go
If the World Service Pips, poor old Michelle McManus Leona Lewis, Boris with his hands in his pockets, some ageing old rocker no-one gives two stuffs about, Beckham (Mr, not Mrs, thank God) a Blue Peter competition winner, The Royal Opera House Dance Troupe (erm, more famously known as the Royal Ballet), flashing umbrellas, topiary (?!) and a broken Belisha Beacon don’t scream:
OH SHIT, IT’S COMING HERE NEXT. DUE TO PLANNED ENGINEERING WORK YOU’RE ALL GOING TO BE STUCK ON THE CIRCLE LINE FOR TWO WEEKS. DON’T FORGET TO TOUCH OUT
then I’m not sure quite what SebCo™&Co. could have done to exemplify London, short of arranging one giant interactive London User Experience by asking the entire audience in the Bird’s Nest to try queueing up for the big red bus and then try boarding, without first having bought a ticket from a broken machine.
In fact, the ceremony of the Olympic flag being passed to London has made me feel somewhat patriotic.
Go London. Just do exactly what you do every day, and it’ll be fantastic.
Wednesday
09Jul
Why I Twitter
“Is Twitter a colossal waste of time?” That was the stark question upstartblogger.com posed earlier today.
For me, it’s not a waste of time. I use the service to add instantaneous status updates in between my longer, more thoughtful blog posts. It’s a quick heads-up on whether someone is going to be in town later, and perhaps might be free for a quick coffee, or whether they’re in the theatre and will have their phone turned off. It’s a way of discovering conversations people are having in semi-public that might be interesting to ‘overhear’ and then it becomes a way of finding random people across the internet I might find interesting to have a semi-public conversation with, for others to find and contribute to.
In short, Twitter itself sums up its usefulness: It’s a way of sending information out into the ether that people might find useful to know, but don’t necessarily need to know (watch the video).
Yes, my homepage is the place that hosts my blog and photo galleries, but it’s also a place where I can pull together other services like Twitter and also Flickr, del.icio.us, IM and email. Because they’re all separate services I can update them independently but house them together, and Twitter is easy to update on the net, my phone, via IM and even from my desktop. It’s less self-promotion and more micro-broadcasting.
Tuesday
08Jul
I Want One Of These
I could really do with one of these to stamp my files with.
(Originally seen on passiveagressivenotes, via The Triumph Of Bullshit)
