A homage to loading screens.
In which we are grateful for health and safety
In the news today: military musicians are having their bagpipe practise time restricted for fear of giving them hearing damage. You’d think that if they joined the army they were willing to risk physical injury to start with, but there you go.
Bagpipes, apparently, are as loud as a chainsaw. As anyone who’s put up with Edinburgh buskers knows, though, chainsaws are rather more musical.
In which we know what you're looking for
It’s the end of the week, and it feels like it; I definitely haven’t been getting enough sleep in the past few days. In lieu of something that needs thought and consideration, here’s some search requests.
what food goes best with strawberry beer: the obvious answer that comes to mind is: MORE strawberry beer. It counts as a type of food, I’m sure, much as Guinness is legally a type of low-grade heating oil.*
girl group harmonies – why don’t you try the Shimura Curves!
land of green ginger is a street in Hull, linking Silver St and Manor St
snog work colleague christmas party – my advice is, “don’t”. It’s not as good an idea as you think at the time.** In fact, before you start drinking, take your best office friend aside and say “I know I fancy [Sam/Lisa/Dave/Amy/Fi] in [Sales/Accounts/Admin/Imports/Alien Abduction], but if you see me going anywhere near [her/him], tie my hands behind my back and lock me in the stationary cupboard for half an hour.”
help posing wedding group photos. Stand everyone together. Fiddle around with imposing-looking camera kit. Spend so long faffing that everyone gets bored, then get someone else to snap them quickly when they’re not paying attention. Trust me, it works.
Edinburgh University posh? Ooh, definitely. When I was there, I was one of the least posh people around.
this aye night fire and fleet and candlelight are lines from the Lyke Wake Dirge, which I’ve written about before. I only found recently, though, that it’s used quite a bit in Neil Gaiman‘s classic book Neverwhere which I read recently for the first time in years.***
Things I haven’t managed to write about this week: the band Montoya – who I have a whole roll of photos of that haven’t been scanned yet – the comic-book hero Scott Pilgrim, the sense of ennui and malaise hanging around the office,**** the effect of Too Many Footnotes, and Big Dave’s latest plan for self-improvement. But that’s enough for today, I think.
* the last bit might be a white lie there.
** if you think about it at all at the time, which is probably unlikely.
*** whilst sitting on a train
**** especially when I get my camera out.
Or, to recap
If this week seems to have gone quickly, it’s because I haven’t been blogging very much. My social life is getting the better of me.
Talking of blogging, one of the branch managers at work has apparently started too. I’m intrigued, but not enough to want to read it. The next thing you know, the Managing Director will be getting a Livejournal.
Update on last month’s post about Christian science fiction: whilst searching for something else, I discovered the book I was thinking of when I wrote it. It’s Operation Titan by Dilwyn Horvat. I’ve tried searching for more information about Horvat, but not very much has turned up. I’m not even sure whether Dilwyn is a male or female name.**
The book I was searching for, incidentally, was How To Travel With A Salmon by Umberto Eco, because I wanted to reread his essay “How To Recognise A Porn Movie”. It’s a long, long story,* but it’s tangentially linked to this post from last August, one of the first things I wrote here. I’ll post more about it soon, I’m sure.
* which, to explain, would take several pages of context, description, links to discussions elsewhere, links to political campaigning sites, links to sites you probably shouldn’t read at the office, and lots more explanation, and probably, diagrams.
** Update, August 26th 2020: Internet searches have become rather more sophisticated in the last 14 years, so nowadays it will tell you that Dilwyn Horvat is a Welsh male Christian SF author whose only books are Operation Titan and its sequel Assault on Omega 4. I vaguely remember that the sequel is not set on the moon Titan like the first book; instead it’s in a grimdark post-apocalyptic Oxford.
In which we would like to hack
Via Boing Boing, I’ve discovered a Wired article on RFID hacking, and how it can be used practically for breaking and entering. I can virtually see your eyes glazing over already: but, see, this is important to me at least. The security technologies described in the article are suspiciously like the ones which have recently been installed in the office at great expense.
Now, it is possible that our security consultant has installed the extra-secure encrypted systems described in the article, that are much harder to break into. Given that I’ve had to work with him, though, I’d be surprised if he even realised the difference between the two. I really must show this to Big Dave, and see if we can get our hands on the RFID-reading kit described, if only because it will really irritate Security Man.
In which we find out what people are looking for
To celebrate the 150th post,* here are a few search-engine queries that have brought people to this site in the past few months:
autumn days when the grass is jewelled lyrics and variations on that is, by a large margin, what brings random visitors to this site. I did post some of the lyrics, here. The rest of the requests below are rather rarer.
byline photo – no, I still don’t think I need one
what is healthy porn? Porn where everyone is getting plenty of fibre in their diet? I have no idea.
pines forest evil – I’m not, am I?
colleague m was presumably searched for by Colleague M’s mother. Hello, Colleague M’s Mother!
the leviathan pictures – I don’t know whether you mean the philosophy book or the mythical beast, but neither are anything to do with me.
i hear voldemort has no nose how does he smell? I love it when people have the same silly sense of humour as me.
fed up with websites. Well, stop reading them then.
I think that’s enough of that for a few months.
* Update, August 22nd 2020: well, it was the 150th post, before I went through and edited away some of the pointless filler.
In which there is both good and bad
Two small things today, because I’m too sleepy to write more.
Firstly, some lovely photos of the dying Glasgow Subway in the 1970s.*
Secondly, reading the paper at lunchtime, I turned to the obituaries to find that one of my favourite writers, Jan Mark, died recently. Although she was known as a children’s writer, her “adult novel” Zeno Was Here is a lovely novel, and one of my favourite books. I’ll write more about it soon.
* Link via qwghlm.co.uk
In which we ponder competition among blog hosting companies
Back in the mists of time, I wrote about Jakob Nielsen‘s top ten blog design mistakes. Including: not having your own domain name. My response: there are several sites I read and respect that do do this, but if you want to be completely sure you control your own reputation, you need to control your domain name too.
One thing I didn’t consider, though, is that the people who host your site can, if they want, control what you put on it. Filter out things they don’t like. You could, for example, do what News Corporation subsidiary Myspace have been caught doing: censor links to video-hosting sites, presumably because these sites will soon become News Corp’s competitors when Myspace introduces its own video-hosting service. You might think you can say anything you like on the internet – but if you’re a Myspace user, that apparently doesn’t apply.
In which we remember tradition
Event of the day: the annual Haxey Hood game, somewhere near the top of the list of vaguely-pagan rural traditions which are largely just an excuse for a drunken mud-wrestle. Information here, here and here.
In which we briefly scoot over things that deserve more space
A couple of things I meant to write about this week, but didn’t get around to:
Far more teenagers self-harm than previously thought. I’d like to say that I’m surprised, but I’m not. It’s puzzling, though, why self-harm is more popular here than anywhere else. For a long time, too, I’ve been thinking about writing an essay on the connection between self-harm and masochism: why do I feel that one is legitimate and the other somehow isn’t?
Little Britain isn’t funny,* and just repeats a list of race and class stereotypes. This is news, apparently. Being an indie-snob, I’d like to point out that I thought Little Britain was rubbish years before anyone else did – before it was ever on the telly, even. I noticed it wasn’t that funny back in the days when it was still a radio show.
* this was originally a link to a Johann Hari article which has now disappeared into the memory-hole following the controversies that hit his career rather badly. However, I originally found it this blogpost from Chris Applegate which still contains a bit of a summary.
Or, getting ill in a topical way
In today’s news, top scientists have discovered that being a bit chilly does indeed help you catch colds. For me, it’s a timely discovery; on Saturday I started to feel a bit wobbly at the edges, and I spent most of Sunday in bed, sneezing, sinuses blocked, hoping my fuzzy headache would clear itself. I’m blaming the rather ill-planned heating arrangements in my office. It does have a radiator, but at the far end of the room to my desk, which may as well be 1,000 miles further north as far as I can tell. Every ten minutes I have to walk to the far end of the room to warm my numb fingers, so I can keep typing.
The Mother was pleased by the news: “Look! See! Mothers are right when they tell you things!” I tried to point out that she had always said the exact opposite when I was small. If I looked at all sniffly on the day of a PE lesson, I’d be told: “getting out there on the field will do you good – the cold will kill all the bugs off.”
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