October 31, 2003
I can't help it, I just can't. I've been fighting it. I'm not proud of this. But it's just no good. I really, really want the pink one....
I have received a plea for help from SwissM which runs as follows: hi dear nerd can you find out for me (if it's not only no bother but positively a pleasure) when BASEL was spelled BASLE? my contention is...
Two characters fused at birth (if I may so term it, but I may be wrong) inhabit blaugustine and I enjoy them both very much. It's an amazing place to visit, like being invited into someone's home, someone who is...
October 30, 2003
I phoned the bus garage this morning with my complaint (see yesterday) and, after a predictable conversation, the very jolly man at the other end of the phone casually dropped his bombshell. "Never mind, dear, it'll all be so much...
October 29, 2003
I live at point X in London. I work at point Y. I am, you might think, fortunate indeed to have bus number 000 running between precisely point X and point Y, which form the termini of its route, from...
Via Stuart Hydragenic: Jonathon Keats, BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The man who sold his brain" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3217423.stm">the man who sold his brain, is offering futures contracts on his brain, in bundles of one million neurones. His aim is...
October 28, 2003
(Further to a number of foaming comments frothed elsewhere in the woods) There is excellent advice (in the form of a downloadable pdf document) entitled "Control of Grey Squirrels" on the Red Squirrels in South Scotland website. As well as...
October 26, 2003
Autumn is here (ps I still loathe squirrels)...
October 25, 2003
I'm similarly obsessive about Vasily (or Wassily) Kandinsky as I am about Constantin Brancusi. It may or may not be an accident that the love affairs started on the same day, at the same place. This is Landscape with Red...
October 24, 2003
The fireworks have started. They started some days ago, but are hissing and sizzling, banging and whizzing with gusto all around the sky tonight. It's going to be like this til the 9th of November. At the moment it's Diwali,...
I'm a touch ebulliant at the moment. Could be because I've actually achieved something concrete and exciting (to me) at work after basically doing nothing for a fortnight, and almost getting away with it. Or could be because I had...
October 23, 2003
Recently added to the feeding tube: Bells and Whistles Guild of Ghostwriters Speaking as a parent What the Hell Happened Last Night Clicking on: Man About Lancaster Zozimus - another blogspot production from the prolific Stephen Moran. Could he be...
Forgive me, you gods of financial rectitude and familial responsibility, for I have sinned, and my conscience is giving me terrible gyp*. Today my replacement SIM card arrived for the mobile that was stolen. I have the same number and...
It's got chocolate biscuits, it's got charity, it's got concord, it's got a hero who's half the man he was. What more could I want? 'My supersonic seat cost £800 of biscuits' Ok, I feel a bit sick now....
October 22, 2003
Murderously mad? We’ll cure you then kill you. Not quite that mad? We’ll lock you up and maybe you’ll kill yourself. Well, in the US, anyway. Perhaps slightly overstating the situation, but have a look at these two reports on...
October 21, 2003
I thought that as the nights drew in, the light began to fail, winter nipped in the air, etc etc, I would be unable to take more busTop pictures, at least on the way home in the evening. No such...
October 20, 2003
The Poem of DarknessOnce more, the vigil season!Broad pen-strokes on my sheet look grim.Night's rust-juice floods the gardens,by six full to the brim.damp oozes from the mouldering trees,you muse on how much timeyou've left. Your foot stops dead, in fearof...
October 19, 2003
This is where I spent more than an hour this evening, waiting to pick up b1 from a birthday party which was "running late". Staring at that demonic purple glow, trying not to hear the piped muzak, and failing, has...
We went to Deal Castle yesterday. B worked out our itinerary. I expressed surprise that we should be taking a train to the town of Sandwich, rather than the town of Deal. Surely, I reasoned, Deal Castle will have been...
October 17, 2003
I was in bed with Mr Noodle this morning. Not literally, of course. I had a dream that I met him. In fact his family (Mr & Mrs N and the two noodlettes) and my family (me and B and...
October 16, 2003
My mobile was stolen today. Out of my pocket, I think, as I walked down the street. I'm not very happy about it. Since it's not insured it would cost more than reclaiming the towed car (last week's disaster) to...
October 15, 2003
As the bad hair decade reaches its eighth month drastic measures need to be employed. At the moment the formerly shorn locks have reached critical length to curl to thickness ratio. Imagine the sort of landscape near sand dunes or...
October 14, 2003
My darling little camera valiantly does as I ask. This is my shadow under a sodium street-light falling over a sudden crisp of leaves the colours of butter and toffee, crunched with litter against a low wall. When I get...
I thought I was being painfully honest about my brittle brain. It's certainly been painful for me, in a cauterising sort of way. Searingly honest, to use another hot, painful metaphor. But it's a fashion statement, according to this article...
October 13, 2003
I grew up near a family called "Pargeter", an unusual example of surname-as-occupation survival. According to my dictionary, definition 1b of the noun parget or pargeting is plasterwork that has incised ornamental patterns [C14: from Old French pargeter to throw...
One of my many hobbyhorses is the apalling standard of most "popular" science journalism. I don't know if the advent of a journal such as PLoS Biology: Open-Access Journal will help the situation. But it may well break the info-opoly...
I've been admiring the way some people's blogs behave when you add a comment. Instead of popping up a paltry weeny-window, they glide elegantly to the wide-open spaces of the end of the entry. How, I have been wondering, is...
October 12, 2003
I was once told that scandium was the only chemical element for which no real use had been found. I had dreams of buying the bulk of the world's supplies (apparently in a large lump in Australia somewhere) for a...
October 11, 2003
O frabjous link! cadooh cadink! You can download your own theremin and make unearthly noises. With an added weirdness button. Utterly addictive. (via splinters, previously from wood s lot)...
Over at Reading & Writing Joseph Duemer has dug up the background of a particularly nasty recent spammer including name, address, e-mail and phone number. I agree absolutely with his thoughts on the matter. UPDATE More on this particular spam,...
A few days ago I received a seeming spam e-mail asking me to fill in a questionnaire as part of a "blog/art project" which "martyn_is_an_artist" hopes to have commissioned. Humph, I thought, being a cynical and suspicious person, and forgot...
Update: Noodle has written a fascinating response to this, but without the benefit of trackback. It's here. /update The police helicopter is out again tonight, and I can't sleep. Circling and weaving, the epicentre of its interest seems to be...
October 09, 2003
Today is National Poetry DayThe Ecchoing GreenThe Sun does arise,And make happy the skies.The merry bells ringTo welcome the Spring.The sky-lark and thrush,The birds of the bush,Sing louder around,To the bells chearful sound.While our sports shall be seenOn the Ecchoing...
October 08, 2003
These are for Shelley. People are always there even when you can't see them. Light and glass show them....
It's been a bit quiet because I've been recovering from trauma. Don't laugh, we with delicate psychological constitutions (aka the mad) find life a bit much now and then. Like I always say, brittle brain disease. Also I've got a...
October 06, 2003
First you feed the children and put them in front of the telly. Then you go to bed in the hopes that either it will all go away by itself or someone else will arrive and make it all go...
October 05, 2003
The car has been towed. It's in some pound in the middle of industrial hell nowhere zone, miles away, and it's going to cost £190 to get it back. Not some friendly round number like £150. Ten times a f*cking...
October 03, 2003
The scientist Philip Emeagwali is credited with being the father of modern super-computing. He was born in Nigeria and saw both independence and the Biafran war. He has an extensive website which includes these personal album/diaries covering various periods of...
The Advocacy Project is an organisation which, among many other things, sends interns to work in partner projects around the world - and to blog about it. Here's the page for Erica Williams's blog - she's working in Nigeria on...
Here, via Splinters is a white-hot indictment of literacy teaching by (my hero) Philip Pullman. He demolishes the kind of result-driven test-fuelled orthodoxy which requires children to write an essay by spending precisely 15 minutes in planning and 45 minutes...
October 02, 2003
or how it's all the fault of the silly cows From the New Scientist: Cattle ownership makes it a man's world Early female-dominated societies lost their power to men as they acquired cattle, a new study demonstrates. The idea that...
October 01, 2003
I was looking for something else entirely, but found these instead... crazy jay bluee.e. cummingscrazy jay blue)demon laughshrieking at meyour scorn of easilyhaatred of timid& loathing for(dull allregular righteouscomfortable)unworldsthief crook cynic(swimfloatdriftingfragment of heaven)trickstervillainraucous rogue &vivid; voltaireyou beautiful anarchist(i salute theeBlue...
