June 04, 2004
So work's still going a bit nuts and I have no time at all. It should all be over soon (couple of weeks max), then I'll be throwing myself back into the world more than ever. In the meantime, a few little catchups from the few things I've managed to get done outside the BBC.
I went to see Harry Potter on Monday with my younger brother and bloody Cory who did his 'taking photos of the "don't take photos" sign' thing to general hilarity from the rest of the auditorium. Again. And - of course - the Englishman dies quietly of shame inside (but it wouldn't have been the same without him). Personal verdict - still flawed, but better than anything else in the rest of the series so far. Four stars. Well done to all involved etc.
And on Wednesday night, I finally got to see the Pixies in concert at Brixton Academy. It was a dream come true in many ways - and one of the most tight, sharp and systematically well assembled concerts I've ever been to. But it was also a slightly sad experience I think - tinged somehow with the fact that I've worn all the songs to the bone with repeated listening. Looking on the stage it looked a bit like Frank Black and Kim Deal felt pretty much the same way...
This weekend I'm planning to detox a bit tomorrow and generally get my head in order - maybe teach myself some more Illustrator to stop myself going nuts with thinking about the web. And of course I'll be at NotCon on Sunday, as indeed should you be.
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May 29, 2004
The new caring version of the Conservative party doesn't inspire that much faith in me. I know they're all multicultural this and "ooh happy gay people" that, but all it really takes is someone like Lord Tebbit to pull back the Transylvanian's cape to reveal the genuine sentiments of the Old Guard Tories. On the Thursday morning edition of the Today programme, Lord Tebbit says the cause of obesity is "buggery" (RAM). Having said that the cause of obesity is directly the consequence of a decline in family life he continues:
And the government is pursuing the break down of family life. We've had one thing after the other... In the House of Lords at the moment we've got this gay marriage bill at the moment - that doesn't help - and we've not only got an epidemic of obesity ... we've got a huge problem of AIDS and the government's attitude is to do everything it can to promote buggery - the two are somewhat intimately connected!
Weirdly we're left with Boris Johnson having to save the day and say, "I don't think you can really say that gay marriage is responsible for obesity, with the best will in the world..."
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May 24, 2004
From a relatively old article (at least in terms of webloggia's attention-span) comes some pointers on improving design through simplicity:
This is a good set of assumptions for trying out new ideas and building new products and pretty close to the way we've been working in R&Mi; when we do our rapid prototyping sprints. I should really write that stuff up sometime...
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May 23, 2004
I couldn't agree more with this piece on gay men being banned from being sperm donors. The same thing happened a few years ago with the blood transfusion service. They're desperate for donors and yet the rules say (in the UK) that any man who has ever had sex with another man should not donate. I've been tested regularly for pretty much everything and am clear, have a relatively rare blood type (A-) and there are chronic blood shortages that could result in deaths. What possible rationale could there be for stopping me from helping?
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May 22, 2004
Yesterday evening, after a few too many cocktails with lovely people from work and an emergency Italian meal, we walked back towards Charing Cross to catch the tube only to see a van full of police officers looking weird and mischievous while playing the theme tune to Mission Impossible incredibly loudly and driving up and down the Strand. They all looked about seventeen, and like they were wearing their dads' uniforms. These are not the uniformed whores from Morrissey's The World is Full of Crashing Bores and that's quite nice. I wasn't scared of them or anything. But I wasn't exactly filled with confidence either...
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The TV miniseries Earthquake 10.5 is just airing in the UK. It is - bluntly - an unmitigated pile of shit. Interestingly if you search for it online, pretty much the first thing you get is a long page by earthquake experts explaining precisely why it's total bunk:
Fiction: There can be a magnitude 10.5 earthquake
Fact: The magnitude of an earthquake is related to the length of the fault on which it occurs--the longer the fault, the larger the earthquake. In order to have a magnitude 10.5 earthquake you would have to have a fault that circles the Earth - no such fault exists.
Fiction: Thinking an earthquake is an aftershock because they couldn't find an epicenter - all earthquakes have epicenters
Fact: Aftershocks ARE earthquakes!! The only difference is that they occur after a larger earthquake instead of by themselves.
Fiction: Nuclear explosions can "seal" faults
Fact: Nuclear explosions CANNOT seal faults. Earthquakes are part of a global tectonic process that generally occurs well beyond the influence or control of humans.
Additional Earthquake 10.5 fictions that are enough to drive you nuts:
Now I know it's churlish to expect entertainment to be completely accurate, but this is just a few things from a list of dozens! I'd like to think that people doing stuff like this had some grasp of what they were talking about, but evidently not...
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May 18, 2004
Apparently some people using IE6 are having trouble logging into Typekey via plasticbag.org and as a result can't post comments. Most other browsers seem to be working OK - certainly all Mac browsers that I've tried - but obviously this is a problem that I need to resolve. If anyone has any idea why this is happening (presumably I've messed up some aspect of the template), then I'd be delighted if they could e-mail me on my normal e-mail address: tom {at} plasticbag {dot} org. Otherwise I'll look into it more thoroughly tomorrow evening, once I've slept and worked the requisite number of hours.
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May 17, 2004
Massachusetts has become the first state in the US to allow same-sex couples to get married. Whether it will last or be crushed under the weight of a Constitutional amendment I don't know, but it's bloody wonderful in the meantime:
Other towns and cities across the state were also prepared to wed large numbers of same-sex couples as the law came into force. The Supreme Court ruling upheld a decision by the state's highest court. It said that denying marriage licences to same-sex couples violated anti-discrimination laws.
The Massachusetts ruling has fuelled heated debate across the country - and the controversy has been particularly intense in an election year. In a statement, President Bush said he had called on the Congress "to pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. The need for that amendment is still urgent, and I repeat that call today." His rival John Kerry - who is a Massachusetts senator - is also opposed to same-sex marriages, but favours a more limited form of legal recognition.
I think the issue of gay marriage only started to matter to me when I realised that many of my gay friends actually wanted to get married. And on the day when a friend of mine showed me a marriage booking form online in San Francisco and I started looking for the section for gay people and there wasn't one - It was all the same form... That affected me too I think - to realise that while it was clearly an issue at the moment, the whole point of this battle was about completely collapsing that difference around relationships. That's a pretty cool goal...
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About this weblog
This site - plasticbag.org - is a weblog by Tom Coates, who works in London on social software, weblogs and personal publishing on the web.
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Best of plasticbag.org
I've been going through the archives looking for posts with potentially lasting value or utility and categorising them.
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Linkloggery
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The Web
Regular linkage
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What's on the stereo?
Currently playing: "Rain City" by Turin Brakes. This is from the album Ether Song. I have rated this song 5 stars out of a possible 5 and I have listened to it 13 times.
Before that I was listening to:
"Son of Three" by The Breeders. This is from the album Son of Three. I rated this song 5 stars out of a possible 5 and I have listened to it 6 times.
"My Dad's Gone Crazy" by Eminem. This is from the album The Eminem Show. I rated this song 5 stars out of a possible 5 and I have listened to it 0 times.
"I Don't Remember" by Peter Gabriel. This is from the album 3 (1980). I rated this song 4 stars out of a possible 5 and I have listened to it 1 times.
"First Of The Gang To Die" by Morrissey. This is from the album You Are The Quarry. I rated this song 4 stars out of a possible 5 and I have listened to it 2 times.
"Bell Jar" by The Bangles. This is from the album Everything. I rated this song 4 stars out of a possible 5 and I have listened to it 2 times.
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