Entries categorized as ‘Ephemera and links’
Today I had to visit Harrods to buy some presents for relatives and friends I’ll soon be visiting overseas (don’t ask me why, but they all want Harrods tote bags); while there, I spotted this monstrosity - an oversized armchair made from minced up teddy bears.
Children walking past it were both fascinated and shocked. This is not surprising given that it looks like someone’s taken several armfuls of cuddly bears, chucked them in a rubbish compactor, mashed them up good and proper, and then stretched their furry little pelts over a threateningly large chair.
More pics of the monstrous Chair ‘O Bears after the jump.
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Categories: Ephemera and links · London
September 12, 2008 · 1 Comment
A short post about what I’ve been reading this week. Hence the name. This week, blogs about the American election. I’ve always had an interest in politics, and this election has completely drawn me in. It has all the elements of fine drama - a hopeful protagonist and a shady nemesis, stunning reversals and Hollywood celebrities demanding one of the central characters talks about how old the dinosaurs are. So, how to keep up to date? This is an issue at the moment, because there’s a lot happening, but not a lot easily spinnable into a news story, so quite a lot of the story hasn’t appeared in the UK media.
* Firstly, a blog called Marbury. The best of the lot for me: it’s written from a British perspective, it’s not too opinionated, and it’s not written by a political hack on from one of the papers so it feels a little different. Mixes latest stories and videos culled from US TV with some very on-point analysis.
* Secondly, and this is if you’re really keen, Andrew Sullivan’s blog. You’ll need to be fast on your RSS reader to keep up to to date with this - think 30 updates a day (!!) - and he’s no fan on McCain and Palin. But it’s passionately written and makes you feel this election really is a titanic struggle. Today’s quote of the day:
“John McCain isn’t running against Barack Obama. He’s running against reality.”
* Third, a bit of a cheat because it’s a podcast, so you can’t read it. Slate’s Political Gabfest. A weekly update that usually strikes a fine balance between chat and analysis.
Categories: Books and reading · Ephemera and links
It’s a bit late, because of course the season has started already, but I was going to predict Robert Kubica was going to be great this year, honest. First up when making any predictions, it’s important to inspire confidence in the quality of judgement, both by stating your qualifications and by pointing out how successful past predictions have been. Sadly, my expertise is limited to being a reasonable player of F1 computer games. However, my Formula 1 predictions from 2007 weren’t too inaccurate - I went for Ferrari for the constructor’s championship (correct), but guessed Alonso for the driver’s (nope). And of course, despite getting one right, I had no clue about how it would happen. So what about 2008?
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Categories: Ephemera and links
Mass games, Pyongyang. Photo: Lawrence Hudson.
1984 was one of the first novels I read that really grabbed me: I hit it at just the right age and at just the right time of year - a quiet teenager holding the book in a blowy spring that was full of bright cold days and people buttoned down into their coats, with pale, fluorescent-light skin. Ever since finishing it, stories about mad, crazy despotic regimes have always interested me - both for the tales of the audacious lunatics who usually run the show, and also for the insights of what it’s like for people to live in a country run by leaders who consult astrologers, spend all the cash on gold plated palaces and think nothing of training thousands of school kids to display coloured placards in sync so you can spell out your name.
No discussion of bleak, barmy regimes would be complete without a mention of North Korea, a place which my friend Lawrence recently went to as part of his travels in Asia. He’s posted about the trip, on his blog, here. Meanwhile, Burma has been in the news more recently: the Times had a good piece up on Naypyidaw, the random, completely new capital the Junta recently constructed. Also worth reading is a blogger’s take on his trip to the new Burmese captial, complete with pictures.
Categories: Ephemera and links
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I stopped link-blogging on this site - as I was using Delicious, everything I ever saved was getting posted here, which was both ugly and lazy. Delicious certainly had its plus points though; regular blogging is good, and using it made me think about the links I was saving. Ultimately, though, the form and the function didn’t quite work.
I’ve been thinking about what to do with this site quite a bit, and one of the things which has occurred to me is how much I like keeping notebooks in the real world - you can see a big pile of the last few years’ worth above - and that if I could find a web app that was similar, I’d be very happy. As a result, I started experimenting with Tumblr. It’s yet another linguistic crime of a name, but the actual program is very nifty; a lightweight, easy to use, and simple blogging app made for handling links, videos and pictures.
Best of all however, is the way in which it handles quotes. Tumblr has a specific way of dealing with little pieces of text, which fits very well with my current thinking on what I’m going to use the main blog for next. There are a lot of design-influenced tech blogs, but far fewer that look at text, writing and reading and how they intersect with technology
But I’m getting ahead of myself… For the moment, behold The Wired Jester’s Jumps & Tumbles, a companion link-log / web scrapbook to this main blog.
Categories: Ephemera and links · Site Stuff
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Yes, that’s right, I am the newest adherent to the web’s favourite productivity cult… GTD. Let’s see if it works for me….
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GTD + the excellent Voodoopad
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43 Folders’ famous lo-fi organiser
Categories: Ephemera and links
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It’s a horrid rainy day here in London, so it’s clearly time for a couple of t-shirt links! This is a fine example of advanced British wartime strategy…
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And on this shirt, the famous Knight goes looking for a paycheck
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New search engine front end from Microsoft using their Silverlight technology; rather nifty, and certainly worth downloading Silverlight to have a play with
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NSFW [?] Full length Google Video of a documentary about Japanese host bars; poignant and strange
Categories: Ephemera and links
