work as if you live in the early days of a better nation
I saw this on an envelope the other day. What can it mean?
To me, it clearly means “May be inspected only by two-dimensional officials with the Eye of Horus wearing a cap at 30° bearing insignia of an upturned army helmet with a lion rampant and a blancmange.”
Oh, and this is my first post with SVG graphics. Yay!
Ever had some really good news that you can’t tell anyone immediately? That’s me at the moment. I can spill the beans next Wednesday. Woohoo!
The blurb says: This image of three dormice, torpid, has won the coveted BBC TV Countryfile photographic competition.
The winning image was taken by Steven Robinson as part of Kew’s monitoring programme of this endangered species in conjunction with English Nature.
© 2003 Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Image: Steven Robinson, RBG Kew at Wakehurst Place
I’m only an amateur at information design, but I know bad information when it nearly causes me to miss my train.
The above image (which links to a larger version) is one of GO Transit‘s new information screens at Union Station. It shows all outgoing bus and train traffic from Union Station for the next two hours or so.
What the used to have was a slightly mouldy old teletext system, where the screen was split roughly into three colour-coded segments: two segments about the next departing train on two different train lines, and the bottom third a big digital clock. You could read the time from across the GO concourse, so you could tell instantly if you had to run for the train.
This new display, you pretty much have to be underneath it to see the time. Also, if you’re a train commuter, you don’t want to know what happens in the next two hours. All you want to know is if you’ve missed your train. This is not an airport.
I know the old system left out bus passengers, but buses don’t exactly leave from the same concourse as the trains. They should have their own information board.
We just watched Salmer fra kj�kkenet, a Norwegian/Swedish film about kitchen efficiency in Norwegian bachelors’ homes in 1950. It’s a very touching comedy, and it even has a musical saw!
Further to They’ll turn white soon enough, I’ve heard from CFSC that you can’t get white poppies in Canada. Maybe that’s a project for next year.
I am no philatelist (though I was a half-hearted member of The Stamp Bug Club — and no, I didn’t know who Alain de Cadenet was, either) but this is the best thing ever: Muppets to appear on U.S. stamps.
The article says: Kermit and his friends are not the first puppets to be featured on a U.S. stamp
… That’s strange, I don’t remember seeing a stamp with George W. Bush on it.
It’s so nice to have a November 5th without having neds lobbing rockets and firecrackers about the place.
This time every year, Catherine bakes cookies to remember her dad, who died nine years ago.
We were coming home on the TTC last night, and Catherine broke out some of the cookies. They’re peanut butter this year, and they’re as good as they always are. We were gnawing away happily on them when a girl sat near us suddenly leaps up from her walkman-induced reverie, and asks, “Are those peanut butter cookies?”
We thought from her tone that she wanted one, but when Catherine said that they were peanut butter, the girl yelped and ran off to the next carriage. Other folks on the train looked at us as if we’d just executed an Aum Shinrikyo-style attack on the transit system with peanut roasters planted at every station.
People just weren’t allergic to peanuts when I was young. But it’s getting so you just can’t enjoy a cookie on the subway any more.
… so do it.
http://www.easytree.org/torrents-details.php?id=12213
Mayor McCa
Lee’s Palace, Toronto
18th June 02004
172MB, FLAC format
Set List
========
I’m So Poor. Buy My CD : 4’13”
That’s A Wrap : 3’14”
Hey Man, You Gotta Nice Job : 4’58”
I Got A Haircut : 3’11”
Funky Fresh Beets : 7’45”
I Can’t Pay The Rent : 3’13”
You Better Watch Out : 4’34”
Recording Details
=================
Audience recorded by Stewart C. Russell
Sony ECM-909A microphone -> iRiver H120 digital WAV recorder
(Direct digital file transfer to host Linux box)
Tracks split using Audacity
Levels normalized using the ‘normalize’ command-line tool.
This recording was made with CA Smith’s permission.
About the Artist
================
CA “Mayor McCa” Smith — One-man Band Singing Sensation, Cartoonist,
Tapdancer, almost-Mayor of Hamilton, ON — is probably best explained by
visiting his website: < http://mayormcca.com/>.
MP3s live here.
Whenever you have to defrost live bread dough, make sure you don’t do it in a sealed polyethylene bag. It looks like a squid has been at it …
(the resulting bagels were great, though.)
Okay, so now I have an Orkut account, it appears no-one I know is on it. Is this exclusivity, or something else?
I misread this CBC headline “Allawi accuses U.S.-led coalition of negligence in ambush of Iraqi recruits“, and I thought, wow, that’s a whole new coalition, and a whole new ballgame!
Legenadary BBC Radio DJ John Peel has passed away. Where will we get the weirdness now?
Scooby-Doo breaks cartoon record — but the BBC article is worth reading purely for the anti-Scrappy Doo feedback items alone.
I have to say, Scrappy Doo was perhaps the most annoying cartoon character ever.
Just been listening to Bing Hitler – Live at the Tron, that being Craig Ferguson‘s early stage act, back when he was much funnier.
Richard Iwanski phoned, and left me with this slogan:
Martyrs for Mammon & the American Way of Life:
a Vote for John Kerry is a Vote for Perpetual Purgatory
He and I are both not quite sure what it could mean, or what we can do with it.
I can’t believe this, but HarperCollins UK are making General Reference senior editor Edwin Moore redundant. Eddie’s a true mensch, knows everything (and everyone) there is to know about publishing, and is everything that was good about Collins in Scotland. He and I used to cycle to the Bishopbriggs plant every day, braving Scotland’s, um, interesting weather all year round.
As we were both active in the NUJ chapel, we used to wonder if the management, err, strategies of HCP UK were those of evil geniuses, or shambling morons. Now we know.
(An indication of this is immediately obvious from HCP‘s website; they can’t spell Dr Seuss, and they’re repackaging yet another bloody commemorative edition of LofR.)