Tag: art

  • definitely clean

    iTunes 'clean' marker

    iTunes‘ clean/explicit labelling worries me. Shouldn’t I, at the age of Dennis the Communist Peasant, be able to decide what’s good for me? Not merely that, but it takes up a bunch of the song title entry, and they label songs by artists who don’t produce bowdlerised versions. Gah!

  • iCaved

    Yeah, I caved in and bought a 2GB iPod Nano at the weekend. I had various gift cards and cheques come in, so…

    It’s a lot better than the Shuffle was. I still don’t particularly like being tethered to iTunes, but I can live with it.

  • yeah, I get this too

    Every few weeks someone contacts me with a proposal for what is, in effect, a perpetual motion machine. He (for it is always a he) can demonstrate to my satisfaction that, unlike all the quacks and cranks and mountebanks I have heard about, he really has solved the problem. He has a special catalyst, or a new equation, or a hotline to God, which demonstrates what all other physicists consider impossible: that energy can be created. … My only defence against these people is to ask them for an article in a peer-reviewed journal, whereupon I never hear from them again.

     — from Heat, by George Monbiot.

  • Amazon.com: Uncle: Books: J.P. Martin,Quentin Blake

    w00t! New edition of Uncle, by J.P. Martin to be published June 2007!

    (Thanks to Mike for bringing this to liontower.)

  • all the stars came crashing down

    Saw the Decemberists at the awful barn that is the Kool Haus last night. The place was fairly busy, but not full. A scalper offered me a derisory price for a spare ticket, so I don’t think they sold out.
    They were pretty good; great in parts, kind of tired and meh in others. Naughty Chris Funk lit up on stage; that’ll mean a fine for the venue. That’ll teach him not to play banjo on stage.
    Sensitive wee Scottish folkie Alasdair Roberts supported. He was good enough for me to buy the CD.

  • house concert!

    We went to a house concert last night to hear Chris Coole & Erynn Marshall play some Kentucky duets. Erynn’s back from BC to record with Chris; today’s a long day in the studio.

    Great music, nice venue, excellent evening. Maybe we’ll eventually get enough money to buy Chris a new banjo head; his current one looks stricken with some dread skin disease …

  • wily fish

    I took ten of the small platys over to Mike’s store last night. Catching the wee things was hard; I doubt the expression as difficult as catching platys in a planted aquarium will ever catch on, it’s definitely true. Maybe I should have tried thinking like a platy. On second thoughts, maybe not; all our ones seem to do is ingest, excrete and procreate.

    In order to replace our dear departed cory, I picked up a couple of tiny Oto cats. They’ve been happily smooching the algae from the rocks ever since they were released.

  • to lie down

    This is might be Nic Jones: I’m Going In A Field [mp3]. I’m not sure, though.
    Whoever it is, it’s rather good, and accompanies part of the Claptrap DVD of Ivor Cutler’s Looking for the Truth with a Pin / Cutler’s Last Stand.

  • about to be gone

    This corner of Bloor & Bedford is about to be gone:

    244 Bloor W

    It has memories for us, as the first place we stayed when we arrived was just up the road. Breakfast was at Country Style (which became a Booster Juice after the massive Tim’s opened across the road), lunch was from Pita Factory, the daily paper from Gus at the Mac’s, dinner was sometimes at Swiss Chalet #1; all on the same block, all going to be gone.
    If you look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that hugin neatly severed a couple of heads. It might smart a little, but with some bactine and gauze, it’ll grow back in the morning.

  • spider in the house

    Ole! Tarantula is in the house, but where’s the promised bonus CD?

  • pastry abuse

    Excel can (but probably shouldn’t) be used to make charts like this:

    hyperdonut

  • free bikes at 892 Kennedy Rd

    6 or so slightly rusty open-frame roaders; some Raleighs, a Dunelt, and maybe a couple of Eaton’s Flyers. None look rideable, but if you were a three-speed/coaster brake fiend, there are parts galore.

  • not the smartest loaches in the tank

    Came home, said hello to the fish, and did a quick count; I was one loach down, and the CO2 generator had an orange tail …

    Seems that one of the loaches had decided it was way cool to get wedged up the back of the gas generator, and couldn’t get back out. I gingerly pulled off the device from the side of the tank, and the loach fluttered off, a little dazed.

    No sooner had I put the generator back did another loach zoom up and get jammed. It must’ve been told that you got a “wicked headrush, dude”.

    And for this reason, loaches don’t rule the earth.

  • to work, and back again

    Biked to work today, and just got back. Maybe not the smartest choice of a day â€” second hottest of the year, with thunderstorms threatened — but I made it. Going there was rather slow, as I got lost a couple of times, but coming back was faster than transit.

    If I felt really nerdy, I’d post my route as GPX, but it’s a bit twisty.

  • bike work

    There is something very pleasing about working on one’s bike of an evening, racing against the fading light. I stripped the ancient bar tape of the tourer, and started on refurbishing the brakes. I think that 1987 was the year that cantilevers got good, and since I have a 1986 Super Galaxy, the old Shimano BR-AT50s were pretty poor. New Alivios don’t quite have the finish of the old units, but they’ll work, meaning I’ll be able to stop without a full city block’s notice.

  • Stewart’s Images :: Groovy Computers

    Stewart’s Images :: Groovy Computers are some images scanned from a 1975 programming manual. I remember when computers looked like this …