10 August 2005
[useful] Say No To 0870 — list of cheaper alternative phone numbers for the extortionate 0870 / 0871 / 0845 numbers.
9 August 2005
[comics] On “Liberality” for all — Tom covers an neo-conservative comic called Liberality For All in which Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy (!!) and Oliver North fight ultra-leftism, the United Nations and of course Osama bin Laden … ‘…I’d like to introduce you all to the future of literature for kids – Liberality, an American Neo-Con comic book in the vein of The Authority’
8 August 2005
[archive] Linkage:
- Spotted on Flickr: V for Vendetta Sleeping
- The 50 Worst Hairstyles of all Time … ‘From the old standbys of ugliness like, The Mullet and Comb-Over to new additions to the bad hair lexicon like, The Career Terminator and The Gangsta Pimp- they are all here.’
- Doom Ported to iPod Linux [via Waxy’s Links]
- Wireless hijacking under scrutiny … ‘…the outcome proves that borrowing someone else’s network is not as harmless as the hobbyist wi-fi user might think.’
- Feed Digest … ‘…mix, filter and republish or syndicate feeds to HTML, JavaScript, WAP or PHP, or to a new feed.’
- … and finally: Jesus Swimming.
6 August 2005
[tv] After the Crash — preview of Lost from the Guardian (which is just about to be transmitted on on British TV) … ‘Lost […] is a fantasy in which Americans (and, by extension, America) survive a terrible aeroplane incident but the society that results is more savage, suspicious and selfish than what existed before. To sneak so tough and thoughtful a theme into a mainstream drama series that was created by crossing reality TV with a disaster movie must be regarded as a major achievement.’
[tv] Sky at Night — Recent Real Media Archive of the science TV series Sky at Night presented by Patrick Moore. [via Metafilter]
5 August 2005
[blogs] The Blogs of War — Wired News covers Bloggers in the American Military … Danjel Bout, aka Thunder 6: ‘Americans are raised on a steady diet of action films and sound bites that slip from one supercharged scene to another, leaving out all the confusing decisions and subtle details where most people actually spend their lives. While that makes for a great story, it doesn’t reveal anything of lasting value. For people to really understand our day-to-day experience here, they need more than the highlights reel. They need to see the world through our eyes for a few minutes.’
[religion] Obscenities Uttered by Jesus Christ … ‘Dad.’
3 August 2005
[food] Blogjam’s Garden Snail Risotto — Fraser hunts, farms, kills and eats some lovely creatures from his garden… Sounds Delicious! 
… ‘And into the pan they go. Reluctantly ignoring their silent snail screams, I boil them gently for ten minutes. Rather strangely, the water turns yellow, but I can’t find any reference to this on the Internet – I’m hoping it’s not some kind of toxic gastropod secretion, but only history will tell…’
… ‘And into the pan they go. Reluctantly ignoring their silent snail screams, I boil them gently for ten minutes. Rather strangely, the water turns yellow, but I can’t find any reference to this on the Internet – I’m hoping it’s not some kind of toxic gastropod secretion, but only history will tell…’ 2 August 2005
[books] Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2005 … Detective Winner: ‘Patricia wrote out the phrase ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ exactly seventy-two times, which was the same number of times she stabbed her now quickly-rotting husband, and the same number of pages she ripped out of ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ by Greg Behrendt to scatter around the room — not because she was obsessive compulsive, or had any sentimental attachment to the number seventy-two, but because she’d always wanted to give those quacks at CSI a hard time.’
1 August 2005
[comics] A Comic Book Hero — profile of Dan Clowes from the Guardian … ‘I would never trust anyone else to work with my artwork. I can’t relinquish absolute control. I have an OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder] thing about having drawn every single line in every one of my comics. The great appeal is to be able to say, I did this whole book all by myself. It’s a little module that I created.’
31 July 2005
[history] Ancient Graffiti on the walls of Pompeii … ‘Watch it, you that shits in this place! May you have Jove’s anger if you ignore this.’ [via linkbunnies.org]
29 July 2005
28 July 2005
[python] How accurate is Eric Idle’s Galaxy Song? … ‘Song: Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. Comment: While there have been some estimates that are a bit higher than 100 billion stars, this is still a pretty good estimate.’ [via Badly Dubbed Boy]
[movies] V for Vendetta Trailer — it doesn’t look as bad as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen… Alan Moore on the V for Vendetta Shooting Script: ‘They don’t know what British people have for breakfast, they couldn’t be bothered. ‘Eggy in a basket’ apparently. Now the US have ‘eggs in a basket,’ which is fried bread with a fried egg in a hole in the middle. I guess they thought we must eat that as well, and thought ‘eggy in a basket’ was a quaint and Olde Worlde version.’ [via Pete’s Linklog]
27 July 2005
[bell] Steve Bell: Uneasy Rider [Related: Archive of Steve Bell’s Cartoons]
18 July 2005
[lmg] On Holiday. In the meantime you can check out the archives, the Evening Standard Headline Crisis or other British Blogs…
16 July 2005
[books] The alternative Harry Potter (link contains Spoilers) — In the Style of James Ellroy: ‘Dig that Hogwarts vibe. Potter foresaw it was going down. The howler came that morning. It howled that his presence was required in the Room of Requirement. Potter knew things were gonna go baaaad. He knew this was a mess even the Sorting Hat couldn’t sort out.’
15 July 2005
[maps] Google spots Jesus in Peruvian Sand Dune … ‘A quick phone call to Erich von Däniken confirmed our initial suspicions that the image was hewn from the sand by an ancient civilisation using hot air balloons and alien laser technology borrowed from the scientists of Atlantis. Either that or someone is projecting a picture of Charles Manson onto the desert from a low Earth orbit…’
14 July 2005
[comics] Tony and George G8 Comic – Page 1 – Page 2 — from Sean Phillips and Mark Millar … [via Do You Feel Loved]
[comics] The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick — comic strip by Robert Crumb from Weirdo #17 … ‘It is an interesting graphic interpretation of a series of events which happened to Dick in March of 1974. He spent the remaining years of his life trying to figure out what happened in those fateful months. You will find all 8 pages of this story here.’
[books] How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later — essay by Philip K. Dick … ‘It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question “What is reality?”, to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” That’s all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven’t been able to define reality any more lucidly.’
13 July 2005
[comics] Ask Mefi: What’s a good place to start for indie comics? … ‘I’d recommend ordering the free Fantagraphics catalogue.’
[comics] Acme Novelty Archive … ‘This site is an unofficial database of the works of Mr. F.C. Ware, proprieter of the Acme Novelty Library.’
12 July 2005
[politics] Simon Hoggart: ‘Parliament was united against a common enemy yesterday, an enemy that will stop at nothing, that has only contempt for our way of life, and is utterly indifferent to our loathing. But as well as attacking George Galloway, MPs also had harsh words for the London bombers.’
[food] How to Poach an Egg — Rob Manuel demos a method for perfect poached egg using clingfilm.
11 July 2005
[moore] Old Gangsters Never Die — another song from Alan Moore produced around the same time as the The March of the Sinister Ducks.
[comics] Desolation Jones #1: Author’s Commentary — Warren Ellis on the first issue of Desolation Jones
8 July 2005
[london] Guardian: Steve Bell on the Attack on London
7 July 2005
[london] Surviving a Terrorist Attack — a personal account of one of the terror attacks on the London Underground … ‘Fate is a strange thing. On this particular day a series of events transpired such that I ended up on a Tube train that was destroyed by terrorists. Fortunately it was only the carriage in front of me, but tragically it resulted in a serious amount of injuries. This is my story.’
[london] Metafilter: “Major Incident” on London Underground reported
[london] mobloguk: Tube Image, Trapped
[london] Flickr: London Bomb Blasts Pool.
[numbers] 100,000 Digits of Pi — if you stare at that page of numbers long enough you see the Secret of the Universe … ‘3.141592’
6 July 2005
[books] The Invisible Library … ‘The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library’s catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.’
[london] Photos inside Battersea Power Station … ‘Built in 1933, the Grade II listed structure now faces a new future at the centre of a large shopping, leisure, conference and accommodation complex, due to open in 2009.’
5 July 2005
[tips] Londonist asks: Do We Need To Dry Clean? … ‘To maximise the length of time between launderings, air your clothes as much as possible, especially after being in a smoky pub. The posh cleaners Jeeves of Belgravia recommend hanging your clothes in the bathroom after you’ve taken a shower “to absorb the freshness.”‘
[linky] Link Dump: Exciting Links for Boring Days in no Particular Order.
4 July 2005
[live8] The Music’s Over, the Message Lingers On — nice summary of the Live 8 concert in London … ‘At midday the approach to the park was a familiar pre-rock concert landscape of men weeing under trees, jocular police and a revivalist with a megaphone: “I used to be a sinner like you, now I’m a winner.”‘
[ipod] UK iPod Repairs — might be useful one day…
30 June 2005
[tv] In Cold Blood — JG Ballard on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation … ‘The series unfolds within an almost totally interiorised world, a clue to its real significance. The crimes – they are all homicides – take place in anonymous hotel rooms and in the tract housing of the Vegas and Miami suburbs, almost never in a casino or druglord’s gaudy palace. A brutal realism prevails, the grimmest in any crime series. Suburban lounges and that modern station of the cross, the hotel bathroom, are the settings of horrific murders, which thankfully are over by the time each episode begins. Gloves donned, the cast dismantle u-bends and plunge up to their elbows in toilet bowls, retrieving condoms, diaphragms and bullet casings, syringes, phials and other signs of the contemporary zodiac.’
29 June 2005
28 June 2005
[web] Kill the Drudge Popups in Firefox — how to kill the annoying adverts on the Drudge Report … ‘To block pop-ups from plugins, open your Firefox 1.0 or 1.0.1 browser, type about:config in the address field. Right-click in the resulting config page somewhere and select New -> Interger. Type privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins in the resulting dialog, hit OK, type 2 in the next dialog and you’re all set.’
[grauniad] Guardian Readers Rob The Poor … ‘Our stereotype of Guardian readers is of well-educated, caring, middle-class people working in education or a caring profession or possibly the arts. They are likely to have a strong morality and unlikely to commit a crime or do anything actively nasty. They would like to think of themselves as the moral elite. In fact, most of us can get that slight swell of self-righteous pride by just spreading a copy of the Guardian over a big table with a large cup of Arabica coffee and some French croissants.’
27 June 2005
[underground] London Underground accelerated time disruption map — movie map of London Underground showing disruptions over a two week period.
[comics] Fleep — great online comic – worth checking out … ‘[Fleep’s] about a boy who wakes up in a telephone booth which has been mysteriously sealed in an envelope of concrete. Using only the contents of his pockets (two pens, a paperback novel, three coins and 20 ft of unwaxed dental floss) our hero must fashion and execute an escape plan before he runs out of oxygen.’
25 June 2005
[comics] Edison Hate Future — archive of odd little webcomics published by Warren Ellis on his blog … ‘edison look detached and amused, like he cope fine with constant horror and heartbreak of world…’ [via Robot Wisdom]
24 June 2005
[comics] Warren Ellis Interview — comics-related interview from Londonist … ‘I jumped into the net feet-first in the 90s, and the handheld is very much my outboard brain now. I’m answering these questions on it, in the pub.’
[blogger] Does anybody know what changed with the Blogger templating code? I’m getting some extra CSS appended to my posts… [Later] A possible answer: Blogger “Clear:Both” Glitch workaround
[music] When Noel Gallagher met David Walliams … On Liam and Peter Kay: ‘Liam hasn’t got a sense of humour, fucking full stop. Like with Peter Kay. If you’re a northern guy about our age, all the reference points are spot on – you can’t not like him. We were on the tour bus one night and somebody put a Peter Kay DVD on and I thought: “This is going to be a fucking disaster.” There’s a few Mancs in our crew and everyone was laughing their heads off. And Liam’s just sat there going: “He’s a fucking fat cunt, fucking shit, fucking fat idiot.” So he gets up to go to the bog and someone goes: “Why doesn’t he like Peter Kay?” Because he’d been to the NME Awards when Liam won a trophy for being hero of the year – and Liam wouldn’t go up and fucking collect it. He had on this big white fur coat. So Peter Kay brought his trophy over to him and went “Ere you are lad”. And as he walks off, he goes: “Me mam’s been looking for that coat.” Fucking uproar! I was laughing like fuck.’
23 June 2005
[comics] Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein — web page with comparisons between Lictenstein’s work and the original comic images. Dave Gibbons on Roy Lichtenstein: ‘…Lichtenstein’s copies of the work of Irv Novick and Russ Heath are flat, uncomprehending tracings of quite sophisticated images … the original artists have translated reality into clear, effective compositions using economical and spirited linework.’
[comics] War Of The Worlds Webcomic — nice looking adaptation by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli.
22 June 2005
[mp3] Foobar2000 — I use this simple MP3 audio player for Windows every day. Recommended.
21 June 2005
[comics] Flog Blog — Fantagraphics gets it’s own blog. Gary Groth, Kim Thompson and Eric Reynolds are posting and they’ve got photos from the set of Art School Confidential including snaps of John Malkovich, Dan Clowes and Terry Zwigoff. Groth: ‘This is exciting. My first blog. I’m not a fan of convention diaries, which seem like some lazy fanboy genre written by useless old hacks like Peter David to fill space, serve up one’s ego and act like reg’lar folk all at the same time – but it doesn’t have to be!’
20 June 2005
[tv] When Old People Attack — Mark Lawson on the Channel 4 documentary “Antisocial Old Buggers” … ‘Surrealism is a devalued currency in modern TV: every sitcom has its dream sequences, every sketch show its non-sequiturs. But Jan’s claim to have made the strangest speech ever heard on television rests on the fact that he seems to believe throughout that his comments are no-nonsense conversation. Discoursing on the state of the modern world, he suddenly says: “The worst thing of all is that pop song: If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? Well, for Christ’s sake, hold it against her! You see what I mean? There’s a sort of wetness that I do find tiresome.” The sound you hear is comic playwrights weeping.’