Archives for May 2005
A quick question for Bay Area friends... (May 31, 2005) If I was to wander over to San Francisco sometime between the 13th and the 27th June, would anyone be around? Are you all going to be off at some weird festival or something? Would there be time to hang...
Links for 2005-05-31 (May 31, 2005) A Joy of Tech "Blast from the Past" posted as a riposte to that Waterstones guy... "Mr Dewbottom! Get Into My Office Immediately!" How to Become an Early Riser An interesting post on sleep which mirrors a lot of...
More thoughts on Doctor Who and Bad Wolf... (May 30, 2005) There are a whole ton of theories all over the internet at the moment about all the 'Bad Wolf' references appearing in Doctor Who. In two weeks an episode called "Bad Wolf" will air, and it looks like it's the...
Links for 2005-05-30 (May 30, 2005) The 'Missing Words' Round (BBC Backstage prototype) A glorious, if impossible, game based on part of the popular "Have I Got News For You" TV Quiz...
On how journalists write about webloggers... (May 29, 2005) There's an article in the Sunday Times today called Golden rules for blogging clever which features a few choice morsels of salient quotage from some bloke not a million miles away from this weblog. For this reason alone I recommend...
Links for 2005-05-29 (May 29, 2005) Congratulations to ex-co-worker and b3ta godfather Rob Manuel on the birth of his son, Angus I give it an hour before the child's picture is in three thousand viral animations... Firefox gets a question on US quiz show, "Jeopardy"...
What a strange episode of Doctor Who... (May 28, 2005) So without wanting to give too much away, did I just go nuts or did The Doctor just flirt outrageously with a group-sex-having, slutty, bisexual, American futurist space-rogue (and zoophile) and then invite said rogue to move into his travelling...
You will not tell me what to post... (May 28, 2005) Okay, this is not a big rant, but it had to be said. Some weblogs actively appeal for people to send them links to stuff that they might like to post about. I do not. No doubt some people are...
Links for 2005-05-28 (May 28, 2005) The most linked UK weblogs as of May 2005, according to troubled diva... Interesting set of statistics which go to show (again) that links bear very little relationship to traffic...
Links for 2005-05-27 (May 27, 2005) The Application of Web-like Design to Data: Designing Data for Reuse Matt Biddulph's paper at XTech talks about the work we did together on the PIPs project, and on identifiers and web services UpMyStreet Conversations - the project that...
Links for 2005-05-26 (May 26, 2005) iPod Plug-In Sets Music Free "ml_iPod, allows iPod users to bypass iTunes and manage music collections in Winamp instead. The iPod is supposed to work with iTunes only. A new version of the software was released Monday." Google's plan...
The chain-letter of musical love continues... (May 25, 2005) So I could say that I don't normally do these things - after all that's what I said last time. I don't know how many more times I can not normally do these things before it starts to look a...
In which Nick Denton gets a pie in the face... (May 25, 2005) Now Nick Denton and I really get on pretty well when we're not talking about politics, but still I can't resist having a little evil chuckle to myself at the news that he's been pied in the face as part...
Links for 2005-05-25 (May 25, 2005) A French commission doesn't approve of the word 'blog' and wants to replace it with the more gallic 'bloc-notes' or 'bloc' for short... I don't like the word 'blog' either. I liked weblog much more. I think Meg Hourihan...
Links for 2005-05-24 (May 24, 2005) Unions announce BBC strike dates "BBC staff are to strike for 24 hours on 23 May and 48 hours on 31 May and 1 June in a row over job cuts" I, Cringely on the Inflection Point - "So...
Links for 2005-05-23 (May 23, 2005) Lecturer censored in Spanish University (UPV) for defending P2P networks This is a terrible story where someone talking about what is legal is forced out of his job by organisations putting pressure on the University. This is not an...
The New York Times can just sod right off... (May 22, 2005) Eurgh. I am so bored of following other people's links to something on the New York Times and finding it all login-required and password-protected. I cannot be bothered any more. I. can. not. be. both. ered. So as of now...
The podcasting and download trial commences... (May 22, 2005) A few weeks ago I talked about the upcoming BBC Download and Podcast trial and everyone got terribly excited even though it hadn't started yet. But now it has! Actually it started last Monday, but I've been pretty distracted with...
A life portrait for a business card... (May 22, 2005) Awesome - after posting up my business card side effects of the plasticbag.org redesign, I got sent this terrific e-mail from Siobhan Curran of Tranniefesto: A while back, I purloined a couple of images from your Flickr photostream, ran them...
Links for 2005-05-22 (May 22, 2005) R2D2 made in Italy "A prototype of R2D2 has been built by researched at the MediaLab from the University of Pisa who wanted to build a ... companion robot with a friendly interface." A History of the Graphical User...
In which time passes too quick, too slow... (May 21, 2005) So it's been four days since I had the conversations with the people at the various finding-family agencies. It's been three days since I filled in the Traceline form and sent it off. I think it's only been two days...
Some side effects of the plasticbag.org redesign... (May 21, 2005) While I was doing the redesign for this site, I was trying to find an aesthetic that I could use in all kinds of other places as well. I experimented a bit during the process with some business card stuff...
Links for 2005-05-21 (May 21, 2005) Newsmap - it's not new, but it is classic and brilliantly executed and I see no reason why I shouldn't link to it again... I wonder whether something like this could be done with BBC News feeds through the...
Links for 2005-05-19 (May 19, 2005) A fascinating graph shows the relative daily traffic of two major international websites Dear God are Flickr doing well. That looks like exponential growth. Or logarithmic growth. wow. Awesome real-world installation built with Flickr that does interesting things with...
A brief aside about filling in forms... (May 18, 2005) A weirdly disorienting couple of days all things considered and some of my fuses appear unusually short and fizzy as a result. This morning I filled in the form from Traceline and sent it off, filling the A4 sheet with...
Links for 2005-05-18 (May 18, 2005) Kylie Minogue 'has breast cancer' "Singer Kylie Minogue has postponed her tour of Australia after being diagnosed with breast cancer, her tour company has announced" Anti-Anti-Piracy Seal A beautiful bit of design for artists to put on their albums...
Another step in finding my father? (May 17, 2005) So my long protracted semi-attempt to work up the courage to find my father has moved on one more tiny little step step with a couple of nerve-wracking and unsettling conversations with (1) the Salvation Army and (2) Traceline. The...
Links for 2005-05-17 (May 17, 2005) The guy who wrote this is an infant and doesn't deserve to be taken seriously If you're going to resort to calling someone an arsehole and mocking their accent as a way of getting your point across, then you...
Links for 2005-05-16 (May 16, 2005) Watch Greg the hypnotically swaying Google AdSense Engineer explain AdSense to you It's terribly good and makes it absolutely clear that my site was not designed to have adverts on it... Sudoku Fun Dashboard widget I have no idea...
On the attractions of the imperfect... (May 16, 2005) A couple of weeks of Tiger and the one thing that I keep noticing is the diminished keyboard buffer. Or at least that's what I think is going on. In Panther, one of the things I could - and did...
Links for 2005-05-15 (May 15, 2005) Ah what fun - A Personality Disorder Test You'll all be reassured to know that there's nothing excessively wrong with me that a few weeks on a beach wouldn't cure... Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto "Imagine you're a...
On David LaChapelle, Selfridges and a Vegas Supernova... (May 14, 2005) Every day on the way to work my bus passes Selfridges. And from my elevated seat on the top floor, I get a pretty good view of the extraordinary themed displays that they put up each month. Sometimes they're pretty...
The lyrics of "Show Me" from My Fair Lady... (May 14, 2005) Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words! I get words all day through; First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do? Don't talk of stars burning above; If you're in love, Show me!...
Links for 2005-05-14 (May 14, 2005) Is your screen dirty? This might help! One of the cheesiest links you'll ever see on plasticbag.org and thanks to Rebekah Ford for the pointer......
BBC Backstage launches... (May 11, 2005) Presented with limited comment, BBC Backstage launches in beta with a stated mission to open up BBC content feeds for the public to build things with. People can also share their ideas on new ways to use BBC content: Backstage...
Links for 2005-05-11 (May 11, 2005) On (Design) Bullshit - An interesting piece on the rationalisation for design decisions that people make on fundamentally aesthetic grounds I think it underestimates the value of the expert in knowing what will work but not being able to...
Links for 2005-05-10 (May 10, 2005) Crazy Orbs on Flickr Mr Biddulph and I have been playing again. All terribly entertaining. More later......
Links for 2005-05-09 (May 9, 2005) Worth1000.com - Current Products in a Vintage Light... Make new things look old again. Some are awesome. Some are clumsy as all hell... Blueprint for a widget of mass destruction - on how Tiger Widgets could represent a security...
Links for 2005-05-08 (May 8, 2005) Are You Thinking What Were We Thinking? Slightly changed the name, but anyway - a page full of hacks and adaptations of vile Tory posters. Build a Better DVR out of an Old PC An article for Make magazine...
In praise of short posts... (May 7, 2005) I've just tried unsuccessfully to read two or three posts on other people's sites that are more than about three paragraphs long and my eyes just slid off them like they were made of Liquid Silk. And in the spirit...
My view of the 2005 General Election... (May 7, 2005) So an election has come and gone and what a strange experience it was. This was the fourth election in which I've voted - in order my vote has gone to the Liberal Democrats when Paddy Ashdown was still in...
An article in the Guardian about MySpace... (May 7, 2005) There was an article in the Guardian about a week ago about MySpace that quoted me and I completely forgot to point it out to everyone. If I don't continue to point out what large national papers say about me...
Weinberger on the BBC / Are presentations redundant? (May 7, 2005) So this is nice - via my boss I'm directed to a brief piece by David Weinberger on some of the work going on around the BBC at the moment and featuring some of the stuff we've been doing in...
Links for 2005-05-06 (May 6, 2005) I Voted For The Liberal Democrats Because... Well, you can read my reasons on this nice little site that can feed your reasons back to your MP...
Links for 2005-05-04 (May 4, 2005) UpMyStreet.com redesigns and bluntly - it's incompetent A screen width that will shut out 30% of its users, incomprehensible navigation, 'issues' like a print magazine distracting you from the database of useful information... WTF?! Plus more pages != more...
A political accord of non-voters... (May 3, 2005) I'm watching Michael Portillo on This Week today and he makes a really interesting point about turn-out at the election. He suggests that people tend to vote less when they think they know what the outcome is going to be....
Links for 2005-05-02 (May 2, 2005) Flickr Automator Action 0.1 First version of an automator action to get your photos up onto Flickr. Very cool. Watching this one closely... Niall Kennedy's Weblog hosts a Nintendo Acapella Melody Highly entertaining piece of musical history / art...
On Tiger and Mail and Automator and Dashboard... (May 1, 2005) A new operating system and a Bank Holiday on the same weekend. It's like fate. And it means that all around the country there are geeks fiddling and installing and reinstalling and losing serial numbers and going "oooh" pretty much...
