You’ve probably had the misfortune to hear William Shatner’s [more whacked-out than the original] version of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, but did you know that Leonard Nimoy also decided to start a singing career? Check out the cover art of his album ‘The Way I Feel’… awesome.
Quite possibly the only television programme worth watching at the moment is the BBC’s ‘The Blue Planet’. It’s amazing that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the depths of the ocean. The second installment contained some creatures that were truly disturbing, like the hairy angler fish and this octopus nick-named ‘Dumbo’ for obvious reasons.
I’ve been busy working on a new personal project, hence the lack of posts just recently.In other news:Apple release OS X 10.1…shame it’s not a downloadable upgrade.Fresh content at v-2.org.deepend have nose-dived. This is pretty significant considering they were one of the leading players in the industry.And… today is my birthday !
An interesting page about the history of the peace/CND symbol ‘designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist and a graduate of the Royal College of Art’.
‘The promise: “Make no mistake—we will hunt down the enemy, we will find the enemy, and we will kill the enemy.” The caution: “You can’t fight a war against an enemy you can’t see.” And the ominous look ahead: “This is a time of war; the fact that it’s inside our borders means it’s a new kind of war.” We have learned such sentiments like a script; that we have heard it again and again has not diminished the sternness with which we have given our assent.Just one problem: it is a script… ’- The Current Cinema, an excellent article from The New Yorker.::.AI opens in the UK this weekend and I’m preparing myself to be disappointed by it. Expect a review very soon.
Today, the world’s first tilting bridge was opened to the public. Here’s some video I rather haphazardly shot and edited today: Quicktime 270k [no plug-in?]
More info about the bridge can be found here.
I haven’t written for a while, I’m not sure what to put down. I’ve started to write quite a few things only to ditch them after deciding that writing about the recent horrific events doesn’t seem right just now. Instead… our lonely planet.Other news: A quick browse through the archives of this site will reveal that many of my links are [via Stu]. This site wouldn’t be the same without the regular doses of inspiration that Stu has emailed from London over the past year. A long overdue weblog is finally online which means I can now credit Stu properly by using a hypertext link. Visit regularly.
Support the American Red Cross by donating some money to the disaster relief fund.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in New York at the moment. The TV is a distortion. NY Weblogs:
Some clever coding at milov.nl:’Using a combination of PHP and Javascript-DOM-scripting, the structure on this page will grow in different directions depending on the number of referrers that link to it.’http://www.milov.nl/linkthispage.phpThis has led me to think how interesting it would be to link the software used for Blogdex to the visualisation technology used for the Visual Thesaurus. Not quite sure what it would achieve, but interesting none the less…Other news: It’s good to see another like-minded designer/blogger based in Newcastle Upon Tyne: pixelised.com
’…good design is ‘clear thinking made visible’‘Edward Tufte on Web Design
‘Don’t think you can sit in front of the computer and press a button and—boing—an idea just pops out,” he said. “Be careful that you might kill the only creativity you might have.’Oliviero Toscani, the photographer behind the controversial Benetton ads criticises digital art. I think this evaluation is a much needed one; there is so much ‘back patting’ at the mere mention of digital media in the arts. People assume that just because new technology is being used, the work automatically reaches a higher level of importance. [via Stu]
It was strange being at St James’ Park to watch the England versus Albania game last night. I now fully realise that football is purely a TV event. We’ve become so accustomed to the post match analysis, the action replays, the adverts, Alan Hansen [et al] banging on about poor defending and the media hype surrounding individual players, that the experience of the event at first hand is almost a let down. The atmosphere was amazing though, and fortunately, there was no sign of the mindless hooliganism that often casts a shadow over English football.At half time, Norman Wisdom came on for a penalty shoot out. He’s a national hero in Albania y’know.If you’re wondering about the title of this post, here’s some Geordie-speak:’Howay!’ = ‘Come on!’ or ‘Come here!’‘How!’ = A contraction of ‘Howay!’‘How man!’ = ‘Come on man!’ [Geordies put ‘man’ after almost every sentence]McManaman = An England playerthus:’How man McManaman man!’The English to Geordie Translator
Sometimes I wish I lived and worked in London… and sometimes I’m glad that I don’t: The Big Ring : : : Not happy with your content management system? Then build your own and give it to the masses… extreme cleverness courtesy of dollarshort.org. : : : I’m not sure whether this is a good idea for a video game. : : : Why couldn’t they have invented this 12 years ago?
Stephen Hawking’s comments about the necessity to genetically modify ourselves to counter the rapid advancement in machine intelligence have been met with much controversy in the media [A couple of examples here and here]. In defence of Hawking’s argument, how can anyone state that something definitely will not happen in the future? Hawking is simply basing his vision of the future on our technological advancement to date and extrapolating it into the next 1000 or so years of human evolution. If we place Hawking’s statement in the context of the far future instead of the next 50 years, his argument starts to have some kind of credibility.In other news [and on a completely different subject]: I’ve got my tickets for England v. Albania at St. James on Wednesday… whoop!
