Driving the kids home from an afternoon out – in the rain – we’re listening to Bob Dylan singing A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall… (“I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’. I saw a white ladder all covered with water. I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken. I… Continue reading Wisdom
Month: October 2004
Rednecks
So I’m reading all the fuss about The Guardian and Operation Clark County and Charlie Brooker out there in Nastyland and it’s all very interesting and then it dawns on me: I write for The Guardian (sometimes, anyway). So now they’re attacking my paper. In fact, they’re attacking me! Lousy rednecks.
Remembering Peel
When you were a kid, did you record the Peel show? I did. Dozens and dozens of cassettes, all made – at least to begin with – by Sellotaping the crappy microphone from my cassette recorder to the crappy speaker of my Sanyo transistor radio. Of course, those cassettes are long gone (this is 25… Continue reading Remembering Peel
To space…
Why is this video from SpaceShipOne’s Winning X Prize Mission so impressive (I mean, apart from the fact that this guy just flew an aeroplane about the size of a double bed to space and back)? Is it because of the team’s unlimited American self-confidence? Or because of the acres of competence and sophistication on… Continue reading To space…
Buy some old printers
Somebody out there needs five – count them! – five lovely Apple printers (4 Stylewriter inkjets and a twenty year-old Imagewriter dot-matrix). I think you should probably buy these just to make some sort of art installation (are you listening Ivan?). With these printers, an old Mac (or a new Mac and an adapter) and… Continue reading Buy some old printers
Book review: go on… build your own
You could build your own car or your own TV but it would be rubbish. I suppose you could build pretty much anything (an aeroplane, a house, a speedboat…) if you wanted to – people do, don’t they – but a routine cost-benefit analysis (can I be bothered?) probably keeps that kind of silliness to… Continue reading Book review: go on… build your own
Kids love stories more than they love toys
A copy of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar is sold every 57 seconds. That makes it the best selling kids’ book of all time. Who knew? We like it round here, of course, especially the board book, which is indestructible as well as being a gentle, colourful and mesmerisingly-paced treat (Rosa, 18 months, is… Continue reading Kids love stories more than they love toys
Outstanding
Measuring value-for-money on a scale of 1-10, this Neal Stephenson interview (conducted by the Slashdot groupmind) approaches infinity. A generous, clever and funny man. Thanks to practically everyone for the link.
Seeking smokers…
This sad-looking (and slightly out-of-focus) TV crew were standing in Carnaby Street lunchtime today and – I kid you not – as I passed them I heard the reporter say “Come on smokers”. Who knows how long they’d been standing there waiting for an indignant smoker to interview about the impending Liverpool smoking ban but… Continue reading Seeking smokers…
Dandy lives
It definitely cheers me up to learn that The Dandy has not only survived for seven decades (longer than any other comic) but has now emerged confidently into the glossy covermount era. The old characters have been updated deftly and there are some pretty good new ones. Good covermounts too (a sticky rubber tomato this… Continue reading Dandy lives