- Blog
-
Xmas presents we liked 1: Carl Hiaasen’s Flush
Flush, by Carl Hiaasen Easing myself back into blogging in ’07 with some reviews of the best Xmas toys and books and stuff (maybe some of the total rubbish too – one of my most popular entries ever is this Rainbow Art slating from a couple of years ago). Hiaasen is a slick, funny thriller…
-
Something nice for the new year
Fission is a really gorgeous, simple audio editing application for chopping up, fading and trimming audio files (like when you’re turning your record collection into MP3s and recording podcasts, for instance). Beautifully designed and does all the niggly things I’ve been trying to persuade other more complicated apps to do for ages. A proper software…
-
Xmas flickr
Bollocks. I have no idea how to mark Xmas these days. Maybe I’ll just link to all these photos of Xmas dinner from flickr.
-
Meanwhile…
…in an anonymous office park somewhere in the South East, young people – the brighest of their generation – confidently pilot the nation into an uncertain future… What I don’t understand (not being a gamer) is how come it’s taken so long for the Wii‘s kind of motion/orientation stuff to show up in consumer consoles.…
-
Palestinian? No.
I was fascinated and encouraged to read the phrase ‘Palestinian Produce’ on this pack of strawberries from the farm shop up the road but then a commenter on my flickr stream told me that the brand name Coral belongs to Israeli exporter Agrexco and that these strawberries, if they come from Palestine at all, probably…
-
Capitalism’s dreadnought
Walking the aisles of a big branch of Toys R Us at Xmas is like being in the engine room of a battleship at speed. It’s not pretty but everything is in its place and the bloody thing works. You can practically hear the purposeful thrum of capitalism in action. The tills ping and the…
-
It had to be King of something didn’t it?
Can’t tell you now much it cheers me up to learn that the man behind King of Shaves, my favourite shaving brand, is actually called King. I suppose whatever business he’d got into it would have wound up being ‘King of…’. King of Lawnmowers, King of Cheese, King of Pants…
-
Is flickr going downmarket?
I love flickr. Every day something new. A proper source of inspiration. I’m a very loyal customer. But dig in and the place is turning into a branch of Athena (British poster shop famous for that poster of the tennis player scratching her arse). Photos ranked by ‘interestingness‘ are frankly cheesy: puppies, semi-nude girlfriends. I…
-
Pinochet and The Partridge Family
The thing about Pinochet is that he’s a kind of retro dictator. When I was growing up he was the man: the dictator’s dictator. A proper big-hat, braided demagogue. Funded and armed by the CIA, overthrowing and murdering a left wing icon (Allende), snuffing out practically the only democratic promise on the whole continent (how…
-
Non-personalities hijack event intended for personalities… again
More evidence that you don’t actually need a personality to be eligible for the premier prize in British sport. Three blocks of wood (one with way too much hair gel) walked away with the top prizes at the BBC’s increasingly silly annual non-prize last night. The British media and the public want so badly for…