Penguin Marginalia

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 04:16:37 GMT

I miss LJ, but it's the community that I miss - which now doesn't exist for me. Very much like how I miss Second Life but whenever I go back, everyone has gone elsewhere.

Really, I'm just missing social structures that just don't exist any more. Nostalgia is so not helpful in these circumstances.

Links for 2012-09-04 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:00:00 PDT

None

Today's least accurate newspaper headline

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:44:30 GMT

"Cheryl Cole Upskirt Pics Shock"

Is this a shock? Is it really a shock? If you have photographers either lying in the gutter already, or performing daring commando rolls, as a woman not known for bringing back the maxi skirt in the first place gets into a car after a night out, is it really a shock that there are then pictures of her pants available?

Now, if she'd sent upskirt pics of herself to the Prince of Wales, or said pics turned out to have been taken by alien cyber-moles, or somebody was planning to display upskirt pics of Cheryl Cole on the moon with a super-powerful pant laser, that would be at least slightly surprising. I don't think that any of these are the case here.

A recipe for pizza

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:29:10 GMT

1. Mix up some yeast with warm water and sugar, leave it for ten or fifteen minutes.

2. Sieve some white flour into a bowl. Add a pinch of salt, a little sugar, the yeast and water and mix for a while into a soft dough.

3. Knead the dough for a while in a small kitchen on a wooden board because there are no other good surfaces, increasingly bothered by the lack of space.

4. When the initial kneading has nearly been finished, knock the board off the counter and dump the dough on the floor.

5. Shout "FUCK".

6. Grab the dough and try to wash the crap from the flour off it, while shouting "FUCK". The crap from the floor will not come off - this is to be expected.

7. Gradually realise that this is a waste of time as the dough is just getting wetter and is just as dirty. Think briefly about physically removing the dirty parts of the dough before realising that that, too, would be a waste of time. You may wish to shout "FUCK" throughout this stage.

8. Throw dough in bin. Damage lid of bin. Kick bin, damaging it more. Shout "FUCK FUCK FUCKING KITCHEN FOR FUCK'S SAKE TOO FUCKING SMALL CAN'T I DO ANYTHING IN THIS FUCKING PLACE".

9. Pour a drink.

10. Pour another drink.

Arrietty and fate

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 22:23:30 GMT

One thing I found interesting about the new Studio Ghibli version of the Borrowers, Arrietty, was how the plot didn't involve wish fulfilment, plucky protagonists making everything right in a great adventure - it's very much about accepting things that you can't change and making the best of situations, and how being grown-up means doing this nobly and humanely.

This makes it very different from most children's films, where after whacky adventures and japes the parents get back together, or the school is saved from being demolished, or Facebook stops being evil. Not so in Arrietty.

The boy protagonist points out that Borrowers are a doomed species quite explicitly (and rudely) early on, only it's sort of forgiven because he himself is doomed - he has a heart condition that he's not expected to recover from, and even when at the end he says he's sure he'll get through it, you don't really believe him. He certainly can't do anything about his situation - he is sat in the house waiting to have an operation, without his parents being there, and he can't make them come. All he can do is mess about with Borrowers and when he tries that, he's destructive.

Arrietty, the young daughter Borrower, does a few things that she's been told not to, and they end up being damaging or just pointless. She goes out into the garden unbidden and is briefly seen by a human bean. She goes to talk to the boy and tries to get him to leave them alone, but fails completely at this, just making him more interested. Her stoic, taciturn father ends up deciding that they have to move before they are discovered and destroyed after she's been seen, and you know what? He's absolutely right, and he's proved right when the boy tries some disastrous home alteration on their house, and then the housekeeper finds them because of this and tries to have them all gassed.

The protagonists manage to foil this, but that's all they can do - make the best of a bad situation. The Borrower family have to move, and there's no last-minute change of heart so they can live in the dollhouse that the boy's grandfather built for Borrowers - they float away to an uncertain future. There's a farewell scene where the boy and Arrietty say goodbye but don't try to hold on to each other, which is a sign that they have both grown up and learnt to accept that sometimes you can't change things.

It's not often you see a modern children's film which is about how it's important to grow up, and that childishly failing to appreciate that (a) some things have to be dealt with (b) there are often reasons why people do things in certain ways, and (c) you just can't fight everything and expect to win, is bad and might mean you all die. These are not popular themes in films for adults either.

The problem with people

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:06:53 GMT

The problem with people is that you talk to them politely for a bit so that you can work out whether or not they are arses, and then they turn out to be arses, but because you've just spent a while talking to them they think you like them and they don't go away. Particularly if they're drunk. In fact they might tell you how they're going to be back tomorrow as well.

quick film review: Midnight Meat Train (Ryûhei Kitamura, 2008)

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:56:02 GMT

I've been watching more horror films recently than I ever did when I was younger. I was quite a sensitive child - even reading the blurb on the back of a James Herbert book gave me nightmares, and when some older kids showed me the dog scene in The Thing, well. Nowadays... well, it's just blood and bits isn't it? Perhaps it was sharing with all those medical students, or maybe it's the internet, but nasty gory stuff just doesn't have much of a disturbing effect any more. Also, there are some quite inventive, fantastical horror films, and let's face it, decent fantasy films in general are quite hard to come by.

Anyway, I heard about Midnight Meat Train, which is based on a Clive Barker story, and had some praise posted for it, and also has Vinnie Jones as a central "character" (in many ways the ultimate typecast Vinnie Jones role - hugely violent and completely taciturn). However, I wasn't left all that satisfied.

Non-spoiler pros:

* Performances are decent; the characters aren't immensely deep but the actors do what they can. The protagonist reminded me a bit of Steve Gutenberg unfortunately but I got past that.
* It's well shot, moodily lit (possibly too moodily at times; see cons) and has some nice old New York scenery.
* It's not gory all the time but it does intersperse the main story with some pretty serious gore scenes with good effects, which are also well shot. (I don't think I'm giving much away by saying this. The title should have alerted you to the possibility. In fact, the three words do rather sum up a lot of the plot, though events actually take place just after 2am.)

Non-spoiler cons:

* Sometimes the lighting is just too moody. Watching it on an iPad, there was at least one scene where I had to rewind and pause several times to try to see what was meant to have happened to someone, and I _still_ couldn't work it out.
* There are some very half-arsed effects near the end.
* The ending just isn't satisfying. The deeper you go into the plot - and it's not a complex plot - the more you think "well that part is obviously going to be explained" and it just _isn't_. I think maybe I've become a lot pickier about plot holes from all this time watching modern serials, where it's _expected_ that loose ends will be tied up and details will have explanations, and when they don't, fandom complains. And also, some of the things that happen to the main character... well, yes, I can see the basic symmetry going on but really it could have been more convincing.

Spoiler section

Okay, so: there are lizard people under the city, and people are feeding them, and have been for generations. Who has been feeding them? There's some sort of conspiracy involving the police, fine, but what? You only see two people involved and clearly it can't have been them over all the years. A cult? _Why_ are they feeding them? It's briefly mentioned that it's important for some reason to "keep the two worlds separate" but why?

What are all the nodules all over Vinnie Jones' chest? What are those supposed to be? A disease, fungus, turning into a lizard? Why is he so superhumanly strong - lifting people up to the ceiling, twice? Why is the train driver superhumanly strong as well, throwing photographer bloke around? Are they hybrids? Are they energised by lizard smells? What?

More significantly... fair enough, the investigator beats the butcher but ends up replacing him as the new butcher. As I said, there's symmetry there. But the transformation needs to be a _lot_ better than that. He's been fighting the whole setup all through the film, increasingly aggressively, getting quite horribly injured, and he then sees his girlfriend being murdered and her heart ripped out, and what - he suddenly realises that this is a good idea? If his will has completely been broken by the latter experience, that might potentially be an explanation, but it's really not expressed. Or maybe the strange marks he got are part of a hypnotic spell or infection, maybe similar to the original butcher's, which could explain the nodules. But come on - _something_. Don't make me fill this in.

(Also the lizards at the end are really disappointing, even though you can barely see them in the light. Better to leave them as isolated flashing bits of flesh-ripping alien movement.)

What I think annoys me is that I can see ways that the inconsistencies could have been easily and quickly explained, without even lengthening the film. Just a few words added would have been enough... it all could have basically made sense. But they weren't there and it didn't. Perhaps they're there in the original story.

Oh well. Maybe nowadays I've swapped sensitivities from horrific ideas and gore to plot holes and poor explanations.

pestography

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:14:26 GMT

For the record, it is perfectly possible to make really rather nice pesto with coriander and cashew nuts.

breadcrastionation (procrustination?)

Wed, 18 May 2011 08:06:15 GMT

I've been making bread at home recently. Bread is actually quite a good way of wasting time when you're working from home. The individual steps of the process are not hugely time-consuming, fifteen minutes or so each, and there are long gaps between them. This means that one can take a break to pound some dough or put things in the oven, and then get back to work.

Kneading dough also allows you to pretend that you are instead folding and squashing a particular person or software package that might have been irritating you. There's the additional bonus of ending up with bread, too. Have you seen the price of bread these days? Any decent loaf costs well over a quid, and you can be paying £1.30 for really rubbery Hovis granary stuff in corner shops. (I don't include sliced white in the "bread" category, it's confectionery.)

This is probably not an appropriate procrastination method if you don't work from home, unless you work in a bakery, where it probably isn't an effective procrastination method.

I'm bored. Let me tell you what I'm cooking.

Fri, 13 May 2011 21:09:15 GMT

* Three potatoes, chopped up into fine slices.
* A fat onion.
* Slightly over half a pack of smoked back bacon. About... 180g probably.
* There was this white cabbage in my fridge which has been sitting there forever. Cabbage just never goes off, it just needs slight shaving to remove the dried-out parts, but you know, it needs to be eaten eventually because if I don't, who will? Not micro-organisms apparently. So I cut bits off it and chopped them up reasonably finely until I was bored. Probably around the same volume as the onion.
* A chunk of butter.
* Some milk. 1/4 pint or so.
* Pepper
* Too much Old Bay

I chopped the potatoes and put them on to boil. If you're going to mash potatoes, and you have any ability to chop things at all, don't chop potatoes into chunks - cut fine, regular slices of a few millimetres each. They boil much quicker and you can leave the skin on. Anyway, I put the potatoes on to boil, and while they were boiling I chopped the onion and the cabbage. Then I went on the internet.

After remembering that I'd put the potatoes on to boil, I drained them and mashed them with the butter and the milk. Then I mixed the onion and cabbage into that. I realised that I'd meant to put bacon in this as well, but had forgotten, so I quickly chopped the bacon up with scissors and threw that in, mixing it about.

It all looked a bit dry so I poured a little hot water in from the kettle. At that point I also ground some pepper onto it, because otherwise it would be a bit boring. And then I thought "oh, I've got this box of Old Bay in the cupboard, that's got pepper in hasn't it? and it's more interesting than pepper" so I put too much in, then mixed everything about. Now it's simmering away and I'm on the internet again. Hello!

What else should I put in? I have quite a lot of herbs but not that many actual vegetables.

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:04:04 GMT

It isn't just me that is being spammed on a daily basis in Livejournal, is it? Anonymous comments, which get screened, but also spam accounts too.

For some reason most of mine seem to be for ebooks, rather than the more traditional pharmaceuticals and gambling.

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:42:02 GMT

from Married To The Sea

What is the point of the MPS?

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:14:16 GMT

Sick of getting yet more snail-mail spam from bloody estate agents, addressed to "the occupier" or "the homeowner" or just nobody, I thought I'd look up how I could at least attempt to have this blocked.

You'd think perhaps that the Mailing Preference Service would be able to help. You can ask that you don't receive junk mail from those companies that are their members, but only mail specifically addressed to a surname and address.

Member organisations of the MPS undertake to remove from their mailing list the addresses of those people who indicate that they want this done. However, the MPS is not designed to stop unaddressed items of mail, direct mail delivered to the door or the delivery of free newspapers; and mail addressed to ‘Occupant’, ‘Resident’ or ‘Homeowner’ is not covered under this scheme.

All right. A bit further down the page it says you can opt out of "unaddressed or door-to-door" mail by contacting the Post Office. But:

If you want to stop receiving unaddressed mail delivered by Royal Mail to your home you can do so by contacting Royal Mail at the address below. However, the opt out service only relates to unaddressed mail. Royal Mail is still legally obliged to deliver all addressed mail, which includes mail that is addressed “To the Occupier” (or with any other generic recipient information), as well as mail that is personally addressed to you by name.

Is there any advice as to how you can stop receiving direct marketing mail with generic recipient information? Is there buggery. Which presumably is why estate agents use this method all the time. The bastards.

this is pretty much how it works

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:02:12 GMT

http://whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com/

Identify relevant and compelling hooks for the audience, create content around the hooks and integrate it into their social repertoires

Maximise breakthrough by leveraging influencers

Activate audience by giving them compelling social experiences, encouraging advocacy

etc etc

humanitarian crisis

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:16:39 GMT

It's amazing how - at least according to the eulogies on Radio 4, which always tells the truth - every British soldier killed in Afghanistan was a dedicated human rights exponent, charity worker, devoted to helping the Afghan people, loved by them all, built an orphanage while teaching girls to read at the same time. Nobody, ever, seems to have joined the army for any other reason; it was never the only job on offer, they didn't go because their mates did, they were never indifferent at best and actively hostile at worst to people who didn't appreciate them being there.

Maybe somebody should have told these laudable dead young men who were so devoted to peace and justice that maybe joining the fucking army wasn't the best thing.

gadget: "boogie board" (terrible name but eh)

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:38:12 GMT

http://www.myboogieboard.com/

Does anyone remember these things? Pressure-sensitive LCD tablets, which only use power when erasing, so last for years. There was a fuss about them a while ago, January or February. For some reason I remembered their existence recently and ordered one, and it arrived today - well, all right, a note saying that I had to pay £12.02 extra to get it arrived today (£4.02 duty, £8 Post Office handling charge :mad: ).

It's smaller than I thought it would be, A5-ish, and weighs pretty much nothing, an ounce or two. It is also much, much dimmer than you'd imagine. I took the photo with my iPhone outside, and you can see from how it's washed out my hand that it whacked the exposure way up. You basically need quite strong light to see it at all, the contrast is really annoyingly low. The pictures on their site where it's practically glowing really aren't accurate.

It's very sensitive, and the width increases dramatically with even slight pressure - the very minimum line is about 0.5mm, just slightly touching it with a fingernail, and writing you're producing lines at least 1mm wide and usually more. Resting your hand on it will also produce odd spots. (This probably means it's a bit pointless in a bag, unless you have a sleeve, which I don't.) You can't partially erase it either - all you can do is press the erase button which resets everything.

There's no save or export function. Take a picture on your phone. Having said that, the above picture came out quite well. No idea if it scans, probably not well since the top bit is slightly raised.

It comes with a microfibre cloth and a stylus, which is decent enough but has no way of being attached to the board - bit of a design flaw.

It's quite fun to write and doodle on the thing, the pressure sensitivity makes it interesting, and it might be useful for taking phone notes, drawing little sketch diagrams, the sort of thing where it would just be a waste to use paper. The poor contrast is annoying though. You have to use it in a bright area, and you can't point a light straight at it either as you get a diffuse reflection from the surface. And it must be said that I *do* have a lot of paper, and pens, too. Still, it is a fun thing for people who come round to play with I suppose.

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:39:42 GMT

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:32:07 GMT

There is a noticeable depression to the right of the trackpad of my macbook pro. This is either because I have been resting my hand there far too long, or, more likely, because at one or more times I have slammed it there with a fist in irritation, and you know, after a while even a puny human can bend relatively thin aluminium.

no cash

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:12:18 GMT

When I first read the casual statement in Neuromancer (I think it was, might have been Count Zero) about cash having been made illegal, I thought that was a weird piece of futurism gone too far. It was however, like all the best sci-fi, based on good extrapolation from the present; only I don't think cash will become technically illegal in the near-to-mid future (that would cause a massive outcry and also massive problems) it will just be useless for doing much more than buying a packet of Polos.

You can see here, for instance, Geraint Davies saying that people shouldn't be allowed to buy prepaid credit without identity checks because paedophiles might use it to get child porn - also going for the "think of the children" double by saying that kids use it to buy knives, the little buggers. (Clearly there are no other ways paedophiles or children might get hold of child porn or knives respectively.) Prepaid credit cards are basically internet cash; they can be purchased directly for physical cash, for an extortionate fee of course but that's how it works, with no notice, identity checking or credit reports. And cash is messy stuff. It lets people avoid having their economic transactions surveilled. We can't be having that.

relocation

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:53:19 GMT

Some readers, not all that many, may have seen my previous flat, which could generously be described as "far too small". In fact even my old landlord said that it was too small for me, when confronted by my drying rack and stinkwood stool (don't ask) a few feet in front of the door when he came in. It wasn't a place where you could really entertain visitors. The bedroom was really a room for the bed, with a gap of a foot or so by the side of it. The shower made an awful grinding noise whenever turned on. The washing machine leaked all over the kitchen floor unless the gap underneath was plugged up with a cloth.

There were mice. Daring, acrobatic mice.

I am now in a larger flat, very close to the old one - literally the next street down. It is a bit more expensive, an extra £90 or so a month, but on the plus side

* it is significantly larger. The bedroom is actually a room that you can walk around in. Kitchen's actually smaller now I think of it but that's okay, it does the job and doesn't have to double as a book storage area any more;
* it's in a block with an internal garden and a caretaker who is I'm told quite nice. Also I know a couple of people who live here;
* there are lots of windows, which are double-glazed;
* there are lots of shelves though I may well get more;
* there are lots of power points in convenient locations rather than "buried behind a radiator";
* there is a (very small) balcony with a view quite a way south. Not an amazingly inspiring view, but the sky is probably the best part and there's a lot of that.

So far, after one night, the only problems seem to be

* the shower is a bit weedy;
* the mattress is a bit spring-poky;
* the fridge smells a bit odd - yes, ha ha fridge smells, yes - I need to scrub it out with some bicarb;
* it's on the fourth floor, though there is a lift, otherwise moving stuff would be a nightmare;
* it's noisy here. It is on a main road, and even though I am four floors up the traffic is louder than I would have thought. There are also aeroplanes. But that sort of noise has never really bothered me much; it doesn't keep me awake.

Finger painting on the iPad

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:59:29 GMT

I have the application he's using, Brushes - though I am nowhere near as good as he is of course - and it really is impressive in use, even though the tools are quite simple, mostly brush customisation, colour picking and opacity. (It does layers as well but I'm not sure he's even using those there.) The iPad provides a proper area to look at an overall image as you're making it, and the zoom gives you the equivalent of a tiny brush as well as a magnifying glass.

Reduced opacity is one of the tools I noticed him using quite a lot; this gives you control over colour in a more intuitive way than picking from a colour wheel, since each successive stroke on top is more intense.

non-remembrance sunday

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 09:18:40 GMT

Apparently it is Armed Forces Day today (conveniently enough on the same day as England vs Germany, though I am not quite cynical enough to suspect that this was planned). This used to be "Veteran's Day", and that was only started in 2006 by Gordon Brown in a pretty nakedly political fashion; previously we just had Remembrance Sunday, which I suppose must have reached its maximum level of political capitalisation, and always has that nasty negative "people being stupidly horribly killed" subtext to it which is so inconvenient when trying to promote a war. Now "Veteran's Day" isn't even about veterans, it's simply "Yay Military! Day".

I'll pass thanks.

caroline miniscule commentary

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:45:22 GMT

I'm quite glad I took up a relatively inexpensive hobby recently; there is VAT on fountain pens and ink, but they're both relatively inexpensive, or at least the ink is. You can do without quite a lot of this; dip pens are cheaper, Quink works perfectly well and paper can be bought cheaper than that.

* Book on calligraphy from library - £0.00 (while libraries survive)
* Black & Red A4 hardbacked wirebound book for practice - £4.49
* Calligraphy nib 1.9mm - £4.00
* Lamy Safari fountain pen - £9.95
* Diamine Amaranth ink, 80ml - £5.95

I'm only just learning you know. I hope to be able to produce some really extravagantly pretty statements on similar lines, shortly.

The unfairly maligned Ohto Tasche

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:46:47 GMT

You may recall that I bought an OHTO Tasche a few months ago, and found that it gummed up and became unusable. I put this down to the pen being flawed.

Recently I bought a bottle of Diamine Blue Black ink (which was a cartridge that I used frequently in the Tasche). It has a very nice colour. Unfortunately it also gummed up two of my pens - the Sailor ProColour and a Lamy Vista that I got recently - to the extent that they needed soaking. The ink dries on and underneath the nib or otherwise forms a crust such that flow gradually reduces and then dries up completely.

Both of the above pens reacted very well to other inks, and so I thought that the problem with the Tasche might have been a result of the ink. Note that the Tasche is too small to take anything but international-size cartridges, so I couldn't test it with proper bottled ink via a convertor, but I had a cartridge of Diamine Prussian Blue - it is performing perfectly well with this. Also, Prussian Blue is quite similar in colour to the Blue Black, which is good too.

There's something about the Tasche that makes it extremely pleasant to write with. It's not too sharp but not too broad, and writing with it feels comfortable, like a stylish but well-padded sofa. I'm very glad that it seems that it isn't the pen that has a problem here, but the ink. Let that be a general lesson.

Regarding shaking inks and Noodler's Black

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:03:28 GMT

I recently bought a bottle of Noodler's Bulletproof Black ink, having seen numerous reviews saying what a generally reliable black it was, working even with Moleskines and being basically impervious to wind sleet and snow.

I loaded assorted pens with it and was disappointed. Yes, it was waterproof, sort of... while you could dunk it in water and it would remain, it smeared at a touch in a way that my Diamine inks didn't, even after days to dry. (Diamine ink generally dries very quickly in my experience and won't smear if you touch it, though they are absolutely the opposite of waterproof. Do not drop a journal written with Diamine ink in the bath. Even if you fish it out quickly, your journal will disappear into faint smears and you will also turn an interesting colour.)

Anyway. I was trying the Noodler's Black again with my new Sailor ProColour, in the hope that perhaps it was something about the Lamy Safaris I'd tried it with before writing quite wetly (the Sailor does not do this - in fact it needs quite a wet ink, but that's something for another post maybe). It wasn't. But then I read this post here on the subject of shaking inks and thought "well, might as well". Gave the bottle a shake, refilled the Sailor from it and - no more smearing, performs perfectly.

So, the lesson there is shake your ink because even Royal Mail may not have sufficiently agitated it.

---

While I am writing about it, Noodler's Black is not a very exciting black. I have some J Herbin "Perle Noire" that is a much deeper, more saturated black - the Noodler's is noticeably greyer when you compare them. (The Perle Noire would make good sketching ink come to think of it; I might fill my Rotring Art Pen with it, if I ever end up doing more ink sketches.)

It isn't a bad black though, and its bulletproof qualities and reliable flow mean that for general purpose journalling it's ideal. I don't find black inks very exciting generally, but they are ideal for this purpose - I can write, draw diagrams and mindmaps, doodle, sketch if I want to.

---

The Rouge Caroubier that I posted about recently is growing on me by the way. I am a sucker for inks with good shading and this definitely does. It's also bright but not overly transparent; you can always read it. I am using it to go over my old journal entries and tick, amend and make notes on them.

Nutcases who have problems with t-shirts in Shepherds Bush #2

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:55:01 GMT

Balding man in a blue top, Goldhawk Road, around 2.30pm, somewhat unsteady on his feet. I am wearing a green camo t-shirt with "BRIXTON: running tings" on it in yellow.

(somewhat paraphrased)

"Hey your shirt you were in the army".
"Er, what? No."
"You are in the army you kill people."
"No, it's about Brixton, look." (Indicate lettering.) "Brixton."
"Your shirt, you were in the army, you killed people eh? Fucking kill people." (Man reaches for his back pocket in gesture familiar from petty teenage threats though he forgets he has done it quite quickly.)
"No. Brixton. It's in South London. I'm not in the army."
"You killed people you fucking army, I'll fucking kill you eh."
"What? It's a t-shirt. What the fuck are you on about?" (Note that obviously I do not stop walking at all.)
"You fucking kill people, the army, I fucking, the army."
"What the fuck are you on about you nutcase?"
"Eh what did you say? Fucking kill you."
"Fuck off you nutter." By this stage I am about ten metres away anyway and man in blue top is unable to move at any speed anyway.

"Drunk," someone walking in the same direction as me says. "Yeah, drunk... something, off his face," I say. There isn't a lot more analysis to be made really.

This sort of behaviour is not really appropriate. Quite apart from the disturbing effect on those challenged, randomly trying to start fights with passers-by in the middle of the day when staggering drunk will likely lead to one of those passers-by at best calling the police, and at worst knocking you on your arse, possibly into one of the many roadworks around here right now or just into the road, where all the cars are.

This is only the second time that somebody has called me out on the street based on a bizarre misinterpretation of a t-shirt I was wearing around here, though, in a good three or four year period.

Links for 2010-01-24 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 PST

Boogie Board writing tablet costs $30, features ‘no power LCD technology’
Like a sort of e-ink chalkboard. Unfortunately you can only back it up by taking a picture of it, and it's quite small, or I'd be ordering one now.

Links for 2010-01-06 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:00:00 PST

Links for 2009-12-25 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 00:00:00 PST

YouTube - amanda palmer - "gaga, palmer, madonna", a kitchen-ukulele-blogsong

Links for 2009-12-20 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:00:00 PST

How Fanboys See Operating Systems — The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century
A handy three-dimensional matrix in pictorial form.

Links for 2009-12-18 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 PST

Links for 2009-12-17 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:00:00 PST

Badman Commandments part 3 | The Heatwave - dancehall reggae bashment
What badman nuh do. See also parts 1 and 2, linked to from the page.