Quite Random

3D matchbox rattling strangeness

Listen to this with headphones on – Holophonic sound (1878kb MP3) . 3D freakyness in your earholes.

The best way to look at photos on the Interweb

I’ve just discovered this new toy, which I love so much I feel the need to spread the word. It’s a Firefox extension called Greased Lightbox, that makes photos (from Flickr, Google image search, anywhere on the web) look beautiful. What happens is quiet simply that when you click on a thumbnail image which is linked to a larger photo, the larger photo is loaded onto your page on its own, and the background is blanked out. It allows you to see the photo without having to load a new page, and see it presented in a way that does it real justice.

To install this extension takes three steps…

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Why blog?

My friend Steve said a little while ago that I’m always ranting on my blog. Of course I am. That’s what blogs are for. The blog was probably invented by someone who was really steamed up about something at three in the morning and didn’t have anyone to talk to. In the world of the blog, everything is important, your opinion matters, and you have your own small soapbox to shout about whatever you like without fear of interruption or a rotten tomato in the face. People who have a bookmark to your blog, or if they’re really clever, are subscribed via your feed, come by once in a while and leave comments. It’s even more exciting when someone leaves a comment after they found you randomly through a search engine – it must mean your blog is really out there on the Internet, it has a presence, you’re not just shouting at a brick wall.

Comments that agree with what you’ve written about or say good things make you feel better, give you a quick fix of approval and validation. Comments from reasonable people who disagree with what you say are a great excuse to compose another diatribe in response to theirs, you know, really have a worthwhile discussion, even if it is about whether Mars Bars are smaller than they used to be or not. Comments that are spelt badly, written in capitals, question your parentage and compare you to someone’s genitalia can be dismissed as the rantings of a lonely madman who likes sour milk and pulls the wings off insects for fun.

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Concentration and my perfect job

I’ve been working hard over the last few days – it’s just a shame it isn’t making any money. My ADD-like inability to concentrate has been replaced by a scarily intense level of concentration on some specific tasks – there’s never a middle road, it’s either scatty child or mad inventor. That said, it’s been good that my energies have been very usefully spent, even if only for a little while. I’ve been setting up a new hosting account for my numerous web sites, have successfully migrated most of them over (including this one), and I’ve set up the Drupal content management platform to run more. I’m also helping a friend in Cambodia with some work she’s too busy to do, and trying to catch up with months-old invoices that should have been sorted out last year. Amongst all of this I’m still applying for jobs.

My time is actually being used constructively for a change – better than usual, at any rate. It’s incredible how just once in a while you can achieve a remarkable level of focus that sees you working until 3am, overflowing with ideas, solving problems, tweaking things, and scratching those little itches like Outlook tasks that have been sat there for a month in bold red, staring accusingly at you. I still have a lot of them to get through though.

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Dirty old men

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Glitter jailed for abusing girls

Gary Glitter shouts “I am innocent, it’s a conspiracy” at the trial where he has been found guilty of sexually abusing two young girls at his home in Vietnam. He may be innocent, but his history casts a great shadow of doubt over that, and it’s got to be seen as naive at best to have moved to South East Asia, rife as it is with sex tourism, in the first place. How does that look when you left the UK because you got caught with child porn on your computer?

Glitter is one of thousands of Western men and women of all ages in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and in poorer countries all over the world, pursuing relationships with young people that range from the consensual to the abusive – from the Westerners who have settled there and been married to the same person for twenty years, to the middle-aged men who know they only have to go to Pattaya to find a bar girl who will give them everything they want in exchange for security, to the predators who go looking for children. This is no new phenomenon – US soldiers fighting in the Vietnam war headed for the Patpong area of Bangkok for girls, and the girls are still there today.

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Pete Doherty ‘edgy’? Give me strength.

I’ve found myself commenting on Pete ‘hang on, I’ve not been arrested for something for at least three days’ Doherty on the Guardian Culture Vulture blog, just when I was doing quite a good job of ignoring him. Caroline Sullivan has opined that Doherty is ‘edgy’ and ‘revered’ in a manner similar to Keith Richards. I see that as seriously dissing Keef. He has been working for many a long year on his image of ‘elegantly wasted’ by taking more drugs than the population of Birmingham have collectively had hot dinners, playing in the most long-lived rock band ever, and has miraculously survived to become the gnarled, fly-blown, wrinkled god of rock and roll decadence that he is. Pete doesn’t look like he’s started shaving yet – and Babyshambles is the most underwhelming rock act since Noel Edmonds, Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin formed Brown Sauce. It’s like comparing Lindsay Lohan’s acting career to Lauren Bacall’s.

The IT Crowd - making sweet fun of IT geeks

The first series of Channel 4’s highly amusing IT Crowd is over, with an unlikely but brilliant cliff-hanger (of sorts). Anyone who enjoyed Father Ted will enjoy this series, coming as it does from the same creators. Chris Morris also does a good line in lunatic boss, and there’s much to like about any comedy that takes the piss out of a) office environments and their absurdities, and b) tech support geeks (the moment where Moss e-mails the Fire Department to tell them the office is on fire is inspired).

There are links to download each episode from the Geeks are Sexy blog, appropriately enough…