March 2006 Archives
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AllOfMP3's iTunes killer
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Dutch price for this thing is 375,25.
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.. this one's prettier
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Bono imitates Sam Beckett at the launch of the Beckett Centary Festival in Dublin
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Count the ones that say 'shot'. Guns don't kill people, eh?
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official site, plus download of the multitracks of two of the songs
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George Underwood's artwork for the unreleased live album of David Bowie’s 1972 Ziggy Stardust American Tour.
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One of Bowie's favourites
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online photography lessons, tips and techniques using digital cameras
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ditto
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Ocean's 10: 'Milk the cow to finance the revolution'
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Another web 2.0 start up
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'a pacman for the '00's?'
sf_3939
Took some pictures of Sneakerfreak's CD launch concert in the 'Rozentheater' in Amsterdam. The lighting engineer was very keen on red and yellow. Sigh. Focusing was hard, had to shoot at 1.8 all the time, except for the few times he flooded the guys with white light, so those images are blown out. 99% of the shots are soft. Bah.
Someone else (a photography student) was shooting with the kit lens. I wonder how she fared.
Not sure if the focusing problem isn't down to the (old) 85mm not working nicely with the new 350d body.
I 'shopped it at 1024x768 and that's how I built it (well, 995px taking chrome into account). Then I got cold feet and brought it back to 800x600 (well, 768x... you get the picture). Now it looks like arse. Bugger.
Y'all gonna have to get bigger screens, 1024x768 it is.
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Flickr's Stewart and Caterina on the cover of Newsweek. Gasp.
Here's a preview of my long overdue redesign. All I can think about is 'I'm going to have to code all that.'
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Dave Stewart and Kara DioGuardi release album as 'mysterious 70s band Platinum Weird', with elaborate viral marketing strategy
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This debate on whether Whedonesque is a weblog or not is starting to piss me off. It's a weblog, because I say so, dammit. Christ almighty.
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*drool*
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photoblog
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Cool 'uptalk' thread on MeFi
Crikey, looks like I'm going to flex my withering writing muscle. I've been tagged by Mr Hg with The Book Title Meme.
(update: It's taken me a month to get it together.)
1. Briefly describe an aspect of your life for which 'The Dying Of Delight' would be an apt title.
Delightful aspects have been sadly missing from my life. No dying, no death, not even little ones. Not a whole lot gives me pleasure at the moment. Even my appetite is lacking, so the pleasure of food has diminished somewhat. I blame the diabetes. It's good to have something to blame.
2. Pick another book whose title has some resonance in your life, and write a little about it.
I could pick 'The Light and Dark', but that would be too self-centered, even for me.
Looking at the books on my shelves, nothing really resonates until I hit Brendan Kennelly's epic 'Poetry my arse'.
But I don't want to make things too easy for anyone who picks up this meme from me, so I'll choose MeFite John Bennett's 'Sea Otters gambolling in the wild, wild surf, which is the type of book you'd tell anyone they 'must read', because it's dead funny and it might give them a few hours of that elusive thing, delight'.
I hear the Dutch title of this book will be 'Dartelende zeeotters in de wilde, wilde, branding', and it will be out in September this year. That's for the benefit of any Dutch readers I might have.
3. Write one more short personal piece - one which matches the book title chosen (in part 2) by the person who tagged you.
So that would be 'Saturday Night & Sunday Morning'.
That title means nothing to me. They're just days. Parts of the weekend. Only slightly different from weekdays for the fact that I usually do not have to work. But sometimes I do.
I'm sure couples have their weekend rituals and younger folk are all about the Saturday Night out, and the Sunday Morning hangover. I'm too old for that now and every day is like Sunday.
4. Take your favourite little-known book and plug it to your readers. Authors need incomes, and word of mouth is one of the best ways to sell books.
John Banville may have won the Booker Prize for 'The Sea', but he isn't particularly well known here in the Netherlands. 'The Untouchable' is quite possibly my favourite book in the whole wide world. can't say that everybody should read it, it's not that type of book. If you identify with aging men (and for some reason I do), it may appeal. 'The Untouchable' is based on the life of Anthony Blunt, one of the Cambridge spies, and it deals with betrayal. Of country, of marriage, of friendship, of self.
5. Sit back and marvel at the magnificence of this meme. It was brought to you by an out-of-breath author, reduced (on account of her publisher* having expired) to trundling copies of her book across the internet on a rusty old trolley with one wheel missing, sweating and shouting "Buy me book, Gov?" Now visit www.TheDyingOfDelight.co.uk and see if you'd like a copy for yourself. I
There is something about this viral/meme that makes me uncomfortable and that's probably why it took so long for me to finish the questionnaire. This last bit, #5, just annoys me a little. With apologies to the original author. I have no idea who you are. Please forgive me for not having the energy to find out. If I knew you, I might like the meme better, but perhaps this is one that doesn't work beyond a blog's regular readers. Or maybe it does and I'm just being my usual misanthropist self. Anyway, thanks for dropping by earlier.
6. Tag five people with this meme.
Nah. But anyone who reads me who hasn't already done this, please, meme on.
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Hey lookie, it's my boss
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This is the first of its sort that kind of clicks with me
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Look, I'm helping someone
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These airlines are no longer allowed to fly in Europe
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Academics like serifs better than sans?
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'a community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information.'
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I have to say, it all sounds very appealing to me. And yeah, I'm pro-Craig
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'a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page.'
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(How many of these are actually useful?)
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eHub is a constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web...
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del.icio.us for shopaholics
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When we were young. Proof... I was a teenage A-lister. (There were only 500 weblogs back then.)
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Douglas Coupland interviews Morrissey
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I'm all for 'Johan Cruyff International' in Amsterdam
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Behind the black hair dye and white make-up goths are simply art lovers, who aspire to middle-class values, says a new study.
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The same old story. It seems every new generation of bloggers goes through this palaver.
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Many years ago there was a site like this, where you could pick a colour and *name* it. Like 'zeldman orange'. Does anyone remember that one, I've forgotten the URL.
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This made Dutch news, so it's either incredibly hot and new, or years old
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fan run blog of Sorkin´s new television series
My Sony Ericsson k750i mobile phone started sucking its battery dry every eight hours or so. I only got it in December so I brought it back to KPN's Primafoon shop where a woman asked me to hand it over. She looked at the front. She turned it around. She looked at the back.
She asked 'Do you have insurance?'. When I said 'no', she said they'd have to send it off to repairs, it would take three weeks and they didn't have a replacement phone. By this point I started losing my temper. I do have a very short fuse.
I told her that was no use to me and she pointed me towards a 3rd party repair shop a few hundred meters further down the road...
... where I was told they'd have to send it off to repairs, it would take three weeks and they would charge extra because I hadn't bought the phone from them. I said that was no use to me. They told me maybe a software upgrade would fix it, but it wasn't something I could do myself. They pointed me towards a Sony Ericcson service centre on the other side of town...
'You're all making me walk all over town, dammit,' I said and legged it out of there in a very bad mood and went... home where I dug up the USB data transfer cable, downloaded the latest firmware ('not something I could do myself'), flashed the phone and...
Problem fixed.
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Quicktime slideshow presentation burnt down Baptist churces
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A stack of early 70s rock and soul band photos 'found in an alley'
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Ah, the world of licorics. So addictive.
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George will be touring this year. Yay!
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"inspired by the relationship between Tony Blair and George Bush"
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tongue blood sausage
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Amazing shots of ships being taken apart in Bangladesh
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Usually not too keen on this National Geographic type of photography, but the colours in these are fab
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Place your own text in an image
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Winners of EE design competition
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Then one day in Haarlem a buyer failed to show up and pay for his bulb purchase. The ensuing panic spread across Holland, and within days tulip bulbs were worth only a hundredth of their former prices. The tulip bubble had burst.
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I've been having Kottke for lunch for *8* years?
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'Miss Heidi Konnt'
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French/irish band
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Everyone aged between 16 and 65 who wishes to reside in the Netherlands for a prolonged period, and needs to apply for an authorisation for temporary residence, has to take the civil integration test.
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The earth of the Afar Triangle in Africa is cracking, tectonic plates in action
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Great panorama shot
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"What are the icons of England? The first 12 have been chosen, and are ready for you to explore… And now we want you to decide what else our portrait should include."
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New Dutch morning paper
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Photoblog of Guardian photographer, on their new 'comment is free' site
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On the publication of her new book of essays and stories, The Tent.
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Video clips of vintage Dutch news items on Dylan, Beatles, Louis Armstron and others
He: Eat and sleep. Sunday is a day of rest! X
Me: Um... I'm going out! Just dinner but. Wid lots of sake 2 wash down d raw fish.
He: Oh no. Dislike raw fish and hate sake. Very bad for the mental state.
Me: Dats coz u a paddy n me is wise and from d east.
He: I am wise enough 2 knw wats good 4 me and u havent heard of the fish flu. Its worse than bird flu. Dutch would eat their granny and knock back a sake. X
[...]
He: That was a joke!
Me: Sorry, my granny has arrived. Yum.
Pointing my camera upward at the licence on the Lion Tavern a voice from behind says: "Sorry, can I ask ya wha'rre you taking pictures of tha' pub for?"
It's my first real introduction to the Scouse accent. It's funny and I rewind his words in my head.
I should be getting used to the question. Poiting your lens at walls, zooming in on details has a lot of people confused. But I haven't really got a standard answer yet.
"Uhm, I'm just taking pictures..."
He's not really listening. He's one of those high energy blokes, a little too old to be called a young man. Jeans a little too snug, always a little fidgety.
"... because it's funny, look: they've stuck the new owner's name over the previous one."
He looks at me a little surprised.
"What is that accent? Where are you from?"
I laugh.
"I'm Dutch."
He doesn't believe me.
"You're joking. Dutch? I wouldn't have guessed that."
I explain I've spent a lot of time in Ireland.
"Yeah! Yeah! That's it. You've a really funny accent!"
And off he goes before I can say anything, but I can hear him mutter to himself:
"There are better pubs to be taking pictures of, luv."
Checking my Amazon Associate reports, I notice that four people ordered Cuisinarts through the links on my sites this Quarter.
I repeat, four U2log/Whedonesque readers ordered 30 dollar Cuisinarts.
Why?
Update: I had a closer look and it appears they are all parts for a Cuisinart, so it is probably just one user expanding. Ah well, it was funny while it lasted.
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the boy grows up
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In Houten, The Netherlands, on March 12. May have to go have a look.
I leave for Liverpool knowing that I have sown a seed for some of that monumental change I wished for at the start of the year. Whatever comes of it or not, confidence is a thing.
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Big swing back to the left. Hallelujah.
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(has mp3s)
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24 minute video of his Other Voices appearance, interview and duet with Martha
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Video of Elbow's Other Voices appearance
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Mike Scott performs with Liam on keyboard and bodhran, and a fiddler
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Interesting biographical info in this interview. K. West talks about art, design, religion, sex, etc. "At the end of the day, I'm a rock star."
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A web 2.0 blogging system written in Javascript with a PHP backend.
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Brings back a lot of memories. I have boxes full of tapes still. Cannot bring myself to tossing them.
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Cool silhouette font
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Picture of Beck, Gary Numan and Marilyn Manson together
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Hmm. First part pretty much spot on.
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Joss and fans watch the Oscars together.
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His acceptance speech.
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Dutch artist Charlotte Schleiffert addresses Tracey Emin in artwork
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After a really bad job taking pictures at a meeting the other day, I've figured out it's time I learnt how to use flash. That means I'll have to buy one eventually.
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... and I'll have to get one of these flash bounce thingies too
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Dutch light, about the mythical light in Dutch paintings
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Dr Who is added to the TWOP roster, which means they will be recapping the show. Yippee!
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"There are no links, no pictures and no cool flying squares that change color when you scroll over them with your mouse."
Timely picture on the weekend I find out I'm going grey. I told my hairdresser she's going to have to start dyeing my hair. 'Don't be silly, just put some wax in it,' she answered. Does wax come in dark brown?
Next Friday I'm off to Liverpool for a very brief visit. I have a little guide from the Liverpool tourist office that will point me in the right direction, but if anyone has any suggestions on what to see or do, or what beer to drink (I like ale), I'll be happy to take note. Tips on where a person can go for a hearty meal on their own will also come in handy.
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At long last, an end to that abomination
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Silent videos for relaxation
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Whedonesque blog of the week in The Times
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The creator of community weblog Whedonesque goes head to head with Joss Whedon, who claims Whedonesque is not a blog. Surreal.
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The Dutch are curiously unaware of their glorious exploratory past.
I walked in carrying my "Wonder Weenie" and the Aussie "no worries" shop assistant said 'Great bag!' Then he took a closer look and told me I had my strap done the wrong way. 'Fix it, fix it!' I told him, which he did. I loved it. Usually in shops these days staff know absolutely bugger all about anything, least of all the products they're selling.
Did I really 'need' another camera bag? I did indeed, my old ones no longer fit my equipment.
So I came home with a "Loyal Chap" (black), which allegedly fits 2 bodies and 5 lenses. Haven't tried that, but it fits my crazy large lens upright plus the body and three smaller lenses, leaving enough space for paraphernalia.
All the while I was eyeing their discount shelf (30% off last year's range), where among others a pretty purple "Heinous" and one of their smaller backpacks ("Team Player") in a fetching oatmeal/brown hue was giving me the eye, but I resisted temptation.
Well, in any case, not when Joss Whedon decides it isn't, dammit.
Whedonesque.com was named 'Blog of the week' at The Times today and in the comments on the post announcing it, a number of our users ask why Whedonesque is a blog. Before I can answer, Joss Whedon himself pipes in and declares Whedonesque not a blog.
I try to explain that perhaps people's interpretation of the world blog has changed somewhat over the last five years and that Whedonesque has all the characteristics of a weblog. Joss seems to call me pedantic, dismissing my reasoning and telling me language evolves, ergo, my blog no longer a blog. He seems to think I'm 'nerd girl' who needs to be taught a lesson in language.
Welcome to bizarro world.
He'd already left when I finally came up with the 'let's say in 10 years time, a tv series is something that has a jury and televoting, so sorry, your work is now called 'fanfic'' analogy. I am a crappy debater.
It seems most of our users have no idea the site is a weblog. I guess they've never gone near our About page.
I'm quite baffled.
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I toyed with it in beta but couldn't really get my head around it quickly enough.
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Spoilers, spoilers!
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Brad Whitford joins the cast. Woohoo!
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Live in Berlin. Was that the tour that was cancelled halfway through?
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So. good.
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This the Dutch minister who wants to make speaking in a foreign language in the streets illegal.
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"I wanna just, to come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it'."
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"With very little effort, you can take existing photographs of everyday scenes and make it look like they're actually of miniature models."