Monthly Archives: September 2009
Nowadays we all have measles
Here comes a quote (my second on here) from the current book, Freya Stark’s travelogue The Southern Gates of Arabia. Stark has just arrived at the fortress of Masna’a and come down with measles, an illness that would almost kill … Continue reading
Filed under books
Mare nipples: selected holdings of the Hunterian Museum
We visited the Hunterian Museum today – the London one with the viscera, not the Glasgow one with the pictures. I transcribed these directly from their labels… 1409: The nipple of a mare showing the soft skin covering its surface. … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Only a Quantum PVR can save you from Letterman
Personal video recorders – TiVo, V+, Sky+ take your pick - have disrupted the TV experience that Raymond Williams called ‘flow’, in the sense that programme units are now easy to reshuffle. And yet, and yet. Would that be any help here? I want … Continue reading
EpiCollect: A mobile app for fieldwork and crowdsourcing
Just heard a package about EpiCollect on World Service. It’s an app for GPS-capable Android smartphones that ‘allows two-way communication between fieldworkers and their project databases’. And the bit that I really like, since I’m not a scientist and can … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Block the nightjar, block the nightjar
I have been forwarded the following. Yes, it says ‘Militancy and Extremist’. Yes, the target page really is a picture of a nightjar. No, nor me. Sometimes content filters just do that. They mean well. You notify someone, write a … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Imma let you finish, but… come on. Really?
Compare the Kanye-interrupts-Taylor-Swift thing to footage of Jarvis Cocker’s stage invasion at the 1996 Brit awards, in which the camera operators do their best to keep up and Cocker gets chased by a security guard. That’s what it looks like … Continue reading
There are worlds within worlds within worlds
Sometimes you notice a dispatch from one of them opposite the chilled desserts in Sainsburys, and experience a kind of ontological dolly zoom. If this is on a supermarket shelf, then my god, what else may there not be in … Continue reading
In which a Pink Floyd pun influences our dinner
While searching for something to do with some chance halloumi – preferably involving capers, quite heavily – I came across a recipe on a food blog called ‘Gastronomy Domine’. Needless to say, I’m following it. There follows an explanatory video.
You were out, so we left this cheap trick
Let me save you some market research, Unnamed Telecoms Company. Does junk mail disguised as a Post Office parcel slip make you feel: Amused | Intrigued | Scornful
What you want to say vs. the effect of what you said
A TV ad for a poker site aimed squarely at n00bs declares: ‘Cool Hand Poker is designed to discourage pros and sharks…’ Uh-huh. But you know you just encouraged them, right?
Filed under Media
