Bit of a longshot: I have misplaced my copy of Brookmyre’s book of this title. Did I lend it to anyone reading this?
Author: Alasdair
Some Required Assembly

I’m doing a meme on one of my blogs. People ask for pcitures of some part of my daily life, I take the pictures and I post ’em. My friend Ara asked for “Some part of the cooking process”. So here is the first part of what eventually became the sauce I put on my past this evening. Mushrooms, onions, garlic and some sweet peppers sweating a bit before I added chicken, chorizo, and a red pepper sauce to them. Tasty!
Links For Friday 30th January 2009
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"The roots of Art and all abstraction are in Magic, firelight, and the hidden world." – a short essay by Alan Moore about art and magic that I hadn't run across before.
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I may not neccessarily agree with them, but that doesn't mean this add isn't a very clever bit of design.
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I must eat here. It is very important.
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I saw someone reading this on the bus this morning. I mostly share this because I like to spread the incandescent rage around. What the fuck are these people doing on my planet, who is allowing them to breed, and why am I not yet allowed to simply kill them for being a complete waste of resources and hand their spawn off to people who will raise them to think for themselves?
Links For Thursday 29th January 2009
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I'm a bit of a linguistic conservative – my objection to neologisms like "squee" and "woot" is well-documented. But I'm also in firm agreement with Mr Fry here, even if my method of expressing it would be 180 degrees from his own. But then, that's why he's a national treasure and I'm not.
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I know fuck all about engineering, electronics, or most of the tools this might be useful for. And yet still, I want one.
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Some staggeringly beautiful shots of my hometown. There is a small, mean part of me whispering that anyone who was half competant with the right kit and a helicopter could produce these. This is untrue, because he has (I assume) put time, effort and work into getting to a point in his career where it is economically viable for him to do so.
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More shots by the same photographer. And I know that small mean part of me is dead fucking wrong. These are superbly composed, beautifully shot exposures that evoke feeling and mood, that betray a really bloody good eye. Even were I up there with the right kit, I'm sure I'd miss most of the more interesting shots here.
Cocoa: First Impressions
Sod me, this is a bit easy. Which is not to appear smug, or anything, but I’ve just knocked a really basic web browser together in about ten minutes. OK, that’s not much more than the OS X equivalent version of your usual “Hello World” beastie, but on the other hand, I’ve never build a “Hello World” app I could post to my blog from before.
Right, back to work. Now for the tricky stuff.
Links For Wednesday 28th January 2009
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"Stars nearly aligned" says Professor Angell. On the other hand, maybe this will finally give us a leg up all becoming young and thin and energetic again. Or turn us into a race of degenerate fish-men, I guess. Either's good by me. Ia! Etc…
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Ding! Correct! This, right here, is why I have never played an ARG. And why I would love to get paid to write one.
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Former colleague's JS graph library. Looks handy.
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About to start an Objective C/Cocoa spare time project. Don't know if I'll need any of these tools, but it can't hurt to have a reference to find them.
Links For Tuesday 27th January 2009
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90% of my job is like this. The *other* 90% is making the black triangle look like something pretty.
Bridge of Sighs
Golgonooza
Links For Friday 23rd January 2009
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I shall pick this thing apart at some point over the weekend, see if there's anything I can splice into/shortcut as part of my own efforts.
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Yes, I know everyone and their badger has been linking to this. Tough. These are just superb. I think #44, the picture of all the cellphones and cameras is particular telling.
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This will be incomprehensible to non developers in the audience, but oh god, this is so painfully, painfully true.
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This idea set off fireworks in my head, and I think I've got a spare-time tech project for the foreseeable (I got a proof of concept lashed together in about an hour, but it needs a *lot* more work before it's useable.) I love the idea of being able to get up in the morning and have the overnight reading ready for me to hop on the bus with. Hell, even if I don't ever make the mailbox public, all I have to do is lash it to some RSS-to-email functionality, and presto – a custom POD newspaper every morning.

