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Internet friend Ariana Osborne on the magic of the present. If you're annoyed with your lack of jetpack, I suggest this as a dose of perspective.
Author: Alasdair
Links For Tuesday 18th August 2009
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"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the 'rat race' — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing."
Links For Monday 17th August 2009
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"The morning question, what good shall I do today?" "Evening question, What good have I done today?"
Links For Thursday 13th August 2009
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This is where you live. Go and look.
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Interesting piece on the design of objects, and the effect it can have on perceptions of their use.
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My brain is a bit fried right now, and even though I'm mainlining coffee, I'm not in a state to really retain serious information. So I'm marking this as one to come back to, as it looks interesting.
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I cut my teeth building systems for a local newspaper company – one, in fact, that I had delivered as a teenager, for pocket money. It's very easy to dismiss local papers as lacking in real news content, and full instead of trivial local rubbish, but the reality is that they provide local-community level news that really is important to the daily lives of many people. There is a very real need to find alternative infrastructure to distribute this information, ideally in a non-digital form.
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I think I could have fun with some of this shit. Need to go LED shopping soon.
Links For Wednesday 12th August 2009
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The rest of this guy's work is good, too, but this is just fucking gorgeous.
Links For Monday 10th August 2009
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Charles Stross in conversation with Paul Krugman. Well worth a listen. Particularly the bit about what ladies who lunch will be eating in fifteen-twenty years time, which made me laugh like a drain.
Links For Friday 7th August 2009
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A day in the overheard life of London.
Links For Wednesday 5th August 2009
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Why do I not own one of these? Someone see to it at once!
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I vaguely recall this from GCSE Latin. It is a rather more ace thing now that I'm not looking at it in a stuffy classroom.
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Go. Look at this. Stunning, bleak, depressing photojournalism on poverty in America.
Haven’t Done A Book Meme In A While
Don’t take too long to think about it. 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you. They don’t have to be the greatest books you’ve ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
The House at Pooh Corner – A.A. Milne
The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
45 – Bill Drummond
Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night – Christopher Brookmyre
Accelerando – Charles Stross
The Great Shark Hunt – Hunter S. Thompson
Bane – Joe Donnelly
Raw Spirit – Iain Banks
Fucked By Rock – Zodiac Mindwarp
Night Watch – Terry Pratchett
Quantum Psychology – Robert Anton Wilson
King Rat – Chine Mieville
I Was Dora Suarez – Derek Raymond
The Complete HP Lovecraft – HP Lovecraft
Nicking nalsa‘s Variation: that took me six minutes and ten seconds – timing myself made it a bit more interesting. (Also I could have been faster, but I was disqualifying comics.) (I suspect that my inclusion of Kitchen Confidential might be partly due to bleed from his list, but I left it in, because I think it deserves to be there anyway.)
Adding My Own Twist: If you’d like to know more about a book, or what it means to me, leave a comment explaining what you’d like to know about my relationship with that book, and I’ll tell you.
Links For Monday 3rd August 2009
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Is you have any interest in data visualisation at all, you need to take a look at these. Really interesting way to present information of this kind – it allows interesting abberations to be identified really quickly and conveniently. What else might be suitable to present this way, other than the pop charts?