Well, I had two topics I was going to talk about. And maybe I will come back to the Valentines/relationshippy one later, but right now, it seems a little obvious, and not terribly in the spirit of Valentines day.

So, instead, I am going to look both big-headed and pointlessly neurotic. I’m good like that.

Neurotica

I’m not going to post it, because it’s not terribly thrilling, but I note that comfortably over half of my (unutterably gorgeous) friends don’t have any sort of likeness of themselves as their default pic.  I am faintly disturbed by this – I know this photo doesn’t look a lot like me (and I must get a new one at some point), but y’know, it is me, and I’d never think of representing myself with anything other than a picture of me (at least as a default).  Not doing so would feel dishonest, somehow. (No, I’m not accusing anyone of anything.  Just saying that’s how I’d feel.)

So, I’m curious: if your default pic isn’t a picture of you in some form, why not?  Why’ve you gone with whatever you have as your default pic?

At around four pm yesterday, I felt like I was coming down with a cold.

So, I did what any self-respecting Stupid Bastard would do.  I battered it with cocktails until I couldn’t feel the symptoms, and then I went clubbing, and battered it with other things.  I have woken up with afternoon feeling cold-free.  So, either it turns out the cure for the common cold has been under our noses all along, and is a lot more fun than previously suspected, or the Black Death is in the post, and when the after-effects of the various toxins I have shoved into my system this weekend wear off, I am going to just fall over.  I shall report back  Or not.  For now, I have orange juice, Very Good Bourbon (thanks to alexdecampi) and the new Brookmyre novel to read, all accompanied by the Alabama Three’s sweet, pretty, country acid-house music.  I shall see you later, when I shall discourse on thrilling topics like Valentines Day (sort of), and the terrible hassle of being both basically lazy and popular (kind of).

Valentines day does have some impact on me.

This is the impact it has. Go on, send your loved one(s) a Trojan Records Valentine ecard. Validate my employment. Or something.

Just went to the gym for the first time in most of a fortnight.  Sad but true: I’ve missed it.  I am, therefore, what, when younger and stupider, I always swore was The Enemy.  Oh well.  Happens to us all, etc, etc.

stu_n and burge had their birthday do at The Big Chill Bar on Sunday.  It was ace, for both the company and the setting.  I forgot to put a flash card in my camera.  On the one hand, I am very stupid.  On the other, this just means I’ll have to go back there.  Oh, the hardship.

Via tinyjo I find The Way We See It.  Accordingly, I shall be at Savoy Buildings WC2 at 3pm on Saturday, to take photos, should anyone else fancy it.  If the next location (due to be posted Friday) is reasonably nearby (or within easy tube journey) I shall probably do that, too.

Weekend roundup: Photography, clubbing, nap, drinking, coma, badly-needed day off work doing nothing.  All excellent, thank you all.

Week coming: Taiko, clubbing, haircut, photography, possibly more clubbing, persistent vegetative state. 

Following that, it is Valentines day.  For the record: this year, I have decided to adopt to the official position of having no opinion at all about it.  It is neither good nor bad, and does not affect my life, or anyone else’s, in any way unless they wish it to, and as such I have no need for an opinion on it at all.

Mental list:  Things I want:

A Digital SLR.  Unless someone out there is fabulously wealthy, and feels like gifting me with one, then this is just going to have to wait.

An iShuffle.  Next month, assuming the Apple Store ever gets them back in.  I’d like to use the treadmill at the gym again, and I don’t like doing it with an iPod – I worry about the constant jolting of the hard drive, and the iShuffle seems perfect for my needs.

A new tattoo.  I know what I want – a caduceus on the back of my left calf.  I feel like I should wait a while, though – it’s all of six months since I got my last one, after all.    Anyone want to make bets on how long I’ll hold out?

One for the PHP developers on my friends list, because I’m completely stumped.

Set-up is PHP on IIS, connecting to a SQL server 7 database.

The problem is an interesting one – different data is being generated depending on the browser that accesses the page. I have an “artist” object, on of the properties of which is “name”. If I load the page in Firefox, the “name” property has the value I’d expect. If I load the page in IE, the “name” property is blank, despite the fact that all the other data for the object has been loaded. The data all comes from the same stored procedure call. This isn’t a browser rendering error – the source code for the page is different depending on which browser looks at it, and echoing the raw data before any HTML comes back gets different resuklts depending on the browser.

Anyone ever run across this? IIS/PHP behving differently depening on which browser access it?

Anyone feel like wandering around somewhere interesting in London with me while I take photos, either on Saturday or Monday (or both)?  I’m running short of photos to post, and need to get a bit ahead of myself again.  I can offer coffee/drinks/reasonably cheap food somewhere (depending on time of day/location/what we feel like doing) as well as sparkling conversation[1] in exchange for the company…

(If you can think of anywhere to go, that’s good, too.  Otherwise, I’m just going to head for somewhere in zone 1 at random.)

[1] Well, conversation, anyway.

Another note to self, abut you’ll all probably enjoy it. Alan Moore interviewed, and being typically clever and interesting.

I’m still whoring for viewers for electricana.  Aside from a week’s inabilty to upload photos, I’ve managed to keep to my five-a-week goal, and remain optimistic about doing so.

So, what I thought I’d do at the end of each month is pick the top four photos, make some brief comment on them, and try and see if anyone’s willing to circulate it a little wider, on their own LJs and blogs.  So, here you go.  The code to reproduce this is under the cut tag, if anyone would like to pass it on, as it were.  If people are seriously pissed off by the prospect of something like this turning up on their friends page once a month, I’ll filter/cut it, but I’d rather leave this as a public post.  So…

Electricana: January ’05

Under Electric Light
It’s a simple enough shot, this one, but I like the combination of the lines of the brickwork, and the way they draw the eye down to the light, and the colours.  And y’know, it’s a neon light.  I love neon lights.

Awakening
Sometimes, you really don’t need to work to get a good photo.  I work up early one morning, and the bands of colour in the sunrise did all the hard work for me.

Light of Knowledge
The reaction to this one caught me by surprise.  I honestly felt that this was a “well, it’ll do” sort of shot – the composition is slightly off, and the light effect isn’t quite what I was looking for.  But it seems people like it.  Another one where the scenery did all the work.

An Otherwise Dull Day
Another neon sign, and another simple composition, but this time it’s the limited range of colours here that I like, the way that the neon sign stands out.  It feels like quite a New York photo to me, which is odd as it was taken right beside Sloane Square tube.

Photos taken from Electric Arcana.  Photos and text © 2005 Alasdair Watson.  Permission granted to reproduce this post in whole, including this notice.

Cut and paste code

Another one for the sake of memory, this time, a photography site: Peter Funch.

I really ought to sort myself out with one of them del.icio.us things properly, like…