OK, I need to read this in more depth when I get home tonight. I'd missed this before, and it looking like it could do some seriously interesting stuff.

A photographer friend of mine is most of the way through a project to take photos in all 50 states of the US, and is trying to raise the cash to finish the job. If you've got a few quid to spare, please consider pitching it her way – she's bloody good, and I want to see the results of the complete project.

Some really interesting picks here. I think I'm going to have to make efforts to acquire a few of the works mentioned in here that I've never read.

Advice about dealing with Photographers given to officers by the Met. Sensible, clear, know your rights stuff. If an officer talking to you does *not* know your rights, then you might try giving them this, because after all, it's their boss telling them what they're allowed to do.

Look, I know I go on a lot about IE, and most of you are sick of it, but the gods honest truth is that using IE actively stifles innovation on the internet, because we have to spend so much time working out how to support it that we don't have the time or budget to get on with anything really interesting. Until Microsoft either take the web seriously enough to implement some proper fucking standards, then using IE is actively hindering the rest of us getting on with inventing the future. Even if you don't care about viruses, please stop it, or urge the people who are making you use it to stop it – I will happily provide supporting documents to counter *any* or their arguments about "business" or "security" reasons.

"Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika."

Iphone app for mac users – get growl notifications from your mac forwarded to your iphone as push notifications. I can see a number of uses for this one…

"The next time you see an application you like, think very long and hard about all the user-oriented details that went into making it a pleasure to use, before decrying how you could trivially reimplement the entire damn thing in a weekend. Nine times out of ten, when you think an application was ridiculously easy to implement, you’re completely missing the user side of the story."

Clients at work routinely ask up to "just you what you did for [otherclient] – just reuse the code, so it won't take you very long", and then look at us like we're trying to con them when we explain that no, we can't do that. And this is kind of why – we learn and reuse relevent bits, but each client gets a custom codebase, because we build the best tools we can for each one. So they're not interoperable.

I for one welcome… etc.

The latest public project from Schulze and Webb, beloved of this parish for basically being much cleverer than me, is site that tracks the word-of-mouth buzz around BBC TV and Radio programs. Yes, it skews populist, for obvious reasons, but I can think of ways round that, and in an iteration or two, might be a really good way of tracking good telly that one would otherwise miss.

Bit of a note to self – with the loss of my laptop, I am kind of aware that had I gotten around to putting proper encryption on the thing, I would not have had to bother with the hassle of changing every single bloody password I use. If you use a laptop, or notebook PC, and don't encrypt the entire HD, then you're running the same risk as I did. (Hell, it's true of desktops, too, but they're not begging to be lost of stolen on a daily basis.) You can find software that will do this for you linked from the link above, whatever OS you use.

"The rise of psychogeography was in some ways an impulse to rediscover those old natural paths that I and others like me had trodden through the ruins, to find ways of rediscovering serious memory, something which Peter Ackroyd (with Chatterton), Alan Moore (From Hell) and Will Self (The Book of Dave) were searching out among the virtual ruins of a London that was becoming a shadow played out on the newly tarted-up walls of Notting Hill and Shadwell.

As well as the friends and relatives who have also become memories, we are equally dependent on the geography of our cities for the myths and rituals by which we live. Without conscious ritual, all we have left are buried tram tracks, some vague ideas of what still lies under the steel-and-concrete cladding and a few bits of film footage."

"I can tell you which Suede record accompanied my GCSEs and A-Levels; today's teenagers would tell you which band."

Never mind kicking myself – I am scourging myself with rusty barbed wire, and rubbing salt in the wounds for missing this. Couple of key quotes from this write up: "Is the current be-scaffolded state of London perpetual remythologising?" Iain Sinclair says “Before we can move forward, we have to absorb everything that has come before, and rip it off.”

Dammit, why was I not told about this? Next year, gadget, next year!

It *almost* makes me want to got there next year, and take a camera. Obviously, I'm not mad, and won't be going, but there are some absolutely gorgeous shots in here.

Shit, I may have to go and see this movie, if only to determine if this review is the touch of genius I suspect it is.

Not a topic I have a hugely vested interest in, being unlikely to marry or spawn, but it's a handy reminder of how Tory social policy is 100% arse backwards. "We must fix our ailing society, by doing things that any idiot can see will only make it worse". Genuine question: in what situation is be conservative (the ideology, not the party) social policy a good idea? Society moves forward – why is attempting to hold it back good or useful?