I saw this linked, and assumed it was an Onion headline, but it's not. This is a real thing. Fucking hell. I don't know whether to be impressed or saddened.

People occasionally ask me why I'm quite militant about only every using my real name on-line, owning several domain names of my name, and generally doing my best to get my name, or a basic variant on it as a username whenever possible, and it's this: I do not want Facebook, or any similar service to be the primary marker of my identity when people look me up on line. I wish to have control over my on-line identity and how people encounter it, not give it up to a third party, and the best way to do that is to be open and clear about who I am everywhere. So I have slightly mixed feelings about this facebook URLs business – on the one hand, I'm going to have to try and get my name on there, but on the other, I'd really rather not improve the chances of my profile there beating out something that I actually control as the marker of my digital identity.

One of London's very finest unsigned bands have just released this first mini album full of absolutely superb tribal pop that is a perfect soundtrack to summer. It'll cost you all of a fiver, and at that price, you cannot afford not to own it.

Exactly was it says on the tin. Except better than you're thinking it is. Seriously, it's ace, go look.

I had the same text as part of my course back in 1995 (I think everyone did), and am quite taken with some Matt's ideas here, in particular, the term "Thingfrastructure".

I'm not sold on the cutsey look, or the metaphors they've chosen, but still: this is the future of business cards right here. I look forward to being able to get a grown-up variant on this.

This is the best insight into the nature of gaming I have seen in ages. Whether you're a PC gamer, tabletop gamer or LARPer, I cannot recommend reading this highly enough. If you run RPGs, and are not devoting a significant chunk of your time to ensuring that a variation on this is the experience your players get, then you are doing it wrong.

Hugh and Alex are up to the brand of idiocy that makes me proud to call them my friends: they're cooking not one, but two recipes from three-Michelin-star chefs with a fondness for extremely complicated cooking procedures, and they're going it live on the internet tonight. I strongly suggest you watch. And heckle them on twitter.

June 28th, Double feature of Helvetica and Objectified at the Barbican. I've seen Helvetica, and could happily watch it again, but not Objectified. Anyone fancy a double bill of design documentaries?

Has anyone used this operation? Or anything similar? While I've got time machine, I have no offsite backups, which bugs me slightly. Particularly curious about the system performance impact of their background process, and also what kind of bandwidth useage spikes I could expect to see.

A summary of the conference I spent a chunk of Friday watching over the web. Sounds like the presentation they killed the video on was completely fascinating. I'm still processing of of the ideas I came away with, and doing my best to make sure they don't leak into anything else.

This is some seriously impressive shit.

Someone has managed to get a ZX-81 on the internet as a webserver. Awesome.

I'm sure 90% of you have no interest in the ongoing ludicrousness of Apple's iTunes App Store approvals process. But the three of you that have been paying attention to it will probably find this as funny as I did.

Anyone fancy going to this in a few weeks time? White Mischief are doing a night there that should be well worth attending…

I would not wish to suggest that any of our clients has ever said anything like this, or that I laughed in hollow recognition of behaviours I have encountered time and time again. Absolutely not.

There is a part of my brain insisting that some of these had to have been jokes, even for the time. m Sadly, I suspect they weren't. Still, they're kind of funny *now*.

I know only a little about Slavic myth, chiefly just the bits where it brushes up against other mythologies I know better, or what I've got from various bits of fiction, and I think it may be useful to rectify that.

Were I not required to be in the office on Friday, I would be here. If you are in London, and do no have anything pressing to do between 11am and 5pm on Friday, I strongly suggest you go. And take notes. Lots of notes. And then give them to me.

I make absolutely not comment on any similarities that may or may not exist between the Tiny Art Director and our clients at work. I will, however note that to date, no client has ever requested a "poo-poo airplane" as part of any work I've done.

I know I've linked to similar articles in the past, but I rather like the spin this one is using, and I particularly like the opening paragraph: "Newspapers stopped working a long time ago and a better means of doing their job is readily available. It’s an asinine debate. Who wouldn’t want their news delivered in a form that was searchable, saveable, resendable, which you can talk back to, which is linked to other relevant news, which allows you to read as lightly or as deeply as you wanted to, and which combines text, pictures, and video?"

A challenge: Read Infinite Jest between June and September. I've been trying to do this for years, but every time I have a go at it, I find myself distracted by some other book, and not picking it up again. So instead of treating it like a normal book, and trying to read it to the exclusion of all else until I'm done, I think I'm going to try and do it this way, spread out over a three month period. 7 or 8 pages a day should be no problem, and I can read other books on the bus. At least until I become hooked on Infinite Jest, and feel the need to start carting a tome the size of my head around everywhere…

Yes: that twat shouting at someone else on the bus really is spoiling your day. Yes: your rude and/or unpleasant co-worker really is lowering everyone's productivity. Yes: Bad manners really are contagious.

"So many of our grandparents were racist, and some of our parents are homophobes. Which of our own closely held beliefs will our own children and grandchildren by appalled by?" I'd add "wastefulness" to this list, but still it's a fascinating thing to think about.

Some absolutely beautiful t-shirt designs in here. One to come back to when I've got some spare t-shirt money.

Maybe this is where I should go on holiday next. (No, I'm not seriously considering it – it's hot, and y'know, not a city. But it is amazing looking.)