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Hadn't run across this one before. Anyone interested in a game?
The Frozen South
Fell out into the world this morning, and as everyone and their dog will have already informed you, it snowed in London last night. And by god, have we made a big deal out of this. But let’s be sensible about this: it was a snow day. We might need used to them, because if the gulf stream gets fucked in the ear by climate change, as I understand looks reasonable likely, then Britain’s going the get the climate its latitude deserves. Still, as days go, it was kinda nice. Worked from home, found time to nip out and get a few pics, and to have lunch at the pub with Sarah to generally conspire and set the world to rights, as is our usual MO.
But photos and lunch with friends are part of my usual lifestyle. What was lovely, though, was the little slices of magic I kept stumbling over as I walked down the back streets. An Asian family, with 4 kids between the ages of about 5 and 15, spilling out of their house, playing in the snow, more or less just diving into the stuff as they horsed about. Dad leant on the gatepost with a video camera in his had, watching the kids horse about. And all of them, the youngest to the eldest had the same sort of expression on their face, of sheer bloody rapt delight. “We only moved here 18 months ago. This is the first time we’ve seen snow like this.”
I watched them play for a minute or two, and ambled on down the street, only to get clipped on the shoulder by a snowball. I turn my head, and two girls of about ten ducked their heads back inside from the upper window they were giggling at, scraping the snow of the ledge to ambush the unwary.
A bit further down the street, I stopped to help push a young woman’s car up the camber of the road when she couldn’t get traction, so she could get on her way – me and another guy trying to get out backs into it without the feet going out from under us, both of us straining and laughing at the absurdity of having to shove a car just these few feet away from the kerb.
The cemetery entrance drive, full of kids throwing snowballs and building snowmen, but never going further than the drive – the rest of the graveyard pristine and white and solemn and silent like something out of a postcard.
Just for once, the weather in this country being a thing people took a bit of time to enjoy, rather than complain about.
Snow Day
A Snowball In Hell
Bit of a longshot: I have misplaced my copy of Brookmyre’s book of this title. Did I lend it to anyone reading this?
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.