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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?
Links For Friday 31st July 2009
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I am unsure exactly what this is, other than "interesting". Who's in?
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It's another Big Picture link. You know it means there are pretty things, so why are you still here reading this text? Get on with the clicking!
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I think I may send this one to my boss, all our clients, and really, anyone who thinks that a simple feature that can be summed up in a sentence of English must therefore be easy to add to any program. "It's just a single field to do X" is almost never "just" anything.
Re: Gothic London: City of the Deranged and Disorderly Dead
Minimal interest to most of you, but there were a few “I’m interested” comments on yesterday’s post. I’m afraid that when I went to book at around 11pm last night, the ticket site they linked to only had two tickets left, so while I did buy both of them, my spare is going to sparksoflight since she was the one who actually pointed the event out to me, and fair’s fair, after all.
Yesterday’s link yesterday does contain a phone number, if you want to try the box office yourself, and see if it’s just that the site had a tiny allocation. Sorry I wasn’t more helpful/organised/swifter.
On The Failure Of Recommendation Engines
Greetings from Amazon.co.uk,
We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated books by Bill Drummond have also purchased The Economics of Large-value Payments and Settlement: Theory and Policy Issues for Central Banks by Mark Manning. For this reason, you might like to know that The Economics of Large-value Payments and Settlement: Theory and Policy Issues for Central Banks will be released on 1 August 2009.
I think perhaps some smarter author matching in in order. Either that or Zodiac Mindwarp is branching out in some really odd directions, and proving unexpectedly capable of taking his fans with him. I suspect the former, and Amazon have made it sound like the latter, but I really don’t believe that very many people (like me) who read books with title like “Get Your Cock Out” are hugely interested in “The Economics of Large-value Payments and Settlement”. Oh dear, Amazon.
Links For Thursday 30th July 2009
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A talk in December. Anyone interested? Speak up sharpish, because every time I see one of these things, it sells out before I get round to buying tickets, and that's not happening this fucking time, so if you want me to grab you a ticket, speak up bloody quickly.
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Superb encapsulation of the impact of meetings on two differently scheduled kinds of staff. Should be required reading for all managers, as it will help them understand why the makers they need to meet with are often resistant to the idea of another meeting.
Links For Friday 24th July 2009
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Please, pass this link around. It's worth doing. Reblog, re-tweet, pass it on to your friends so they can do the same. If you are a geek or a nerd of any stripe, you should be aware that some small fraction of the money you spend on entertainment media is going to fuel homophobia (if you're giving money to companies that are then giving money to an operation that is fuelling homophobia, then yes, that *is* what is happening), and that this should be stopped. And unless they are publically shamed, then there is no reason for companies like Marvel to grow a spine. So you should circulate this link.
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It does exactly what it says on the tin. I have no use for this, but I love that it exists.
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Watching this, I had to keep reminding myself that he's a politician, and that his words are unlikely to be backed up by action, that he's not going to be called on the content of this speech, and that he has teams of people whose job it is to help him seem engaged, aware and generally serious about the world. Still: this is a good speech, talking sense, and it's quite nice to see him saying things I agree with 100%.