Category: from the blogroll

Times like these…

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Your Quote of the Day comes from Brian Micklethwait who has a dodgy internet connection:

My internet connection is doing weird things, going on and off and on again and off again, for no apparent reason.  I fiddle about with the connections, which sometimes seems to work, but this could be coincidence.

All of which is of some small interest, but then he bangs in a line like this:

Times like these remind me of how much my life revolves around times like these not happening too often.

Brilliantly put.
Indeed, we’re all dependent on difficulties not befalling us too often, but we rarely think about it that way until they’ve well and truly befallen us.

History today

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While commenting on this post, I was reminded of History Today – a series of sketches by David Baddiel and Rob Newman of Newman & Baddiel in Pieces and The Mary Whitehouse Experience fame. Brilliant early 90’s “alternative” comedy:

 

TMWE started out on radio in the late 80’s and I can still remember listening to it late on a Friday night, having hit •RECORD on my cassette player in case I should fall asleep halfway through. I never did.
When it moved to TV in 1991, it became more mainstream and was perhaps generally funnier, but a whole lot less edgy. Still, it spawned characters like Ray – always getting into trouble because of his permanently sarcastic tone of voice – and Mr Strange who has an odd obsession with off milk. His catchphrase: “Milky Milky”, became the adjective applied to any social outcast throughout the 1990s.
However, History Today remained a personal favourite and I still recall it when watching or listening to any dull academic debates these days.

Anyway, as with all comedy, it’s never funny if you have to explain it, but you may enjoy clicking through some of the links.
Especially if you happen to be a teenager in the UK 20 years ago.

Picture admin

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Right, first up, this amazing photo from flickr user assassin00708. I have no idea whether he is actually an assassin, but I did spot this on his photostream and thought it deserved sharing.

Which he describes thus:

Photograph taken on Signal Hill looking over the CBD. Sun setting behind Lions head and signal hill with the fog rolling in from the East. Taken 30mins before sun dissappeared. My first real attempt at HDR.
3 Exposure, Tonemapped.

Thanks to man himself for granting permission to use it.
Check out his other work here.

Secondly,  while we are on a photographic theme, manxscenes.com blog is back and is destined for the blogroll – it may already be there by the time you read this. Go check.
I have long been a fan of Peter Killey’s work. Nothing pretentious, nothing overly complicated, just well composed, good quality images of my “other” homeland.
I’m looking forward to seeing more of the same on his happily resurrected blog.

N SKY C

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Via deleteyourself (see the blogroll):

N SKY C

Today is the summer solstice, which is a perfect day to announce my latest internet “art” project.

I wrote a program that takes a picture outside of my office window every 5 minutes. It uploads the photo to a server and then analyzes the sky portion to figure out what the average sky color is at that time. The site is a constantly updating mosaic and record of the sky over New York City, and I think it looks pretty awesome.

I’m looking to expand this project across the globe. If you have a cool view and wouldn’t mind running the program hooked up to a webcam all day, get in touch.

As you may have heard, I’m not too big on art, but this is rather cool. Hover over any bit of the mosaic and the image from Mike’s window appears:

Surely someone from Cape Town must have a decent enough office view to warrant giving this a go?

Brahms did not torture and murder cats for sport

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Logging on to teh interwebs for the first time in a few days brought some laughs on an otherwise cold and grey Monday morning, the best of them being this line:

Brahms did not torture and murder cats for sport. Wagner, who had musical differences with Brahms, and who was an utter shit, made the story up.

From here, which links to here and the all important evidence for the quote above, here, stating:

Author’s research reveals calumny that for 100 years defamed German composer was the malicious gossip of ‘notoriously bitchy’ Wagner.

If there had been a Hello or an OK magazine back in the mid-19th century, one can only imagine that these allegations of cat torture and notorious bitchiness would have been regular front page news.

Amazing. I’ve certainly learnt some stuff this morning already.