July 2004

Quite possibly the best review of The Day After Tomorrow that I have read so far. Via Kottke.

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One of the drawbacks of living on one's own is lack of extra hands. I have just managed to skewer myself with three large chunks of 2×4, and one small one. (Before you ask, I was ferreting about in the loft, looking for my years old INXS tapes (and before you ask about *that*, it was just a sudden urge, ok?) when I overbalanced and unwisely grabbed at a rafter.) )
So, I have three or four splinters of wood stuck in the first finger of my left hand. I have a magnifying glass in my right. I need another hand to drive the tweezers. And I'm left handed, which makes it all a lot tricker because I am far from dexterous, ironically, with my right hand.
Seems like a bit of a trifling thing to go nextdoor to ask for help with though, even if my neighbour is an EMT.
Oh, and another thing. Trying to position a magnifying glass in your cleavage is pointless – the angle's all wrong and you can't see a thing.
UPDATE: Managed to get the biggest one out. The rest are still proving elusive.
UPDATE2: Shit, I need to get out more.

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Preparing for emergencies

by Suw on July 29, 2004

This rather good post will lead you to this rather good parody of this rather pathetic site by some rather humourless people. Thanks Tim.
I would comment further, but I'm rather knackered after a rather long day full of rather hard work and, (yay!) not that much IRC.

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The Guardian to launch games blog

by Suw on July 29, 2004

The Guardian, one of the few UK publications to understand blogging, is to launch a new games blog.
The blog, which will be available from Monday 2 August, will be written by Aleks Krotoski, former presenter of Channel 4's “Thumb Bandits”; Greg Howson, Guardian Online's games reviewer; and Keith Stuart, the mobile gaming expert. It will cover every game genre and every major gaming platform, including PCs, consoles, the net and mobile phones.
Read the rest at Strange Attractor.

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Free Culture in Helsinki

by Suw on July 28, 2004

A small but perfectly formed MP4 video for you. Lawrence Lessig: Free Culture and the Creative Commons, Helsinki May 04. Ta for the heads-up, Joi.

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Lumpers and Splitters

by Suw on July 28, 2004

When Carl Linnaeus started classifying plants and animals in his taxonomic Systema Naturae, he inadvertently gave birth to two new groups of people: Lumpers and Splitters. Lumpers are the sorts of people who look for similarities between things and group them according to what features they have in common. Splitters look for differences and create new classifications for things that don’t seem to fit in an existing pigeonhole.
Read the rest on Strange Attractor.

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It came to me in the shower

by Suw on July 28, 2004

I wish I had a waterproof computer and wifi in the bathroom. I seem to get lots of ideas whilst in the bath or shower which often cut short said ablutions so that I can go and write stuff down before I forget it. Maybe I need some sort of voice-activated dictation machine. Or an amanuensis.

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Catch 22

by Suw on July 27, 2004

Dw i'm yn sgwennu yn Gymraeg, felly dw i'm yn meddwl yn Gymraeg, felly dw i'm yn sgwennu yn Gymreag.
Mae gen i lyfr: Pwy Sy'n Cofio Siôn gan Mair Evans. Mae'n dda iawn – dw i'n mwynhau sgwennu Mair – ond dw i'n wedi bod yn trio darllen y peth ers tro. Dw i'n darllen tipyn, ond wedyn dw i'n cael fy sylw'n tynnu gan rhywbeth ac anghofio be' dw i wedi darllen, felly rhaid imi fynd 'nôl i ailddarllen bennod neu dau. Gwaith araf ydy e, ond rhaid imi ddarllen mwy – sai fo'n helpu efo'r sgwennu, mae'n siwr.

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Trying to kick the IRC habit

by Suw on July 27, 2004

I've spent too much time on IRC lately. Since I upgraded my OS and lost use of my second monitor – a loss that hit me hard because I'd only just got used to it – I have found that my IRC habit has increased to unacceptable levels. It's therefore not a surprise that I rank as #1 for words typed and hours active for both #joiito and #suwcharman (thanks to James and Adam for the stats). In #joiito I have typed nearly 160,000 words over the last four months. That's a whole book's worth. Two, even. Six feature film scripts.
Obviously I have verbose stuck on 'on'.
This isn't the first time I have tried to cut back on my IRC usage, but this time I have a new tactic. Just don't open Hydra!
Have you any idea how hard it is not to open Hydra? I mean, I currently live alone, in a village in the arseendofnowhere. Sad or otherwise, my online life is my life. The urge just to pop in and say 'hi!' is almost unbearable. But IRC is interfering with getting work done, so it's got to take a back seat for a while.
I'll be in lunchtimes and evenings only from now on. If you want me, email me, or AIM me.

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I am delighted to announce that I have been invited by Hylton Jolliffe and Stowe Boyd to join Corante's growing staff of writers and journalists. My new blog is called Strange Attractor and I'm going to be writing about blogs, social tools, e-learning, storytelling, journalism and anything else bloggish that rattles my cage.
Corante is home to some really cool writers, including David Weinberger, (whose Joho The Blog was one of the very first that I discovered), Clay Shirky, Elizabeth Lane Lawley and Mark Cabiling.
So, what does this mean for Chocolate and Vodka? Just that I shall post less often here about the topics that I will cover on Strange Attractor, instead making CnV a bit more personal. There will always be stuff that I want to blog about that just isn't appropriate for Corante and that is what you will find here – the random goodness that won't fit in on Strange Attractor.
But overall, you will get more Suw for your pound, as I'll need to produce more content for two blogs than for one, so I think you'll be happy with the changes. I certainly am! I relish the challenge of getting my teeth into the blogosphere in a way that I haven't had the opportunity to before. Strange Attractor fits in just perfectly with the other stuff that I'm doing at the moment – Stowe and Hylton have great timing!
So, become a Strange Attractor early adopter – sign up to the RSS feed (available in flavours 1.0 or 2.0) today and watch as I sort through the chaos of the blogosphere like a small, flittery butterfly winging complex patterns in the face of the hurricane.
Should be fun.

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Have some Lamington

July 25, 2004

Lamington: A type of Australian sponge cake – usually pink and frequently served with a cup of tea over which bored housewives will engage in conversations with little or no informational content, but with the metacontent 'Hey! Look! I'm not dead yet! Yay me!'. I learnt to use the word lamington to mean 'meaningless chitchat' […]

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I get the feeling

July 24, 2004

I'm just not gonna be able to follow that Shatner post. Instead, I shall be a terrible tease and say that exciting news may or may not be due on Monday. Although I don't think that really cuts the mustard, but hey, you can't be breaking the big story of the week every day.

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Language and property

July 24, 2004

Vince writes a good post about language and property that's worth reading over on Dragon's Fandango. Vince is one of the most intelligent, talented writers I've met, and I'm really glad that he's started a blog. Just wait til he gets his book finished, is all I can say.

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BlogOn

July 23, 2004

Just been watching the feed from the BlogOn 2004 Conference at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. For some inexplicable reason, the powers that be chose to stream the new product demos (many of which just weren't even vaguely new), instead of the panels held in the other room. Whoever made that call needs […]

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Interspecies translation help requested

July 23, 2004

I need someone who is fluent in written Cat to write me two signs, one which says “It does not matter what you do, I am not getting up for at least another hour”, and another which says “Please remove your tail from my nose. Thank you.” And no, locking them in the kitchen/out of […]

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