buildings are different for architects

These guys have been touring Europe looking at buildings, and playing with them as well, their Daily Masterpiece post is very funny, but may be slightly disturbing for readers who have not been exposed to architects architecting before. They have pictures illustrating the post here at Flickr.

It reminds me that when I stopped studying architecture buildings suddenly became enjoyable again, I could have any opinion I liked, or no opinion at all. Very nice. Very relaxing.

telephony

This is excellent, it's a counterscript to use with telemarketers, I recommend when asking the questions to keep your voice even, and your mouth smiling at all times, to indicate your friendly and yet impassionate perspective on things.

kottke had a job!

Jason Kottke has decided to give up his day job, and blog full-time for a year. This is remarkable for a number of reasons:

1. I'd imagined that he already made his money from blogging, or things associated


2. though I couldn't imagine how


3. he obviously reads and processes a lot of stuff, and puts it up in a very engaging way, so he's almost becoming a professional information processor, pointing to various things, rather than a writer that you read for what he is writing


4. judging by the response at del.icio.us he should be successful - at least 58 people have linked to his post about going pro and the need for micropatrons, and at least 413 people have linked to his blog.

It'll be very interesting to see how well it works.

I found out via Chapati Mystery which is a very fine blog compassing history, cricket, kite flying, ritual sacrifice, US politics and a lot more. And I was directed to Chapati Mystery by Kottke. Nice circularity, almost chapati like, maybe.

traces¹

traces¹
Originally uploaded by hinke.

One of the things I like about Flickr is that other people are out there taking the sort of photos that I like - you know - a wall with some paint and a half obscured tag, all very formally composed. Very beautiful, and subtle.

salvation

Looking at opensourceCMS.com I found this exchange:

[Guest] Alan: Which is the best free CMS tool?

[Guest] rib: howdy

[Guest] bob: hi

[Guest] Bibo: Mambo is free. Salvation in Christ costs you nothing either. It has been fully paid for. Accept the free offer now!

By the way CMS stands for Content Management System.

we like the Triffids

Lenton has pointed out to me that there are now 4 (four) people who have listed The Triffids in the "Favourite Music" part of their Blogger profile. This is good news. It might even mean that Triffids' songs start turning up randomly on radio stations . . . that'd be cool. It wouldn't be so cool if one of their tunes got morphed into an advertising jingle - I really hate watching tv and finding that some song from my distant past has been cut down into a 20 or 10 sec loop and is background music for pretty girls in frocks and jeans and etc. smiling inanely, or pouting unreasonably, or having some kind of generic "fun", to tempt us to buy whatever it is that they are selling.

However I digress, The Triffids, great band from Perth, my favourite song "Field of Glass" recorded in 1984 at Maida Vale, London. I used to go and see them at Caringbah Inn! Those were the days!

swing bridge blog

inspection
Originally uploaded by brendadada.

Nice oil can! Nice colours - greys, warm browns, orange, shell pink hands!

This picture is of someone on the/a swing bridge over the Tyne at Newcastle. The bridge has it's own blog - Swing's Blog - it's good.

eucalyptus

I haven't read the book - it seemed a far-fetched premise to me - a man who grows every species of Eucalyptus on his property, I don't think it'd work I mean you've got your really big tall trees growing on ex-volcanic soil, and your mallee growing out in sandhills, and little stunted trees growing on sandstone cliffs on the coast. So, no, can't see it myself.

But now given the flurry over Jocelyn Moorhouse, and Russell and Nic, and the film being indefinately postponed, and the town of Bellingen in uproar (I doubt it), I might have to read the book and see if I reckon it'd translate to the big screen. Here's stuff about the putatitive (usage?) film at IMDB, and here's the book at Amazon where its current sales rank is #11,540.

Mind you I thought there was no way the The English Patient could be made into a film, and look how wildly popular that was, so I'm not a good judge.

*

currently reading:

Joyce Carol Oates "Beasts"
and
Agatha Christie "They Came to Baghdad"

oil crash

One of the guys at work left me two links to look at through the evening shift. The first Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash has the catchy slogan - "deal with reality before reality deals with you" - it also makes a lengthy, and seemingly well-documented argument for preparing for the time when oil requirements exceed supply and we can not go on living as we are now. The second is an essay by Richard Heinberg A letter from the future in which he imagines himself as a 100 year old looking back from 2101 over the last century . . . very interesting.

Ironically, both my workmate and I are heading off to Europe on holiday this year - how much oil will that use up?

flowers for Rafah

flowers for Rafah
Originally uploaded by brendadada.

beautiful and moving, flowers and destruction

blog survey

Caron Spector is a blogger and second year graduate student at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles. For her masters thesis project, she is

researching the uses and gratifications of bloggers - basically, why people go to blogs: for content gratifications (information/education/learning), social gratifications (interactions/chatting), or process gratifications (search engines/surfing).

Very interesting! You can contribute to this research by completing this survey. I've just done it, it's very short, and not hard.

And if you're interested in Caron's blogs, they're here:
guacamolelane.blogspot and caronspector.blogspot.com.