Icon-icon all day

It was lovely of lizzip to make me a classy music icon -- and thanks also to besskeloid for a cool suggestion -- but in the end I decided I wanted to make my own.

So I toyed with the idea of producing a blue-washed photo of myself à la Joni Mitchell, but couldn't be bothered trying to take new photos and couldn't find any suitable ones. I failed to produce a satisfactory Badger Mask Replica -- the idea still appeals, but all my attempts were too lame even to post here. I was briefly quite pleased with this rather generic one:



until I realised that when it was reduced to LJ-icon size the writing was so tiny as to be illegible. Finally came up with the icon you should see on this post, which is just about recognisable and, I think, just naff enough to suit me. :-)

Like falling off a blog

Nielsen observes that "much of the Web is like an anthill built by ants on LSD". Surely he's thinking of spiders? After all, we already know what their webs look like under the influence of drugs. To this research I can also add the anecdotal datum that webs created under the influence of copious amounts of caffeine look something like this.

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Ever since I've worked in this office, the fax machine has made moaning noises reminiscent of a wookie in labour. Today, though, the real meaning of those noises became hideously apparent as the air-conditioning added its voice to the chorus, with a noise somewhere between a snore, a grunt, and a ruler being twanged over the edge of a desk. "Grunt - ouhhhh. Grunt - ouhhhh." It's just like living in shared student accommodation.

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And finally... nou has introduced me to the category game, which is an even better office fiddle-object than those little magnetic whatnots that keep the money rolling in for IWOOT and their ilk -- if, of course, you'd rather play with neat javascript implementations of experimental cognitive semantics than overpriced grown-up versions of construct-o-straws. If this (the linguistics, not the plastic) is an area that interests you, I can recommend Lakoff's superbly-named and eminently readable book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Oh, and Amazon get one out of three for product placement.

No big song and dance

Tell Me on a Sunday, Cambridge Corn Exchange

Written for Marti Webb in 1979, this one-woman musical tells the story of a wide-eyed and optimistic 29-year-old who goes to New York to seek fun, friendship ... and maybe more. A series of emotional entanglements follow, with a big-shot film-producer, a young photographer, and a married man with a daughter and a wife whom he is going to divorce, real soon now. Each relationship leaves her progressively older and wiser, or at least in a position to make new mistakes each time; but she never really loses her optimistic streak, sure to the last that true love will happen to her one day.

Now in 2004 Marti Webb resumes the role. ( read more... )