For people who live in London and other places where there’s not really enough room to keep a dog but who wish to keep up with the trend of having a dogs head poking out of their handbag this is the solution.

I’ve not worked out the details yet. Will the head be taxidermy or a fluffy toy? I’m not sure, but I think the fundamental idea is sound. Obviously the design can be adapted to bags other than the one in the picture which is kind of an indie girl sports handbag. The more mainstream consumer might like their dogs head stitched onto one of those handbags that looks like a bloated pancreas. As a kind of extra piece of branding genuine Sunnyblue™ dogs head handbags will come with a plastic dog turd inside.

Right I’m off to go bowling now. See you there.

I’ve been on a huge Ursula Le Guin binge for the last six months or so. Culminating last Sunday when I bought what I thought were the four remaining books in the Ekumen cycle. but let’s start fromt he beginning…

When I read this I was totally unaware it was part of a broader series of books. Nothing on the back says anything like “Volume 3 of the Hainish cycle!” and that’s kind of understandable as Le Guin herself has said they aren’t a cycle or a saga. They do not form a coherent history. I like that, It really irks me when stories get bent out of shape to accommodate earlier inventions out of some misguided idea that a sense of reality in fiction comes from absolute and perfect consistency rather than an understanding of how people work. The Cities in Flight series, as currently collected, has lots of this kind of post rationalising, with Blish going as far as to re-write protions of earlier books and whilst the whole is still great I think it’s weaker for this fiddling.

So anyway, this is the second copy of this book that I owned the first one was a gloriously retro bantam paperback but it fell out of my pocket as I was walking into work on the day of the London tube bombings. I like this cover better though. Not sure about the colour scheme though. Virago have a tendency to kind of feminise their covers as they’ve done here with the colour scheme, not that I have anything against that per-se just that the population of the planet Winter in the book are androgynous and to support the amazing balancing act Le Guin pull off in the text in making the culture believable I think a more neutral cover would have been appropriate.

The first edition cover is absolutely brilliant. It seems to me to captures a lot of the ideas in the books with out being overly literal. Book covers should really avoid being overly literal, they need to avoid populating the readers imagination before the author can get in there.

Read the rest of this entry »

I made my first foray into paying for MP3s (or equivalent DRMed digital music files) last week. I’m too scared to use Amazon at the moment because of WILD CAT POSTAL STRIKES!!! and the album I wanted is NOT AVAILABLE IN THE SHOPS!!! So instead of sending NO MONEY NOW!!! I signed up to itunes music store and bought Simon Bookish’s TRAINWRECK/ RAINCHECK album for £7.99 or there abouts. It’s really good. Next, with almost no thought, I bought his previous record which was good but not as good. I wasn’t really meaning to buy it I was just toying with the idea, like when you pick up loads of CDs in HMV and then end up putting all but one back, or like how you put stuff in your amazon basket but never check out, I was just trying on the idea of buying the songs, so it was a bit of a shock when, with no further prompting required, the music downloaded to my hard drive. I quickly closed itunes before I bought anything else. I need to make sure I don’t go on that thing when I’m drunk.

Some things that you may have seen on my del.icio.us links, but which really deserve a bit of extra comment.

Firstly

Why the square-root rule for vote allocation is a bad idea
This is a great blog post about the the mechanics of block voting systems, a pretty crucial debate within the EU at the moment that really doesn’t get much space in newspapers because it’s basically about maths.

This debate has real-world importance, in particular because of Poland’s recent lobbying for square-root allocation in the European Union, in opposition to Germany’s support of something closer to proportionality.

Well I found it interesting anyway.

Secondly

Band Logos
This short article is a whistle stop tour of pop music branding, something I first noticed as it crept into festival posters in the early to mid 90s. The use of illustration is brilliant, giving the perhaps-a-bit-on-the-dry-side text a bit extra juice. Loads more wonderfully illustrated mini essays at the authors blog.

It’s interesting, having an iPod touch where the preferd method of music navigation is via the cover flow album browser has made album art more important to me again and made me listen to more full albums, making me think that being able to cram more imagery and text into ID3 tags would be a cool extension.

Thirdly

Be Smart Drive Safe Posters
The last one on the page. It looks nice but I’m not sure that the message is responsible. It seems to me to give the impression that the primary reason not to drink drive is that you’re a danger to yourself rather than that you’re a danger to others (which is the reason I don’t drink drive) i.e. it’s OK to get sloshed if you’re in a tank, whilst clearly the potential for damaging people outside the vehicle is much greater than for someone on a scooter. It also seems to perpetuate the myth that fewer fatalities result from collisons involving SUVs etc. than lighter cars.

Don’t get me wrong the poster looks lovely and is produced by great illustrators but the air of authority confered by the info-graphic style and the copius small print is troubling for me when combined with the frankly irresponsible advice eg. safe alcohol levels for lorry drivers = 15 glasses of wine? I don’t think so.

And Finally…

…and probably least geekily; some articles from Wired magazine. Whilst I have nothing but contempt/ mild irritation for much of Wired hyper-consumerist content they do have some great writers and some great articles like these three…

• La Vida Robot
• An IM Infatuation Turned to Romance. Then the Truth Came Out.
• Gizmondo’s Spectacular Crack-up

I’d seriously reccomend these to anyone, they’re all fascinating. If you only have time to read one though you should go with the first which is seriosuly amazing. Really you should read it now. Or print it out for the bus ride home.

If Microsoft buy a stake in facebook, I will de-register.

DO YOU REALLY WANT MICROSOFT TO GET THEIR GRUBBY CAPITALIST HANDS ON YOUR MOST INTIMATE AND PRIVATE INFORMATION?

Yeah and facebook loves you and doesn’t want to make any money out of your personal info. What idiocy. People who put their “MOST INTIMATE AND PRIVATE INFORMATION” on facebook need to step away form the computer. The reason why facebook hasn’t been sold is because the owners think they can get richer by not selling your personal data.

I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft products but the claim that they’re “shoddily programmed” is totally unfounded and basically ignorant with regard to just how complex something like Microsoft word or Excel (incidentally, a bloody great piece of software) actually is.

And Bill Gates = Hitler? Yeah of course because Hitler was famous for giving 34 BILLION DOLLARS towards improving global health, and increasing access to education for those on the margins of society.

I hope facebook is sold to Microsoft.

What Facebook groups do you find annoying?

Including lots of buildings. I seem to take lots of photos of buildings and signs, not many people…

[I’ll update this with some pictures later]

We’re back, after 4 and a half sweltering days in New York. We saw protests outside the UN (and realised that we had had problems getting a hotel on Manhattan because it was General Assembly week) a Barak Obama rally at NYU and I finally saw the Statue of Liberty (On my 3rd visit. I have this thing where I go to major world cities and completely fail to see the defining land mark, I must’ve been in Paris 10 times and swear I’ve never seen the Eifel tower (or if I have I can’t remember it)) and on Scott and Analise’s advice explored Brooklyn where we found an awesome restaurant.

As predicted I got an Ipod Touch it was kindly bought for me by Emma as an early birthday present. I did some ‘testing’ on it this morning: vaulting a barrier near Kilburn sorting office it flew out of my pocket, landed on a corner (chiping the metal surround) and skittered half a meter across the pavement, screen down - yikes! Amazingly there are no scratches on the glass at all, god knows what it’s made of but its hard. I have to say though, whilst it’s an amazing piece of technology/ design (browsing the Wired web site from the sofa yesterday afternoon on a thin sliver of screen I felt just about as futuristic as I ever have) there are some ways in which it’s markedly inferior to my old 2nd gen block. Interface-wise it’s a step back from the brilliance fo the scroll wheel (though the extended functionality necessitates this to some extent, the original ipod was a supremely focused piece fo technology the touch is more general purpose) and the addition of a pin number system (vital for protecting your email passwords etc.) has been thoughlessly placed right up front rather than on specific security sensitive functions, entry is required to skip a song or change the volume. The closed nature of the platform is frustrating too, but hey it can only be a matter of time before some decent 3rd party apps come along and fill in the gaps Apple has conspicuosly (and predictably) left, though a software fix is unlikely to sort out the irritating, and frankly insulting lack of a plug.