Fractal Geek

Tonight on BBC2...

2008-06-29T14:12:28Z

...they are repeating Jezza's astonishly good homage to the St Nazerre Raid - the first test of the Commandos. Largely considered to be a suicide mission, horribly under-resourced, and one of the most astonishing cases of "winging it" in existence.

Highly recommended.

BBC Glastonbury Coverage - Elbow(?)

2008-06-29T02:15:42Z

I caught the end of a clip where someone who I presume to be Guy Garvey of Elbow was singing in front of band and Orchestra, an anthem with motif "throw open the curtains", which may rival the Farm's "All together now"

Cam anyone fill me in on the details? I can't link the lyric exactly to them, nor has this yet appeared on the BBC website.

Book Meme

2008-06-25T22:17:17Z

Taking the list from

thalinoviel

- and it's a lot quicker to use the "Rich Text" input

Bold those you have read.
Italicise those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.
Strikethrough on the "barge pole" ones

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
~~23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens~~
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

"Volume" is back!

2008-06-25T02:22:53Z

Probably my favourite piece of interactive art of all time is back, now on the Southbank between the RFH and Hungerford Bridge. It's a lousy location compared to the V&A courtyard garden, but it's still fun. It's there until nearly the end of July. Going late, when the world is a little quieter and darker is strongly recommended.

Current details: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/calendar?action=production&production=39f
V&A link : http://www.uva.co.uk/archives/49

Animator vs Animation

2008-05-21T23:58:07Z

http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs13/f/2007/077/2/e/Animator_vs__Animation_by_alanbecker.swf

Curator forced to kill out-of-control bio-art exhibit

2008-05-06T22:36:46Z

Cross-posted from adriftinthefog:

http://io9.com/387274/curator-forced-to-kill-out+of+control-bio+art-exhibit

A short senryu form

2008-04-10T03:19:18Z

Find trail of feathers,
A black and yellow corpse lies,
Which cat dreams smugly?

Just what you want to find as you go to bed...

Dr Who

2008-04-05T23:59:04Z

Nice episode...
Foster deserved to die, as she infected and was trying to commit mass murder without compunction. OTOH, if she'd explained, then she could have charged what she liked and still had a willing line of hosts.

Anyone else think how much like Anthony Gormley's "Field" it looked towards the end?

BBC costume archive sold to Angels

2008-03-31T00:03:30Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7321453.stm

Maryland, eat your heart out.

2008-03-22T17:14:35Z

Minature Guide Horse Photo Page

Links - and I think they ARE related.

2008-03-05T00:41:49Z

A "Father Ted" festival - http://www.metro.co.uk/news/world/article.html?in_article_id=104501&in_page_id=64 . Of course, it couldn't possibly go smoothly... http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=34023&in_page_id=34

Gaming Theory: While the Academics may miss the point, there are some interesting ideas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Model. The GNS theory is also worth a read.

Total Lunar Eclipse tonight (Feb 20/21)

2008-02-20T01:05:39Z

For GMT: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2008Feb21/image/TLE2008Feb21-GMT.GIF

Re: "Gearhear Nirvana" reviews below

2008-01-27T22:26:01Z

I did a hunt for who "Michael Leonhart" is - turns out he is a Grammy-award-winning musician who has done 2 albums with Steely Dan, worked with loads of people including David Byrne, Brian Eno, A tribe called Quest, Slash, Steve Tyler, Lenny Kravitz, Wynton Marsallis,..., mostly on trumpet. This is a serious player.

The Narrator is his wife(?) and co-worker Jamie, who sounds pretty good too - Nora Jones, but more electro, springs to mind. Definitely worth a listen to the free tracks at the link if you like current hot chanteaux. A very NY Jazz voice, well produced and arranged.

Now we know where we stand...

2008-01-26T15:02:37Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7210342.stm

We've spent £70m in the start-up phases of the Gemini telescopes, which is currently the best in the world, and have just cancelled our memembership to save £15m now it is uop and running and the best in the world. By cancelling immediately, rather than selling the time on, there was an extra and easily avoidable penalty fee of £7m invoked, but what a message it sends...

This derails most of the cutting edge UK northern hemisphere infrared programs, immediately junks stuff that had otherwise been committed for several years more, shows our partners that our commitments aren't worth the paper they are written on and trashes a generation of UK astronomers. A quiet approach to "let us stay in touch" was given a proper "sod off".

Welcome to an officially second-rate country where science is concerned.

Places to go - stuff to play with

2008-01-25T22:23:49Z

For the most detailed aerial pictures yet (at least of London)... count those roof tiles. Thank you, 192.com.

Gear Head Nirvana: These are just the coolest guitar pedal reviews - for a start the "Stereo Electric Mistress" - 70's flange a go-go... And that narrator's voice.... Or go deeper with the "Myth of the Memory Man".

And finally, the very dodgy looking chinese cafe on Drury Lane has become a rather swish looking Thai cafe. Reports to follow.

Star Trek Teaser video

2008-01-22T20:49:45Z

http://www.paramount.com/startrek/ or
http://www.empireonline.com/video/startrekxi/ - UK but no secret link or HD option

And how to find the hidden bits: http://trekmovie.com/2008/01/21/star-trek-teaser-trailer-online-now/

Bill Gate's last day...

2008-01-15T01:57:45Z

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2008/01/bill-gates-reti.html

Happy New Year....

2008-01-01T00:52:00Z

...!

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T00:01:37Z

'Twas xmas night, and not a thing was stirring, save for the click of mice, the chink of glassses, the sound of mad wrapping and "Father Ted" on More4...

Manifestos for the Cat-aholic in your life

2007-12-24T12:54:37Z

Cross-posted from souldier_blue

http://www.cafepress.com/dogs_of_war/1702256

Cool media

2007-11-20T01:08:09Z

The world's first thrust vectored radio-controlled jet airplane
http://www.flixxy.com/rc-plane-mig29.htm

Earthrise and Earthset over the Moon
http://www.flixxy.com/selene-moon-earth.htm

Unfortunately, the link I wanted to post - One of the finest "One song to the tune of another"'s ever, appears to have gone from the show, and "Pick of the Week" does not go on "Listen Again".... "Yesterday Once More" will never be the same again to me.

Comet 17P/Holmes...

2007-10-30T02:28:21Z

... is getting good. We went out tonight, in the well-lit london suburbs, and I located it with binoculars. Once found, I managed to spot it again naked eye.

Binoculars bring out a nice fuzzy core, and apparently it is developing signs of growing a tail.

It's relatively easy to find. At about 11pm, it's nearly vertical (making for good seeing), starting from the eastern horizon, just about above Mars. Or for a star map, try http://www.astronomynow.com/news/071025holmes/

Roll on a nice long tail...

A nice little earner

2007-10-15T22:19:02Z

Vatican archive yields Templar secrets

Things to watch

2007-10-09T02:19:33Z

The launch of a rocket built as a near-full scale X-fighter:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/boom/x+wing-rocket-launches-disintegrates-mid+air-307945.php

Feist, "1 2 3 4", aka the "iPod nano video". Get it from the official site, at better resolution than most of the postings. I saw this a few times on the music channels, it's good for such a good video to get more exposure.
http://www.listentofeist.com/

Chocolate 'aids fatigue syndrome'

2007-10-01T22:30:16Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7018055.stm