July 2009
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“Movies, even those that run nearly 3 hours long, are more like short stories...”
– Amanda Marcotte on pandagon.net, talking about how Harry Potter was more suited to a long-running TV adaptation than the current movies.
The actual post is full of spoilers, but who doesn’t know how part six goes? Still, you’ve been warned.
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“I don’t know what’s more surprising: that my first thought was ‘so what, most...”
– Martin Deutsch (again, sorry; but he says interesting things I like responding to) on the reports that the NYC MTA are to use CCTV in the New York Post.
A random, longwinded observation of my own. Those “secure beneath the watchful eyes” ads that everyone from Boing Boing down took...
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“Maybe I’m missing something, maybe it the photography. But it strikes me...”
– Will Wiles in Spillway on Urban Farming and Apocalypse Chic, in particular the recreation of A Wheatfield at Dalston Mill (previously, previously).
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“I understand the need for newspapers to save money, but I’m not sure that this...”
– Martin Deutsch critiquing the Observer for killing its TV guide while saying that readers are using EPGs and the Internet rather than print. A couple of quick thoughts.
The Observer’s coverage duplicates the Guardian Guide. How many people buy one, but not the other? The Guide always seemed...
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Recovering From Safari Crashes
Every now and again, I’ll see a friend complain online that Safari has crashed and that they’ve lost a vitally important window. Usually I chip in that there is a session-recovery feature, even though it seems that hardly anyone knows about it.
If you look in the History menu, the last option in the third block is the one you want: Reopen All Windows From Last Session. This does what...
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Heroku, App Engine, and AppJet
When AppJet was still around, we had an edit button, a single page of a few dozen lines and a cross-domain AJAX API. This, surprisingly enough, was all you needed to apply some programmatic patching to a bunch of different use-cases
Jonathan Lister, from Joyent Smart Platform – a replacement for AppJet?
In it, he compares Joyent (nee Reasonably) Smart’s model, where you develop locally...
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“So, has the change on route 507 been worthwhile? I’m not convinced. All...”
– diamond geezer on the non-bendy 507, a route I actually use once or twice a week. I recently took it from Victoria to Lambeth Palace on a weekday morning, so perhaps I’ll give it a go during rush hour this week. It doesn’t sound like I’m going to enjoy it, though. (The entire...
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WatchLittle Boots new single, Remedy, from a Newsbeat interview.
More 1980s video effects homage (see: La Roux), plus Tenori-on, so it gets my vote. It’s certainly a lot better than the horrific New In Town promo (“hi, I’m new to LA, let me wander around while you look poor and dance around me!”), despite one jarring moment when you realise it’s doing a bit of lyrical...
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Movies In Frames
moviesinframes:
The Terminator, 1984 (dir. James Cameron). By rizomer.
Oh, come on. This isn’t even chronological order, damnit.
I know I’m biased (I did my own version a while ago), but a lot of movies in frames are pretty meh. There’s no theme, or narrative: they just feel like random shots from the film, picked because they mean something to the author, but they never...
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Floating Above The City
Six years ago, I saw Finisterre, Saint Etienne’s film about London, at the ICA.
The perverse possibilities of the Barbican. You could be invisible here. You get a notion of floating above the city. Escape. Escape. Escape.
I’d started getting interested in the highwalks before then, exploring them a little. I’d even take detours to them in lunchtimes and evenings. However, the...
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“[Tumblr] was more of a scrapbook for posting select bits of mixed media, be they...”
– A play with Posterous by James Holloway, late of this borough. The entire post is worth a read; some good points there (although I seem determined to just plough on through, mixing bookmarklets with essays on highwalks).
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Dalston Mill Reviews
Two links, thanks to Tom Taylor.
Diamond Geezer: Dalston Mill
For three weeks only, a windmill is operating in Dalston. It’s art, obviously. But it’s also a proper mill with blades and turny things and grindy bits and flour. And, because it’s essential to maintain sustainable credentials and ensure low food-miles, there’s even a cornfield alongside.
The bar was...
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Twitter, @replies and in_reply_to
benw:
Existing conversation trackers don’t work with this. The @@ replies get left out of threading tools. That’s a shame, but that’s the reality of new behaviour. It takes time to be recognised and supported. That as much as anything is why I’ve documented @@ here, as a reference and explanation for you to use as you advocate the practice, and to encourage everyone to settle on the @@ syntax in...
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“Boris Johnson, has managed to get on the wrong side of several councils with his...”
– John Crace in an aside as he covers a Paris-style bicycle scheme in Bristol for the Environment Guardian blog.
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“this amazing little internet-connected computer that I always have in my pocket...”
– Marco.org: Update to “Serious doubts”
I keep meaning to write about my experiences with iPhone 3GS (look, Gareth, I’m even using Apple-approved brand constructions!) but I don’t seem to have got around to it yet, and as it fades into the everyday (as it has for everyone else...
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“Astonishingly, no one thought to question the phrase that became his...”
– The Guardian’s surprisingly critical obituary of US anchorman Walter Cronkite, by Harold Jackson. via minority report.
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“Heroes abound, but don’t count astronauts among them. We worked very hard,...”
– Michael Collins, in an article about how he “became the forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11” in The Observer. Collins was in the command module of the orbiter as Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon, and the article is worth a read.
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“I think we are supposed to find the sound of Big Ben friendly and reassuring,...”
– Joe Moran, on The Big Ben dissidents. candace always said to me that the hour bell was slightly out of tune, but I’m tone deaf, so I never noticed.
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“Those who spend most of their lives being alert to the demands of others – and...”
– Andrew O’Hagan: A Car of One’s Own in the London Review of Books. via Joe Moran, whose On Roads comes highly recommended.
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“The Government must ensure that those who seek to run a deregulated bus service...”
– Tom Cox MP in the House of Commons, 9 Jul 1993. In the end, deregulation for London buses was amended to being privatisation within a regulated framework (partly because of the Travelcard) and London buses are still red.
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WatchStratford City link bridge timelapse video. Just what it says. (via)
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“I was about to comment that she’s of the generation entirely used to...”
– A Sony Walkman, By God, by Warren Ellis. It’s a good ramble on interfaces and computers and teens and music. 