That's How It Happened

Tonight marked the start of the new All Star bowling league. Our team, the Pin Pirates, sent the competition fleeing in terror. We recorded huge wins over Autobahn (expatriate US corporate lawyers) and Foyle's (bookshop workers). I haven't participated in real competitive sport in almost a decade, and I'd forgotten how much fun it could be. Drinking, cheeseburgers, and spectacular strike ball action all make for a great night out. I'd like to thank Zoot, Ado, Chris, and Sam for being the greatest team of buccaneers an old sea dog could want. Bring on next Monday.

Update: Sam's Match Report totally trumps mine. (Click to supersize)

Tags: bowling, pinpirates,

(via RW)
I've watched this 50 times in a row, and I think it is a well crafted fake. The meteor looks like it was added in later. The meteor is briefly audible before it hits, when it ought to be supersonic. Also the sound is neatly balanced throughout. People who've just survived near death don't start whooping with joy, especially because they'd be deaf. However the moment of impact, as the cameraman and colleague get blown down is pretty convincing. Anyone spot anything more concrete?

I am worried that the advent of unlimited bandwidth will destroy the internet as we know it. A golden age of semi-literate written communication is going to be subsumed in a morass of attention grabbing YouTube clips. This might be "Cartwright's First Law" actually. Like telephone killing the telegram; video killing the radio star; and now YouTube killing blogging.

More here about the petition to release the Nike McFly. Personally I'm still hoping for a result from the petition to release the Team Zissou. If you're less hopeful, then check out the new Nike Air site. Fantastic interactive flash, and my favourite "non-retro" Nikes for forever.

Tags: zissou, mcfly,

Tip 1: When approaching a single lift (i.e. not in a bank of lifts) on one of the middle floors of a building, watch the indicator sign as you approach. If the lift is one or less floors away, and travelling in the wrong direction, do not press the call button until after it has passed your floor.
The logic behind this is that sometimes the lift will stop at your floor, but then proceed onwards in the same (undesired) direction (when passengers inside have already pressed several buttons). You have the opportunity to get in at that point, when the lift first stops. Pressing the button prematurely will only delay your journey, by causing the lift to stop at your floor a second time as it travels in the opposite direction to your desired destination floor.
This tip can also be used successfully at the penultimate floor of a tall building, even at a bank of lifts, when most lifts are busy in the lowest floors.

Tip 2: When you are at a bank of lifts you should rarely get in when the lift is indicating that it is due to travel on in the wrong direction. However, particularly on the ground floor, you can sometimes get into a lift that intends to go down to the basement, and instead cause it to travel upwards.
The trick is to carefully watch all the indicator signs on all the lifts. If two lifts arrive at once, both intending to go down, step into any one that has no passengers, (and crucially one in which the "basement" button has not been pressed by pesky kids). It is due to collect passengers waiting in the basement, but can usually be commandeered. Hold the door open, until the other lift reaches the basement. Now press your desired upwards floor, and often your lift will rise upwards.

These are my two top tips for lift/elevator power users. I'm curious to know if anyone else has any sneaky tricks.

Tags: lift, howto

(Thanks P Dicky!)

Mr X in Moscow writes: "I love it but I don't really know why". I couldn't agree more.

This list of the 32 worst lyrics of all time (Thanks, Haz), contains some unbelievably awful songwriting, but somehow omits entirely, R Kelly's Trapped in the Closet. I thought this might be an opportunity to review some of the highlights of that much maligned work:

Checks under the bed (bed)
then under the dresser (dresser)
He looks at the closet (closet)
I pull out my berretta (berretta)
He walks up to the closet (closet)
He’s close up to the closet (closet)
Now he’s at the closet (closet)
Now he’s opening the closet (closet, closet, closet)

And from the incomparable Chapter 10:

"Now the midget jumps outta the cabinet and stomps the policemen on his toe
The policemen hoppin around on 1 leg screamin "son of bitch" while he runs under the table
He yells ''freeze'' dives over the table and lands on the midget...while the midget is kickin real fast screamin out bridget,bridget, "She yells darlin don't hurt em'"
He says bridget get yo' ass back...then he continue to ruff up the midget as if the midget was under attack..."

There's no way genius like that doesn't deserve a place in the top 5.

Tags: lyrics, rkelly

I sat next to an Amazon employee, at a wedding last week. She told me that everyone at Amazon, goes by their last names; including Bezos. And that he pronounces his name Bee-zos. She didn't however mention that he owns his own spaceport.

Two ice cream innovations: the fizz cup, exploding volcano Coke float maker; and Pepto-Bismol ice cream. The second link also contains a great photo howto for a sweetbread terrine.

Great article about the chicken sexing world champions, of which more here (at huge length).

I guess it was inevitable: OhMiBod, the iPod powered vibrator.

New (to me) David Foster Wallace essay online: The Nature of Fun.

I haven't posted for a couple of days, because the internet has been too boring. The internet in 1996 had a popular perception as a being a sprawling fascinating collection of freaks and weirdos; BDSM fetishists rubbing alongside techno-hippies. I think that's changed now. The more people get online and start contributing content, the more we seem to be drifting towards a single reactionary mid-Atlantic voice, with mid-Atlantic politics, and an over fondness for everything nerdy. In the last few days I haven't seen one link that hasn't been round the meme whirlpool before, and haven't read one post with a genuinely fresh voice. That is, until I saw what Thomas Pynchon wrote on Amazon about his new book:

"...the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck."

I was 19 when Mason & Dixon came out in 1997; it seems like a whole lifetime ago, when I was a different person. I'm taking the forthcoming publication as a hint to go back and finally finish Gravity's Rainbow. I started it while I was working in paperback fiction at Hatchards, during the 95/96 christmas holidays. My lunchbreaks were never long enough for me to finish it, and the employee discount not large enough for me to buy it. It feels great to be really interested in something again, after a barren intellectual week. Even better is that there's a new Penguin edition of 'Rainbow, with a fancy cover by Frank Miller.

Tags: pynchon

Remember the scene in Police Academy 5 where sunblock is used to write the word "DORK" on a guy's chest as a prank. Witness the Mona Lisa "solar tattoo".

Bobby McFerrin played on a Theremin. More of which can be seen in the movie Moog.

Richard Linklater interview re: Scanner Darkly, rendered as a comic.

Tags: theremin, linklater

It's late here in GMT, and I ought to be tucked up in bed already. Just time for some WOTDs:

Foveate, meaning pitted, from today's Guardian crossword: Having depression, though not quite finished in destiny (7). (Incidentally today's crossword was awesome. Set by Paul, it was Woody Allen themed, as far as I can tell in order to sneak in this clue: Was catty, as (Woody Allen) in arrears with child maintenance? (7) MIAOWED!)

Contrail, a word that has been cropping up on link machine go of late.

Asterism, the appearance of a star shape in a cabochon. Who knew engagement ring shopping was so fraught with jargon.

I love this backstage tour of the Stern factory, seemingly put together by one of the Stern kids, perhaps as a school project. It's disarmingly innocent, free of the "end of an era" angst that hangs over every pinball fanatic. Stern is the last bastion of pinball in the known universe, an electromechanical hold-out in a digital age. This awesome Lego pinball table, might be the last pinball table ever constructed outside of the Stern factory.

Tags: stern, pinball

My most anticipated album of '06 is The Outsider, by DJ Shadow. He's taking his sound in a hyphy (wotd) direction.

Tags: djshadow, wotd

Most of the time writing a z-list blog is like screaming into the void. Nobody much comments, and the hit counter just rambles along of its own accord. On Monday though I wrote about Zidane, and why I was still impressed by him. As a consequence of that post, casually dashed off during a 5 minute break, I got kottkedotted, (qv this), and from there my quoted paragraph spread to football forums around the world. To the nearest order of magnitude, I would guess my little defence of headbutting was read by 100,000 people. That number might be small beans to a real "MSM" print journalist, but it feels like a lot to me. If you are still sitting on the fence, thinking you wouldn't enjoy blogging, then take it as a firm commendation, that almost 3 years after I started, blogging still has the power to really excite me.

Tags: blogging

My generous father lent me the cash to replace my stolen iBook. A shiny MacBook arrived from amazon today. I planned to time myself, from unboxing to blog posting, expecting that it would be a matter of minutes. Instead though I got waylaid during the process, transferring files, and updating my iPhoto library. Total time to post is thus more than 2 hours. Although it wasn't particularly quick, it was stamped all over with Applish ease of use. And it's blindingly fast, despite being the current bottom of the range laptop. When it comes to Apples, it seems that reports of the death of Moore's Law have been exaggerated.

Tags: macbook

"And this desire never to stop fighting is something else I learnt in the place where I grew up."

I'm quoting Zidane way out of context, but to me, his willingness to headbutt Materazzi makes him more of a hero, not less. Admittedly, since France went on to lose, he's something of a tragic hero, but a hero none-the-less. If someone insulted my race, or my religion (if I had one), I wish I'd be as ready to attack them, no matter what the circumstances. Zidane's action highlights for the world the fact that the racial unity of France is more important than winning the World Cup. To quote from Gary Younge:

"In any case, if winning the World Cup every eight years is what black people have to do to prove their worth to a country then we're all in more trouble than we thought."

As Zidane exits the pitch for the last time, he's reminded us that he means more to France than just being a great footballer.

Tags: zidane, worldcup

Huge thank you to RJ at sneakerplay, for hooking me up with an invite. Right now it's like 140 serious global influencers, and me. It's still private beta, so I haven't got any invites, and you can't even get a glimpse at how awesome it is.

While you wait for an invite, I suggest you check out barcodepedia, the social networking site for barcode enthusiasts.

WOTD: pons asinorum, or "fool's bridge", a mental stumbling block for the dim, taken from the name of Euclid's 5th proposition.

Non-WOTD: cryovelate. This seems to be a DFW neologism, used to describe a cold hearted person. I'm not the only one to take exception to it, viz this open letter to DFW.

The Heavy Metal Umlaut.

WOTD: An ogonek is a diacritic mark that indicates nasality. I have a soft spot for odd words that look like they could be useful in Scrabble.

The list of English words with diacritics.

Can anyone explain what a quadrigraph is to me?

Tags: diacritic

Kobayashi sets a new hotdog record. He is my sporting idol.

Live action transformers.

Ant Simulator

Terrifyingly awful grouphug confession of sexual adventuring gone wrong: "I feel like Patrick Bateman, I feel nothing. Well not nothing, like Patrick Batemen I feel like slaughtering this behemoth."

Wikipedia Space Disasters, is like my best wikipedia page ever. So many good facts.

Despite the fact that Speedo sponsored David Walliams rather amazing cross channel swim, but the BBC have revealed that his high tech insulation was provided by good old-fashioned goose fat.

Tags: links

I go away for two weeks, deliberately cutting myself off from the web, and when I get back the unthinkable has happened in my absence: a sneaker oriented social networking site. I'm itching to sign up, but now I've missed the early round of invites. The screenshots reveal sneaker galleries, sneaker tags, sneaker friends, and sneaker battles. I can't wait.

Tags: sneakerplay

I'm spending the day moping about the house, fitting sash locks (horse bolted etc), and waiting for SOCO, the Scene of Crime Officer, to dust for fingerprints. Which gives me the opportunity to review my summer holiday reading list:

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
BSG is a very likeable, readable diary of a 13 year old boy in Worcestershire in 1982. It is quite opaquely a bildungsroman, and has a superficially very straightforward structure. With its rural child protagonist it reminded me of Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", and also of Tamara Drewe. David Mitchell positions it neatly within his canon, with explicit nods to Cloud Atlas and Number 9 Dream, but stylistically it's quite distinct. Both I and the GF devoured it avidly, but it's simplicity made me feel slightly guilty for enjoying it so much. I think it could be a big commercial hit with adults and maybe children too.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
This is another dazzling collection of short fiction pieces by DFW. They have such aggressively new structure that they hardly qualify as short stories. I've bored everyone before by pointing out how much I admire DFW, but in this collection he combines humour and intelligence with absolutely breathtaking realism. He can somehow take the most difficult implausible set-up, and spin it into a captivating emotionally rich tale. I didn't take a dictionary on holiday, and I now have approximately 100 difficult words from BIWHM to look up. I'll bore you with them later.

J-Pod by Douglas Coupland
This is supposed to be the Coupland renaissance; a return to the subject matter and form of Microserfs. I've stuck with him since the beginning, but he writes the same joyless lifeless book time after time. Nobody will be reading anything of Coupland's but Generation X in 25 years time, because they're all drivel. Seriously the denouement of this book, is that all the characters quit their jobs to go and work for the author Douglas Coupland. Save your time and money for something real.

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
My father slung this my way, and it's excellent. A really brilliant first novel, about a single day in a single street in Nottingham. The text actually blends into poetry at some stages. I know that sounds dire, but McGregor's entire book is like a long gripping prose poem. Saying too much about it might spoil it, but it's a startling book about ordinary lives in an ordinary part of multicultural Britain.

The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
Sebald was an octagenarian German emigre english professor at East Anglia university when he wrote this extremely digressive travelogue of his wanderings along the coast of suffolk. He constantly returns to themes of decay and the impermanence of human lives. He spends far more time discussing historical events than he does his actual travels. It's baffling, and wonderful, and full of fascinating intellectual meandering. Like a good linkblog in some respects.

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders
The UK press is piling onto the Saunders bandwagon. If you liked Pastoralia or CivilWarLand, then it's more of the same. Morbid, hilarious short stories that flit between allegory and satire. The title story is novella length, and is perhaps the least successful part of the book. The rest though, are sad and funny and true, and you can't ask for much more from a book than that.

Tags: books, dfw, coupland

We got burgled last night, while we were asleep. It was a hot night, and the windows were open. Some money, and my camera were stolen, but that pales into insignificance compared to the stress of having my iBook taken. I'm slightly dazed right now, trying to work through the possible consequences. The thief was probably just an opportunist junkie, but potentially at least my "online identity" is compromised. I've been a "victim of crime" three times this year, and this is the worst yet.

Tags: ibook, theft