Pictures of fish?

Well, pictures of fishing, anyway. Design*sponge today had an article about Corey Arnold, this guy who's a fisherman in Alaska and also a freelance photographer. His portfolio is online here - check out the Bering Sea Crabbing folio. Amazing. What a way to make a living.

A scary true story: man hears voices

A friend of mine told me this story. It comes from a Young Offender's
Institute, where she does some voluntary work. One of the inmates (I'm
sure they have a more PC word for them, but I'm going to call them
inmates), a fourteen-year-old boy, came to his mentor in some distress.
"I'm hearing voices in my head!" he complained. Cue panic: a mental
health nurse is drafted in, and they set up an interview with this kid.
Let's call him Sam (I don't know his real name.)



"Sam, tell us about these voices. When did they start?"

"Well, it was the uvver night, I was listnin to these two blokes
chattin', and this voice in my head said, like, 'that bloke's a
tosser'. An' ever since, I can't get away. I'll be, like, sitting in my
cell on me own, and it'll be, like, there. All da
fcukin' time."

"And what does it say?"

"Jus' like, stuff. About me. About wha'ever."

"Does this voice tell you to do things?"

"Nah, like, it's just dissin' people and goin' on, innit."



... so after a bit more of this, the nurse comes to a conclusion:

"Sam, we think we know what the voice is. You don't need to worry about
it - this voice is you. It's called
thinking. We all have it. Doctors call it your inner
monologue, or inner narrative." (or something... I made that bit up.)



Seriously. This child, aged fourteen, had never heard his own thoughts
before. He was scared, really scared, of his own inner narrative. The
idea of an internal monologue, such as the one which is reading this
back to me, was totally alien to him. How scary is
that?



(Apologies for my poor attempt at a teen accent).

IWOOT(x): Design without losing your soul

It's a book: 

Azathioprine

Well, it's been kind of an up-and-down month or so health-wise. After the debacle of the drugs test,
I had a couple of great weeks on prednisolone... but you can't stay on
steroids forever, and as soon as I came off the drugs I was back to
square one - not passing anything solid, feeling run down, stomach
pain... not fun.



So last week I had my latest appointment with my consultant, and now I'm on Athazioprine, which is strong magic indeed. (see here for
a bit about how it's used in ulcerative colitis) It's an
immunosuppressant, so it's damping down my immune system's responses
generally which is kind of alarming (what happens if I catch something
else while I'm on it?!), but I'm assured that in cases like mine it's
pretty good. And little sis is on something similar for her arthritis,
so I'm hopeful that there won't be any problems. Nonetheless, I still
have to go in for blood tests every week for a bit, until everybody's
happy that there are no serious side-effects.



The main downer about this new voodoo is that it takes up to 3 months
to actually start working. In the meantime, I'm not allowed to take my
balsalazine (anti-inflammatories), nor any steroids (already had three
courses in the last six months), so I'm feeling pretty dreadful -
tired, occasional stomach pains, and diarrhoea. And (I think it's
because I'm getting dehydrated from all the liquid going out the other
end) I'm getting quite a bit of cramp if I even get slightly cold. It's
all very depressing, and I feel like I'm really not much fun at all.
Went to a party last night, but really didn't feel particularly
sparkling - "so what do you do for hobbies?" "Not a lot, at the
moment." ... all a bit of a bummer, really.



Got to look to the future, that's all. Hopefully the Az will have kicked in in time for the festival in August...

Accelerando

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Charles Stross

It's not often that I know the exact date when a book will be published in paperback, but with Accelerando, I had a good excuse. I'd bought it already. And had it SNATCHED FROM ME at Geneva AIRPORT, after I'd spent an entertaining hour on a plane, chortling over how good the first three chapters were.

So when I finally got my hands on another copy, it had a lot to live up to. This is Charles Stross' third novel; Singularity Sky was a fantastic debut, with one of the most entertaining and novel descriptions of space warfare ever (as well as all sorts of other weirdness). Iron Sunrise, his second, was spoiled a little for me because it seemed to threaten to become a cheesy series. But this is Accelerando, and it's fantastic, just amazingly brilliant. It pushed pretty much all my buttons - it had bafflingly incomprehensible aliens, barely comprehensible technology, dialogue snappier than the West Wing on speed, and a sarcastic cat. What more could anyone want?

Stross' ambition only becomes clear as the story unfolds - nothing less than a family saga and history of humanity, a bastard lovechild of Catherine Cookson and Brian Aldiss. Part of that little group of exciting Scottish sf writers, whose ranks include Iain Banks and Ken McLeod, Stross' style is sharp and snappy, and I absolutely adore his descriptions of technology going far too fast for people to follow.

I do think his characters would benefit from a bit more depth, though - perhaps some of the inexplicability applied to the aliens and the AI might have been better applied to the people - and to be honest I found the ending something of an anti-climax; it's hard to chronicle such a vast span and still end on something more dramatic, without it becoming a cliffhanger. So I forgive him for ending with a lack of 'bang'. But there's plenty of 'gosh-wow' moments here, and I can heartily recommend it for anyone who likes to lose themselves in a fast-moving, fast-talking vision of a World Gone Mad.

Caption me?: World Cup carton

There's something not quite right about this. I can seewhat they were
trying to do, but to me, it just says "Happy Cows during a Bank Raid"

Cows are a serious business...

Edinburgh has been hosting an art 'installation' for the last few months. Every so often you'll turn a corner and be confronted with a brightly painted cow. There's quite a lot of them, but here's just one or two that I happened to pass when I had my phone in my hand...

Another eco-rant: Calculate the size of your footprint

...presumably the same size as your foot...



Seagoon: Let me see that boot! (sotto voce) Hmmm, size nineteen. (aloud) What size head have you got?

Eccles: Size nineteen.



I was bored at work today, so I devoted some time to finding ecological
footprint calculators on the web. I knew these things existed, but for
some strange reason it'd never occurred to me that they'd be on the
internet - although of course, they're perfect web fodder.



So anyway. I found a few, the best of which were probably the Mountain Equipment Cooperative one (yeah, I know), and the Earthday Network one. The general gist of it was that if everyone lived like me then we'd need about 4 planets to keep us all going.



I had time, so I did about four different ones, and the results varied
a bit. The MEC one did put me off when it came out with statements like
" The average living space for a North American household is around 200m² in your area" (in my area?), so I plumped for the Earthday one in the end.



Cut to the chase: my ecological footprint is 4.9 hectares.

Good news: the UK average is 5.3 (phew)

Bad news: the sustainability target - an equitable figure based on everybody using the same - is 1.8 hectares.

Good news: The Earthday calc has another calculator to help you work
out what the most effective steps you could take to become more
ecofriendly are.

Bad news: the best thing I can do for the planet is become vegetarian.



The thing which most startled me was the contribution that my food (all
flown in specially from New Zealand, obviously) makes to my footprint.
I was genuinely startled about that.



Anyway, go see what your footprint is.

Write your own job advert

Wanted: one CAD monkey. Must have infinite patience with dead-slug-in-a-straw slow computer links, and own supply of bananas. Ability to keep self amused during slow periods crucial. Ability to not mind too much when people at head office ignore your life's work and produce something dumb instead without so much as bothering to inform you, also helpful. Must be able to go for days without speaking to another living soul.

Benefits:

1. nobody really caring that you're using company resources and personnel to make light switch surrounds for your flat.
2. The ability to go bang things with hammers when stuff gets too frustrating.
3. Many many toys (lathes, chemi-etching, rapid prototyping machines, etc.) which can be pressed into service for various, er, personal projects. (see 1)
   

If you had to write an advert for your own job, what would it look like?

We think we're so clever (1): Everest clothing

Modern technology? Bah. Climbers have just returned from testing replicas of the original clothing worn by Mallory and Tenzing on the first Everest expedition, and found them lighter than the modern stuff.

They say the kit was very warm, and apparently pleasant to wear for long periods. What they don't specifically say is whether it was as warm as the modern kit. Also, I suspect that the fact that they were tailored to fit, rather than off-the-shelf makes a significant difference.

On the whole, though, a triumph for the Wisdom of the Ancients. And very dapper.

Design/students: Lil Jonsson

(Via Treehugger):

Besides having an adorable (if extremely minimalist) website, some of her designs aren't that bad either, in a studenty kind of way (oodles of creativity, no time, no money, and no need to be practical = simple, daft, and adorable). I loved wd40, a musical hinge which greets you every time you open the door. I reckon it would be utterly charming for maybe the first two days or so, then drive you to demented rage within a week. But it's cute.

Cutting a bit close to the bone - in a very funny way...

On Sunday I was having lunch with some friends I don't see very often,
when the subject got round to clever songs (via Flanders and Swann's
The Reluctant Cannibal, if you must know). And Archie leans over to me
and says, "there's these two doctors..."



Hello, I thought, this sounds familiar...



"..doing the most outrageous songs! They're brilliant! I'll show you their website when we get back."

"One of them wouldn't be called Adam, would he..." I said slowly. And
yes, indeed: it turns out I know these two. I did a couple of choir
tours with them when I was a student, and I can vouch for their
brilliance and musical ability. Listening to their songs now, though,
it's probably worth pointing out a couple of things: Adam is a shocking
misogynist (or I thought so, anyway), and they.. well, they don't hold
back with the lyrics. But they are brilliantly funny. They were up in
Edinburgh for the festival last year, and I only didn't see it because
I lost the venue. (I had a ticket and everything).



Check out their website - the Londoners amongst you will definitely, definitely enjoy the Underground Song...

Eco-stuff: Stunning news flash (not)

Well, I was going to spew righteous venom about Guantanamo Bay, but Hazel's beaten me to it today. So instead, he's an eco-newsflash from the Treehugger blog - wash your clothes less.

Not entirely surprising - but it does contain one valuable nugget - the washing, drying and ironing (?) of jeans constitutes 47% of the total environmental impact. Apparently. Including the transportation, which I was a little surprised at.

Sleep

Start:

Jun 8, '06 6:00p

Sculpture: unnamed man with laptop.

I want one of these (5) - DIY radio

Less is more, right? Right? But... how little can you get away with? This design from wouter Geense design studio explores that territory - it's a radio which comes in a basically unfinished state, and you can use whatever you want as an aerial, buttons, etc. - even down to drilling your own arrangement of holes for the speaker (spell out your name? Why not?). I think it looks deliciously idiosyncratic, and cool, and I want one. But at a deeper level, it seems to me to pose an interesting question. When my Dad was a kid, his radio was a mass of wires on a bit of board, with a crystal and an earpiece. It was totally do-it-yourself. This one has taken that to a different level, but is it less designed than a 'proper' shop one?

Ach, who cares.

Eco-abomination - the disposable electric toothbrush

I had my parents come up at the weekend. This may not seem such a big
deal, but it's an eight hour drive for them, and they were bringing me
furniture, so it was a big deal. But that's not what I wanted to talk
about.



What I wanted to talk about was this: My Mum, who's a dentist, showed
me a free sample she'd been sent recently, of an electric toothbrush. A
disposable electric toothbrush. I mean, completely disposable. There
was no way of charging the battery, and no way of replacing it. Is it
only me whose blood boils at this sort of profligacy? The life of the
blasted thing is governed by one thing only - the power in the battery.
If you made the battery replaceable, you could increase the life of the
thing dramatically - but no, some evil company wanted to sell as many
of the cursed things as they could, so they sealed it up. What's more,
since it's a sealed unit it'd be extremely difficult (probably
impossible) to recycle - if anyone would bother. That is genuinely
EVIL. There is NO EXCUSE for that sort of waste. In my shower, I have a
razor which is a similar size and shape, and has a replaceable battery
in - so there are no problems with the dampness of the environment, or
sealing the thing. There is literally no excuse, and it poos all over everything I hold to be important about design.



Unfortunately, I can't find any links to the thing, and I can't
remember what make it was. It was a reputable tooth-stuff manufacturer,
I remember that much - Colgate, or Oral-B, or someone. It was someone,
in short, who should know better. It's bad design, and it's positively
disgusting.



Your sincerely,

Disgusted of Edinburgh.

Picture card society

I must admit, I'm slightly obsessive when it comes to greetings cards. I always make my own Christmas cards, and I'm eternally on the lookout for something slightly different and memorable when it comes to sending people things. So when I came across this card society  on design*sponge, I immediately saw the appeal. Subscribe for a month, 3 months, 6 months, etc., and every month they send out unique (and very nice) cards which can't be found anywhere else. I love the clean designs, and I don't send that many cards so it'd be perfect. In fact, I'd subscribe now - if it wasn't so freakin' expensive.

My flat, again. Just can't not tinker...

The table is now a much more realistic glass; the speed is slower. Other than that, much the same as the last one really. Still not happy with the focal length on the camera - objects may appear larger than they really are!

The leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army is called...

Minni Minnawi



(doo doooo doo doo doo)



Minni Minnawi



(doo doo doo doo)



Minni Minnawi



(doo doooo doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo dooo dooo doo doo dodo doo.)



...I know I shouldn't make fun of such a tragic situation, but I heard
his name on the radio this morning and I just couldn't help myself.