select your month:
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
HOMAGE TO THE T47 SNOWSPEEDER
Gold & SL-core are pleased to unveil the development of the Hive5 communication computer. This has been specifically designed to work with the DSL4's Mr'chro NanTech replicating support droids that provide extensive flight and combat support and allow instant intelligent camoflage.
With a top speed of 5KKmh and unlimited flight ceiling, you may expect the DSL4 to lack traditional speeder control - the "bounce" ABrake technology allows tighter control than seen before and in orbital situations can be used as landing feet for the vehicle.
This exciting new G&SL-c venture will be available in the 3rd of next 57. 2001 in black vinyl and shiny plastic Darth Mills: Happy New Year to everyone, mail me let me know if I should get out of the house more. Solstice has come and gone, party madness ahead, then hopefully a sales or bar job in the City. Nice.
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND
Inner
Space, Outer Space Best served straight
|
|||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
CHEQUEBOOK VANDALISM
This and similar golden rules were handed out freely by the now defunct Society of Lionic Love & Learning of Clerkenwell to their members who included Dame Barbara Cartland, G.E. DeSade, Pauline Quirke and local artist Henry Moore. Judi Dench was rumoured to have joined at the tender age of 17 in order to "get out of the house" and "start painting", and her formative years with Dame Cartland's polo ponies may have led to the great tragedian that we see today. OTHER ART NEWS It's fucking great that we can view artist's work without actually going to a gallery. Banksy and friends have created "Chequebook Vandalism" on the bridge that crosses the roads that seperate The East from East (Old Street to Hackney Road), and there's plenty more to see around the area. There are other artists who are doing similar, but "oh just that little bit different", things in this trendy little village called The City - a lot of it seems to be in the form of stickers or strips pasted onto signs. A kind of brute force tagging. Unfortunately, it's fucking hard to derive meaning from a faded multicolour strip of paper with three letters repeated across it. LINKS PAGE
A Master
at work. HOME PAGE I've been searching for cheesecake recipes: the one I used was based on crystal's recipe but without the yoghurt, with some assistance from memories of Mr. Midgely's recipe. I could have sworn it was mascapone... DK CHEESECAKE RECIPE INGREDIENTS (if you think I measured
things, think again) METHOD Grate the lemon peel - you will want quite a bit throughout this recipe. You will also want the juice, so perhaps it might be easier to juice the lemon, then grate the peel. Anyway, next step: Heat the butter in a large pan - this is to hold the digestives together, so you'll want quite a bit. You can use a low fat substitute if you want. Heat the butter till it starts to bubble, then add about a third of the lemon rind to the fat and heat for a few seconds. Now add your crushed up biscuits to the bubbling fat and lemon rind. Yummee! Mix it all up so it looks like dryish cement and put it into your dish, putting pressure on top to flatten it and make it as solid as possible. I buttered the dish, but seeing as I could never be bothered to let the butter melt before serving, this may not be a good idea. Once you have a solid base, place the base into the fridge to cool and harden. Get two bowls - one for the cheeses and one for the cream. Mix up your mascapone and philadelphia together. In another bowl, whip your cream - the amount of cream you want to add is up to you - I added it to make the cheese mix a little more spreadable. Make sure your whipped cream is stiff, then mix it in with the cheeses. Add the juice of the lemon and mix thoroughly. Next add sugar or sweetener to the cheese mix, making sure you taste it regularly to make sure you haven't over done it. I'm not sure how much sweetener I added, but
it was likely to be the equivalent of 3 dessert spoons at most
- the flavour should be a little bit tart. Slap this mix on top
of your cold biscuit base, et voila! Vous avez un tarte de fromage. In memory of Dora and George Partlow - there's nothing stopping you from going to the garden now. Best served under cover.
|
|||||||||||||||
|
IT WOULD APPEAR TO HAVE RUN OUT. Going to take it easy with the flash after a week and a half rapid drowning in ActionScript. Also reading Chekhov short stories. "Peasants" is a rough direct view of a winter for a peasant family somewhere that sounds as close to Hell as can be imagined. Man gets ill, goes home, stays with family suffering badly, matriarchal maniacs and alcoholic wife-beaters, children trying to survive, emancipation to more hellish regimes, glimpses of light followed by their destruction and blockading by a simple evil action from the light's source. Oh, man dies, his wife and child beg their way back to Moscow... we hope. When the character the story starts with dies, it's an aside to the psychological mania going on around - family so close it hurts. We also managed to catch Channel 5's highbrow Catherine The Great documentary. Highly boring with barely a few minutes to destroy the myth of her death. The galloping horse between the adverts was pandering to the myth they set out to abolish - me: "Catherine the great? what was so special about her death?" Dom: "She died whilst copulating with a horse". If they'd not advertised the program with lines to the effect that they'd investigate her mysterious death (she died of a stroke), I'd never have asked Dom what they were referring to and would now no longer be referring to this thing. That, along with Louis Theroux and the Hamiltons, showed exactly how TV can be as damaging a medium as newspaper comic strips.
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION - GOING LOCO
PA (it's just a game - more details soon) tools
by the not especially gifted: Best listened to with bass melodies.
|
|||||||||||||||
|
'DO WHAT THOU WILT' SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW
"Now the calendar had flipped over into
year 1999, providing the dash of Tabasco that really spiced up
the recipe... Larry had seen enough corpses in his time to know
the equation: psychotic + Bible = disaster. There were the national
legends if you wanted extreme examples - Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dalmer,
John Wayne Gacy - but every cop who'd worked murder or rape cases
knew there was no publication more destabilising to an already
fragile mind. Maybe it was the mysticism and superstition; maybe
it was the notion of something greater ultimately being in control,
that abdication-of-responsibility deal; maybe it was the images
of supreme power. Who knew? But it fucked them up every time.
Dangerous software, a former colleague had called it. A lot of
machines simply weren't equipped to run it." Christopher Brookmyre, "Not
The End Of The World" (Abacus Books)
|
|||||||||||||||
|
The top quote, Crowley's infamous "fuck you" to semantics (twisted a little for my purposes), seems to cause fear in a great many people. People see it as a threat - if we all did what we liked without thinking about other laws, it'd be anarchy! (or Hell). However we all follow this tenet unconciously, so owning up to the fact should surely make our lives easier. Those who suggest that it is a dangerous principle are those who you should be wary of. Ask them if they take responsibility for their actions and for the worlds they create. Ask them if they created the world they currently inhabit. I remember my "Anthropology of Religion" classes. The brain is capable of placing the fuckups into their own category, and calling it God. God, by definition, is inexplicable and undefinable. Great. We still have some way to go, I feel. |
|||||||||||||||
|
Related Culprits Burning in the USA - a valid
comment. (note, this site contains very disturbing images
from the G8 summit in Italy - please do not go here if you want
to have a pleasant day)
Best served with sauce.
|
|||||||||||||||
|
NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL TOO MANY VOLUMES "For, truly, the man who does not know
when to die, does not know how to live." John Ruskin " Unto The
Last" |
|||||||||||||||
|
I suspect that if you were wise enough to purchase every single volume of this collection, you would have a veritable treasure tome of antique pop worth a small fortune to the collector of throwaway kitsch 'en pop. Provided they were all in their original plastic wraps, of course. |
|||||||||||||||
|
WAAAKKKKAKAAKKAMMMANA!!! Fight Club - beat
up your mates - warning, this Flash has proved to be hugely
addictive in office environments, so I've heard.
Best served with Apache
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
September The seemingly endless repetetion of the images from New York this week by the BBC, the filmic quality of many people's last seconds on this planet, are becoming sickening. That is their aim - to brutalize the viewer into realising that this is war and that there could be plenty more to come. When buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan are destroyed in the coming weeks, the film will be brief and not on a loop. 'Net users will not be searching for the face of god in the smoke clouds. No group has yet emerged to take responsibility for their actions - leaving human life sacrificed for no reason, and no clear enemy for those affected to blame or attack. Like a predictable child, the "last superpower" may seek to teach it's enemies a lesson. That is what the BBC seems to think it will do. Like many "amateur politicians" I have
an opinion on this - Fundamentalism grows by feeding on itself.
Texas fundamentalists or Religious fundamentalists? Someone please
provide me with a way to discriminate between the two. |
||||||||||||||||
|
Related Links All it would take would be a few
of these, and there'd be nothing left for us to worry about. Best viewed at 1pm
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
OPEN YOUR MIND... Two games have been dominating our
free time recently - Skies of Arcadia which is incredibly silly,
with occasional moments of hallucinogenic brilliance, and Tony
Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (on a Dreamcast). What on earth could I have gained from this total annihilation of my finger synapses? Did we really play Skies of Arcadia every night just to avoid what was on TV? Whatever, it'll help focus the past month and a half clearly in my mind. It's when a variety of different sites and media finally provoked me into starting sketching again - and made me want to update this site a little more regularly. Is there a theory of 'creativity' - what do we need to make us want to change our environment? I think I have the answer. A whole heap of shit and a glimpse of something beautiful. |
||||||||||||||||
|
Related Culprits Activision Best read.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The Pool Of Consciousness... I am currently reading "No Logo" by Naomi Klein. Enjoying it thoroughly, despite occasional lapses (on Klein's part) into a brutish pessimism. For those who haven't read it, the book deals with ideas of commercial branding, and the rise at the end of the last century of certain "lifestyle" corporations. Klein deals with the issues of incorporation raised when lifestyles we think we create are sold back to us as the "authentic" item. The book itself is an item of interest. I've not finished reading the book, but already there are ideas that strike me as very important.
Secondly, while containing a copyright message,
Klein also includes the following statement: When we talk about brands today, we are now talking about ownership of our choices in commercial fields. I know I'll go into a sports shop and try on one of the major brands rather than a cheaper company's offering because I'm familiar with their iconography, advertising and quality. Despite the fact that I hand over money to take ownership of the shoes, the trainers are still branded with the previous owners mark, three stripes or a swoosh, a tree or a truck. And if anybody says they are not influenced by "advertising", they are lying. I'm all up for proving it at the moment too... yes, a good book. |
||||||||||||||||
|
Related Links: Flash - _root.Macromedia.gotoAndPlay("myLife",
"job")
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Yet Another Revamp! The wonders of modern technology allow us again to step beyond whatever was here before. This style, and the new navigation system above, are not only easy to maintain but also very simple, allowing me to get rid of the clutter that mounted up on the previous versions of these pages. Previous pages have been modified a little to fit this new layout - unfortunately the menu above conflicts with Flash movies where they intersect, so occasional pages may look odd. Also, Netscape6 doesn't seem to know what to do with it's windows sometimes, so watch out for excessive numbers appearing when using the menu. Have no fear, the content of this site will remain as sketchy as it has ever been. For some reason I'm still out of work - if you, the reader, feel that this is a bad thing, or that I should never work in graphic design again, please let me know. Perhaps it has something to do with... The Reason Why FiredUp.com
Burnt Out... Not that anyone gives a fuck, but without a series of top notch groovy URLs (written on a piece of folded ripped notepaper), sometimes I think back to the glory days of big corporations and low bandwidth. These pages take a fucking age to download, as they're hosted on Demon's homepage servers, over 13K in size and have enough CSS, embedded tables, repeated tags and javascript to scare a monkey. These pages get about two hits a fortnight - cheers mate!. They are incredibly flat and until this new interface were a nightmare to get around. Which, on a personal note, I liked. There are still parts of the site that cannot be reached from this page and plenty of 404s on the way. Does that make this a shit site, a cabbage among cucumbers, a "never use that" resource? Yes. But then, do you give a shit? No, because if not you, then some other sucker is going to get here via a lost search engine within a couple of weeks. If I was trying to sell something, things would be different. Gone would be this friendly politeness in the tone of the text, in would come garish graphics (lots of wee chopped up baby bits of big pics, and the green and gold would definitely have to go) and at most two paths to your final destination - the till. One via membership, the other via the shopping mall. Great, yeah? Well, according to Fruhlinger, not necessarily. He points out that when you've a target audience, the more you know about your target, the more you'll be able to anticipate them and discard what'll make them go for the back button. In my opinion, FiredUp.com fits the description of the company that didn't quite get it in his piece. The site was entirely data driven, relying on "product managers" to provide the content. Without spicy interactivity or decent information, the site fell apart. As an e-commerce site, it got it's knackers rather than it's foot caught in the door†. Fruhlinger suggests basic participant and non participant observation of target audiences, recognising the fact that a culture within a culture feeds on cultures and spouts forth something new. He talks about branding the site, though this can more comfortably be done with cultural branding - iconography and design methods specific to the groups you've investigated. But is there a middle ground? Is there a path to true website design where people only hit the back button to get back to your site? Find out next week! † OK, so big spending, big sackings and big egos may have also helped to push FU under. |
||||||||||||||||
|
Design ideas like that - or,
"Why People Should Give Me Work"
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Related Links: Shit song - Fat
Duck (not to tune of Little Wing)
Best served with radish
|
|||||||||||||||
| PROBLEMS? WRITE AND TELL ME | ||||||||||||||||
Designed
to give you the best of all worlds, the DSL4 will take speeder
technology to unheard of places. Combining the forces of the Gold
clan of Nubia and Corellia's SL-core technology team in a new
venture, the DSL4 can reach speeds previously unheard of in the
galaxy. The JF35 thruster unit allows the DSL4 to enter orbital
space and work effectively from there.
A
variety of weaponry can be fitted, though the craft is ideal for
removing experienced pilots from firefights in seconds.
Now,
I quite clearly remember Now That's What I Call Music Volume 6
- it was the first and only one I bought, mainly on the strength
of two tunes long forgotten. One was by Bill Halley And The Comets.
It was a treasured cream cassette, solid, endowed with three minute
pop tunes that bought momentary pleasure and monetary gain to
the publishers. I wonder if the current "Now" collection
is still purchasable in those eminently breakable double cassette
cases, or has tape been replaced by the "slide it in"
behemoth of the twentieth century, the CD. 
