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.
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.
A
variety of weaponry can be fitted, though the craft is ideal for
removing experienced pilots from firefights in seconds.
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:
#1 "Dont Stop Moving" - S-Club7
Abs'n Beard Smith:
#n "Abbey Road" - The Beatles
#n "Is this it?" - The Strokes
Slacquer Santorum:
#2 "Murder on the dance floor" - Sophie Ellis
Bextor
#3 RGC03 - Radioactiveman
#7 "I'm so crazy" - Par-T-one Vs INXS
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.
"The
need to express oneself can be so big, so overriding, that it
gets in the way of the norms used by your society. In such cases
there is no need to panic. Follow the path you want, but give
your expression freely. Remember, dogma walks on the left hand
side."
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.
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)
A small pot of mascapone;
A lemon;
An old fashioned block of Philadelphia cheese;
A pack of Digestives - enough to cover the base of your cheesecake
holder;
Butter;
Sweetener and or sugar;
Some cream.
METHOD
Get a load of digestives, preferrably McVities because of their
salt, sugar and fibre balance and place in a bowl. Get a minion
to grind them to a pulp. I used about 12 biscuits but could have
done with more.
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.
DECEMBER #1 2001 (Please note - one of the christmas
Flash movies has been removed to make loading of this page easier)
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
the one that started in The Virtual Iberia
Haven, irc.stealth.net:6667, #acorn
PA (it's just a game - more details soon) tools
by the not especially gifted: battlecalc -
uk mirror SexyMonkey
CGI display page - not just a PA thing,
this will do it's best to display any cgi pages you want to save
for a period of time. Just copy the HTML source from the page
with the information and paste into the big ugly box. Real nerds live in Denmark Zappo
- the fastest sys-op in the west
Or they're writing DHTML
Best listened to with bass melodies. (Currently -
LKJ - "Inglan' is a bitch")
NOVEMBER #1 2001
'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)
(my emphasis)
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.
"For, truly, the man who does not know
when to die, does not know how to live."
John Ruskin " Unto The
Last"
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.
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!!!
as they say in Hackney.
Fight Club - beat
up your mates - warning, this Flash has proved to be hugely
addictive in office environments, so I've heard. Larry Potter
was shite - My sister's suggestion of 6 saturday episodes
on BBC2 would have been far better, but did WB listen?
Did they hell! Not
very logical, but it makes perfect sense. Give Away
URL - For the people who get addicted to the pop ups on pr0n
sites.
Not entirely sure who this is targetted at - subtle.
Best served with Apache
SEPTEMBER #1 2001
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.
Space age
mythologies about war. Looped images
of horror. Sense
and sensibility shocked.
Best viewed at 1pm
SEPTEMBER #2 2001
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 Skies
of Arcadia - too many small fights. The flight animations'
resemblance to Star Wars scenes is fun though. "everyone
calls me "jane"
including my mother; she just liked the sound of "miyuki jane",
like "mary jane". " Doonesbury
- yeah, comics, better for the soul by far. Proof that nobody
is infallible. Fortean
Times - check out their links section. Now with daily "Breaking
News"! Gaiteros
in the some of the most beautiful
land in the world.
Best read.
AUGUST #1 2001
The Pool Of Consciousness...
...and other bollocks
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.
Firstly, the book is published by Flamingo
in the UK, an imprint of HarperCollins,
itself a subsidiary of News
Corporation. In the opening chapters Klein talks about the
way large companies, such as Coca Cola Schweppes and Levis Strauss,
either bought or created smaller companies and brands that worked
or gave the impression of being independent from the larger corporate
will. While I'm all for self serving hypocrisy, we should remember
that what we are being sold as an independent viewpoint is never
isolated, and that our mediators haven't changed much in the past
20 years.
Secondly, while containing a copyright message,
Klein also includes the following statement: Naoimi Klein asserts
the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
In my opinion this signifies a few things. Klein has a postmodern
viewpoint. Often she suggests the commandeering of corporate identities
and tactics, in much the same way that those corporations and
companies assimilate the other cultural items dropped in their
paths. However, while copyright has a judicial emphasis, her choice
to apply a moral argument as well suggests that she feels that
there are stronger systems which humans apply to themselves than
those enforced by a judiciary or government. I am sure that Homer
applied his moral right to be recognised as the author of "The
Odyssey" before twentieth century translators claimed copyright.
This is something that the publishing houses, the major recording
labels and the big brand websites can not assert in the same way
as an individual or group of people. The book's contents, the
important bit, is what Klein is branding.
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.
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... (a piece with several lies and inconsistencies)
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.