nudejournal

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

The skipper of a British-crewed yacht detained by Iran has said they strayed into Iranian waters by "mistake".

Oliver Smith added the crew were blindfolded while at sea, apart from him as he was at the helm. [BBC]

Either this report is misleadingly written and it means that the Iranians blindfolded them once they were arrested, or the yacht race they were taking part in is weirder than I expected.

Oh, okay:

I've got an upcoming gig with Small Crew:

Sat 12th Dec at the Bull&Gate, on last so about 10pm - which will be convenient if you're undecided about it because of the X Factor final - you can watch that and then come out.

I've mentioned the 9.15am slot on BBC1 before - it really is the bit where the BBC attempt to appeal to readers of the Mail and the Express. It's either cosy stories about animals, heroic rescues or moaning about anything that could be the subject of a headline starting with "Now"¹. This week, the contribution to the unique and distinctive brand of public service programming that the BBC provides is entitled Rip Off Britain.

It's dreadful. This type of programming's beyond parody since the Not The Nine O'Clock News That's Life parody that I can't find on YouTube, but this might have brought it back into the firing line. It's full of just utter moaning b@stards - this morning it was about food and supermarket alleged ripoffs. Apparently - and I hope you're sitting down before you read this - some things cost more than they used to. I know, it's awful isn't it? And shockingly, sometimes things cost more in Tesco/Sainsbury's Convenience stores than in the big out of town barns. Which isn't surprising, since presumably it costs more to rent a shop on the high street than it does to rent land in the middle of nowhere. I had to go out to work after 10 minutes of it, but I imagine in the bit I saw there was someone complaining about how he bought a tin of carrots, and then he got home and he realised he doesn't like carrots. Grr. Those supermarkets!

¹Yesterday the Express's front page story was about how foreign eggs are coming over and stealing our salmonella.

1. I will never get over you, 2. tunnel, 3. Tiger Style, 4. untitled, 5. I would imagine so, yes, 6. Fishhead Revisited

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Sadly my line manager only just told me she’d seen this, and it has since been cleared away: yesterday, in the area where accumulated junk from throughout the building sits waiting to be thrown away, there was a battered old Amstrad lying on its side with a note stuck on it that read, “For Lord Sugar’s office”.

There was an absolutely amazing article in yesterday's Metro where they interviewed some chefs about festive recipes. They asked Heston Blumenthal what his "best alternative festive recipe" was and he said that he had once been given a white truffle and eaten it in a sandwich with peas and butter.

That wasn't the amazing part.

The amazing part is that he specified that, if you wanted to copy him, you should use Birds Eye frozen peas, and Anchor butter, and Mother's Pride white bread.

It wasn't marked as an "advertising feature" or anything like that.

I thought maybe I had imagined it, but here it is in an unpleasant Flash interface [registration required but you can just put in a fake email address].

And here's a screen capture:



So either:

• Blumenthal has repeated this recipe over and over again, and somehow determined that those three brands are the best ones to eat with white truffles.


• A series of marketers came to Blumenthal and asked him to sign deals to mention various specific brands of processed foods - I'm presuming it must have been a series of deals because those brands are all owned by different companies - and he accepted, and then decided to discharge his contractual obligations in a single sentence, perhaps making up the white truffle sandwich anecdote as a pretext, and the Metro hack decided not to edit out the risible product placement.


• The Metro has signed deals involving inserting mentions of specific food brands into its editorial content, including anecdotes told by its interviewees.

What have we come to?

Have you got a story you'd like to share? A request for advice? A trvia question? A poem?

Go on, say something anonymous, see what happens....

Currently sitting idle in a radio studio in Chelsea. A perfect opportunity to post the first track by Gentlemen's Agreement. Smooth. Enjoy. Good times.

http://bit.ly/break-away

This has to be the best use of an old phonebox:



Turn it into a Library, as they have in Westbury

(via inhabitat)

• 10:58 The Twitter shade of #red for World Aids Day isn't terribly convincing. It's more like a dark wine, on my monitor anyway. #
• 21:15 Watching #paradox purely to enjoy its apparent shitness as recorded by last weeks tweets. Already enjoying the shitness. #
• 21:19 Christ, are these two flirting? If so, it's like watching a 10 year old boy flirting with his babysitter. #paradox #
• 21:23 "DS Holt and I weren't having a domestic. Don't worry. I'll be round to babysit you later". #paradox #
• 21:32 Wait, where the fuck is this boy trapped then? #paradox #
• 21:35 "[The images of DS Holt and SPACE] came from different sources" Aw boo! I was hoping an alien had dunnit. #paradox #
• 21:39 This woman is the shittest policewoman ever. #paradox #
• 21:46 How does she know the pigeons are still out? For all she knows he fucking cooked and ate all the pigeons before she turned up! #paradox #
• 21:54 Of course you wouldn't touch it - why would you fucking touch it? Gah, this is just making me angry now. #paradox #
• 21:57 Jesus, could they not just have shown repeats of Quantum Leap instead. This is embarrassing on every level. Woeful, woeful. #paradox #
• 21:58 And incidentally, noone cares if you shag him, Tamsin. Even if you do have tights older than him. Bah. #paradox #
• 21:59 RT @JoffMytt: #paradox Next week's pics... a weasel on a skateboard, barry mcguigan eating a banana and a worm hole (with a worm in it). #

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Day four, my favourite book.

There's lots of books that I absolutely love. Some that I first read as a child, some in my teens, some later on.
The Complete Molesworth is a very close second, but I think my favourite has to be The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 and 3/4. I must have read this so many times in my life, over a hundred maybe? It's wonderful, so funny and sadly sweet and bogged down in the minutia of the life of someone who hit their teens ten years before I did. I first read it as a kid and it gave me a warning of the maelstrom that was to come much better than any facts of life book did. The inward focus, the confusion and worry, the inability to see what's right there in front of your nose, Adrian went through all that a decade before I did, and he lived in Leicester too, worse luck.

Years later, living in Archway, I read The Diary Of A Nobody, and it felt like reading the diary of Adrian's South Eastern great uncle. Interesting how these books on the trials and tribulations of everyday life appeal to me. I don't need to read about someone farting about on the Amazon - Adrian on the glories of Big and Bouncy, Pooter opining on Lupin's lack of taste in women, or Molesworth detailing the plunk of each key of the skool piano is enough to fascinate me. Maybe because my life is taken up with minutia? Anyway, I love these trivial bookmen.

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite film
Day 03 → Your favourite television programme
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Hey! What are you doing for Christmas? I will be doing this: GETTING RICH, because these cats you see here are available to buy as honest-to-goodness christmas decorations at etsy, thanks to "Amanda Gourmet Gamer Girl" Irwin.

If you want to buy some for yourself, they're right here! Better order quick if you want to get them in time for christmas, ok

Christmas traditions depicted here include: Rudolf Cat, Santa Cat, Christmas Pudding Cat, Falling Asleep In Front Of The TV Cat, Kwanza Kake Kitty, Cherub Cat, Heart Attack Induced By Over-Consumption Cat. There are probably many more I never thought of! If you wanna draw some Christmas Cats and post them in the comments, this is a practise I fully endorse!

No amazing tricks in my lesson today, but more a confirmation from L that I've progressed a lot. Even my buzz rolls are coming along.

Main topics were 7 stroke rolls/ruffs in 32nd notes (last time was 7str in 16th note triplets, different feel) I probably need to book out a rehearsal room to work on sticking some in as fills. Also a co-ordination exercise where instead of alternating between hands or LF, RF, using the right hand and bass drum foot in conjunction with the left hand and hi-hat foot. Surprisingly difficult, even for slow, easy patterns.

I'm feeling a lot more capable behind the kit lately, fills seem to be coming out more expressively. Is it wrong to enjoy my technique as I'm playing? Quite often I'm watching the shadows of my hands/sticks in rehearsal to check the movement is graceful enough.

oh, the internet is dead great for information about superstitions relating to leaving your decorations up too long. but can i find information about socially acceptable dates for utilising christmas scented toilet paper? can i heck.

I have a couple of friends in this one, if you’re in the LA area:

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Rubbish things:

• I have to go to work tomorrow, having laboured until 4pm under the impression that I did not.
• Most of the Christmas music that isn’t about how awesome it is to spend Christmas with one’s partner is about how utterly shite Christmas is without said partner.
• I am under pressure from my dad’s company to finish some illustration work by the end of the week.
• It’s bloody cold.
• We’ve run out of cake.

Lovely things:

• Um…
• I’ll get back to you.

Ophelia Xx

Laurenn’s new art project, a massive thing:

In February, I’ll be presenting a gallery show that I’m calling Speaking to Las Vegas in the Language of Las Vegas. This is going to be an art installation that combines sculptural elements, performance, audio, video, photo documentation, and illustrated portraits of Las Vegas sex workers. The purpose of this show is to investigate the connections between the Las Vegas economy & the legal & illegal sex work that happens there….

Laurenn McCubbin

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

• Archaeologists find a 10,000-year-old weapon at site of new Ontario arena
  "She said the artifact comes from Paleoindian hunters often called the ?first people of Ontario.?"
  (tags:history )
• World around us: Prohibition of death – There are really some places where death is illegal
  "Prohibition of death is a political social phenomenon and taboo in which a law is passed stating that it is illegal to die, usually specifically in a certain political division or in a specific building."
  (tags:history culture )
• Rainbow trapped for the first time – physics-math – 26 November 2009 – New Scientist
  "Oh, to catch a rainbow. Well, it's been done for the first time ever ? and with just a simple lens and a plate of glass at that. The technique could be used to store information using light, a boon for optical computing and telecommunications."
  (tags:sci )

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)