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A 'yes' to all of this; English Weird as a thing, and Christmas is the time of English Weird. TDIR begins on December 20th; time to read along.
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Filed away for a thing on data next year.
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I love jq at the command line for even the simplest tasks; I need to go over this at some point.
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This, like everything Tony and Taylor did, is very good. Not just on film, but on creative work, too.
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Excellent overview and collection of links on cryptocurrencies from the Co-op Digital Newsletter; some useful links in here for A Thing.
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Nils Frahm makes a mix from his vinyl collection. It's just marvellous, and I'll definitely be listening a few times – not just at Christmas, either.
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"…nothing really gets older online; the only aging of things here comes from the erosive force of changing human sensibilities. The black of that North Face jacket looks just as black, but the point of wearing it has faded a little. Here there is only the appearance of getting older because everything else has gotten much newer. The pixels do not outwardly become worn. They are like grains of sand. If one is destroyed, it’s too small for us to know it’s been annihilated. And there is so much sand."
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"I wonder if there’s a business to be gotten into where one shows movies the way everyone wants to see them: just the movies, from the very first second you start watching. It’s a naive thought; I understand that. But I can’t forget that when those lights went down, when that screen went up, and when that twangy riff kicked in, there were audible gasps and cheers in the audience, and someone behind me yelled out “whoa, awesome!” I want to believe that there’s a business to be gotten into that capitalizes on “whoa, awesome”."
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Stewart Lee's dark, self-referential Christmas tale from this year, for the New Statesman.
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"In other words, the more packages you send at once, the shittier job FedEx does of delivering each of them, with each package getting less and less of a delivery attempt. And the limit actually approaches zero, which means that if you somehow send me infinity packages through FedEx, they will not even knock on my door. They will take the infinity dollars and run. I did honestly not intend today to use math to prove precisely how bad FedEx is at delivering packages, but, um, here we are?" I love Ryan North.
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"How does a game about killing people, the Old Testament, and the Borgias completely bore an Italian Jew?" Simon Ferrari didn't like Assassin's Creed II; he explains why. It's entertaining, for sure (but I'm still going to pick it up).
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Wonderful interview with Richard Mosse, who photographs (quite beautifully) plane wrecks.
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"I wonder what Tulon Ethabathel the Dwarf is doing right now." A US brain surgeon talks about his interest in gaming, the amount of time he gives it – very little – but the nontheless-important role it plays in his life. Lovely article, really; well-crafted and thought-provoking.
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"For Christmas 2009 the Really Interesting Group wanted to create a a gift comprising a series of 4 unique decorations based on each recipient’s use of the Flickr, Dopplr, Last.fm and Twitter. Having used a couple of the software APIs they were thinking about using (flickr and dopplr) and with experience of rapid prototyping we worked together to turn the data into something physical." Can't believe I haven't linked this already. Ours were wonderful; many thanks to RIG and Andy.
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For each of the 25 days leading to Christmas, Paul and Storm have done one of their Randy Newman theme-songs. Twenty-five pastiches of Short People, for your pleasure. Die Hard, The Godfather, and the Big Lebowski are stand-outs.
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"I'm not sure if I have made it clear about how much I want a Sega Genesis for Christmas. I have developed a way that the gift of a Sega Genesis for me will not only benefit me with many hours of enjoyment, but it will also benefit you with many clean bathrooms, clean rooms, and meaningful hugs." Chris Baker finds the evidence of how (he thinks) he managed to get a Sega Genesis for Christmas in 1992. At least they'd stopped shipping Altered Beast with it by then.
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"Here's the most important thing to understand about the mass market for videogames: these players – the ones who aren't even remotely interested in the kind of videogames the hobbyists want to play – have very specific tastes, and when something takes off with them it continues to sell, and sell, and sell. But these players don't buy many titles – when they find the game they want, they generally just keep playing that."
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"But in a game – or, at any rate, in the kind of game you used to get for Christmas – you’re literally the only person in the universe, and literally the only person with the power to fix things. No-one’s going to come and help, no-one’s going to come and tell you off or second-guess your choices: there’s just you and a world that will stay broken unless you fix it. What’s in the box isn’t a frog power fantasy – it’s a vibrant, momentary taster of the glorious pressure of being a grown-up." Margaret, being brilliant (again) on games, Christmas, childhood, and what it means to be meaningfully alone.
So much to say…
23 December 2006
…so little time. I’ve been not so much busy as hectic in the past few weeks, and very out of practice at the blog. I’m planning to change that – in fact, to change a lot – in 2007. Rest assured that all is well here, though it hasn’t been the easiest of times.
I’m catching a train early tomorrow to head back home, to Gloucestershire, and spend a few days with family before meeting the Girl’s family for a few more days, and then it’s back to the Smoke for an extended New Year break. I’m looking forward to lots of food and rest. I’m also probably going to be able to finish the various unfinished blogposts sitting around – about print-out-ed media, about a few of the tricks I wrangled to build this new blog design, about Gears of War, and about 2006 as a whole.
In the meantime: keep safe, keep sound, hold your loved ones close, have a very happy Christmas. That’s exactly what I’m planning to do.
Happy Christmas
25 December 2005
Happy Christmas, y’all.
It’s been a lovely day here, doing not a lot. Eating good food, ringing the relatives, a lovely selection of presents given and received, and lots of time to chill out. All quite tiring in fact, so off to bed quite soon. Tomorrow it’s off to Bedford to see aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmother, and then on Tuesday I’m off to Derby to visit the Girl’s extended family. Back in London towards the end of the week, for New Year.
I’ll be posting again before the New Year; a few things to mention, perhaps a retrospective on 2005, and the usual stream from del.icio.us will all be happening before that. Enjoy yourselves!