Archives for June, 2003
2003.06.30 (Mon)
20th Century Voyage
23:58 | Comments (7)
Very cool screensaver for Mac OS X.
Barcode Tattoo
23:58 | Comments (93)
At the pool last week I saw a guy (Japanese, early-30s) with a barcode tattoo — only the second or third I’ve ever seen.
2003.06.28 (Sat)
Map Week #2 - Shikinejima, 1992
23:58 | Comments (4)
A contemporary map (published 1992 — the year I first stepped foot on the island) from The National Lands Agency Geographical Survey Institute. These are the official maps, so to speak, the U.S. Geological Survey equivalents. The entire country has been mapped in all its 3-colour utilititarian glory.
The Catalogue of Public Looks
23:58 | Comments (10)
There exists waiting to be written The Catalogue of Public Looks wherein all the glances, stares, gazes, and peerings of the public sphere are identified and blessed with taxonomy and their degrees of furtiveness, dartiness, lingerability, longing, lack of focus and hollowed out exhausted zombification (peaking on the trains home after work) are quantified.
Vast Blackwing Conspiracy
23:58 | Comments (9)
Weed species and vermin thrive around humans. Just something about us, I guess. The crows in Tokyo have been scary for a long time — and they’re getting scarier.
Not My Way
23:58 | Comments (1)
Sydney Morning Herald: A 25-year-old Filipino man has been stabbed dead for singing a Frank Sinatra classic out of tune during a birthday party.
2003.06.27 (Fri)
Linux Overtakes Macintosh, Film at 11
23:58 | Comments (5)
Always fun to read a good writer in full curmudge: John Gruber on Paul Boutin’s silly article
Map Week #1 - Wakayama, c.1959
23:58 | Comments (0)
If you don’t get to travel as frequently as you’d like, then looking at maps is the next best thing. In fact it’s often better, travel being a foretaste of hell as Bruce Chatwin has the Bedouin saying somewhere. Thus begins Map Week, a look at some of the maps I have lying around.
2003.06.26 (Thu)
Britain’s 10 Most Shoplifted Items
23:58 | Comments (7)
The Centre for Retail Research in Britain lists the 10 most shoplifted items.
2003.06.25 (Wed)
Human Traffic Observations
23:58 | Comments (11)
I try to stay well off the sidewalks when I’m cycling, but sometimes it can’t be helped. When approaching people, there are some behaviour patterns to watch out for. A few gross generalisations from today (and my responses)
2003.06.23 (Mon)
Power Nap
23:58 | Comments (13)
Some years ago, a fellow I was working with introduced me to the secret of the 20-minute power nap: guiltlessness. Researchers at Harvard University seem to be confirming the benefits.
2003.06.22 (Sun)
Antique Store, Funabashi
23:58 | Comments (7)
Junk stores are so great. Fossicking through layers of objects, going back in time, the archaeology of taste and style.
2003.06.21 (Sat)
Traffic and Birdsong
23:58 | Comments (2)
[Audio] Out the window just now.
2003.06.19 (Thu)
On the train today I looked over at a train on the other tracks and saw yet another guy in a Beckham shirt. Beckham and his wife arrived in Japan yesterday to make more money. Sometimes you just want to say fuck ‘em.
Straws Wrapped and Unwrapped
23:58 | Comments (5)
Do you take the wrapped or unwrapped straws?
Cornering
23:58 | Comments (5)
Women rounding corners with their eyes shut. New developments in cornering strategies.
Literary Detective Agency
23:58 | Comments (2)
Find missing words. Follow words around, see what they get up to. Park outside their sentences with cameras.
Matsumoto, 1944
23:58 | Comments (0)
[Photo] During the war, Tokyo schoolchildren were evacuated to the countryside. The students at the school my daughter now attends were sent to Matsumoto, in Nagano prefecture. This photograph was taken there in 1944.
Bamboo, Todoroki
23:58 | Comments (0)
[Photo] Bamboo above the Todoroki gorge in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo.
2003.06.18 (Wed)
Harajuku Looking to Yoyogi
23:58 | Comments (4)
[Photo] Harajuku looking to Yoyogi, just before the rain on Monday.
2003.06.17 (Tue)
Bag of Biscuits
23:58 | Comments (3)
[Photo: New Year’s bag of senbei] A bag of senbei (Japanese ‘biscuits’) bought at New Year. They’re long gone now, of course, but the photograph remains.
Omote-Sando Body Parts
23:58 | Comments (2)
[Photo: arm in store window, Omote-Sando] Have any definitive histories of window dressing and shop manequins been written? There must be a couple of medium-sized photographic surveys from Taschen.
2003.06.11 (Wed)
More Wrappings
23:58 | Comments (4)
[Photo: Wrapped building at twilight in Omote-Sando] Sometimes you’re not sure where the wrapping of the building ends and the wrapping of the sky begins.
2003.06.09 (Mon)
Swept Away by Balloon
23:58 | Comments (8)
Every parent has the occasional nightmarish thought, and Gorey’s book speaks to them like no other. But this?”
Zaha Hadid’s First Building in U.S.
23:58 | Comments (3)
Herbert Muschamp in the NYTimes on Zaha Hadid’s first building in America, the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati: “Might as well blurt it out: the Rosenthal Center is the most important American building to be completed since the end of the cold war.”
2003.06.08 (Sun)
3 Japanese Combs -#3
23:58 | Comments (4)
The comb of someone long dead. Bamboo, boxwood, steel, unidentified wood for the endpieces….
3 Japanese Combs - #2
23:58 | Comments (2)
This one’s old — don’t know the origin of this.
3 Japanese Combs – #1
23:58 | Comments (3)
Recent manufacture but rather old design, unoiled, made from two pieces of boxwood (黄楊 – tsuge). This is the…
Don’t Drink and Blog
23:58 | Comments (6)
Someone should take away your keyboard so you don’t blog drunk. Had a friend over for yakitori last night and…
2003.06.07 (Sat)
Killer View of Fuji
23:58 | Comments (1)
In 1984 Miguel Arboleda (Laughing~Knees) took an astonishing photograph of Fuji. This is a once-in-a-lifetime view, and a kick-ass first…
2003.06.06 (Fri)
Webby Award for MovableType.org
23:58 | Comments (3)
MovableType.org wins the Best Practices Webby. Woo-hoo! Great news.
Bundle::DBI Available Here
23:58 | Comments (1)
I’m making Rob Giseburt’s Bundle::DBI package for Mac OS X available here because his server seems to be off the air at the moment. Rob, I hope this OK.
Omote-Sando Face
23:58 | Comments (0)
At the lights on Omote-Sando, giant well-groomed poster women stare balefully from windows.
2003.06.03 (Tue)
CSS Bookmarklets
23:58 | Comments (10)
Simon Willison on wrangling CSS with Jesse Ruderman’s remarkable bookmarklets. Don’t miss!
Choosing Battles Wisely
23:58 | Comments (2)
John Gruber on Apple’s declining to become the next Napster.
2003.06.02 (Mon)
Send This Story
23:58 | Comments (7)
Added MT’s “send this story” function to the bottom of the individual archives. I very rarely use this myself — does anyone? — but curious to see if it works.
2003.06.01 (Sun)
Ballroom Bra
23:58 | Comments (5)
Talking to a friend the other night about a certain blues musician from the ’30s I said that he’d once killed a man in a ballroom bra.
El Grande Dead
23:58 | Comments (6)
The tree thought to have been the world’s largest hardwood tree and flowering plant has been killed.
The Scrollwheels of Your Mind
23:58 | Comments (11)
Safari’s scrolling is scrolling how my mind works.
Must Have Ocean
23:58 | Comments (5)
Too long without salt water is not good.
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