Archives for August, 2003
2003.08.31 (Sun)
Unknown Film
10:16 | Comments (5)
I took two 35mm film cameras to Shikine, opting not to take the CoolPix 990 because it wigged out again recently, and things that tend to do this shouldn’t be in your rucksack on a camping trip. This means waiting for the pictures to come back from the lab — more nerve-wracking than usual because I used 3 kinds of film that I’ve never shot before.
Cocksec Mosquito Coils
10:16 | Comments (13)
I changed the header image in honour of Cocksec mosquito coils from the Japan Insecticide Manufacturing Company which literally save your skin. They must be extremely poisonous: light up one of these and within seconds there’s not a mosquito to be seen within a luxuriously large radius.
The Shimada Tunnel Incident
10:16 | Comments (0)
From Mainichi Intercative: A train passenger committed suicide by setting his carriage on fire while the train was passing through a tunnel in Nagano Prefecture, police said.
Cicadas (Traditional)
10:16 | Comments (1)
Summer isn’t quite over until the fat ladies have stopped singing.
Back on the Mainland
10:16 | Comments (4)
The trick, I realised, to distinguishing snakes from branches on the roads as you ride towards them wondering whether to go over or around is that snakes have a slight specular highlight to them whereas branches don’t.
2003.08.22 (Fri)
Toy Musuem #4
10:16 | Comments (1)
Finally, some robots.
2003.08.21 (Thu)
Autumn Sea
10:16 | Comments (2)
The word from the fishermen is that there was no summer this year.
2003.08.19 (Tue)
Timeless
10:16 | Comments (33)
My watch died, and died good. I wore it in a couple of oceans, a sea or two, a strait here and there, and more hot springs than I can remember and it never once complained. Until a month ago, when it didn’t just complain but stopped dead, drowned like a sackful of kittens when I wore it into a hot spring in Hakone.
Toy Museum #3
10:16 | Comments (7)
For years I’ve been looking for an old glass bell jar (dirty and mouldy is fine) but I haven’t found the right one yet. I intend to fill it with Kewpie heads of various sizes and then display it somewhere. Like a Damien Hirst piece, only cute.
Cicadas (Fast)
10:16 | Comments (4)
The cicadas here seem to have two speeds: a rapid, regular pulsing sveral times per second and then the longer, classic-sound-of-summer crescendo pulsing. Here are 30 seconds of fast cicada pulsing outside my window just now.
2003.08.18 (Mon)
Your Permanent Record Isn’t
10:16 | Comments (3)
Wired has toned down its hype-addled techno-boosterism considerably, but is still capable of publishing some refreshingly stupid and short-sighted things, such as this opinion piece from Microsoft CTO David Vaskevitch.
Thylacines in Melbourne
10:16 | Comments (0)
From the Sydney Morning Herald: Tasmanian tigers, or thylacines, are running wild in parkland 25 kilometres from Melbourne’s CBD, according to at least 20 sightings reported to the Victorian government.
2003.08.17 (Sun)
Flatlining
10:16 | Comments (7)
I took a look at the access stats for August the other day in Urchin and was surprised (and predictably dismayed) by some of the things it keeps track of. Couldn’t help but get a laugh out of this selective view of some of the data I whipped up in a spreadsheet. The story of my life.
The Emperor and the Wolf
10:16 | Comments (5)
The rain saved me. I took a load of clothes to a coin laundry this afternoon for machine drying and I passed the time waiting in a nearby second-hand bookstore where, of course, I found a hardcover first edition of the book for less than half the price Tower wanted.
Concrete Poetry
10:16 | Comments (3)
At a nearby construction site — builders drawing plans, scrawling notes on an unpainted wall. Thus the building helps with its own creation.
2003.08.16 (Sat)
Toy Museum #2
10:16 | Comments (0)
Another photograph from the toy museum of graphic design from a bygone era.
BBAutoComplete
10:16 | Comments (0)
You’ve probably seen this by now, but I’ve been meaning to mention that Michael Tsai’s BBAutoComplete is now at version 1.2.
2003.08.15 (Fri)
Temple in the Rain
10:16 | Comments (3)
Back in June when the hydrangeas were out we hiked up to Aikousan Amida-dera (above Hakone) in the rain. Here’s the approach to the temple.
A More Dangerousmeta
10:16 | Comments (1)
Wow — take a look at the new dangerousmeta, a whole new package with added Movable Type goodness. That’s a nice-looking page.
2003.08.14 (Thu)
Toy Museum #1
10:16 | Comments (0)
I found some photographs I took back in late spring during a visit to Hakone. Some of the ones from the Toy Museum are maybe worth a look. It was really the old posters that caught my eye.
John Treby’s iDesk
10:16 | Comments (3)
This new iMac-inspired desk looks pretty neat, but where do you put all your papers and books?
The Roof of Kappa Tengoku from the Baths
10:16 | Comments (0)
My tin fetish shows no sign of abating.
Block the Receptors
10:16 | Comments (0)
After helping my friend move the other night and getting home very late I crawled into bed and found I had an amazing headache which was swarming over my head like flies on a corpse. It wasn’t just one headache but many, collectively determined to find a way in.
I found myself thinking of Lindt 70% cocoa chocolate, because some people get headaches when they eat high-cocoa confectionary. Then a strange thing happened. Here’s what I wrote in my notebook in the morning.
2003.08.13 (Wed)
Breakthrough Swim
10:16 | Comments (8)
I need to try to write something about the swim I had today because, well, it was a bloody good swim, a breakthrough swim, one of those swims you have about once a year. The kind you write about.
Looks like another bad year for the rice harvest.
2003.08.12 (Tue)
Whatever the intention, no expense has been spared in making the place thoroughly disconcerting. The dominant message, delivered with a quiet fascistic certainty, is that in the future everything will be like this, so you’d best get used to it. [A collection of photographs from the non-place of Odaiba.]
Weird House
10:16 | Comments (41)
Here’s a weird house I found. From the shape it appears tro be a regular old house but — god knows why — it’s been covered (windows and all) in sheet tin which seems to be held together with aluminium construction scaffolding.
Affordances of the Squeaky Gate
10:16 | Comments (3)
Gateways into vestigial collective security.
The Fever Diaries
10:16 | Comments (4)
A while back I caught a cold and went through one of those half-delirious fever periods getting over it, the kind where weird dream-like thoughts occur to you as you loll on the tidal plain of consciousness between the ocean of sleep and the firm land of wakefulness. Here are some scribbles from my notebook of that time.
2003.08.07 (Thu)
Buzzwhack.com
10:16 | Comments (5)
Yesterday a friend introduced me to Buzzwhack.com, a site “dedicated to de-mystifying buzzwords,” where I immediately signed up for the buzzword-for-the-day mailing list.
Perfidious Nature
10:16 | Comments (4)
I just went and sat out in the garden for a minute to take a little break from work and cool down a bit and I noticed something very disturbing.
2003.08.06 (Wed)
August 6, 1945
10:16 | Comments (7)
There’s not much I can say about this that won’t be said by someone else so let me just mark the day with a heartfelt prayer that we can learn the right things from history, because otherwise we are truly doomed.
2003.08.05 (Tue)
Help Viewer
10:16 | Comments (10)
This is an old and oft-heard rant, but I hope the person or people responsible for the Help Viewer in OS X were fired.
2003.08.04 (Mon)
It was so hot today that I occasionally forgot to breathe.
Can Salarymen Beat It?
10:16 | Comments (2)
What is one to make of the news that “Japanese businessmen will be able to cast off their ties and dress like Michael Jackson with a new lineup of suits planned for next spring”…?
2003.08.03 (Sun)
Finally Summer
10:16 | Comments (3)
Our cool spell is over, it would appear, and the sloppy clouds that for weeks and weeks hung all over the sky like sailors on shore leave, by turns belligerent and maudlin, are squeezing themselves into their puffy white uniforms and trying to stand up to some sort of attention before putting out to sea.
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