slipstream

Everybody wants to be a cat

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:06:48 +0000

I’m watching The Aristocats on TV, which I haven’t seen for years. There aren’t as many good tunes as The Jungle Book, but this one is great.

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The comfort seeker

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:30:19 +0000

A few of Bianca’s many favourite sleeping places. The first picture explains why we end up with cat hair all over our bedlinen, while the second shows that Mr. Bsag is a big softie. He gave up his cushion for Bianca to sleep on the top of his studio desk, while he used a few layers of bubble wrap on his hard chair.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Peacock spider

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:51:46 +0000

That is a really beautiful spider. I’m not usually a big fan of spiders, but jumping spiders are brilliant, and this one (Maratus volans) is gorgeous with all the iridescence. There are more lovely pictures of both the colourful male and the drabber female here.

[via Neatorama]

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Fireworks and pets

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:45:35 +0000

You know how pets are supposed to hate fireworks? Our cat Bella has just jumped excitedly up on the desk, and is watching the firework display in our neighbour’s garden with great interest. Our other cat, Bianca, is fast asleep on the floor of Mr. Bsag’s studio, oblivious to all the bangs and flashes. I’m very glad that we don’t have pets that you have to sedate during fireworks season, but this is a bit ridiculous.

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Prototype slimline UK plug

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:42:51 +0000

This is a brilliant bit of design. I find US and European 2-pin plugs rather flimsy (they often feel as if they will pull out of the socket accidentally with little provocation), but they have the advantage of being small and having a relatively flat profile. UK plugs are solid and secure but relatively gigantic. Also, if you’ve ever stepped — bare-footed — on to a UK plug with its pins uppermost, you know how painful it can be.

I love the fact that the unfolded plug also has the advantage of a ring-shaped handle on the back, which would make removal much easier for everyone, including people with arthritis or other conditions which lower dexterity and hand strength.

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Waving from Google to Posterous

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:53:54 +0000

Waving from Google to PosterousI’m trying out the posterous-robot to see if posting from Google Wave to Posterous actually works. Wave takes a bit of getting your head around, I’m finding. I can see that possibilities are enormous, but at the moment, I feel like I did when I first went on the Internet, many years ago…

via google-wave-robot

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JustNotes

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:34:24 +0000

JustNotes:

This looks like a nice, lightweight and attractive app for accessing your Simplenote notes on the desktop. Though the Simplenote website is pretty good as it is.

Saw this dignified old gent waiting for his chauffeur in the Merc.

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:42:54 +0000

via tweetie

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For Immediate Relief: Speaking Like a Human

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:20:31 +0100

merlin:

I’m also a big fan of that yearbook-caption style of opening a sentence with a gerund (“Flipping the Wang Chung cassette in his Fiero, Douglas plucks at the pastel tee clinging like a crazy girlfriend to the sherbet Don Johnson blazer blazing in the blazing Dade City sun.”).

“A gerund attacks some peaceful pronouns”: and that’s why you never start a sentence with a gerund, though I’m sure I have at one time or another.

But seriously, these press releases — and this Newsgator release is nothing out of the ordinary — are so hard to get any sense out of. After a few sentences, my brain replaces the words with “blah blah blah…”

System Records. Independant specialist music store.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:14:33 +0100

System Records. Independant specialist music store.:

An interesting catalogue of unusual and hard to find CDs, DVDs and vinyl.

Meow mix

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:05:29 +0100

I just played this and my two cats came racing up to the computer, looking around with wide eyes to try to work out where all the other cats were. They even looked hard at one another as if trying to work out if the other cat had somehow taken up ventriloquism. That was all much more entertaining than the video itself.

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Ravens at the Tower of London

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:38:17 +0100

kottke.org: The most famous unkindness

“The current raven roster at the Tower consists of Gwylum, Thor, Hugin, Munin, Branwen, Bran, Gundulf, Baldrick, Fleur, and Colin.”

Colin? So I suppose they ran out of Norse/Anglo Saxon names, eh? I bet Colin gets beaten up by the other ravens.

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Email Service Guide – Interview with Jeremy Howard of FastMail.FM

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:19:53 +0100

Email Service Guide – Interview with Jeremy Howard of FastMail.FM:

Interesting interview with Jeremy Howard of Fastmail.fm. I’ve been with them nearly a year now, and I wouldn’t go back to another service provider as my mail email host. Brilliant reliability,…

Use Dropbox to Create a Yojimbo iPhone App

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:57:36 +0100

Use Dropbox to Create a Yojimbo iPhone App:

Nifty hint that could be extended to do fancier stuff. I must say that I think the new Dropbox iPhone client is brilliant. Being able to view and/or email a link to a document to someone while on the…

I’ve only recently come across the Matt Berry/Rich Fulcher...

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:37:14 +0100

I’ve only recently come across the Matt Berry/Rich Fulcher comedy series Snuff Box on DVD, and I really like it. It’s a dark, surreal, funny and filthy show, with some really classic moments.

Occasionally, they rely a bit too much on swearing for shock value alone, but sometimes the surreal aspects are genuinely funny. This song (while NSFW because of the aforementioned swearwords) is brilliant, and absurdly catchy.

thebestcamera.com - iPhone App

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:26:16 +0100

thebestcamera.com - iPhone App:

There are loads of camera/filter apps around, but this looks like a nice balance of ease of use and good results. Just wish it shared to Flickr too, though.

TimeMachineEditor

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:51:35 +0100

TimeMachineEditor:

Simple but very useful utility to allow you to schedule Time Machine backups whenever you want: you can use an interval (every n hours) or at calendar intervals.

mrgan: Here’s another excruciating video from Microsoft, this...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:24:06 +0100

mrgan:

Here’s another excruciating video from Microsoft, this time explaining how to host your own Windows 7 launch party.

The poor actors are all chuckling so uneasily and so much, I’m starting to feel like this is all subtext for an orgy they’re throwing later.

This video is a parody, right?

Right?

focus booster live - the pomodoro technique

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:58:41 +0100

focus booster live - the pomodoro technique:

A simple, but nicely designed web app to start a work/break timer to help you focus on what you should be doing. Everynow and again when my brain gets all squirrelly, I find these kinds of timers…

Notational Velocity 2.0 Public Beta

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:08:59 +0100

Notational Velocity 2.0 Public Beta:

This is really terrific news: a new version of Notational Velocity, and Open Source too! Even better is the fact that you can opt to store all your notes as plain text. I discovered that if I used a folder in a shared Dropbox folder plain text notes added from another machine showed up in NV, which is really excellent.