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What sucks, who sucks and you suck.
Now truly underground
Much as a death is always a sad occasion (sniff), BB is looking forward to hearing "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones again (and again, and again...), just to remind ourselves how much we hated John Peel's latterly eclectic but uniformly dire taste in music. Of course, we don't get... »
Nostalgia for pub bores
Just added, the Nostalgic guide to Aber pubs, a lament for those drinking dens of yore and how they've been steadily eroded or ruined ("modernised"). "Had to leave to get back to Swansea in time, so couldn't go to see whether the pubs are the same too," said Telsa... »
Good news for the environment
BB would just like to congratulate all the main political parties taking part in the upcoming European and local elections. All of them have recently made significant contributions to environmental improvement, collectively making the biggest difference ever through party-political means. If anybody has more electoral leaflets that they would... »
Yet another System error
He may be KBE now but to us, he'll always be Bill Gates, Cunning Ubermeister of NT. It's amazing the lengths to which some people will go to get Microsoft to fix their Windows problems. Presumably, Alan Cox righteously (and rightly) declined an honour. Because obviously, you'd rather offer... »
Another merry xmas
BB blames the BBC for our drink problem. Every xmas, we look forward to nothing more than eating and drinking in front of the telly. Recently though, we've had to start drinking a hell of a lot more to make up for the crap we choose not to watch... »
Tuna and Waffles
At last, Big Bubbles (no troubles) is pleased to announce the publication of our first book, Tuna and Waffles by Ade Rixon. Available for a measly fiver or so from Lulu, it's a rollicking compendium of student humour culled from tattered ten year old copies of The Courier, and... »
Trumpet blowing
Two recent notable mentions for my photography that would otherwise pass unnoticed: Fourth place in the PhotographyBlog Autumn-themed monthly competition. PhotographyBlog also interviewed me as part of their gallery member spotlight series.... »
Remartyred
Lonely? Depressed? Filled with despair and feeling suicidal? You're probably best not downloading these Scarlet Martyrs MP3s then - now available once more following a long, and we're sure much-needed, absence.... »
Empty Spaces is being highlighted
Empty Spaces is being highlighted on GBlogs today, so we'd like to say "hellooo" to you all in a delightful Leslie Phillips voice. But really, following the unwritten rule of blogs (now written down: "all blogs not written by Anna Pickard are crap"), you should go here.... »
Spent
the other night discriminating against tent pegs on the basis of their sexual orientation: bent or straight. Then I swore at the pile of bent ones, which was bigger than the straight pile, and threw them out. No letters please. I used to bend tent pegs with my foot, which... »
Consultants are a bit like bindweed
And this sort of thing quite clearly runs top to bottom in the shadow cabinet. Very few of them give off that air of quiet technocratic confidence, and they all have plausible-sounding schemes cribbed from American thinktanks. Daniel Davies is my new favourite columnist.... »
Laptops and Linux
This post is mostly for the benefit of any other poor sods trying to run Linux on a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo L7320GW, but it touches on general problems with penguins and laptops.... »
The Moron's Guide to Fixing Computer Problems
Got a computer system? Got a problem? Take that dumbfounded look off your face and unknot that eyebrow. To accompany major reference works such as The Dummy's Guide To The Internet, The Complete Tosswad's E-Commerce Handbook and The Utterly Cretinous Imbecile's Introduction To Managing IT In The Enterprise, BB... »
CentOS 5.0 a success?
(Compare "success" in Fedora terms: "doesn't corrupt hard drive beyond repair".) Upgraded the Glamorous Research Assistant's PC from CentOS 4.5 to 5.0 yesterday and...it actually went pretty swimmingly. Using the recommended Anaconda upgrade method took about an hour, including a moderately long pause after the final package update, after... »
Placeholder: sharing VPN with VMware
Scenario: you are running some proprietary VPN software under a Windows guest OS in VMware (e.g. Shiva/Intel NetExpress), and you want to share the connection back to the host OS (e.g. Linux) so that you can run native tools that access the VPN. I've used this to run the... »
It's too loud, man
"Imperfect sound forever" is a wide ranging article that discusses the problem with over-compressed music on modern CDs which has garnered a fair amount of attention lately, but also covers how we now consume music and everything else in our lives.... »
Stoned again
"...For the purposes of this book, I will be dealing with rock music and pop music, the subtle distinction being that 'rock music' is a loud aggressive form of entertainment enjoyed by many people, whereas 'pop music' is crap." Many years ago, BB bought a small yellow hardback called... »
Fan-attic
Article from The Guardian: "Twenty years ago, Mark Taylor was a 16-year-old with few friends and an obsession with the Smiths." Figures.... »
Go home then
All About Eve's grassroots Top 40 comeback campaign has hit the buffers, as their new single, "Let Me Go Home" stalls at no. 52. Given that a band only needs to sell about fifty copies to reach no. 1 these days, this is a pretty bad showing. Presumably, if... »
The red tide
Ashley Norris over at the Guardian becomes one of the first mainstream journos to sample the All Of MP3 "samples" (that's full length, unprotected samples in the format of your choice, bud). He offers some unintentional (we think) black humour.... »
Magnum on Magnum
Review of a new Magnum book in the Independent, featuring well-known Magnum photographers on other well-known Magnum photographers (Trent Parke is in there!).... »
The Digital Nikon EM
I keep saying it and I'm about to repeat myself, so try not to yawn too obviously: I love my Nikon EM. It's small, light, basic and does everything I need in a camera. Unfortunately, it's a film camera and, while I love film, I find myself without much... »
Evolution or regression?
Should have blogged this long ago; a classic photo.net post from 2003, Evolving into a photographer.... »
Placeholder: bookmark round-up
Interesting URLs from the last day or two: qtpfsgui is a graphical frontend to various UNIXey HDR tools, if you want to experiment with the techniques suggested in this TOP post. Early findings: it's tricky to get right without a lot of experimentation, and what's wrong with blocked shadows... »
More Bessa experience
I made a conscious decision to use the Bessas last weekend, as they've been sitting around mostly unused for the past six months and I had a hankering for black and white film. If I were being a "rational economic actor", I'd probably have come to my senses and... »
Magnum on Magnum
Review of a new Magnum book in the Independent, featuring well-known Magnum photographers on other well-known Magnum photographers (Trent Parke is in there!).... »
Evolution or regression?
Should have blogged this long ago; a classic photo.net post from 2003, Evolving into a photographer.... »
Placeholder: bookmark round-up
Interesting URLs from the last day or two: qtpfsgui is a graphical frontend to various UNIXey HDR tools, if you want to experiment with the techniques suggested in this TOP post. Early findings: it's tricky to get right without a lot of experimentation, and what's wrong with blocked shadows... »
The Gone Guide to the Lakes
Preparing for an upcoming family holiday in the Lakes, I looked to update my aging copy of The Good Guide To The Lakes by Hunter Davies with the latest edition. Except the "latest edition" came out in 2003 and now appears to be somewhat rare and increasingly pricey on... »
Quack intolerance
According to AllergyUK, 2%-3% of us suffer from a food allergy, while a fifth of the population believe they have food intolerance. - Food fighters, The Guardian 2005-01-08 An article I was trying to track down - you are not as ill as you (are being led to) think.... »
Consultants are a bit like bindweed
And this sort of thing quite clearly runs top to bottom in the shadow cabinet. Very few of them give off that air of quiet technocratic confidence, and they all have plausible-sounding schemes cribbed from American thinktanks. Daniel Davies is my new favourite columnist.... »
A perfect day
One of BB's most-respected research associates has kindly sent a 1930s travel guide to "Aberystwyth and North Wales". We plan to write a whole entry about this shortly (here's a scan of the Aber street map as evidence of our good intentions), but in the meantime we're going to... »
Shared space
Simon Jenkins enthuses about shared space traffic management in the Graun.... »
Local boy makes good
Take a gander at this image of Richard Burton and his father in their hometown of Pontrhydfen in South Wales. Burton, the epitome of the local boy made good in pale casuals, strides purposefully along a rough Welsh road trailed by his mining father, a small man dressed in... »
To boldly go
BB was going to write about another horrendous Fedora upgrade experience, but right now we don't want to go back to that place. Let's talk about travel books instead.... »