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What sucks, who sucks and you suck.
Tool pr0n
Handy items for every Real Man(tm)'s toolbox: Kamasa chubby ratchet screwdriver; six double-ended bits built into the handle, and small enough to go into your pocket. And it doesn't break after the first turn. This partly assuages the grief over my late, much lamented £2.50 Woolies ratchet set. (More... »
Peripathetic
Regular writing and photographing, amongst much else, are currently on hold - even more so than previously - due to pace of life and a corresponding lack of investment. In the meantime, we are currently pursuing a separate personal project with more regular bloggage elsewhere.... »
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... »
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... »
Olympic curling
Debugging web apps with Curl It's the Swiss Army knife of web app debugging. It avoids wondering how much of what you're seeing is current, and how much has been cached by the browser. It shows you all the gory details of HTTP requests and responses. It's curl, and it's... »
PhotoPost to Flickr
Some time ago, I used a handy Perl script called fp2flickr to import some Fotopic collections into Flickr. It was crude but it did the job usefully. After a moderate amount of hacking and bodging, I've now modified it to import PhotoPost albums into Flickr: pp2flickr.... »
Backs up
(Blows dust off category in blog.) I am slowly coming to the conclusion that if you built up a billion dollar company over ten years but never did any backups, and then a massive data loss wiped out the organisation, you still wouldn't have lost as much money as... »
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.... »
Current raves
After a loooong absence... Silence, esOterica Try to overlook the fact that the lead singer looks like Igor. (MORE BASS GIRL! LESS SHOUTY FREAK! UG!) This is a cover of a Delerium/Sarah McLachlan trance track which is much less interesting. Money, It's Pure Evil, Bigelf Mascara and lots of... »
Prog out
With a little help from Classic Rock Announces Prog magazine (OK, that's not precisely the title but we like the acronym better), and carefully avoiding ITV in the evenings, we finally found some decent music.... »
Do we have the time?
Dan Smith, 1968-2009 Scarlet Martyrs guitarist Alan Brown called me today to convey the sad news that our bassist Dan Smith (aka the Cult of Dan) passed away suddenly on 25th February. This has come as a great shock to his family and to those of us who knew him.... »
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... »
Scan Magick
Enhancing scanned images with ImageMagick Having nailed down a faster b/w workflow for digital images, using Bibble, I've been considering something similar for scanned negatives. Obviously, the bulk of time is unavoidably expended on developing and scanning those negatives (which is why I now have four unprocessed rolls of film... »
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... »
Backs up
(Blows dust off category in blog.) I am slowly coming to the conclusion that if you built up a billion dollar company over ten years but never did any backups, and then a massive data loss wiped out the organisation, you still wouldn't have lost as much money as... »
Two sides
One of the great things about the Internet is that, while you can still read the newspaper online - for free - you can also read lots of other news sources, for free. This variety (and lack of obvious revenue stream) might change the news media industry in all... »
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 long and winding road
...is (still) blocked by caravans and lorries. Back to Aber for the weekend. Some grey clouds, but patches of blue sky, the day slowly warming up and turning pleasant before squally showers blew in later that evening. By then, we were sat in the bay window of our room... »
Rattle
ELC Baby Rattle Shake and throw audible rattle for babies aged 3-12 months. How this toy aids your baby's development: Develops hand and eye co-ordination Stimulates senses, including hearing, sight and touch. Strengthens muscles. Introduces principles of rhythm. Builds tolerance in adults. Develops an appreciation of nuclear physics, the environment... »
Things to do in Denbigh when it's dead
The wonder of Woolies It was a Sunday out of season and we were in Denbigh. Think we'd been to the castle, which is worth a visit (especially if you ask for the key for the magic gate that lets you walk around the town walls). Denbigh town centre is,... »
Small potatoes
Michael Janke grabs a meter and checks the power consumption of a few household electrical items, chiefly those power blocks we're now being told to switch off if we want to save the planet. His main conclusion is that they aren't worth worrying about if you're still going to... »
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.... »