UK-based weblog on technology, queerness, language and fitness

Monthly archive: June 2006

links for 2006-06-30

Friday 30 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-29

Thursday 29 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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Weekend crowd at Barcode Vauxhall's midweek opening night

Thursday 29 June 2006 / uncategorized / Comments Off

A photo of a face, one hand covering one eye in painWe went to Barcode Vauxhall's opening night yesterday. I loved the place, as you step in you forget you are in yet another reclaimed railway arch in Vauxhall.

The new Barcode is sleek and big; at around 5,000 sq. ft, it must be the largest gay bar in London now. Last night it was packed by hundreds of eager punters who looked more and more handsome as my G&Ts kicked in. Dr B. swears the venue looks very much like a bar in New York, but could not tell which one. It certainly is a long way from the usual spit and sawdust decor of British pubs. I made sure I paid my compliments to the architect (lovely chap, a friend's friend I have met a few times). He was particularly proud of the DJ booth in the dancefloory room at the far end, in the shape of an oversized letter 'b'.

I spotted one of the staff from my gym there: the picture of health and clean living, drink in one hand and cigarette in the other. I bet he, like me, was not in this morning before work.

We got home at midnight, via the corner shop. You see, it's this new Paul McKenna 'I Will Make You Thin' philosophy whereby when you are hungry, you must eat, otherwise your body goes into starvation mode and slows down its metabolism in order to survive. Last night I made sure my body understood that there is no shortage of bread and cheese and houmous, and that it need not worry. Dr B.'s body has been equally reassured that there is enough icecream around. Or rather, there was. And then there wasn't.

I fell asleep on the couch, woke up with the dried-up rind from a bacon rasher stuck on my cheek and my head clamped in a vice.

And this is why I don't usually go out on a schoolnight.

links for 2006-06-28

Wednesday 28 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-27

Tuesday 27 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-26

Monday 26 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-25

Sunday 25 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-24

Saturday 24 June 2006 / links / 1 comment

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links for 2006-06-23

Friday 23 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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Plotting my way to world domination

Thursday 22 June 2006 / uncategorized / 1 comment

060622_crown.jpgThere's this Excel spreadsheet I have on my computer at home. It's called log.xls and has detailed information on all the food I have eaten during the last fourteen months, my daily calorie intake, weight (recorded on a daily basis) and body fat (weekly, on Monday mornings), along with weight fluctuation charts and stats.

I also enter all my sessions at the gym, with details on body part(s) I exercised, duration of cardio-vascular exercise, and calories that were burnt.

It also used to hold daily information for me to compile my timesheets at my previous job: time in, time out and lunch breaks, with overtime and projected salary, every day for over two years. At my present job I am hired on a daily rate and therefore I only roughly need to keep track of how many hours I work.

Until a year and a half ago, I also used it to record every single expense and income, no matter how small. Yes, even stuff like 'Newspaper – 35p', and 'Found in street – 1p' – until I decided to outsource the procedure to Microsoft Money, which additionally pesters me with highly informative messages such as 'You may have underestimated you budget for: Food' (such a nice way to tell me I eat too much).

More often than not Dr B. finds me hunched on my laptop in the morning before going to work, updating what he calls my "World Domination Spreadsheet". God forbid I start the day without knowing exactly how many calories I am allowed, based upon the cumulative total of the previous seven days, or with no exact knowledge to the penny of how much money there is in the bank.

And then today at work we discussed keeping track of a series of procedures we recently modified. There was talk of a spreadsheet, and graphs. I kept a straight face and eventually said that yes, well, I suppose I would not mind giving it a go, as I've got a rough idea of how to organise and present the data.

Inside, I was stroking a white long-haired cat, with an evil glint in my eye, a chilling 'mwahahahaaa' resounding through the throne room of my Imperial Palace.

links for 2006-06-22

Thursday 22 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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Travelling by bus after driving a Ferrari

Wednesday 21 June 2006 / uncategorized / Comments Off

060621_brushes.jpgI have recently changed jobs and moved on to a more suitable, less designer-y role.

Today I needed to prepare some user interface mock-ups for a short presentation I must give, and of course I immediately looked to open Photoshop… which is of course not installed on my machine at work.

In a bit of a hurried panic, I searched for free alternatives that I could download and install, and I came across GIMP. It sounds like it can do all that Photoshop does, more or less, and for free. You can take it a step further and get GIMPShop, a hacked version where menus are renamed and reorganised to look and feel almost exactly like Photoshop, shortcuts and all.

I was running out of time though, and did not want to spend too long on it, so I used MS Paint. It ships with all computers that run Windows, and yet I had never used it before because there isn't much you can do with it. The images I produced might not be pixel-perfectly aligned, the fonts do not match exactly, but I am sure I will get my points across to my colleagues.

I'd never have thought that one day I would favour content over presentation. But you see, two women from Dr B.'s ju-jitsu club got partnered today, and there's no way I was going to be late for their drinks party tonight simply because I wanted perfection.

And no matter how much I like my job, at the end of the day I'd rather celebrate lesbian love than push pixels around.

links for 2006-06-21

Wednesday 21 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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  • A young developer/designer comments on the offputting effects of WCAG's stilted recommendation language, and the emergence of alternative sets of guidelines and definitions of web accessibility, that people can actually understand and use.
  • 'A blog dedicated to cats that look like Hitler' (i.e. with a black spot above the nose and a lopsided 'fringe' on white fur). Has the potential to have you roar with laughter or leave you totally unimpressed.

Phenylalanine has taken over our household

Tuesday 20 June 2006 / uncategorized / Comments Off

A can of Coke ZeroCoke Zero has (softly) launched in the UK. It suddenly is in most shops I went to, although I do not recall having been exposed to any advertising for it.

It has been heralded as the greatest Coke innovation since the introduction of Diet Coke in 1984. It is targeted to young adult males who don't usually buy diet drinks (i.e. 'Pepsi Max' drinkers), as you can clearly see from The Zero Movement – a marketing department-conceived 'blog' to push the new product, that attracted so much criticism it now clearly shows Coke Zero logos and bottles everywhere.

I normally drink Diet Coke to save a few calories. I tried Coke Zero last week and it reminded me of cleaning up the morning after throwing a party, slightly hungover, drinking leftover "full-fat" coke somebody left behind. It felt naughty and I had to remind myself it had something like three calories per bottle.

Dr B. cannot stand the taste of Diet Coke and has been known to indulge in the odd can of the "full fat" variety now and then.

He did not like his first sip of Coke Zero. I suggested he tried another sip a while after clearing his mouth from the taste of the Yorkie chocolate bar he was eating at the same time. He did, and he's a total convert now. He cannot believe it's got almost no nutritional content.

If you see a bright light coming out of a South London flat in the near future, that's probably us glowing in the dark.

links for 2006-06-20

Tuesday 20 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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'Sugar Rush' – Series Two, Episodes 1 and 2

Friday 16 June 2006 / uncategorized / Comments Off

060616_candy_cane.jpgSeason 2 of science-fiction series 'Sugar Rush, ' premiered last night on Channel Four. Not one alien or a laser beam in sight, but plenty of lipstick lesbians meeting in lesbian sex shops, having lipstick lesbian sex, dancing in crowded femmes-only lesbian clubs, then holding hands and sipping Coke from curvy glass bottles on Brighton Pier. I mean, where can you find a glass Coke bottle these days?

I've seen lesbians like that. However, they are not all like that. It's as if they did a story on gay men where we were all young-ish and buffed and had un-shaved heads and talked and walked manly. If such a place exists, I'd like the address please. In the meantime, I'm more than happy with a mix of all the flavours under the rainbow, from campest to butchest, from daddy to twink, the more varied the merrier.

Still, I quite enjoyed it, mainly for its Desperate Housewives-y highly unlikely situations and dialogue (it is an adaptation of Julie Burchill's teen novel):

'OK, it's been 18 months since I hot-wired a car, stole my mum's credit card and had hot lesbian sex with my best friend Sugar'.

I liked Episode 1 enough to switch over to E4 and watch the following episode, and went to bed at an ungodly hour and I'm a bit of a wreck now.

Will probably watch it again, if I can get over the protagonist's striking resemblance to Li-Lo. Kept thinking Herbie was going to appear any minute.

links for 2006-06-16

Friday 16 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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"Hello Moira"

Thursday 15 June 2006 / uncategorized / Comments Off

A closeup of popped corn
What is it with some people have to jump up from their cinema seats and leave the theatre the second the last scene fades into the closing credits?

When you have paid over a tenner to see a movie, missing the last few minutes can be very frustrating. I suppose that in the age of Google and IMDB it is no longer necessary to read the credits to find out who sang the catchy song that you hear for three seconds when the main character scans the radio dial before the big car chase, or who plays Pizza Delivery #4.

So last week Dr B. and I went to see X-Men: The Last Stand, and as soon as the first line of credits peeked onto the screen he, as usual, stood up impatiently. The people blocking the exit on my left were lingering in their seats, but when they saw his frown they apologised and bolted up and off they went.

So we left – and missed the post-credit scene at the end that I have just read about on overyourhead.

If you have missed it too you can find out more information – and the scene itself – on the websites linked below. (Warning: spoilers.)

links for 2006-06-15

Thursday 15 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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Let me just break the ice

Thursday 15 June 2006 / uncategorized / Comments Off

A picture of iciclesIt's been a while since I wrote anything relevant here (have I ever?) and there's no reason at all really, apart from you know, when you are a bit out of practice and some time has passed and the whole thing starts looking a bit daunting.

So here we go. Hello. And laters. Off to produce a short writeup about myself for the company's intranet now. Stuff along the lines of 'Dislikes: shaving. Likes: the Eurovision Song Contest'.

Might send them the 100 things about me instead…

links for 2006-06-14

Wednesday 14 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-13

Tuesday 13 June 2006 / links / 1 comment

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links for 2006-06-12

Monday 12 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-10

Saturday 10 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-09

Friday 9 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-08

Thursday 8 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-07

Wednesday 7 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-06

Tuesday 6 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-02

Friday 2 June 2006 / links / Comments Off

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links for 2006-06-01

Thursday 1 June 2006 / links / 1 comment

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