It came as some surprise to see my own site linked to from Ian Dale’s political mega-hub, particularly as I’ve not published one even vaguely political story this year. So I’m unable to glean quite how I achieved a rank of #75 in the lib-dem chart, and a higher rank than the official blog of the Liberal Democrat party leader.
Ian states that his rankings are a reflection of ‘votes’ cast by his panel. All I can say is that this sort of voting reminds me of the kind they have in Florida where the actual number of votes cast have an estranged relationship with the results. Perhaps a few of those “hanging-chads” got mis-counted as votes for Stodge.org?
I’m certain that none of the Lib-Dem supporters would have singled out my site for a vote. I never solicited anybody to vote for me, nor was I aware that this competition existed until I was mysteriously revealed to be 75th best in the land. I never got involved with the debates on the other LibDem blogger’s sites, in short I made no effort and did not actually deserve to be on any ranking.
I can be pretty certain that any votes allegedly cast for Stodge.org are either accidental or imaginary - and almost certainly below the threshold of what is statistically meaningful when compiling a ranking.
If I was feeling charitable, I’d say his methodology is dubious - at at worst entirely bogus. Would it be fair to conclude that the whole affair is link-bait, intended to persuade the gullible and eager for publicity to link back to Mr Dale’s blog and thus boost his profile in the web-o-sphere?
I took this photo in the Sainsbury’s off Green Lanes in Haringy. There were a whole bunch of these “Entertainment Blitz” free-standing units in the “Seasonal Goods” isle.
As I was busy loading my basket, it occurred to me that Sainsbury’s plan to do for “entertainment” what the blitz did for London. Careful scrutiny of the titles available in these stands confirms that this is indeed the case.
Friends of Hooting Yard will be delighted to learn that Frank Key’s latest book has finally been published: “Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars” It’s been a long grind since we began putting the text together, way back in the shivering months of 2006, but our work is complete and we can all be proud.
“Desolation” is a notable contrast to Frank’s normal work: He is a prolific short-story writer, however this book’s main text is a single story spanning thirteen chapters. I’m not going to give the plot away, but I can say that it is a comedic thriller, with a genuinely touching end. It’s on sale at Frank’s site now if you care for such things.
Shelley the republican thinks that “Dr. Who?” (sic) is a perverted British horror-show that is going to terrorize your kids; She wants you to join her campaign to prevent it from being broadcast in the USA. Somehow I think she will loose this particular battle in the culture-war.
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Do you recognise this statue? The photo was taken circa 1974 by a Resonance FM listener who dearly wants to know where this severely truncated work of art can be found. It occurred to me that the statue may never have been more than a pair of feet, so while not strictly dishonest, the text below the art-work is misleading.
I just got myself a Nintendo Wii. Nintendo dont want anybody to actually use the Internet via this machine, so they have decided to make it nearly impossible to connect to friends without first exchanging ponderously long numeric codes. These are called “Wii Numbers”. Mine just happens to be 4176 5000 6548 4340. If you want to add me as a friend, make sure you add your own wii number as a comment to this blog.
I think I’ll catch a pigeon
To teach it how to dance
I’ll keep it in the wardrobe
And feed it bread from France
My pigeon will be stubborn
And steadfastly refuse
To switch off Silent Witness
So I can watch the news
My pigeon will make gravy
With string and twigs and dirt.
Our guests will smile indulgently
But leave before dessert.
(with thanks to wetwebwork for the pigeon photo)
This is one of my favourites from Stuart Lee’s 2005 set. I saw him perform this live in the more intimate setting of Crouch End’s “Downstairs at the Kings Head”, however I think it works just as well in front of a big audience:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/gtBQhrFhock" width="400" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
According to the OLPC project (One Laptop Per Child), the people who are building a sub $100 laptop so that kids in developing countries can become 3lit3 hackers too, the new device will come pre-loaded with a visual smalltalk based development studio called Squeak, and a fun animation / programming toy called Scratch.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/jxDw-t3XWd0" width="400" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
I found the video mostly very annoying, once you skip past the beginning they get into a demo of the environment. Basically it’s a drag & drop scripting environment with an emphasis on animation and sound.
You can program flash-style animations and drag and drop the scripts in real-time - the animation changes in real-time as a consequence. I guess that the individual modules are objects written in Smalltalk, which can easily be extended.
I also like the idea that these laptops will present new users with a whole bunch of new programming languages and VB is not one of them.
I just discovered that the art-group known as Paperrad have a blog. In case you have trouble picking out text through the hyper-saturated backgrounds they love, they have an RSS feed which is here: RSS
