One for media junkies like myself: the Economist-esque Der Spiegel now has selected articles available online in English, and the translations are good.
If they added RSS feeds, I'd giggle like a schoolgirl.
With a rallying cry of "new toy!", last weekend I received my Lens Baby. Discovered via the J-Walk blog, I couldn't afford a decent new lens for my camera but I could get one of these. The first pic is of Martin from SoDa magazine, the second of some Adidas shoes, both shot at the CMYK exhibition.
I'm still learning how it works, but I kinda like it already.
(click on the pics for larger versions)
If he weren't a Sherlock Holmes scholar, it wouldn't be half as odd.
Free with today's El Periodico: a CD called "progammes of free distribution", chosen by Softcatala. Even better, this is being paid for by the local government of Catalunya (El Periodico is based in Barcelona though distributed nationwide). And - get this - they're even including the not-yet-1.0 Firefox.
My geek friends, you may now weep on our doorsteps. Everyone else may continue with their normal lives.
Contents:
Open Office 1.1
Abiword 2.05
Mozilla 1.5
GIMP 1.0
Salt 2.0
Winrar 2.90
Leechftp
Opera 7.32
Firefox 0.8
Webcopier 2.1
and some translated information on using them. Which is all very nice.
From Origins of the EU flag:
"Germany objected to the number 15 because one of the members of the Council war Saarland, and 15 stars would imply "star" sovereignty for that region.
France would not agree to 14 stars as that number would acknowledge the absorption of Saarland into Germany.
13 was ruled out for superstitious reasons.
12 was reckoned to be a "good" number because it had no political innuendo, and there are
12 signs of the zodiac;
12 hours on a clock;
12 months in a year;
12 apostles;
12 tables of Roman Law;
and 12 starry crowns of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
That last one's a joke, right?
(via Interconnected)
Just to make things clear, though I am Barcablog (currently resting), I'm not BarcaBlog. And neither of us write about El Barça.
After the whole Belle de Jour thing, I suppose I deserved this.
While I fret over my facial hair, two friends who have the endurance of giants have recently completed feats of foot.
Charl returned to the London Marathon (after last year's tragic last-minute pullout) to make the capital her bitch for Kidney Research in a storming 5:09:21.
And Hammersley ate the desert for, well, dessert, leaping dunes in a gallop of the sands for the EFF, retired greyhounds and ChildNet in a quite awe-inspiring 54:53:49. Which totals more than I think I've ever run in my life.
I bow to your respective calf muscles, you utter utter loons.
It's been a fun 16 months, but the time has come for us to part our separate ways. It was a reasonably amicable split in the end - there was a little blood but no tears. I am no longer a bearded man.
It began as a symbol - of breaking away from London, offices and clients - just as my first contact lenses, aged 18, were the physical manifestation of how different I felt, post-school and abroad on my own.
Much of Western society frowns on facial hair, while also worshipping a bearded martyr who gained his whiskers around the 15th Century and kept them long after fashions had changed. Hiding your chin is one way of daring to be different.
My beard also began to take shape thanks to that natural curiosity that comes to every man at some point in his life, when faced with the chore of shaving: what would happen if I just didn't? Would it be the same fuzz you get when you leave yoghurt on the radiator? Or would it add a further boost of masculinity to my form, of the kind granted to the dangerous, the drop-outs and the (Brian) blessed?
The jury's out on the visual effect of my own attempt, but having a beard certainly opened up new avenues of personal definition. I, for the last 16 months, have been a bearded man. When describing me to others, it's the first thing people would say. No matter how short I trimmed it, I was bearded - even though, at times, it was shorter than it had been when I was clean-shaven and lazy. Then, I was smooth-chinned but scruffy. Subsequently, although the stubble was exactly the same length, I was bearded and tidy. It all depended on the starting point.
There was a dab of writer's chic involved in the growth of course, as well as a touch of laziness - what other act of apathy is also a creation of something new? - plus a desire to look older than my years as a budding freelancer. Now shaven, I look younger than my age - but like the contact lenses, 90% of it is inner confidence and bearing anyway.
But I regret not a single hair of it. I call out to those of you who can, who are hiding behind your smooth-chinned disguises, to throw off the shackles of well-defined jawlines. Inside every chin there are hairs waiting to burst out. I say, let it grow, get through that early, dodgy ginger phase and last until you need to buy a trimmer to keep it neat. Be a man. Be hairy. Be Brian. (Never go for a goatee though. That's just wrong.)
Meanwhile, I've gone the other way. I'm not saying never again, and it looked particularly dapper trimmed with a matching morning suit at a friend's wedding. But I'll probably wait for a few years or a long travelling stint before embarking on such a commitment again. I need a while to get used to the face looking back at me in the mirror.
For my brother Esau is an hairy man, but I - at least for now - am a smooth man.
Jon's musings on cricket, coupled with the recent Test series and my own return to the field in whites (3-0-14-1; 9 runs, 1x4 0x6) brought to mind a query I had in the back of my head that was answered, as such things are, by google (though Bearders was my next stop):
Discounting 'this morning on the beach', when was the last underarm delivery bowled?
The answer is by Trevor Chappell, last ball of the match to prevent a NZ victory, in 1981. There's an article about it here. The delivery was subsequently outlawed.
Well, it might be useful for a pub quiz one day.
Via V-2, a fascinating history of the art of the feuilletonistas.
The story then starts to ramble a bit, but it's still worth casting an eye over in its continuation here and then here
Those nice men over at DMJ being nice about a nice thing.
Less self-reference from now on, promise.
Barcelona votes to end bullfights. Which means the time has come to choose a new bloodthirsty sport. Barceloneans would probably have chosen Beckham-baiting, if that hadn't already begun in earnest elsewhere.
So what can replace the bullfights for the Spaniards' need for sangrous entertainment? Brits on stag weekends thrust in with the lions? French schoolkids in the port with killer whales? Suggestions in the comments section, please.
Hearty congratulation on your success in the Examination. May Heaven's coicest blessings be showered on the young couple.
Sincere Greetings for the Republic Day. Long Live the Republic.
Many happy returns of the day.
A.
(This entry, Prandial's 501st, was produced by the Indian List of Set Phrases for Greetings Telegrams 1968)
Lovely ending to a Bill Drummond interview with an overly odd Stewart Home:
Even if the above doesn't make you want to go out and buy his books, you should get hold of one of Stewart Home's necro cards. You should never go out without one in your purse or wallet. It looks like an organ donor card but in fact it gives permission for your body to be used by necrophiliacs.
I'll add it to my organ doner card. Apparently that unfortunate misspelling gives permission for my body to be turned into a kebab.
The ever-superb blog of death reports on the sad death of John Sack, the only man ever to report from every US war in the last fifty years (what's that? Oh, they weren't wars, just conflicts. Well, them too).
His first article for Esquire was the longest they've ever published - 33,000 words. The front page was about as powerful as you can get. It was black and had only the words "Oh my God - we hit a little girl". These were the days of real print journalism.
He also wrote the almost-unpublishable Eye for an Eye, about the post-war Polish prison camps run by Jews where they tortured German prisoners. It took seven years to find someone to publish it.
Without wanting to throw in my uninformed twopennoth, all I'll say is that it must have taken huge moral and journalistic faith to want to write it at all, let alone to go $100,000 in debt to tell a story that no-one else would touch. He then went to speak at a conference of Holocaust deniers (despite not being one himself) - and argued eloquently why he did it, while revealing the intellectual flaws in many of their theories.
Sack is also the man who refused to hand over his notes to prosecutors in the trial of the Lieutenant charged with the My Lai massacre.
No matter how much editors may demand it, the truth is that there is no black and white - only different shades of grey. Sack constantly put his job and life on the line to make that clear.
More links over at Blog of Death.
As previously promised, the London News Review continues this week's media theme of "me" here. Damn paparazzi. I've had to head to Tuscany to escape (back Monday).