I’ve just finished writing a small program that generates our website banner. I’m not a great programmer, by any means, but I’m pretty proud of this program. It’s been a long evening where I could have blamed my lack of programming skills on a stinking cold and slouched off to bed at any point, but by creating a program to make the above banner I think hope I’ve saved work later on.
For now, you can refresh to see the subtle yet intricate changes, or download the program yourself to dissect how it works.
Anybody who knows me, knows that I really like the Buck Rodgers TV show from the 1980′s. Idly browsing Youtube over the Christmas period, I’ve found this outake from the original pilot, where Buck and Wilma kiss.
Awwww.
I don’t think they ever got round to kissing at any other point in the show. Maybe they cut it in order to avoid sappy love stories, or possibly because the writers couldn’t think of any way to generate plots other than “Buck meets girl, girl in trouble”.
This is great news, because it’s IN NEWCASTLE. Where we at the Unnamed Laboratory are based! So what is a Maker faire? Well, according to their website it’s a family-friendly event that celebrates the
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. Over the past few years, Make magazine has been documenting the rise of this DIY mindset, and this festival will be a great thing to have on the doorstep.
If there is any one person who I’ve met from Newcastle that really embodies that DIY mindset, it’s got to be Derek, aka Bo the Clown. Currently, Derek is working towards presenting a massive multi-user bike installation as part of the Glow Festival, but he’s also an educator, philosopher, and storyteller. Hopefully, he’ll have the chance – and the time – to get involved with what the Maker Faire gets up to.
Now that we’ve shaken off the annoyances of changing themes, let’s talk fun stuff.
The video above is such a classic piece of mid-1990′s footage. The style of it is pretty eye-catching, washed in original sentiment grunge, but gear-heads like me will notice the reel-to-reel tape recorder in some of the session footage. Do you know how expensive recording things used to be? It was crazy! Now everybody has got a laptop that can do multitracking, so the cost of making a single has dropped.
And bear in mind that the footage you are seeing is from 1996. There wasn’t really an internet in the same way that we have one now; search was still getting started in a lab at Stanford University. There was still a media hierarchy that meant it could take months for some media to come out – ‘sleeper hits’, etc, that would permeate through a system of media.
I don’t really know much about Jem Cohen, who according to wikipedia has also designed the album covers for Fugazi. Apparently he shot this video for a fanzine, which seems like a very ambitious fanzine. At first I was confused, and thought that he was the same Jem that used to be in the Pogues, and later went on to make music inspired by the philosophies of the Clock of the Long Now. This is not so; apparently Cohen is his own Jem, working in different areas.
I’d stick with the video up until the last song, ‘Angeles’, comes on. That’s my recommendation, anyway.
If you are an RSS reader of this blog, you’ll not have noticed that I’ve made the site look different. Go take a look.
Cool, huh?
I’m going to keep my site this way for a while, as I feel that it’s a bit of a baffle that stops the less-nerdy and those people who casually browse my site keeping an eye on me (but actually hate me).
I had to buy a new helmet, because my old one broke when I was going round the corner near Heaton Park Road (actually, the junction at Heaton Hall Road and Wandsworth Road) and did a huge swerve to avoid some numpty riding a downhill bike. I mounted the pavement and ended up gently crashing to the floor in a tangle of skinned elbows and bouncing craniums.
Whilst I was fine physically, it would have been nice if the idling taxi driver parked nearby could have checked on me, as I lay on the pavement looking dazed. It would have been even nicer if my fellow cyclist, who I swerved to avoid, had done a little more than turn his head to check on me. But I don’t expect any signs of intelligence from taxi drivers or people who ride downhill bikes in city areas.
My new helmet is manly, huge enough to fit my bonce, and comes in lovely 1980′s colours. It’s difficult to not buy a new helmet when you prang yourself and find a bad-ass crack down the back of your old helmet, and I’d like to thank the manager of my local Edinburgh cycles for taking the time out to help me find a helmet accomadating enough for my cranium. Because, in all modesty, my head is fecking massive.
