Slint are a seminal alternate guitar-rock band from the 1990s. I first came across them on the soundtrack to Larry Clark’s Kids, which was one of those albums which promised that the film would be a-fucking-mazing. Instead it was a bit of a bummer, but the majesty of Slint’s “Good Morning Captain”…
Steph Swainston’s Fourlands is [...]
I knew it was a bad sign when, halfway through the film, I started regretting not going to Maplin’s. That’s not how it should work if you put the cash down to go and see the latest Hollywood blockbuster; you shouldn’t have the urge to stifle a yawn halfway through, let alone think about checking [...]
This book starts with a potted history of Wikipedia, beginning at it’s predecessor Nupedia, and then follows the development of the site until sometime in mid-2008, when the book was published. As an effort to keep up with both change and the technology, a wiki was set up to act as an afterword. Weirdly, although [...]
On Friday, I left the house for Datarama, Newcastle’s software version of Dorkbot. Well, maybe it’s a more artistic, friendly version of Dorkbot, without all the posturing that can be seen at the Limehouse. That’s not strictly important.
What is important is that, whilst there, I presented my resubtitled version of Gran Torismo.
Gran.Torino.subtitles (that’s the subtitle [...]
In my teenage years, I had a big comic habit (graciously funded by my parents). It all started with the Silver Surfer double-issue where the Kree-Skrull war kicked off, on a holiday in Saffron Walden. I can’t remember the year it was, but it was before my reading speed kicked into the ludicrously high speed [...]
I’m reading Infinite Jest as part of the Infinite Summer project, and I’ve got some reservations.
Infinite Jest is a big book, but I’ve read bigger, and I’ve certainly read better. I think my flatmate summed it up best: when I pointed out the size of IJ, and how I wasn’t really enjoying it, he said [...]
My reading of Infinite Jest is part of Infinite Summer, an online reading group of the novel by David Wallace Foster
Infinite Jest: is it really that great a novel, or is it merely called a great novel owing to its size? After all, American’s like big things: Buicks, skyscrapers, Texas. And Infinite Jest is a [...]
I have a deep antipathy for Torchwood. You see, Doctor Who was my introduction to Science Fiction. I mean the old-school Target book series, which were novelisations of the broadcast episodes, unrestrained by budgetary considerations. A deep space station can only be written in a way that it appears in deep space, whereas careful financial [...]
Confederacy of Dunces is a book from the late 1960’s, set in New Orleans. I first heard of it from the writer/speaker/internet guy Merlin Mann, who uses a line from it as his Twitter ‘handle’, differentiating his presence on the mighty microblogging service from his more professional website, 43folders.com.
As I said in my last post, [...]
I’ve just brought a new bag.
I should explain; I ‘m only really excited by the prospect of buying bags and notebooks. After all, anything could go into them. This means that I own a lot of notebooks (they’re cheap) and some really swanky bags. I tend to pay at least £40 for a bag and [...]
