Jon Curnow's Digital Home
Promote your book in a strange new way.
You can’t really see this picture too clearly but the author of the book This Diary Will Change Your Life 2005 was eating the book this lunchtime at Waterstones, Piccadilly. I have no idea if he finished it or not and there was nobody buying it when I was in the shop just a photographer taking pictures. I thought it was an off was to promote a book.
Happy Birthday to me.
I found a fishmonger. I know this isn’t revolutionary but it’s important to me.
For several months, I have been trying to find a fishmonger – a good, decent purveyor of fine foods who will have fresh fish but prepare it for me on site and explain a little more about it. And today I found a great little place by Clapham South Underground station: Moxons.
There are too many obvious jokes here.
I have no real reason to post this about Matt Damon and porn apart from the fact that it amused me a great deal:
It’s difficult to tell if Damon’s tongue was firmly implanted in his cheek when he spoke, but World Entertainment News Network is reporting that Matt wants to make a “character-driven” XXX flick – with, dare we say it, a plot. [source]
And Steph and Alek have some great pictures. It’s probably not wise to think about it a great deal.
Cute guys in a video. I wish it was like this every lunchtime.
Really, I am not sure Steph and Alek should be allowed to post images of so many cute things. It doesn’t help when you’re catching up on their site over lunch; it
makes me want to watch music television all day just to see if it shows up.
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Originally posted at musak.org | Wayback – original | Wayback
Where did today go?
So I had the day off work today and had planned on doing lots of things. I did, in fact, do quite a lot but not the things I wanted to do. I wanted to work on some web site projects and other stuff that I usually don’t get time to do. Still, I upgrade this Movable Type instance to 3.11 so I can see the new features. I did – also – move it to a MySQL database rather than leaving it on the static files that it used to be on. I hope this has made it better but there will be – no doubt – be some oddities that need ironing out.
Comments now need approval unless you have a TypeKey id. This is designed to reduce the amount of spam but if I find spammers have keys I will just turn all comments to require approval.<
Apparently, there are 4.2 million cameras watching the people of London.
In my little piece about Gmail last week, I noted that my journey to work covers many CCTV cameras. In a piece published on the same day at CNN, it was noted that there are something like 4.2 million cameras observing our movements around the British capital. That really does seem like a great number. An American author, Jeffrey Rosen, notes,
Instead of being perceived as an Orwellian intrusion, the cameras in Britain … were hailed as the people’s technology, a friendly eye in the sky, not Big Brother but a kindly and watchful uncle or aunt [source]
Do you really think this is the case? I certainly don’t think of it as the people’s technology, although I will admit to a resigned acceptance of the devices. Overall, I suspect they are a necessary evil in the world we inhabit. Is that a foolish notion?
Why are we always looking for the next new phone? I know I’ve been looking.
Why Do We Love Our Mobile Phones?
Occasionally I have noted my use of a Palm-powered Treo on Orange in the UK. It’s an OK phone and an OK organiser (and an OK MP3 player and a poor camera), but as one pocket-sized device it more-or-less rocks. Sometimes I wish it were smaller, and sometimes I wish it were bigger. Sometimes I wish I’d spent the cash on the keyboard accessory, and sometimes I don’t.
Last month Engadget carried what they said were actual pics of the new Treo Ace/Treo 650, which is the next version of the device and – of course – carries some neat improvements. At the start of next year, I will be 12 months into the contract for the ‘phone and able to change it. The thing is – although I love all the features and I love the whole Palm experience – I can’t help thinking that I need to get a simpler machine that is just a telephone.
Ah, the dilemmas of the gadget obsessed.
Great pictures on other people’s web sites.
Matt Haughey has a superb picture of San Francisco on Ten Years Of My Life (entry for 1 September 2004), which – for some reason – is making me yearn to go back there. I once visited on a rainy week in 2000. It was a business trip, and my first time in the US, so there were so many other things going on that I didn’t really appreciate it as much as I would have liked to. I do remember the view from the top of the Marriott, but it’s certainly not as good as Matt’s view from the plane.
Don’t stop me now we are doing so well.
Since February, I have maintained regular gym training sessions and have found myself pleasantly surprised by my own enthusiasm for pounding a treadmill or rowing nowhere several times a week. I always return from the gym energetic and enthusiastic, but I am starting to note a worrying trend in myself in attempting to rationalise avoidance. So far I have not stopped myself from going, but my head keeps thinking that I could just miss this one and have a rest. It would be good to rest. I think this is a worrying trend, so, my gym buddy, time to put those motivational techniques to the test.
I do have to say that if, like yesterday, Thursday turns out to be a designated gym day, then it’s not too bad, as the cute aquarobics instructor is marching up and down the poolside, encouraging a bunch of ladies to float better (or something). You get a nice view from the third exercise cycle from the entrance.
I am fairly certain that my gym is not full of gay men. Firstly, there is far too much sport on the television screens (although I did watch a football match earlier this week – Hull v Bradford, if you’re interested. Bradford won). Secondly, there are no signs of the steroid problem amongst gay men identified by the NHS – although there are a worrying number of overweight middle-aged men wearing those head/sweat bands that used to be popular with tennis players. It’s not a good look – even in a gym.
The first digital download chart is out.
I’ve noted the online music charts several times. I didn’t hear the chart last night (the current chart is here), but Westlife’s old hit Flying Without Wings from 1999 topped the first official download chart yesterday. Now, I find Westlife pretty harmless, but a song from 1999 topping the first of the digital download chart? Some predict this is good. I am not one of them. Listen to the chart at the BBC.
In related news, as they say, I hadn’t realised that MSN US didn’t have a digital download site. Their UK service does (powered by OD2). MSN has their new US version in beta, and it looks OK but isn’t earth-shattering. What do you think?
Atlantic 252 Long Wave was born on 1st September 1989. Today is the 15th anniversary (I think) of the launch of the now-defunct Atlantic 252. I only mention this because it strikes me that the radio landscape in the UK has changed dramatically since it launched.
Happy September to you.
Today is the 15th anniversary (I think) of the launch of the now-defunct Atlantic 252. I mention this because the UK radio landscape has changed dramatically since it launched. I am no expert, but if I recall, there was something about DJ’s having to stand up when presenting (which made it sound very American). Gary King was the first voice (Mine is the first voice you will ever hear…on Atlantic 252), but I remember Charlie Wolfe and Dusty Rhodes (whose website I can no longer find); was Rusty Nails a presenter, or did I make that up? It was pop music on heavy rotation, with small amounts of talk and that hiss and crackle of long wave. In 1989, it was exciting and different, and the fact that it was really an Irish radio station gave the feel of a pirate broadcaster. Long wave really was the home of hit music (even if only for a little while).
And for Atlantic 252 fans, a couple of quick links:
Long wave radio Atlantic 252: Born 1st September 1989. Ceased transmission 20th December 2001.
Updates
2014: The fan links on this page were updated as many of the old sites had disappeared and the launch audio embedded.
Google knows all, but how much does it really know?
Since Google announced the Gmail service, there must have been a small rainforest of paper written about the privacy implications of scanning email. It’s never really bothered me (which you should not read as I don’t care about it – it just doesn’t bother me right now), and my lovely Gmail account remains somewhat underused at the moment (oh, and I do have a spare, if you’re interested and give me a good enough reason to send you the invite).
Anyway, Hublog has an interesting list of things Google knows about you(plus an interesting follow-up). Froogle is not mentioned there, but thanks to this link, they could believe I’ve just searched for dog beds twice in 10 minutes. If they infer that I have a dog (or am about to get a dog), they would be misreading this data.
Lots of organisations have access to lots of data about you. That should never be a problem. Personally, I am on CCTV for about 10 minutes after I have left my house until I arrive at the office. Anyone who cared to could tell you quite a lot about me by observing my travel patterns daily. My bank knows where I spend my money, and my doctor knows about my illnesses (although I have been to other doctors that my main doctor is not aware of).
The point is that mountains of information about me are out there. The problem is that none of it constitutes a full picture of me as an individual, and that is the real danger. Recording the data is not a problem until somebody tries to look at it. In itself, that’s not a great problem until somebody acts on an event because of that data. However, inferring something about me because of it is not a good idea.
It could almost be a new feature for this site: headline of the day.
I spent the holiday weekend in Copenhagen, and I will write something about it eventually!
In the meantime, I feel I have to post about my favourite headline of the day, which is on Digital Spy: Ulrika dyes her hair. Certainly more news than I needed.
Oops, I ought to fix the site.
Eric posted a comment about my entry Camp, and I have just noticed there has been a problem with the template that displays the comments. It should be fixed now, although I guess the spam comments will now show alongside the real comments.
I too rushed out and bought the Camp CD soundtrack, which I got in the mail yesterday, and it will be my soundtrack home in a few minutes! I got it from a cheap place in Canada – which was cool (although I guess it’s only cheap to me, used to paying overpriced UK CD prices.