Archive for September 2009

Mouth

In Photos and Videos on 29 September 2009 with Comments Off

I think there’s a very high chance Al took this photo, because I had the little cam­era tak­ing foot­age for my awe­some sea creature doc­u­ment­ary I will never edit into an actual film. This was taken at the point where “stay in the Atlantis Palm Hotel” was added to the list of things to do before I die, because even stand­ing in the lobby/shopping centre/aquarium was, frankly, amaz­ing. I’m fairly sure that most of the people who designed Dubai were on very strong hal­lu­cino­genic drugs at the time, but you really need to hand it to them for actu­ally mak­ing it all hap­pen. And for hav­ing no end of awe­some ice cream for sale.

Och, ye cannae come in the noo, hen

In Rants, Websites on 27 September 2009 with 3 comments

I’ll be hon­est: I secretly love the Daily Mail. Not in a ser­i­ous way, or even in the same — admit­tedly slightly evil — way that I love watch­ing people get park­ing tick­ets, but in the way that some­thing goes so far bey­ond the bound­ar­ies of bad that it begins to tran­scend real­ity and become breath­tak­ing awe­some, in the true ‘worthy-of-amazement’ way.

If you’re from the UK, you won’t need a primer in Daily Mail Hate, and the quite wor­ry­ing trend of people read­ing a Daily Mail head­line or story and using that as an allegedly fac­tual basis for some form of pre­ju­dice. In fair­ness, the DM also does a good line in cute animal pho­tos and in quirky stor­ies that BBC News will steal the next day, although they tend to be some­what less con­ten­tious. But they have now pub­lished a head­line that goes wildly, enter­tain­ingly, bey­ond even the DM’s usual stand­ards: “Eng­lish pas­sen­gers forced to show pass­ports when arriv­ing in Scot­land”.

In short, we Scot­tish people hate you Eng­lish people so much, even though you pay for everything for us and we steal all of your money and give it to stu­dents and ill people that we now make you show us your pass­ports at the air­port. We think you are such a major ter­ror risk that you might do an incen­di­ary Mor­ris dance or foot­ball hoo­ligan­ise us all to death that we have decided to to incon­veni­ence you slightly in order to make our point.

So let me do all of middle Eng­land a favour and trans­late the head­line into actual fact: some pas­sen­gers, regard­less of where they’re from, are being asked to show their pass­ports at some air­ports for secur­ity reas­ons. This, strangely, will prob­ably also include some Scot­tish people, return­ing home to Scot­land in order to deep fry a Mars Bar and toss a caber or two before nip­ping back down to Engli­and to steal your votes. And so hor­rific is the abuse of our Scot­tish powers that the Mail end the piece with the news that “Met­ro­pol­itan Police, which cov­ers Heath­row and City air­ports in Lon­don, also use the powers on domestic pas­sen­gers. A Met spokes­wo­man said: ‘From time to time we to stop people and look at their travel doc­u­ments. It’s not that unusual.’” This would con­sid­er­ably under­mine the entir­ity of the Mail’s argu­ment but, erm, you know, that prob­ably doesn’t count as kilt-screening because, erm, ooh, look what Sienna Miller’s wear­ing today! And is that a baby duck without a mother?

I admit it: I’m a bit­ter Scot who some­times gets annoyed when Dorothy Per­kins in Sus­sex won’t take my 100% genu­ine Scot­tish £20 notes without first treat­ing me like a money laun­derer who’s put on a dodgy accent. I’ve had whole argu­ments with my Eng­lish boy­friend when he won’t accept that the word “juice” cov­ers all forms of drink­able flu­ids apart from water and alco­hol. The words “answer” and “dan­cer” do not — and can not — rhyme. But regard­less of that, even we money-grabbing, bagpipe-playing, mean­ies, who have sent our entire pop­u­la­tion to work in the Cab­inet, really couldn’t care less about look­ing at your pass­port unless we have to, apart from to laugh at  your photo.

After all, our time is pre­cious: we have chips we could be eat­ing instead.

Image inspiration

In Design, Websites on 25 September 2009 with Comments Off

Like most people who have to be cre­at­ive for a liv­ing, I go through troughs and peaks of inspir­a­tion. And some­times the troughs are big­ger than the peaks, with my most recent trough last­ing, well, all summer.

One of the ways I store images and ideas that feed the idea machine, though, is on a big folder on my hard drive, not an ideal solu­tion since I’m not always sit­ting at my desk when I need to be inspired, so I was quite excited to find ImageS­park. Free (for now), ImageS­park allows you to upload and share the inspir­ing images found online and, import­antly, give some credit where it’s due. Fun even for those who don’t have to fil­ter everything they see in life into Pho­toshop, I just love to watch the some­what whim­sical trends and pat­terns that emerge in what I like. Today, poster design. Cur­rently, col­our. Always, birds.

This time last year…

In Hamster on 12 September 2009 with 1 comment

When we took him through to Glas­gow for his last hol­i­day, it was claimed that babysit­ting Frip­per is, “scar­ier than look­ing after [my] actual baby would be”. This is true. I couldn’t have Frip­per and a baby, because the baby could never com­pete. But just because the boy pees in a potty and gets a treat every single night when going to bed (and a feast on his birth­day) and yes, we maybe checked flats we were view­ing for how hamster-manoeuverable the door­ways were, doesn’t mean he’s spoilt. It just means he lucked out so hard the day we walked into the pet shop.

Mind you, does that look like the face of a ham­ster who thinks he lucked out?