groc's bloggette: September 2004 Archives

But really this is a time when MPGs really show their weakness, you'll need a lot of bass boost for this to get the most out of it. I used to play this on vinyl on my proper grown up system* with big beefy bass speakers... ooooh, those old analogue synths.

*Not really but it was the best I could afford and it was still lots better than anything I own now. Sighs.

by groc at 12:12 PM | Comments (9)

Whooooo

Totally strange webnet links java browser thing (found via my referal logs) which makes me wonder what strange things have they might have got planned with the GoogleBrowser.

'Xciting.

by groc at 07:56 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2004

cats

Some cat porn.

Some cat poetry.

they go well together.

by groc at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)

stretchy

New Incredibles Movie Trailer.

Which reminds me: how much longer have we got to watch for the Spongebob movie? I know it won't be out in America-land until Thanksgiving. So will we have to wait for Xmas or even until the new year?

by groc at 02:51 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

bottle cap doodles

yay! Go Nerf.

by groc at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

if voting changed anything

they'd make it illegal. Oh, they do that already? What a f**king surprise.

via Die Puny Humans >> The commission, in a report earlier this year, said that in Florida, where President Bush won a bitterly disputed election in 2000 by 537 votes, black voters had been 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected and were often prevented from voting because their names were erroneously purged from registration lists.

by groc at 03:49 AM | Comments (0)

dance

dance_4

Originally uploaded by groc.

Why you shouldn't use marker pen to colour in solid blacks...

From a series of totally handmade signs outside of a Dancing School in West Worthing.

by groc at 02:26 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2004

baffle

Lomographers Baffled Over 'What the Hell is Lomography'.

by groc at 01:11 PM | Comments (1)

The country is turning beige.

No really it is, and it�s worrying me.

On Worthing sea front there�s a wonderful Art Deco style building which when I first moved here it was showing signs of neglect, it was painted a not particularly appealing shade of light peachy orange. Guess what colour it is now? A few buildings down there was a block of buildings painted in the most revolting shade of green imaginable, guess what colour it is now? Even though I didn�t like the choice of colours before, and they were pretty foul -I think they were far preferable to what they are now. One of the things I�ve always particularly disliked about Brighton and Hove was that by law every building on the sea front has to be painted the exact same council-approved off-white creamy beige colour. But that mindless state-sponsored conformity now seems to be quietly spreading along the South coast. Don�t they know that the seaside is supposed to be a bit tacky? It�s a major part of it�s charm.

The boyfriend and his family have recently moved to a newly built house on a housing estate - guess what colour all the houses� interiors are decorated in there?

One of the places this current trend seems to have started is with Ann Maurice - that �House Doctor� from California. She has the one tune - the one simple concept and sells it very well, over and over again. Which in a nutshell can be summarised thus:

If you�re selling your house you�ve got to make it look as much like a show home as possible, all traces of your personality and as much of you and your family�s presence has to be removed, you�re then meant to decorate it in the most inoffensive, blandest way possible in order to appeal to the maximum number of people to make that sale.

Which is all very fine, sensible and reasonable. What people then forget is that once you own your own home you are allowed, and are actually supposed to express your personality and your own taste upon that property -it is these touches which make it a home rather than a hotel room. But we live in such superficial times now I guess people don�t know who they are any more - and have to be told what they want. Thus the rich folk get in interior designers in to do it all for them, and the rest of us get a never-ending stream of home decorating programmes. Oh yes, the whole country had a brief flirtation with colour during the 90s but instead of going for what was personal and really liked with whole multitude of colours being chosen, what most people ended up with was lime green and orange -because they were being told that was what was trendy and it was all that could be readily found in all the shops. Of course those colours really aren�t for everyone, far from it. So later -suitably appalled and fingers burnt -the age-old chromophobia has come back with a vengeance and so it�s hello beige / magnolia /cream / white all over again. The general public all thinking -as one: �You can�t go wrong with beige - it�s not quite as clinical and hard as bright white. It adds a air of sophistication.�

No it doesn�t, what it does is add an air of bland unimaginative stultifying conformity. If you really want to show a level of sophistication learn a bit about colour theory, learn about what sort of person you are, discover your own preferences and develop your own aesthetic taste, make your own style.

Looking at the new trends in the plethora of home decorating TV programmes which currently blight the networks - the current fashion now is for lots of pale beige or white and a few - carefully controlled accent (gasp) colours. Which is because even the designers know that too much beige and white is soul-deadening.

Of course there�s an unwritten agenda being played out here - the notion of fashion has now crept into home-making and what fashion is all about - is keeping people addicted to short-lived novelties. It�s about keeping people away from all that might suit them personally, keeping them always slightly dissatisfied and neurotic so they�re constantly running to the shops to buy new things to try fill that nagging emptiness. Which is what all the DIY stores want to keep their tills ringing year after year.

It�s all very depressing.

by groc at 09:32 AM | Comments (4)

September 20, 2004

snip snip

jake (not particularly sfw)

by groc at 08:26 AM | Comments (3)

got milk?

snake milk?

by groc at 06:45 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2004

sunrise

oh look - it must be time to go to bed... but there's Dr Who and some Spongebobs still to be watched.

by groc at 07:13 AM | Comments (0)

Bad ads 3

Oh no, I see Actimel are back again with a rehash of their rubbish advert. Still on with their bizarre concept of �dare to buy our product and get put under constant 24 hour surveillance� schtick (and by doing so we'll be spending vastly more money than we would ever lose by simply giving the poor woman her money back -whether our yoghurt drink was responsible for making her hypermanic or not).

Why can�t they get into their heads that Big Brother style scrutiny is not a good sell to anyone, well anyone other than the Home Secretary David Blunkett. Omigod. I�ve just thought - it�s him, he�s behind all this - he wants all terrorist suspects to� no ,wait he wants everyone to start buying Actimel so that when they start noticing that they�re being spied on 24/7 he can blame it all on the Actimel company�

It's all starting to make sense now�

by groc at 03:02 AM | Comments (0)

September 18, 2004

Chippie alert

Oh hellllo. I see one of my favourite TV carpenters and once used as a bloggette pin up has made it onto the cover of September's Attitude magazine - wearing only scimpies. And so, according to the interview within he's now offically out. I'd still like to see him a porno with JJ though.

(And why is Attitude still running that 'humourous' agony column. It's a bit of a stale worn out joke now that has over stayed it's welcome by about five years now surely?)

by groc at 01:56 AM | Comments (5)

September 17, 2004

cooo - junk. Lovely, lovely junk

A journey through junkland.

by groc at 05:53 AM | Comments (1)

September 16, 2004

futon hinges

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I got delivery of a metal frame futon today (yay! At last something proper to sit on). But uh-uh. Now I�m flummoxed. There�s these two hingey springy mechanism things which are the crucial part of the whole thing - but since the real things bear no relation to the cheapo shoddy badly drawn instruction sheet whatsoever I�m left with no idea how they�re supposed to go on the frame. Anyone had any experience of putting one of these things together? Help.

I've got to give kudos to Ikea for putting the effort into having really good instruction sheets -which I�ve never had a problem with and boo hiss to the folk who did this futon's sheet.

Update: After much back-breaking trial and error it's done. But eeek, doesn't having furniture take up room.

by groc at 10:42 PM | Comments (5)

Rippoff Britain. No. You don't say.

Apparently the UK is charged more for iTunes downloads than the rest of Europe. Why do the Americans think of us as cash cows -are they still getting their own back for the Empire or something? Damn it - they won their independance now it's about time they showed a bit of good grace -or at the least a bit of fairness.

by groc at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2004

Aaaaaaargh!

Only half way through September and I've just seen the first Xmas commerical on TV.

hate

Xmas.

The only 3 day (or is 10 day?) religious/secular capitalist ceremony that lasts 3 months long - now they're tentively angling to stretch it for four? No, thank you.

by groc at 05:25 PM | Comments (5)

cute

squirrel!

by groc at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)

file naming

The wild and wacky world of file sharing has brought it to my attention just how many different and conflicting and confusing and ultimately annoying ways there are naming a simple file�

you could go for

the directory structure

/name of artist/album/track number - name of song

(I think that's my preferred choice, it's neat and simple -up to a point)

but if it's a file on it's own do you go for

artist_name - track number - title of track

track number - artist - track title

track title - artist -and ditch the track number.

do you use spaces (which some antiquated OSes baulk at) or -hyphens- or _underscores_ or CapitalsWithinTheTitle or do you use (brackets?) or even [square ones?]

I DO KNOW ONE THING -THAT ANYONE USING NOTHING BUT ALL CAPS NEEDS TO BE TAKEN OUT AND SHOT - THE MORONS

or th0se trYin8 hArd 2b "cl3v3r2" and "l33t" -they need a damn good shooting too.

Oh.and.i.really.hate.it.when.people.get.happy.with.the.full.stops.stop.it.with.the full.stops.

After all that Windows Media Player likes it's own way of going about things, as does WinAmp, as does iTunes -none of them compatable with one another. I do know that trusting any one of them to go through your system and organize everything for you is a sure route to disaster.

(On another point -I'm getting sick of having all these different programs on my 'puter that all pretty much do the same thing. Well, actually they all play the one single propriety file that the others don't -but then try desperately hard to do everything else. Real player (Ram and RM) should just stick to streaming files -but now it's an obscenely bloated CD, MPG playing cd-burning, web browsing monster, WMP (wma and wmv) as well, iTunes too (acc)... oh you get the idea). Bloat bloat bloat, compete compete, and my poor computer groans under the strain of it all. I won't mention that each has their own propriety DRM system -because I'm likely to get hysterical by then.

Sighs.

by groc at 03:27 AM | Comments (1)

September 14, 2004

83 lion

I've suddenly realised I've taken a lot of pictures of lions over the past few days. It must my moon in Leo making itself felt or something...

By the by - who'd like a flikr invitation?

by groc at 12:33 PM | Comments (5)

September 12, 2004

link dumping

hypnosis really does do things to your head...

Gays and lezzies to go on strike?

Here are two from Outwardly Normal:

DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology should make you paranoid.

The Onion's satire on Bush's administration in which nearly everything came true. Frightening. I haven't said it for a while -but America is really screwed.

Getting old sucks...

Once upon a time I might have found this funny - but these days I think it's kinda pathetic. Being gay just isn't cool any more -it really isn't. (I'm talking about the doll -OK.)

A flash documentary with sound on Lomography.

by groc at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)

There isn't enough

pretty piano music in the world. So here's another piece.

by groc at 02:48 PM | Comments (1)

Invaders revisited

I was watching the Invaders on channel 5 in the wee small hours of the morning (bloody stupid time for them to put it on...) and at the end I noticed Larry Cohen was created as it's creator. Cooo, Larry Cohen hey. I never knew that.

by groc at 02:41 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2004

think

different? Yeah -that'll be the day... What the hell is wrong with these people? Jeezuz. Mark my words there'll be iPod bukkake shots before long.

Maybe I should put up pictures of my cd players and of my nice new portable DVD player as an antidote...

by groc at 02:15 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2004

diary keeping

makes you poorly, apparently. Does this carry over to blogging - or is that OK because blogging is more open and 'social'?

Also environmental pollution is turning seagulls gay? I don't recall seeing any seagulls at the park at Brighton Pride. Maybe they had their own float and I missed it because I didn't go on the march? Darn.

by groc at 09:39 PM | Comments (2)

Plymouth Barbican scary fishy

scary fishy

Kinda appropiate since I've just watched Tim Burton's 'Big Fish'.

by groc at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)

Back home now

So very many photos... where to begin?

(PS it looks like aaaaaall my San Fran photos have disappeared into the digital ether. Hurrumph and sob and grumble and a bit more sobbing. Think I'll be saving up for something that you can download your photos onto, something which I can keep total control of... whether it's a laptop or a lovely archos thing or whatever.)

PS. Hellboy is on my recommended films list. It was great fun it was.

by groc at 01:02 AM | Comments (6)