Netflix
Posted under: I tried signing up to Netflix yesterday and got an error “We are unable to start your Netflix membership with the information you provided. Please contact Netflix Customer Services 1800 94 86 16.” I rang the number and got a crazy over-friendly robotic american who asked me where I was calling from:
- Ireland
- Oregan?
- No, Ireland
- Arlington?
- *Slowly* I R E L A N D
- *Slowly* A R L I N G T O N?
- No, I R E L A N D! It’s this little country in Europe right beside the UK, you know, where the leprechauns come from?
- Oh! A I R L A N D? Very good sir, our technicians will definitely look into that straight away. Please check back soon, and sir? YOU MAKE SURE AND HAVE A GREAT DAY NOW!
Still getting the error today.
That other time I went to the States…
I ain’t no high flyer. On exiting San Francisco Airport – the first thing I found myself doing was driving on the wrong side of the road with a huge motherfucking SUV coming straight at me. Now I KNEW I was supposed to drive on the other side of the road – but the other side of which fucking road? There were about 12! And I picked the wrong one.
Minutes later – I was in the appropriate lane, a bit flustered, having JUST learned to drive and, you know, having JUST narrowly escaped death. But I somehow made it to California in one piece and collapsed onto a hotel bed. It all seemed a grand adventure. Not sure why anyone trusted me to make such a voyage on my own! I sure didn’t. I’d just got my driving license but not sure I should have been awarded a Fully Functioning Mature Adult License just yet. Somehow there’s no test for that.
The next morning, a completely overdressed weirdo from Dublin arrived at the Palm head office in Sunnyvale. I somehow got it into my head that my never-worn weddings/funerals/interviews suit was the way to go. First guy I met was a cool looking dude in ripped jeans, a punk t-shirt, and some nice tats.
First impressions last. And here was me, looking like a straight-laced office monkey. Self-concious levels multiplied threefold by jetlag and not entirely sure what I was doing here. Or if I was cut out for this new job. Flying Fish out of water! Would you have offered to bring this weirdo out on the town? Me neither – so I ended up on my own every night in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, thinking I would adore the peace and quiet of childless evenings – but just feeling lost and lonely.
Sunnyvale is pretty dead. The local hokey bar across from the hotel was amusing for one night only. There was nothing around for miles. I was going stir crazy by the end of the week, I made it my mission to do something I would NEVER usually do – but suddenly seemed like the best idea ever. I was going to find an Irish bar.
Have I ever mentioned I’ve a sense of direction like a tiger has a sense of humour? Three hours after I left the hotel I was wandering around Sunnyvale with a map, grumbling to myself about the whole place, and then I eventually found this strip of bars and my final destination, Fibbar Magees!
Unfortunately it wasn’t rammed with other out of town Irish lost boys looking to have a bit of banter. It was full of big-jawed american jocks, and one of which was loudly slagging off the Irish as drunks. In a fucking Irish pub! I bit my lip and went to the bar, and with seemingly the only Irish accent in the place, ordered a pint. And the bar girl goes. “Jayziz where’d the fuck have you come from?” – “Phibsborough!”. “Ha deadly, me too!” she goes. “Jimmy, Lorraine, come over here and meet Phibsborough”. At last!
And indeed, one by one, some other lost soldiers sheepishly sauntered in, swung there heads towards the banter and joined the other Aliens on this remote planet.
The next morning I woke to discover someone had written a drunken blog post and then got sick on my laptop, so I removed both, checked out and drove up to San Francisco a day early where there was plenty to eat, drink, and see before heading back home the next day.
And for some reason, four years later, I decide to replace that drunken blog post with this sober one.
Quincy M.E. and Cameron Diaz doing the La Bamba
Pun intended : you may or may not remember that I have a particular interest in memory. If you read this post you can see why my interest would be piqued by a review of a book called “Moonwalking with Einstein – the Art and Science of Memory“, as it’s a very similar story to mine; someone with an average memory (or in my case, a terrible memory) discovers amazingly effective memory techniques, then spends a year memorizing all kinds of obscure things with ease, but ultimately, realises he still can’t remember where he left his car keys, or his car! and also realises that even though these techniques are very handy for some things, it’s still far easier to write down shopping lists and stick people’s numbers in your phone. The one big difference with my story and this is that I didn’t end up entering a national memory competition.
Joshua Foer is a journalist who began writing an article about the U.S Memory Championships, and then a year later gave as good as the other memory masters. “Moonwalking with Einstein” is bookended by those two events; his attendance at the 2005 U.S Memory Championship, and his entry into the 2006 event. What you get between the book ends is a fascinating exploration of the science, art, and history of memory, mnemonics and memory techniques.
When I first heard of the book, I thought it may only be for people like me who have an interest in mnemonics but it’s selling by the truckload and getting great reviews everywhere. The title “Moonwalking with Einstein” is a reference to the kind of mental image that’s all too familiar to anyone who uses these techniques. When the missus asks me for one of my numerous pin numbers, or the WiFi code, or similar, I say something like, “let’s see that’s a bear on a bike trying to eat a cat in a shell…. that’s 94977165.” So I found reading about someone else’s experience with all this stuff a fantastic read. Though everyone else seems to be enjoying it just as much.
- – -
And from a different angle, but wholly related, about a month ago I came across a website called Memrise. I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while, rather than the usual quick tweet when I come across a site I like. Memrise is a really well thought-out site designed to help your learn, or rather, memorize the vocabulary of various languages. I’ve been on beginners Spanish for the last month. I’ve been on/off trying to learn Spanish for years.
Memrise is by far the best tool language tool I’ve ever used. There’s the usual stuff: english / spanish phrases, with audio snippets. But every phrase has a mnemonic suggestion, a mem. It’s crowd sourced too, so you can add your own mem. For example a Fortnight in Spanish is Los quince Dias. My mem for this is: “Picture a fort at night, and on top, Los lobos have Quincy M.E. and Cameron Dias dancing to La Bamba.” How much easier is that to remember than repeating the phrase over and over and hoping it sticks? I’ll never forget that image, another phrase memorised with ease. And at it’s most basic, that’s all the memory champions do, and to some degree Savants too. And Memrise utilises the technique quite well, you don’t even have to come up with your own mental images.
What other language courses fail to do is give you the tools to learn. It’s a bit like buying a wardrobe from Ikea but they don’t give you the tools to build it. Memrise supply the phrases, and the tools to memorise them. By the way, I swear I have absolutely nothing to do with the site, I’m just very impressed by it. Oh and it’s also free. Completely free, as in no ads either. It also works quite well on an iPad. It’s as good as an app, without having to install an app.
The site also uses gamification pretty well too, something else I have a passing interest in that’s growing in popularity. Memrise gamifies language learning by daily quizzing you on your phrases. You get points for every correct answer, and creep up the league table. It becomes quite addictive, like in any game, always wanting to improve your high score and go higher in the league.
They also employ the metaphor of a memory garden, which works quite well. You have to plant seeds (new words), and harvest plants (add them to the quizzes), tend to your garden (practise new words) and water your wilting plants (practice old words). I guess it’s a bit like Farmville, except, instead of annoying everyone else on Facebook, you learn a new language. I’m just so impressed by the level of thought and execution that has gone into this site, without any profit in mind.
- – -
And the thing that ties in “Moonwalking with Einstein” with Memrise is that over the course of the book, there are a few characters who coach Foer in his memory techniques, members of the K7 memory masters, whose initiation is memorizing a deck of cards in a minute, drinking two beers and kissing the knees of three women. Or variations thereof. And it is these two guys Ed Cooke, and Ben Whately who have setup memrise. So I feel like i’ve been surrounded by these guys for the last few weeks.
So there you go if you’ve any interest in memory or learning new language, there’s a 5 star book and a 5 star web site.
p.s. I was discussing this with a colleague, very recently, who happens to speak Spanish fluently, and he asked me “why don’t you just remember Los quince Dias, instead of dancing on forts and shit?” and I guess some people can, but he’s just reinforcing my idea that a lot of people make the terrible assumption that everyone else learns, and thinks, and remembers exactly like them.
Different folks, different strokes
The response to Facebook updates always reminds me of some topics that I get to thinking about now and then:
- Different people learn new things, and adapt to new things, in very different ways.
- People are as different to each other on the inside as they are on the outside.
In technology upgrades, two types of people always surface; those who embrace change, and those who resist it and want to stay in their comfort zone. Two valid responses. Two different personas.*
Though there’s also a third type that’s easy to miss. People who couldn’t really give a shit one way or the other.
Years ago, part of a job I had, was to try and make everyone else’s job easier. You know, automating tasks and tweaking processes. But when I sent out updates, there was always a few groaners. And I found that really surprising at first. I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would groan about something designed with the sole purpose of making their life much easier.
Again it all came down to learning something new and implementing change. Even though the learning something new was ”Just click this, instead of 5 minutes doing that” and implementing the change took just a moment. Some people are naturally inclined to resist change, regardless of the reward. That’s mother nature fucking with your head. As she does in many ways.
I also discovered, that if I researched various methods of carrying out a task, and found one method infinitely easier than the others, there would still be people who preferred another method entirely.
And therein is my point. And I think it’s a big one. I think it’s the most important lesson I’ve learned in the last decade. People are very different to each other. More different than many people allow for regardless of the well known idiom in the title of this post. That’s the problem.
There’s as much, if not, much more difference between you and me in how we think than how we look. The way you think, learn, work, interact, enjoy, hate, feel about something is quite different to other people. Your brain took a completely different path to arrive at you being you.
Keep that in mind, either with colleagues, family, or friends, and some shit will be easier … either for you or whoever you’re interacting with. Life lesson 101 over and out.
*some updates are just shit, regardless of your persona – because of design by committee, or a lack of basic UI Design principles, aka common sense, or again not recognizing different personas – but that’s a different debate. I’m neither arguing for or against the latest Facebook update
Family cinema design
Why hasn’t someone designed a family cinema like this yet?
- Adult seats facing one way, child seats facing the other.
- Screen at one end showing kids movie, screen at other end showing grown-up movie
- Headphones at every seat.
Everyone happy!
On second thoughts: All seats the same size but they can be clicked into place one way or the other, to cater for different parent/kid ratios.
Seat hogs
I’ve just finished meeting all public transport offices about a new sensor I’ve invented that can be positioned overhead to detect the degree at which your legs are spread apart.
The sensor is only enabled when there are two people on a seat. So here’s how it works; if one passenger has their legs wider than 60 degrees, (thus preventing the person next to them from sitting comfortably) the sensor is triggered and they get a small prod up the arse and an announcement: “Ay up – don’t be such a selfish fucking cock – this seat is for two.“
I wanted to install automatic knee capping but the Bus Eireann solicitors wouldn’t go for it. The DART guys were game for anything though, suggesting everything from stun guns to full-on ejection seats. But we’re just going to go with the prod/announcement for now.
Installations on all window seats start next month, great news!
Super Fly Guy
A friend from college who I did the final year project with just sent me the link to the video of the game we made together. Looks pretty cool! I posted a video of it before but this looks a lot better. We made the motion controllers using accelerometers just before the Wii came out, we could have been billionaires!
SuperFlyGuy 3D Flying Game from Mainframe TV Video Production Co on Vimeo.
Doctor Heiter’s Connections
Any while I was looking up the details of The Human Centipede to do that image, I discovered that the director Tom Six, is my Doppleganger!
Chopsticks
Maybe it’s just me but this occurred to me this morning when I needed a long pointy thing:
Please don’t say you drive a Morris Minor
On census day PLEASE don’t say you drive a Morris Minor unless you really do. Because then you’re forcing the rest of us into Morris Minors whether we like it or not. And a lot of us really don’t want to be forced into buying a Morris Minor just because most of the country SAY that’s what they drive. In reality most of them don’t drive at all any more, and really only take the odd lift in a Morris Minor at weddings, and funerals.
“On the question of religion the enumerators have been instructed to guide people to fill in the form to reflect their background rather than their current position. How does this help us plan for Ireland’s future?”
“I’ll use an analogy: imagine a survey on car ownership. The question “Do you have a car?” is not asked; the survey goes straight to “What type of car do you have?” And then, someone who has no car is encouraged to say they have a Morris Minor because, way back, it was the traditional family car. What use would this information be?”
BRIAN WHITESIDE – Think carefully before answering census question on religion
Take me out
I feel like I’m supposed to be equally guilty about both of the following for different reasons as they’re both hated by many for different reasons, but some of my favourite TV shows at the moment are either wanky cultural discussion shows or bottom of the barrel trash TV. It’s all that middle brow stuff that I hate.
My guiltiest pleasure of all right now is Take Me Out. Of all the people who usually have Twitter and TV on the go, no one dares admit to watching Take me out, even though the same people are all over X Factor when it’s warbling season. I wonder if they’re afraid of the TTP*.
And then, on The, usually wonderful, Anti Room this morning I start to read the scathing words “Take Me Out is probably one of the most horrendously sexist shows ever dreamed up by a bunch of TV executives. ‘Scraping the barrel’ doesn’t even come close.” and I think “here we go“, all the while agreeing but still thinking “Yes but I can’t stop watching it!“. And then I get to the following line. “But here’s the rub: I. Cannot. Stop. Watching. It.” and I laughed so loud, the cat woke up with a jerk and fell off my desk.
That’s it in a nutshell. It’s the cheesiest shclock in years yet I can’t stop watching. I’m as intrigued as I would be were I watching a documentary about the mating habits of an alien species. To me, people who happily take part in a live cattle market, albeit tongue-in-cheek, are about as alien as they come. Cannot. Stop. Watching. Indeed.
So there we go. The Take Me Out fan club starts here, or rather there. And the TTP* can fuck right off.
*Two big groups you get on Twitter are
1. People watching shit TV but having fun on Twitter giving out about it.
2. The TTP (Twitter Taste Police). People giving out about people watching shit TV but having fun on Twitter giving out about it.
There’s a fine line between the two really but you have to wonder about the latter’s quality time if they spend their night on Twitter giving out about the former’s quality time. No Likey, no lighty!
Homeless Negro Adoption
Did I ever tell you about my perfect welcome to New York?
We’d got the train up from a small town in New Jersey, and as we emerged from the subway, coming up the last few steps and waiting to be greeted by the skyscrapers, we were met instead by this huge disheveled black guy with a big grin on his face. He was similar to that golden-voiced homeless dude in many ways, and the words he bellowed have stayed with me since:
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
BOYS AND GIRLS
YOU HAVE BEEN ELECTED
AND SELECTED
TO ADOPT
YOUR VERY OWN
HOMELESS NEGRO
He trailed along behind us for a good few minutes, wittering away and I was advised to ignore him. But he was quite the character and hard to ignore, and ultimately the most memorable part of the trip. And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls was my introduction New York City.
I was reminded of this by Andrews recent trip to NY.
Flickr set: US trip 2002.
Interview fail
I’m openly looking for a new job now. Which means I can post about my job-hunting, should I feel like it. I just got turned down for a job today. I usually do grand in interviews but this one was just a bit off from the start. What sucks is I’m pretty sure I blew it with one (or two) really basic questions. “List 5 factors that make a website accessible” and I completely blanked and ended up giving a long waffley answer rather than the requested list.
The ridiculous thing is that I’ve been building accessible websites for years now, the items I were to list are so ingrained in what I do every single day that I couldn’t manage to dredge them up from the bottom of my brain. When it came at me in the context of an interview question, it was like the word accessible lost all meaning, like when you say a word too many times. Building accessible web sites is my bread and butter. It’s all I do every day. It’s a bit nut’s that I screwed that question up so badly, negating all everything else. God, I could give lectures on building accessible sites, yet there and then I couldn’t list 5 simple practices of accessibility.
It’d be like asking an experienced builder to list all the ingredients he mixes into his foundation and he says “Jaysus I couldn’t tell you Paddy!” and then doesn’t get a building job despite the fact that he’s been building solid looking houses for years, and you can go and have a look at a whole street of them. Damn, chalk it up Johnny Boy and be ready to answer the basics next time.
While I’m at it – despite what everyone says I’m not convinced wearing a full suit is the best idea either – It’s just a hunch but I can’t help thinking I have less of a chance of *clicking* with the interviewer, who in my field tend to wear the same uniform I do every day – Jeans, Hoody and T-shirt. Not that I’d wear a hoody to an interview obviously but you can be shirty without being stiff. And if there’s no click, no rapport, you can forget about everything else. Doesn’t matter what you know or don’t know. I’m dropping the suit next time, unless entirely appropriate. Wotcha think?
- – - – –
UPDATE: I was so glad this interview was a fail. Much happier with the job that I since got.
Is it ready yet missus? It’s 10 O’Clock!
Talbot street tack-o-meter
I had to walk up Talbot street during the week and I was glancing into all the shops as I walked up… and charting this graph as I walked.
Inception
Tell me it’s not just me. Are your dreams just a grey hazy fog of blurry sensation lacking in clarity and continuity? Or are they perfectly clear full-colour glossy images full of detail, like say… Inception. I need to watch that movie again. I just don’t get it. I had the exact same experience with Dark Knight. Found them both to be completely over-hyped action movies with people speaking about them as if they were so much more.
Indeed Inception is an extremely well made, much-better-than-your-average action movie but still. It wasn’t the only thing that jarred with but the dream thing often annoys me. Why don’t they ever make an effort to make dreams even slightly dreamlike? Yes I know in nearly every single movie you’re not supposed to know what’s a dream and what isn’t – but what a fucking cop out. It’s like shooting in the daytime and calling it night. It’s like setting a Vietnam movie in New York. It’s like casting Leonardo Di Caprio as a grown man…. oh, right. Point is: showing someone waking up in a sweat does not turn the previous scene into a dream.
Mark Kermode put Inception at number one in his top five of the year. But if you listen to his reasons they’re more political. It’s because it’s a big blockbuster that isn’t stupid or completely dumbed down. Like say any Michael Bay movie. And indeed those really dumb movies need to be discouraged but that doesn’t make Inception the best movie of the year.
I didn’t hate it – but definitely didn’t love it. Maybe it’s Decaprio. I just never buy the baby face in an adult role. The quality of the plot is debatable. But I think it’s more the setting and mood. It just feels like any other action packed blockbuster.
And I don’t just hate action packed blockbusters. Some of my best friends are black:
Alien or Bladerunner. They’re not particularly intelligent (Kermode’s defining factor for Inception) but they’re toned, dark, moody. Aesthetic masterpieces. Inception and Dark Knight just lacked that final sheen for me. They still spoke the same Hollywood accent as every other action block buster. Astounding special effects. But special isn’t beautiful. And and an intelligent plot isn’t enough. Not for film of the year.
Keep the wolf away from the door.
Keep the wolf from the door at election time with this friendly message. Large version here.
Pomegranate seeds
Getting very lazy around here lately. I changed the theme on my site a few weeks ago and then still didn’t do any new blog posts. I promised myself I’d never write a blog post that starts like this, who wants to read it? But then there’s so much I said I wouldn’t post that there’s little else to post. Specially as most of my thoughts etc find themselves on Facebook or Twitter these days. And all my book “reviews” are now going on Goodreads. Might just lax the rules a bit, and start posting more often, even if it is random stuff.
I think at the very start this was going to be a web design blog. Got bored with that pretty quickly! I do post new designs now and then though. Actually – I’ve just updated my web design portfolio. But wanted to give a special mention. I always seem to be doing sites for the Missus! Here’s the latest Pomegranate is a charity that “raises money and hope for infertility”. Basically they raise money for couples who can’t have children naturally but can’t afford infertility treatment.
I meant to post about this at the time. It took off really quickly though. In no time at all there were 500 likes on the Facebook page. And the donations started coming in very quickly. And just this week news came in that the first couple to receive help from Pomegranate have a confirmed pregnancy. How fantastic!!!
Build your own ghost estate
A new toy that should be on tonight’s Late Late Toy Show.
Some Stuff, Wotsits and Thingy’s from Zefrank
I’m subscribed to the Ted Talks podcast, so every couple of nights I watch one of the talks in bed. And as much as I love them in general, I have to be honest, I’m getting really bored with the environmental ones lately. There’s only so many you can listen to. I scrolled past ten of them last night and then saw the name Zefrank which made me smile and I didn’t stop smiling until it was over, you gotta love a bit of Zefrank.
If the video doesn’t appear in your feed, you can watch it here: http://www.ted.com/talks/ze_frank_s_web_playroom.html
How to make a fairy fly
Movie remakes starring the Invisible Man
This was just going to be a Photoshop Friday blog post but I’ve entered it into a competition instead. Most clicks wins lots of cool stuff. So feel free to share!
Here’s the link:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnb3/movie-remakes-starring-the-invisible-man-bbd
Current leader has 53,000 hits though. So there’s slim chance.
The king of Comic Sans
I read this over a year ago but it’s a great story I find myself posting it in various places every now and then. It originally popped up in a thread about fonts on metafilter. The King of Comic Sans…
Every month or so, we then decide who has spotted the most unexpected and/or inappropriate usage since we’d last judged it and they’re declared the current “King of Comic Sans” – complete with a certificate and free booze for the evening (yes, unsurprisingly, this competition is generally carried out in a pub).
Anyway, about three months ago now my mother passed away. She’d been battling cancer for about two years but it finally won. Mercifully, she lived a relatively full life until virtually the very end – it was only in the final month, after the cancer spread to her brain, that she detoriated seriously. Then, after a couple of days of serious pain, she slipped into a sleep from which she never regained consciousness and died about three weeks later.
As it happened, I was the only family member with her when she died – it was very early in the morning and we’d been operating a “shift” system during the nights to ensure there was always someone with her.
I took a minute to compose myself (okay, maybe more than a minute) and then went and woke my dad and the rest of the family. Whilst they were having their own moments, I went to look for the little booklet that said what you had to do next. Towards the end, when it had become clear that she didn’t have much time left, the charity people had given her this – it said who to ring, what to ask for etc.
She wouldn’t show it to us at the time (said it was “too morbid”) but told us it was in the top draw of her bedside cabinet.
Now, as the others had their own moments, I remembered about the booklet and opened the draw. It was there, just like she said it would be.
It was a little A5 booklet with a Lily on the cover. I opened it up and inside it listed in great detail and in formal yet understanding language, who needed to be called and what could be done when.
It was also written entirely in Comic Sans.
Of course I wasn’t really thinking entirely clearly at the time and this completely passed me by. At least it did until the very last page. There, scrawled in the corner in my mother’s shaky handwriting, complete with an arrow pointing at the printed text below, were the words:
“Comic Sans!!!!”
My mother had known about the competition – I’d told a story about it last year during Christmas Dinner. She also knew that I tend to deal with grief by just getting on with things, and so probably guessed I’d be the person who read the booklet.
We don’t give out a certificate to the “King of Comic Sans” anymore. By unanimous decision we have a little plastic silver cup called “The Garius’ Mum Memorial Trophy.”
I think she’d like that.
Sketches of the kids
I haven’t really used my graphics tablet properly since I got it last Christmas. Mostly just use it as a regular input device. But I only got around to figuring out the pressure settings in photoshop recently so it can mimic a real pencil. It’s so much easier to copy a photo and the freedom of editing is great. I rarely draw so well on paper without an undo command! The rubber doesn’t quite cut it.
One more step
“The world’s a headmaster who works on your faults. I don’t mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you’ll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that’s wrong with us, if we’re too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that’s a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn’t such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps.
There are always more.”
— David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
Social media is such a crap name
Social media is such a crap name.
I’ve been dossing on the Internet since I first heard about it. Mailing lists, discussion groups, forums, usenet, whatever. Discussing common interests. Sharing links. Talking shite. Forming relationships. Meeting new friends online and off. And fueling my social life. Hear that? Not substituting my social life with a synthetic one – fueling my real one.
The tools have changed in the last few years now and they have an unfortunate collective title. Social Media. So now every day I have to listen to some expert tit on the radio, or read a quote from some other gobhole who really has no idea what they’re talking about. They see a title ‘social media’, assume the rest, and make total tits of themselves. It’s getting more boring by the day. And the flocks of tits are getting bigger.
It’s exactly like the IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) débâcle years ago. Brilliant music but scoffed at by many because it garnered an unfortunate name that stuck.
Bah, here’s some classic IDM presented to you by the magical tools of social media;
Fish spotting
Lunch time. Full tide at Clontarf bay. Spotted lots of fish; large Roach right in against the wall swimming in couples and threesomes. Busy shoals of silvery fry trying to stay away from the Roach, and even some jumpers farther out clearing a few feet out of the water and making a big splash like something from an old irish coin.
I can’t quite remember which came first. Being obssessive about trying to spot wild fish whenever I’m near water. Or those weird recurring dreams where I’m obssessively trying to spot wild fish whenever I’m near water.
I honestly can’t remember whether some memories, like spotting a big carp in the Liffey, are actual memories or just memories of dreams. But spotting fish is a bit of an odd experience these days; I have so many strange dreams about fish-spotting that when it actually happens for real, like at lunchtime, I feel a little dizzy, as if I’m half transported back to dreamland for a few seconds and have to look away from the water to get head back to reality. But I never can tear myself away, and have to wait for the fish to swim away before I come back to reality.
Yes – definitely one to be filed under waffle.
The Ambassador’s skull
You know that famous anamorphic painting The Ambassadors?
I was messing about with it in Flash and it’s very easy to show the distorted skull morphing into the image you’re supposed to see from an angle. Have a look see.
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Recent Posts
- Netflix
- That other time I went to the States…
- Quincy M.E. and Cameron Diaz doing the La Bamba
- Different folks, different strokes
- Family cinema design
- Google+
- Seat hogs
- Super Fly Guy
- Doctor Heiter’s Connections
- Chopsticks
- Please don’t say you drive a Morris Minor
- Take me out
- Homeless Negro Adoption
- Interview fail
- The Weakest link