fourth edition

A few brief links:

Why not visit Pompeii from the comfort of your own home? The ruins of Pompeii are now available on Google Street View.
This is absolutely lovely: Flare, a wind-sensitive electronic dress. “As the wind gently caresses the dress or if you “blow” on the dandelions themselves, a pattern of lights will twinkle across [...]

I do not know how many of you have read Alasdair Gray’s excellent dystopian novel, Lanark: a Life in Four Books? It takes place partly in Glasgow and partly in an imaginary Glasgow, known as Unthank. In Unthank the characters are forever chasing sunlight whilst seemingly dying of a symbolic disease known as ‘dragonhide’ (Yes, [...]

.. one Halloween costume down, one to go.
Other Half is currently trying to consider whether or not to stab the ear with a palette knife or not.
Oh, decisions…

Tomorrow my partner, David, and I are off to an arty little Halloween party. As I’m writing this, David is busy getting himself all Van Gogh‘ed up. Both ears are still intact, thankfully.  I have chosen to go as Frida Kahlo, who is pictured to the left. Having a similar colouring as Ms Kahlo [...]

The Guardian is running a series of semi-humourous columns called This Column Will Change Your Life and I hit upon It’s Not Easy Always Being Right the other night. I don’t think I’m always right – I live in  shades of grey – but I know that I often feel like I’m outsmarting people (mostly [...]

An assortment of various links for your pleasure.

Dicey knitting – for the ones among us who like to throw dice when we need to make a decision. “Start with the Ivory Cube — it will tell if you you knit, purl, slip, increase, decrease, or cable/twist. This is where you Impose Chaos“. Thanks, L.
Golden silk [...]

You take approximately 750g of ripe elderberries (rinsed and de-stalked, natch), 200g of granulated sugar, two table spoons of lemon juice, two diced cooking apples and about 2 pints of water. Stick ‘em in a pan and boil until you’ve squeezed every last drop of goodness from the elderberries. This should take about ten minutes.
(Remember [...]

I haven’t done one of these in ages. Also: insomnia has struck.

This is my new favourite cartoon. Strong words lurk within, beware.
Robert Barclay Allardice – The Celebrated Pedestrian: “His most famous feat was the walking of 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in 1000 hours for 1000 guineas in 1809.”
Fancy Fast Food: “Yeah, it’s still bad for you, but [...]

After spending the afternoon drawing, laughing and singing at Dr Sketchy’s (brief nudity, beware), it was a bit of a downer heading back onto Glasgow’s streets to find that Rangers winning the football league equalled people heckling other people and a lot of drunken aggression. Sectarianism is such an ugly thing and never fails to [...]

We have found more clay pipes by the Forth and Clyde Canal – here is one of the nicest pipes, if not exactly the most intact..
Notice also the rather interesting shards of china in the background. We’ve identified one piece with the Willow Pattern but the rest remain elusive. Interestingly we’ve found tiny bits with [...]