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I’ve added a new section to my sidebar—’Friends and family’. As I’m sure the mentally agile among you have already guessed from the name, it’s a place for links to sites run by people I know. So, Mr. Bsag’s site is up there, as is my friend Joe’s new site, Interesting Thing of the Day. It is—as the name suggests—a fantastic mine of excellent writing about interesting things. If you’ve ever wanted to know about leaf cutter ants, bubble tea, the Battle of Dunkirk or lightsabres (amongst many other Interesting Things), this is the place for you. Take a look—it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Oh, and unlike the BT scheme of the same name, there are no concessions on these sites for my friends or family. For that matter, I don’t even get a reduced price. Sorry.

I’ve put up some more photographs from my Brummie excursion, to go with my earlier entry.

After what seems like an unbelievably long and painful gestation, Mr. Bsag’s gallery site has finally been born. I feel slightly awkward about advertising it here, but I’m hoping that no-one will object too much to what Lisa called “a plug for something in the family”.

It isn’t perfect by any means. I had to make a lot of compromises in all kinds of areas to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. It’s much less fancy than I was hoping, but I can always tinker a bit with it later. I also have no doubt that it will fail in all sorts of horrible ways on other platforms and browsers. If anyone has the energy to send me a bug report, please do. I really couldn’t bring myself to check the validation this weekend, so I make no claims about its compliance with standards.

If any of you actually feel like buying anything, please feel free! We (and our bank manager) would be pretty happy about that…

…this is the funniest thing I’ve seen all weekend. But then I have been hacking Mr. Bsag’s website for two full days. Your mileage may vary.

[via BoingBoing]

I just had to link to this: Joy of Tech’s take on the rumoured Panther ‘piles’.

Some Apple-related interested news today:

• New iBooks—Apple have announced a speed bump for the iBook. They now have 900 chunks worth of megahertzy goodness, plus larger hard drives. I love the new AlBooks, but I’m still very fond of the iBook. I think it’s something about the shiny, snowy look. And the Linux geeks love ‘em. [via MacNetJournal]
• Panther rumours—some interesting speculation about what might appear in the next revision of MacOSX. Fast user switching would be very welcome. (Mr. Bsag and I spend a lot of time waiting for each other’s applications to quit or restart when we log each other in and out. I share everything with my hubby except a user environment—what he does with a desktop is shocking. And don’t even get me started on his desktop picture…) The ‘piles’ idea sounds intriguing too, but did they have to give it such a “Carry On” name? It reminds me less of a feature of a modern, go-ahead operating system and more of elderly people queuing at the chemist for some ointment. [via ext|circ]

p. I’ve uploaded the first batch of pictures I took in Florida to “wings open wide”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/wingsopenwide/index.html — all of which were taken with the digital camera. When I get a chance, I’ll scan in some of the pictures I took with the Lomo. I also discovered that I could set more than one category for each image, so that it would appear in more than one gallery. So, for instance, some of this batch appears in both the Florida 2003 album and also in fauna or flora. When I get a chance, I might edit the others so that the categories make more sense.

p. “This (Salon - Hot, Sweaty and Scandalous)”:http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/04/04/bikram/index_np.html goes against all the stereotypes of Yoga instructors. Is he chilled-out? I don’t think so. Is he enlightened? Na-uh! It’s certainly never like this in the yoga class I go to. I also think that trying to claim that certain postures are your own invention — in a system which has been around “since about 500 BC (Allspirit Yoga Annex)”:http://www.allspiritfitness.com/library/features/aa012401a.shtml — is a bit cheeky.

p. It seems to also be part of a trend to ‘modernise’ traditional practices and pastimes, so that you need to buy lots of accessories before you take part in them. One of the great things about yoga is that you need almost nothing to practise it: a quiet room, roomy light clothing (of any kind), and a mat, rug or blanket to pad the floor a bit. You don’t need special postures, 105 degree room temperatures or, for that matter, special skimpy yoga pants.

[ via “BoingBoing”:http://www.boingboing.net ]

I read a review of the sitcom ‘The Office’ by Dean Allen with great interest. I’ve always been fascinated by how humour translates (in both directions) across the Atlantic. About 5 years ago, British comedy was in a pitiful state. Native sitcoms were dreary, formulaic and completely unfunny. Instead, we had a series of re-runs of classic shows like ‘Dad’s Army’ and no end of American imports like ‘Frasier’, ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘The Larry Sanders Show’. These were wonderful of course (I still use the term ’sponge-worthy’ on occasion), but no substitute for some new British comedy.

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I’ve just picked up on this discussion on Textism concerning what you think about when you’re not thinking of anything else. There are some great answers: my favourite was, “What would happen if I started a Slinky going down the up esclator?”, and the scariest was, “Sex and viral vector purification via HPLC”.

On the bus coming home yesterday, my thinking about nothing ran thusly. “Why has that guy got dark hair and a grey moustache? Does he dye his hair? I don’t see any grey roots, and why wouldn’t he dye his ‘tache too? Is it possible for just your facial hair to go grey? That’s weird. Surely your facial hair is younger than your head hair. Idiot—they both get replaced every few days. Maybe he leaves it so that women will stare at him and wonder why his hair is dark and his ‘tache is grey. Must stop staring at him.”

I know that this is the second link I’ve posted recently to a photography site, but I came upon this one via Zeldman, and I just had to share it because the images are so extraordinary: Lost America Night Photography. The pictures are all taken around the full moon on a really long exposure. The colours make the abandoned diners and gas stations look totally other-worldly. I’m really excited waiting the next full moon now, as I’m going to dash out with a camera, a tripod and a lot of patience, and give it a go.

A couple of things which caught my eye:

Asia Grace by Kevin Kelly – some really stunning photographs taken all over Asia. I only wish I could take photos like this. [via BoingBoing]

Ladies Against Feminism. It looks like a total wind up, but apparently it isn’t, which makes me laugh and despair at the same time. Evidently, I am not a “lady”. At about the age of 5, I found out that girls were allowed to wear trousers. Applying the logic of a child, I had assumed that if boys weren’t allowed to wear skirts (remember, this was the 70’s, and I’d never heard of transvestites), girls obviously weren’t allowed to wear trousers. Angels appeared, singing the Halleluiah Chorus, and from that moment on, I had to be surgically removed from my jeans (I nearly spelt that “genes”, which would have been a bit of a Darwinian slip). You just can’t climb trees in a skirt. On very rare occasions, I do wear a skirt or dress, whereupon some wag always says, “So, you do have legs!”. I go “hahaha” and think, “Yeah, you see them every day in my trousers—what’s the difference?” [via greenfairy.com]

Just what the world needs: a new eating utensil for people who can’t coordinate their bowl-mouth popcorn action. Actually if you can’t get popcorn in your mouth without a utensil, you probably shouldn’t be trusted with pointy plastic objects—you’ll have our eye out.

From the publicity blurb:

Hi, I’m Don Sothman. Now you, too, can say good-bye to greasy fingers and paper napkins.  With new finger foods coming to market almost daily, the least I can do is help clean up this delicious mess!

Replace ‘Don Sothman’ with ‘Troy McClure‘, and the Popcorn Fork might be up there with Styro-Glow: “the incredibly simple seventeen-step solution that makes your styrofoam look brand new”. [Link via BoingBoing]

If you fancy a bit of a laugh, take a look at this site. There’s all manner of bizarre and unusual recordings — Muhammad Ali singing about tooth decay, anyone? My favourite is “Beatle Barkers”. Give “Love Me Do” a listen, and marvel at the close harmony sheep on backing vocals. [via BoingBoing]

Lemonlye has written a brilliantly funny (and affectionate) parody of The Two Towers. The three-way telepathy call is particularly hilarious. It’s just the kind of thing I would have written if I was witty and intelligent.