i’ve always wondered how bidendum (known to many as simply “the michelin man”) got his name:
In 1898, O’Galop created according to André Michelin’s directions a poster in which one sees, at a banquet table, an imposing character composed of tires raising his glass filled with broken glass and nails, and offering a toast declaring: “Nunc est bibendum” (translated very approximately as: “To Your Health! Michelin tires drink obstacles”).
[found via metafilter]
where does lorem ipsum text come from?
Contrary to popular belief, Lipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance.
create your own mock up text at lipsum.com. very useful.
i played the be your own chancellor game, and then remembered something similar from last year. curiously (or maybe not so curiously) my attempts at budgeting this year had nearly the same effects on the economy as my attempts last year. i won’t be taking up residence at 11 downing street anytime soon.
and who even knew we had bingo tax? i swear they just make these things up to make us feel good when they’re abolished.
anita borg, who i first heard of through the systers mailing list that she founded, died yesterday:
Anita Borg sought to revolutionize the world and the way we think about technology and its impact on our lives. Fond of quoting, “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission” and wearing a t-shirt that declared, “Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History”, she devoted much of her life to dismantling the barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields.
This wasn't as deep the two volumes of the Roth Trilogy that I've read so far but I did think it was a really interesting introduction to what I hope I'll find to be an engaging series. As well as enjoying previous books by the author I was attracted to this series by the titles: they are all quotes from AE Housman's poems A Shropshire Lad and are set in the imaginary town of Lydmouth on the border of Shropshire and Wales in the 1950s. My mum's family are from Shropshire so that appeals to me, and the fact that Andrew Taylor isn't trying to paint a halcyon picture of the 1950s or write 'cozy' murder mysteries attracts me to the historical period more than would otherwise be the case.
The two central characters of this series (at least I presume they will be that) are both newcomers to Lydmouth in this opening book. It's an old trick but it works well. Jill Francis, a journalist from London, has come to stay with old friends, the Wemyss-Browns who own and edit the Gazette, one of the local newspapers. Detective Inspector Richard Thornhill has recently moved from Cambridgeshire with his wife Edith, who is local to Lydmouth, and their two children. It's a prickly time for both of them as they settle in and get to know the lie of the land.
The story revolves around a box of babies bones found when demolishing the cesspit behind the Rose in Hand public house and a gangster known as Genghis Carn who has turned up in Lydmouth. Taking place in the week of November just before Remembrance Sunday the setting and characters really came to life for me and the small details of the story all fitted in with my ideas of what the years after the second world war would have been like in such a place (I wasn't born until the seventies).
I think for the most part Taylor's done a commendable job of not giving his characters modern opinions or impossible foresight into the half century that will follow them. The mystery storyline spends a long time unfolding so that when it is resolved there are no fireworks and it's a bit like 'well of course that was the case' but I found it a rewarding read and look forward to reading more about the same place and people.
Purchased on 1st April 2003.
After the superb Garnethill trilogy I couldn't wait to see what Denise Mina would come up with next and I had my fingers, toes and every other extremity I could find crossed that I wouldn't be disappointed by Sanctum.
On some levels this book explores the same areas as the previous books, we're still in Glasgow and we're still dealing with the mental health system one way or another. But this is a very different style of book than before.
This book is written as the diary of Lachlan Harriot, an unfortunate twenty nine year old ex-Glaswegian who's psychiatrist wife "Dr Susie" has just been convicted of murdering a serial killer and his wife. One thing that really bugged me about the book was the way it was bookended with prologue and epilogue that wrap it up as a true crime style of story. I don't like authors using themselves as characters in their fiction though it does work pretty well and the story is obviously fictitious. I just find it a bit creepy, but maybe making me feel that way is good storytelling.
I really enjoyed this read though I didn't think it was as moving as Garnethill, but if every book was that moving I'd be an emotional wreck. I'm not really being fair holding this book up to be judged by the trilogy that preceded it, it's a good read and I enjoyed it very much, and if this had have been written by nearly anybody else I'd be praising it no end. Garnethill is a hard act to follow, but this doesn't do badly.
Purchased on 1st April 2003.
i have been so sick of the old black design for ages and this new white design has been knocking about my hard drive for a couple of months now, i’m not entirely happy with it but it does my eyes in less than the old version (i must be getting old…). the only way to persuade myself to get it 100% finished is to put it up and work on it live. please wear hard hats in this area for a couple of hours….
i think that’s about it for now, everything should be correct, or at least not broken, nothing is quite how i want it and many bits of the site are still in the old black design and will get swizzled to white just as soon as i’ve found one of those round tuits that are lying about somewhere in these parts.
the front page has a new dynamic look and is a good place to start if you want more than just the weblog. i feel much happier about adding new stuff into my maze of php now it feels less claustrophobic on the outside (the inside is even more tangled but i guess that’s just the way i enjoy it.)
if anything is unusable to you let me know, my testing consisted of mozilla1.3/linux, ie5.5/win95, ns4.7/win95 and ie6/winxp and they were all passably usable. that’s as much testing as i can do without going downstairs so it’ll have to do. (some things look a bit odd on netscape4 but it all works and if you haven’t found a better browser than netscape4 yet it’s your problem.)
all found via photo friday and posted here so i don’t lose them in the giant heap that is my unsorted bookmarks (i need a blogroll type thing; it’s been on my to do list for a billion years) (my to do list is also about a thousand miles long) (exaggerate? me?):
just seeing what this little racket is all about…. it looks like it could be fun so long as people don’t take it too seriously. or it could just fizzle out like a myriad of weblog related toys have done before it.
the museum of unworkable devices looks like fun when i’ve got some time to read through it; it looks like lots of people with an unhealthy disregard for friction.
[found via write only media]
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