specialknives

Filament magazine website now live.


Currently lacking useful stuff like a way to order, as well as many digital marketing ideas contributed by Interactive Mix, but it should really move things along that there is one. In short, I'm pleased as punch.

Only £39.99 from Clarkes. Who woulda thunk it.

They seem to be going for the whole 'upselling' thing and tried to get me to buy a matching handbag.

I really don't do handbags, about which the sales assistant was incredulous.

My mother has a handbag. I do not.

Warren Ellis, creator of the dystopic future graphic novel series Transmetropolitan, linked to Filament from his blog. Colour me stoked.

Suprised Squirrels last night by making him turn up at Clapham Junction. We went out for dinner then to see Jeremy Hardy at Battersea Arts Centre. Jeremy Hardy is a left-wing comic that we both like. So you know, lots of moaning. Which is what I came for England for innit.

Never been to the Battersea Arts Centre before. It's very nice in a slightly crusty but obviously much loved sort of way.

Currently reading: In the aeroplane over the sea, a 33⅓ book by Kim Cooper, which tells the story of how the awesome Neutral Milk Hotel album came to be.

It's also very small. I like very small books, that I can fit in my pocket. Very small book recommendations gratefully received.

Ask me a question.

One of the other fun things that happens when you register a company is you start getting a lot of junk mail from people offering a bit of congratulations and, can we register your domain for you for as little as £75? Er, no thank you.

Oh and, new haircut.



It's supposed to be an asymmetrical fringe, but it's certainly more symmetrical today than it was yesterday. My hair does not suffer asymmetry to live.

Can anyone tell me what one tends to pay for 'import' magazines these days, either in stores, or if you happen to subscribe to something that comes to you internationally, what it is and what you're paying for it, including P&P?

Thanks!

It's been ages since I've been to see a band, but I went to see one last night, Witches, at The Dublin Castle in Camden.

Colour me all sorts of impressed. They are exactly the sort of music I like, reminding me much of quintessential NZ guitar bands like of The Bats, The Verlaines and Snapper, with occassional moments of The D4. All with added glockenspeil, trumpet and maraccas :D

Highly recommend you listen to some, especially if your name is matariki, mahurangi, maxinemogadon, von_da_bra...

Also they let you buy their CDs in Euros if you're too lazy to get your money changed after a Paris holiday, and have been carrying it around in your wallet for weeks.

This article about the science behind noisy eyeballs really fascinates me.

Although my eyeballs don't make noises, I suffer from problems blocking out exterior noise such that I find it difficult to work in even an averagely noisy office. I always attributed this to some form of autism, but the idea that it might be attached to my tendency to depression via lack of serotonin, and possibly remedied by sufficient protein (in particular, the amino acid tryptophan) is an exciting prospect.

I have long been a believer that protein is key to good nutrition - for example, getting enough seems to prevent me craving sweet or starchy food. But I doubt most people - vegetarians, vegans and those watching their weight especially - are getting anywhere near enough. You need 50g a day (more if you're exercising) - that's a litre of yoghurt, 200g of cheese, 3.5 eggs or 1kg of hummus.

This is not the same as saying that vegies should just get some meat - you can certainly get enough protein on a vege or vegan diet, but very likely not without paying attention to it and knowing where it is and isn't coming from.

Searching what you eat on the Nutrition Data website might be a good start.

Current obsession: Spots on my face. Irritating. Squirrels gave them to me.
Point of fashion: Floaty purple skirt for Scottish Country Dancing tonight

Nothing quite compares with the sheer beauty that is the movie Twilight.

Afterwards, we ate raw food and I drank a smoothie called Pink Mermaid, which would supposedly spice up my sex life. Then my chair started to vibrate.

Then we went to an underground mafioso bar, of which she is a member, which had a dog, plenty of wood veneer and laminated posters of James Dean pinned to the ceiling. It doesn't get any more romantic than that. And besides, she had garlic breath and I have coldsores.

I'm just back from Paris, which was freezing and expensive. But who can complain with all the crepes to be eaten and other cool French stuff.

At the bird markets with Squirrels:

Me: Oh honey - look at those lovebirds! Aren't they just like us?!
Squirrels: Yeah, if one of them was a knob-end.

I couldn't agree more ;)

Research found that men in relationships with feminist women and feminist women themselves report more sexually satisfying and stable relationships than other couples.

It also found that women who considered themselves feminists were no more likely to conform to popular stereotypes of feminists (being single, unattractive or lesbian) than other women.

Not exactly rocket science to most of us, but somehow I can't see it being reported in The Sun or The Daily Mail!

Link from Penny Red.

Ginger Lover, alternative swimwear made in New Zealand, have updated their website and added new styles. Fabulous!



Support independent business and design. They are awesome.

There doesn't seem to be much menswear that's interesting and unusual without being either firmly placed within a subculture or so ludicrous as to mock the very idea of itself.

Do you agree?

Do men get frustrated with the lack of fashion for them, or is the lack of variety primarily market-driven?

Edit: Album of styles from the latest Nom*D collection. They used to be one of the better designers for menswear, I thought, so it's a shame there's probably 2-3 examples in here that don't take the piss out of the whole concept.

A friend who suspects they have Asperger's Syndrome recently asked me about my coping strategies, and realising I have other possible Aspie readers I thought I'd make it open to all.

( Read more... )

My friend Maree recently started designing and manufacturing a range of alternative swimwear called Ginger Lover. They ship worldwide and knowing Maree, the workmanship and materials are top quality.

And the models have visible body fat! Woo!

Today I am Plain English-reviewing a glossary of curriculum terminology written by a major UK education body. It is full of poor grammar.

For example, the writer uses which where they should use that, but they are so oblivious to their error that they've inserted commas to fool the MS Word grammarcheck. This produces sentences like The part of the curriculum, which is compulsory for all students.

I would love to say this shocks me, but it doesn't. I rarely see a teacher-developed resource that doesn't contain at least one grammatical error. Their apostrophes in particular are all over the place, commonly the likes of:

1. DVD's
usual justification
If you take something out you have to put something back in.
why this is wrong
This is a weird confusion of several English usage rules. It confuses the possessive apostrophe rule (which is irrelevant here, because this is pluralisation) with abbreviation and contraction. You have to 'put something in if you take something out' when you contract (eg, making could not into couldn't) but Digital Versatile Disc to DVD is not contraction, it's abbreviation. Rarely full stops are placed between the letters to indicate abbreviation (D.V.D.) but never apostrophes (D'V'D'). To make DVD plural, you simply add an s, making DVDs.

2. hijab's
usual justification
Add an apostrophe to pluralise any foreign word.
why this is wrong
You do not add an apostrophe when pluralising; the plural of hijab is hijabs. Although using the singular of a foreign word to mean the plural is usually fine and sometimes more correct. This is the case for maori words, eg, I went to the rock pools and collected 30 kina.

3. tattoo's
usual justification
Add an apostrophe to pluralise any word that ends with a vowel.
why this is wrong
You do not add an apostrophe when pluralising; the plural of tattoo is tattoos.

All of the above apostrophe insertions are right if meaning the singular object's possession of the next word, eg, her tattoo's colouring is incomplete, her hijab's decoration is lovely or my DVD's case is broken.

I thought that Ms Eats Shoots and Leaves sorted this out, but it seems that few teachers were paying attention. This is nothing new. At my school we usually got vague or inconsistent answers when we asked about apostrophes, leading us to think that there weren't rules at all. My mother, Inglewood High School dux 1968, also gets it wrong quite often.

Teachers though. I find it hard to knock them wholeheartedly. Have you seen them? They get up in front of kids and say stuff. It's amazing.

The Corsica Arts Club is a great little venue in whited-out interconnected rooms under the railway arches at Elephant & Castle. Friday night's event was called Electric Storm. It featured free absinthe, cupcakes and cucumber sandwiches, a french performance artist interacting with animated projections and Trost, fronted by a woman in a dainty dress (left) who sang sensitive songs about heartbreak in a macabre cabaret style, holding a bottle of red wine in one hand and a hammer in the other. I love her.

I didn't really know what to wear, so I wore absinthe-coloured stockings and big crimson butterflies in my hair. Several people stopped me to complement my outfit, which didn't seem like much of an outfit to me as it wasn't made out of materials intended for furnishings and hadn't taken me several days. I guess the folk who tend to frequent the place don't dress up so much. How terribly sad for them.

I went to gay Scottish country dancing tonight. And not just 'gay' in the way that all folk dancing is.

Anything that presupposes male-female pairs leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At The Gay Gordons, where the dances require two clear sets, apparently they do it with arm bands, but we did six or so tonight and none of them seemed to require people to be one or the other. It would've felt subversive, but there was almost nothing to subvert. Heterosexuality may be embedded in the culture of folk dancing but it doesn't seem to be embedded in the dances themselves. Credit to the teacher no doubt.

It was mostly men over 40, but they didn't mind holding hands with girls, and mostly people were pretty rubbish at folk dancing but friendly and the teacher was definitely good. Five stars.

The Gay Gordons
Thursdays, 7pm, Unity Hall
between Highbury and Islington and Angel tubes
£4