I don’t know about you

Posted on January 12, 2012 by charlie Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but it’s at about this time of the month that I like to wallow is self-doubt, and ask myself questions like “if I chosen a career in toothpaste, say, or retrophrenology, would I even now be basking on the poop deck of some obscene Sunseeker yacht?”

Actually, I don’t necessarily have exactly those thoughts, but I just felt the need to use the phrase ‘poop deck’.  It doesn’t get used enough hereabouts.

On this very day in 475 AD, as I’m sure you all know, Basiliscus became the Byzantine Emperor, crowned Hebdomon palace in Constantinople.  I, on the other hand, in 2012, managed to do a bit of shopping, some light laundry at around lunchtime, and achieve an almost complete ignorance on the subject of Drupal Fusion sub-theming.

I think you’ll agree that that all just goes to show.

Anyway, yoghurt is what I brought you all here to talk to you about, but I fear that there’s no time left.  That’ll have to be for another time.

Still, I’m glad we had this chat.

Uncategorized

Chew, chew, chew.

Posted on July 7, 2011 by charlie 3 Comments

As a parent, I am concerned by the imminent arrival of the moment when I have to switch tacks from “here comes a chuff-chuff train…”, to “stop playing with your food”.

Parenting

Wade into the water, Alabama 3

Posted on April 2, 2011 by charlie 2 Comments

I love Alabama 3.   They make Sweet Pretty Muntafoobin Country Acid House Music.  All night long.

One of my few regrets about leaving London is that a it’ll be that much less easy to go and see them live.

Anyway.  It also so happens that I’m learning the guitar, and I enjoy doing that by playing things that I like – generally by looking for the relevant tabulature on the electric InterWeb.

Having recently failed to find tab for ‘Wade Into The Water’ from Alabama 3′s charming ‘La Peste‘ album, I decided to pay back the tabiverse by tabbing it myself.

The results can be found on Ultimate-Guitar.com

Alabama 3, La Peste album cover.

Guitar

Talltoise.

Posted on March 11, 2011 by charlie Leave a comment
Talltoise

Talltoise

Do you see what I did there?

Colouring In

Gecko!

Posted on March 10, 2011 by charlie 1 Comment

Although strictly speaking he’s a common house gecko, this chap (*) is a rare visitor to our house.  So we’re chuffed to bits to see him mooching around on our ceiling.

Common House Gecko

Gecko. Our Gecko. Not yours.

Incidentally, the photo is upside down.  The dude is actually hanging nonchalantly upside down on the ceiling.  They do that, geckos.

Go, little gecko!  Gorge yourself silly on houseflies!

(*) and, strictly speaking, this chap could in fact be a girl.

STIS Towers

The Lee Child inspired ‘Literary Fiction Detector’.

Posted on March 7, 2011 by charlie 4 Comments

tl;dr: a cunning tool for analysing written text
http://www.ck-conception.com/leechild.php

On the 5th March 2011 The BBC broadcast a series of programmes celebrating World Book Night. Amoung them was the particularly entertaining “The Books We Really Read”, presented by the friskily intelligent Sue Perkins.

I was particularly struck by a comment made by Lee Child, blockbuster author of what is known as ‘genre’ fiction, about ‘literary’ fiction.

I happen to be married to a, frankly, stunning literary fiction author who has just signed a squeelingly fantastic book deal with Bloomsbury. As she explains it (and excuse my clumsy paraphrasing), ‘genre’ fiction is anything that can be slotted neatly into a pigeon hole – ‘thriller’, ‘crime’, ‘romance’, etc.

Literary is all the remaining fiction that refuses to be categorised, like “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen.

Lee Child gave the somewhat grating opinion that ‘literary’ writers are jealous of ‘genre’ writers, because genre writers could, if they so wished, write literary fiction, whereas literary witers can’t write genre.  He attributed this to the fact that, while genre writers know big words like anyone else, they are able to choose to use smaller, better words.

This made me wonder if his assertion could be tested in any way and so, standing on the shoulders of giants, I had the cunning folks over at CK-Conception knock up a simple tool to test the readability, and verbiositinessitude, of any text you care to drop into it.

You’ll find the tool here: http://www.ck-conception.com/leechild.php

I hope it proves useful, entertaining, educational, and that maybe it will even go some way to alleviating someone’s hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

Geekism