BLOGSCOTCH 11: pedals

Still messing around on things I found Boss virtual pedals. They sound great and look even better. Try the acoustic ones.

BLOGSCOTCH 10: vintage automatics

From Spitting Image I hopped to things magazine, which was set up by some V&A amd RCA historians in 1994 in the belief that objects can open up new ways of understanding the world. If that sentiment ever needed validation then one only has to hop over to automatic washer where vintage automatic washers, driers and dishwashers to be found alongside restorations, video clips of the machines working, a cyber-museum, a patent-of-the-day feature, pictures of a graveyard for automatics called Aberdeen Farm and even a sister site called Vacuum Land. Life is good.

BLOGSCOTCH 9: obituary

next up is Spitting Image . Unfortunately this blogger has died, here is his obituary:

"John Cieciel, July 01, 1949 - November 09, 2007

John was a long time contributor to News of the Weird, coconspirator and eventually primary blogger behind spitting-image.net, and the author of the original and brilliant Overheard Starbuck. Readers of this blog knew John as a generous sharer of information and a keen observer of American culture, and anyone who had the pleasure of receiving his e-mail valued him as a wise and honest friend. John was proud of the accumulation of this site, which shall remain, a spark of light among the constellations. I will dearly miss him."

Kind of sad but glad I came across it.

Overheard Starbuck is worth a look. It does exactly what it says on the tin and is full of gems like this:

"He had motive and opportunity."
---"And you have a tv set on which you watch cop shows. Seriously--who the hell talks like that?"

and this:

"It's almost like not being in a cult at all."

I love that.

BLOGSCOTCH 8: tiny horse

I couldn't resist the tiny horse. Posthuman Blues comprised a treasure trove of alien related sites and blogs. Among them was the strange Aberrant News who carried this story from that very weird paper The Daily Mail. about something very much of this planet, but still strange.

It may not look it, but the horse is not a toy. According to the Mail, "the 15 in silver dun tovero was born 10 days ago" in Australia and will grow to 24 in.

BLOGSCOTCH 7: TV-B-Gone goes open source

Remember TV-B-Gone? It was a gadget that allowed you to turn off any telly, great for those pubs which have TV's flickering away depsite no-one watching them, especially when they are playing music videos which bear no relation to the music actually playing in the pub.

It was invented by a bloke called Mitch Altman and, after discovering 'hackers' had been building the gadget into hats, mobile phones and even a long range sniper model, he has made the firmare open source. Which is nice.

Found this by hopping to posthuman blues and then to a blog entry which took me to gizmo

Phil

BLOGSCOTCH 6: Forget dan's Wii laptop, the future is in the past

This is steampunk. Basically sci-fi set in the age of steam power. I found it on edgetrends, a link from the Vividians.

The movie City of Ember was seemingly "the best steampunk allegory" for many a year

Time to hop

Phil

BlogScotch 5: Last of Vividians

OK, i got a bit stuck in the last blog because there was no blogroll to hop from. I rummaged around in his Last.FM friends list and his delicious page but to no avail. My breakthrough came today when Tom (remember, he is Tom too or 2) very helpfully posted this link to the Vividian Design Movement. Now, i had heard of Light Greens (green is the new black types) and Dark Greens (back to the dark ages types) but I had never heard of Bright Greens. Bright Greens believe that the planet can be saved by better design, new technologies and innovation. I like the sound of this lot.

Anyway, the Vividians are among the original bright greens. Or were. For this site is their reuquiem: "After the years transpiring – various disasters, wars, financial collapses and a major change in political tone – the world has become a different place.It remains only to close the Viridian episode gracefully"

I did like this piece of par though: "I strongly recommend that you carry a multitool. ...It's a set of possible creative interventions in your immediate material environment. That is why you want a multitool. They are empowering."

anyway, he also mentioned something called Steam Punk...

Phil

BlogScotch 4: Bike Hero

Tom led me to this one take piece - bloke plays guitar hero with his bike. This is very difficult according to Tim C.


Must admit I'm having trouble getting away from this site as there is no blogroll.

Phil

BlogScotch 3: An iPod Developer

So next I find Tom (I don't think its our Tom) This Tom is learning to become an iPhone developer. He has developed a version of I am near for the phone. He says: "After a few hours I’ve got a native version of i am near working, which performs a similar function to the site, but with the ability to fetch the user’s location directly from the iPhone. It’s simple, but effective."

It's quite good actually. The photo is pubs nearby.

Phil

BlogScotch 2: Cozy Powell on vinyl

This is lovely. Found it on magic nihilism. Nothing happens, it just plays to the end. But doesn't it look beautiful?

BlogScotch 1: Computers behind Blogs

Ian Tait has set up a Flickr groups called Computers Behind Blogs. It is basically photos of the computers bloggers use to write their blogs. It is quite enchanting and a little bleak, the lack of people in many shots creates a feeling of loneliness.

the photo is of my gubbed old macbook and emily's lovely new one (It's really not fair)

Phil

Introducing BlogScotch

These silly pictures are getting boring, we need some right good postings on the site so I've invented a new game, it's called BlogScotch (note the digi-friendly cap letter in the middle of the word.)

The idea is simple, pick any site on the blogroll, go there, find something good, steal it and post it here then go to that persons blog roll, click on someone at random and do it again.

Phil