The dark rolled in off the sea and crashed onto the glass sand of the beach in a silent wave of static. In the purple sky a lone paper bag blew on the mauve thermals, a sad song playing in the background. The hills on either side of the bay were dark and thoughtful, brown flecks of grazing perms moving slowly on their tight flanks. Far out, past the line of singing fish, just on the straight line of the horizon sat a group of fishing boats. The water slapped their cork sides as they wallowed in the warmth, the ruddy bearded children who worked the nets persuading the fish, politely, to step inside.

book: Finished the Iron Council by China Mieville, definitely his best. Clearly he's been reading his Gormenghast again. Also read 'I don't know how she does it', which was cool. Reading Dr. Miriam Stoppards book on raising children, so now becoming expert on breast pumps, the billion or so illnesses children can get and sleeping patterns.
film: Saw Crimson Tide all the way to the end, finally, and was rather disappointed. Like Logans Run (though clearly not in the same class) a film which benefits by stopping watching five minutes before the end. Soon to go and see Wimbledon (gak, gak.....vomit), Bourne Supremacy.
music: Lauryn Hill
weather: nice, sunny


very good, if you are in any way a Tim Burton fan this will be most appreciated.....AtomFilms - Robot Boy

nearly nothing but something, not quite a quickening but more than a mote appears a little speck of substance. Twisting and dancing now like a mad jot it appears small to the inhuman eye but on a scale of zeros has mass and a potent velocity.

quite enough of that. two cups of coffee today, more than I've drunk in ages (again), it'll be the fags next. Parents have been here the last week, its good for them to see me settled here. I'm away for the weekend along the coast, should be interesting.

incidently, I have not forgotten - more tales of iceland coming, including hangovers from hell, violence and Wolfgang.

where were we.......the great bulk of the slave ship tumbled from null space with arcane energies still flickering around the twisted metal of its hull...........




quite incredible news, medical science takes another bound....BBC NEWS | Health | Baby for ovary transplant woman

strangely, after yesterdays blog, this turned up on the gruaniad site today.....Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Guardian special: the world in 2020

Heres a thought for you, ten years ago (or maybe 15 if you really want to be sure) few of us had mobile phones, lap top computers (or those that we did have had the weight of a baby elephant and burnt a hole in the desk), cars were not stuffed full of microchips, cds were pretty cool, mp3 was an obscure piece of compression code, DVDs were the next big thing (yeah, right we said) and the effects in terminator (either one) were cutting edge. Now, think of this. Going further back, before us Generation Xers, our parents thought the humble tape a revolution, the transistor radio amazing and the mass production of the car astounding. Where am I going with this. Well, in ten or 15 years time mobile phones will not exist, none of us will carry lap tops and familar technology, just as in our parents time, will have changed beyond all recognition. This is the way things work, mobile phones will become smaller and smaller until we can place them inside our bodies, computers will have become completely commoditised and things like washing machines, microwaves and ovens will have ceased be commonplace because other technologies will have replaced them. They are just tools, and when we have self cleaning clothes and food which heats itself, they will be moved to the history books. Further, things we totally take for granted, like microsoft windows, html, the internet, petrol and film may have been completely replaced and rendered archiac. My point is this (somewhat based off a recent guru's lecture) that we (and certainly me) tend to base our idea of the future on what the present feels like. It will be completely different, even in the short space of 10 years. And if that doesn't seem realistic remember 10 years ago, 1994, we'd only just characterised stem cells, pentium I was pretty damn fast and the human genome was just a bunch of poorly understood letters.

nighty night.



very very cool site, well worth surfing around, very nice. One day all
sites will be like this. tokyoplastic v.2

its tiring to build an Ikea Hemnes cupboard, even harder to carry it 4 flights of stairs when it weighs more than you do. But now its assembled, and all that money and effort (and I include the diligence of the nimble fingered children in some far off land with their well honed drilling and measuring skills) has meant that we can now put stuff in another place, rather than leaving it somewhere else.

book: Gemma Bovary by Posy Simmonds; Modernity at Large by Arjun Appadurai (which is doing nothing but make me feel really thick) and, wait for it, China Mievilles new book - very exciting.

rather like e2 (remember that from ages ago, back when this blog was youthful and innocent, like a virginal rabbit skipping towards the chopper of doom), well, this is a little like that...but of course, more in homage and well, more worthy. Its a liff thing. BBC - h2g2 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Poopsie Chuckle Chunks

Tuesday, started with a spirited driving lesson and then a quick comuter trip into work........look, I'm struggling to write anything remotely witty or interesting here, its been a long day and I've drank half a bottle of red wine for dinner. Actually, that should be with dinner otherwise that would be extremely worrying.

Started a new project at work today, linking together various business support mechanisms in the New European states. This therefore includes Lithuania, which has one of the highest rates for suicide in the world, according to a recent study by the WHO. Its apparently due to the very high rate of alcoholism....interestingly the USA is quite high up in the list of popping ones cork, due this time to easy access to firearms.

weather: its dark and mild, the second Swedish summer has arrived.
music: Morcheeba
book: oh god knows, same old bollocks about globalisation.

very noble Mr Blair, but you wonder how much of the argument he will take to his chum in the White House....BBC NEWS Politics PM gives dire warning on climate

Iceland, what a blast. Probably one of the most memorable trips I've had in a long time, incredible fantastic place. I'll scribble more later (when I'am not in my underpants and need to get to work soon), but some of the highlights are, one of the best nights in a bar in a strange place, bizarre scenary with little vegatation, geysers, lava (though the cold kind), geothermal power, terrible hangover and hours in the 'blue lagoon' sitting in 40 degree water in the rain, in the dark, surrounded by rolling clouds of steam. The conference was okay, though the two hour pep talk from a business guru was cool. More stories will include waterfalls, violence and evil lava.


given that my photo uploader piece of software has gone up the spout heres a website from Iceland from the totally trippy and surreal Blue LagoonBlue Lagoon this photos don't really reflect my experience of this place which was in the pissing rain (not that that mattered), in the dark.

music: the zeros, Icelandic strangenes, already very cool and I've only listened to a few minutes.....

I have to pack. Expect an update soon including blue lagoons, Björk and ponies.

old and dusty, but quite strange.....Chrome Moon FAQ V2.01

and some idle curiosity turned this up.....Max Headroom

blogging at the minute on something like the set from Blade Runner or Max Headroom (theres something to hunt for).....the rooms draped in thin sheets of plastic which gives it the appearence of afore mentioned cyberpunk movies or low buget pop videos. Yes, we've got the painters in. They burst through the door at 0730 every morning full of thinner and camel hair with a churlish yell of delight, never mind that I'm stumbling around SBN looking for a towel....oh well.

The blogs going to be quiet for a few days again, I'm off to Iceland this thursday so there'll be no blogging then (but such things will change when I get hold of my wireless laptap, cool). Its wednesday tommorow, yes I know, but thats also lanquage school night so there may be a lack of motivation.

heres some images of Sweden, from today:-

the brown spot on the skin of the woman who sat next to me on the bus.
the sun reflecting off the shiny steel of the observatory at the university.
the bill board guy mopping his face with a dirty hankerchief.
my driving instructor grabbing my foot.
the rumble of some studs car in the streets.
the realisation that I was an English man, reading a book about globalisation, on a bus in Sweden going to a company which has offices in Denmark and represents a network of 11 different countries.
a motorbike with two people on it.
the christmas carol.
the fingers.

The driving lesson was cool this morning, learnt how to crawl drive and change gear properly. I assume the handbrake turns are next week.

music: usual mixture but at the minute, Chicks on Speed
weather: lovely sunny
cute little flash site.....yugop.com

"and thats the way to crucify a fish" said my latin teacher, stepping back from the tree and letting the black and decker with dual hammer action slip from his scale encrusted hands.

its the weekend. enjoy it. there probably won't be another one like it.

most excellent D&D parody.....actually a little to close to the truth8bitDandD

Good morning.

Its been a lovely day today, no working late, no sweating feverishly and wishing for more hours in the day. Start the working week on wednesday and end it on friday, nice.

Completely lost my thread of thought there, listening to BBC and suddenly heard the news that SETI may have picked something up but turned out to be nothing....bugger, as the great man said.

The other good news out today was that I'm off to Iceland in a weeks time, the land of geysers and Björk (which means birch in Swedish, incidently), looking forward to that I must say.

One of those little differences which mean a lot (number nothing of an irregular series): in supermarkets you always wait to pay the cashier rather than the usual british style of scurrying after your shopping and then frantically running back to pay while the people waiting behind you click there teeth and hiss with disapproval. Here we wait patiently, pay, and then pack our goods while, wait for it, they use the divider to segragate your goods. ordered. scented. nice.

it took me a second to remember who Tom Lehrer is, which is a real shame as I really used to like listening to this guys stuff, his most famous tune being 'Poisoning Pidgeons in the Park. Here, in this lovely site, a cunning flash maverick has put the elements to a little flash animation, good stuff.....incidently, you do need speakers...Mike Stanfill, Private Hand - Flash Animation - The Elements, by Tom Lehrer

music: Radio 4, news
book: still the Lexus and the Olive Tree
weather: nice.
new skill: using the brake before changing gear, much smoother.

again with the question, why exactly did we come down from the trees?....BBC NEWS | Europe | Turkish man eyes squirting record

oh dear me.........BBC - 6 Music - Robert Smith Lookalike Gallery

more proof that the world is going mad....- More Useful Everyday

a you thought I'd forgotten the link......one man/womans crusade on the net to poke fun at the evilness of 419ers..What's the bloody point ??

and as the world goes to hell in a handbasket again I resume the frippery which is this, lovingly incoherent ramble through the backwaters of my mind. I've read, as I expect you might have done, my fair share of blogs out on the net. So things you won't find here is sneering commentary or insightful thoughts on the world we live in. Those of you who know me well will know that such insight occurs rarely and sneering even less (usually in sentences which include the words conservative, reimagining or piers anthony). This is not to say that all blogs are sneering or/and insightful, many are truly awesome whereas this one, like its author, is random, inconsequential and troubled by corns.

For the minute the great onslaught at work has calmed down. It all culminated with a two day trip to Finland last week which was most excellent. The reason was our yearly forum (conference under another name) which collected the movers and shakers from all over the Baltic region. Finland seemed cool but to be honest I saw little but my hotel room, the conference centre and a few choice bars. The days of giving presentations whilst still drunk seem to have gone, after a few beers I made my excuses and went to bed.

The weekend, and indeed the last two days of vacation, was most excellent.....English chum came over to visit and thus a trip to the summer house and Copenhagen was in order. All good.

music: creedance clearwater revival.
book: Lexus and the Olive Tree by T. Friedman (all about Globalisation), The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapiscinki (about Africa, fantastic) and Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (very good thriller by the chap who wrote Mystic River). Also Camelot 3000 (as reminded to me recently) and HellRaiser (collected best).
weather: overcast.