Life Less Literary

Been involved in an interesting thread on the freelancers mailing list, under the somewhat misleading topic “An interesting photoshop question this time”. Here are a few choice, err, morsels…

Kathy:
“A telephone is a nice environment to live in, if you’re a bug,” says
Glasgow biologist Bernard Dixon. It is sheltered and there is a ready supply
of nutrients (from spit).” The worst way to clean a phone is to use a spray
polish. The wax is a perfect medium for bacteria to grow.”

Amarillo Globe - News - did an article on the Top 10 items most
likely to harbour live flu organisms:

Keyboards were no 5 and telephones no 4. No 1 was petrol pump handles and
garage/petrol station pens.

Dan:
While we’re one such tasteful topics, this reminds me of a study a while
back which found that urine forms a scarily high percentage of the nibbles
you get in bowls in Indian take-aways - the main reason being that pissed
people with a need for frequent toilet breaks, a shaky aim, and little
regard for hand-washing hygiene are often to be found in such places.

Darren:
Same goes for bar nibbles. I have an American friend
who told me scientists did a test on some regular courtesy
bar nuts and found 30 types of urine. Nice

Dave:
Reminds me of the report that told of what was found in an average tube
train seat - pretty much all the human secretions/excretions you can imagine
were included in the list along with the same for rats.

Dan:
That does it. I’m having myself hermetically sealed inside something
sterile. The real world is just too mucky.

Kathy:
Oh, just to finish you off, a recent outbreak of food poisoning in America
was traced to an ATM which was contaminated with e coli. Now considering
that e coli comes from faeces…what had someone done to that cash machine?

Can’t type, can’t use the phone, can’t travel, can get any cash out–seal
yourself in that bag, it’s the only way

Nice little resource for building database connection strings in ASP at http://www.connectionstrings.com/

Took some teeny-tiny video clips of Lola’s walking… here

Whoah! Lola just took off!

Well, not in the rocket-ship sense, but she is pounding the floorboards up and down our living room. She’s been taking the odd tentative step unassisted, very reluctantly, for a week or so now, but since returning from nursery today she’s been charging about with a vengeance.

Obviously a good day for kids with new tricks!

Rowan has discovered a new obsession - the microwave. She has moved on from her toilet experiments, where she would fill jars with water and various mixtures of soaps and other toiletries plus toilet paper and leave them in the bathroom to stew. Now she wants to see what happens to things in the microwave. She just asked me whether it’s safe to put glass in the microwave, as she wanted to microwave a glass of ice cubes and see what happened. Once she’s finished I’m gonna show her this page so that she doesn’t have to experience the rest herself. Mind you, it’ll only encourage her. Ah well, an inquisitive mind is a healthy mind, I guess.

Heeeeey! Just noticed that Call Me Audrey put my photos up on the Crouching Bitches website - go to the PHOTOS FROM LONDON section and check the creds! (and don’t forget to look through them all… use the drop-down nav)

I finally put some more of my written work online - in print has 5 new articles in it, 2 Brand Republic book reviews and 3 pieces for FAD, the new magazine on Fashion, Art and Design which Mark & I are putting together with our chums!

I would greatly appreciate any comments and constructive criticism on this work… by email or using the little comments link below.

Thanks to Phil for pointing out the science of my life: Gumptionology

Hmmm… free domains at www.dot.tk - got a feeling this might just be some email-grabbing scheme but what the hell, I grabbed myself www.sumption.tk anyway - wonder if/when it’ll be up and running.

Update: it works!

This weekend I finally read Getting Rid of Mister Kitchen by Charles Higson - I swiped a review copy from GSpot years ago (well, to be precise) and Gill read it in fits of laughter as soon as I got it home. I was eager to read it, but the guy who reviewed the books for GSpot said could he have it back please as he wanted to read it and write it up.

So our copy went back and I never got to read it. A few weeks ago I spotted a copy in a charity shop and thought “YES! now is the time”, so I bought it, and this weekend I read it. And it really is as funny as everyone says, if not funnier. And especially relevant as the car that the protagonist is trying to dispose of is a Saab 900 (as Mister Kitchen says: “very popular car, the old model nine hundred. Hippest car around at the moment. Your Saab enthusiast don’t like the new model, reckon it don’t look like a Saab… more like a BMW”). I seem to have been harvesting literary Saab references recently - Douglas Adams seems to be good for a few, the guy who picks up Arthur Dent in So Long and Thanks for all the Fish has a grey 900, if I remember rightly.

Getting Rid of Mister Kitchen has nice big writing and fast pacing - easy to read in 1 sitting, though it took me two what with hopping trains and stuff, very very hard to put down. Have to say the cocaine scenes made my nose hurt rather though. Ouch.