Rather amused and possibly a teeny bit proud to see my old school mate Nick Ray with President Obama (apparently it IS a genuine photo, though it looks a bit suspicious to me). We always accused Nick of ‘schmoosing’ and being a ‘social climber’ and now it looks like he’s schmoosed his way right to the top.

The CIA/FBI should know, however, that in 1988 this guy deliberately drove us (in a lime green Vauxhall Chevette) the wrong way round the Little Chef roundabout outside Peterborough just to undertake Mark Harrod (in an orange Vauxhall Chevette). Nick, that is, not Barack.

Think I may have to decide which speakers I’m using. Although, nothing so far beats my self built transmission line monitors (at the back). Built like MDF tanks with Kef B110 drive units and Morel soft dome tweeters, the design delivers awesome bass right down to 20Hz.

A panorama across Barcelona taken from Park Guell a few years ago. Only just found in my Flickr collection and thought I’d finish the job. Unfortunately it’s only a Flash version, as the HTML5 fallback doesn’t want to work. SHIFT=Zoom In. Ctrl=Zoom Out.

Nothing is more imperfect than something that remains unfinished or incomplete.

Love this concept. Not sure if it’s feasible to produce though.

Rather love the Pantone colour of the year this year: Tangerine Tango or approximately #DD4124 in hex RGB. Here’s a graphic of recent years.

“Benzedrine-like drug, Pervitin, causes a spider to build a one-sided web. After laying a foundation for a large web it becomes so restless under the stimulant that it cannot co-ordinate. It weaves back and forth at one end only, laying down too many strands there but not completing the whole net”

Source: LIFE, 1954.

My favourite thing of the day:

I’ve had a bit of a visual refresh of this site over the Christmas break. Farewell to my planet, fixed colour scheme and overcomplexity. Hello to simplicity and a thousand colourful variations. I also took the opportunity to make things a little more responsive than before and inject a little movement. Still working on things here and there though.

Excellent view from the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai. From this vantage point it was particularly interesting to watch as people put towels on sun beds at 7am. Some would at least paddle a bit or swim a quick length of the pool to justify it.

Wicksteed Park proves that a theme park needs little more than a ramp, a winch, a very stable boat and a large and slightly stangnant pond to give hours of fun.   Most of that time I must admit is spent queuing and watching other hapless boat sliders be launched off the end of the 45 degree ramp.  But the 5 seconds of fun that a 20 minute wait affords is almost worth waiting for.

So I spent my weekend levelling ground, building a patio (of sorts) and erecting a summerhouse. One day soon it may also have a roof.

I very nearly gave up the whole idea this morning when I saw what a hash I made rushing to lay slabs as the light faded last night. Fortunately I found some energy, lifted, re-laid and cemented the worst offending slabs and got it at least level enough to form a solid foundation.

Digging around and mucking out some old Headscape folders, I found a remarkable photo of Harry Potter in a mini bus. Took me a moment to notice I was driving the thing and this was in fact Mr Boag himself off for a game of Quidditch. I believe this was before the films were even made, and hmmm, looking closely I’m pretty sure that’s a scar on his forehead.

If this is what it takes to keep my desktop Intel i7 2600K (sandybridge) nice and cool;  35ºC  (without overclocking at least) then I’m wondering how the heck Apple are going to keep their next generation of Macbook Airs cool.

I guess the entire aluminium body will become the heat sink, but at what temperature? Will I be able to boil my coffee pot on one? OK, I admit that would actually be quite useful.

Been a long term user of Fruity Loops on and off over the years. It’s always been highly intuitive removing most barriers from instant creativity. Didn’t see this one coming to the iPad, but wonder how it stacks up against the mighty Garage Band both in terms of features and price point. We sill see.

Maxon, the makers of Cinema 4D (a truly intuitive 3D package, and the only one I’ve ever really got along with) have a great tool available for benchmarking CPU performance. Cinebench is a free download from the Maxon site.

What I particularly like about it is, well… mainly the fact that it’s quite pretty. I like watching multiple hyperthreaded cores at work too. Oh, does that make me a bit nerdy, perchance?

Amazing what happens on the Internet in a single minute. One of those infographics that summarises and educates where words and numbers alone fail.

Finally got round to creating an online archive of my Dad’s creative work.  I have a lot more to add to it over time, but please with the progress I made on Father’s Day.

Possible issue with general staleness and buttery obscurement. But memorable.