D'log

Junk = chump?:A fascinating opinion piece in The Sunday Times, expanding on recent press coverage of the clear “diet & mood/behaviour” linkage; which has apparently been obvious for twenty years. (Free registration required). It would be interesting to find some stereotypical university students, subsisting on pot-noodles and beans, and run a trial to see if […]

Creative opp’s:Lots of new/current opportunities for Midlands’ digital creatives are listed on my Digita message-board.

‘One Party & a Sketch Book’:Sorry for not blogging daily this week; it’s that busy time of year again, where everyone bustles – before July begins to creep towards the long school holidays. Although; judging by the number of children apparently truanting, you might think the holidays have already started. Things to do: a new […]

Passing the plate:kuro5hin needs $70,000 to pay for operating and traffic costs. So the editor made an appeal to the readership. He’s raised over $17,000 in donations in the last 48 hours. Who says weblogs can’t make money? If you care to do something similar for me, then please donate a few clicks to push […]

It’s fun to learn:MIT’s “Games-to-Teach” prototypes are now online. AltComix:I just found out about Caption 2002: the annual alternative comics convention. No guest-list, but it looks interesting. It’s on 17th – 18th August 2002 at the Oxford Union Society in Oxford.

Trend-seeding, not advertising:Following on from some ideas muddling around in my head on the train last night…. So, you have a niche service/product/trend to push. You’ve found your target audience of inside-track opinion formers. You’ve probably found them because some timely on-topic content serves their info-hunger for the subject they’re passionate about. That content’s probably […]

For one month only:My selection from tonight’s private view for Wolverhampton University’s art & design graduate show. Page is 338kb in total, and will only be up for a month. I felt the show wasn’t generally as strong as last year’s, which is a pity. The show is open to the public on the 16th, […]

‘Wake up and smell the mouse piss’:Today’s “go to make a coffee, switch on BBC Radio 4 while the kettle’s boiling” random aural experience; hearing a snatch of a scientific discussion of the chemical volatilities inherent in mouse piss. And yes, I was still able to drink my coffee 😉 An idle thought:Why does new-media […]

Freelancer, with emphasis on the ‘free’:Three months after I invoiced them, I’m still waiting for payment for freelance work I did for artsnet & marketing:arts. 🙁 RealMyst:One of the first computer-games to stray towards the sublime was Myst. I had long since give away my old boxed copy as a birthday present, when a year […]

“Welcome to the Matrix, Neo…”The Register – Snoops go mad. Of course, Blunkett’s proposals will only make legal the technically illegal gathering of data that’s already going on. So that’s all right then.

Come to sunny Moseley:I got the advance dates for this summer’s Moseley Arts Festival, in Birmingham. For those not “in the know”, Moseley is the nearest thing to a bohemian quarter that B’ham has. Half the city’s artists live there; along with assorted tree-huggers, avante-Guardianistas and sundry beardy-weirdies. The dates are 24th – 26th August […]

Accepted:One of my nameplate designs for Typographica has been accepted and should be in the rotation by next week. Landscape on the square:Robert Brook is a talented photographer, from Shrewsbury in the West Midlands, working mostly in the square format. His site has extensive online galleries; make sure you see the Close Up Landscapes series […]

Type:A new and rather juicy typography blog. It’s inviting mastheads, so I threw some together, one of which uses my own Burning Rubber font.

Combat Tanks – retail version, free:Probably the best ever ten-minute game for Windows, certainly the best game-play in any pre-’96 Windows arcade game. It’s Combat Tanks 1.0. Now the full retail version has been released for free, by the original author. Yes, the full registered version; after five years when no-one could unlock the old […]

‘Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross’:The opening line of an old song that was one of the first I learned as a child. Ever wondered what a “cock horse” is? Take a look at this photographic archive of folk-culture “‘obby ‘oss” animals, the use of which has survived in a few remote English street […]

Happy Jubilee:Sat, Sun & Mon; a broadly happy, broadly sunny Golden Jubilee weekend & bank holiday for most people (bar a few grumbling unpatriotic ninnies) in England. Among other things I went to the opening of my uncle’s new shop on Friday, the opening of a new local industrial museum, an excellent free music-fest, and […]

Mark Wood:It’s still ever so slightly ‘under construction’ (missing menu buttons), but Midlands photographer & printmaker Mark Wood has launched his redesigned and re-filled gallery site on schedule today, 1st June. There’s a treat in the gallery section; all of his photos. fuk all new fashion in Nottingham:The rather good fuk.co.uk sent photographers to get […]