"The Dollar Dreadful Family Library brings you short stories that shall surely entice, engross, and shock you and your fellows!" Stunning recreation of a nineteenth century newspaper, and authentic use of fonts. From a web design and standards perspective, the implementation of rollovers is a bit iffy, and large chunks of text are represented as images. But it's sure pretty.
My micro life: 11:55am, 4 October 2008
Best thing about the iPhone is that it helps me get around the “no laptop in the toilet” rule my partner instituted.
The secrets of storytelling
From Scientific American, research into the ways in which stories can "enhance social skills by acting as simulators for the brain" and can help people "make sense of increasingly complex social relationships"
Found object: 9:59am, 18 September 2008
I figure an ASS reader is some kind of special toilet paper with Braille lettering on it. Either way, when I tried to install one on my computer, all I got was a bunch of errors and some nasty smears on my monitor.
(Design Encyclopedia, which ought to know better)
My micro life: 12:44pm, 28 August 2008
Connex shortlisted for new Melbourne train tender. Which is like drafting an epileptic marmoset as a contestant in an egg and spoon race.
My micro life: 2:30pm, 27 August 2008
Thanks to the packet of liquorice bullets I just gobbled down, I now know how quickly I can sprint from my desk to the loo.
My micro life: 8:43pm, 24 August 2008
Move over David Allen, Axl Rose has his own ‘getting things done’ methodology. The secret? Refrain from your ‘bitch slap rappin’.
My micro life: 11:42am, 22 July 2008
Apparently the name ‘Aaron’ is Hebrew for “Doomed to receive calls from friends who forget to lock their mobile phone keypads”
My micro life: 2:33pm, 3 July 2008
Ah, Microsoft Word… only a mother could love your default heading styles. Like a Tourettes fit in a type foundry.
Fixing flat, grey input buttons in Safari 3
I’m not too proud to admit that this problem had me stumped for ages.
My micro life: 1:36pm, 1 July 2008
Apple’s lowercase-personal-pronoun ‘i’ thing has gone too far; takeaway joint iSushi just got added to the list of things to which ‘iObject’
My micro life: 8:03pm, 26 June 2008
In the 70s, people truly believed that the identity of a man named Mott could be clarified by the addition of the cognomen ‘the Hoople’
My micro life: 3:51pm, 24 June 2008
C-3PO is not only fluent in 6 million forms of communication, he also manages to sound like an asshole in every one of them
My micro life: 4:00pm, 17 June 2008
Booked in for an appearance on Carson Kressley’s new show Why Have You Got Two Of Those?.
My micro life: 3:52pm, 10 June 2008
Chatting with a work colleague just as they enter the toilet is awkward; you both know that they’ll shortly be, to some extent, minus pants
Open Library
Another way to access the mind-bogglingly huge archive of full text digitised books at the Internet Archive; very neat site design and great options for refining searches.
The ebb and flow of movies: box office receipts 1986-2008
A very attractive graph showing how some movies are like mayflies (are they the ones that don't live for long?) and others are like, um, much-longer-living flies.
Public domain weird fiction at Wikisource
Includes a selection of horror and Gothic fiction, scientifiction, fantasy and sword and sorcery.
Lovecraft jottings (or, jotcraft leavings)
From the man himself: "This book consists of ideas, images, & quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use in weird fiction…" (H.P. Lovecraft). Frightening that any of these mind have found their source in, as he calls them, "casual incidents".
Found object: 2:28pm, 17 March 2008
Discovered while looking at Wikipedia entries on people more successful than me. (By definition, anyone who has a Wikipedia entry.) But at least failure and obscurity are effective safeguards against this kind of Wiki-vandalism.