Monthly archives: March 2006


It can be a civil war without battles everywhere

Sorry for the rather cumbersome title. The Today programme today had some senior armed forces spokesman on. Amongst the many things he uttered and denied was that the current situation in Iraq isn’t a civil war because there are areas where there isn’t heavy fighting.

A map of the English not-civil war.

A map of the American outbreak of minor disturbances.

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Cheap Light

Powergen are funding a scheme that subsidises compact fluorescent bulbs so shops can sell them for as little as 50p each. This is a lot like my suggestion to Manchester Council that they replace all there incadescent bulbs with compact fluorescents. It seems surprising that a power company should be behind it, but it’s simply that they’re fulfilling their obligation to the government’s Energy Efficiency Commitment. Which feels like a lot more than the Government is doing.

I was an early adopter of compact fluorescent lightbulbs. I don’t think any house I’ve lived in for the last six or more years has been without them, and that was while they were in the £8 a bulb range. Now I think it’s time to move on and try some of the LED lighting solutions mentioned in the article.

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Around Spinneyhead

I think I should start giving occasional updates on the states of my various projects, if only to shame myself into finishing them sooner.

Adrift– nine pages rendered and lettered. I’ll start uploading them today or tomorrow for launching next Friday. Tenth page mostly rendered, I’ll get it, and hopefully most of the eleventh page, done tomorrow.

Tiger– four pages layed out. Adrift is getting more of my attention at the moment.

Discontinuous Infill– I’m starting to collect images for a second Discontinuous Infill. This one will probably be larger than the first as I seem to be only doing one a year.

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You have one hour to get lucky

I wandered into EBay’s “Other” sales area out of curiousity, and nearly got swallowed. The Pashley ice cream cycle was really sweet, and I’ll happily cycle it back from Blackpool if anyone in Manchester buys it.

If the ice cream business isn’t for you, then perhaps you need “one year of good old fashioned English luck“. Closing at around 1pm, so hurry up.

Having a bad day? Using an ancient ritual developed in the woodlands of the rural English countryside, anyone’s fortunes can be turned around. Of course this can not be guaranteed but with 100% approval of our previous rituals you can rest assured your luck will change. A crtificate will be sent to prove your year of good luck has commenced. 10% of this sale will be donated to the RSPCA

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The Da Vinci Load

For those few of you who can still get Spinneyhead at work- do not click on the links in this post.

You have been warned.

Fleshbot on upcoming Hustler release The Da Vinci Load

Operatives of the Priory of Semen, including penile profiler Dr. Nadia Saint (Missy Monroe) discover that Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa using his own sperm. Determined to resurrect Da Vinci and overjoyed that the master’s sperm was not all “lost up a man’s ass”, they steal the painting and kill anyone who gets in their way.

This is already so much more believable than that whole Virgin Mary thing.

Having forced myself to read the book, I can’t think of anything better that could be done with it.

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MEN – "Net blogger must pay £10,000"

Be careful what you say in a chatroom, especially if you’re inclined to accuse a Parliamentary candidate of being a sex offender and a racist bigot. Tracy Williams, from Oldham, made just such a claim about Michael Keith-Smith who fought the Portsmouth North seat last year for the UK Independence Party and has been fined £10,000 for it.

He’s a UKIP member.

Who likes to sue people for things they say about him online.

But he’s a UKIP member.

I think my head’s going to explode.

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The Manchester Way, the fall out

It turns out the Coronation Street non-entities who turned up on Saturday to give really uninspiring speeches on what it means to be a Mancunian were paid £9,000.

What annoys me about the report, though, is the assertion that “More than 80 per cent of people at the conference thought [the Manchester agreement] was a “good” or “very good” idea.”

I don’t remember 80% of us ever saying that. In fact, I took a picture of the screen after they polled us a second time and it distinctly says 67.8% thought it was a good idea. Are they fudging the results by counting the “Perhaps”es as people who thought it was a good idea really but were too embarrassed to admit it?

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