Monthly archives: March 2006

The future is Goth

This entry was posted in God Robert Smith on by

“Most youth subcultures encourage people to drop out of school and do illegal things,” she says. “Most goths are well educated, however. They hardly ever drop out and are often the best pupils. The subculture encourages interest in classical education, especially the arts. I’d say goths are more likely to make careers in web design, computer programming … even journalism.”

And Robert Smith is their God……


(Okay, he isn’t, but I wanted to bring Clare’s picture of the Bobster out again.)

via Ministry of Information

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run to the hills

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I’m having one of those days where i really need to escape from the office. Sat here in the open plan, where i can see everyone and everyone can see me, i feel terribly isolated from the stuff that’s really important to me.
The quest continues to build a spinneyhead empire which i can rule from home whilst wearing my dressing gown and between househusband duties.

How to spot the signs of global warming

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The Independent thinks the increasingly early onset of Spring is a pretty good sign.

What event defines the spring for you? Maybe it’s the first primrose. Primroses traditionally appear around Mothering Sunday. But last year the countrywide average date for the first primrose was 28 February. And even in these climatically challenged times, February is not many people’s idea of spring.

How about frogspawn? Well, if you live in Cornwall, frogs start to feel the urge around Christmas time. By the time spring comes to the south-west, garden ponds are full of tadpoles.

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Brown to raise the tax on soft roaders

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I like the name “soft roader”, it sounds so much more….. English than SUV.

The Daily Mail reports that Gordon Brown may be considering a rise in road tax for the most polluting cars to £200 a year. The new top rate will be for vehicles emitting more than 250 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, catching all those school run monsters and a lot of luxury and sports cars.

Drivers’ groups will be up in arms, of course, and it will only be a symbolic charge anyway. The fuel costs of one of these monstrosities must be huge, bound to dwarf the cost of road tax. Maybe it’s time to put width or height restrictions on roads past schools (with bollards that only raise at school run time?). Or, even better, announce that every £200 raised taxing the mammoths would be spent to buy a bike for a school kid or commuter.

Update The Independent reports that road tax may also be waived for low emission vehicles.

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howtosavetheworldforfree.com

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How to Save The World for Free has now moved to its own domain- http://www.howtosavetheworldforfree.com/. It’s hosted by GreenWebHost, because I thought it would be appropriate.

The new rss feed is at http://www.howtosavetheworldforfree.com/ecoatom.xml.

For now I’m trying to get all the archives to publish, but Blogger’s being a pain in the arse. The archives at Spinneyhead will stay, because they still get search engine traffic, but I’m going to stick a redirect on the front page. Dig, Digest and 2 Wheels Good will come over as they have similar themes that will sit better as subdomains of howtosavetheworldforfree.com. When everything’s fully published I’ll think about converting to WordPress or some other publishing tool.

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howtosavetheworldforfree.com

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

How to Save The World for Free has now moved to its own domain- http://www.howtosavetheworldforfree.com/. It’s hosted by GreenWebHost, because I thought it would be appropriate.

The new rss feed is at http://www.howtosavetheworldforfree.com/ecoatom.xml.

For now I’m trying to get all the archives to publish, but Blogger’s being a pain in the arse. The archives at Spinneyhead will stay, because they still get search engine traffic, but I’m going to stick a redirect on the front page. Dig, Digest and 2 Wheels Good will come over as they have similar themes that will sit better as subdomains of howtosavetheworldforfree.com. When everything’s fully published I’ll think about converting to WordPress or some other publishing tool.

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Something went wrong for Fay Wray and King Kong

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Fay Wray's nippleI got the original King Kong through Amazon rental, to see how it compared to the recent remake.

It doesn’t drag on the way the new one does- they’re on the boat within the first ten minutes, for instance. There are no pointless attempts to create depth, and there’s no need for them.

And it doesn’t have Jack Black in it.

Then, at one hour, nine minutes and thirty five seconds (I checked) Fay Wray surfaces after falling into the river from King Kong’s eyrie. And her right breast pops out.

Forget starlets trying to get themselves a bit of publicity, this is a 1930s screen goddess accidentally flashing in one of the most famous films of all time. It’s a PG!

I had to be sure, so a bit of screen capture and messing about in Photoshop was called for. I’m sure there are better things to do on a Sunday morning, but I had a lot to drink last night and needed to do something simple to restart the neurons.

What other classic film rudeness is there, I wonder?

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The Manchester Way, part 2

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The problem with a meeting like this is that the crowd is a bit self selecting. In this case, more likely to skew toward a Mancunian Contract than the Manchester population in general, I think.

The workshops were quite interesting. Council employees were on hand to take notes, so I raised the idea of replacing all their filament bulbs with compact fluorescents. I should follow it up with a How to Save the World for Free interview request. And they gave us a free lunch whilst asking us questions that were recorded electronically from polling boxes and laptops.

There were also some Coronation Street stars, but I’m with the 25% who said they’d rather watch paint dry.

Linkage
http://www.themanchesterpartnership.gov.uk/, though that doesn’t seem to be working right now. (Try http://www.manchesterpartnership.org.uk/. do hope they didn’t screw up and put the wrong url in those lovely consultation booklets that must have cost so much to produce.)

The Beacons Partnership, regenerating East Manchester.

Challenge Manchester

Wild about Manchester

Manchester Local Image collection

Manchester newspaper archives

Manchester Green City

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the manchester way

This entry was posted in flickr Manchester photo on by

the manchester way
the manchester way,
originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

How will manchester change between now and 2015? That’s the question we’re supposed to be answering today. I’m here to do a bit of networking and blag free tea towels. If i can get some answers about the council’s environmental and transport policies whilst i’m about it, that’ll be book too.
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The Green House

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A few environmewnt related press releases from MPs-

David Lepper, Brighton Pavilion Labour and Co-operative MP, has been told the government is reviewing the guidance it gives to local councils about conservation areas to see if it can be made more compatible with energy effciency devices and renewable energy devices.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats will put the spotlight on the Assembly Government’s green credentials in their minority party debate next week.

Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Lembit Opik MP, who will open a groundbreaking new exhibition at the Centre for Alternative Technology today, has backed his colleagues in Cardiff Bay, and called on Labour to be bold where they have been timid and do more to make Wales a powerhouse of the green economy:

“The green economy can bring enormous benefits to Wales. Labour should embrace green technology, not shy away from it.”

The Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill will reappear in the House of Commons tomorrow (Friday), after it was wrecked by filibustering Tory MPs last Friday.

Despite huge support amongst the public, environmental pressure groups and politicians this legislation, was “talked out” in its Report Stage – one of the final hurdles.

Bath’s MP, Don Foster, has rearranged his diary so that he can attend the debate and vote in favour of the Bill.

Alan Whitehead, MP for Southampton Test, says that if the tactics of two maverick MPs are not curbed tomorrow, it could have disastrous consequences for the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill.

The Bill which had its Report Stage and Third Reading last week with all-party support was once again subjected to the juvenile actions of two Conservative MPs, one Mr Christopher Chope, a former Southampton MP, the other the Rt Hon Eric Forth. Between them they spoke for a total of three and a half hours out of five, an attempt to deliberately delay the Bill’s passage preventing progress through the Bill’s remaining clauses. This tactic effectively prevents the Bill from proceeding.

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The Dumbing of Tony Blair

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I think Tony Blair loves Dubya so much he’s trying very hard to emulate the Chimp in Chief by becoming as stupid as possible. A few weeks ago he showed a lack of understanding of efficiency when he said that energy saving wasn’t as important companies’ profits. Then there was the admission that some hypothetical higher being was as important to his decision making as reality. The last couple of days have seen the whole honours for loans scandal. And now he admits that he’s incapable of learning from his mistakes.

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The Adventures of a Dead Man in a Spacesuit

This entry was posted in Adrift Comics Poser webcomic on by

Another of my upcoming webcomic projects, this one is due before Tiger. In fact, depending upon the work I get done today, it may debut next week.

Adrift is a computer generated comic, done in Poser and with postwork in Photoshop and Illustrator.

I’m still working on the Mongrels universe. It’s sort of post Singularity, with self aware AIs getting citizenship rights and evolving to the point where they run their affairs like corporations. The AIs are patrons to the Mongrels, humans with nanotechnology that enhances their abilities, who exist to protect them against luddite humans and other humans from rogue AIs. (No AI believes it could ever be a rogue computer, of course, but they worry that others might be.) There are a load of other elements I want to include and I’m going to write a more complete bible and start encouraging others to contribute to the shared world.

Less gabbing, must go away and get rendering.

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