Monthly archives: October 2010


links for 2010-10-12

  • We're talking about the biggest craze to hit the gearhead world since Pro Street in the '80s. It's had traction for at least 15 years. No one wants to admit it, no one wants to talk about it, and virtually no one can define it. That is, at least no one within the walls of publishing giants or speed-parts empires. "Ignore it and it'll go away" has failed. But the guys on the streets? They get it. Implicitly. They may hate it, but they get it. More likely, they'll claim they've been into it since way before it went mainstream.
    (tags: ratrod hotrod)
  • Josh Hadar has built a solar electric three-wheeler that will knock you on your ass — literally.

    The New York artist has made a name for himself fashioning wildly ornate bicycles and motorised bikes as radical as they are beautiful. He’s back with a wild trike that has enough torque to throw you off the back. That’s exactly what happened the first time he fired it up.

    (tags: bike solar)

links for 2010-10-11


Boyfriend Season now available on the Kindle

‘”Autumn is boyfriend season. With the nights drawing in and the weather getting worse it’s the right time to have a man to keep you warm and stuff.”

I was with Lauren and Vanessa, a few pints into the night somewhere in Didsbury, when Lauren had dropped this concept into the conversation.

“And in Spring you can dump them because there’s so much else to do.” Vanessa added.

I think I did a guppy impersonation for a while. It was only later that I thought that men are at their horniest in Spring. It’s all sunny and the serotonin levels are rising again. I’d probably have been told that that’s just the way it goes.’

James is looking for love, so it’s good that the season’s turned and the girls are hunting boyfriends. A short romantic comedy about speed dating, blogging and drinking after work. Also includes How Deep Is Your Love? Find out what happened to James next.

Boyfriend Season, with How Deep Is Your Love? as its B-side, is now available for the Kindle. Buy it in the UK Kindle shop or the US Kindle shop.

I’m going to collect a load of short stories soon. However, Boyfriend Season/How Deep Is Your Love? are very different to all the other shorts I’ve written, so it seemed right to publish them separately. Also, as BS is set in Autumn, I thought it would be a good idea to get it out there just after the seasons turned.


links for 2010-10-10

  • Ghost-cities are the places abandoned due to various reasons – economic decline, wars, natural or anthropogenic catastrophies. This city stands in the range of the ghost ones. This is Stepnogorsk and this post is devoted to it.
    (tags: russia ruins)
  • "It all started as a dare," Bob told me at the 2nd annual Dover Nostalgia Drag Races at Island Dragway in New Jersey. "A friend showed me a picture of this crappy 1927 Dodge sedan and dared me to make something out of it," Bob says. Never one to back down from a challenge, Bob bought the sedan without any clear plan in mind. He did, however, have a whole garage full of car parts from various automobiles spanning almost a century.
    (tags: hotrod)
  • For everyone waiting for an R-rated Labyrinth, your time has come. We just saw the first footage of the profanity-laced fantasy epic Your Highness. It was pretty funny. And, if nothing else, it's got Natalie Portman in a golden thong.
    (tags: movies)
  • His appearance and personality may have changed dramatically over the decades he has spent travelling through time and space, but Doctor Who has always remained resolutely male.

    However, it has emerged that the show's creator urged the BBC to give the character a sex change in a desperate bid to prevent the series from being cancelled.

  • For those taking to the streets of Leicester, the EDL is providing a new white nationalist identity through which they can understand an increasingly complex and alienating world. In a similar way to how football hooligans once coalesced around support for Ulster loyalism and hatred of the IRA, the followers of the EDL genuinely believe they are "defending" their Britain against the threat of Islam. What makes the EDL much more dangerous is how it reflects a wider political and cultural war. Across western Europe rightwing populist parties are achieving huge electoral success on the same anti-Islam platform. This is being mirrored by the emergence of the Tea Party movement in the US and a religious right that is pouring money into western Europe to fight secular liberalism, which they blame for allowing Islam in through the back door.
    (tags: EDL racism)
  • The English Defence League, a far-right grouping aimed at combating the "Islamification" of British cities, has developed strong links with the American Tea Party movement.

    An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.

    (tags: EDL racism)
  • Nearly 200 householders in Didcot are heating their own homes with gas produced from their own waste. The Oxfordshire town has become the first in the UK to have biomethane gas, obtained from human sewage, piped straight into the natural gas infrastructure.
    (tags: renewables)

Object of Desire-Cartoon hot rod



Object of Desire-Cartoon hot rod, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

This passed me going the other way as I was heading into town. I immediately turned round and caught it at the lights. I’m not sure what it is- it looked like it had a 32 Ford radiator shell, but that’s not necessarily conclusive on a rod. The supercharged engine had a nice burble to it, and I’m intrigued by the air scoop into the boot. Those Mickey Thompsons are serious, aren’t they.


All you good, good people

I feel like I meant something you always say you need more time
Well I’ll stay right here and I’ll wait for good until I find a love worth mine
Someday you’ve got it coming it hurts me when I read the signs
So loud and clear that I’ll make you glad if I’m leaving first and crying
All you good good people listen to me
You’re just about done with the way that you feel
When nothing rings home enough to dig your heels in
You don’t have to leave me to see what I mean
All you good good people listen to me

And all I wanna do is find my name upon the line
Before I have to lose this I want time

All you good good people listen to me
You’re just about done with the way that you feel
Nothing rings home enough to dig your heels in
You don’t have to leave me to see what I mean
Lose all your fears
They are keeping you down
You won’t have to fake it while I’m around
All you good good people listen to me

Listen to me..
Listen to me..

All You Good Good People- Embrace

This was my getting the fuck out of Cardiff song in 2001. On The Good Will Out it’s preceded by an intro of an orchestra tuning up. Almost every time, by the drum rolling start of the song I was accelerating up the bridge over the bay and on my way back to Surrey. Because I’m on a mid ’90s-early 00’s nostalgia trip, listening to songs from the Shine albums, Songbird has thrown this song at me twice this afternoon.

[I would like to say that Cardiff is quite a nice place. It’s just that some of the days of work I did there, it was nice to get out again. I was in Cardiff on September 11th 2001. That was an odd journey home.]


links for 2010-10-08

  • The Census cuts non-religious people in half!

    The census data on religion produced by the 2001 census gave a wholly misleading picture of the religiosity of the UK, cutting the number of non-religious people in half.

    Why this matters

    If you say you’re religious on the census and don’t really mean it, then you are treated by some sections of the media, churches, and even government policymakers as if you are a fully-fledged believer.

  • A coder has built an interface for e-book reader browsers that lets you play text-based adventure games from the 1980s.

    Before computer games arrived on the scene, kids amused themselves with choose-your-own-adventure books that allowed you to explore fantastic worlds that were described without the aid of fancy graphics.

    As computers became a little more powerful, these were translated into text-only adventure games that retained the spartan aesthetic, but allowed the player a little more control over their exploration of the world. For example, you'd type "north" to move north, where you'd then "look" around a scene before deciding how to interact further.

    (tags: kindle)
  • I love hollowed out books. They make excellent hiding places or they can be used as unique and tricky double gift wrap. "Ah-ha, it's a book wrapped up in a book!" I've built hollowed-out books before, using the time-honored, frustrating, and very time-consuming hobby-knife method. This time, I decided to speed things up (by hours!) using my Dremel Multi-Max oscillating tool.
  • Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

    Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

    A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.


Art of Tea

As the next Irwin tale is tentatively titled A Death in Didsbury, I shall be spending some time over the next few weeks down here trying to soak up local flavour. I’m currently in The Art Of Tea on Barlow Moor Road, making the most of their free WiFi and casting about for inspiration.

I remember when this was a bookshop with a mod inspired sign, which started selling drinks as an extra earner. Now it’s flipped. The bookshop still exists in the rear of the building, along with the picture framers, but the last time I was here the lights were off in the back room so I didn’t venture in. Maybe when I’ve finished my green tea I’ll go for a browse.


links for 2010-10-06


In praise of Oklahoma

Between a third and half of Tiger was written in a cafe in Manchester’s Northern Quarter called Oklahoma. Every so often I’ll be unfaithful and go looking for another place to drink coffee and Earl Grey (or the lightly spiced hot apple I just tried), whilst writing and occasionally checking the internet. As yet, none of them has been as good.

I Starbuck’d out in 2001 and vowed to thenceforth give them as little money as possible. I’ll only go into one if someone else drags me or if the charity I’m collecting for gives me a free drinks voucher. Nero’s is okay, but they rarely have free power sockets for the laptop and you have to pay for WiFi. Costa likewise. (Costa used to give extra shots of espresso free, at least in 2001, so I’d always have one in my latte. I like to think I’m the reason they stopped doing that. [I drank a lot of coffee in 2001, my stomach lining is still recovering.]) The cafe in the International Anthony Burgess Foundation has the power sockets and the free WiFi, but just doesn’t feel as friendly.

So I keep coming back to Oklahoma. Half of it is a wonderful shop full of kitsch goodies where I have bought a few presents over the years. It’s where I meet up with my sister when she’s in town. It’s lovely and not too far from anything. I don’t yet visit often enough to be recognised as a regular, but I’m working on that.

When Irwin is sat in a cafe in the Northern Quarter, I like to think it’s Oklahoma. I don’t know where else he’d get the internet access to check his stocks.


links for 2010-10-04

  • While Richard Branson seems set to dominate space with his planned tourists flights and the seas with the Necker Nymph, a design company has created a "clipper in the clouds" that could rule the skies.
    (tags: airship)
  • Australian firm SkyLifter is developing a gargantuan airship, capable of lifting entire buildings and carrying them over a thousand miles, for use in getting aid to remote areas or sites of natural disaster.

    It’s the solution to a long held problem in transporting huge pieces of equipment. Roads and railways don’t always reach remote locations, and areas of natural disaster or poverty rarely have airstrips or runways. Even heavy-transport helicopters suffer from limited payloads, meaning the equipment has to be dismantled and taken in many trips.

  • Some analysts suggest that lessons can be learned from Portugal's drug laws. So how are things done differently there?
    (tags: drugs)