Love Toronto
I still love London, but I'm getting to love Toronto, too.
I've only been here a shade over a week but have already found a gaggle of fine places for The List.
12 posts tagged with:
- Upbeat
- Things I'm impressed by.
Love London
I'll be moving out of London in just a few short weeks, but I'm far from tired of it. Here's a quick run-down of some of my favourite establishments. I've been popping in as often as possible lately, each time not knowing if that'll be the last time for a good, long while.
Update at 09:07 BST, 4th August 2009 – Honourable mentions: The Old Mitre and The Harp
Joe Biden on Black and White
Joe Biden was quoted in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago (emphasis added):
"I'm going to say something presumptuous," Biden said to me. "The reason I've been relatively successful is that I have never questioned the motive of other senators, and that's instinctively Barack. Barack doesn't start off, 'Well, you disagree, you must be a, you know, an S.O.B. or you must not care about the poor or you're sexist or you're racist or you're a whatever.' He doesn't think that way." Biden continued, veering slightly into stream-of-consciousness, "I think it comes from a guy who is, you know, who's half white and half black. You know, this idea – he is a black man because society won't let him be anything else. But he's as much his mother's child as he is his father's child. And here's a guy raised in an environment that was relatively normal in the sense that there was no—he wasn't able to be squirrelled away somewhere, or he didn't live in a homogeneous neighborhood where he was part of the homogeneity. You know what I mean?"
That's a pretty simple story, and a compelling one.
A penguin president
There's been some chatter recently about how Barack Obama isn't really black. The claim is that he's basically a privileged white guy.
I've a proper problem with that, and my basic difficulty is with a classification that is so damn crude.
Why try and jam Obama into one of the pigeon-holes of being exclusively white or black, but never both? I'm sure a large part rests with the media, in wanting a story that is simple to tell; I fear that a greater part is playing on America's more fragmented, near segregated culture when it comes to colour. Growing up as a kid with a mixed background made me feel no less British. I have a great love of Irish and Indian culture, but they aren't quite home to me. I'm not sure America, or perhaps just public identity there, allows such a tick-all-that-apply approach to cultural identity. I'm pretty sure living in London makes that much easier, which is why it is home now.
I hope people start the more nuanced conversation about Obama. He is black and white. He could be their first penguin president.
Words I use
I'm sure I'm fairly late to the party tinkering with Wordle, but I found running the text I've written here quite insightful:
Generated with Wordle (and a little bit of sed, naturally).
Nick rightly points out that the word BEER should appear in large letters somewhere. Unfortunately, I generated this just from these posts, not the entire site and crucially not these places.
Tagged: Upbeat
Posted at 14:46 BST, 1st July 2008.
No comments.
BBC Programme Support
The BBC have a great new Web site – BBC Programme Support (more info from Tom Scott of the BBC). This is especially good for Web nerds like me, but it will help make link-centric television work for Real Human Beings, too.
There are a few quirks in how things are listed right now but I'm sure they'll shake out in due course. What's great about this service is that the Beeb is committing to long-term, stable URIs for their programmes, with a single, clear link for each show, irrespective of how and when it is shown or repeated.
Edinburgh Festivals
Following Chris' lead, here's a gaggle of films that Mary & I are going to later this month in Edinburgh.
I'm also excited to be going to the Un-Festival, organised by Ian Forrester, catching some decent comedy and generally being up in such a lovely city, even while it is wearing a clown suit.
Harry Potter leaked
I'm a Harry Potter fan. I like the books, and I really don't want spoiling about the last book. According to Torrent Freak, poor quality scans of the book are already kicking about over BitTorrent.
Now I'm not surprised, but I think – in this case at least – the publisher is winning.
Update at 17:42 BST, 19th July 2007 – Tracing leaker via EXIF metadata
Tagged: Rants, Upbeat, Distribution, Social, Technology
Posted at 18:12 BST, 17th July 2007.
Twitter awareness
Wired has an article on Twitter by Clive Thompson which is spot on:
Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.
I've several friends using Twitter who I'd love to see more often. I'm not going to manage that, but at least when I do see them now the conversation starts in a much more interesting place. We both have a sense of whether things have been fun or crap lately. Since the Twitter messages are so short, they sometimes only just make sense after chatting about it.
Twitter's great, and I expect we'll see more of this ambient presence in other spheres before long.
Tv Calendar
I've been using pogdesign's Calendar for TV for some time. It covers many series I watch, and makes it easy to remember what I should be recording or borrowing from a friend.
It used to be full of swanky, fragile Web 2.0 AJAX goodness. Thankfully, they've just overhauled things. It's now a staunch database-backed site, storing a user's information in a database, not their cookies.
I was a fan before, despite the technology choices. I'm a much bigger fan now.
And with the new iCal feed of what you want to watch, I'll be able to automate more of the recordings, which is fab.
Decongested London
The Congestion Charge extended past my home & work this morning, and I'm quite happy.
Every road I've crossed today I crossed without breaking stride. It made for a much more pleasant journey in.
Tagged: Upbeat
Posted at 19:07 GMT, 19th February 2007.
No comments.
A new year – a new start
2006 was a very good year. I finished my thesis, and started on a research project that takes some of those ideas on much further.
On the family side, there have been a lot of good things. Life at home is better than ever; my brother and his wife had a beautiful baby girl in January; and a few other things have gone well.