on the internetz.
Just saw the news about the bombs in London. They’re talking on CNN about the operation at Kings Cross being ‘clear up rather than recovery’ – ie, they’re not looking for any more survivors. *sigh*.
Let me know if you’re in London and OK – I’m back in New York now for those people who thought I’m still back over there. My thoughts are with everyone over there and for an end to this stupidity around the world.
Yes, the rumours are true… I’ve totally fallen in love with the flickr interface. It’s slick, fast, easy to use, intuitive and just, well, lovely. Titles turn into edit boxes with a slight click, the style is clean and readable and they have cute little Flash apps to organise and view stuff. Wow. Reminds me a bit in style of the folks over at 37 Signals, a great little design/build shop who came up with Ruby on Rails.
So now I have another photo feed…
Oh yes, and London won the Olympic bid. Yay!
R.I.P.
Yesterday, while I was busy enjoying a long transatlantic flight back from England to see the NYC Independence day fireworks, one of the “Twelve” apostles decided to end it all. That must have been a helluva sight. Makes all those sparkly sky bangs and lights seem less impressive – although they seemed quite splendid at the time.
Before I forget, and the jet lag kicks in, thanks to everyone back in England for a great week and a bit. Had a great time driving around the country to fit everyone in, culminating in a dash from Norwich to Liverpool (via Brum), then across to Manchester for John’s wedding. Congratulations to Mr & Mrs Michaelides – a splendid day for two splendid people. Expect photos of all of the above sometime soonish.
Realised that I had, yet again, not written anything in my blog for a while.
Until now.
Bet you’re glad you waited aren’t you…
On more blog-worthy type ramblings: at present I’m enjoying some lovely sunny weather over in England as I catch up with my family and prepare to attend a wedding oop north. The last few days have been those beautiful sunny, 20 degree days with a slight breeze that are supposed to comprise the whole of ‘spring in New York’. Of course those of us who lived through this (now yearly) event saw remarkably few of those days this year – instead we enjoyed torrential and occaisionally freezing rain followed by tropical, summer-esque humidity.
Now that it’s summer of course we can expect a pile more of the latter, which gets me to thinking; where would be good to live and find more of this current weather that I’m enjoying so much? Montel goes off to Chile for the New York summer (for his MS), others go off to the Hamptons for the summer and me, well, I tend to stick out the hot, sweatiness – often without the benefit of a/c. More fool me.
Well apparently I’m doing something right in the eyes of Google, as a search on Matt Hobbs (no quote marks) brings me back as the top result. Pretty bizarre really given the other day I was on the second page. Guess this may have something to do with Google’s new search patent filed the other day that explains how they’ve changed their search to de-prioritize link farms and give sites that have been on the web for a while higher priority.
It’s only 8.50am and already 86 F in my apartment. The humidity is also supposed to be pretty high today, making it feel like 100+ degrees (around 36C for those Europeans in the audience). Summer. Is. Here.
After the last few weeks of chilly, cloudy ‘spring’ this change in heat comes as a bit of a shock for most of us. One suspects that the weather’s gone “hold on a mo, I’ll make up for being so chilly by being extra hot for a few weeks” – great. The familiar New York ‘air conditioner spit’ has kicked in, constantly throwing out a light drizzle as you walk past tall apartment buildings. I always think that the excess of air conditioners in the city just makes the problem worse. All these people pumping their heat out into the street to keep their little boxes cool must surely make the outside a few degrees warmer. In fact Manhattan definately throws off it’s own column of heat that affects the local weather – sometimes even causing clouds to split apart as they pass over the island.
So for the moment I’m trying to survive without an air conditioner, although I suspect this won’t last. What I really need is good dark wooden blinds outside my window in true European style. Since most of my windows face west this would be highly useful, especially for staying asleep in the mornings when the sun hits. Luckily I have one window on the shadey side of my house, although unfortunately that goes onto the fire escape so I can’t leave it open while I’m out. Being on the top floor is great most of the time, but in summer it really ups the heat level.
Mustn’t grumble.. could have no light in my apartment at all which would be much worse.
John just sent me this handy little gadget – an underwater case for your mobile phone for taking pictures down to 20m! Cute little gadget and definately a market for it – although if it fails and trashes your phone that’s pretty painful.
This led onto the thought that you could text underwater – fr’instance “look out – there’s a shark behind u!”. Of course with T9 or other predictive text who knows what that would turn out like in a moment of panic. John was thinking it would lead to a resurgence in Jaws theme ringtones, or failing that a nice phone wallpaper to scare the shark off…
My s30 is getting a bit the worse for wear. Time for an upgrade. But which one to buy?
For a few years now I’ve been suffering from these episodes when I’ll wake up from being asleep unable to move, except for my eyes. Generally when this happens I feel like there is someone in the room lying on top of me and I feel very afraid*. Not a particularly nice experience, but it seemed pretty benign overall.
For some reason this topic came up at a rib bake-off contest I was at on Saturday, where the winning rib chef commented that he also had such experiences and it was called sleep paralysis. Pretty obvious really. So I owe him a big debt of thanks for that – plus for the excellent ribs.
What’s fascinating about this, aside from finding out I’m not such a unique freak after all, is the wealth of folklore attached to it. The concept of the old hag, or incubi sitting on top of you, is often cited, as is the more recent trend towards alien abduction ‘victims’. Figures really. Wake up – can’t move – strange feeling of someone in room with you – then you wake up again in the morning unable to explain what happened. Quick! Call Mulder & Scully!
Of further interest to this minor revelation is that I only found this out due to the usual random sequence of New York life. On Wednesday I was in Beauty Bar chatting with someone, who introduced me to someone else who was the boyfriend of one of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby team. Because of this I got convinced to go along to their charity race on Friday which was a whole heap o’ fun. For those of you who don’t know what a roller derby is – it basically involves two teams on roller skates trying to skate fast round in a circle and get past each other to score points. Anyways, while at this crazy event I met some more people who gave me a lift home in a nice wood panelled van and then invited me along to their barbecue the next day and there I learnt all about sleep paralysis amongst other things. Good random fun, and definately the manner in which I’m now intending to live my life – or at least my social life.
* As an aside this was a very different feeling from the odd times in our old family house where I used to half wake up to a ghostly shape floating 5 feet above my bed. For some reason I always found that vaguely comforting after I stopped freaking out. Sorry gran, we’ve moved now, so hope you’re alright with the new owners.
