“Don’t lose your sense of wonder” – POW
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
Oh my pretty things, what sweet music they make
(contains: geekiness, disclaimers and someone who can’t tell the different between a Scanjet 4c and a Scanjet 4p)
Work in progress – as slow as possible, indeed.
Vlog test
Seems my decision not to take the Civil Disobediance Handbook on holiday was the right one (isn’t Suicide Bombers a great name for a band? “I’m going to see the Suicide Bombers tonight”)
Linkblast
This sucks (worksafe)
Well thats one mystery solved. I woke with a shock last night, so much so that I jumped out of bed. I assumed it was because I was feeling unwell[0], but it seems it might be related to the latest raid, at the shop not far from my house. There has been a series of such raids on village stores around the area, it was only a matter of time before Milton joined in – there was a period when there were two or three raids a week in various villages, but they seemed to have calmed down a bit. I had assumed the raids had stopped because they had been caught, but apparently not. They all take the same form, three men in balaclavas using two vehicles, one large SUV style and one high-end executive style saloon. The SUV is used to open the shop (to get to the cashpoint contained within) and left, damaged, on site while the saloon is driven off as getaway car.
I wondered whether it was really that good a living – it seems the raids net around 3000 cash, which I suppose split between three isn’t that bad for a nights work, but theres significant risk involved, as well as planning and organising of vehicles, etc. But I suppose not everyone is cut out for regular work.
The shop itself is quite damaged – its a brick building from early 20th century, probably 1920s given those around but maybe a little earlier, but must have suffered some structural distress since the upper floor is now being held up with scaffold poles.
[0] I’ve been having intermittent trouble sleeping lately which I had put down to stress rather than anything serious – I was hoping it wasn’t starting again before getting back to work today.
Be a Cleopatra’s nose
Indispensible for your beautiful nose
You wouldn’t miss a chance”
Does anyone know anything about mapping and/or geographical data representations?
Specifically I’m looking for some maps in an open vector map format, ideally one that is chunkable for piecemeal download over a GPRS connection, scales reasonably easily and is handlable by midrange mobile phones.
The format is the important bit for the moment, the maps themselves can come later.
(And, yes, I’m half tempted to reverse engineer the map database out of my satnav software, but I fear that is going to get a bit boring after a while)
Oh, and while I was poking around for a community about such things I discovered
Book review: Junk by Melvin Burgess
I’ve been a bit lax on my book reviews of late – theres a little bit of a backlog, which I’ll try to clear over the next few days.
Junk is a book I bought some time ago on the strength of its cover – pure white, showing the works of an addict. Theres something that fascinates me about drugs, I’m not a user of anything more serious than caffeine, nor do I ever intend to be, but the way they work, the things they do, the way they make you *think* is something that I think helps me understand myself that little bit more.
The book tracks the descent from smalltown family life of a young couple, him running away from his abusive father, her following him, through a squat network onward into the grip of the drug culture.
One of the interesting things about it is that each chapter is written by a different character – somehow this is far stronger in this book than of many which take a similar approach, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps its the way the transitions between chapters aren’t immediate, time passes as you’re moving from one to the next. Whatever the reason, I thought it nicely done.
The other thing, which I’d never really thought about before but perhaps should have already noticed, is snobbery within the underclass – there is a disrespect for junkies even within the squatters.
Overall a good quick read – its aimed at the teen market, and probably has more for those, like myself, still naive about drug culture.