Sunday, 11th February, 2007

How To Interpret Your Dreams

dreams random

I have to type this quickly, because all the things are starting to fade...

You are watching some medieaval reenacters shooting paintball

Explanation: You recently watched Hero on Film 4, and perhaps wondered to yourself how crappy it would be to be in the front row of the archers¹

You are standing at a urinal, while someone else wees on you

Explanation: You got up in the middle of the night for a piss

You are a werewolf

Explanation: You watched the first espisode of Season Two of Doctor Who the other night, and caught the trailer for the next episode at the end.

You are in a secret werewolf school, where they treat the condition with ibuprofen

Explanation: When you got up in the night for a piss, you had a headache but didn't take anything becayse you were saving your last two ibuprofen for the morning

You are Queen Victoria

Explanation: See "You are a werewolf" above

You are walking into a courtroom in an enormous gown, and taking centre stage

Explanation: You are a transvestite with a liking for large dresses, and an inflated self of self-importance.

...

Weird one that There were other things — things like how when the ibuprofen stopped working, we had special chocolate lollies to stave off the lupine-attacks². And someone from the Alumni department at Lancaster trying to find out what I was up to these days over the phone (but I could see her in the next room), and I had to be selective in what I told her because if I told the truth then the guy who looked like Alan Rickman would be angry with me.

And I could try and describe the dress — it was enormous and black, a cross (sort of) between this and this, but it had large quilted cream panels that went over the top that I could rearrange to suit my mood.

/me needs more coffee

¹ As oppose to being "in the front row of The Archers", which would be quite interesting I think. I mean, you'd get to see all the actors and how they do the sound effects. But then again, I doubt they record that in front of a live audience.

² Do I mean "lupine"?

™

bank evil

Just wanted to link very briefly to a post from NRT that caught my eye in my usual RRS trawls yesterday, on a certain bank stretching the limits of plausable trademarking and ask the same question he asked:

Can they do that?

Meanwhile, sitting on my laptop's desktop is an enormous¹ post I wrote yesterday — for therapeutic reasons more than anything — outlining in great detail my seven-month battle with said bank, which forms an unseen undercurrent undercurrant of context to practically all my blogging since July, but will never see the light of day (unless I publish my memoirs in thirty years time).

But asides from that, I'd really like to know (comments or email) if anyone has any experience of smile.co.uk as a bank — because I'm fed up and it's time for a change.

¹ Even by my standards.

Sounds plausible?

Potentially, although I'm more inclined to go with the Tooth and Claw explanation myself

From what I recall (and I'm by no means remotely knowledgable on these things — this is just gleaned from conversastions in pubs and random Wikipedia trawlings), it all depends on the context of a phrase. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can trademark a phrase (like "Every little helps" for example) and prevent people using it within the same context as yourself (so if Sainsburys started tailing their ads with "Every little helps", Tesco could kick up a fuss)

I mean, I could trademark "the act of whacking trademark symbols on the end of everything" as long as I made it "within the context of a transvestite blog" I Guess™

Yes? No?

I think though, the main issue I have with what Barclays are doing there (and I think I'm echoing what NRT is saying) is that the intention appears to be all paly¹ and chummy and friendly, but behind the scenes they're being Evil Corporate Bastards™.

¹ is that a word?

Out Of Me Into You

photo abstract

Gravatars and Buddyicons

icons design buddyicon gravatar

A Tedious And Pointless Navel-Gazing Entry™ about pixels.

The art of self-expression within two thousand, three hundred and four pixels is a tricky one. Over the years, I've had various stabs at trying to create the perfect avatar. There was a time, for example, when every online instance of myself was accompanied by this little face...

(Ah, I remember those days Do you remember those days? You must be Old Skool. Rock on!¹)

The evolution of my male avatar is a simple enough process — from a sketch in my undergraduate work (mentioned in the fifth 'Graham' comment in this) to a character on a business card, to a cropped version of it when I hastily had to make a 'User Picture' the first time I installed Mac OSX.

In fact, come to think of it, those two icons above still feature on the login screen of Emer. Because I used her at work a lot, I kept my two identities very seperate — creating two accounts so as not to expose anyone to my 'alter ego' — and I've never gotten around to changing my 'Siobhan' User Picture...

..which has undergone a couple of revisions over time. From the cartoony-me above, through the obligatory Flickresque 'cyclops' one-eyed stare...

...to my current currant abstracty stripey a-bit-like-my-hair and obviously-from-my-header-image (but if you can spot which bit, I'll be impressed) buddyicon that I use all over the place now:

Kisa's avatar has gone through similar progressions. An early pre-red-bangs profile crop:

Through an (again) de riguer Flickresque 'cyclops' one-eyed stare...

...to something I came up with the other day — something intended to be a representation of my 3D self, within the same constructs and criteria as my 2D one:

(It's the hair, the colours, and the abstraction)

There is an intent (isn't there always?) that I have to create some kind of consistency through the various channels I choose to exist in online — an intent to somehow coalesce them all together into a meaningful 'whole'. There should (in my mind) be a logical reason for choosing one over the other — the differing mind-sets that I find each 'self' imposing on me should somehow make sense.

And that should be reflected in the accompanying forty-eight square pixels of colour.

Or rather, perhaps, those gravatars and buddyicons should do more than just provide a pretty accompaniment to some text. They should — in some way — convey a sense of the personality behind the words. The textual medium of the internets is well-noted as being devoid of emotion, so any clues as to our 'intentions' behind the things we say — the emoticons, the "/me does something"s — should be seized upon and made the most of.

Somewhere, on her Photostream, Torley and I had a brief conversation (which annoyingly I can't find) where she remarked how unsettling it was that I'd changed my icon and didn't have a little cheeky eye staring out of the screen.

And (dammit, I wish I could find it) I had to agree — the transference from the representational to the abstract which works (IMHO) on Siobhan's avatar, strips the essential personality out of anything I say as Kisa. And the intended 'gravitas' (Ha! "Gravatas" ) that I'd meant to convey, doesn't fit that 'self'.

...

Anyway, before I spend far too much time analysing what essentially boils down to "a pretty little picture", I just wanted to chuck in a set of three buddyicons that I came up with the other day while I was trying to design a new Kisicon...

I thought they were rather clever. You might disagree

¹ Shit, that reminds me, I need to create a Yahoo! id for Kisa...

You can't take it with you

photo hair

If I didn't know that it was perfectly natural, and that I lost hundreds of them every day anyway, I'd shit myself

It was more of a Sheriff Of Nottingham one, now that I think about it.

Ha! That's priceless! Made my night

I don't suppose you have found a new job

No, but if someone would like to donate a suitable outfit, I'd gladly pose for photos

Food Stupido — Parts 1 and 2

random food

One

I made a rather delicious chicken pasta thingy this afternoon. The only thing it lacked was something green and crunchy — like a green pepper for example. Even though I enjoyed it immensely, I couldn't help but think that with a green pepper, it would have been perfect. But alas, I knew I didn't have one.

Just there now, rummaging through my fridge for some cheese, I found a green pepper at the back.

Two

Part of what made the pasta chickeny thing so yummy, was some chilli. I only used half a one, because one of my favourite things to eat is cheese on toast with chilli.

But somewhere along the line — between then and now (now being me starting to make cheese on toast) I threw away the chilli.

...

Still on the subject of food though, I dunno about you guys, but sometimes — even when I've got loads of stuff in the fridge — I feel uninspired. I've got sausages, bacon, chicken, veg, pasta, bread, cheese ... and I know that given twenty minutes or so I could knock up something tasty.

Hell, I've even got a garlic bread in there that would only take ten minutes.

But sometimes, I just can't be arsed. And it's at times like these that I resort to sticking my finger in a jar of mayonnaise to keep myself amused and non-peckish.

Mmmm. Tiffin.

Corrugated Speleology

photo cat tish

From deep within the cardboard caverns, our intrepid explorer catches a glimpse of daylight

Well, it seems to be holding

What's interesting (slightly) though, is that we must all have thousands of hairs at different lengths all the time — it just looks like they're all the same(ish) length.

It's a good job they all shed at staggered intervals — otherwise, if they were all in sync — we'd periodically be as bald as a coot

Hold on. April cleans your bathroom?