Bodies Corporate

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet.

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine on record company skullduggery:

The contract we did in 2001 basically gave me ownership of the tapes, and then ... when the new regime came in, the tapes disappeared. That was relevant because even though I was the owner, it would only revert back to me if I remastered from the original tapes—if the tapes were gone, I couldn’t remaster from them and hence I couldn’t ever own them.

Easter Island heads have bodies.

Historical perspectives on the LEGO gender gap [via Mefi]. Further reading: When Lego lost its head and Lego Club membership—are you a girl, or are you normal?

Small, Far Away: The World of Father Ted.

20 May 2012 · · Weblog

Disconnected

Several years ago I wrestled with Keane’s catchy debut album and their reputation for being Dad Rock. Their second, Under the Iron Sea, was so good that I decided I didn’t really care what the critics thought about sad paternal rockers, I just loved it. Once I actually was a dad, and album number three came out, I actually went off them a bit, loving the teaser single for it but not the end result—so much so that I failed to purchase their third-and-a-halfth album, Night Train, and figured I was done with them.

But Amazon insisted that I should try their latest, Strangeland, at a bargain price on mp3; and I did.

The AFOL Truth

I was never the Lego kid in my family; that was my brother. Over the years, my handful of Lego sets were subsumed into his, leaving me with only one. When it came to toys, my focus was on Matchbox cars and action figures, but I knew the sight and sound of Lego all too well. G. kept it in a divided wooden caddy our Dad had made him, and throughout the summer holidays it would be spread out in the lounge-room somewhere, waiting for someone in bare feet to tread on it.

So there’s some irony in being father to a Lego kid of the 2010s. I’m reliving part of my childhood vicariously through him, but it’s a part that was vicarious in the first place.

Numbers Games

The frying pan as canvas: Saipancakes.

Robert Downey Jr teaches you maths.

Michael Rosen goes on a bear hunt: The billions we’re not allowed to talk about.

MP Michael Meacher on the Sunday Times Rich List.

13 May 2012 · · Weblog

Well, that little unplanned gap between posts sure put to rest the post-every-day challenge. I had a few too many things on my plate after our time away, including gathering photos for the Lego Show postmortem. I’d better write that up, I guess.

12 May 2012 · · Site News

Never Let Me Go

The Lego Show

In the end, we spent all three days at the Lego Show. I’m just about all Lego’d out, but I’ll try to post a proper account of it tomorrow.

7 May 2012 · x1 · Journal

Manchester Sans Mad

For some reason or other, I’d never been to Manchester before this weekend. Never been to Liverpool, either. I’d been to Chester (man) and Blackpool, but not their big brothers.

Visiting a place for the first time with a five-year-old, and specifically for that five-year-old, is an odd experience. I haven’t done any of the general wandering around to get my bearings that I otherwise would have, so haven’t seen many of the supposedly nice bits yet. Instead, after getting off the train at Manchester Piccadilly, which is surrounded by a jumble of nondescript buildings, we caught a cab to our hotel and then two buses out to the Trafford Centre, the neo-Victorian shopping mall where the Lego Show has been held. Along the way we passed Daniel Libeskind’s striking Imperial War Museum North and the new BBC buildings, but haven’t visited either. On our bus trips up and down Oxford and Wilmslow Roads we’ve been travelling along the “Curry Mile” of Rusholme, which has left Mint Royale running through my head and my tastebuds tingling, but we haven’t eaten there—we ate at Pizza Express last night and the hotel restaurant tonight so that we could avoid scary spices and stick to the bedtime routine. Manchester’s famous nightlife is just up the road, but for this trip it might as well be on the Moon.

But never mind: the Lego, and especially W.’s reaction to the Lego, has been worth it. Two full days of it seem to have satisfied him, so we might get to see something else before we catch the train back tomorrow afternoon. I don’t think it’ll be the War Museum—or, as one of his nursery friends told him it was called, the National Worm Museum (in memory of all those worms who have given their lives for us...). Maybe it’ll be some of the fancier Victorian buildings of the West End. I hope they’re fancier, anyway; so far, Manchester reminds me of the dingier parts of Glasgow or London. But I’m sure my limited exposure to its non-Lego charms isn’t doing it justice.

6 May 2012 · · Journal

The Lego Show

W. and I have spent the afternoon at the Lego Show in Manchester, and will be back there tomorrow. It’s five-year-old heaven. A fuller report will follow in due course—it’s been a long day of trains, buses and bricks.

5 May 2012 · · Journal

Half a world away and more than half a lifetime ago...

My Dad once asked me to make a sign for the gate next to his workshop, one of those wide metal gates that spans a car-width, to say something like “Please Close the Gate” or “Close the Gate Behind You” or “Please Keep Closed” so that the sheep wouldn’t get out. He left the exact wording up to my seventeen-year-old discretion.

Which is how he ended up with a sign that read DO NOT OPEN.

4 May 2012 · · Memory

May 2012