Dear...

str8:man:wife:flatmate

please do not feel that I will be put out if you move out and into our mutual friends flat - I've just spent an hour extolling your virtues so that he will consider it more heartily.

go, go - with your toilet seat upness and your smelly boy smell and your apathy and endless telly watching. Fly little bird, fly...

YEEEOWCH

WOW!!!


Yes - the deed was done.
Hell, what a good piercer he is! I had Mark at TUSK, and he rocks. Not only is he a decent guy, but he is a really good piercer. He talked me though the proceedure and was really good with the breathing when it came time to put needle to skin.
My 2 ear lobes weren't the most difficult or harsh of piercings to have, but pushing a 3.2mm needle through a fleshy piece of skin and then pushing a 4mm acrylic tube through the fresh wound, aint the lightest of feelings.

Twice.


That was prob the worst...the second one. By then I anticipated the pain.





Result?
2 beautiful black tubes of acrylic held on with tiny black rubber rings. If all heals as it should, I'm going to go in and get some 5mm ones put in, in 2 weeks time. Another month or 2 and I can replace those with beautiful, steel flesh tunnels. So you can see the skin of my neck through them.

*schwing*

Now I've just got to endure the cleaning 3 times a day and the strange mode of sleeping as if I'm a damn vampire - on my back, no head movement.

ButchBlooms

Are these not the butchest blooms in the world? ValenSwines looked better after this unexpected hand delivered giftie...



butch swooning commences...

I.WANT.TO.GO.

NOWHERE 2006 DATE ANNOUNCEMENT:
Thursday 6th - Sunday 9th JULY 2006

The Third Adventure in the Middle of Nowhere

You are invited to participate in the 2006 Nowhere festivities, a
celebration of self-expression through art, costumes, music,
performances and tomfoolery.

Nowhere is an event inspired by Burning Man and embraces its underlying principles of radical self-expression, radical self-reliance, no commerce and leave no trace. It is a blank slate waiting for you to draw on it, giving you the opportunity to be whatever you want, however you want.

Participation is the key element which makes Nowhere the inspiring event it is. Everyone is involved in some way in its creation and evolution. From Set-up (erecting the main structures, building toilets and showers, décor, building art and personal projects) to Clean-up (leave no trace), there are many ways to participate. Set-up begins on 3rd July and Clear-up ends on 11th of July

Leave No Trace means that the site is left exactly as it was found.

Last year's event took place near Zaragoza in Northern Spain
Check www.euroburners.org/wikka/NoWhere2005 for photographs and comments on Nowhere 2005.

In order to ensure that the event is managed responsibly tickets will be capped at 200 participants this year. To avoid disappointment we recommend you buy your tickets early.

NOWHERE 2006 TICKET ANNOUNCEMENT

The Price of a Passport to Embark on The Third Adventure in the Middle of Nowhere.

Time to start putting pennies in your piggy bank - ticket prices have been decided and will go on sale on 1st March 2006. There are three tiers of pricing.

45 Euros - for people on low incomes. 40 tix available till end of March.
60 Euros - on sale from March 1 until the end of May.
80 Euros - on sale from March 1 until the end of June.


We kindly request that you buy tickets early and at the highest price level that you can afford, in order to help raise the resources necessary for the event.


The 2006 Nowhere festivities take place in Northern Spain on July 6th-9th and promise a celebration of self-expression through art, costumes, music, performances and tomfoolery.

In order to ensure that the event is managed responsibly tickets will be capped at 200 participants this year. To avoid disappointment we recommend buying your tickets early.

Nowhere is an event inspired by Burning Man ( www.burningman.com ) and embraces its underlying principles of radical self-expression, radical self-reliance, no commerce and leave no trace. It is a blank slate waiting for you to draw on it, giving you the opportunity to be whatever you want, however you want.

Check www.euroburners.org/wikka/NoWhere2005 for photographs and comments on Nowhere 2005

open source iTunes?

Songbird, is an opensource itteration of itunes-ish...well not really , really but kinda.

its a desktop media player that looks to work with apples proprietary music store files amongst the usual others...but I can't say that legally. From what I can gather, it's based a bit on Firefox.

From what I've read so far, it looks to work better with genereic mp3 players - but what I'm after is something I can use my pod as hardware for, with open source media library/jukebox for the desktop and open source OS to put on my pod.

The pod itself was freecycled, so it kinda fits that I should try and shrug off other closed source bits hanging off it, and use openness. ( ipod G3 15Gb = £0. replacement battery and postage = £35. Desktop charger/cradle thingie = £20 plus or minus, can't remember. Charger = £15 probably. Not too bad eh.

Now - I could put iPod Linux on my pod - and boot into either the linux or the apple OS. That I like - having a choice. The linux one even allows for simple monochrome pictures and also sound recording!

I may as well hack about with it now - I rebuilt my pc so I've got a pod that loaded with tuneage, a partition that has the original tunes on it ( untouched by the rebuild) and no itunes on the pc. I'd really like to keep it so as I find itunes sucks up all free resources. In fact I curse iTunes - having to provide corporate support in a design agency - I can assure you that each and every staff member demands the right to have itunes. Which is fair go - creative types and all that.
But hell - I gotta say I sometimes take a small amount of malicious glee in telling people their desktop has siezed coz of itunes and I dont have to support it or fix their problems as it is not company related software. ( I do help em, but barely, and only coz I'm nice.)

So, lets see what I can come up with.

retrosexual

the term dropped into my head the other night but I haven't had time to craft a wikipedia entry for it. Someone else has termed it but their explanation doesn't suit my understanding of the term.

GEEK:GIRL:DINNER v3

Well, I blogged briefly about the first one. Didn't make the 2nd, but was there for the 3rd.

There was no formal speaker this time, but Rachel Jones from Instrata spoke about designing UI's for mobiles, and how the dilemna was whether to design an interface that would be familiar to people, or whether to design an interface that may work better or show off the new phone features better.


Bill Thompson, a tech journalist, also spoke, and Jen Dixon, who spoke about us all being geeks of one kind or the other.

Katy Pearce had a chat too about Global Voices online.

There was another podcast - I tried to make up for my last drunken blathering by blathering on drunkenly.
I just need to stop it - see microphone and run. It's not good.


I met a couple of new people, which was the whole point really, and managed to bring a few gals along to swell the ranks. Wine was thoughtfully sponsored by StormHoek and Instrata.

This is Kate - who took loads of pics. Nice to meet you Kate. We want to live in your house.

oops - cant link from yr flickr

This is AJ, DrJane and Mia

oops - cant link from yr flickr