Circadian Shift

Oh you should see my trail of disgrace,
it's enough to scare the whole human race

grapejuiceplus has several songs by the band Felt available for download, including the always haunting and melancholic "Primitive Painters".

Grab some Stoli, turn down the lights, stare at your toenails and sing along.

Read the rest.

It's that time of year where the weather is yucky and grey, the damp cold still manages to seep through however many layers of clothing you've got on, and the sun sets far too early. Listening to something bright and sunny is in order.

• "Holiday" by The Other Ones (MP3; 3,518 KB)

The Other Ones were a Berlin-based group (although I only recently learned that the three principal members came from Australia), and this was pretty much their only hit. The production effects, particularly the brassy keyboards, pretty much scream mid-80s pop, but it's all very cheery, no?

Bassist Johnny Klimek went on to produce techno records and wrote the very cool soundtrack to the film Run Lola Run.

(BTW, other recent uploads of mine are still available over at Circadian Shift: The Outpost.)

• cartoons from toothpastefordinner, specifically this one and this one
• this handy guide to workplace communication skills (Flash, needs sound)
• and lastly, this edict that Great Britain has revoked U.S. independence, which in fact did not merely make me smile, but laugh/chortle/giggle non-stop for five minutes or so

Props to The Nub for providing this link to an article on self-defence in the home. The article has pointers on making use of common household items to battle home intruders:

And it's good to know that my TV remote control is still useful for something, given that I haven't watched TV at home for several months now...

Also did a bit of tweaking to Circadian Shift: The Outpost, and uploaded following file:

• "Revenge of the Photocopier" -- funny TV commercial (WMV video; 1,298 KB)

And that's all for now...

In light of the current shortfall in blog posts, I've taken the following measures to reduce the length of the sidebar so that it doesn't scroll out longer than the body of the blog:

• Moved all the blogrolls, webring stuff, and search widgets to this page. (Note: the side-by-side display of the two blogrolls was achieved using a table. Insert overly apologetic web-authoring self-recriminations here.)
• Moved the Drive-By Linking into the body of the blog, after the "regular" blog posts. (I've also changed the setting so that only posts from the last 14 days -- or lack thereof -- display on the front page, instead of 28.)

Posting to the main blog will continue to be sporadic, but I'll try to add to the "Drive-By" links with a bit more regularity.

Apologies if things look wierd.

Just because I haven't been writing here much lately, that doesn't mean that I haven't been spending any time working on le blog. That's because, while I haven't been posting, the comment spammers have. And it's gotten particularly out of control in the last month or two.

So, I've spent several hours both yesterday and today going through every single goddam post on this blog (all 1357 of them), deleting anything that carries even the faintest whiff of spam, and shutting off the commenting option on all posts that don't currently appear on the home page (i.e. most of them). Going forward, this will clearly require a more elegant solution.

Meanwhile, here's some related linkage:

• a Wikiepedia entry on link spam, which explains what it is, and why people do it; there are also some links to more information
• a BBC article on how spammers are targetting blogs
• a Wired piece on the evil genius of comment spammers
• the Online Journalism Review looks at bloggers fighting back against comment spam
• the Blog Spam Database maintains a list of spammer domains and publishes it as an MT-Blacklist file

So, the last couple weeks have been muy insane. The less said about that, the better.

Just because, I've posted a double-shot of pub rock to Circadian Shift: The Outpost:

• "Stick It Where the Sun Don't Shine" by Nick Lowe (MP3; 3,450 KB)
• "Freeze" by The Motors (MP3; 4,214 KB)

Out of sheer laziness, I will point you to the following linkage in lieu of my own commentary:

• Wikipedia entries on pub rock, Nick Lowe, and The Motors
• an entry on pub rock from Make the Music Go Bang!, a website on the history of punk rock

Updates to le blog here will continue to be intermittent for the next while, as I've got several other things on the go.

Might be a while before this sorry little page gets updated, as I will be channeling my webified energies elswhere.

Don't worry. It's a good thing.