One last thing for January

I'm not really feeling that verbose tonight (oddly enough, considering the subject), so let's just cut to the chase:

WordCount ranks the most frequently used words from the British National Corpus, a 100 million word sampling of the English language.

This goes hand in hand with my current fascination with concordances. Amazon has been doing some neat things with them. The digital texts provide opportunity for easy concordances of anything, but what I really want is something that will make a blog/website concordance, with size indicating frequency, sort of like the top of WMMNA. Which I think is a category concordance of some type. But I'm not sure how it's done, or if it's automated. But ultimately it would be neat to see the words used most often in your blog, and have the words link to all posts containing that word.

Which probably exists. Let me know if it does.

WordCount [via | swissmiss]

If only it said "Don't Panic"

This fantastic poster is a reproduction of a World War II British poster. It's for sale (scroll down just a bit) from Barter Books, which the New Statesman calls "The British Library of secondhand bookshops."
A bargain at three pound sixty (UK) or four pound sixty (ROW), including parcel and post.

[via | swissmiss]

And now for something completely different...

Sorry for trotting out the hackneyed phrase, but, if you read this blog, you've probably deduced my interests lie in art, music, writing, travel and technology. Here's where I may lose you.

I also like business. And reading about business. And Iceland. Hoo boy, do I love Iceland. And Britain.
Which is why the growing phenomenon of Icelandic companies taking over British companies is really, really intriguing to me.

And not to sound like a total poser, but Iceland is a fascinating country. I like Bjork, Sigur Ros, Emiliana Torrini, Apparat Organ Quartet, and other Icelandic musicians. I like the efficient, self-sufficient attitude. And I had a kick ass time at Iceland Airwaves.

They have a beautiful airport, too. And the Blue Lagoon.

Who knows, you may like these articles.

I, for one, think Britain could use a little Icelanding up.

Tennessean is tennebelievin' or: look where my hand was. or: hang the blessed DJ

I went to a birthday party last night and had far too much tequila (but you'd like me when I have too much tequila), and then when the Petron ran out, a bottle of vodka came out. Ahem.

Remarkably, I feel pretty good this morning. Of course I woke up about, oh, incredibly early o'clock, but that is to be expected. We'll see if it sneaks up on me later. I'll try to preempt that with some tea and then breakfast. I'm thinking Flor Morena. I might even bring the old compy for a writin' time.

Where was I going with all of this?


Um...
Oh, I thought Aidin Vaziri's Best of 2005 was really funny. He's a music journo for the SF Chronicle. It's great stuff from interviews. Like this:


Duff McKagan of Velvet Revolver
Q: How weird is it to go through all this again?
A: Oh, there are times when Slash and I look at each other onstage and the crowd is going crazy and it's like, "F -- , dude. We did it again." It doesn't happen very often. But it's pretty great. People tell us we saved rock 'n' roll.
Q: I just wish your pancreas was here to enjoy it.


Duff, by the way, is morphing into some amalgamation of Bowie and Ichabod Crane.

That is all. Time to make the tea.

P.S. How the hell did I get raspberry filling in my hair? Guess that means I have to shower.

Further adventures in melodrama through song lyrics (with photo).

We're just a million little gods causing rain storms.














Okay, even if sleeping is giving in, I need some.

People say that your dreams are the only things that save you

For all we know, it's just a lie.

Everytime I close my eyes:


I'm right behind that raspberry.

apologies to the arcade fire and miss smith

3,688-3,444

I love basketball. Never been any good at it, but I love it. And I'm not from North Carolina
Which means, of course, that I both loathe and respect Duke, and to a lesser degree, UNC.
Which is why I want to play a three day basketball game.
Just so they don't hold the record for the longest basketball game ever, and especially so Duke isn't the winner of the longest basketball game ever.

Anyone have three days free?

Busby Berkeley Dreams

I saw the AutoGene on Tuesday, and have watched Peter William Holden's creation at least once a day since. Choreographed umbrellas in an homage to Kelly's dance in Singin' in the Rain. It's Zen and the Art of Umbrella Maintenance.

the video: AutoGene in action. [wmv]

[via | WMMNA]

How to make friends and do travel writing.

Rolf Potts, the author of a book that I didn't think was all that great, writes an article about travel that is all that great. Definitely one of the better things I've read in the last month or so.

The Art of Writing a Story About Walking Across Andorra

[via | Arts and Letters Daily]

And, as mentioned in the article:
The Games of the Small Countries of Europe.

The basement of a Ramada Inn has never been so much fun.

Happy New Year, the peoples.
I spent the new year at 1160 bar seeing Busdriver (highly underrated by my crowd) and Very Be Careful. V.B.C. was throughly enjoyed by my party, and the whole Ramada Inn basement setting made it feel like some house party too cool to actually exist. But exist it did, and we rang in the New Year to the sounds of an awesome DJ between the two aforementioned acts, and danced our asses off to the other two.
Hope all was well, and that you had a hap-hap-happy new year.
Hugs + kisses,
Etienne