The blog with no name

I've analysed my blog with Typeanalyzer and this is supposed to be my profile.

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generelly prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

I've tried Scoutle, a free service that is supposed to match my blog with similar ones. Hence the widget at the bottom. Now I see that I've been matched with something called "Celebrity Images Unlimited". With all respect but I think we are a bit off target here as I have little or no interest in celebrities and their images. Maybe I should make it a bit clearer. If anyone comes here hoping to find pictures of celebrities, it ain't no "Hello!" magazine. Sorry for the disappointment

Europeana, the European library launches today, eventually it should give us access to 2 million digital objects, increasing my information overload. I have still not had the time to explore this. I'm always happy to see these developments, unfortunately I feel the urge to get involved with everything, which is impossible and leaves me slightly frustrated.

This time we have an interesting article in the Economist on the rate some languages are disappearing.

Of some 6,900 tongues spoken in the world today, some 50% to 90% could be gone by the end of the century.

My question is without any doubt our language is part of our cultural heritage and so on and it's a shame if it disappears. At the same time does it make sense to prolong its lifespan when not many people want or feel the need to speak it?

From next week BBC1 and BBC2 will stream live on the internet. Well I assume it will be on the BBC website the same as News 24. It is sort of good news, although I have already too much to do when I'm online I doubt that I will spend much time watching live tv and I do pay the tv licence. I quite like iPlayer though, I like having the chance to watch programmes when I feel like rather than when they are on. The only complaint I have about iPlayer is its limited choice and how programmes are taken off too quickly. A few months ago I read that they were planning to keep programmes for a longer period and give us more choice, I have not noticed any improvements yet.

The story goes: woman has swimming pool and cats, worries about her cats falling into the swimming pool and drowning therefore decides to teach her cats how to swim. Claims that cats feel very proud when they realise they can do it, I'm sure it's good for their feline self-esteem.

Now we have the Monty Python channel with a series of high quality clips (hopefully growing).
The channel introduces itself saying:

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube...
None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

One of the discussions around the web in the past 24 hours has been what mobile phones have killed, especially the smarter models. Even someone like me who does not like mobile phones very much (I've never changed a mobile phone because it was no longer trendy but only because I'd lost it) has to admit that mobile phones have changed what we carry in our pockets.
For me it is not so much that I no longer carry a camera or an MP3 because I've never carried them before but I definitely no longer carry pieces of paper with telephone numbers and addresses. But above all, and I've never spent much time thinking about it, I've not had a watch in years.

I've found this blog that examines maps and has lots of very informative articles. I find it fascinating. There is a lot to read here. I mean who knew that there was an U.S. state called Absaroka?

In its short-lived attempt at existence, the US state of Absaroka (pronounced ab-SOR-ka) managed to acquire quite a few trappings of statehood: a governor and capital were selected, Absarokan car license plates issued, and there even was a Miss Absaroka 1939 (the first and only one). The King of Norway also visited, apparently – although he might not have suspected that it was a state visit.

I know you are not reading this but as you have posted at least 30 spam comments on my blog I would like you to inform you that not only I'm not interested in what you sell but I don't intend to publish any of your comments, now and in the future. Thank you.

The very cute animation for the night.

I've found these pictures never heard or seen them before.
So I searched the faithful Wikipedia that says this:

The monasteries are built on natural sandstone rock pillars, at the northwestern edge of the Plain of Thessaly near the Peneios river and Pindus Mountains, in central Greece. The Metéora is home to six monasteries and is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Metéora's criteria[2] for the UNESCO World Heritage Site are I, II, IV, V and VII.[3]

And I add them to the very long list of places that I would not mind seeing. Now I'm going to bed because my PC is playing up tonight it is too slow and sticky and it's getting on my nerves.

This lists 16 applications that anyone blogging cannot live without. It's all very well but knowing me I have to try everything and I always end up with useless applications that I will never ever use. Or I end up registering to another 10 websites that I will only visit once, simply because I forget they exist. Until next year when I find them again, and realised that the reason why my username de rigueur is not available is because I've already have an account. I'm trying RSS Bandit now although I'm perfectly happy with my Google Reader but it's there and is free, I've just got to try it. Oops there is also this list.

When I was a Kid my mother did not want a telly at home, now that I'm big and with a broadband connection I'm catching up.

The video embeds ok in the preview but not when I post it link is here anyway

The Panama Canal is 48 miles long and over 27000 workers died when building it
In this video you can ship through the Canal in two minutes flat.

View Larger Map

And now this
Reginald, Agatha, Fred and so on are the friendly snails. And on the blog we can follow the story of Walter the snail.

I could visit a 3D Ancient Rome thanks to Google or analyse my face, I think it's quite similar to this but I have not tried it yet. Or read comics online, previously we had to pay to read the archive but now it's all free. Unfortunately I will need to register again first. Another username and another password in my long list. I could get some crisps and watch free HD videos here (well the ones available to non US residents obviously) or as usual spend time virtually wandering and not achieving very much.

But this animation is really good with a strange and rather intriguing music. I don't want to turn this blog into a showcase for videos (that might prove I don't feel like writing after all) but in this case I cannot help it.

The Black Dog's Progress from small time inc. on Vimeo.

They might be artistic and beautiful, to me this Barbie Jewelry looks scary. This guy thinks that Barack Obama is going to be a sort of Marxist Hitler. Then if someone explains me this, I would be grateful. Finally this is quite useless.

This is quite curious, they have done a research sending something like 350 millions spam emails and reached the conclusion that to achieve a sale from spam (the usual Viagra thing) you need to send over 12 millions of them. It means that statistically, at the moment, there are at the very most five people in the UK willing to follow a link from a spam email and buy something.

I'm on an artist-storming session fed by my insatiable desire to find something new each day.
What I've found so far today is
Kara Walker who apparently was among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine and nobody told me. Basically she does lots of silhouette work illustrating social and polical issues and quite a lot is about slavery and plantation work in the South of the US.

Then I have Albert Namatjira who was an Aboriginal painter who died in 1959. For most of his life could not manage his own affairs as most Aborigines were not Australian citizens until the late 60s but wards of state. Which seems unbelievable now but I'm talking of only a few decades ago. He was one of the Aborigines to have citizenship.

I had to doublecheck the date, it is not the 1st of April.
I find this a bit too surreal

But it is indicative that the current specifications for an AS paper in English Language and Literature should include a railway timetable and that a chief examiner should be seriously discussing with teachers the merits of putting a bus pass in the same anthology.

More ideas for things that should be included:
mobile phones itemised bills
Sainsburys receipts
credit cards statements
any correspondence from the council (it could be quite interesting as I managed to receive a letter from my local council containing two words that do not exist in any dictionary not even in the Oxford Dictionary yes, the one with 20 volumes, I've look them up)

I knew a few sites that collect disgraceful album covers but this is new to me and has a few gems
like this one.

BTW, the Ritchie Family were not a family and this is what they sounded like
And there is also Cilla Black (as seen on TV of course).

This is an animation made in the early 70s that won the Golden Palm in Cannes as Best Short Film. I have also found more information on this website:

Fyodor Khitruk (b. 1917) began his career as an animator, and came to be one of the pioneers of Soviet animation. Apart from animated satires of topical issues that sharply criticise everyday phenomena and are directed towards adult audience, Khitruk has also made many lovely children’s animations. The festival presents a comprehensive screening of Khitruk’s films that are both cheerful and visually very inventive. The screening includes Khitruk’s direction debut Story of a Crime (1962), Man in Frame (1966) and The Island (1973).

This is the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas as found on Flickr, even the sky is fake (click on the image to see a bigger version)

The hotel's website says:

No trip to Venice — or The Venetian — would be complete without a graceful and romantic glide down the Grand Canal in an authentic Venetian gondola. Float beneath bridges, beside cafes, under balconies and through the vibrant Venetian streetscape as your singing gondolier sweeps you down the Grand Canal for a ride like no other. A relaxing and romantic gondola ride reveals all the charm, excitement and passion that is Venice — and The Venetian.

Fascinating as it might be I still like holidays in real places with real skies and things that might even go wrong and where buildings look their age. I have not bought this fake perfection yet even in this age of plastic surgeries.
Here's some pictures of the real thing in all its decaying glory.

Today is hard to find anything on the interthing that does contain either Barack or Obama or maps of the US. I think that anything that can be said has already been said.
Therefore I'm going to talk about jerboas.

Jerboas are the bulk of the membership of the family Dipodidae; they are small jumping desert rodents of Asia and northern Africa that resemble mice with a long tufted tail and very long hind legs. The small forelegs are not used for locomotion. In general, Asiatic jerboas have five toes on their hind feet and African jerboas have three; the shapes of their ears vary widely between species. Jerboa fur is long, soft and silky. Diet varies considerably: some are specialist seed, insect, or plant eaters, others are omnivores. Jerboas obtain energy by eating plants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerboa

I didn't want to mention the US election as everyone else is talking about it anyway but I saw this virtual polling station and I couldn't resist. Basically it's for us non-US citizens and we get our chance to vote albeit only symbolically. The results are then broken down by country and it is fascinating to notice that the McCain's fan club hides in Albania, but then again only 58 people have voted.

While I'm still testing if I can still use a keyboard I have this interesting found from Rolling Stone magazine. A list of the best guitar songs of all times. While I'm not of fan of lists in general which will always be too subjective, I find this one quite entertaining as after each track there is a link to its own YouTube video. Therefore it seems appropriate to present the winner Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, it's alright really.