Ramblings of a Mike

Detektivbyrån

2008-09-29T11:36:55Z

http://coilhouse.net/2008/09/29/better-than-coffee-detektivbyrans-wermland/ - Amelie meets Edward Scissorhands meets plain ol' awesome.

Art Critics Part 2

2008-07-03T23:27:25Z

After the first Forcan installation was discarded/stolen by our cleaners, we set up a new Forcan (known as Forcan II) in its place. This time with a white fork, for a bit of variation. This morning, as we expected, it was gone.

Today we've decided to raise the stakes. Forcan III has 2 elegant metal forks in place of the prior plastic utensils. Will they take the can and leave the forks? Will they take the can and wash up the cutlery? Will they recognise it for the fusion artwork that it is? Stay tuned!

Update: Forcan III has gone! Currently planning Forcan IV

Art Critics

2008-07-02T09:18:44Z

We set up an impromptu 'art gallery' at work yesterday, with lots of interesting creations (the 'bloc party' made of wooden cubes and tinsel is inspired). Today we came in and found all of the exhibits still there except for 'Forcan' - a plastic fork taped to a Coke can. A pavlovian response from the cleaners? Or art criticism? Who knows!

Memeage

2008-06-30T11:22:48Z

As stolen from nmg - plenty of gaps here, then!

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see."

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicise those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE.
4. Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (reading now! :)
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Oo, it's been a while!

2008-06-15T20:33:22Z

Hello LiveJournalettes! I'm now doing most of my blogging (if you can call it that ;) over at tumblr, as it fits in a little better with my random-finding-thing process. I might switch mikesroom.org to point there at some point, as 'tis quite nice really.

Also, does anyone know of goodly tea shops (in a 'we sell tealeaves' mode) in London? Whole Foods has a pretty good selection, but I'm sure there must be somewhere that's entirely tea-based, and not Whittards?

P.S. I've just finished watching The Prisoner. What on -earth- was he taking during that last episode?

links for 2008-03-25

2008-03-25T19:18:37Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Rabbit Head Pasta

There are some things I won’t cook, and the majority of those are ‘things that appear to be looking at you as you cook them’. *shiver* That said, the end result looks great!

(tags: rabbit head pasta)

links for 2008-03-23

2008-03-23T19:17:29Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Unix Toolbox

Amazingly thorough unix cheatsheet.

(tags: unix cheatsheet reference)
Yellow Drum Machine | Let’s Make Robots!

(tags: robotics robots music)
Kaffeeklatsch - Wiktionary

(tags: kaffeeklatsch coffee)

links for 2008-03-18

2008-03-18T19:19:50Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Different-Space-Shuttles.png

(tags: donald sutherland fortified dagger space shuttle)

links for 2008-03-13

2008-03-13T19:18:44Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Launchball: we did it differently, and got it right.. « electronic museum

(tags: design london game launchball sciencemuseum)

links for 2008-03-12

2008-03-12T19:19:11Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

The Geometry of Musical Chords

(tags: music)
The Geometry of Music - TIME

(tags: geometry music)

links for 2008-03-11

2008-03-11T19:19:13Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

The Wonder Years Without Narration

(tags: funny video)
Database Exception caught

Interesting mini-ARG thing

(tags: arg game)

links for 2008-03-10

2008-03-10T19:18:18Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

All Just Words: The Mark Zuckerberg SXSWi Keynote: an almost-realtime transcript

(Audience break into spontaneous standing ovation, in awe at Zuckerberg’s razor sharp retort. Fat guy at the front screams and faints. Twitter crashes.)

(tags: humor facebook)

links for 2008-03-06

2008-03-06T19:17:43Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

The Peeps come out at Night on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

(tags: flickr photos)

links for 2008-02-26

2008-02-26T19:18:57Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

YouTube - A Great Big Robot From Outerspace Ate My Homework (VFS)

(tags: movies cartoon)

links for 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T19:18:37Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

YouTube - Sesame Street - Casino - Robert Deniro & Joe Pesci

(tags: youtube Casino mashup)

links for 2008-02-19

2008-02-19T19:18:28Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

MAD POTS of Tea!: Tea Blends

(tags: tea guru)

links for 2008-02-18

2008-02-18T19:21:22Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Make Your Own Tea Blends

(tags: DIY tea)
How to Dry Orange or Lemon Peel at Home

(tags: recipes)
Herb tea blends

Why do I suspect it’s a short step from tea blending to witchcraft?

(tags: tea recipes)

What I’ve Been Up To

2008-02-03T20:02:11Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Getting Lost Girls and meeting Alan Moore to have it signed.
Seeing Cloverfield (excellent film, go and see it!)
Seeing Sweeney Todd (see above) and seeing a surprise Q&A with Tim Burton afterwards.
Eating eddoes (they’re a lot like potato), for the first of my ‘new things to eat each month’
Eating 100% Dark Chocolate as my second ‘new thing’ (I’m going with Luke’s description - it’s like licking an orange)
Getting settled in with Thing A Day (Guy will be making guest appearances!).
Buying a spangly iPhone, which has already proved its worth in direction finding.

links for 2008-01-31

2008-01-31T19:18:22Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Sweeney Todd Audiowalk

Probably contains spoilers

(tags: sweeney todd audio walk)
http://homeland.gov.safenow.org - what to do in an emergency

That closet door in your bedroom leads to the gates of Hell. Don’t go there.

(tags: funny security)

links for 2008-01-30

2008-01-30T19:21:25Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Ethan Hayes-Chute

(tags: art newsletter)

links for 2008-01-28

2008-01-28T19:21:42Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Amazing Young Organ Player Rocks Out Video

Cool stuff, though I can’t spot where she’s controlling the drums. Possibly some sort of loop triggered via the pedals?

(tags: music organ video)

links for 2008-01-27

2008-01-27T19:20:34Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Tofu Jerky

Who’d have thunk it?

(tags: jerky vegetarian)
BOOKS2EAT edible Gallery

The Edible Book Festival

(tags: books food)

links for 2008-01-25

2008-01-25T19:21:29Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

Do’s and don’ts with babies :: Hilarious pics

(tags: cartoon education funny baby)

links for 2008-01-22

2008-01-22T19:21:11Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

That Goat Has Devil Eyes! | Ask MetaFilter

(tags: food recipes goat)

links for 2008-01-21

2008-01-21T19:22:07Z

Originally published at Mike's Room. You can comment here or there.

YouTube - Portal ” Still Alive” by Cana:n Cana:n

Amazing

(tags: still alive j-pop dungarees)
Lasagna Cat

I’m sure this must be satirical… surely.

(tags: cartoon garfield weird)
A SHORT FABLE FOR CHILDREN THAT TEACHES A VERY IMPORTANT LESSON
Vacuum Tube Modules for Electronic Music by Metasonix - G-1000 Guitar Amplifier

“The G-1000 consists of two totally independent amplifiers, with very different preamp sections. One channel is called the HAPPY channel. The other is called the ANGRY channel.</p>
For damn good reason. One sucks your face, the other gnaws your foreskin of

(tags: audio cool amplifier ow)