No Middle Name

Smoky sunrise , originally uploaded by No Middle Name . Sunrise obscured by bushfire smoke this morning.

(de)construction , originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

A later train than usual. Mostly full, but I see several empty seats clustered together. I sit down next to a skinny man, who is wearing denims and is hunched over the freebie newspaper. There are a couple of other empty seats near us, but people are standing. The man's jeans are dirty enough to have become shiny in parts. The skin on his hands and neck is papery, blotchy, abraded in strange places. His hair is cut very short and is either naturally a faded ginger colour, or the man smokes a lot and has white hair. We sit next to each other for a few more stops. Nobody sits in the seats opposite. He carefully folds his newspaper, then puts it in his holdall before getting off at his stop. He leaves behind a slightly sickly, persistent smell and a fly which will not leave me alone.

David Blaine embarks on his most ambitious stunt ever . The renowned magician will today attempt to fold himself into his rectum, vanishing forever with a slight grunt. "It's the trick I've been training for", said Blaine through a megaphone standing on a street corner, shouting at anyone who was unfortunate to be passing by. "Look at me! Look at me!", he added. Reaction to the news has been overwhelming: "Thank fuck for that", said Milton Armtwistle, society burglar; "Twat", enthused Devon McCreamy, lady-adventurer; "Didn't he do that before?", enquired Lennon McCartney, 57, a retired hamster sexer.

Today I cast aside all pretence at normality and wore my geekdom in public. I watched the first episode of season 6 of Smallville on my phone on the train. A double-whammy of nerdhood - firstly, that I watch Smallville at all; secondly, that I like it enough to work out how to get it onto my phone to watch; thirdly, that I have a phone capable of playing video. Ok, so that's a triple-whammy, but considering that neither you nor I would recognise a whammy if it ran up and bit us on the bum, you can bloody well stop being so pedantic. Anyway, this season looks promising. There's a nice setup for some super-baddies to appear in later episodes, Jimmy Olsen has turned up, and things might actually happen this season. Then again, I have said that at the start of every season, and for the first four seasons of monster-of-the-week episodes that ended with Clark making big cow eyes at Lana but not doing anything I was proven wrong. Season 5 broke the mould by having things happen that w

My workplace , originally uploaded by No Middle Name . My workplace has The Empire Strikes Back on the telly in the kitchen. Beat that Bloomberg. (that's Chewbacca holding c3p0's head in his hands, by the way)

One for Mr. VanderMeer , I think. [via Warren Ellis ]

I bought an ibook just before they started bundling bluetooth, but after they started bundling airport extreme. On Friday, my new i-mate jasjam (also called a HTC Hermes / TyTN ) was delivered. It comes with Active Sync, which only works on PCs. It comes with a USB cable, but all I could do with that was charge the battery on a Mac. It has Wi-Fi and joined my home network easily, but it won't sync over wireless. A bit of googling later, and I found out that you can share files, and get it to work as a modem with a mac - but only via bluetooth. Grr - no good for me unless I shell out for a dongle. There's also Missing Sync , an Active Sync replacement for Mac OS X, but it costs money and requires OS 10.4 (I've got 10.3 - so that would be an extra $200 on top). I thought of using FTP to transfer files, but Windows Mobile doesn't come with a FTP client. You can buy them, but I'm a skinflint. Ah-ha, I thought, Windows Mobile probably supports SMB (the windows standard

On a whim, I ordered Howard Who? from Small Beer Press (along with Kate Wilhelm's excellent Storyteller ). I'd read a couple of Howard Waldrop's stories before on the now-defunct SciFiction (the archives still work, worth a read), and was keen to read more. The man's a fucking genius. In the last week I've read about a man searching for the last dodos; Elvis wishing he could play the clarinet like Eisenhower instead of being a Senator; fishing for Leviathan after the Great Fire of London; zen sumos throwing their opponents with the power of their minds; and what happened to Mickey, Donald, and Goofy at the end of the world. All meticulously researched, and completely believable. Every single story is great. They're all examples of a writer getting an idea and running with it, elbowing aside worries about whether the story will find a market or any of the other crap that gets in the way. "Horror, We Got" is the perfect example. In it Israel builds a

Miracle , originally uploaded by No Middle Name . Where do the trolleys go?

Did you ever read a book that you really liked, but made you feel stupid? The Dragon Waiting is one of those books. It has a great plot, interesting characters and a very well thought out fantasy world that combines elements of real-world history with magic and vampires. No problems so far. There were sections however, that only hint at what's going on. Conversations where one character says something vague, followed by the other character thinking things along the lines of "...he knew exactly what she meant". Well I don't, tell me! I don't have a clue, mate. I hate being made to feel stupid, or that I've missed something, mainly because it doesn't happen very often (me being super-clever, of course. Much cleverer than you, for instance. Yes, I am). Luckily, the interwebs have found another review that comments on the same thing. Which is fine by me. As long as it's not just me feeling a bit stupid I can cope with it. Maybe, as the reviewer above sta

"Ah, sit down, Moistbeard." "Aye, yer lordship." "Er, yes. Just George will be fine, Moistbeard. Our company culture is one of informality. Anyway, let's get down to business. You've been with us a little over six months now, haven't you?" "Aye, yer lord - aye." "Company policy dictates that we have these little chats, they're called appraisals but they're more of an opportunity for us to get to know each other, decide what we can do to help you achieve your personal career goals." "Size each other up, like Ahab and his fish." "Yes. Ahab's in accounts, isn't he? Smashing fellow. So, let me just scan through your appraisal form and we'll take it from there. Hmm, under 'achievements' you've written 'plundered the seven floors, stirking fear into the hearts of all the desk-lubbers'. Care to elaborate?" "Aye, sir. My crew and I have formed many a raiding party, gat

Reflections , originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Horse , originally uploaded by No Middle Name . My workplace is protected by electric cyber-horses.

Resurrection , originally uploaded by No Middle Name . And lo, on the third day didst some of the trolleys rise up from their graves and trundle away.

Across the aisle from me, is a woman with the flawless complexion of a terracotta warrior. Same burnt orange colour, same featureless, uniform texture. She looks plastered, rather than made-up. To relieve the monotony of hue, her lips are picked out in a subtle shade of neon pink. Her dyed hair is a strange purply-red colour, a little too short for the artful piling she has attempted, varnished with a stupendous amount of hairspray and buttressed with an assortment of hair grips the size of girders. For good measure, a large, green, silk orchid is glued to one side of her head. Her black uniform bulges in all the wrong places, and she stares vacantly into space. On her shirt is the name of her workplace, a beauty salon. You too could look like her, it says.

So I've converted my blog to blogger's new beta . This means the site is dynamically generated, not static, and I can add little tags or labels to each post without using Flock. Actually, Flock probably won't work anymore. Or Flickr. But I know Flickr has been fixed. I just need to sort out my settings. Which I will do in a minute. I'd hate for me not to be able to post crappy cameraphone pictures to my blog.

Motivation Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . Stupid poster.

This weekend I had to strim our garden. We're moving out of rented accommodation so we need to make everything nice and tidy. I up-ended the strimmer to replace the plastic coil of whirling cellulose disruption, and proceeded to shriek like a pansy. Nestling gently amongst the compacted, shredded lawn remnants was a redback spider . Sleek, black, pointy and kind of cool looking, it was the KITT of the spider world. But without the annoying, slightly camp voice. Seemed a shame to have to stomp it into a small smear on the garage floor,  but poisonous, potentially lethal creatures with the ability to scurry up my trouser leg have no place in my world. technorati tags: spiders , redback , gardening , carnage

Graveyard Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . Where shopping trolleys go to die.

Imagine a balloon squeezed at one end, the other end swelling and - well, ballooning. Paint a face on it and you'd have a first approximation of the guy that sat opposite me on the train the other day. He looked as if his tie was too tight. His eyes seemed to bulge, showing too much white. His face was almost purple. If he'd been frowning you would be concerned about how much fibre he was getting. Smiling beatifically, he stared at a point about two feet above my head and a foot to my right for the whole journey. It may be that his over-starched collar had forced his head into this position and he couldn't move any more. I surmised that he must be on his way to see a doctor, or perhaps a tailor.

I crush a tram Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing - lifehack.org These look interesting, but 50 is far too many for me to get around to reading. I never seem to have that much time. technorati tags: writing

subbuteo cricket Originally uploaded by iyers . For me, Wendy, and the other 3 people who watched the Kids in the Hall in the UK: I Crush Your Head .

The most beautiful woman in the world sat opposite me on the train the other morning. Eyes like polished emeralds watched the suburbs slide past. Succulent lips pouted above a delicate chin, cradled on long, elegant fingers. Her shoulder-length, blonde hair was restrained in some complicated folding arrangement the secrets of which are known only to women. The most beautiful woman in the world dozed off not long after I got on. Her head would slowly fall forwards, jerking herself awake in a glamorous, heartwrenchingly sexy way, followed by mopping up the drool from the corner of her mouth. The most beautiful woman in the world woke up a few stops from the end of the line. She ran an unpainted fingernail around the inside of her right ear, delving into the folds. The most beautiful woman in the world wiped whatever she'd excavated on the lapel of her fashionable jacket before yawning and returning to her quiet contemplation of the world. The most beautiful woman in the world lurched

Since we arrived in this beautiful country, nearly a year ago, we've been trying to get into the Australian music scene. Back in dear old Blighty, Radio 1 told us what to listen to if we wanted to be cool and groovy, and down with the kids, man. Jo Whiley would carefully inform us as to what we were allowed to listen to and what we should now sneer at. Over here, most of the radio stations are total dogshit. They play adverts between each song, adverts during the news, sneak in adverts as part of the traffic reports, they'd probably even put an advert in the songs themselves if there's a quiet bit. When they're not whoring themselves, the songs they do play are crappy Americanized, middle of the road, poppy pap or sphincter-clenching Classic Rock where the music is drowned out by the creaking of the tight leather trousers and you can almost smell the hairspray. If a song does not have a guitar (or sample of a guitar) in it, you won't hear it. Triple M , for instan

Sign Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

snow patrol Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Tim-tam cornetto Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Central Sunset Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

How can they tell? Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Mitchell House Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Have a nice day Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Carved face Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Bird? Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Red thing Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

The Police Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Morning Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

He loves you... Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . ... but He doesn't love spelling.

Scary job Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Lounging in progress Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . Hi! Pull up a chaise longue.

Grr. Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . No hot chocolate for you, Mr. Jones. You've had enough. Here's a nice cup of lukewarm water instead. German engineered bastard of a coffee machine. I will have my revenge, oh yes. Well, probably not.

Rain Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . This picture looked just as crap on my phone's little screen. I was hoping it would look better when viewed larger. It doesn't. It was forty degrees here in Melbourne last weekend, and the sun was blazing down, shrivelling everything like a crisp packet in an oven (see episodes of Blue Peter in the late 1970s for more details on that reference). This weekend it's still quite hot, but there's lots and lots and lots of rain. Oh well - we're still doing better than a UK summer, so no reason to complain. technorati tags: rain , melbourne ,

Flags Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . Swanston street flags for Australia Day.

K-9 versus the mop people Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . A lost episode of Doctor Who, in which plucky K-9 is attacked by a race of animated cleaning implements.

Lines Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Steamy window Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . An inexplicably steamy window, at work. Me that is, not the window.

For squeaky emus Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Nautilus Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . I was going to write an in-depth review of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The forces of procrastination have overwhelmed me. Short version: vol. 1 great, author having fun; vol. 2 great, author had enough now, time to finish.

Hot chocolate Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . The evil coffee machine at work has decided that hot chocolate (and derivatives thereof, e.g. mocha) is an abomination. Any requests for it are met with a surly beep and a cup of tepid water.

Transistors Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

Beach Originally uploaded by No Middle Name .

bulbs Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . Artistic light fitting where i work.

Trains Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . Waiting at the station.

Welsh church Originally uploaded by No Middle Name . The welsh church in melbourne.