Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

• IBM Makes Supercomputer Significantly Smarter Than Cat
  "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at IBM have presented at paper at the SC09 supercomputing conference describing a milestone in cognitive computing: the group's massively parallel cortical simulator, C2, now has the ability to simulate a brain with about 4.5 percent the cerebral cortex capacity of a human brain, and significantly more brain capacity than a cat."
  (tags:tech computing neuro )
• Cabell cairns pique archaeologist’s interest
  ""On the summits of nearly all prominent bluffs, spurs and high points of this region are heaps of large, angular stones," according to a survey report published in 1894. "Unlike the loose cairns of the Plains and the Northwest and elsewhere, these appear to have been systematically constructed for some particular purpose.""
  (tags:history )
• Gang ‘killed victims to extract their fat’ | World news | guardian.co.uk
  "Peruvian police have arrested a gang which allegedly killed scores of peasants, drained their bodies of fat and sold the liquid abroad as an anti-wrinkle cosmetic."
  (tags:crime )

Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 20-odd hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:

(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)

So every year I do a thing where all the readers of the site take a photo and send it in to me, and I run as many as I can. It started off as World Wide Wednesday, and last July I did a World Wide Week just because of the volume of shots I get. I just realised today that I haven’t done one of these stunts this year. And that I don’t have a clear week between now and New Year where I’m actually at the keyboard every day. So I’m going to bring back the iteration from 2008, I think. Tomorrow will be The Friday Telescreen 2009.

Take a picture of yourself, email it (not a link to it) to warrenellis@gmail.com and I’ll run as many of you as I can here during Friday.

Why do I do this every year? I dunno. Kind of a tradition now, since the days of the WEF and Die Puny Humans. I have this idea in my head that the internet, like Soylent Green, is made out of people, and it doesn’t hurt to see the people you’re with when you come here.

It begins.

• The Belbury Parish Magazine
  the organ of Belbury Poly/Ghost Box/confusing & haunted British electronic music
  (tags:music haunt )

• Help Phoenix Marie
  "We are raising funds to get urgently needed medical treatment for our beloved friend, Phoenix Marie. She has been battling a life-threatening progressive heart valve disease since 2006, when she had her first heart failure and near death experience. With no insurance to cover her, Phoenix sold almost all of her valuable belongings and clothing and did eBay sales for half a year in order to see a specialist and receive the tests and costly x-rays needed to diagnose her condition. Her heart disease was a congenital defect (from birth) that was apparently misdiagnosed in childhood as harmless and left unchecked…"
  (tags:people )

• BBC NEWS | World | Europe | ‘Body sold’ to Russia kebab shop
  "Police in Russia have arrested three homeless men suspected of killing a man, eating part of the body and selling other parts to a kebab shop"
  (tags:crime )

• Constellation 04: Cover for Sag/Cap issue
  "Here's a sneak peek at the new cover for Constellation's Sag/Cap issue out at the end of the month featuring Dame Darcy, Peter James from "Some Secret Place", Pluto in Cap, Travelmania, gorgeous photographs by Christina Labey, & horoscopes based on your inner animus. issue will be available at the end of the month."
  (tags:peopleiknow magazine design covers )
• Holy water dispenser combats spread of swine flu - Telegraph
  "…a churchgoer waves his or her hand under a sensor and the machine spurts out holy water."
  (tags:cult tech )

So, one week later. Copies of SHIVERING SANDS are now starting to arrive with people — I found this on Kat Foisy’s blog this morning:

(If you want to send me a photo of you posing with SHIVERING SANDS? Email it to my dump address at warrenellis [at] gmail dot com, along with your website address or twitter ID or whatever, and I’ll run it and your link here)

A week since launch of the book. We’ve sold, I believe, a little over four hundred copies. Given that the production of the book involved 1) me culling from seven years of jabbering and sticking it all into a couple of RTF files 2) Ariana flowing all that into a single file and spending a couple months’ worth of spare moments fiddling with it 3) Ariana uploading the thing, ordering a proof and spending an hour checking it over… we were well into any definition of profit by the end of day one.

It is, of course, the long game that pays off. It’s interesting to look at the first week, but it’s not defining.

A persistent criticism of my interest in POD has been that only writers at my level of cultural awareness can make any kind of success out of it. And some of them will now be saying, well, even Warren Ellis can only move 400 copies in the first week of a POD project. But, for one thing, it is about the long game. For everybody. The book doesn’t go away. And, for another, if I’m not aware enough of you to order that POD project — whose fault is that, really? Because, I’ve got to tell you, I wasn’t born with a book deal in one hand and an exclusive comics contract wrapped around my other flipper. Hell, when I was starting out, there wasn’t even an internet.

SHIVERING SANDS is published through Lulu.

At my shithole today:

* The MATT FRACTION Interrogation 2009 - comics writer Matt Fraction kindly taking questions from the proletariat

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Zero

* Whitechapel Radio Is On

* Warren’s Ancient Jukebox - fear

* Warren’s Work FAQ (Revised Nov 2009)

* Eliza Gauger’s SWEATSHOP

(I’m in a foul mood today.)

All you people with your augmented reality unlocking the digital city outernet designing the sentient city rhetoric and toys? You know what you’re making?

Street Clippy.

Now fuck off and make something that’ll do useful work on a phone in a village, instead of something that’ll get you laid in fucking Hoxton. Make something that has meaning outside a major metropolis.

Oh jesus, I’m sorry, you were working on building the urban digital future playing Foursquare and I disturbed you.

(I’m off to kick the cats.)

(Yes, playing Devil’s Advocate a bit. But, see above about foul mood. An article I’m not linking to because they don’t deserve my ire just tipped me over the edge into shoutiness.)

• Oldest American artefact unearthed : Nature News
  "The tool shows that people were living in North America well before the widespread Clovis culture of 12,900 to 12,400 years ago"
  (tags:history )
• Brazil crime wars: Spiderman’s story of drugs and Jesus in Rio’s slums | World news | The Guardian
  ""If you add them all up I control 15 communities," boasted Spiderman as his shiny 4×4 hurtled through the narrow backstreets of western Rio de Janeiro. Behind the wheel was Juarez Mendes da Silva, 28, one of the Brazilian capital's most wanted drug lords, better known by the nickname Spiderman. The words "Jesus" and "Christ" were tattooed on to his forearms in black. In the boot his pet dog, Bloodsucker, shared space with an M-16 assault rifle."
  (tags:crime drugs pol )
• Detroit: Urban Laboratory and the New American Frontier | Newgeography.com
  Not a lot new for Detroit watchers, but I love the phrase therein: "urban prairie"
  (tags:cities )
• New podcast: Shift Run Stop ? Roo Reynolds
  Roo says: "I?ve been working with Leila Johnston on a new thing. It?s a fortnightly podcast called Shift Run Stop and as she explains it?s ?an ambient soundscape sort of production, an undulation of chatter and noise, ideas, games and food?."
  (tags:podcasts )
• re-inhabited circle-k?s - mammoth // building nothing out of something
  "photographer Paho Mann documents the diverse array of stores that re-inhabit the empty shells abandoned by the national corporation Circle-K; the current lives of Circle-K's include "a dry cleaners, a couple of florist shops, a tattoo parlor, a tuxedo rental place, several mini-marts and dollar stores, and Bridgett?s Last Laugh Karaoke and Fish Fry." "
  (tags:architecture culture )
• The Psychedelic Review Archives 1963-1971
  "MAPS has posted PDF scans of The Psychedelic Review Archives 1963-1971."
  (tags:magazine history drugs )

• core.balance:sustainable masterplanning tool-SuBET
  "Hilson Moran has developed a masterplanning system called SuBET (Sustainable Built Environment Tool), which provides a design framework. It brings together everyone involved in a project, from the client and the quantity surveyor to the architect and environmental consultant, to consider 71 environmental, economic and socio-cultural indicators."
  (tags:architecture eco culture )
• Cousin: Japanese captured Amelia Earhart | NevadaAppeal.com
  "?The Japanese then transported Amelia Earhart, Noonan and the airplane to Saipan. Noonan was beheaded by the Japanese and Amelia soon died from dysentery and other ailments,? Wally Earhart continued. He added that the Japanese troops on the island cut the airplane into scrap and tossed the remnants into the Pacific."
  (tags:history )
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Smart spectacles aid translation
  "Spectacles that can provide subtitles have been created by hi-tech firm NEC. Resembling glasses but lacking lenses, the headset uses a tiny projector to display images on a user's retina."
  (tags:tech ar wearable bodymod )
• Dark Matter And Dark Energy Make Up 95 Percent Of Universe, Detailed Measurements Reveal
  "These measurements of the cosmic microwave background — a faintly glowing relic of the hot, dense, young universe — put limits on proposed alternatives to the standard model of cosmology and provide further support for the standard cosmological model, confirming that dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of everything in existence, while ordinary matter makes up just 5%."
  (tags:space )

Been in the work mines all week, and today isn’t looking any better. Catching up is becoming a full time job in itself.

So it’s been confirmed that the wonderful Helen Mirren — a good old Southend girl, don’t you know — has joined the cast of the film adaptation of me’n'Cully’s graphic novel RED. So the top of the cast is now Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren. Which is a little surreal. They’ve also set a release date, which I think is 2 November 2010. So we’re a year away from seeing it. Shooting starts in January, in Toronto and New Orleans, I believe.

And BLACK SUMMER is now in development, with Ryne Pearson writing the adaptation. He wrote the recent KNOWING, which I haven’t seen, but which I know made its money back. Pearson’s a novelist by trade, according to the internet. Also, according to the internet, a man of devout religious conviction. Just as well SUMMER doesn’t contain any of my usual atheist ravings. And no, I have no idea if the death of an American President will be retained in the script. It’s theirs to play with, no. I imagine I’ll be talking to them in the near future.

And next week I’m on the phone with Legendary to get GRAVEL moving.

PLANETARY Volume 4 now has a subtitle: SPACETIME ARCHAEOLOGY. I understand that ABSOLUTE PLANETARY Vol 2 is also being prepared right now.

(I should actually write a new work FAQ. There’s one on Whitechapel that hasn’t been updated in a month or so. So I’ll add here: FELL moves along slowly, DESOLATION JONES remains on hold for various reasons, NEWUNIVERSAL will get finished up next year once Steve and I are past ARMOR WARS, I have no idea what the state of the CASTLEVANIA animated property is, and, in general, assume that a prolific career of many projects contains several that have just run into trouble or stalled out because, guess what, shit happens. And no, I never got my dead computer back. That’s a tale in itself, which includes the guy who was trying to repair it dying on an operating table.)

Buy my book please?

Wakey wakey.

Back to something like normal broadcasting today. But first, something to eat, and then to the pub.

(Image: Agent Redhead, photography by Beth Anderson)

Too much to do, so I’m bailing out of warrenellis.com for the night. Tomorrow, we go live with SHIVERING SANDS.

I am being played off tonight by NEU! and the phenomenal "Fur Immer." Been dragging out, dusting off and re-playing all my Krautrock since watching a pretty good documentary on those days by the BBC. I shouldn’t call it Krautrock, mind you, they didn’t like that term…

G’night.

• Indian engineer ‘builds’ new glaciers to stop global warming - Telegraph
  "Chewang Norphel, 76, has "built" 12 new glaciers already and is racing to create five more before he dies. By then he hopes he will have trained enough new "icemen" to continue his work and save the world's "third icecap" from being transformed into rivers."
  (tags:eco )
• ‘Demon worshipper’ kills four | The Australian
  "the killer was said to be a demon worshipper who believed in a black Jesus and worshipped on mountaintops before dawn"
  (tags:crime weird culture )
• Space hotel says it’s on schedule to open in 2012 - Space- msnbc.com
  "A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012"
  (tags:space idiots )
• Technology Review: Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics
  "By building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates, researchers have made electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body."
  (tags:sci tech bodymod )
• Car maker develops its own flower species - www.drive.com.au
  "Toyota has created two flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere."
  (tags:sci eco biotech )

At my internet hovel today:

* The Starry Wisdom Of Warren 3nov09 - my daily notes on what I’m up to, and what (or if) I’m thinking about.

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Kardak The Mystic - this week’s challenge for artists, all are welcome to play

* The Self-Portrait Imagethread (Nov 2009)

* Netlabels - a rolling list of the ones we like. If you’re running a netlabel, feel free to stop in.

* Comics Shipping This Week (Nov 4) - the list

* NaNoWriMo 2009 - a support thread for the people participating this year.

Yesterday got pretty much swallowed up. Today, I huddle here under the plastic roof in the pub smoking compound, as the weather shifts from torrential rain to sunlight and back again every five minutes. The workload’s pretty hairy today, but let’s see if we can’t do some embloggening in between the usual shouting and crying. Probably mostly linkblogging, as I fight to get my RSS reader under 1000 articles… but, as usual, probably also mostly about my friends and fellow-travellers. Jamais Cascio has a Cheeseburger Carbon Footprint t-shirt and tote that I should show you later. Matt Jones had dinner with Brian Eno last night and put all kinds of arcane knowledge into his notebook, some jabbering about a “minimal book” that I have to decode at some point… COILHOUSE turned 2 and I was too busy to notice, Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER was made a book of the year by Publishers Weekly… and, in general, I’m not doing a good job of keeping up.

And SHIVERING SANDS goes live tomorrow.

(Also, I want to post more music, which will probably make most of you go “oh god no.”)

More in a bit. My fingers are freezing up out here.

• polis: Tracing the Paths of Revolution
  "… a brief visual exploration of urban development in Moscow leading up to the October Revolution, focusing on aspects that may have influenced current public parks."
  (tags:history architecture )
• POWAY: Body found hanging from tree on Halloween
  "A public works employee got a grisly surprise this Halloween when he discovered a partially decomposed body hanging from a tree, according to the San Diego County medical examiner's office."
  (tags:crime )
• Deforestation sped demise of Nasca in Peru: study | Science | Reuters
  "The mysterious people who etched the "Nasca Lines" across deserts in Peru hastened their own demise by clearing forests 1,500 years ago"
  (tags:history eco )
• Magazine The Journal of Inter… | Issue Issue One | MagCloud
  "Issue one of THE JOURNAL OF INTERSTITIAL CINEMA. Featuring 24 pages of reviews, articles and rare pictures." Must remember to look at the preview
  (tags:magazine )
• Japanese scientists create ‘Alien’ bionic arm - Telegraph
  "Japanese engineers have created an exo-skeleton arm that is attached to an operator, enabling humans to lift more than 90 kg with ease."
  (tags:sci tech bodymod )
• Kissing was developed ‘to spread germs’ - Telegraph
  "the gesture allows a bug named Cytomegalovirus, which is dangerous in pregnancy, to be passed from man to woman to give her time to build up protection against it. "
  (tags:med )

• BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Secrets hope as Hitler aide dies
  "The fly had been buzzing around the room during a strategy conference in July 1944, irritating the Nazi leader. Hitler ordered Mr Darges to get rid of it, but the SS adjutant suggested that as it was an "airborne pest" the job should go to Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below. He said Hitler then flew into a rage and dismissed him, saying: "You're for the eastern front." "
  (tags:mad war pol )
• ‘Miracle’ as communion wafer becomes heart tissue - Telegraph
  "The Catholic Church in Poland is investigating claims of a miracle after a piece of communion wafer was reported to have been transformed into human heart tissue after falling into water during a mass."
  (tags:cult weird mad stupid )
• Darpa Looks To Send The Internet Into Orbit
  "…part of a larger movement to extend terrestrial networks into space, and eventually build an "Interplanetary Internet.""
  (tags:space net )
• BBC NEWS | England | Hereford/Worcs | Father uses son’s ashes in tattoo
  "A father from Herefordshire is to have a portrait of his dead son tattooed on his chest using the child's ashes."
  (tags:bodymod tattoo death )