Builded
September 1st, 2006 | Work
West Stow
August 31st, 2006 | Work
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Originally uploaded by warrenellis.
A quick and sliiiiightly illegal shot of an experimental archaeology site, piecing together an Anglo-Saxon settlement circa AD 500. Small lump on left of shot is my daughter Lilith.
Whisky-Scented Tiramisu In Chocolate Cage
August 30th, 2006 | Work
You have received a new message
Originally uploaded by warrenellis.
Because that is indeed how I roll.
The Weekly Katie West
August 29th, 2006 | Work
hot as ice
Originally uploaded by avolare.
Make with clicky for details etc. I’m off into the wilds for a few days. Katie will entertain you while I’m gone.
links for 2006-08-29
August 29th, 2006 | Uncategorized
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Superb, raw, experimental punk-edged post-rock. I’ve been listening to the magnificently doomed “The Dying Hour” all night. All four tracks on the page are downloadable for free.
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One of the most influential graphic novels ever, Bryan Talbot’s LUTHER ARKWRIGHT, is now available as a pay-download — the first part for £1/$2, the whole thing for £5/$9. Do it.
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Scientists at SUNY Downstate Medical Center have discovered a molecular mechanism that maintains memories in the brain. In an article in Science magazine, they demonstrate that by inhibiting the molecule they can erase long-term memories.
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Scientists have found a way to trick cancer cells into committing suicide. The article is notable for the phrase “the executioner enzyme caspase-3.” We have Executioner Enzymes now.
The Spider Jerusalem Award
August 28th, 2006 | Work
Oh my god. Infamous Defamer-style Silicon Valley gossipblog/club-hammer Valleywag has created and released their inaugural Spider Jerusalem Award for the best blurb in tech journalism.
This is peculiarly glorious to me.
(Via Doug Fort, thanks)
Speedometers
August 28th, 2006 | brainjuice
I remember, as a kid, reading Doris Lessing’s foreword to her novel SHIKASTA and being struck by an aside comment: that the youth of “today” (1981) could not conceive of how wonderful the present was, where any book you could think of was there to be had “on a nearby shelf.” Soon, I will have to explain to my daughter, who, through her love of story and fantasy will soon be interested in fringe, “occult” knowledge, that part of the joy of seeking it out was the quest itself. Poking around in small grimy London bookstores for the transcript of the Jonestown tape that Genesis P-Orridge released as a photocopied pamphlet comes to mind, for me. And dozens of other objects I had to hunt down. They were on a shelf somewhere, but it could be a fight to lay yours hands on them, back then.
When she was about four years old, we had the television conversation. Where I had to explain to her that when I was a kid, there were three tv channels, and one of those didn’t come online until 5.30 in the evening. She considered this, my Lilith, and then said, “was one of them The Disney Channel?” When she heard that it wasn’t, she flopped back in her car seat, rolled her eyes, and I swear she actually said: “but, Daddy, what did young people do back then?”Â
She’s growing up in a time where any piece of knowledge is at the end of a Google search. Here you go, found in under two seconds: the Jonestown transcript. In a world now defined by nets and jets, she’s in a position where web access will bring her any datum she can frame a halfway correct search string for. She’ll find what a lot of us have found, which is that for many daily things we don’t need the nearby shelf anymore. It’s worth stopping to consider what’s happened in our lifetimes so far. Taking a reading of the speed of things. And, in that concept of the Western world run by nets and jets, considering the drag factors. If you’re in Britain, then you know as well as I do that we don’t really have so many jets right now, on the basis of the premature and enforced arrest of “terrorists” who spent most of their time making “martyr videos” of themselves with their laptops and not so much time actually obtaining passports. Thanks to that clusterfuck, I’m going to have my rectum checked for hidden shower gel when I fly to Helsinki next month.
And, right now, a friend of mine is waiting to be told whether she’s going to be sent into the teeth of Hurricane Ernesto. Because her job is to be sent into American disaster zones to keep the internet backbone up, a job she does with a Glock on her hip.
Ernesto, by the way, has dumped momentum over Haiti, but is expected to pick up speed again once it gets over the open sea, aiming itself at the Florida Keys.
It’s all about speed.
links for 2006-08-28
August 28th, 2006 | Uncategorized
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A Flickr stream of, yes, bad album covers. Which is something that no normal person can get enough of, really. What bothers me is that I think I may once have owned that Undertones one.
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Hyperglyphics: “Words build reality. They mean things. Changing the story of a culture is only possible by revising the metafiction within which we live. Words do not need to be able to be represented by letters.”
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Chips in bins which help councils charge for the weight of rubbish collected could be common across the UK within two years: Privacy International, said “Residents need to be aware that once they accept this there is no turning back”
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An object lesson in why comics fanfic and its practitioners are Wrong on a base genetic level.
Technorati Cosmos
August 27th, 2006 | admin
Is Technorati fucked again? How do you get to be the ninth most-linked blog and yet also drop 350 points in Technorati ranking in the same week? I suspect I’m not getting useful returns from Technorati (again), and so have stripped the Cosmos link from the bottom of entries. It’s professionally useful to know who’s linking to me, but I think it’s time to give up on the idea of tracking such by blog entry.
So if you were looking for the Cosmos link on the end of entries — that’s why it’s not there anymore.
(And, no, I’m still not done with site design fiddling.)
links for 2006-08-27
August 27th, 2006 | researchmaterial
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“A couple left my first show and said, “We’re coming back for your next one.” I’m trying to write a whole new hour in fifteen minutes. Or maybe I could just poison them.”
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The Scythian warrior was found in June at a height of 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) in the Altay Mountains in an intact burial mound or kurgan; if global warming trends continue, in 20 to 30 years there will be no more ice kurgans.
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Law also includes a list of acts that it defines as obscene, including certain sex acts as well as sex toys. Raised after Georgia’s obscenity law found unconstitutional, forcing local governments to operate without one unless passing an obscenity law of their own.
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“You could imagine using this stuff as an emergency spray on soldiers injured by shell blasts or on burns victims. It could provide immediate protection for the wound and stop infections spreading.”
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As we yawn and open our eyes in the morning, the brain stem sends little puffs of nitric oxide to another part of the brain, the thalamus, which then directs it elsewhere. Like a computer booting up its operating system…
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Skeletons found at an unearthed site in Mexico show Aztecs captured, ritually sacrificed and partially ate several hundred people traveling with invading Spanish forces in 1520. Experts say the discovery proves some Aztecs did resist the conquistadors.
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“The urge to be sitting in the front row at (the Hugo sf book) awards ceremony — even though I know I’m not going to win one this time round — is to me much as the eternal search for brains must feel to a zombie.” His ACCELERANDO changed sf and no-one noticed. Bah.
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A single track for download, “Put The Knife Down,” is Sheffield electronic music that seems to straddle about 25 years’ worth of local music history in four minutes. Stoned by time. Found via http://www.rummaging.org/
Saturday Night Open Mic
August 27th, 2006 | comics talk
On at THE ENGINE tonight, thread found right here. If you’re new, just generate yourself an account and make sure your real name’s in the username or nickname fields. All are welcome.
– W
links for 2006-08-26
August 26th, 2006 | Uncategorized
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Brian Wood’s new NYC-based political sf series — the first issue scanned and downloadable for free from the publlisher.
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Sean Phillips tours the UK in support of his new Marvel Icon series CRIMINAL.
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Charlie Stross finds the stupidest Swiss Army Knife in the world.
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Re: the Pluto farce: “…one of a zillion reasons why these silly sons of bitches need to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up: Carl Sagan’s Pioneer Plaque. Way to make us look like a bunch of dipshits to the spacemen.”
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Journalista, the original boingboing-for-comics, is back.
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The $10,000 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research was tonight given to the team based at the ANU Department of Physics for its quantum cryptography breakthrough, which uses light to convey data that is impervious to hackers and eavesdroppers.
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“This particular song is all weeping slide guitar and analog synths, and the lo-fi quality makes it feel like it’s coming from the bottom of a well… approaches the chill-inducing territory normally reserved only for someone like Neko, or maybe Nico”
ROCKET PIRATES Update 25/8
August 25th, 2006 | about warren ellis/contact
Well, falling ill almost immediately after I made the call for submissions has slowed things down a bit. As did getting vastly more submissions than I expected (and I’m still sorting through them). Also, I’m giving a few people the time they need to get set. And I have to stab someone with a sharpened robot, too.
So right now I’m looking at launching the site in mid-September, with everyone in the first wave in place.
It’s going to be a massive thing. The equivalent of a fat anthology. I don’t expect you to like everything there. That’s not how anthologies work, after all. I do, however, figure that most people will find something to love in there, and that the association of the work will lead you to try something new.
And, frankly, I’m amused by the idea of MICKEY DEATH, Molly Crabapple, Rachel Nabors and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey in the same place once a week.
So it’s getting there. The work is being assembled. I think there’ll be a surprise or two in the final thing.
And ROCKET PIRATES t-shirts are being arranged.
Spread far and wide as you see fit.
– W
Goddamn Thing
August 25th, 2006 | mobilesignals
Originally uploaded by warrenellis.
Remote posting to warrenelliscom isn’t working still/again, so I’m retesting the kludge of posting through Flickr. Which will doubtless do terrible things to the formatting.
(EDIT: yes, it did. This entry is reformatted manually. Bloody thing.)
In this paragraph, I’m not putting any line breaks in, just to see what happens. In any case, I may as well mention here that I’m going to be monkeying with the site design over the next 48 hours, so don’t email me if anything suddenly looks weird or broken. I’m fiddling with things in between work, so it’ll be a slow process of fucking things up rather than suddenly producing a new release.
Linkblogging will probably be reduced to once-a-day dumps from del.icio.us for the next little while.
– W
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Sent with SnapperMail
www.snappermail.com
links for 2006-08-25
August 25th, 2006 | Uncategorized
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“Creative is very fortunate to have been granted this early patent,” Jobs added in a moment of snide, stung bitterness, grappling with the ugly concept that perhaps he never thought of everything ever
HOWTO Screw Some Evangelist Maggots Right In The Wallet
August 25th, 2006 | researchmaterial
What with the Washington State Supreme Court handing down its anti-gay-marriage decision several weeks ago and the ever-hearing more about attacks on reproductive rights down south, I’m feeling that the States is tripping a bit too merrily down the Handmaid’s path.
This week, I found a way to strike back.
Focus on the Family, the horrid anti-gay evangelical church based in Colorado Springs that wields too much power for anyone’s good, has a store on their website that will give you books, CDs, and DVDs absolutely free of charge. Usually people pay for their items by donation, raising millions of dollars to help Focus on the Family produce more hate-propaganda featuring “experts” on homosexuality who claim it’s a curable “sickness”. (They’re practically defined by their book A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Course, there’s no mention of having less kids, which is the only proven method. No, no, you shouldn’t use birth control, that would be wrong. They need more worshippers, how dare you prevent god’s will.)
It’s a little bit time-consuming, but not enough to deter me. (Nor should it you). The chance to take money out of their pockets is too useful, not to mention satisfying.
Here’s how to do it in 10 steps:
1. Go to www.family.org and look for the “Resources” link in the blue bar on the left-hand side, right above the “Search” box, and click it.
2. Under the “Resource Category” menu on the left-hand side, you’ll notice categories such as “Homosexuality” under “Resource Category.” Me, I went straight to the CD’s and DVD’s under “Resource Format.”
3. Go through, find something you like, such as the recently released movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Chronicles of Narnia Radio Theatre Complete Set, suggested donation US $79.00, or the three disc Les Misérables soundtrack. It’s not a very wide range of products, but there’s bound to be something either you like or you could use as a sweet gift for someone else. Click the “Add to Cart” button.
They won’t send more than $100 worth of materials for free in any given shopping trip, so be sure to go through a few times, until you’re sure you’ve dinged them.
4. Select “Add New Shipping Address,” decide to send it yourself or someone else, and once you’re done picking up to $100, click “Proceed to Checkout.” Some people have been sending items to themselves to sell later on eBay, some have been ordering the more controversial items as conversation pieces or educational props, (as anti-anti-propaganda), but I plan on using mine as gifts, mostly. I’ve found no reports on receiving Focus on the Family junk mail after inputting an address, so I figure it’s fairly safe.
5. The next screen asks you to sign-up for an account and give your information. Fill it out with fictitious information, enter whatever name and address you like. You might want to make up a phone number too and an e-mail account too. After filling out all the required fields, click “Proceed to Checkout” one more time.
6. This will take you to the “Here is Your Cart” page. You may have to re-enter your data again after this part to actually confirm your account. Eventually, you’ll get to the “How Much Would You Like to Donate?” page.
7. Select “Enter other total amount” and enter 0.00 as the amount you would like to pay. (Don’t put in a dollar sign or it will ask you for credit-card information.) Don’t be fooled by the field in the lower-right-hand corner that shows you the suggested donation amounts, simply Proceed to Checkout.
8. The next screen is a guilt screen, to make you feel bad about how little you donated. ignore it. Ignore it utterly. Think of how many people they’re persecuted and had in their “gay kids can be cured” camps. Just proceed to checkout again.
9. Click “Checkout Now.”
10. Finally, pass this information on to all your friends. They’ve got money to back them, we have word of mouth, let’s see if we can win.
Tide Pool
August 25th, 2006 | music
Tide Pool Recordings (re-)launches today:
Tide Pool is about half-finished thoughts, tools, dubs, edits, and all those other words that electronic music likes best. We believe in both dancing and shoegazing in equal measures, and sometimes at the same time. We believe in leftfield masterworks, off-kilter dancefloor devastators, and general wonderment. We hope you dig it.
