This week’s Station Idents are provided by artist EG Gauger.

This piece of art, executed in walnut inkwash on a piece of marble slab lifted from bulldozed junk piles in Berlin’s St. Marien cemetery, is for sale. Find out more at this link.

I was going to write something about books, as has been the fashion in our digital circles this year, but of course I haven’t bought a paper book in months, due to having obtained a new Kindle in late summer, out of curiosity and also because I have filled the house with books that I have only read once and now sit around collecting dust and beetle turds and generally get in the way, to the point where the child has to clamber over great accreted ramparts of them to get to my office, where she stands and mocks me for owning a Kindle, a device which is apparently “just sad” in the rarefied coolosphere of a fifteen-year-old girl, not understanding that if I continue to buy books that I only read once then sooner or later she’s going to have to start eating the bloody things, and so I bought the Kindle for sound environmental reasons, not the least of which is that I prefer not to encourage more landfill publishing in the crime genre, an area I’ve had to investigate of late and crammed with so much bad writing (particularly that one that won that big literary prize, which goes “wank wank wank (repeat for four hundred pages) wank wank ooh guns bang end”) that it’s had some kind of hideous osmotic effect on me and now I’m only using full stops once in every two hundred words.

I do, however, have a lovely-looking Duane Swierzcynzki novel to read next week. So there’s that.

This appears in lieu of an actual post because I’m working on four things at once, with only one available pair of hands. I trust that pluripotential cell culturing of extra limbs and smart microsurgery will cure this in the near term, because there is so much left to do, and yet only so much longer left to live.

See you in the morning.

Musician, writer and editor Meredith Yayanos, backstage at Project BORN last night.

• Unlogo
  "Unlogo is a web service that eliminates logos and other corporate signage from videos. On a practical level, it takes back your personal media from the corporations and advertisers."
  (tags:video culture pol )

At my message board tonight:

* ALTERNATE WORLD REMAKE/REMODEL: David Lynch’s SPIDER-MAN

* Karl Urban as Judge Dredd: First Picture

* Sizer’s LITTLE WHITE MOUSE needs a favor

* T-Shirt Of The Week: SATAN GIVES ME PRESENTS

* New Comics Talk (17nov10)

* The OSBORN #1 Thread

• soCinematic: TeslaTouch
  "TeslaTouch infuses finger-driven interfaces with physical feedback. The technology is based on the electrovibration principle, which can programmatically vary the electrostatic friction between fingers and a touch panel. Importantly, there are no moving parts, unlike most tactile feedback technologies, which use vibration motors. This allows for different fingers to feel different sensations. When combined with an interactive graphical display, TeslaTouch enables the design of a wide variety of interfaces that allow the user to feel virtual elements through touch. For example, when dragging a file, the level of friction could convey the file size. Objects could "snap" into place when designing a presentation. Or perhaps with a quick "rub" of your email application's icon, you could sense how many emails are unread. Finally, imagine a (flat) touch keyboard where the virtual keys can be felt. The possibilities are endless."
  (tags:tech )
• UNESCO Culture Sector – Intangible Heritage – 2003 Convention :
  The UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.
  (tags:culture net )
• Found Objects: proto-hauntologists (an irregular series), #1
  "Still, judging by this September 1998 mini-profile of Drew Mulholland, you have to give props for his being way ahead of the game. Unless I'm grasping the wrong end of the stick, it sounds like he was on this path back in postpunk days (his 1996 release "The Sound of Pre-Punk" drew largely on material he'd done circa 1979-1980) and he actually first started messing with tape loops back in 1975. Nods to Joe Meek and "Tomorrow Never Knows"/Sgt. Pepper's era Beatles (as well as Radiophonic Workshop) confirm my sense that dub isn't really a major strand of British hauntology's DNA; the indigenous sources are more than sufficient."
  (tags:hauntology music )
• ?Wilson? Lands At Fox Searchlight With Alexander Payne ? Deadline.com
  "Fox Searchlight has made a deal for Wilson, a Dan Clowes-created graphic novel that the author will adapt as a potential directing vehicle for Alexander Payne."
  (tags:comics film )

A preview:

Released on Tundra Dubs next Tuesday, the new EP from I†† continues the course of events laid out in the full Preliminary Invocations album released last month. The tracks here increase the atmosphere to something more subtly filmic, eventful, almost score like….

I†† :: The Lesser Keys EP by Tundra Dubs

“Crime,” crooned the great detective Falconer. “Its musky discharge is the finest perfume to me. It is all I can do to stop myself from milking the juice of crime from suspects, like rare fragrance from a civet’s glands. Of course, civets carry a variant of SARS, so you can’t really chew on them the way you want to. I miss the days when you could have a good chew on a cat. Also people. Did you know that’s illegal now? There is crime everywhere. Terribly good for the prostate.”

Falconer, amazingly, has never been convicted of any crime.

SPARKLINES: ideas under 100 words. © Warren Ellis 2010

* cassandramelena:

(Taken with instagram at Tybee)

* hammersley:

* melisaki:

Christian falangist; Beirut, Lebanon 1978

photo by Raymond Depardon for Magnum

* xplanes:

more of the George White Ornithopter, 1928
(via Paul Dunlop, from the personal collection of Tim White – the inventor’s grandson)

I was going to do a Friday Telescreen photo call this week, because it's been a year since the last one, but then Katie West did Ass Day on Tumblr, and I thought, really, I'm not going to top that...

1. Untitled, 2. ///^\\\, 3. Me with Thought Bubble Art, 4. Reddit I am in you!

“Yes, the rib-spreader”

It’s 1am. I just kind of looked up and took a breath. So far today I have:

* done a phone conference with a film producer and a screenwriter

* talked to a publisher about doing a blurb for a book

* worked with JahFurry in re: a gig I wasn’t suited for, but knew a man who was

* processed the last week’s worth of mail into labels and folders

* talked to film/tv agent, re-familiarised myself with a tv deal

* scribbled notes in Notebook C

* viewed and approved some "extras" footage for a DVD

* checked out sketches on a Thing

* caught up with Katie West, who has a new book out soon

* scribbled notes in Notebook M

* considered and made notes on two anthology invitations

* called on Twitter for #DoctorWhisky at around 9pm

* denounced Xeni Jardin for wanting to "jailbreak the sky"

* looked at and enjoyed a really beautiful, odd piece by Liam Sharp for this TRANSMET CBLDF benefit book that I know next to nothing about

* swore quite a lot at various bits of news

* pushed things to the blog and bookmarks

* dealt with Ariana jabbering at me in Japanese

And some stuff I forgot. It’s 1am. I’ve done no actual writing all day. And yet I haven’t bloody stopped doing stuff.

• Tiger-Stone: Paving Machine
  "Tiger-Stone is a Dutch made paving machine that uses gravity and an electric motor to print stone and brick roads. It?s a six meter wide machine that is capable of laying 300 square meters of road a day. The printing width is adjustable from the width of a road to as narrow as a bike lane or walkway. "
  (tags:tech cities )
• Space scientists develop new breed of space vehicle
  "Scientists and engineers at the internationally acclaimed Space Research Centre at the University of Leicester are developing a conceptual motor design for a Mars 'hopping' vehicle which should lead to a greater understanding of the 'Red Planet'." MARSHOPPER. MOONHOPPER.
  (tags:space tech )
• BBC News – The secrets of Britain’s abandoned villages
  "The ghosts of thousands of long-forgotten villages haunt Britain, inhabitations suddenly deserted and left to ruin. As a new campaign begins to shed further light on these forgotten histories, the Magazine asks – what happened and why?"
  (tags:history )
• Earthrid
  "Earthrid releases unusual electronic music, without pursuing any genre. It was established in 2001 to promote the work of selected artists and therefore has an infrequent release schedule. It is not a traditional record label and is not part of the ?record industry?. We increasingly offer free MP3 downloads in addition to high-quality, low-cost CDs for those who, like us, still like that format."
  (tags:music )
• Announcing Personal Factory 4 (now with 3D printing)
  "Today we bring you Personal Factory 4 to make it even easier for you to buy, sell and make custom goods online, with or without design skills. Personal Factory 4 is the world?s only personal making system to instantly price your custom projects using a combination of 2D and 3D digital making technologies and open-source electronics hardware. With no setup fees and no minimum order sizes, you can now make custom electronic gadgets, homeware, fashion and furniture in the comfort of your home ? and sell them to the world."
  (tags:tech )

Picking at Digsby and Yoono, the desktop app "social aggregators" that pop up notifications in realtime from (for example) your Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts, as well as gathering in your IM accounts (I don’t use IM). What I could really use is something that also captures my Google Reader in realtime, popping up notifications when new articles appear in that, just as it does when someone twoots or posts a new photo to Flickr or whatever.

I still don’t have that One Big Thing that scoops up everything I want and puts it in the corner of my desktop and runs it in realtime. And I’d really rather not be running a ton of different desktop apps, not on this poor broken-down machine. I mean, how hard should this be? People have been talking about "dashboards" and "digital lifestyle aggregators" for fucking years. Find me one.

(I have to note, I haven’t tried Seesmic Desktop in a while. I should load that now.)

EDITED TO ADD: oh, Seesmic Desktop 2 is VERY close. There’s a Seesmic Marketplace plug-in for Google Reader. But no Flickr linkage. Also it made me install Silverlight.

I’m also thinking about picking up a second-hand iPad and using it as a secondary display screen, to be honest.

This Facebook Messaging thing is interesting to me — despite the slightly dodgy security implications of no strong walls around what’s essentially single sign-on – simply because it puts a whole bunch of things in one stream. It’s the Everywhere paradigm, that you find with Kindle, with the forthcoming HBO service, with Reeder for iPhone, with Hulu and the plans for the NYT, where whatever you do is connected and updated seamlessly between the devices you touch. It’s less about convergence than it is about total presence

1. Untitled, 2. Unsuitable Door Noise

Contents of bottle: lock of hair, brown, dyed blonde; cinema tickets (2); press-on fingernail, red, cracked, skin residue at tip; condom, used, cleaned, “decorative symbols” drawn on in gold ink; receipt for purchase of flowers, “THIS IS A WARDING SPELL” written on back; scrap of telephone bill envelope with “i really like u kevin” written on (different handwriting to previous); “Zink” photo prints of three recent crime victims, female.

Bottle found: in garden outside flat, label attached reads “STAY AWAY FROM ME I LOVE YOU”

SPARKLINES: ideas under 100 words. © Warren Ellis 2010

Oh, this looks fun.

Phantom Circuit is a programme of strange and wonderful sound waves.

Since October 2008 Phantom Circuit has promoted music that is alien, electronic, exotic or overlooked. Do not be concerned by the presence of atmospheric disturbances, electronic voice phenomena and mysterious signals: these are all integral parts of the Phantom Circuit.

New and experimental components may be found working alongside more conventional musical elements: the circuitry is unpredictable, and is always changing. Come along for each edition’s unique explorations and maybe discover something new.

This week’s station idents are provided by artist and designer Paul Sizer.

Paul Sizer’s graphic novel LITTLE WHITE MOUSE is being re-released. Go here for details on how to instruct your local comics store to order it for you.