I just listened to the new Portishead album, Third
It's awful.
There are three listenable tracks on it; the rest is just mournful rubbish, badly enough written that you remember that Beth really can't sing. It didn't matter with the material on Dummy and Portishead, but this material does her no favours. The whole album smacks of desperation, and not the angsty torch-song desperation of past glories but the desperation to get something out there and be recognised again.

I'm listening to Diamanda Galas now to cleanse my ears.

I've just read that Humphrey Lyttleton has died, news which was not unexpected but which is still exceptionally sad. It's funny how people you've never met can come to be such a huge part of your life; for me, rushing to the radio at 6.30pm on a Monday to catch "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue", "Humph" has been visiting my front room for the last twenty years, making me laugh (or groan) out loud. I don't know anyone who didn't listen to this programme and there is now a huge and irreplaceable hole in one of the best bits of British culture.

It's the end of an era!
My trusty iPAQ 5550 is now gone after many years of service. First the 3970 and then the 5550, replaced by the new eee PC.





The eee is annoying me as I upgraded the RAM to 2GB and it shows this in the BIOS startup screen, but only 1GB is available by the time Linux boots.

Research time!

THIS is incredible!
Scriptographer is a free plugin for Adobe Illustrator which allows you to write your own plugins in Javascript.

Look:





This is a sample made with four of the scripts from the website. All the effects are procedural and this was done in about ten minutes. The plugin is not completely bug-free, nor is it the most obvious thing to use, but it is certainly worth a look.