TIFI: 6 March 2009

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Objectified Poster

TIFI: 5 March 2009

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Purple and Lime Inspiration

TIFI: 4 March 2009

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Things I found interesting today: Dreaming of Summer

Crowdsourced Music

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I tend to be something of an obsessive, musically. When I like an album, I'll listen to it on repeat, sometimes for days and to the exclusion of all else. Lately, I've tended to go round the same albums or artists (Metallica, The Gaslight Anthem, Dolly Parton, Karine Polwart) but sometimes overlistening deadens the efficacy of the transformational effect on my brain, and it just doesn't do what I need it to do any more.

I've put the call out for recommendations on twitter a few times, and always got some interesting stuff in response. It's not always to my taste, but I do try and listen to each recommendation at least once, just to give it a chance.

At the tail end of last week I was in serious need of some bounce and so put the call out for recommendations again, but this time round, through the magic of spotify, I was able to make a collaborative playlist, which I could then share.

What I loved the most was that the majority of the music recommended wasn't stuff I'd have chosen myself, but all of it worked - even the inclusion of the West Side Story Soundtrack! I turned up the volume, danced around the house like an idiot and got more stuff done than I would have otherwise. It seemed to work for some other twitter folk too, which just adds to the fun.

So if you're in need of some bounce, give the Twitter Bounce Mix a go, and if you feel like it, add some tracks. If you can't get a spotify account, I'm sorry, but if you're feeling brave enough, you could try my last.fm library radio.

If you have your own collaborative playlist, post a link to it in the comments - I'm bound to wear out this playlist soon enough, and I'll be wanting something new.

Live Tweaking is Fun!

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Except when things go horribly wrong, like the feed stats plugin I was using. It's not been banished to the depths of wherever, but unfortunately, NetNewsWire has cached the version with the borked URLs and I can't figure out how to get it to update.

So if you're using NNW (or associated thingies and wotsits), apologies. I promise all the links are cool and worth clicking on. You just have to visit the post and then click to see them.

Sorry.

The Sliding House

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In amongst my morning routine of checking email, twitter and feeds, I checked out the website of a new twitter follower @LinkBitch. Amongst the LinkBitch links, I found a video file from Wallpaper Magazine, of the most amazing sliding house. I had visions of a house like a Rubiks Cube or something as I waited for the video to load, but nothing as simple and elegant as the reality.

Part barn, part greenhouse, it's a wonderful building, and I was completely transfixed watching the video of the roof sliding back and forth over the house. See for yourself. I've embedded it, even though it's too wide for this design, because it's worth hitting that fullscreen button.

The architects, dRMM, have done a fabulous job, and the reactions to the building (at least amongst twitter and in the few articles I've found online have been overwhelmingly positive).

I really wish I'd known about this a couple of days ago, because I might have been able to swing a visit to the Ecobuild and Futurebuild exhibition at Earl's Court to hear the architect talk about the project. He's speaking between 4.30 and 5pm tomorrow, March 3rd.

As @duality1 said to me on twitter, if you ever hear someone asking why you'd bother employing an architect, this house is very definitely the reason, and the words of the owner "We are prepared to be radical" might become my new motto for this year.

Further reading

  1. Sliding House PDF (1057kb) from dRMM
  2. Sliding House by dRMM on Dezeen
  3. The Times on the Sliding House
  4. The Observer on the Sliding House
  5. Icon Magazine on the Sliding House

Please update your feed subscription

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If you're one of the lovely, lovely people who've remained subscribed to pixeldiva even though I barely wrote anything last year and all you've been getting is flickr pics and the odd delicious link, first of all, hello! it's been a while. Second of all, thank you. It's been nice to know that in the event that I actually wrote something, at least a few people (outside immediate family and friends) might have read it. As part of the sweeping programme of change recently instituted around here I'm moving away from feedburner, so I'd be awfully grateful if you could change the feed subscription to http://www.pixeldiva.co.uk/feed/ as soon as possible, so I can stop using feedburner.

Thank you.

It's time to start over

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Sometimes, when things are very broken or very muddled, the effort needed to fix them is too much to contemplate. In those situations, there are two choices: do nothing or do something.

I've been doing nothing for several months, because I knew that the doing something was likely to be complicated and I just didn't have the time, the brain power or the energy.

I love blogging though, and I've been missing it very much. Twitter may have scratched the itch somewhat, but it just wasn't reaching that teeny spot in the middle that nothing else can reach. I started doing Project 365 28 days ago, after failing miserably last year, and although it started with me just posting a picture to flickr every day, I realised a few days ago that I'd actually started blogging again.

The only problem was that I was blogging on flickr, not here. Which on one hand is good, because blogging again is fantastic, but on the other hand, I felt guilty about continuing to neglect my actual blog.

So here we are. With the 9th blogiversary looming in a few days time, a re-virginised pixeldiva.

I've moved to Wordpress from Movable Type, making it the fourth CMS used to power this blog (the first three being Blogger, Greymatter and Movable Type) and in the interests of actually getting shit done I've gone with a generic template to hold me until I get the new design (which is still a work in progress) sorted and built.

Everything else that used to be here is now gone, but only temporarily, until I can put it back. I won't be importing everything that went before into Wordpress, but I will be linking to it in its archived form.

Fresh starts work so much better when they're actually fresh.

So, feel free to grab the feed, add it to your feedreader, and join me for what's coming next. I've got no idea what that is going to be, but I'd love for you to come along for the ride.