Hum. I couldn’t sleep last night so I read a book that’s been sitting around on the shelves for ages. Johnny Jarvis by Nigel Williams. I thought I remembered it from my youth but I can’t have read it very carefully last time. Now I’m trying to find out more about the TV series it was based on. I came across this very good blog which mentions it in passing.
Monthly Archive for July, 2004
I’ve just nearly finished re-designing a site I made a while ago. It is based on a book written by one of my favourite authors, Mervyn Peake and published in 1954. The book is a collection of full page illustrations, each one of which represents a well-known (well-known in 1954 anyway) figure of speech. His idea was that you would use the book as a basis for a party game.
I adapted the game as a sort of competition. The original version ran two years ago but the gameplay was fatally flawed - The site publishes one picture a week and I decided not to give the answers until after the 29th picture. Eventually everyone including me lost interest. This time people will see the answer as soon as they’ve made their suggestion. Obviously it’s still only going to appeal to a very few people, but that’s the point of web publishing, right?
The new “Freedom Tower” that’s probably going to be built at the former site of the World Trade Centre is going to be 1,776 feet tall. 1776 is the year that the US gained independence from the British Empire. The ceremony at which the cornerstone of the new tower was laid was held on 4 July, Independence Day in the US. It is touching that people in North American are still defining themselves by their relationship with Britain but I know what I’d think of someone who still celebrated the day that they broke up with their first girlfriend.
What is a bit ironic is that the American war of Independence introduced several military tactics which have now become commonplace but which were considered fairly radical at the time. Sneak commando raids and the deliberate killing of enemy officers were just a couple of the tactics which were previously considered unacceptable in warfare but which the Americans were forced to resort to out of desperation. Suicide bombings and the deliberate targetting of civilians might be two more innovations which become standard practice in the future. Let’s hope not.
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