Posts by Robyn Gallagher
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I'm actually feeling really low about not being able to afford to go to Webstock this year.
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I'd want to know how much context matters - will an image used to illustrate a serious article on child-porn be treated differently from a similar image on a website 'promoting' sex with minors?
This reminds me of the idea of a teenage boy feeling certain stirrings upon seeing a photo of a topless African woman in National Geographic.
Sure, it's a serious context, but it's still a photo of a naked lady.
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Yesterday I came to an uncomfortable realisation that almost everyone my age I know who has bought a house, has done so with the financial assistance of their families. It would not be possible otherwise.
The few people who have been able to buy a house without assistance have basically been singularly nerdily focused on saving for/buying a house, in a way that the previous generation never needed to be.
I fear I'll be a renter 4 life, no matter what I'd like to do.
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I ran into my old friend David Merritt in Cuba Street yesterday, and bought one of his hand-made books, geek prayers.
I had a similar run-in in January. I hadn't met David before (but have since discovered we have lots of quite disparate Facebook friends in common), but easily struck up a conversation with him about the geekful arts.
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Except that I saw the film with the Wellington Richter City roller girls and there was much derision afterwards of the skill of certain actors and depictions of the sport.
Stupid film-makers, making roller derby look all fun and cool and stuff.
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And a quarter of a century after the CD was introduced, vinyl LPs are a growth category in the music industry.
People are going mental for lovely old analogue stuff.
It's things like LPs, Moleskine notebooks, cocktails made from 1930s recipes, Chemex coffeemakers. It seems like a reaction against a highly digital world - when your life can be shoved into a neat little i[gadget], I reckon there's a desire to have something to hold, something physical that you can smell, feel, and admire.
So now that we don't have to buy a physical CD to own music any more, it's no wonder that lovely sticky vinyl is something that people now want to posess in addition to digital versions of that music.
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My iPhone fits in a little (but rather expensive and fabulous) Minnie Cooper bag. I don't necessarily want to upsize my bag so I can have both a cheap phone *and* an iPad in it.
This is an important issue! I've noticed that lots of women's handbags have cellphone pockets that seem to be designed for a li'l Nokia, circa 2003.
There are awesome handbags that I have coveted but not purchased because their cellphone pockets are not big enough to fit my iPhone.
Also, Minnie Cooper FTW.
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Re people freaking out that the iPad has "pad" in its name, I will share two tweets from my friends:
@fogonwater Remember the hilarity when Nintendo announced their new console would be named Wii? Obvious puns get old fast.
@annettle Can you say note pad, stamp pad or Paddington Bear without snickering? Yes? Then you can cope with iPad.
Soon enough we'll get over it and the iPad will remind us of periods no more than a pad of paper does.
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So it didn't work out then?
One coffee cart in the atrium. That's it.
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Having had a good walk around inside the Court of Appeal it is brilliantly brutal (if indeed it is actually Brutalist architecture - I'm no expert) on the inside too. The court room had no windows!!!
The term brutalist comes from the French name for raw concrete: béton brut.
Despite the name, brutalist architecture isn't (meant to be) brutal. It's all about using concrete as a raw, uncovered material. It can make warm, pleasant spaces, but its use as a low-cost method for making cheap, badly designed buildings eventually saw it fall out of favour with the public and architects.
The Beehive is an excellent example of a brutalist building that is a lovely space to be. [This is not a cue for political jokes.]