Posts about anything

Derelict or developing?

August 14th, 2007

Battersea Z

This snap is a detail of Battersea Power Station in London. It’s a fine old structure that has been gradually falling into dereliction through neglect. Many exciting plans for its development have been proposed but they never seem to come to anything. Once in a while somebody does a bit of work just to shore up the structure.

Bit like this site really.

I intend to be back blogging soon. Sooner anyway, I sincerely hope, than the Battersea developers.

Skimmed Milk

December 2nd, 2006

CoffeeThis site’s theme is Skimmed Milk and if that seems odd to you I should mention that “theme” is a WordPress term for the presentation of a site. Its visual design, layout and language are all, for the most part, customisable. This page is about the theme of the site in this sense, not in the sense of an overarching subject or topic of discussion.

If you have a WordPress blog and would like to use this theme then feel free to pick up a copy at the bottom of this post. [Edit: this version has been superceded. The latest one is available here.]

I didn’t set out to write a theme. I found a lovely one, called White As Milk by its designer Azeem Azeez, which attracted me by its deliberate visual sparseness and simplicity. I’ll just take this, tweak a few minor things and start blogging, I thought. Read more »

First blot

December 1st, 2006

I’ve a childhood memory of the perfection of new notebooks; the smooth silky white pages, the neat cover design, the precision-machined shape. Then I’d make my first mark – an unskilled little drawing or some scrawny handwriting – and this perfection would be ruined forever. So I’d put off this moment of disappointment for as long as possible. But once, finally, this damage was done I’d then be free to fill up the book in as messy a way as I liked.

Well this is my shiny new blog and that childish feeling is with me. I don’t want to start until all ideas are clear in my head and until I can map out the future structure of all arguments and discussions in their entirety. But, of course, if anything will it’s the blogging itself that will help me to get this thinking straight. So I can’t put things off any longer: this is the first blot. The rest of the mess will follow shortly.