And since I'm posting anyway, I thought I would put this, my first attempt at an Illustrator vector portrait, up on here as well, as a record of my inability to do anything very creative. I'm going to be honest - I like many of the elements of this sketch. It looks pretty similar I think (although perhaps a little...predatory? - that certainly wasn't in the original). And I also like the simplicity of it. No colour, and the almost wireframe like layering of hair is a really good aesthetic I think. Truth be told that's a convenient truth as I couldn't have coloured the thing if my life depended on it. More practice needed in that department at least I think. Still, I'm fairly proud of it for a first attempt (and it didn't take a geological period of time, which I had rather worried about). Helps when you have a good model I suppose ;)

PS - I have read literally shed loads this summer, and will at some point write some short reviews. Look forward to it.

PPS - Literally no idea why it has gone green. It was rather more elegant in white. Bloody thing.

Labels: bored, design, girlfriend

We have a house people! And what a house it is. Well, I don't want to big it up too much (it is, after all, still clearly a small place) but I think it's going to a) look fantastic, and b) be a dreamy place to come back to and forget about stuff. Plus it's really well located (in a neighborhood I know well from university days (love saying that, makes me feel like a real nostalgic). So, HOORAY!

I got so excited that I...no, not that...I made a mood board! I was in a bit of a rush actually so I didn't spend heaps of time on in, but I thought it would provide something of a double whammy: good inspiration for the house; and a good opportunity to try and replicate a moodboard-vibe digitally. Can't say it completely worked on either one of those fronts if I'm honest, but there you are. Life is full of small disappointments.

Labels: househunting, London

Found a nice place in Holland Park, listed: 'The Studio is specious with a nice kitchenette with full cooking facilities, a double bed, table chairs.'

The studio is specious. Unusual, but honest advertising.

Labels: househunting

The idea of moving into a new place should be an exciting one. Unfortunately, having spent hours of today trawling through flat shares and studios, I'm rather of the opposite opinion. I started looking for a place in London a few weeks ago. I'm moving in with my girlfriend (you may now, like the friends I have so far told this to, take a sharp breath of grinning knowingness, as if to say, 'this is the end of fun') and I've been really looking forward to finding the right place for us to come home to.

Now, I know the rental mark is absurdly inflated in London. But seriously, what the fuck. Who are these single people looking at properties we can't afford between the two of us? How does anyone pay the extortionate prices required in central London, let alone save enough money after the landlord has fisted your bank account in his monthly violation, to build a deposit for their first purchase? It really is a but of a nightmare. Let me give you just one of countless examples of the absurdity of the market.

A studio flat in the heart of Bloomsbury. £205 a week. Furnished.

So far so good I think, great location (the little script underneath the property gives me the distance to the nearest 11 major areas, just in case I knew London well enough to know where Russel Square was, but no clue where Angel, Camden, King's Cross, Holborn, und so weiter are. But wait, what's this? Kitchen separate but sole use. Right, so it's a kitchen which others have access to, but which really is mine. Well, I might have to be a bit of a kitchen Nazi to begin with, but that's hardly a deal breaker. One WC. I look at the picture. A set of what initially appears to be some bizarre plumbing arrangements materialises into a disabled handrail. While it sits uncomfortably on its sludgy terracotta gloss wall, at least saftey comes first in this flat. So, despite a few hiccups, things are going well. Time to hit the big stuff. It's (virtual) viewing time.

Well now there's a chair in there too. All that's done really is to make the large table seem small, and the small table seem really small. (And the TV shrink to fingernail size). That clever landlord though, he knows the difficulty that prospective tenants face, and he kindly deigns to reveal the true aspect of the room:

Oh there's that chair again...and that table. Which means that...which means that it's just a fucking corridor. A SMALL corridor at that. How do you fit a bed in? How do you do almost anything? It's like Alice in Wonderland except that Alice stops by Ikea first. More than anything, it's insane that anyone would pay for this. I really hope I sort out my place soon, but until I do, I am at least glad that somewhere, no matter how wretched my conditions, no matter how overvalued my room, some poor chump is living in a white box for the best part of a thousand pounds a month.

Labels: property

Just before I put the next post up, (which is little more than a placeholder really, but pretty at least) I thought I would at least do my readers and myself the courtesy of cleaning out my blogging attic as it were. I found this in my unpublished tray, and thought I would share it. On looking at it my overwhelming thought is that I wish I had enough time to waste on things like this now, but that's life I suppose. Enjoy.

Labels: random

'Oi warz droivin' past the pee-er, and whot do I see? I see a ruddy great camera attached to a car. Well, oi smoiled and whaved!'


Oh Yarmouth.

This is exactly the type of man I imagine living in you.

Labels: travel

ARGHHH. Herein follows an anecdote about why people at the UL need to go on a textual studies course. I arrive in the map room and ask to consult the 1590 Saxton Atlas. I'm asked if I could use the facsimile. I say, well, ok. I go back to my desk, look up the facsimilie record, and it's for 1579. I return and say, I want to look at the 1590 text, so the facsimilie will not do. I add that I have already looked at the 1590 text in the Rare Books room, and need to compare them.

'But they are the same,' I am told insistently.
'Well, yes, but I'm looking for variants.'
'The only variant is the binding.'
'What, so you are telling me these copies are identical.'
'Yes'.
'No they're not. They can't be.'
'They are.'
'They're not. Printed texts are always different from each other.'
'What do you mean text - there is no text, just maps.'
'I know, I just mean text as in textual object.'
'So you know there's not any writing on the maps - are you thinking of Speed? Do you want Speed? [Funny question in itself]'
'No, I want Saxton.'
...
'Can I have a look at the 1590 Saxton?'

One argument later, and it turns out that the item is listed incorrectly anyway and they only have the 1579 copy.

FFFFMMMMLLLLL

Labels: cambridge, reading, renaissance

I don't really have anything special to write, but I had to show this off to the world. Originally from here.


LOL. If you don't get the reference, then you fail at geek chicdom, and the Internet, since it became quite prime meme hunting territory. Here's the link to the part in question though, so you fail better. It's just like Beckett said: Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better. That's right, I mix the high brow with the low brow. Suck it.

Labels: blog, random

So, I officially got confirmation of my place at Cambridge, which is a relief, as I only managed to send my documents in last week after a number of communications with various people forcing me to get off of my backside. So that's good. I have to say though, for the first time, I am a bit anxious about the whole thing. People keep asking me if I know anyone there, although I think it's a bit of a weird thing to ask - no one asks if you know anyone when you go into your undergrad. But the fact remains I don't, and because of my Latin course, I will be in college a good fortnight before most other people. The space to settle down might be alright, but it would be much easier if you could just unpack and then go walk into a room and start things rolling. Still. I hope it won't be as awkward as this. Although if it was as funny it might be some consolation:






In other graduate-related news, I got my bow tie in the post today for graduation on Friday, and was happy with it. Very happy in fact, the perfect colour, I think it's going to look grand on the day. I also got a matching hankerchief to complement the whole ensemble, so sartorial elegance is the name of the game when I mount those stairs, yes yes. I'm going to make a mood board of what I'm going to wear now, which relies on me going to my other computer. Get excited people. Get excited.

Labels: cambridge, fashion, UCL

Labels: blog, bored, random, yay

I've just finished a bit of a boozey blitz through southern England, and now I think it's more than time enough to update this blog. I went dwon to Winchester to see my ex-housemates, which was fantastic - it seemed so long since I had seen them. I've made a mental note to put more effort into even casual keeping up with that lot - they really were / are a good bunch. The day after I was in London to celebrate an old school friend's birthday, and just today I've driven back from what was enthusiactically called 'Farmageddon' - a night of prosecco-based debauchery down in Kent. Suffice to say, I'm a little relieved to have three days of decent drinking behind me, and having just popped out of the hot tub, I can say without regret, that as fun as getting wasted can be - sometimes the creature comforts of my parents' house (Sky HD, good food, etc.) does take the biscuit.

But kind of on the back of the sandwich night of my triumvirate of drinking, I want to talk about Karaoke. I love karaoke. I think most people do (although some people pretend they don't). But there is a politics attached to the whole odd-social right that is getting drunk and belting out your very own cover version in front of your mates. In my mind, there are key elements to getting the perfect karaoke night.

Pre-lash.
 Crucial this. Don't put enough Dutch Courage in your belly, and you might lose your bottle when the time comes, and freak out on stage. Alternatively, get to plastered, and you risk entering school/uni/workplace mythology, as the guy or girl who got through 7 bars of Karma Chameleon, and then promptly chundered everywhere. I think the most important thing is to make sure that you maintain yourself at a level where you are ready to sing at any point. Prefereably do rounds with someone(s) else, otherwise you risk believing you are going to be able to sing perfectly lucidly, when in fact, you are already dribbling on your arm. Go for mixers without Red Bull and other rubbish - you're probably going to be buzzing enough from nerves, you don't need your CNS blistering with a caffeine injection too. Below is a picture of myself and my sister preparing with admirable style. Take your cues from that.



Song choice.
A real tripping point this, potentially, and also one which you have no excuse for not working on in advance. In fact, I don't just recommend that you try and figure out in advance, I urge you. Because if there is one guarentee I can offer, it is that in the heat of the moment, you will be unable to think of ANY song to sing. Don't depend on doing one of a few famous classics either - Don't Stop Beleivin' by Journey might be a brilliant song choice, but if someone has just sung it, you can't expect to do an encore and win any plaudits more grand than 'good effort'. Power ballads are too emotional (unless you are so drunk anyway that you need to play the comic card to try and mitigate the shame of your drunken, awful songmaking. Raps never work. Ever. Ditto for songs with small elements of rap within. Just don't do it. Duets are potentially good, either as a tool of seduction, or as a way of sharing any embarassment. But again, trying to have a duet appropriate to whoever you end up singing with can be difficult. The Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing is no good as a duet with your Dad at a wedding. Unless you are with a really trendoid girl, Sunny and Cher's I Got You Babe is going to be less seductive than it is a bit creepy.

Singing ability.
Possibly the most important factor of all - many a would-be karaoke enthusiast has lost years of preperatory work on this final hurdle. There are only a few types of karaoke that are acceptable. One of those is ragingly bad, although in many cases this isn't exactly de rigeour either. A happy medium of pleasant to listen to but a little bit wavery is ideal. Unless you are an exceptional vocalist, do not try and be awesome. No one likes a try hard with an ego. The inverse of this is true though - if you are an exceptional vocalist, and then surprise everyone with your skill, that's pretty sweet (see: Jewel's little trip into the world of karaoke)

If there's one thing you should be careful about though, this is it. My final and most important advice is made clear throught the medium of photo. Observe the casual portrait of two friends, ruined, by the imposition of an overly enthusiastic background singer. Ah. The shame. Well, that's all folks. Until next time.

Labels: blog, bored, random

I can't remember whe I saw this image originally, although I think it may have been late at night, because I remember it being more side-splitting at the time. But regardless, I still think it's a clever little play on perceptions of cooleness, and it's something that many friends are quilty of (sepia tone photos? loma cameras? arbitrary angles?) I'm guilty of that last one myself, but nonetheless, the desire to produce edgy (read, poorly developed) photos remains a hobby horse of the bored moddle class youths of the UK.As for Helvetica, well, it's every trendy kid's fav. Afterall, Wes Anderson, name drop of those who can only bring themselves to enjoy indie cinema in its most mainstream form, refuses to use anything but Helvetica and Futura for the typography in his films. I should add I think Wes Anderson has produced some excellent films, but jesus generic 19 year-old from Hampstead, shut the fuck up about how he totally 'got' India like you did on your gap year. Props to my girlfriend who knows more about India than any of you, but whose extent of pretentious asides extends only as far as a rather frightening anecdote about 3rd degree sunburn in Goa. Go Danna. Anyway, the point is I thought I would have a go and make some of my own. Of course, the first issue was finding some bad photographs. I'm so immensely talented behind the lens that I normally have to physically exert myself to do anything even sub-amazing, so the rooting around in folders took a while. I think I came up with a few though. Enjoy. In order to vintage them, I took a rather cheats root, and just screwed the colourbalance / levels, so they don't look perfect. But so what, it's my blog, and it would be pretty meanspirited of you to ask for better. These ones have a slightly modern twist too, paticuarly the distorted text in the last one. Turrah.

Labels: blog, bored, Edinburgh, yay

Labels: anger, jobs, random

"The circle of human knowledge, illuminated by the pale, cold light of reason, is so infinitesimally small, the dark regions of human ignorance which lie beyond that luminous ring so immeasurably vast, that imagination is feign to step up to the borderline and send the warm, richly colored beams of her fairy lantern streaming out into the darkness ; and so, peering into the gloom, she is apt to mistake the shadowy reflections of her own figure for real beings moving in the abyss.

Sir James George FrazerThe Golden Bough

April 2010 / May 2010 / June 2010 / July 2010 / August 2010 / September 2010 / February 2011 / April 2011 / August 2011 / September 2011 /

Messing with Illustrator / /homeless / The irony of househunting. / Househunting / Some old material / Favourite capture on Google Maps Street View / Idiot librarian / THIS IS NOT THAT DAY! / Confirmation (not religious) / love data? love data. /

The title of this blog comes from a poem by Coleridge, A Wish: Wriiten in Jesus Wood, Feb. 10th, 1792, Plus most blogs are moans anyway. Including this one. lol manuscripts

email me here
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bootlessmoan.blogspot.com

I'm a 23 year-old student in London Cambridge London, studying English Literature Law. It's hard to really think of anything truly personal I can put here that might give you some idea of who I am, so I will just tell you that my favourite Shakespeare play is Richard II, my favourite chocolate bar is Snickers, and I have a bit of a thing for instant coffee, especially if someone else makes it for me.

I'm interested in Renaissance Literature, Higher Education policy, and libraries.
I'm completely in love with a Scottish girl.