Can You Read This?
The look of Burning Salad* has obviously changed slightly. This is the result of a voyage into the murky waters that is CSS and browser compatibility. It all looks fine from where I’m sitting on a Mac running Safari but it would be good to know how it’s rendering on other platforms. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that on Internet Exploder it looks like a car crash. So please let me know- particularly if you’re using IE 6.
I’m not going to go off on a tangent here but there are a lot of good reasons to suggest that Internet Exploder is a bad thing peddled by an evil empire.
Firefox is a superior alternative. It’s free. And it’s got a better name.
*Still can’t bring myself to use the word ‘blog’.
Nov 18, 2004 at 0:54 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Tittyshow
The reason I decided to give Burning Salad another overhaul was due to a phenomenon that has caught my attention of late. You see, when I log-in to post an entry here, I have a control panel that performs various functions. And one of these functions is to give me a quick summary of the latest comments that have been left. Which is obviously fairly handy- it means I don’t have to scroll through recent posts and check each one for new comments. However… it would appear that an increasing number of pages from the ‘Salad are being indexed by Google. Again, this is a good thing. (Oh, how I laugh at the number of people running searches for ‘the importance of salad’).
But two pretty good things don’t necessarily make for one really good thing. No they don’t. Surprisingly often they seem to add up to something fairly crap. And that was the case in this situation.
The problem was that my comments summary system was getting clogged up, seemingly by people finding really old pages on Google and saying little more than ‘Hi!’ or maybe ‘Is this some sort of guest book?’
I don’t have anything against someone dropping in a cheery hello. Far from it. In fact, Hello Everyone!
But the problem was obviously that it meant I was missing an increasing number of recent comments (from people who are able to figure out that a post dated eight months in the past isn’t the best place to expect a reply). If there were more than 5 ‘Hi!’s then I had to go through the comments log manually and just keep an eye out for anything new.
And that was when I really realised that the rot had set in. Imagine my surprise and horror at finding the comments log peppered with text about busty sluts and big hard nipples. In fact, sometimes that was the extent of the message in it’s entirety- just ‘big hard nipples’, not even so much as a ‘Hi!’
Well Busty Sluts is not some new stalker of mine. She doesn’t even exist. (Sorry). It was all just spam. And I would hate to make any assumptions here; but it was almost certainly posted by some fucking moron who thinks that the best way to separate a stranger from their money is to sour the internet by acting like an ignorant leech. Spammers are fucking bottom feeders.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti porn (oh no) but porno spam in the Burning Salad is something I will not put up with. Everything in its place etc.
And so began the overhaul of Burning Salad. I now have a far fancier system going on behind the scenes. I shouldn’t miss any genuine comments anymore, no matter how many random ‘Hi!’s occur. And I have all sorts of ways of weeding out the fools.
So that’s it, Burning Salad is now leaner and fitter. But that’s not the end of the story because another one of life’s ironies cropped up and played itself out…
I decided that an overhaul of the area of the site for my work was long overdue. There are already a lot of images there and I’m just about to upload a lot more. The whole process is long and tedious at the best of times- each image needs to be scanned, adjusted, resized (twice) etc etc. And that’s just preparing the images. The really time consuming part is having to make up new web galleries and then a new web page for each full size image… blah, yawn.
There are however ways of automating this part of the process. The only problem is is that I don’t have the time to write the code to do it. Nor do I really have the inclination. Because the best solution is to hack. (The difference between writing code and hacking code is like the difference between making a bronze sculpture from scratch and making an installation out of found materials. One way assumes authority as a result of ‘superior’ technique and labour; the other way ignores hierarchy in favour of expedience and produces far better and more interesting results). So I set about hacking something together.
Picture my fake amazement at discovering that the best code for dealing with large numbers of images on the web was related to the adult industry.
And so when the new updated galleries of my work go live, unbeknown to the innocent viewer, the code that will be running them will be based on software called Tittyshow.
Nov 17, 2004 at 22:09 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Point And Laugh
I’m upgrading some of the site at the moment and Burning Salad has gone very wonky. Many inexplicable and random things can and probably will happen over the next wee while so please feel free to laugh and point as I attempt to cobble everything together.
Oh, and it’s Shape 3 Mice 0 as of yesterday.
Nov 17, 2004 at 3:27 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Slight Return
Here I am back in dear old Blighty. I got back in on Saturday evening I think although I’m not sure because the Mexican sleeping pills I took didn’t work and it all felt like on big long day. On the way home I watched the film Open Water three and a half times in a row. I just can’t get enough of yuppies being eaten alive.
Mexico turned out to be really good. The tequila was of the finest quality for a start. Like most people I have strong memories of drinking the stuff and the memories are probably remarkably similar… Guzzled a bottle, fell over, vision switched to triplicate, body violently ejected offending alcoholic liquid simultaneously through mouth, nose and eyes. Took a mental note not to drink tequila.
But I was in Mexico so it was pretty difficult not to drink tequila. And I was pleasantly surprised that it was surprisingly pleasant. The bottle had a big horseshoe on it and the figure 100% somewhere which seemed ominous but it went down well, probably due in no small part to the fact that in this part of the world slamming tequila ‘is for Gringos’.
Another important discovery was that it’s okay to eat grasshoppers. If you put them in tortillas with cheese. And as long as you don’t open it up and look inside. (About twenty of the wee fellas lying just lying there staring back at you). I can’t remember where I heard the quote ‘I never eat anything that’s got a face’, but I’m sure grasshopper tacos are one of the few exceptions that can be made. Also on the menu were ants’ eggs and slices of cactus leaves which were both surprisingly tasty. So I ate those insects until I could eat no more.
I got the floor done fairly quickly with a minimum of glitches and so I had time to relax a bit. Assuming the definition of relaxation includes drinking all night.
David Bachelor was out there overseeing the installation of his work (by blowing up a slide projector), giving an artist’s talk in a corridor and drinking and drinking. And then Oliver Payne turned up and everything was in place to go proper AWOL. But alas, there were only a couple of days left. So we spent them drinking and shooting the shit.
The undoubted highlight was Oliver overcoming his pre-artist’s talk nerves by spontaneously electing to ignore the traditional ‘imagine the audience are naked’ technique in favour of a pre-emptive strike. The setting was a slightly seedy all night bar with karaoke capabilities. He said that he had never given an artist’s talk before. Then he said that he had never sung karaoke before. And then he just got up and did a lo-fi deadpan rendition of Pump Up The Jam.
I almost fell of my bar stool with laughter.
And so I returned with a bottle of tequila, a bottle of stuff to chase it with and some cuban cigars. My sleep pattern and my guts seem to have both reset themselves and so it’s back to my regular routine…
An hour or so after getting off the plane I went to Transmission to see Torsten‘s show. The upstairs space was all blacked out with tree branches taped everywhere and some projections and the downstairs space was full of musical instruments for a sort of interactive musical happening. The only rule was that no-one was allowed to play anything they actually knew how to play. Perfect! I watched for a while and the spectacle and resulting noise was funny, interesting and at times surprisingly listenable. (It almost sounded as if someone was breaking the rules). For my part I grabbed a mic and as a tribute to the preceding days, ‘sung’ the only sensible choice. Pump Up The Jam.
I’ve been listening to the new Melvins release which Dshrig got me for acting as technical adviser to him during his recent computer purchase. It’s called Never Breathe What You Can’t See and it’s got Jello Biafra on voice. Hence the song titles like The Lighter Side of Global Terrorism and Dawn of the Locusts. Good stuff.
And I got another goldfish to keep The Man company. It’s a very fancy looking one. So fancy in fact that Trish decided it must be a girl. Of course. So The Man has a girlfriend and she needs a name. It was all getting too cute or something so if indeed it is a she then she’s called Just A Girl. The Man and Just A Girl. Trish remains unimpressed.
And what of the errant feline Cat-Shape? Well apart from terrorising the fish by drinking the water from their tank and eating their food he is hard at work menacing the wildlife in general. He came rushing in through the cat flap late last night and started crashing around in a semi-random fashion. Nothing unusual there then; apart from the fact that I detected a subtle difference in his behaviour.
I watched him for a few minutes as he chased around clawing things and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was hunting for real. He was sniffing around more than usual and seemed to be fixated on a particular area. I investigated his activities but was unable to find anything untoward so I got back to what I was doing and left him to it.
After about half an hour I got up to make a cup of tea and I found him in the middle of the floor maniacally batting one of his mice across the floor. The thing is- his mice ie. his toy mice (with real rabbit fur) are, after about five minutes, nothing more than bald pieces of plastic with no discernible features (he even bites of their small plastic faux mouse noses). But this one, the one he was playing with, was still in possession of its tail and was sporting a full coat of mousey fur. ‘Oh shit’, I thought.
I rushed to the scene to find a small mouse that was still very much alive if a bit worries looking. And it was right to be worried because it was only moments away from becoming an ex-mouse. So I shouted at the cat and grabbed a nearby paper bag that the cat plays with in order to rescue the hapless rodent from its fate. (The mouse was at this point just sat there frozen with fear and trembling slightly).
But as soon as I made an attempt to grab it the cat burst into an excited frenzy and swooped on it. I tried to grab the cat but this just made him more possessive so I let him go in the hope that he would drop it. Which he didn’t. So in the end I was there just shouting at the cat to get it over with. Which he did. And so alas the doomed rodent was not returned to the wild; he was too dead for that. Which brings the tally to:
Cat-Shape 2 Rodentkind 0
And as I sit here writing this I await delivery of a t-shirt. But not any old t-shirt- it’s one of the new Mogwai t-shirts. And not any old Mogwai t-shirt. Oh no, this one has a particularly fetching design… a mug-shot of my good self.
Churminator designed it for their last US tour which is why the text says Landlord (backwards).
Get one now while stocks last and ward off threatening strangers with a picture of me on your chest.
Nov 10, 2004 at 14:41 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Uncharacteristic Political Post
By the time I wake up tomorrow I will know whether or not the most influential nation on earth has elected the stupidest man in the world to be the most powerful man in the world.
George W. Bush is clearly a fucking imbecile.
Nov 3, 2004 at 1:23 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Day Of The Dead
Today is the Mexican Day Of The Dead. (Not to be confused with the seminal George A. Romero zombie flick). Apparently the cemeteries get packed full of food and decorations and tequila. So Mexican graveyards don’t really seem to be the preferred haunt (no pun intended) of cider drinking goths and Smiths fans.
On my way back from the gallery this evening (it’s 8pm here just now) the small square outside the hotel was packed full of colourful handmade shrines and decorations. Like old fruit boxes with coloured paper all over them and small cheery looking skulls made out of what looked like plasticine and small bottles of tequila and photographs of the dead people. Some of the photographs are obviously of family and friends and some are of famous people like Marilyn Monroe. It seems to me like a pretty good take on the old life/death thing.
I got the floor finished today. Which is a good thing. I can relax now. But at the moment I am a tired man and I really need to get some rest…
Nov 3, 2004 at 1:16 Filed Under: Blog Comment
okay, I only got 7 minutes to write this
So anyway, I made it through customs and was loading everything into a taxi and I looked up to see for the first time the Mexican evening sky…
It was very dark blue, there was not one single star to see and the moon was small and high in the sky. The moon was also a dark red in colour with just a glowing sliver on one edge.
‘How odd’, I thought. I was tired and spaced out and during my journey it seemed to have been light pretty much the whole way. And a thought ran through my head along the lines of ‘I am a tired man with an an exhausted mind and I fear that all my sense has gone for this is one nuts moon I am seeing’.
It was only once I got to my hotel, found out I had a non-smoking room, went downstairs and outside for a cigarette and once again looked sky ward that I realised… I had arrived in Mexico bang in the middle of a lunar eclipse.
Nov 1, 2004 at 0:23 Filed Under: Blog Comment
M-M-M-Mexico Or Bust
Here is me in Monterrey, Mexico. The time according to this part of the world is about half past eight in the pm. It was quite a long trip to get here… my personal and somewhat freestyle time measuring system counts the time from standing in my room until I find myself standing in the room at my destination. This system has obvious limitations and flaws; namely if there is no room at my destination, in which case the measuring of time shoots of towards infinity. (For instance, the time I slept rough in Basel means that the current estimate of how long it took to get there stands at about two years- and counting). However, it worked on this occasion and it was 23 hours end to end.
When I landed at the airport I was a very tired boy but I needed to have my wits about me for customs. You see part of the logistical glitch was, to cut a long story short, the fact that I was travelling with 170 square metres of vinyl tape as excess baggage.
So I approached the customs officials and thought… not much really. Like I say I was very tired and my brain had shut down.
Customs Man (pointing): What’s that?
The Gregor: That is two big boxes of vinyl tape.
Customs Man: What’s that?
The Gregor: Plastic it is.
Customs Man: How much is worth?
The Gregor: Two fifty.
Customs Man: Okay. Press the button.
The Gregor: This button?
Customs Man: Yes.
And then it was revealed to me how completely rum and uncanny the customs and excise procedure actually is in Mexico…
The button he was referring to was a small and unremarkable button apart from the fact that it was attached to what can only be described as a large traffic light. So press the button I did, and… ping… the big traffic light went green.
‘Is that it’? I wondered.
And apparently it was. Seemingly at the touch of a button some arcane and mystical Mexican process had managed to establish beyond reasonable doubt that everything was okay and I was a law abiding citizen who was telling the truth.
And so I entered Mexico with two very big and very heavy tubes and I wondered what would have happened if when the man asked what was in the two big heavy tubes, if I had said something like ‘parts of folk’, ‘black dust’ or ‘a bad man’, what would have happened?
I’ve got a suspicion that the big traffic light would have simply turned a cheery shade of green.
So yesterday I had a bit of the jetlag. Although I’m not actually sure exactly what jetlag is supposed to feel like getting hungry at exactly the wrong times must be quite close.
*****And it seems I must go now. The Internet Cafe Man says ‘You go now’. So I go now. Mexico tale continue when I next get chance.***
Oct 30, 2004 at 2:58 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Arts And Crafts
Just when you thought I was slacking off a bit, I really slacked off… and Burning Salad has gone biweekly. Hmm… well the real reason is that I’m working on a top secret project. Add to this my ongoing plan for world domination and unfortunately the ‘Salad gets treated like a step-child yet again. Another factor has been the inevitable winter blues. Oh well, never mind.
So what have I been “up to” as they say in Glasgow?
Well I’m afraid I’m going to have to start name-dropping already. I went to see Franz Ferdinand at The Barras. I mean I would never dream of actually paying to go and actually watch those art pansies perform live but I have been currying favour for some time now and Bob put me on the guest list. So me and DShrig traipsed along to watch the show. And what a show it was. A very showy show indeed. That’s not to say that the ‘Nand are show offs, no way- they were simply showing the world (or at this moment the part of the world contained by The Barrowland Ballroom) what they are all about and what they do. And what they do they do very well. It was funny watching them now that they’re fame-ous anawrat.* They look like they are really enjoying their role as ‘pop stars’. Good work.
And bonus ticks all round because they signed a CD for my mum…
(Apparently my dad was worried that it was heavy metal).
Okay, enough about them- more about me me me! Well I bought a goldfish the other day. It’s a type of goldfish called a comet. Which means that it’s not gold. That is my type of goldfish. It’s a sort of silvery white with a red patch on its head and different coloured eyes- one orange, one blue.
And he’s called The Man.
So The Man is settling into his new home on the living room windowsill which seems to be quite a secure spot since he’s been under constant assault from the Cat-Shape. But his wee plastic house is too much even for the ‘Shape’s razor sharp claws.
I was also busy last week sorting out work to send to the art fair in Cologne. Which was good. And I’m also busy right now because tomorrow I fly to Mexico to install a show for Jim. And due to factors beyond the control of mere mortals (including Fed Ex) it’s all been a terribly last minute affair and could become potentially stressful. Generally I’m okay with stress. I don’t get stressed out very easily. But it’s not like I’m mad- it does sneak in from time to time- it’s just that I tend to ignore it until it reaches critical mass. And then I crack. And at the moment I’m ignoring it.
I’m away for a week and hopefully I will be able to get access to the pipe** and make up for my recent malaise by updating from Mexico. (Arriba etc.)
* phonetic spelling of a Glaswegian phrase that literally means ‘and all that’ and can be variously translated as ‘as well’, ‘and suchlike’, ‘etcetera’. It’s referent is often vague and the phrase itself, tending to be grammatically erroneous, can normally be ignored.
** The Internet.
Whilst undergoing training with British Telecom, the strategically re-deployed late middle-aged man responsible for my ‘induction’ proceeded to ‘teach’ us about current technology. He told me to imagine the internet as a vast pipe. (I didn’t of course. I just started calling it The Pipe).