One thing that has been conspicuous in its absence (so far) from Durham this year has been snow. After last years deluge I am still hoping for a repeat performance! (I blame Global Warming personally!)
Elsewhere in the world has certainly not had the same problem, namely Hokkaido (Northern Japan) with some amazing ice sculptures on display at the annual Snow Festival.
Photo (c) Associated Press 2005 - Large version here.
Varying from replicas of famous Japanese and foreign architectural pieces to depictions of imaginary world, hundreds of sculptures made with white snow and ice create a fantasy atmosphere … the festival has grown to Hokkaido’s biggest winter event and attracts more than 2 million visitors annually.
Photo (c) Associated Press 2005 - Large version here.
Pretty spectacular, especially the attention to detail! Thanks to an anonymous insider for the cool pictures!
Elsewhere [Translation] in the world some crazy Germans have been recycling old computers into ‘art’. I especially like the idea of the real life computer bug which rather contradicts the time when I had to explain to someone that computer bugs were in software rather than real living organisms!
As a side note it’s Chinese New Year’s eve today as well as Panacake day (in the UK at least)! Lots of good food tonight i hope 
Here ends the year of the monkey!
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Excuse the lack of updates the last few days, been rather preoccupied with various things. Also excuse the contradiction that is today’s post title - I just liked the sound of it. Whether or not it is semantically correct is another matter!
Went into Newcastle on Friday afternoon which was fun although the weather wasn’t up to much. I’ll probably be going there again next weekend when my family come to stay - they’ve been meaning to visit for the last couple of years but in light of the fact that I wont be living here much longer they’ve only not managed to get round to it! I’ll also be repairing the server next weekend so hopefully I should have the photo gallery back up in a couple of weeks.
Some linkage:
WiFi Map Project - Some very cool large format maps of Seattle showing wireless access point locations as discovered by students at the University of Washington department of Communication. I wish the department I’m in would set projects as interesting as this - all theory, no practice makes me very bored!
Hello Kitty Sushi - Some people take their obsessions too far and I would say this may be bordering on that! Still, it does show a lot of skill and hard work on the part of whoever made this. I’ve never really fancied the idea of raw fish, especially not in the shape of cute little cats but this doesn’t look to bad!
Oversaturation - versaturation is common in most global processes as the fluxes: material and linguistic evolve real time in shape and magnitude. these fluxes, acting onto limited spaces (of conscience, the earth’s surface, bandwidth, etc), add pressure on their ‘host’ surfaces, and that pressure is defined by each process itself. as organisms keep multiplying and processes evolving in complexity, the available space becomes more limited and eventually tends to disappear. this game is about keeping your personal space clear, and as in life it’s theoretically an infinite process. I’ll leave you to figure this one out!
Blinkenlights - Play some classic games like Tetris on the side of a building in Paris. It’s basically an interactive light simulation using lights in each window of the Bibliothèque nationale de France as a huge pixel matrix. Pretty ingenious if you ask me! Reminds me of the ending of the film Hackers for those who remember 
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I don’t usually go in for comedy anime series but Azumanga Daioh would have to be the exception - it’s about as random as it gets with absolutely no story line, and a bunch of characters so psychotically crazy that you wonder at times just what on earth you are actually watching?!
It’s an episodic series which follows the fortunes of seven girls, two teachers (and one dog) through the three years of high school. It focuses on every day events, which might sound a bit boring at first but actually it’s hilarious. All the characters have their own quirks which play heavily in each episode - I especially like Osaka’s wacky daydreams which are just way off the scale of normality!
Each episode is rather short at around five minutes long (so if you have the attention span of a fish then this is definitely for you!). The animation itself is simple but effective with vibrant colours and a pretty cool soundtrack. In a word its fun without trying to be anything other than this - definitely one to watch on a gray day
[For a more indepth review see here!]
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