I find it incredibly annoying that Amazon has started inserting advertising (or ‘sponsored links’ as they prefer to call it) in your search results. I accept that large chunks of the web can only survive because free services are paid for with advertising, and that seems fair. But Amazon is a shop. It’s trying to sell stuff to me. I’ve already spent more money there than I care to remember. Why the fuck should I have to scroll past extra advertising while I’m shopping?
The pick of the search engine queries used to find this site during September:
nelson cricket anecdote
chipotles canned sainsbury
england cricket jerusalem listen
pseudo-ku
banana shallot photo
rik auden
maradona gastric bypass
richard gere films
dead land
kedgeree
maskless diving
poetry perfidious albion
old american pinup
what are the kennings in the seafarer poem.
processions that lack high stilts
What a lot of disappointed punters.
Today feels like a day for posting a poem. This one, by Hopkins, will have to do:
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Slightly early, this week, because I’m going to Cambridge for a party tomorrow. A mask from Japanese Noh theatre, via the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art:
![[picture of a Noh mask]](https://www.ishibi.pref.ishikawa.jp/msm-2d/tn_detail/syozo/11/11003300.jpg)
Apparently, if you ask wine experts to match the tasting notes to the wine, not only are they unable to identify them on the basis of other people’s notes (beyond obvous things like ‘it’s a sauvignon blanc’ or ‘it’s oaky’), they are unable to identify them on the basis of their own tasting notes from a few months ago. In other words, all that stuff they come out with (“I’m getting a slight hint of candle-stubs and grass”) is too impressionistic to be really informative.
Presumably the same would apply to a lot of poetry reviews.
I just downloaded The Gimp as a substitute for Photoshop. And so far it looks pretty damn impressive. The interface is a bit Windows-y (Unix-y?) for my liking – not because there’s anything wrong with that, but because I’d prefer all my software to be consistent. And it’s a tad geeky (a menu called ‘Script-Fu’? Puh-lease).
But as an alternative to ordering £500 worth of Photoshop from Apple, a five-minute free download takes a lot of beating.