Nick Gibbins

Gacked from many people, primarily , , and . It’s an interesting list, maybe not of the “best” books (whatever that means, and however you might quantify “best”), but certainly of influential titles. I haven’t given the read/not read/partly read/never heard of classification that other people have. Instead, suggested in part by ‘s post, I’ve indicated with a “*” those books which I rate especially highly, and often which I have two copies of – one for me, and one to lend. Conversely, books that I read and disliked enough to never want to read again are marked with a… Read More »Matters skiffy

Just seen a couple of interesting presentations on physical hypermedia, in which hypermedia trails are bound to paths in the real world, both by the InteractiveSpaces project. Good stuff.

This morning’s keynote is a blow-by-blow account of the internals of PDF. I can honestly say (and this is coming from someone that has written PostScript by hand in the past) that I can’t see why I would ever need to know this stuff, nor why it is really relevant to hypertext. In other news, saw a pair of hummingbirds last night – beautiful little flashes of metallic green and gold. It sounds stupid, but it had never occurred to me that they might appear in the wild outside the tropics. Failed to get a photograph, since they were moving… Read More »Death by PDF

Finally seem to be acclimatised to local time, and I’m sitting in a live hypertext reading session at the conference, more of which as we go along. The flight over was fantastic. I’ll type that again, but louder: FANTASTIC. Our route took us over Iceland, Greenland, across northern Canada and down through the Dakotas, Montana, Utah and Nevada. The weather was clear with only a slight haze for most of the journey, so got some stunning photographs of glaciers, icebergs, the Grand Canyon, the Mojave Desert, Lake Mead, and so on. Photos will have to wait until I return, since… Read More »Hypertext 2004 so far

4am local time, here in Santa Cruz, and I’m wide awake. Thank heavens for free interweb in hotels…

What better way to pay tribute to Henri Cartier-Bresson (In pictures, G2, August 5), who took pains to ensure the faithful reproduction of his work, than with a shoddy enlargement full of digital artifacts? Nick Gibbins Bath, Somerset (this is the image that has been mauled)

A 1960s picnic hamper, plywood case covered with bright orange leatherette, for four people. Contains not one, but two thermos flasks (and proper made-in-Brentwood-Thermos-with-a-capital-T Thermos flasks at that), a sandwich box, four stacking cups (and a stacking sugar bowl), a sharp knife, four teaspoons, and two screwtop plastic bottles. All in good condition – some slight knife scratches on one of the plates, but otherwise fine. £30, and well worth it.

The combination of the following things is inadvisable at best: Two espressos at 30p a shot A can of sardines for breakfast That is all.

Moved the last of my stuff out of my old house this morning. In total, my belongings fit into three conference bags (WWW2004, Multimedia 98 and Autonomous Agents 2001) and a black bin bag for my duvet. Goodbye to the sink estate! Goodbye to being hassled by urchins, the smell of burning cars, unlit alleyways, petty vandalism, In-ger-land flags and the four forms of base elemental matter that I’ve had to negotiate daily for the last two years (namely dogshit, broken glass, fag ends and plastic bags). Hello to Portswood! Hello to living within five minutes of two supermarkets, two… Read More »He’s leaving home / Drive my car

Things I like: Having my new credit card turn up when the bank said it would Things I hate: Finding out that the bank has changed my credit card number