A Tagine is a rich meaty stew from North Africa, made with marinated meats and fruits… I’m hoping you get the analogy- this ‘Roast’ is somewhat late, but I hope better for the slow cooking and marinating process, filled with tasty fruit and nourishing meat.

If you couldn’t already tell, this is still Neko, guest blogging whilst the mighty Cas is away incubating her novel. I’ve not done one of these before, so she kindly supplied me with some links to get me started: I’ll run through hers first, then add some special spices of my own!

Firstly some things that made the news (and made me grin…)

The CIA have been editing wikipedia . I’m sure there are incisive comments I could make about the nature of communal knowledge and the dangers of open participation, or I could just laugh about some employees doing a Skeletor on the President of Iran…

The joys and dangers of applying technological solutions to family problems- a novel use of googles’ calendar facility documented in the NYT.

In your facebooks! Haxxing ur iPhone…Another interesting example of pervasive computing – not sure if this is a good thing or not, but a group of researchers are looking at hooking you Facebook profile to your mobile phone with Bluetooth, to suggest people you run into regularly but don’t already ‘know’ according to Facebook…

The BBC have integrated social bookmarking buttons on all their news content , which means it must officially be de-rigueur now, and the trendy kids will have to find something else to play with..

The new iLife release from apple has met with mixed reviews. I’m not a Mac user (The shock! The horror!) so I can’t really add anything to this one!

A UK radio station has received heavy criticism from a Dr for offering a boob job as a prize in a competition. I have to agree- even though I consider some cosmetic surgery necessary and possible beneficial, giving it away as a prize seems a bit beyond the pale.

The rest I found all by myself, and so have to officially absolve Cas of any responsibility!

How cool are these crows! I love corvidae in general, they are smart and always doing something daft. I think they like to play.

Cas and I both bookmarked this great webcomic, xkcd , and I’m pretty sure we both got to it via danah boyds blog . I’ve not read the entire back catalogue yet… but I loved it, even if I did have to explain some the really geeky jokes to my other half. I want one of the ‘ science, it works ‘ T-shirts to wear to archaeology conference where the theoreticians gather in droves and shudder at the word science every time one of us computing/ geophysics types uses it…

Will it blend? is, I guess, viral marketing, but it’s good viral marketing. Especially when they blend an iPhone and some glow sticks. Genius. I can feel a disturbance in the force… like a thousand Apple fanboys crying out in anguish… then silence…

Finally, playing with maps to make pictures is something archaeologists often get accused of (that isn’t a ceremonial complex, it’s just a bunch of random lines and dots….) but this is an ace variation on that, making animals out of the tube map…

That’s it for now folks… I’m handing over to Moose as of this time tomorrow as I’m off playing silly games. Be excellent to each other.

Neko out.

(Rapidly edited to fix my links- apologies to whoever read the first version of this, sorry! Not as much of a ‘net genius as the proprietor..)

You know those weeks where you’ve been frantically busy all week but when you look back you can’t pick out a single thing you’ve done? I’ve had one of those weeks. I did go out for a night of debauchery and cavorting to celebrate the Divine M’s birthday, which was fun, but didn’t lead to anything blog-worthy (other than the ever-constant wonder why all the best ones are taken).

So I really have nothing else to say before I start you in on the roast.

The Thai police force have come up with a novel way to punish their rule-breaking officers.

A new tool is being developed to help you fix your holiday snaps – unsightly fat mounds of roasting tourist blubber spoiling your shot of the pristine golden sands? Worry no more. Also props to the researcher for getting the phrase “semantic scene data” into the interview.

Trust the Japanese to come up with video conferencing for the shy.

In London between September 13th and March 2008? Pop into the British Museum to see the Terracotta Army.

Once again, William Gibson was ahead of the curve – invisible art. How very Spook Country.

There are times I just don’t need to add anything to a link other than point you at it and suggest you sit there and marvel at the idiocy that is mankind. The Banana Bunker is one such link.

I love me some Gnocchi, but Waitrose doesn’t always it in store ( 🙁 ) so my thanks to Abi for this Potato Gnocchi recipe. Tasty.

Like books? Blog a Penguin.

I could go into a long rant about the debacle that is the A303 and Stonehenge, but I won’t. It’s much easier if I just point you towards what Paul has to say on the matter.

And lastly before I go and make a start, once again, on the Never Ending Quilt for my beloved Aged P, two movie trailers for you:
Lars and the Real Girl
Dan in Real Life

This week what is there to tell you? Um. Not so much really. I’ve been laying low since last weekend’s fun and frolicks, trying to decide what to do on my holidays in a few weeks time. Yes, I have the last two weeks of August booked off and I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do. Usually I’m the queen of forward plans but lately I’ve been the last minute lady. Jersey is still top of my list for some reason so if anyone knows of a decent B&B or hotel there – or conversely somewhere else I can have a kick-ass holiday (English speaking is my one requirement as I’m chicken when traveling on my own) – please let me know.

The roast I have so lovingly prepared for you on this glorious Sunday afternoon is testament to the 40+ hour weeks I’ve been pulling lately – very, very short because I don’t have the energy to do more and am very hard to impress at the moment! As always, I hope you enjoy and feel free to bring more links to the table 🙂

The Harry Potter Plot Enlightenment Project appeals to my sense of the absurd. If you’ve not read the books yet, yes it is spoilerific as their entire purpose is to reveal what happens in Book 7. On a t-shirt. In yellow or black. What more could you possibly want?

Joe has a 55 reasons why you shouldn’t use Wikipedia that made my Sunday morning.

Mac user? Faced with lots of icky Word tables to make into pretty HTML? Use Tom’s tip. Hell I wish I’d know this last year… *rolleyes*

Triffids! That’s all I have to say.

Apparently there’s been a spate of incidents in Hong Kong where people are getting seizures as a result of Mahjong… Yup. The Chinese tile game. Okay.

I’ve linked to it before, but I’ll link to it again because watching the full trailer for “National Treasure 2” I was struck with the thought of how much easier conspirators would make their lives if they, just for shits and giggles, didn’t write down their plans and real names and hide them in idiotic places any person with a few brain cells and a propensity for outdoor pursuits could find them. Seriously, these people need to stop reading from the Bond villain handbook.

And lastly because his images always blow my mind and more people need to see them, publicenergy.co.uk

Yes, I’m back.
No, there hasn’t been a Roast for the last couple of weeks?
Why?
No reason, I just didn’t feel like it. I refuse to apologize, but yes, I do feel a little guilty. Damn how the internet has wiggled it’s way into my life!

Consequently, this does mean that I’ve been collecting stuff for the Roast for the past three weeks – some of it is going to be a little bit behind the curve. For this reason, and because there were 35 articles which I really didn’t have the energy to go through again, I’ve cut 99% of the news from this Roast. I think you’ll agree there’s enough else to read without them!

booktwo.org is a blog I subscribed to on the basis of recommendation and I’m glad I did – this article on the sustainability of the archive is well worth a read. The arguments made are pertinent to all fields, not just publishing.

This animated T.Rex model, whilst gleefully archaeologically inaccurate, is just so much fun 😀

I had something witty to say about Matthew asking you to listen to him, not Jakob Nielsen (witty things in support of his article I should say), but I must be suffering more from the affects of last night than I thought, because I can’t locate the funny.

I’m sorry, but my twitter bits are staying 😛 In all seriousness, I like the microblog effect that I get when all my tweets are integrated with blog bits and pictures.

I have fond/cringe-worthy memories of the time I turned round to an American classmate in secondary school and asked him if he had a rubber I could borrow…

I know there’s been some speculation on teh interwebs as to Moose’s identity. Well, I can now reveal all.

Welcome to Greenham – this one’s for Neko (warning, it is flash heavy).

*WARNING* DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING LINK IF YOU HAVE NOT YET READ HARRY POTTER 7, IT (AND THE RELATED COMMENTS) ARE HEAVILY SPOILERIFIC
Chip Cullen and his theory on Harry Potter

Rarely has a post made me want to reach for old anthropology books and check things half remembered from Dr Sinclair’s first year lectures, but Tara on gift economies made my spidy senses tingle some.

Like MOO cards? Love StickerBooks

So what if the entire page is in Japanese, I’ve found my watch!

Treasures of calligraphy

I’ve no idea how I came across this, but this penguin is so cute! An even (sort of) practical!

A fair few movie trailers have come out lately and made me go Hmmm…
The Jane Austen Book Club
The Ten
Vantage Point
Goya’s Ghosts
In the Shadow of the Moon
Feast of Love
The Darjeeling Limited
Beowulf
Lust, Caution
Dedication

And to finish, as Moose said when she emailed me the link: I so want this to be true!

Yes, again there was no Roast this weekend. The reason (as ably spotted by Nils) was that I was Racing for Life.

I fully intended to do a Roast yesterday… But I didn’t because Mondays are evil at work and I could just about manage to collapse on the sofa when I got home. I then fully intended to do a Roast today – because I have so many fun links to share! – but I haven’t because now I’m feeling as sick as a dog again. I think there’s something in my diet that I’ve developed an intolerance to and I’ve yet to work out what it is.

Therefore, no Roast tonight either.

Ickyness permitting, there might be one tomorrow, but there might not. Sorry 😕

I’m not sure what’s happened this week, but there’s just not a lot out there that has caught my interest.

OK, I lied. I know exactly what happened this week: work. It was the end of the quarter and all the claim paperwork and data entry for the nine projects we manage had to go through little old me before the Friday submission deadline. It’s hard to describe exactly what’s entailed in my job and even harder to explain why the end of the quarter sends me totally and utterly fruit-loops with the stress, but it does. This has a nock-on affect in the rest of my life – quite the last thing I am in the mood for when I come home is to trawl the internet looking for stuff to Roast.

So you only get a few things this week. If, however, there are things you want to share, you are more than welcome to add them in the comments 🙂

In a very Indiana Jones worthy moment, archaeologists have discovered a secret chamber in the tomb of Emperor Qin.

I have two main ways of finding new authors to read. One by recommendation of my friends and two by randomly walking through the library/bookstore and picking up titles that grab my eye for whatever reason. It’s a sobering realisation, but covers of books DO matter, as do the blurb and the opening paragraph. I hate to think I’m fickle but… I am. I think recommendations from blog writers are going to have to fit into the ‘friends’ category even though in reality it’s not that clear cut. The following are three that have made my spidy-senses tingle:
Glimpses by Lewis Shiner
Mirrorshades: the Cyberpunk Anthology by Bruce Sterling
When the Music’s Over by Lewis Shiner

The blog is dead is a pronouncement guaranteed to stop you in your tracks. Go, be stopped, and read what Nils has to say about it all. And as for Scoble’s pronouncement that “traffic is going down” – 😛 to you, and so what if it is? That’s just a sign that people are starting to wake up and actually pick and choose what they are reading as supposed to being mindless sheep.

And I’ll stop there before I go into a huge off-topic rant.

Moose got all excited last night because Dell are releasing coloured laptops – she laughed at my suggestion of just buying a tin of red enamel paint and doing it herself. Seemed like a reasonable idea to me, but not as pretty as this laptop/typewriter mod.

The Golden Compass – the books were a little heavy handed to me. I think they might actually make a better film. And Daniel Craig just looks… Oooh, so yummy. And Eva Green (as always) looks just to gorgeous for words too.

Shoot ‘Em Up – more of Clive Owen running round displaying unrealistic military prowess, but he looks good doing it, so that’s ok. What IS it with me and liking shoot-em-up movies?

Skinwalkers – one more in the rash of werewolf/vampire/supernatural movies. Something about this one caught my eye though.

The Invasion – oh, you just KNOW that Daniel Craig is going to go evil, but it will be fun to watch him. Worth putting up with Nicole Kidman (never my favourite).

Lions for Lambs – worth it if only for Meryl Streep’s line of “even WW2 only took five years – what are we still doing?!”

And that’s me done for the day. Hamilton didn’t win the British Grand Prix, so I’m a happy bunny, though perhaps not as happy as Alonso is at finally having beaten his team mate! I’m off to see if I can jinx the Wimbledon final like I did Roddick in the Quarters.

And it’s that time again. Technically it is Sunday lunchtime, but because I’m still sitting here in my PJ’s, drinking a fruit smoothie and feeling ever so slightly rough around the edges thanks to Neko & Co, I’m going to persist in thinking it is ‘morning’ till I’ve had my shower, made myself respectable, and taken myself off the Apple Store to see if they can work out why my trusty iPod is loosing ten minutes each day. Now loosing ten minutes a day on your iPod really shouldn’t be such a major thing, but it is bugging me because my iPod is my alarm clock. Not for me being woken each morning by the harsh, clarion call of synthetic bells jangling discordantly in my eardrums. Oh no. Instead I come to consciousness gently, to the strains of some favourite mellow music. So when my iPod is loosing time each day, this causes me a problem, because I rely on the iPod to wake me up each morning. Plus I really don’t want to have to buy a new one.

Other than that, I have one more thing to get out of my system and then we can continue – I met William Gibson’s UK publicist-type-person! < moment of sheer cyberpunk geek-out pleasure / >

OK, I’m good to go now. Enjoy 🙂

The world this week
The cash machine was invented by a Scots man, as all the great inventions were.

I’ve been taking Echinacea for several years now, as have other people I know, and we can all say anecdotally that we’ve had fewer and less severe colds, but now it’s been scientifically proven.

Clearly my penguin obsession has filtered through to y’all, because five separate people took it upon themselves to tell me about the discovery of a giant penguin. This is just the first evidence that once penguins ruled the world and should be taken as a warning that they will soon be trying again…

It’s not often that a book review in the NYT catches my interest, and it’s even less often that a non-fiction book reviewed in the NYT catches my interest, but The Cult of the Amateur has peaked my interest. The purported premise – that the rise of the amateur in Web 2.0 is dangerous – intrigues me because it chimes with some things I’m thinking of at the moment. I’d be interested to read this if only to see what his arguments actually are (and yes I know I’ve used ‘interest’ far too many times in this paragraph, but it’s a Sunday and my creative writing skills are still fast asleep in bed).

The poor NFL is withdrawing from Europe because no one is watching or even interested. Funny that. We have these two sports called Football (soccer if you’re American) and Rugby. The first requires skill. The later is American Football for grownups – it also requires skills and, unlike the wimpy American game, they don’t wear more padding than the average soldier on deployment in Afghanistan.

Bytes and Pieces
Emil has, as always, good tips on how to check if your site is ‘accessible’.

So I’m a huge fan of the Die Hard movies – can’t get enough of ’em, and seeing a trailer for Die Hard 4.0 at the cinema is often more exciting than the film I’ve gone to watch – but I never figured on the collateral damage in the movies before.

It’s great to see that Nils has we and truly got his blogging mojo back – his comparison of the different social networking sites had me giggling like a nutter (or GLAN’ing to make Neko happy).

Some people, it turns out, are incapable of getting places on time. Me, I’m not one of them. I think mainly because of my insanely organised mother, I have to be early everywhere. Yes, I can think of a few instances later where I’ve been a few minutes late but that was always due to circumstances beyond my control. This WikiHow article claims to have some useful pointers for the chronically late among you. It might be so, but I have an issue with point two and its reliance on time pieces. I don’t wear a watch and I haven’t for many years. I don’t have multiple clocks around the house or on my desk at work – the only clocks I look at with anything approaching regularity are the one on my mobile phone and the one on my computer taskbar. But, and I stress this, I rarely look at them. Tasks take as long as they take and I don’t rule my life by minutes/hours. Yes, there are certain things that have to be done at certain times (meetings to get to, tv shows to watch, buses to catch) but once I know the fixed points in my day I’m good to go. I don’t really have much of a point to make, but I do recommend trying to go without a watch for a few days. Once you get used to it, it is very liberating.

I don’t want an iPhone, I want a Helio Ocean – if, you know, I had to go for a multi-function device. As it is, I’m fine with using my phone just for calls and texts and only checking email etc when I’m at a computer. Call me old fashioned that way.

Here’s a nice article on Creative Commons and publishing (book publishing for the premise of the article, but the points are pertinent for other fields).

There aren’t the words to describe how glad I am that strange things happen to people other than me. It makes me think the fates aren’t just picking on little old me.

Filmy Goodness
I recommend you go to One Race Films and look at the video for Babylon AD (alas I can’t link direct). Yes, I’m a bit of a Vin Diesel fan.

And now it’s time I got dressed and headed to the Apple Store. Wish me and my poor aged iPod luck!