It took a while for me to notice that Flickr provides an analysis of how many times your photos have been looked at. I’ve never expected any of my stuff to have broad appeal, but it’s intriguing to see what people seem to be interested in.
With one exception, this is the fairly stable order of popularity amongst my pictures.
10! I still haven’t seen Patrick Keiller’s London again, so I still don’t know how close I got to guessing the particular location of the forgotten corner of the city that briefly appears in the film. Instead, I relied on Iain Sinclair’s description of finding the same place some years later, somewhere near St Andrew By The Wardrobe.
9! Trainspotters ahoy! The Tube’s inexplicable allure adds a cachet to even the most mundane snapshots.
8! Heh heh, I said ‘faggots’. I’m amazed this one isn’t the most viewed in the entire set, because half of my website traffic consists of kids on MySpace linking to the smaller version on this blog.
7! The promise of violence. Because people like violence. Especially when it’s close enough to enjoy but you’re safely out of the way.
6! The tastefully understated Colloseum photograph. One of very few taken on my holiday in Italy. I can’t help feeling people are mildly disappointed when their searches turn up my photos.
5! See? This is exactly what I mean. This a security guard outside the Sagrada Familia and is tagged accordingly, so I hope people turning up this one are more interested in handcuffs than Gaudi.
4! The only thing more exciting than an old Tube station is a derelict Tube station. Aldwych station, once briefly known as Strand station, is now a ghost station and frequent stand-in for real Underground stations on film and TV.
3! Now here’s the anomaly. A blurry shot at a graduate art show off Brick Lane, which has suddenly rocketed up the charts in only the past week. I have no idea why. Perhaps it’s been discovered by a cabal of Ballardian fetishists who like to pretend this is Rosanna Arquette.
2! A street stall of nested dolls for the tourists in Riga. There’s nothing like Harry Potter, Stalin, and Osama Bin Laden tags to boost the hit rate, although I guess this photo must have disappointed many feverish authors hopefully searching for illustrations for their slash fiction.
1! Ah, the inanimate carbon rod of my photo set! These soothing wood tones and rich timber grain have brightened the desktops of geeks around the world. A pinnacle of repose and tranquility, which I thought had an unassailable lead over the others until the James Spader wannabes turned up.
Filed under: Art, Self-promotion by Ben.H
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I’m setting up a committee to raise funds towards the construction of a giant talking brazen head of Pete Smith on Mount Dandenong.
Thursday 23 August 2007
Nothing to post today, sorry! Meanwhile…
- A heated discussion ensues at Sarsaparilla.
- Soho the Dog resolves the AC/DC Bon Scott vs Brian Johnson debate forever – with SCIENCE!
- Life in the Slough Lane discovers the wrong kind of Magic.
- Sterne realises Australians are getting weirder by the minute.
- Frankly, I Would Have Preferred the Sword loses her shoes. At work.
- I’m On Your Computer is on thine tapestrie.
- Straight from the Tated   is moving to a place without the luxury of context as prescribed by title.
- The Rambler has more death, which I know readers here can’t get enough of.
- The Supermercado Project is down right now so beats me what’s happening there.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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What did I get for my blog’s third birthday? I got it a bloody search engine at last.
Tuesday 14 August 2007
It’s in the right column somewhere. It’ll also appear on the main site pages too once I figure out the coding.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Site Maintenance
Wednesday 4 July 2007
Cooky La Moo Enterprises (which includes this blog) is moving to a new server, so the site may be a bit flaky over the next couple of days. Please drop me a line if you notice anything unusual.
Normal service will resume shortly, with more room to offer new and exciting features (i.e. more unpopular music).
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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It’s not filler it’s a trailer. Fine have it your way.
Sunday 22 April 2007
Hello. I have spent the better part of the last week helping my girlfriend decide on what kind of a small rug she should put in the hallway. In my spare moments I have thrown together a barely-coherent review of Satyagraha, and an unpleasant rant after going to see The Sound Source night at the ICA. There was also the Radius concert at Wigmore Hall on the weekend, which I should say something intelligent about.
These will all be posted very soon when I’ve made them into something readable, I’m sure. I was going to post another picture of the mummified corpse of Jeremy Bentham reading inter-office emails but I’ve had someone commenting that this blog is obsessed with death, so instead here’s another photo taken from my toilet. This is the glamorous night-time view over the Isle of Dogs towards Canary Wharf, and is as un-blurry as I can manage for now.
Filed under: Self-promotion, The Bunker by Ben.H
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Any Day Now
Monday 19 March 2007
“Normal” “service” will “resume” by the “end” of the “week”.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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House Moving! All Change.
Wednesday 7 March 2007
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Also, the indices are almost up to date.
Saturday 17 February 2007
In case you tried to read this site last week and wondered whether I had trashed everything in a fit of blogger burnout, the answer is no. My kerazy web hosting service likes to keep things lively by randomly deleting my account from time to time, then reinstating it a few days later with a terse apology but no explanation. Suggestions for a less impetuous web host are welcome.
I’ve used the downtime productively by getting all fatalistic and not bothering to finish up the next article I was preparing. Meanwhile, at Sarsaparilla, an intelligent posting about language and erudition has descended into a discussion about people sticking inadvisable substances into various bodily orifices. You might enjoy that.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Ugly Cooky
Sunday 11 February 2007
Pardon my French, but the new version of Blogger is a bloody disgrace. Above, on the left, you see the official portrait of this website’s patroness and muse, Ms Cooky La Moo, as she appears in the standard Blogger profile. On the right, the deformed and wretched travesty, like a mildew’d ear, of said portrait as displayed in the pop-up comments window in the new, “improved” Blogger. A bloody disgrace, I say.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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“Our new barbarity is acquisitive – it collects anything and everything.”
Wednesday 3 January 2007
The accolades are coming thick and fast. Having only just recovered from the shock of being named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2006, I’ve returned home to find that The National Library of Australia has decided that a blog devoted to gratuitous references to Jeremy Bentham is an “electronic publication of lasting cultural and research value of national significance”. So they’re archiving Boring Like A Drill on a server somewhere in Fyshwick, I guess. A winner is me!
These things come in threes, so I expect an envelope from Reader’s Digest any day now.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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The cosmopolitan rush of Surrey; the interminable Peter Holm.
Wednesday 13 December 2006
Yes, it’s a placeholder. Today’s post about Morton Feldman has been held over until tomorrow, because it’s late and I suspect it’s gibberish.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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The half-yearly list: condition stable
Wednesday 29 November 2006
I am happy to report that for once there have been no additions to The List of People Or Things I Have Been Mistaken For, Or Allegedly Physically Resemble, In Increasing Order Of Ridiculousness, in the past six months.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Masons in Distress!
Wednesday 15 November 2006
(Somewhere between Bonn and Bristol. Back in a few days. There are comments on the posts below to tide you over.)
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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The New Season at Sarsaparilla
Saturday 28 October 2006
The good people at Sarsaparilla have invited me to join their crew of kulchur bloggers, so of course I immediately accepted. Every now and then I’ll be posting stuff over there, which will either be cross-posted or linked to here.
My first contribution is up now, and even though you’ve probably read it before I suggest you go read it again, what with the nicer formatting and other interesting things to read that they have on their site.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Simultaneously overenthusiastic and excessively lethargic
Tuesday 10 October 2006
New on the blogroll: Straight from the Tated . It has excellent taste in links.
