Winners will be announced soon.

Not far to the finish line now so every boost counts. Try to pick boost canisters; a 100% boost will give you enough power to fly through three sites! Oh, and aim for the rainbows! If you email me with your balloon name, I’ll give you a boost.

Shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life that you’d like to.

The Smiths

We’re on a family holiday in Greece. Its a lovely warm evening. The sun is on it’s way down and everything is the most amazing sunset red. We’re wandering past a pretty restaurant playing “traditional Greek music”. My little girl, she’s 4 going on 14, looks up at me and says “Daddy, I want to take my shoes off and dance”. I say that it would be lovely and of course I’m more than happy for her to, but I can see the noticeable change in her face as she is overcome with “shyness”. Such a dreadful word. It’s like a disease. Shyness. God forbid anyone should be shy.

So I said “Ok, let’s find somewhere to dance where no one can see you”. Well that was no good. What’s the point of dancing if no one can see you.

“Ok then, what’s the deal?” I say (we do this often). “I’ll do a twirl over here if you give me a cuddle after”, she says matter of fact. Well who’s going to argue with that. She does the twirl, she smiles the biggest most beautiful smile and gives me a big cuddle.

A half hour later she’s still dancing, getting lots of praise and attention. Even my little boy’s joined in. I’m smiling proudly, feeling a little shy myself now. Then she comes running over, grabs my hand and says “Thank you daddy, I’m not shy anymore”.

Sir John Betjeman

See that little balloon floating from the bottom left bottom right side of the page? It’s part of an awesome project I’ve been working on at POKE. It has just launched and registration is now open for the World’s first internet balloon race.

Get yourself a balloon here and if you’ve got a website or blog make it part of the the race course by signing up and adding it here.

Love isn’t glycerin, it’s nitroglycerin

Crikey, I’m on a roll. I thought this might be a punk album from 10 years ago but I ‘googled’ Crystal Stilts. It’s very recent and of course Pitchfork are all over it. Very lo-fi, very punk, very good.

I grew up with a very healthy dose of Bob Dylan so a little folk music doesn’t scare me shitless like it does some. So on discovering The Tallest Man on Earth, I didn’t run away covering my ears. I’m particularly fond of the track ‘The Gardner’. It’s melodic, it’s poignant, it’s clever.

I tried to retrace my steps but I’ve no idea how I discovered this. I was hunting around looking for something to listen to. Something to satisfy an audio (not audible) lust. Shallow Graves quenches… briefly.

http://www.thetallestmanonearth.com/

Over a period of 3 months I stopped 150 strangers on the street and asked them what they were thinking about the second before I stopped them… then took a picture of them.

The Thought Project by Simon Høgsberg

I enjoy discovering something interesting or beautiful in the seemingly prosaic. So it’s with great pleasure that I stumbled (via Matthew Buchanan) across the work of Philip Bloom. This video in particular. The South Bank is my favourite place in London and I’ve walked the route from Waterloo to the Tate Modern many times yet this beautifully observed video is full of images I feel ashamed to admit I’ve completely missed.

There’s more work on Philip’s site and it’s all beautifully observed. Great stuff.

The past is a grotesque animal and in its eyes you can see how completely wrong you can be.

Of Montreal.

I decided to try to find as many of the Mississippi riders as I could and make contemporary portraits to accompany these earlier photographs.

The mug-shot. Usually a photograph of a felons face made for police record. Or, in the case of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders, a visceral account not of justice served but of a massive injustice.

By the photographer Eric Etheridge, this is an enlightening project about an important part of history, not be lost or forgotten, and testimony to the power of the individual to make a difference.

The book, Breach of Peace - Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders , is available on Amazon here.

There is no crisis.

Geoff Hoon, the chief whip, insisted.

The Guardian

I’m not a big fan of jewellery but these mens bracelets from Oye Modern are a great idea. I’m guessing one made from a Leica Noctilux would be super expensive but I would definitely wear that.

AUDIENCE No.2 is the first single that is being released from the next/new AUTOLUX record, entitled: TRANSIT TRANSIT

I’m slightly excited!

Autolux dot net

I don’t like talking shop but look, I couldn’t care less for most of the utterly pointless features proposed for CSS3. Animations (super useful interface shit like wobble and bounce), transitions (fade everything on the page at least once you utter noob), gradients (oh, for fuck sake) and web fonts! (god help us)

Now take note. A proposal for CSS variables. This idea is so excellent that on it’s own it makes up for all the other petty proposals. This is something genuinely useful.

The presence of David Hyatt (Apple, Inc.) and an Apple Copyright on the document is also somewhat encouraging but if you can’t wait for the actual implementation you could start with Shaun Inman’s CSS Server-Side Pre-Processor implementation on which, it would appear, this proposal is based.