All Stories
wey hey!
we have a new reader - hello JASR (José-Antonio Sobrino-Reineke). Jasr is a good friend of mine from New York who lives in Germany and is about to get married :-) I have mentionned beforehand that I am going to mi...
I still remember the first all-nighter
I pulled at my first job in advertising. It was in preparation for a pitch to Conde Nast (Vogue) ah those were the days (what am I doing working at 04:28 am?)
not those corporate anthems again
Will this one not die? Once upon a time a man called Chris Raettig was slogging it out at a small consultancy called pumpernickle when he came across the first corp anthem (kpmg I think it was) - anyway, you all k...
Falby
As part of the child naming process, I’m trying to find the first name of the falby that came over from denmark in 890AD (I imagine). I realise this is entirely impossible, but I can dream can’t I? My branch of th...
another spammer relents
“As Manager of Customer Experience for CustomOffers, your recent claim with Exodus has been brought to my attention. I have personally sent a request to unsubscribe dug@pumpernickle.net from CustomOffers’ mailing ...
ok, I cried
It’s the pipes - does it every time, there’s just something about the sound of a piped lament… I’m glad the Queen mum’s funeral service was well attended. Intellectually, I think the monarchy doesn’t have a leg to...
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Lots on - little time
Well, it’s the 6th of April(!) I haven’t posted in weeks and my mom has just sent me a note to see what’s up, so I thought I’d better post. Well, I’ve been struggling to get a number of things sorted out at once. ...
Lesbian barbecue
Nicki’s friend Julie (who has produced two chilun) says “breastfeeding is worse than a sado-masochistic lesbian barbecue” - I shudder…
Meme alert
Ok, does meme have two ems? (as in memme, not mememe) - not sure about that one. Just came a cross one of them in the making (well ok, not a meme exactly). Perhaps a new form of haiku. Apple have started shipping ...
It amazes me that the phrase “Wireless applications are not dead” only returns one result (a rambling piece I wrote on wml pop clients and so on). Of course without the quotes you get a lot more…
Bathroom
Sophie and Nadinne are recent art school graduates who have moved from their first few jobs to set up on their own as interior designers. They are designing and contracting our bathroom and things are looking up -...
I haven't read a hifi mag in 15 years
Remember when we were all obsessed with ‘rumble’ and balancing our tone-arms? As a teenager, I religiously kept up to date on all the latest hifi technology. Hours lost lusting for some brushed aluminum box…
National childbirth trust
Just got back from our first class. Wow, just like in the movies. More about this later, but nice people and good instructor called Akiko - class at her house in Cricklewood…
My friend Sally and her relationship
Now I’ve been dying to write about this as poor old Sal is going through the most horrendous shitty nasty messy relationship thing right now and I have a lot of thoughts on the matter.
Kitchen and bathroom designers
On the bathroom designer front, we’ve been seeing some more designers. Very multifaceted bunch really. We’ve also started talking to specifically female designers as Nicki is going to be spending a lot of time tal...
The nature of creation
Had a fantastic day on Sunday. Went to see the Paul Klee show at the Hayward and then took in Coppola’s “The Conversation” - yes Billy, I did spot the changed inflection ;-)
Baby boom?
Nick and I spent a large part of yesterday afternoon walking around John Lewis with a ‘baby clobber consultant’. This was the first time I pushed a pram in public (strange) and the first time the sheer logistical ...
Ben used to have this yellowed warning sign above his stereo
Which was designed to look like it might have come from the ammunition store at Colditz. The were lots of achtungs and zis and zat and so on… Imagine my surprise when this showed up on an email list I subscribe to...
Not enough hours in the day
Damn, I’m trying to get all these personal projects together and failing miserably. Ever since we moved Pumpernickle out of Berkeley Street, I can’t seem to focus on anything for any significant length of time. Th...
Bush-to-bush like Joyce Grenfell
Recovering from a weekend spent in Devon, celebrating Jed & Ruth’s 40th (Ruby) wedding anniversary. Dug and I had both been rather dreading the prospect of “hosting” tables at a formal dinner populated by weir...
I take it all back, orange
Well, the fact that they use javascript to forward certain page elements to other pages, including using javascript actions instead of using form submit buttons is infuriating and evil…
The things you find when cleaning out your disk
I was just cleaning out some backup space on the server, and you know how when you’re trying to throw away old magazines and you can’t help reading the articles and you end up not throwing half of them away?
Bathroom designer in London
If anyone reading this has had a good experience with bathroom designers (that’s another word for building contractor…) in London, UK please drop me an email with contact details. I’ve spent the day talking tub wi...
Sheppey
Nicki and I just had a fantastic day down in Kent.There’s a particularly enjoyable type of British leisure activity that involves grey skies, wet lay-bys and hot mugs of tea (or pints of real ale) and today was de...
What is this log about (additional notes)
Ruth, my mother, reads this log and has sent in corrections about the previous post. I have edited the post the get the facts straight (thanks Ruth). I’m trying to get her to keep her own web log as I know so litt...
What is this log about?
When I started the log, it was going to be somewhere for me to put thoughts about our pregnancy. It seemed like I had never written anything down and life was most definitely feeling like sand between fingers. So ...
I’d just like to say whoever built the orange website is a w*****
And whoever’s in charge at Orange and has done nothing about it for the last two years is an even sadder w*****.
Feeling a bit bleugh today…
I can’t seem to focus. Just got a lovely T68 (phone) that has this gizmo where you plug a digital camera in and now all I can think of how cool it would be to buy the (too expensive) camera…
Oldey but goldey (reminded me of a smile I’d had)
NASA fakes moon landing! (reprinted without permission from brainsluice)
I was designing commercial websites in 1992
Don’t you get tired of reading biographies on websites that say the person was there at the beginning of the commercial internet? Just as a reality check, the next time someone points out how they were writing for...
Things you don't remember from childhood
Nicki and I had dinner with Billy and Ohna last weekend. We got talking after dinner about stuff that happened years ago when we were kids growing up in France. There’s been quite a lot of talk about childhood rec...
In childhood memories,Microsoft promotes software theft
I wonder if Microsoft would be willing to pay me for the hours I lose attemping to repair damage caused by their software? Office v.X is beautiful to look at, but has a number of ‘surprise’ features designed to wa...
A friend of mine just sent his cv to a prospective employer
…and asked me to have a look at it first. The guy has the most amazing list of jobs on it. In one, he describes how he had Harrier fighter/bombers drop 500 pound charges around the building he was working in. The ...
The web never ceases to amaze me
http://www.iranmatch.org/ “dating, romance and friendship with other Iranian people around the world” - fantastic.
Few things give me as much pain and pleasure as typography
but this em thing is killing me– just got off the phone to Ben in DC and he says the type’s to small. How can that be? 0.8EM (fractionaly smaller than your usual) seemed like a WAI compliant, sensible, robust and ...
Aside from miscalculating my lovely em measures
and just generally being ugly and crap, win98 and win2000 are failing to render my head-of-dug graphic. Arse. Take a look at the source code - we’re validating to xhtml here. The mac (OS9 and X) versions of IE ren...
If you are American read this
The following is an address from the President of the United States of America (one of the actual ones).
In things Dug cares about,
Messing with templates again
Been messing with templates (there should now be exactly thirty characters in every line) - ed and del buttons might not work terribly well. Oh, I finally wrote my first review for the food site - the trick is to ...