Daily Photo

A dead Vespa scooter in a “bike graveyard” in Payson, Arizona. Dead technology is powerfully attractive. Particularly when it was a nice bit of kit in its day.

I grew up in the green suburbs of western Perth; within walking distance was an abandoned factory. If I’d had a good camera and lens when I was sixteen there’d be a pack of snapshots of rusted machinery and broken louvre window closeups in the two boxes of photos in my spare room.

It’s like wandering around town with a Walkman playing Metal Machine Music would have been in the late 1970s. Of course, these days everything sounds like that.

Photo: “Vespa” by Rob Sinclair. Taken with a Nikon D200 with Sigma 30mm F1.4 EX DC HSM lens. Taken 31st July, 2008. CC by-sa 2.0.

NOTE: None of the links below are to the actual Goatse image. Promise.

Oh dear Lord. The classic shock site has inspired millions of Internet folk artists. Including corporate logos — much like the b3ta-inspired competition to spot bored graphic designers putting penises into any logo they can. One of those things that once you see it, you see it everywhere. YOU CANNOT UNSEE THIS.

The original Goatse is renowned as the finest possible insurance against bandwidth thieves. Jason Scott goatsed a hundred thousand MySpace users, which deserves some sort of award.

Image: Goatse Snowman, Internet folk art created with Snowman Construction Kit. I wouldn’t normally put up a “found on the internet” image, but I think this one warranted it.

It’s snowing in London today. Twenty centimetres of snow overnight and another thirty expected tonight. Public transport is shut. I’m not at work today — my boss texted everyone not to bother trying, and one guy actually made it in but went home again. We expect the same tomorrow.

This is from Ottawa, Canada in December 2008. They’re a bit more used to snow there. The above shows what happens when a small snow cloud really hates you personally. (Or, more likely: when snow is cleared from all around the bike rack but not off it, then left to pack into ice.)

The moral of this story: when it’s snowing like this, you don’t need to lock your bike up.

Photo: “‘Snow-Megaddon’ Approaches - Ottawa 12 08″ by Mikey G Ottawa. Taken December 17, 2008. CC by 2.0.