nicnic's New Writeups

Join me (idea)

2003-07-11T09:41:16Z

"It's not a cult - it's a collective"

Whilst attending the funeral of his distant Swiss relative, a journalist, writer and general geezer around town - Londoner Danny Wallace - heard of how the deceased old man once had a dream of starting a commune. These dreams never came to fruition however, and at the time of his death the old man was seen by the rest of his family as an amiable nutter, and his plan of forming a harmonious collective were forgotten. Except by Danny, that is.

One afternoon, when extremely bored (and obviously, as a journalist, having no real work to get on with) Danny decided to honour the memory of his dead relative and try to start a collective of his own. He placed an advert in a local newspaper which read simply:

"Join me"

This is as far as his plans went. Danny had no idea why people would join him, or what they would…

wack bike (thing)

2003-05-30T10:28:56Z

What, you ask, exactly, is a wack bike? Well, apparently the wackbike is a sort of bike often seen on the streets of New York City that has been crafted out of various obsolete, undesirable, and unattractive parts. The design goals are simple - construct something from used, found, and scavenged parts that is of sufficient quality and beauty to survive the urban death maze of NYC. The finest wackbikes are contradictions - beefy utilitarian workhorses that simultaneously emote speed, simplicity and efficiency.

Living in the UK, and not particularly in an inner city area I have personally not come into contact with a wackbike as such, although I have seen a particularly close approximation on the mean streets of Pudsey, the bike in question being a bastard hybrid of a BMX with a mountain bike front wheel. The little scally riding this beast was the true definition of the word wack, and the bike was definitely getting there.

Paternoster lift (thing)

2003-05-21T10:46:22Z

Also known as the Cyclic Elevator.

A type of lift or elevator working on a different principle to the common design. The main feature of the Paternoster is that it never stops!

The Paternoster Lift is essentially a chain of lift compartments with no doors, into which users must step rapidly in and out of at the desired floor, again through open doorways. The lift is engineered so that each compartment travels up the building along one shaft and then down a parallel shaft, while the compartments remain correctly orientated throughout their whole journey. This design, although outlandish, could handle twice as many passengers as a contemporary standard lift shaft when first implemented.

This type of lift, although more popular on the European continent, can be found in some buildings in the UK, including the University of Sheffield's Arts Tower. This provides hours of fun for bored art students, especially by trying to get each…

How to spike your hair (idea)

2003-05-19T14:38:42Z

I'm not sure how many people would want glue, or egg stuck in their head thoughout a long raving session, or at all for that matter...but each to their own I suppose. Here is another method which manages to avoid any kind of food product, while being a little more hard wearing than gel alone, and so avoiding your work being screwed up by some loved up, head-molesting gurner...

First of all make sure that to start with you have nice clean hair, then slightly dampen it, and simply soap it up until it is nice and frothy.

Then slick it all forward and divide it into a bunch of little squares as detailed above by Bane, starting from a row down the centre of your head and then moving outwards. The keep it all nice and soapy, unitl you're finished, then add a little gel when its dried just to make sure it keeps the shape

That's it...spray some nice day-glo paint on your head, grab your Vick's and your glowsticks and get clubbing.

shottie (thing)

2003-05-16T15:03:02Z

Method of smoking, mainly (probably exclusively) involving cannabis.

The mechanics of a shottie are similar to that of a bong, with a system involving the smoke passing down a tube, bubbling through water into a smoke chamber and thence into the lungs of the smoker.

A shottie, however, has a number of features which make it unique amongst smoking paraphenalia.

A SIMPLE DIAGRAM OF A SHOTTIE:-

              
                       | |
                       | |
                      /   \                  
                     /  *  \
     Bottle-------  /       \
                   /         \
                  (   * *     )// -- Tube
                  |           //
                  |          //
                  |___*__*__//|--Waterline
                  |    *  *// |
                  |     * //  |
                  (______**___)

HOW TO MAKE A SHOTTIE:-

The ideal size for a shottie bottle is…

micromania (thing)

2003-05-16T13:13:06Z

Micromania is also the name of a book, published in 1984 by Gollancz, which provides a witty, and very cynical, account of computing as it was then, and a view of the predicted future of civilisation in the light of the then current fears and observations of computers and their uses. Written by Charles Platt, with input from David Langford for the UK edition.

Well worth a read even if it's just to laugh at the hideously outdated technology, especially the passages dealing with hard disks, and the concept of the mouse, this book also included some scarily accurate predictions about the role that computers now play in modern life. Also worthy of note are the illustrations showing the degeneration of a healthy human being into a micromaniac computer geek. Categories of micromaniac include the hacker, end user and hardware freak (and you know you fit into one of them).