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deputydog

here we goOctober 6

the last few days have consisted of me copying, pasting and re-formatting every post i ever wrote from google's cache onto blogger. i just finished and as a result my wrist is ruined, i'm bored senseless and i've got a couple of hundred posts waiting to be published. over the next hour or so i'm gonna publish them one by one - i just wanted to warn those people who still have the site on their feed reader as these might clog it up.

the downside to all this bollocks is that the posts now have different urls, meaning the rankings deputydog did have are probably buggered. i don't really care. i'm finally free of wordpress and google now host the site for me. i'm assuming there'll be plenty of problems with the posts, whether it's formatting issues, missing photos etc. if you come across any just let me know. i've also lost all comments from all posts, something which pisses me off beyond belief. there were thousands of 'em and some weren't left by freaks and actually made sense. not a lot i can do.

when this is done i'll start getting some new material on the site.

pfftOctober 1

in future the following things will never be touched by me: wordpress and servers. i can't begin to tell you the amount of time i've spent in the past year attempting to keep this site up-and-running when i could've been spending that very time adding content instead. whilst wordpress is brilliant in many ways, the one fact to keep in mind is that it's the most resource-sapping piece of shit i've ever had the displeasure to use and unless you have the money to buy an indestructible dedicated server or the technical brainpower and willpower required to fiddle with settings constantly, i would not recommend attempting to run even a mildly popular blog using their software on your own server. and as for hosting companies, i can't even bring myself to talk about it. fucking idiots.

so anyway, a couple of weeks ago the site went down due to a combination of problems and i subsequently hit brickwall after brickwall. in the end i decided to dump my setup as it was just too demoralising and move the site to blogger, google's blogging platform. i don't give a toss about lack of features at the moment, as long as i don't have to worry about servers and then periodically have to pay through the nose for atrocious customer service. the site's extremely bare as you can see and at the moment i'm attempting to redesign the one half-decent blogger layout i could find. due to the problems i mentioned and retarded staff, all my old posts are in limbo at the moment, so bear with me

hyperboloid structuresSeptember 13

corporation street bridge :: photo source

there’s a sprawling shopping centre around the corner from my flat in manchester called the arndale centre and it’s generally a predictably horrible place, the one intriguing feature of the whole complex being the above bridge which acts as a decievingly attractive portal from shit-hole to shit-hole. as with most things that become a regular sight, i stopped even noticing it whenever i walked underneath, until last week when i snapped out of my trance and decided to find out the name given to its shape and why you don’t see more of them. thanks to cuil, turns out it’s called a hyperboloid structure and while there are a number of other such structures in the world, this happens to be the only known hyperboloid bridge/tunnel.

cottam power station: original photo source

the one hyperboloid structure everyone’s aware of is the cooling tower, seen above, but there are a number of mo

6 menacing towers fit for a supervillainSeptember 9

i thought i’d offer some assistance to any supervillains who may be looking for a menacing building to call headquarters. admittedly they’re quite noticable so unless you have the necessary means to defend the building or are managing to operate under the radar, you may want to look for something underground. all chosen structures look either creepy as hell, flat-out brutal, or both, and as far as i know none or on the market at present so you may have to use underhand tactics to actually move in.

jin mao tower, pudong, shanghai

photo sources: 1, 2, 3

jim mao tower is absolutely huge at 1380ft, a feature which will enable you to survey the surrounding area for miles assuming cloud cover is minimal. as for sturdiness, it’s been designed by hardcore architects/engineers and as a result can withstand winds up to 200km/h and earthquakes to a maximum of 7 on the richter scale. inside, the building is home to one of the tallest atriums on planet earth (375ft), a perfect place for henchmen to dispose of unwanted guests.

moser tower, naperville, illinois

top 6 eco-friendly car designsSeptember 5

this is a guest post courtesy of been seen, a great site that ‘approaches travel from a creative and visually artistic point of view’. as an indication, if i was a thief and wanted to start a travel blog i’d definitely steal a lot of their posts - that’s how good it is (i’m not condoning theft). check out their site here, have a lovely weekend and remember: i love you all.

the term ‘eco-friendly’ is on everybody’s lips at the moment and thankfully it’s not going to disappear any time soon. let’s take a quick look into the near future and find out what we may be driving 20 years from now, in a time when, hopefully, gas-guzzlers are a thing of the past and our robotic butlers will have to plug our cars into the mains overnight.

the aptera

a car that gets 230 miles per gallon? don’t be daft. that would blow the trusty toyota prius out of the water, and turn the rising cost of gasoline into only a minor concern. right? which is why we should all rush out and preorder an aptera. the vision of steve fambro, who wanted to create a car that was safe, comfortable, and more fuel-efficient than anything ever produced,