Matthew's Journal

I saw this on rmc28's LJ, and am in the mood for procrastination...

Look at your LJ userpics list. If you have fewer than 50 icons, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five icons, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five icons, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em. List them on your LJ, and tell everyone exactly why you have it, why it's interesting to you, what significance does it have.

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This has been my LJ userpic for as long as I've had an LJ. It's from a medieval woodcut, and is a phoenix (despite what some people say). There has been at least one attempt to get me to change it, but to no avail. I even have it on my mobile phone these days...

1)

This is the crest of the University of Cambridge. I've spent nine years studying here now, and the prospect of leaving once I've finished my PhD is quite daunting. The University was founded in the 13th century and at its best manages to combine a rich historical tradition with cutting-edge research, with Colleges that look out for their students. It's rarely quite so perfect, however...

2)

I took this photograph myself, at Lausanne Cathedral; the original picture is here, of a man drinking with a skeleton. I use it for drinking-related entries and comments, although it suits goth things quite well too ;)

3)

This is actually a very large unicode character, the story of whose construction can be found here (along with a discussion of whether or not it's an ideogram!). It represents "phoenix", like my default userpic (which is why I chose this character), and I use it when writing e.g. entries for haiku_daily, which is something I'd like to get back to in my Copious Free Time (TM).

4)

Gin! I took this from someone else (with permission). It's a riff on the "Tea" userpic that did the rounds after the 7th July tube bombing. I'm working on my own version, but don't hold your breath...


I think I'd would have preferred to pick 5 userpics to talk about, rather than just "every fifth", but never mind, eh? If anyone wants to ask about other of my userpics, I'll gladly wibble about them ;-)

In unrelated news, I find myself hoping this gets laughed out of court.