| Tuesday, January 25, 2005 |
 | It's not exactly single-handedly tearing the money from the hands of Teen Beat Megatron Bill Gates and eating it, but after a bit of flirtation with Knoppix I've just installed Ubuntu Linux on my spare PC. This is intended to give me some familiarity with non-Windows OSes, with a view to potentially getting an iBook.
So far so good, but then I guess the GDE thing makes it pretty easy so far. I haven't dealt with a command line for a while. So far, in fact, since I have not tried to do anything ambitious involving RJ-45 ports or wireless networking, everything is groovy and will continue to be so until I do try. Since the password for my router was on my now-dead laptop, this may be a while in the doing.
Speaking of which, it seems at least one of the problems post-dropping was the hard drive. More precisely, I popped it into a USB2 external caddy, and discovered that it was not so much a portable hard drive as a portable device that makes mewling noises. It's partly adorable and partly deeply saddening. However, since the motherboard and processor are probably going to have suffered quite badly from the same percussion, I suspect replacing the whole thing is probably still the way forward
Besides, I've probably lost half the little screws, and ah fuck it.
via Ned, a couple of Linuxy reasons to be cheerful:
Tomboy for Linux.
Supreme ultimate power for Linux.
Grand Theft Auto for Linux
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| Monday, January 17, 2005 |
| Ian MacShane has won a Golden Globe. So has Clive Owen. John Nettles can only follow.
Elsewhere, linkage:
Bad seeds. Presumably because the urge to propagate is pretty high in the mind of your average seed, given that there are very few underground libraries or rollerdiscos, Monsanto is favouring litigation as a way of ensuring that farmers do not replant their intellectual property.
Never Snitch - this discussion of the mythic roots of Harry Potter, I think, adds nothing new whatosever to one's understanding, but does collect a fair bit. Mind you, I have heard a lot of people bitch about how Americans just don't get the British public school. I have some pretty serious doubts about whether Rowling does, for that matter.
Antique hands - some nice photography on this site.
The account of a British man who took up his hammer and shovel and travelled to Thailand to help with the recovery work.This is astonishingly impressive, and almost makes me wish I had a skill.
Still, no use moping on a perfect day for bananafiish.
Oh, and one other link, now that I think of it - have a listen to this rather enchanting little song by the Blow, if you like that sort of thing, that sort of thing being approximately Lisa Germano with a keyboard. How naked are we gonna get?
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| Friday, January 14, 2005 |
| Humorous yet melancholic article from 1974 on what Christmas will be like in the year 2000, with a cult TV link.
The traditional decorated tree is very unlikely to be a real tree, but will probably be a plastic one, just as some homes already have today. But to make it seem like the traditional Christmas festival, the plastic tree will probably be impregnated with the smell of pine.
If pollution and the effects of the population explosion go on at the present rate, there will probably be very few trees left in the world, and any forests which do still exist will be protected by stringent laws.
They were doing so well until the stringent laws part...
Speaking of protected areas full of wood and wildlife, Thomas Gravesen is to leave Goodison Park. It is, again, an interesting choice - Real Madrid's choices of hard-tackling defensive midfielder have so far encompassed David Beckham and Steve McManaman. It's as if they simply don't understand the idea of a holding midfielder, or possibly cannot quite bring themselves actually to buy one, and so torpedo the ideal of Zidanes e Pavones. Claude Makelele could fit the bill, and was shuffled out of there as soon as this became clear, but who else has really functioned as a holding midfielder for Real? Fernando Hierro? Although the idea of Lee Carsley at the Bernabeu with anything other than a watching brief is quite clearly bonkers, he might actually be more useful at this point.
Speaking of studs-up challenges, Pierre Cardin puts the boot in on modern fashion.
You no longer have the construction of a real silhouette. Before you had Balenciaga, Chanel, Courreges, Cardin ... Of these names, yes Dior still exists, but it's spectacle. It's superb, but it's a spectacle.
Cult TV note: Pierre Cardin created the suits for Steed in The Avengers. For this reason, I have always esteemed it a little above other franchise suit brands. It's odd how arbitrary style decisions can be.
Speaking of irascible old men, Fathers for Justice have once again attempted to demonstrate their suitability as fathers by showing a spirit of easy criminality. The Mouth of Sourgrapes declared the security around Celebrity Big Brother far more impressive than the cordon around Buckingham Palace. This sounds like a shocking indictment, but ask yourself: would you rather see the Royal Family or the cast of Celebrity Big Brother wiped off the face of the Earth by terrorists? It's not an easy choice...
Speaking of security, this is not a problem George Bush will have. In order to avoid the risk of the entire chain of command being wiped out by a single lunatic with a copy of the Constitu- a suitcase nuclear bomb, corporate clients of the Republican Party are shelling out for a whole lot of clowns at little George's birthday party. Has anyone ever successfully a) detonated or b) demonstrated the existence of a suitcase nuclear bomb? Alexandr Lebed's claims were never supported, right?
Speaking of the American dream, this seems like a role made for Tom Hanks. As a follow-up for The Terminal it's brilliant. A likeable main character of ambiguous nationality finds himself, as a result of an administrative blunder, without representation, access to consular services, and lost in a suddenly circumscribed world away from fresh air and natural light. Admittedly, Hanks might want to skip the bits where he gets Bob Flanaganed from both ends to within a centimetre of his life, but we can at least look forward to the outing of two of his school teachers as members of Al Qaeda on Oscar night.
And, speaking of being hooked up to the mains, the Commodore 64 is making a comeback, Megatron-style. Retro-W00T. The triumphant return of Yellow River Kingdom can be but months away.
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| Wednesday, January 12, 2005 |
| Blow me, but this cover of "I'll Come Running (to tie your shoes)" by Chica and the Folders is marvellous. Admittedly, there's a limit to how far wrong you can reasonably go, but nonetheless... Thanks, . I don't know why more Casio-toting Bontempi goddesses don't address themselves to this project. Ladytron could do a mean "The True Wheel".
Speaking of technology, while I found myself moistening gently over MythTV boxes, I also found myself wondering whether such devices increase one's consumption of television, or simply make one a more efficient consumer of television. At present, I think I probably watch maybe an hour or two of television a week, which, given how people tend to underestimate their television intake in order to appear more intellectual, we can probably peg at about four hours. That's 4 hours in 168, or a little under 2.4 per cent of my week. At that point, what constitutes useful technical support? A digibox? A PVR? 5.1 sound?
Unfolding. As of this weekend, I own a DVD player. I occasionally bought DVDs in the past, but watched them on my PC. I had efficiently persuaded myself that, since DVD players were becoming cheaper all the time, and those cheap DVDs were becoming smallerand more sophisticated, if I simply held out eventually every feature I wanted from a DVD player would be available at the desired price point. As you can imagine, this is a line extending towards infinity, and a damnably useful one. It's only a shame you can't use it on clothes or alcohol. However, since this DVD player was free, the price (vanishing/Zabriskie) point argument fell apart. Problem being, it now makes perfect sense to buy DVDs in ever larger numbers. Which is useful, because I haven't been shopping enough lately.
So, question 1: How much television do you watch? How much technology do you use to watch it? How much technology would you ideally have, why don't you have it at present and what do you think it would do to your consumption? What other media devices do you employ?
More generally, the world is full of technologies I don't strictly speaking need, but do rather fancy. The latest from Apple, the iPod Shuffle, makes me feel strangely empty, although not sufficiently so to eat the damn thing. Please tell me they're joking. Reassure me that anyone attempting to sue Apple for the deleterious impact on the digestion of having eaten a solid-state music player would be laughed out of court. Even in the US. If it were not already the case that I carry with me at all times at least two devices able and willing to play me music, it would be a definite gimme.
The photovoltaic waistcoat, as not modelled by Ben, provoked a moment of hardcore internal fist-pumping (no, not like that), but despite the sheer joyous glory of the idea doubts immediately began to germinate. Simply put, can you imagine yourself (or, more to the point, me) wearing something designed for that level of practicality? It may even offset the Buck Rogers cool of the concept. Ben can get away with that sort of thing, because he has something - iPod, satphone, snakebite kit, Luger - for every single pocket, and might need any one of them at any moment. Also, the PV cells will be good for trickle-charging his hair. The equivalent backpack, on the other hand, is clearly a good and necessary idea, and it is purely a question of when I can talk myself into laying out that much cash for an item of technology designed for all its environmental marketing essentally to take into account the possibility of at any time being more than a cable's length from a plug socket, when every datum available about my life to date suggests that that will never happen.
So, question 2: Roght now, what single thing would both make your life complete and yet have almost no impact on your life whatever?
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| Tuesday, January 11, 2005 |
| Holy Joe Christ. I recall somebody on 's LJ asking whether it was indeed the case that portions in American restaurants were larger than those in Europe. I offer in mute testimony the 2/3-pounder. Yes, two thirds of a pound of ground beef between bread. That's a little under three quarter-pounders. With cheese and bacon, obviously. This would in itself be a bit disturbing (why not just polyfilla your colon and have done?), were it not for the further detail that it is being advertised (largely to young men, who have the kidney and later the kidney failure for this sort of delight) with images of women pushing deformingly large masses into their mouths. Nice.
Although I would still be scared and grossed out, I wouldn't mind so much if that were the most damage the US hamburger industry had done to my mind. It is not. That must be reserved for this fresh breakfast hell.
Now, waking up unexpectedly alongside somebody wearing an ornate and anachronistic costume is not in itself a terrifying idea. I've been to public school. For that matter, waking up alongside same, but equipped further with a gigantic plastic head, unable to change expression is not so bad. I've never been to Whitby, but I know people who have. It's the way the voiceover artist says "meat and cheese... and meat and cheese", as if he had personally ensured, using his own body in a manner not dissimilar to Jesus, that every single bun was suitably meaty and cheese, and was now sore and exhausted but bursting with pride. It's not a sound you can forget. Ever.
Meat and cheese... and meat and cheese.
I'd become a vegan, but I don't think it would help.
Meat and cheese... and meat and cheese.
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| can't seem to find any useful receipts for the tax year I'm actually trying to sort out, but as ever failure is far more interesting than success.
A Hewlett-Packard external CD-Rewriter cost £224 in May 1999. This is actually less than I expected. The 2005 equivalent would cost perhaps a quarter of that. At the time, this was big scary technology, delivering strange powers through the parallel port. For the younger members of the audience, those are like USB ports but hella big. If you have a desktop, and run your finger along the back of it, the parallel port feels like a shy hedgehog, and is a port so unhotswappable that you had to clip, secure and bolt with studs and wire any peripheral you wanted to connect. It read and wrote at 2x2x6 (that's the reading and writing speed of a bright six-year-old), and worked spasmodically at best, but when it did work it took mix tapes to a whole different level. A CD Burner, a colour printer and clearly no chance of seeing another human being naked before the end of the millennium, and I was sorted. This was back in the dark ages before compression technologies and capacious hard drives, of course - burning a CD meant copying the tracks as WAV files onto your hard drive, burning them and then deleting them before your system feel apart under the strain on its memory, and could take up the best part of a day. Heady times.
A Storm watch (camera) and heart-shaped lighter, sold by Neil in January 1999, cost £102.98 - £72.99 and £29.99 respectively. This was between breaking up with my partner (November 98 or thereabouts) and the long soupy period of dates, brief relationships, the occasional one nght stand and recurrent guest stars that followed. The fact that this receipt is from Covent Garden suggests it was probably, although not certainly, a post-Christmas shopping trip, possibly actually in the company of the aforementioned ex-partner and friends. That would also help to explain why on Earth I blew what was at the time mind-mangling amount of money on a watch. I didn't tend to behave very rationally after breakups, particular in the company of.
I haven't worn a watch for some time - since I always have at least two items of technology able to tell me the time about me it seems a bit pointless, especially since this particular watch, due to the ingenious lever-operated iris that gave it its name ("camera"), managed to nulllify the two main benefits of looking at a watch as opposed to, say, a PDA - it took two hands and was impossible to do surreptitiously. Both watch and strap gave out a while back and are awaiting repair when I have the time. The lighter, conversely, broke almost immediately. Make of that what you will.
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| Wednesday, January 05, 2005 |
| Things you notice when you're ill...
During the "Big Brother Panto" (for the love of God), whenever the conversation takes a turn for what I assume is the risqué, the sound is replaced by a tape of the whistling wind, which is rather how I imagine I would experience every moment of every single conversation therein. Either that or the merry hum of the chainsaw.
More generally:
The Abercrombie Plan stipulates four acres of open space per head of population. Given that I am about to move into an office where I do not have a living room's worth of space to myself, into something more like this, open space becomes more important. I think I might be less inclined to dally in the office when it isn't the equivalent of a charabang or penthouse apartment. This is hopefully good, as it will get me gyming and fencing more regularly. Because that's how the world works.
Elsewhere, Britney Spears is runoured to be considering a new career fighting crime:
A pals says, "It sounds ridiculous but she's been inspired by CSI, which shows scientists solving crimes.
I think the only point I would take issue with there is the unnecessary use of the word "sounds. Still, if Britney was really serious about fighting crime, she should really be a beat cop. After all, the fact that she is Britney Spears would provide a vital moment of confusion in the minds of those she is attempting to arrest. If Britney Spears was bearing down on you with a gun, wouldn't you have to take a moment to process it? That moment could be priceless. Criminals area cowardly, superstitious and celebrity-focused lot, as I believe Batman once said.
Elsewhere, , source of many of today's links, has captured a hedgehog on camera. But what if you're more interested in being captured by a hedgehog, you could do worse than the wonderful Mistress Tiggywinkle. Usual provisos apply - I am of course not seeking to mock, belittle or undermine any people whose tastes run to the kinky end of being a hedgehog, or the hedgehoggy end of kink. On the other hand, am I alone in thinking there might be a better combination than dominant mistress and tiny, timorous, wuffling, erinaceous forager? It must be a tricky balancing act...
Further afield, that is beyond the back garden, a quick quiz. Which of these giants of the science fiction industry would you rather have a drink with? Orson Scott Card or Ursula K LeGuin? Show your working.
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| Inspired by a New Year's Eve conversation I decided, in a fit of sheer self-indulgence, to play myself an old mix tape (or CD, more precisely) and try to remember why I had put those songs together. Scrutiny of subsequent mix CDs demonstrated that, since most of them had been created in the period between getting a CD-burner (early 1999 - serial connection - very exciting) and getting a CD-MP3 Walkman (December 2001, in an electronics store in Boston, having a bit of spare time at the end of a business trip), and are more about the horizontal redistribution of the tracks on the albums I was listening to at the time. Coincidentally, this time coincides with I think probably my lowest ebbs and silliest highs.
A man could himself in London. Lose himself. LOSE HIMSELF!
Our featured CD, then, is titled "Prom Queens, Bad Dreams", from, at a guess, early 2001. It was made for a dual purpose, IIRC. First, to provide a peppy, upbeat opening 15 minutes or so to cover the tube and walk from Shoreditch station to Hoxton Square in the morning. Then, to provide the diminuendo of the prom night feel - a descent into paranoia and distrust, melancholy and intermittent joy. It's probably fair to say that I had some issues. I'm not even sure if I made it to my "senior prom" - having gone in the lower 6th with a real live older girl, I think I might have given it a swerve - but we're talking about the iconography here - corsages, limos, mickeys, hotel rooms.
Onwards:
Praise You – Fatboy Slim - I realise this looks bad, but hear me out. The whole point about this early part of the CD was that it was a high school prom. "Praise You" was pretty much the ultimate late-90s senior prom song. Observe "She's All That" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", in both of which seminal teen experiences there is at some point a dance routine to "Praise You". Sometimes you have to sacrifice the limb for the whole.
Sound file - Woo-hoo! - from the much-missed Breakup Girl.
Clubbed to Death – Rob D - again, we're looking at dancable, jaunty, on the way to work stuff. Alternatively, I am a closet goth, which would explain a lot.
Badtimes – Laika - It's a single joke - the contents of the "Badtimes" mass email, itself a parody of the hoax virus warning about the "good times" virus read out to a trip-hop beat, but at this point you're at the top of Brick Lane, with a bagel in your hand (herring, salt beef if you had a late night) and the rhythm keeps you moving.
P.A.C.O – Ladytron - into Hoxton Square, and climbing the stairs. This excitable electronic reworking of the theme tune to "Are You Being Served" was a necessary pick-me-up.
Sound file - “You're hurting me – that's good too” - Darla, from Buffy. Buffy crps up a fair amount here - it had hit terrestrial in 98 and I was enthralled. Six years on, it's hard to recall the thrill of watching episodes of Buffy for the first time, but it was, in many ways, precisely what I'd wanted to be around when I was a teenager and had had to settle for Dark Season - mighty, but differently mighty.
Strong – Velvet Chain - See the power of Buffy? It can even insinuate substandard US corporate indie onto what is really starting to look like a very ropey mix CD. This was played at the Bronze in "Never Kiss a Boy on the First Date". It is with the best will in the world not a great song.
French Rock'n'Roll – Black Box Recorder - thank God. A bit of credibility. Notwithstanding the joys of ye-ye, there were elements of this that really hit the spot - somebody, at the risk of undue Smallvillism, was saving me. Not least the fuzzy instrumentation around Nixey's vocals.
Ouvrez la fenetre, regardez le chansonnier,
Ecoutez la musique. C'est parfait.
Tidal Wave – The Magnetic Fields - I'm honestly unsure whether I have made it through a month without blogging, quoting or burning this song. One of the songs I can't imagine doing without, and based on a kind of obsessional focus in the face of the world that was very much a necessary part of life. Much like meditation, in fact, but quicker.
The boys talk like they own the world,
The women keep their stupid diaries,
When suddenly there's a tidal wave,
And everything is swept out to sea
When they played it live the last time I saw them (promoting the release in the UK of their back catalogue, which of course everybody there already owned), I welled up, and I am ashamed to admit it only if it suggests the wrong kind of kittenish effeminacy.
I Know That Loving – Tindersticks - and we're back. After "Travelling Light", this is possibly the most depressing song in a spectacularly depressing catalogue. For those who have not heard Tindersticks, it's a bit like taking a bath with Samuel Beckett. A bath of glue. This was a reference to a gig I saw, and a long journey home.
Let the Sun Shine In – Frente - If you know Frente at all, it's probably as the creators of "Horrible", briefly played on Mark Radcliffe's show in the late 90s. This track is taken from an album of tributes to saturday morning cartoons, and is, believe it or not, a cover of a song sung by Pebbles and Bam Bam. When lines like:
When I forget to say my prayers the Devil jumps with glee,
But he feels so awful awful when he sees me on my knees
Are voiced breathily by an indie clonette, it starts feeling oddly wrong.
You, You, You, You, You – The 6ths
You make me feel like I'm seventeen again,
You make everything beautiful seem true.
I can't wait to go to sleep and dream again,
'Cause every dream I dream's a dream of dreamy little you...
A rare uncomplicated love song from the Merritt hit factory, this is a relentless ray of cloud-breaking sunshine - the high point of an upswing from Tindersticks.
Sound file - “Don't sleep with someone in order to get over someone – especially if its that person” - words to live by.
A Little Guilt – Laptop - And the payoff. Whenever I have seen Laptop live, he has performed an acoustic set. I find this terribly endearing.
I feel so sick, I can't sleep,
I got my head in the toilet, got a case of dry heaves.
I'd give anything to get rid of this mood poisoning
Give me Back my Dreams – the 6ths - This is cheating, of course - two songs by the same artist on one CD. The only defence is that they have different vocalists, in this case Sally Timms of the Mekons.
Sound file - “Did you try looking behind the sofa in Hell?" - Geekery
My Body May Die – Pulp vs. The Swingle Sisters - The song that heralds the first arrival onto the screen of the ghost of Marty Hopkirk in the Reeves and Mortimer remake, but try not to hold that against it. This fulfils the statutory requirement that Jarvis Cocker play some part in every mix CD ever made.
Sound file - terrified grunting
Cannonball – The Breeders - a tribute to my butch-dyke LTG, who has been missing in action for some years now. She had a thing for the Deals, back when it was OK to have a thing for the Deals, and there are very few mixes not improved by the presence of Cannonball - I remember bouncing around Popstars to it way back when.
Bohemian Like You – The Dandy Warhols - Pre-mobile phone ads, I feel I ought to point out. This could be seen as a jeremiad against my failure to achieve the state of carefree, cashless bohoism that many of my friends seem to handle so well, but to be honest it's more likely that i had run out of songs I wanted and still had ten minutes to fill. See also:
New Angels of Promise – David Bowie - not Bowie's finest hour, despite the excellent title, and not his finest album, either, unless you are ready to squint and see the fact that his voice is utterly fucked as poignant rather than a reason to return the CD. I'm pretty sure I bought it in an airport, probably on the way to New York. However, embarrassingly, it's probably on here primarily because of its use as the music during the first pan across the city in Omikron: the Nomad Soul, a PC game one gimmick of which was the involvement of il Bowie. It looks massively dated now, but at the time of its release Omikron was genuinely exciting in its attempts to create a consistent world that could be explored with a degree of freedom. OK, it was French. It was a French PC game. Innovative, whimsical, attractive, ultimately unplayable. Happy now?
Miss Prissy – Lambchop - very much the last chicken in the shop. By no means a bad song, but clearly stuck on the end as nothing more than a depressive coda. For practical purposes, I think this mix probably ends at "Cannonball".
It's scary just how closely these songs map to specific people, moments or reminiscences - recollections have in certain cases been emended or amended to protect the innocent. God, I'm a geek. Maybe a simple track listing would have been more memeable, but then what would the point have been in that? Then again, what exactly was the point of this wander down High Fidelity lane?
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