You can't possibly be interested in this, surely? The oldest entry is at the bottom.
Go somewhere else: I have.
I was blogging in sufficient volume that my homemade scripts and Demon's non-scripting homepage service simply weren't good enough, so I've moved over to a proper hosting service (34SP) and I'm using WordPress to manage the content.
I've imported old posts going back to the middle of 2004, just for fun. The import isn't perfect, but it will do.
So, off you go to the all new and improved At Home With John And Debbie. RSS users, there is a new feed to add to your application.
PermalinkThe new Chenard Walcker album, Monster, is a collaboration with someone called Roy "Chicky" Arad.
They could have made a Grant Naylor style joint pseudonym, Roy Walcker. It's good but it's not right.
PermalinkOn New Year's Day, our morning was sullied not only by the mess left by our disorderly party guests, but by the discovery of a broken window pane on street level (upstairs from the party). It had been smashed from the outside, and it must have happened some time between the arrival of the last guest, and Fiona's going to bed in that room, in the early hours of the morning.
Tom thought here was blood on the glass, so when I called it in to the police (primarily to get a crime number, in case we decided to claim it on insurance), I mentioned the possibility of blood, and they were keen to get a sample.
A SOCA officer came on Sunday. I still wasn't sure it was blood, but he had a testing kit that showed it really was. They're going to check it against their database of criminal DNA, and we'll see what happens. The policeman told us that windows are very seldom broken by "ordinary people".
Today I contributed to this crimewave, by paying a glazier cash-in-hand, in exchange for which he waived the VAT...
PermalinkA mysterious stranger has put a load of comments on the Leamington Pubs photo page. It's nice to be noticed.
Careful though, it get's a little blue!
Our mystery commenter apparently lives upstairs from the Lock Dock. More convenient for Bollywood Spice than we are! Swine!
PermalinkI always like to spend the first morning of the year tidying up a godawful mess of party popper streamers, spilt drinks, broken glasses, cigarette ash and general detrius, and to this end we invited a number of people we knew to be of dubious character to see in the New Year at our house.
Just to make them earn it, we made them dress up.
There's lots of beer left!
PermalinkWhen I opened the paper on Monday to read about the tsunami ("More than 11,000 killed"), it was compelling news, and I read article after article.
As the coverage continues ("True horror emerges") adding only greater death tolls, and grimmer details, I'm ashamed to say I can only bring myself to skim read: we know it's terrible, it's already on an unimaginable scale, and doubling or trebling the scale simply moves is further past the line in my head marked "big".
This morning's Guardian has a death toll chart: Indonesia 79,940, Sri Lanka 27,268, India 7,330, Thailand 4,500. Again I'm ashamed to say that just for a moment I thought, "well, India didn't do too badly then" -- as if Indonesia's huge losses made India's thousands of deaths insignificant.
Meanwhile, the letters page is full of nonsense about science (which while explaining the phenomenon, apparently leaves us bereft of a means of coping emotionally with the tragedy) versus religion (scrambling to understand how their deity could allow such strife to occur).
Richard Dawkins' eminently sensible contribution (to paraphrase, we can help without supersitions to guide us) yesterday has been knocked back by some halfwit
"As a Christian, I know exactly why I should love and care for others. If I were an atheist, I can't imagine why I should bother to help anyone whose genes might compete with mine."
Imagination isn't required. It seems foolish to pick an argument with Dawkins without at least some familiarity with his work. Dawkins has written extensively and in a very readable fashion about how Darwinian evolution can lead to cooperative behaviour and to altruism. To summarise, it is the gene that is selfish, not the individual. The people you are helping share many of your genes. By helping them, even if you fail to reproduce, you are aiding the survival of those genes.
Does our letter writer (Dr GJ Welch of Chester) prefer the idea that he acts with compassion because someone (or something) told him to, rather than because compassion is in our very nature?
PermalinkPug Fugly Games has released another game: Revenge of the Robot Cats from Mars. It's not as good as Ambush, but then what is? I was briefly 2nd in the online hiscore table, but that didn't last long. I can't get past the first boss.
PermalinkFrom now on, if I see a change in Leamington, I'll consider adding it to the Leamington Changelog.
PermalinkEverything's sort of back to normal after Christmas, except that Debbie's up with her folks for a day (missing her already).
Mum and Dad turned up on cue on Friday afternoon (Christmas Eve), we fed them pie, served them various drinks, and watched Spiderman 2 (far better than the overly talky first one -- seemed very violent for its PG rating).
On Christmas day, we had a nice cooked breakfast, opened our presents, fretted a bit about a cooking oil shortage, took a stroll through Jephson and Mill Gardens, finding the shop formerly known as Londis open for oily business, then prepared a very successful Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. Our carefully created bread sauce demonstrated to Debbie how a bread sauce should be (her only other experience being the boring bread sauce provided at the Metropole).
Later we played a game of Jacob Marley Esq. -- a practice ready to thrash Ruth the following day. Mum won, despite only clicking with the rules halfway through. We also played N-Tropy, an excellent wooden stick stacking game bought for me by Debbie.
Sadly, I the meal was so sumptuous that I never mustered the appetite for the turkey sandwich I'd been looking forward to for weeks. That would have to wait.
Ruth and Dave came on Boxing day, bearing more gifts. We fed them a traditional leftovers meal, and at last I got that turkey sandwich. After our lunch, we braved the freezing temperatures for a nice walk along the river towards Warwick, turning around by the canal aquaduct and returning along the canal.
We had a quick six player game of N-Tropy, then Debbie and I left them to play with / read their presents while we rustled up a lasagne (from the 20 Kg of delicious bolognese I'd prepared and simmered for three hours on Friday). The meal finished off with Christmas cake from Mum and panettone from Dave.
An evening game of Marley saw Debbie win after a tight battle for first place. I lost badly, having sat in last place for most of the game.
Ruth and Dave left early on Monday morning, and we took Mum and Dad into Leamington for some shopping (having decided that the crowds of Solihull would be too much for their parochial sensibilities). We drew a blank on binoculars for Dad, but Mum got some nightwear.
We fitted in a couple of games of Nom before going to the new Zizzi restaurant in Leamington: a chain, to be sure, but excellent pizza in nice surroundings. Some of the staff were clearly still learning the ropes, but it was quiet enough for them to cope with aplomb.
Debbie left for Heywood early this morning, with Mum and Dad leaving shortly afterwards. I'm left in the house relaxing. I accidentally snacked myself into a mid afternoon slump, and watched The Manchurian Candidate (the Frank Sinatra one).
Back to work tomorrow! Probably from my home office...
PermalinkWe wolfed down a pizza at Viallis, then saw Wish supported by Broadband at the Jug and Jester. Alright actually, although their encore was genuinely a repeated song: "the one that sounds like The Ace of Spaces".
Broadband were ambient dub merchants, ten years late. A laptop, a violin, a digeridoo and a sitar... It probably had merit, but it was easy to ignore and talk over the top of.
PermalinkHas anyone seen anything like this before?
$ telnet
pop3.demon.co.uk 110
Trying 194.217.242.253...
Connected to pop3.mail.demon.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK demon POP3 server ready (demon.co.uk)
user ladle
+OK
pass [snip]
+OK
stat
+OK 36 335223
uidl 8
+OK 8 1Cgrq1-0000t2-Kt-0000t5
retr 8
Connection closed by foreign host.
It seems to me as if message 8 is malformed in such a way as to crash the POP3 server process. I had several such messages yesterday, and the only way to get the server into a state where my proper mail client could get the rest of the mail was to locate them and delete them manually through raw POP3 commands. ... and now I have at least one other one.
Maybe these messages are meant to be DoS attacks. Worse, maybe they're exploiting some bug in the POP3 server code to install malware. Or maybe the messages are malformed in order to exploit some mail user agent bug, and this POP3 server just happens to choke on the result.
Anyway, I've left the message there for a while, so Demon's helpdesk can take a look at it. This means I can't get mail for a while.
PermalinkSince American voice over artists keep reminding us that it is the "holiday season", holiday plans are on our minds. My manager has agreed four concurrent weeks off for me in the Summer, so we have free rein to book flights for yet another Road Trip.
Yes, we should broaden our horizons, but look how low that dollar is. Anyway, there will be horizons aplenty where we're going. Initially we planned to do the Alaska Highway - a drive through wilderness from Dawson Creek in Northeast British Columbia (Canada), to Fairbanks in Alaska. However, that low, low dollar is luring us to do Road Trip USA's longest itinerary, US-20: the Oregon Trail. Although The Book documents from West to East (so that maps read intuitively left to right), we'll do the proper 19th century migrant route from Cape Cod in the East to Portland, Oregon in the West.
I'm already excited. Mount Rushmore. Carhenge. Yosemite. Niagara Falls. Yellowstone. Prairie. Plains. Another Mississippi crossing. Lobster. Steak. Taco Bell... Kitch motels...
So, let's book some flights then simply wait for six months reading background material...
PermalinkSaturday was a day mostly of sleep, but we managed to squeeze in a Chinese takeaway and a rental DVD - Mean Girls. Fluffy teen-com, but ideal for our vegetative mental state, and I could watch Lindsay Lohan all day. Because of her excellent acting skills, of course. According to IMDB she's playing Jeannie in an in-production remake of I Dream Of Jeannie.
Having slept in the daytime, I couldn't sleep on Saturday night, so I got up and spent from 2AM until 4AM listening to the iPod. This podcasting thing turns out to be better than hoped: the BBC is experimenting with it, and through it I found Melvyn Bragg's "In Our Time" on my iPod, discussing The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics with John Gribbin, Peter Atkins and Monica Grady. Good material for the wee hours.
Other than that, just as Wiki seems to be an excellent medium for talking about Wiki, Podcasting appears to be a hot topic for discussion in amateur talk shows distributed through Podcasting... Were early radio shows all about radio? Was Caxton's first book a printer manual?
Sunday saw a festive trip to the dump, to recycle bottles and papers, followed by Tesco for Christmas supplies. Then we met up with Laura to exchange small gifts (well, our gift to her was small -- I don't know what she's given us!), stroll around the Sunday market on the Parade, drink coffee in two pubs and eat tapas in one.
At the market there was an artist exhibiting really nice prints of his paintings of local architecture: Warwick Castle, Clarendon Square, Regent St., etc. Apparently he exibits in one of the Regent St. galleries.
In the evening we watched Steve's copy of Elf. Early on it was hard to tell whether it was very very good, or very very bad. A completely incongriuous appearance by a cartoon narwhal near the beginning was particularly difficult to evaluate: genius or idiocy?
Actually there were a good few belly laughs, although the comedy derived from watching the eponymous elf really irritate other characters was balanced by us getting really irritated by him too. Near the end, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" was described as a carol. I can't find a dictionary definition of "carol" which would specifically exclude it, but carols are like obscenity: I don't know how to define one, but I know one when I hear it.
"Good King Wenceslas" is a carol. So is "When Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night". "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is not. Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody" is not. "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" is borderline but odious.
This has been a rambling account of a weekend on behalf of the Christmas Pedants Society of Leamington Spa
PermalinkI added a couple more images to the Leamington "street art" collection.
PermalinkIt's nearly 2PM, and I am still drunk from last night's jaunt to the Metropole for the IBM Club dinner dance. Nicky was the only IBMer among us at our table. After an early doorman related setback, we managed to crash the Next Directory party next door.
PermalinkI expect I'm behind the curve here, but this seems cute.
iPodder is one of many applications that enables "podcasting". People put audio material online -- often spoken word, sometimes music, sometimes "other" -- and use an RSS feed to announce its availability. iPodder monitors those RSS feeds and automatically downloads your subscribed podcasts and instructs your MP3 library application (probably iTunes I'm afraid) to add the file to your library.
Result: as long as you habitually synch your portable MP3 player, it usually has new and up-to-date material on it.
Clever, but how are we to pick out the good content from the awful lot of rubbish available?
PermalinkYesterday's office Christmas party represented something of a last hurrah, seeing as it had been planned as an IBM event before the sale to GXS was announced. As it was, we were a mixed group of IBMers and ex-IBMers, we had a nice meal, we topped up the drinks kitty with £10 each three times, and as far as I recall, enjoyed ourselves. For some reason we saw sense at closing time, and went for a curry instead of a club.
Ajay got the train home at around 5:30, but was well lubricated with beer and brandy by that point, and by all accounts fell asleep between Marylebone and his home, and would have ended up who knows where if Iciar hadn't met him at the station and boarded the train to wake him.
Today was Christmas dinner day at the work canteen. No parsnips, no bread sauce, no rolled bacon, no sausage meat -- but a good feed nonetheless. At least two more Christmas dinners are due before the year is out.
PermalinkI put a paltry four pictures of the Amnesty vigil on the Web.
PermalinkFriday: an early evening, rather well attended, candlelit vigil for Amnesty. Amnesty's current campaign is "Stop Violence Against Women". I'm afraid I have the same kneejerk reactions as many people to this: immediately assuming it's all about battered wives (it's not), and objecting that violence against man is ignored (Amnesty have other campaigns that by no means exclude men).
Saturday: went to Coventry to get the car serviced and discuss the possibility of replacing it. All the sums work out nicely, so it's a new car exactly like the old one (but a different colour), rather soon.
While we were waiting for the service to be done, we got some Christmas shopping done in Coventry -- the nice car salesman even gave us a lift to the shops.
Early evening: wrestle with the central heating. I think it's been refusing to come on because the pressure is too high. I bled a radiator until it came down to the proscribed pressure.
Later: a civilised soiree upstairs at Baroque for Carol's (or "Dr. C") birthday.
Sunday: We went to Stratford with Gary and MC to watch Bubba Ho-tep at the Stratford Picture House. Good, but not as insanely great as I'd hoped. When we got home, I emptied the larder then refilled it. Only more neatly.
PermalinkA comment, presumably from a stranger, gets promoted to an item.
From 1997 you were my inspiration to write smiley faces on 10B beach.
You started it and now there is a smiley face on the beach every Easter Bank holiday with a "Happy easter to all in 10B" title around it. Time you came back, from Tenby, its only a short trip from there to Pembroke and a cheap Ferry to Southern Ireland, somewhere neither of you have been.
He's talking about this smiley, and I'm so proud.
Actually I've been to Southern Ireland with my parents, but Debbie has not.
PermalinkAt The Band Aid Dilemma they say:
"You want this record to succeed, because you feel for the plight of the refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan and this project is funding aid projects on their behalf. However, you hate this recording and feel your musical ego looming and refusing to be bruised.The answer?
- Buy as many copies of Do They Know It's Christmas by Band Aid 20 as you can afford.
- Destroy them in amusing ways, on camera.
- Send us the pictures.
Alternatively, give £3.99 to your favourite famine relief charity, or indeed any charity you like. Similarly, give a quid to charity every time you are tempted to enter the lottery, and 50p every time you're tempted to vote in an inane phone poll.
That way, all that money goes to charity, instead of 70% of it going to Camelot, Orange, wherever.
Better still, do Give As You Earn, so the charity gets your money before Mr Income Tax does. Oh, and tell your MP what we could be doing to reduce society's reliance on charity.
PermalinkInteresting night...
We had a freshly made bed, with freshly laundered and ironed bedclothes, so I was looking forward to a particularly comfortable night's sleep.
I was just dozing off when the doorbell rang. You can't really ignore the doorbell: it could have been a friend in distress, or anything. I got up and picked up the door phone. "Please let me in, please help me" called a plaintive voice. "I'm sorry, no", I said, and left the receiver off the hook. I wasn't all that comfortable about doing this, because imagine if this was a Jame Lee Curtis figure escaping from Micheal Myers desperately ringing arbitary doorbells for assistance.
I was just going to go back to bed, when I heard footsteps in the hallway upstairs. I put my dressing gown on, and went to see what was going on. Opening the door, I found a stinking, drunk, female stranger already in the communal entrance hall. She asked to come in. I said no. I said no again, then she barged past me and down the stairs. I asked her to leave and she refused, telling me to phone the police if that's what I wanted to do.
So I phoned the police.
She sat in the kitchen, and I watched her while we waited for the police to arrive. In those 45 minutes:
Eventually two policemen turned up, whereupon any friendly side gave way to more abuse, and after some attempts at persuasion, they manhandled her out of the building to shouts of "help! I'm being oppressed!", or words to that effect.
Debbie slept through most of this, and hid in the bedroom for the rest.
The police's helpful advice? "Don't let people in". Cheers.
Then, back to bed, then up an hour later to see if some cocoa would help. In the morning, I called Gary to say I needed some more sleep and would be in late. I settled down for an hour's extra kip, but woke at noon. Oops. I do think I have a reasonable excuse.
Imagine how someone more sensitive would have taken all this!
Update: I can't have made this clear enough, because a couple of people have now asked. This was a wino. Not a tipsy nubile temptress.
PermalinkThis Guardian article discusses how the film version of His Dark Materials may compromise some of the anti-religious aspects of the story to avoid offending an American audience.
Leaving the general thrust of the article aside, I was a bit taken aback at the bit that describes the Authority as "a malevolent but feeble deity".
I don't view the Authority as "malevolent" I think the point is that he's become weak, and the hierarchy below him is corrupt and misrepresents him. If God exists and is malevolent, and the Church is his organ, then the Church can't be blamed for ills it performs per God's wishes. In Pullman's fictional world, God exists -- the Authority -- but the evil deeds performed by the Church in his name are not part of that God's will. The books condemn the Church, not God.
PermalinkWhen we went shopping in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago, I took some pictures. I've just reviewed them, and I'm moderately pleased with some of them.
PermalinkI have mixed feelings about graffiti. On the one hand, I'd throw a fit if someone painted anything on my wall without permission. Clemens St. was tarted up recently, and I resent anything that makes it look anything but pristine -- boarded up shops, flyposting, graffiti. I object to the "Germiston Boyz" tag under the bridge where we live: keep your scruffy tagging in Germiston, wherever that is.
Yet, like many people I love the Banksy stuff you can't avoid on London's South Bank, and Dave Shanks recently introduced me to a couple of web sites that document that kind of thing: Wooster Collective and via that, Sticker Nation.
So, on our Sunday stroll around Victoria Park, I snapped a few of Leamington's unauthorised decorations and started a collection. The decorations hanging from the trees look like they ought to be official "art", but there is no attribution to be found anywhere. Eagle-eyed Debbie spotted the second one, which I'd never seen before today.
Clearly writing a phrase on a wall in white spray paint doesn't compare with the great drawings and paintings on those sites -- but I decided to photograph "AVOID CIDER" and "I HATE YOU KIRTON", and decided not to split them out into a different collection.
PermalinkWe ate a dinner of bunny chow, made using the very tasty and authentic tasting "Spicy Durban Curry" sauce from Simply South African. Bunny chow is a terrific meal, and a genuine curiosity. I'm surprised Simply South African don't have it as a serving suggestion on the packaging. I suppose that although it's a genuine local dish, a white tin loaf cut in half doesn't have that feel of ethnic authenticity about it.
Stuffed, we popped over to Steve's for a beer and a chat, then moved on to the Lock Dock and Barrel: officially our closest pub, at 17 paces. The LDB has gone through three changes of management since we moved to Old Town. Tonight was the grand reopening under new management, so we went to see what they'd done. It was heaving. There appears to be some link to the Portugese deli next door, so there was a Portugese flag up and they stocked Portugese bottled lager.
Tasty nibbles were provided, but the bunny chow dulled that pleasure somewhat. We were disappointed that there had been no effort to redecorate. Something feels indefinably wrong in that pub, and it needs sorting out. The layout isn't very forgiving, but someone with some vision and some money could probably put it right.
Joined by Mike, Jayne, Gary, MC, Gav and Tom, we soon decided it would be much more pleasant if we adjourned to the comfort of the Jug and Jester. Now, the Jug is a bit tatty (by design I suspect), but it has comfort and atmosphere nailed. On our arrival, the front room was half empty, and we had no issues commandeering a table large enough for the lot of us.
GXS need offices to house us. I can't help but cast a hopeful eye at the "Office Suites To Let" sign above Solo restaurant, right in the beating heart of Leamington... and handy for the municipal multi-storey too!
PermalinkHad a nice lunch at the Slug & Lettuce. It's often worth reminding oneself that pubs change personality in the daytime, and it turns out the S&L is a pleasant place to be at lunchtime.
We found some jewellery for Debbie to wear at the IBM Club Christmas Dinner. On the way home, we stopped at the Pump Rooms, and spotted some reprinted 1925 maps of Leamington. I snapped one up: £2.10.
It's pretty fascinating stuff. One interesting exercise is to check which pubs are that old, and which are not. The Sun in Splendour wasn't there in 1925. The Lock Dock & Barrel was (under a different name), as were the Railway and the Stoneleigh. There was another pub on Clemens St, which is no longer there.
There was a pub on Althorpe St, which I do not believe still exists (I'd better get down there and check though!)
Obviously, a lot of what is now housing, was then fields. There are two major iron foundries on the map: The Imperial Stove Works, which is now the Ford foundry, and the Eagle Foundry, which is now the RangeMaster factory, but whose name lives on in the Eagle Rec. The accompanying notes explain how the canal brought pig iron, coke and limestone from the Black Country, and how in the 1850s Leamington was famous for the stoves and ranges produced in its foundries.
There are numerous glasshouses on the map. Leamington produced a lot of ornamental plants. Ranelagh Terrace and Ranelagh Street are named after Ranelagh Gardens, itself named after the London gardens of the same name.
Beyond the built up areas, it's astonishing how many fields are allotment gardens. Tesco weren't importing peas by plane from Guatemala in those days.
The old Windmill football ground is marked, as is the windmill itself (disused, even in 1925).
Grand buildings now destroyed include Shrubland Hall (replaced by council housing "fit for heroes" between the wars), the "Royal Midland Counties Home for Incurables" between St Helen's Road and Tachbrook Street, and the sprawling Warneford Hospital on Radford Road.
... and much much more. This map only covers South Leamington, and doesn't even get as far North as the river. I want the North Leamington one now.
Alan Godfrey Maps produce reprints from similar periods for all sorts of places. You can even subscribe and get all their maps as they are released. I do wonder what the copyright situation is: have the copyright restrictions on these maps expired? (Let's be clear, I'm not suggesting Alan Godfrey has ripped off the OS. I'm just wondering what I'd be allowed to do with the content.)
PermalinkThanks to Steve's elite pub quiz skills, last night we enjoyed one of his prizes: a meal for four at pizza hut. Me, Debbie, Steve, Laura.
Then we went to the Jug. Incidental characters included Jo from upstairs, Rosie from Debbie's work, and her man, who drives diggers: lucky bleeder.
After that, Singstar Party.
I need to motivate myself to shower, dress, and go for a haircut.
PermalinkI created a LiveJournal account, primarily so I could add comments on other people's journals therein. For reasons related to a cocked up transfer out of IBM, I was left without access to the systems I need to get work done, so instead I filled in the LJ "interests" field rather thoroughly. If you share an interest with someone else, LJ makes it a link, so you can list those other people. Here is a list of the interests I entered, that nobody else has. They may have used different wording, of course.
66 bus, alka seltzer xs, ambush in sector 9, aubrey allen, barbara nice, canal bridges, chenard walcker, g-international, gxs, ipod faults, national milk bars, pug fugly games, road trip usa, sakarya kebab house, tarsus kebab, thong'n'hipsters combo, trestle bridges, vialli's, warwickshire college of knowledge
The lowercasing is LJ's fault.
Addendum: this item was brought to you by the menu item "view source" and the regular expression "s/<a[^>]*>[^<]*<\/a>,//"
PermalinkAs of yesterday, I no longer work for IBM. I work for G International: I am part of the G Force. We are a G Unit.
PermalinkA nice man commented on my entry about Joanna Newsom. He was filming the Birmingham concert, and I didn't notice a thing -- which makes him innocent of the sins of those flash photographers. Here are his videos.
PermalinkAfter mid-afternoon trip to DFS to order a nice new sofa -- our old one never really recovered from Abbi's sofa dancing, and was tatty anyway -- we had a quick dinner, then went to the New Inn with Gavin for a pub quiz.
To our astonishment, it was £5 each! It turned out that this was a special fundraiser for an encephalitis support charity. There was food laid on too. Also, it left us slightly out of pocket, which moderated the drinking. I had driven, since I needed a clear head in the morning, so I didn't benefit from that last bit.
We did moderately well in most rounds, getting 9/10 in our joker round, and 8 or 9 in most of the other rounds, except for a disastrous General Knowledge round, where we got 5/10.
The winners got full marks. Suspiciously, they were stood right next to the quizmaster. Hmmm.
We didn't win anything on the raffle either. Lucky there's the warm glow of charidee to tide us by.
PermalinkAfter a nice civilised lunch at Ask, which left us unable to walk -- only waddle -- mine and Debbie's paths split for a while, and I left her to her make-up and accessories shops. I spent some time in Fopp, some time looking for Christmas presents, then on my way home I popped into the Pump Rooms gallery, to see their current temporary exibition, "Taking In Water"
I liked Roni Horn's "Still Water (The River Thames, for Example)". I failed to note the artist and title of the really quite rude video installation. Really quite rude. I wonder whether the fuddy-duddies at CLARA know of this?
Update: the mucky video is called "Dream (of wanting wetness and waste)", by Hadrian Piggott. It is mentioned in this article.
PermalinkDebbie's still in bed. I'm up because I wanted I nice quiet read of the paper, with a nice cup of coffee. But the paper's not arrived yet. Bah.
Update: it arrived in the end. Nice excerpt from Peter Carey's new book on Japan. A free CD featuring, among other things, Paul Weller massacring "All Along the Watchtower".
PermalinkLadies and gentlemen, I present to you my impressions of Donkey Konga and Singstar Party.
I bought my Gamecube in Canada, which has advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is that I need to use a Freeloader disk to load European games, and this doesn't always work. It didn't work with the copy of Donkey Konga I borrowed from Paul while he's away, so I had to also borrow Steve's proper British Gamecube to try it out.
For those who don't know, Donkey Konga is a videogame which comes with a controller shaped like a set of bongos. As music plays, a sequence of actions scrolls into a target area. When the action hits the target you must hit one or both of the bongos, or clap. If you do it right, you'll find yourself playing a nifty rhythm in time with the music. With more controllers, you can have up to four people playing an arrangement.
It's great fun, and once I'd bought a second pair of bongos, it became even more fun. The only fly in the ointment for me is that the songs are lacklustre re-recordings of the originals.
House favourites include "The Impression That I Get", and "September", and the UK release treads a comfortable line between cheesy Nintendo theme tunes (Latino workings of the Zelda theme, the Mario theme, etc.), camp, and slightly ageing Britpop cool (Supergrass, Jamiroquai).
So it was that I had to get a copy I could play on my own equipment, and while Ruth was in New York, I asked her to get me a copy. It turns out the American release is a very different beast.
The first few songs in the American game are nursery songs -- immediately making the game feel less, well, grown up. Having said that "Bingo" ("There was a man who had a dog and Bingo was it's name-o. B.I.N.G.O. etc...) is a lot of fun because of the "[CLAP] [CLAP] N. G. O." choruses.
Surprisingly, a number of the songs on the American version are clearly recent American chart hits which are unfamiliar to the British ear. Maybe the English speaking world isn't as homogenised as we thought? Disappointingly, "I Think I Love You" turns out to be a recent cover, rather than the original or the exuberant Voice of the Beehive version. This kind of thing accounts for a disappointingly large chunk of the game.
But, there's good new stuff in there. A lot of the British indie-pop is gone, but in its place there's We Will Rock You, there's Jesus Jones' "Right Here Right Now" (of all things!) and there's Willie Nelson's "On The Road Again". Plus you've got the Pokemon theme...
All in all though, I feel more positive towards the UK one: which means I need to invest in a way to play that's my own.
Singstar Party, the sequel to the karaoke game Singstar, came out on Friday. Much anticipated it was too. Basically it's 30 new songs, proper duets (i.e. you don't always sing in unison), and a "party mode" for teams.
There's still something for almost every taste, although there's nothing as insanely inspired as including "Ace of Spades" on the first one. Some 80s Bon Jovi style pop-rock wouldn't go amiss..
It's interesting how what you want to listen to can be so different from what you want to sing. I'm not a fan of Dido, but "White Flag" is among the most satisfying songs to sing in the game. "Video Killed the Radio Star" probably doesn't have the image in most people's minds of being a great song, but singing it -- as a duet -- reveals that it really is, and it's great fun to sing.
Conversely, songs you might have a soft spot for, are revealed to be really bad, once you stop listening to the production and start singing them as songs. "Survivor" (Destiny's Child) is just awful. Javine's "Greatest" has verses that barely have a tune.
Elsewhere, songs that sound easy to sing turn out to be immensely challenging -- giving you new respect for the artists. I never imagined that "A Little Time" by The Beautiful South would be hard to sing.
Bottom line though: it's worth it for the opportunity to belt out Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out". That feels great.
PermalinkYesterday afternoon, after a delightful two and a half hours of jovial conference call banter with my fellow G-Force / QXL / G-Unit / G-Police transferees, Debbie picked me up from work, and we drove to Birmingham to see Joanna Newsom play her harp and sing oddly at the Glee Club.
Coming in along the littlish roads from Warwick meant we drove through all sorts of old Birmingham haunts. Debbie was particularly pleased to see that Yardleys School appears to be in the process of demolition. We cast a nostalgic eye over many of Stratford Road's balti houses.
We had a quick dinner in Las Iguanas: packed with theatregoers when we arrived, but so empty that we were moved from our weeny table to a nice comfy booth before our meals arrived.
Outside the Glee Club, we joined a queue. Since it was a prebooked and sold out affair, I checked with a man at the end of the queue.
As it transpired, the CeRoc dancers could skip the queue and go straight into the main Glee Club room, tables and chairs cleared to the side. Us sophisticated music afficionados were in the Studio.
Absentee provided support. I'm going to call them lo-fi alt-rock alt-country, because I like to use buzzwords. They sit down and play quiet songs. Their drummer seldom beats a drum particularly hard, preferring to tap gently. As well as your basic guitar, drums and bass, they have a particularly hairy pedal-steel guitarist, and a girl with big glasses who plays xylophone, tambourine, and some keyboard instrument that sounds like a reed organ and is also controlled by mouthpiece...
I enjoyed Absentee. I didn't feel their particular ouvre was likely to provoke the crowd into violence, so I thought the plastic glasses used by the bar were probably unnecessary.
Joanna Newsom was terrific. Our angle meant we saw her face only through the strings of her harp. I'd be interested to know what an experienced harpist would make of the arrangements, but they seem pretty damn ornate to me. It's such a direct instrument: you pluck a string, a noise comes out (we'll gloss over the pedals for now).
The only fly in the ointment was audience members taking flash photographs. What with quiet being the new loud and everything, the whirrs of their zoom lenses and the clicks of their shutters were clearly audible, and of course the flashes were distracting. If you're reading, you are SELFISH, SELFISH BASTARDS, and the least you could do to recompense me is to send me some of the photographs, so I have the consolation of a souvenir.
One photographer (he may have been a pro: this does not excuse him) wandered around the room (the audience was seated) in an exaggerated "I'm being unobtrusive" tiptoe. Note to him: THERE'S NO POINT CREEPING AROUND WHEN YOUR SHUTTER IS LOUDER THAN THE HARP.
Bah. Despite this, a good night out.
PermalinkI've seen a few of the government's current "Keep it safe, keep it hidden, keep it locked" TV ads -- where a member of the public cheerily explains to a thief what valuables they own and how to steal them.
Now, I make jokey comments about chavs and pikeys. It's banter. I am, however, a little bit offended by the stereotype "criminals" in these adverts: the young lad in the baseball cap -- obviously a thief. The mixed-race fella with the beard and the hoody -- career criminal.
Not good. Not good at all.
PermalinkSince I lost patience with Bloglines, I've tried a few desktop RSS aggregators. Neither is perfect.
The first is Sharpreader. This is a Windows application based on the .Net framework. it's the first .Net application I've installed, which is quite scary in itself.
Sharpreader does much of what I'd expect: It presents your feeds in a heirarchy. Unread items show in a bold font. New items pop up from your system tray, just like an new mail notification.
Sharpreader has a nice feature whereby items which refer to each other appear below each other in the tree, so you can see just how incestuous the blogging community you monitor really is.
A serious oversight is that there does not appear to be a "go to next unread" function. In Thunderbird, for example, I can view all unread mail or news items by just hitting "n" repeatedly.
Sharpreader has another serious problem, which is that it seems to have trouble reading large documents from some kinds of network -- including my home wireless network. My guess is that this is to do with the network's MTU, but that is purely based on some empirical tests. On such networks, many feeds fail, with the document truncated, and Sharpreader rejecting the entire feed as a result. Worse, when you return to a wired network, Sharpreader requests the feed again, using HTTP's "if-modified-since" header, and the date of the previous failure. The server correctly replies "no change", so you won't see the contents of that feed until it is updated.
The author of Sharpreader has not responded to my bug reports.
The second piece of software I tried is Sage. Sage is a plugin for Mozilla Firefox. Rather nicely, Sage tiles the articles from a feed across a browser pane, so you can scan them all, or pick one to view it in its proper HTML form. I've just updated Sage, and one missing element has been added: "mark all as read". This only works for one feed at a time however.
Sage doesn't have an obvious "next unread" feature either. The other irritating thing about Sage is that if a folder is collapsed, there's no way to see whether it contains unread items.
So, no ideal RSS reader yet. Any suggestions as to what to try next? The "live bookmarks" feature of Firefox doesn't suit my needs, and Thunderbird's RSS support needs to mature a bit before it's suitable for me.
PermalinkThanks Gary, for showing me these maps showing the distribution of US electoral votes in various ways.
Regardless of the conclusions, it's really cool presentation of data.
How about seeing the states sized proportional to values other than population -- for example by wealth, or by density of media moguls...
PermalinkOooh, where shall I start? ("Near the end?")
I took a half-day on Friday so that Laura, Debbie and I could train down to London to see Cake at the Shepherds Bush Empire. Meeting up and catching the train was all hassle-free, and when we arrived in Marylebone navigation to our hotel -- a short walk to Edgeware Road followed by a tube to Hammersmith -- went without a hitch.
There were some issues on our arrival at the Novotel London West, since our LastMinute.com booking had been lost, but after a short wait, and some expression of our urgent need to be somewhere (Shepherds Bush), we were checked in and sweetened up with a promise of some breakfasts we'd not paid for. Well done Debbie.
More by accident than design, the venue was a shortish walk from the hotel, although we passed many, many affordable looking independent hotels on Shepherds Bush Road, which may warrant investigation one day. Debbie is idealogically opposed to any hotel you can't book on the Internet, however.
On Shepherds Bush Green, we were greeted by an awe inspiring selection of fast foods, and we settled on the Diner Express, serving dazzling array of kebabs. Laura and I both had a doner with a posh name, while Debbie had falafels. It was just what the doctor ordered, and it wasn't long before we were on our way to the venue.
Pleasingly, there were plenty of touts offering to buy tickets, but none offering tickets for sale. Indeed, so popular was the show that Cake will return in February (to the Astoria this time).
The Empire is a nice venue: a classic tall, balconied, ornate old theatre, converted into a music venue. We were surprised at how small it felt, since we had standing tickets, although there was clearly a lot of capacity above our heads.
In support, The Decemberists put on a good show, building up to an extremely entertaining climax with a rendition of "Chimbley Sweep" which broke down into a "duelling banjos" scenario between Colin Meloy (on acoustic guitar) and Chris Funk (on electric guitar), involving full-on rock'n'roll guitars behind the head showing off. Laura was somewhat underwhelmed -- I think she'd have been more impressed if she'd known some of the material, if she'd been a wee bit taller and therefore seen more, and if The Decemberists had had time to do their whole set, which I'd love to see.
Incidentally, The Decemberists are performing at the LSE on Monday 15th November. We can't get there. If you can, do.
During the interval I spotted and briefly conversed with Ant Chapman. This would be a coincidence, if it weren't for the fact I knew he'd be there.
It was astonishing to be in a room full of people who had not only heard of Cake, but loved them like we do. My early enjoyment of the set was marred by the presence, in front of me, of a man who was not only the tallest man in history, but also was in possession of the most voluminous haircut in history. If I ran a music venue I would ban him.
Some shuffling around afforded Debbie and I an adequate view, but Laura's situation was hopeless, and she went in search of some higher ground.
Cake did an uptempo set, and entertained us for at least two hours, including two encores, predictably (demonstrably so, since I predicted it) ending with "No Phone", "The Distance" and "I Will Survive". "I Will Survive" is a song about hope -- but "Cake's official position is that there is absolultely no hope".
It's a little sad that bands feel the need to finish their shows with ten year old past glories (I love that Radiohead don't play "Creep") -- but the whole room loved it, including me.
Alas, XL Cake T-Shirts were sold out, but I got a nice Decemberists shirt and their CD-single "Billy Liar" (I didn't have two of the four tracks... they turn out to be average).
We accompanied Laura to the tube station, where her chauffeur duly collected her, and walked back to the hotel, where there was nothing on TV, so we slept.
Flinging open the curtains in the morning, it was incredibly bright and sunny, and we took in our view across the city. With our limited knowledge of the London skyline, we could make out the London Eye, the BT Tower and the Gherkin. After our free breakfast, we set off without hats, gloves or jumpers. We did take coats. It is, after all, mid November.
Our destination: Woolwich, to see Ajay and Iciar and their fancy new flat. Despite tube surprises (the train slowed, but did not stop, at Cannon St.) we got there in excellent time; indeed we were exiting Woolwich Arsenal station just as Ajay arrived to meet us.
Their flat -- apartment -- is bijou, but very fancy. We approve. Some of Iciar's Spanish friends had also come to visit, and after a while accepting hospitality and admiring wedding photos, we all set off for Camden Market.
After some market browsing (the Spaniards fascinated by magic mushrooms on open sale) we paused in one of the food areas and all bought our preferred form of street food. Ajay and I both bought West Indian goat curry, Debbie had a Chinese assortment, etc.
We had arranged to meet Sean and Karen by the river to watch some fireworks that we'd only heard about that very day. It was beginning to feel cold. We regretted our wardrobe decisions of the morning. We made our farewells and made a circuitous route back to the station, looking for a cheap extra layer for myself, and some gloves and a scarf for Debbie.
These we found, on the high street. When we arrived at Embankment, the exit route from the tube was crammed with crowds and it was a relief to emerge at the surface and meet Sean and Karen.
The fireworks were spectacular but a little distant. We could have done with being a little further East. Nonetheless, it was a great show. It must have brought tens of thousands of Londoners into town to spend money, who might otherwise have had a CSI Saturday night in.
A Chinese meal and a chat led to a Hagen Daaz and a chat, which led to a sugar crash, and a mutual decision to set off home. We stayed together as far as Hammersmith tube, where we bade farewell to Sean and Karen, bought a couple of cans from an off-license (quite a trek!), then watched Match of the Day in bed.
After another free breakfast, Sunday's activity was a trip to the Whitechapel Gallery, where an exhibition of Paul Noble's extraordinarily ornate, large, and frankly filthy in places, pencil drawings is just approaching the end of its stay. There was an incredible amount of detail to take in, and to be honest I've no idea what it's about at all ("autobiography throught the medium of town planning" apparently), but it was all entertaining, which is something that's often missing from art on show.
I talked Debbie out of going shoe shopping (she'll enjoy it more if she goes alone), so instead we made our way to Marylebone for the journey back, only to find that all trains would be going from Paddington due to works. Bah. However, a bus got us to Paddington with enough time to get sandwiches and magazines before boarding, and we were soon on table seats on a train taking us back to Leamington and the opportunity to rest at home.
That or write an unnecessarily long "what I did on my holidays" essay, of course...
Afterthought: we bumped into Rich Headworth on the way home from Leamington station, suitcases in tow. "Been anywhere nice?", he asked. "We've been to London." "Oh, no then."
PermalinkAlthough yesterday's letter was intended as "Corrections and Clarifications" fodder (and was sent to the appropriate address), The Guardian has seen fit to print it as a letter.
This is my second time in print, in the Guardian, this week -- a comment I made on their Gamesblog item on body image in Grand Theft Auto made it into a boxout in Thursday's print edition review of the game.
They've edited the letter quite heavily, presumably for length and for house style. I'm not absolutely sure that the message has remained intact: reading the published version, do I come across as the Open Source advocate that I am, or not?
They've declined to capitalise "Open Source", and they start a sentence with "And" where I did not. That jars a little.
My "secondly" loses pretty much all meaning: I assume most readers don't know exactly what "public domain" means, and I had tried to explain it.
A recent George Monbiot article mentioned in passing how editors can mess with your intent (search down for "SUVs"). I don't think I got as bad a deal as he did, so I'm happy to rest on my laurels...
They have preserved my spelling of "licenses" 
Today I felt compelled to write a letter (OK, an email) to the Guardian "Reader's Editor", he who among other things, maintains the "Corrections and Clarifications" column. (The link within is added for your benefit -- it wasn't in the original email)
PermalinkWhile I'm sure the Open Source community will be delighted by the overwhelmingly positive tone of your leader today on Firefox, I feel it's worth pointing out the three common misconceptions propogated in the first sentence:
"Today marks a milestone in the history of the "open source" movement, the extraordinary unpaid community of volunteers all over the world who work together to produce software which is placed in the public domain without commercial gain."
Firstly: while many Open Source developers are indeed unpaid, a significant amount of Open Source software is produced by paid professionals as part of their job.
Secondly: to place a piece of work in the Public Domain is to explicitly renounce one's copyright on the work -- effectively allowing anyone to use the work without obligation. Open Source licenses, on the other hand, are an agreement between the copyright holder and second party, allowing that party to use, modify and redistribute the work as long as certain obligations are adhered to. This is an important distinction.
Thirdly: while it can be difficult to sell Open Source software for direct commercial gain, it is not unheard of. Regardless of this, plenty of commercial entities produce Open Source software for indirect commercial gain. IBM is a good example of such an entity.
I feel these are significant pieces of misinformation which should be corrected.
Ever wondered how Debbie maintains her delightful complexion?
Well, this morning I sneaked a look in her makeup bag, and caught a glimpse of what might be the answer:
I walked to Radford Semele in the morning, to collect the car. Energetic! I listened to headphones on the way, which I don't do often, and while it made the time pass more quickly, it was an odd sensation being slightly cut off from the world. Also it made me feel as if I was in a film -- the solitary figure walking to his soundtrack.
When I got back, Debbie suggested getting lunch in town. I was going to suggest seeing if anyone wanted to come with us, but it occurred to me that the two prime candidates for lunch company were also the people most likely to lure us into spending the rest of the afternoon in the pub.
That decision was avoided however, because Laura called us before we called her, and suggested we meet her and her two local dads John and Alan, for lunch in The Lounge. We did, they were nice (if lewd), as was the food. Steve came along too, and after John and Alan had left, Laura and Steve lured us into spending the rest of the afternoon in The Hogshead, The Star and Garter, Macky's, The Sozzled Sausage and the Bowling Green. Oops.
To our credit, we were home before closing time -- real normal closing time, not Jug extended closing time or Bowler ignored closing time -- eating Chef's Special kebab from Sakaraya, enjoying some Donkey Konga and some Channel 4 Simpsons. Laura, incapable of getting home, slept in our spare room. Steve would have also had trouble if he didn't live so close.
PermalinkOn Friday, we went to JV and Suzanne's for a dual celebration of their engagement and of the failure of a terrorist plot against parliament 400 years ago.
Many fireworks were set off. A coat rack fell off the wall for no reason.
The household contains at least three copies of "Stanley Road" by Paul Weller. They are stored side by side on the alphabetically sorted CD shelf. Who knows how many more copies are stored around the house just in case?
PermalinkGoogling for the phrase "due to a construct in my mind", to support some philisophising about the nature of God (!), I found this fantastic piece about how Cake's lyrics are spoken from the perspective of Lucifer himself.
It's all good stuff...
PermalinkOur opinions of Joe Simpson prejudiced by Amber's professed hatred of him, we watched Touching the Void on TV last night.
I was particularly taken by Joe Simpson's account of his lapsed Christianity, and how, lying on his back in a deep, dark, cold ravine, alone, with a badly broken leg, exhausted after a hard climb and subsequent descent (at various rates, including 9.8 m/s2), he reflected that if there was ever a time to embrace one's passing to the other side, this was it.
At this point, he realised that he really didn't believe in an afterlife (as opposed to just suspecting he didn't believe), and got on with extending the only life he had.
Now, to be honest, in his situation I'd probably have lain back and waited for the lights (and the pain) to go out. I'd have given up. On the other hand, I'd have given up before setting off up the mountain, and wouldn't have got myself in that situation...
I think it's great when people are explicit about their atheism. Just as in some circles it's assumed you must support some football team or other, vast swathes of humanity seem to think that everyone believes in a god, and the question is simply which one. Well, I don't care who wins -- as long as it's not Chelsea or Man U -- and I believe there is no God, Allah, Gaia, Odin, Zeus or Vishnu.
According to this page 14% of Britons are atheists. Just so you know... 88% of East Germans... cool :)
Permalink... but I know someone who has.
We've just discovered that "The Impression That I Get" on Donkey Konga, "Chimp" difficulty level is a whole lot of fun.
PermalinkIt looks like November is going to be the month of live music for me. On the 12th we have Cake and The Decemberists in London. On the 20th it's Ben Folds at Warwick Arts Centre, and on the 22nd it's Joanna Newsom at the Glee Club in Brum.
Then, on Monday 29th, the day before our transfer out of IBM completes, there's the option of seeing Sunn o))) at the Custard Factory in Brum. Apparently we're talking beatless drones at pitches likely to induce incontinence... but it's close, it's weird and I'm interested. We'll have to see how motivated I am nearer the time.
PermalinkWell, it looks like Bush has a clear majority. This terrifies and baffles me. They seem like such nice people when you meet them. New Mexico hasn't called yet, but if they come out for Bush, I'll have to revise my "favourite state" choice to lovely, friendly, staunchly Democrat Vermont. Go to Burlington, it's delightful.
PermalinkIn case anyone from Ohio is reading, here's how you cast a vote in a UK general election:
You wander up to a polling station -- usually a school or a church hall or something like that. If you're unlucky, you queue for maybe five minutes. Then you're given a piece of paper, and led to a booth, where you make a mark on the paper with a pencil (provided!), and put it into a slot in a padlocked box.
You do not queue for five hours to operate a computer that nobody's quite sure they trust.
Also: there are some remarkable haircuts on this BBC coverage of the US election.
PermalinkI love election coverage, so I'm having a tough job convincing myself to get to bed. One day, British TV will broadcast coverage of all elections worldwide -- we'd get to see John Snow revelling in statistics about the elections in Malawi or something.
No real indications on Bush vs Kerry at this point.
PermalinkMidway Arcade Treasures 2 for Xbox dropped into my maildip today. I'm looking forward to four player Gauntlet II fun at home.
However, Gauntlet II wasn't the main attraction for me. My nostalgia juice was welling up for Cyberball. However, I'm disappointed (but not all that surprised) that what we get on Treasures 2 is a missed opportunity.
The robot American Football game Cyberball was released into arcades in 1988. The first thing you noticed was the unique cabinet - there's a picture of it on its KLOV page. Note the two screens, each with two sets of controls. What this meant was that a team of two people could take on another team of two.
In a way, Cyberball is a kind of glorified Rock-Paper-Scissors. One team plays in offence, and selects from a menu of plays. The other team chooses a defensive formation. Once the formations are chosen, the offensive team attempts to make good their planned offensive play, while the defensive team tries to stop them. The way players can't see each others' screens means the plays and formations can be chosen in secret.
(A very neat feature of the cabinet is the horizontal slot that runs across the cabinet above the screens, behind which is a mirror at 45 degrees to the screens. You can glare at your opponents through the mirror)
Cyberball is a good one player game, and a good two player cooperative game -- but it really shines as a competitive game, with 2, 3 or 4 players.
Midway could have made Xbox Cyberball playable online by up to 4 players -- you could choose to speak to only your teammate, or to everybody, with the black/white joypad buttons. That would have been terrific. I'm not surprised they ommitted to put that effort in, however.
As a second best, Midway could have provided a linkup mode for two consoles and two screens -- so with a little setting up, you could play two-on-two in the same room, with screens facing away from each other. That would have made me happy.
However, Midway has done neither of these things: Midway has provided us with a one-screen Cyberball for one or two players only. This is disappointing. Not greatly surprising however.
It may be possible to play two-on-two Cyberball with two (or more) PCs and Kaillera -- a version of MAME that allows you to play online. I don't understand how it works... but apparently it does.
PermalinkWe've just come back from visiting Chris and Rae in Blackwood, where they had a delightfully horrific Halloween party. Horrific, that is, apart from the hot dog outfit. Photos.
PermalinkA big "well done" to JV and Suzanne for their engagement. You're both winners.
PermalinkI'm taking the week off work to use up holiday. Phoenix reads this, so I'm sure she'd be disappointed if I didn't note that she came to visit and we had lunch in town -- yummy Five Rivers buffet.
PermalinkSome might describe the knuckle-draggers of Kenilworth as an easy target. With Steve and Ev's help, we took them on at pub quizzery, and won.
Expenditure: several rounds. Income: a bottle of cheap white wine. Profit: um... I'll get back to you on that one.
PermalinkI've been a bit weepy on and off for the last 24 hours. Now it transpires that come the end of June -- ticket allocation willing -- then I'm liable to get a little tired and emotional every time I visit the erstwhile "New Stage".
It'll be nice though, and that stage needed a better name.
PermalinkI just heard the very sad news about John Peel's death. I'm actually close to tears.
Update: It's beginning to sink in. Quite aside from the condolences to his family, what the hell are we going to do? Who's waiting in the wings to introduce us to interesting new music?
Chris McG: you're no John Peel, but I might be keeping you busy.
PermalinkI just noticed that Julian Cope set the questions for the Guardian prize quiz this week.
I don't know any of the answers, though Google probably does.
PermalinkOne reason not to have kids, is to avoid the prospect of a screeching four year old in your living room. Odd then, that this afternoon it sounded as if we had just that - albeit a reasonably talented four year old, accompanied by a harp.
It turns out that not only is Joanna Newsom a full grown woman, but that once you get over that voice, her music is really very good indeed.
She's coming to Birmingham next month too. Ooh...
Update: I bought tickets: Glee Club Birmingham, Monday Nov 22nd, a bargain £6.50. Life's too short to try and sell this idea to people, but hey, I think you all read this, so if you want to join me, get your own ticket. You'll get to enjoy the Glee Club ticket buying system's interesting quirk, too.
PermalinkPressure Chief is album of the week, and warrants a review on CD-Wow.
See, Cake are mainstream. Now, how about a tour incorporating more than one UK city?
PermalinkIf ever a band was easy to love, it's Cake. I can appreciate that some of the music I like might be a little unapproachable, that it is by its very nature doomed to obscurity -- but Cake is not like that. To me Cake sounds chart-friendly and catchy.
It came a surprise to me then, when the Guardian review didn't include the new album, Pressure Chief, in their CD reviews section. The album is mentioned in passing, though, in an article by Alexis Petridis wherein he subjects himself to every CD release and re-release in October.
So, the closest we get to a review is a parenthesised "sounds a bit like the Police, can't see it working over here".
The Police are a perfectly cromulent band, I don't take offence at the comparisom. I just don't understand it. I'm not familiar with the entire Police canon, but listening to the Cake album while looking at the track listing from "Every Breath You Take: The Classics", a Police best-of album, I can't for the life of me work out which Cake song is in any way comparable to which Police song.
I can only conclude that Petridis's mind was so battered by the strings and arrows of outrageous music releases (a 3 CD Datblygu set, eek!) that he'd lost some basic critical faculties.
PermalinkThis is potentially the best website ever.
PermalinkI stayed home ill (again) on Wednesday, and would probably have done so yesterday too had it not been for an email summoning me to a "mandatory" meeting. So strongly worded was the invitation, and so short was the notice, I assumed it was going to be important, so I turned up.
In the event, it was quite important.
IBM is selling its EDI business -- that's the bit I work for -- including the staff, including me, to some investors called Francisco Parters. They will form us into a new company called "G Force" or something, which they intend to merge with big EDI cheeses GXS, just as soon as regulatory bodies let them.
What does this mean to me, and the people I work with? Well, we'll all get job offers on (at least) the same money we're on now, and we won't have the option of staying with IBM. Neither will be we able to rejoin IBM for two years. This is expected to be done and dusted by the end of next month.
The big worry for me is location: I don't want to move house, and I don't want to travel far to work. For at least 6 months, we expect to be working from exactly where we're sitting now. After that, who knows? The general expectation, however, is that a sufficient number of people are based in the Warwick/Leamington area that we may well be able to set up an office locally. If so, I want a say in the decor -- the practice I've had playing Animal Crossing should come in handy.
"How," I hear you ask, "do you personally feel about the new owner?". My reply to you is deadpan: this is an opportunity to move the business to the next level.
PermalinkYes, It's all change at Ladle. Can you spot the subtle design tweak?
PermalinkThe following is a whinge/rant, and not a statement of intent. Please read no such thing into it.
Details are sketchy at the moment, but Steve invited a number of our social circle to his football thing tonight, and apparently the result is a broken wrist for Gavin. My initial reaction was "Poor lad", followed by "Why on Earth are they playing football tonight: it's cold, dark, and I'm not feeling very well".
My third reaction was "There you go, exercise is dangerous." One good reason to avoid it. Having said that, I do dangerous things rather often. For example, I was yanked off my feet three times by a kite the other weekend. Some of the risks we took in Guatemala could be construed as foolish...
However, as I may have mentioned, I'm not well, and that could well have something to do with my general level of fitness. I suspect I'm more apple-shaped than pear-shaped, and I'm sure my heart and lungs aren't in as good a condition as they could be.
The other thing that triggered this chain of thought was a thing in the paper a while ago. A man writes to the paper about maybe taking up a little jogging. The reply goes on for a while, then says "A month in, safeguard your joints with cross training, add cycling and swimming, and train at different intensities." -- at which point if I was the correspondent I'd probably say to myself "This is all sounding too involved and complicated now. Sod the whole thing".
So what are my exercise options? The obvious one is jogging. I gave it a go for a couple of weeks when we lived in Sydenham, and jogging is just terribly dull. You've nobody to talk to. If you took someone along, you couldn't talk anyway because you'd be out of breath, and anyway you'd just irritate each other with differing abilities. I suppose you could spice things up by setting yourself targets, but let's face it this is the exercise equivalent of the stamp-licking game:
Principle Skinner: Oh, licking envelopes can be fun!
All you have to do is make a game of it.
Bart: What kind of game?
Principle Skinner: Well, for example, you could see how
many you could lick in an hour, then try to break that
record.
Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.
Principle Skinner: Yes, well... Get started.
Cycling is just like jogging, only faster and more expensive. For a few weeks, I cycled to work, but it's a really tedious way of getting to work, you have to shower in a nasty utilitarian room, and it leaves the newspaper unread.
Swimming is drearier than either, since you can't even vary your route.
Gym-based exercises: no. Jogging on a machine is surely just like jogging outdoors, only duller (albeit warmer and sometimes drier). I'd resent the fees, and I don't like the idea of the audience either.
Please do not mention Salsa dancing.
Squash: I don't understand how people even begin to move their bats in the right direction. Plus people drop dead of heart attacks playing that game.
Team sports are a no-no. Firstly, however much they say they won't, team mates get really upset when you let them down by being inept, unfit, or both. I remember this from a bruising "social" game of rounders between work departments, where I had the opportunity for a game-winning catch, but instead got a ball in the gob. I know how they feel: it's awfully frustating watching a newcomer play (say) Crazy Taxi, or playing against them at a video game you've practiced at.
Secondly, I really hate all that "hail fellow" post-match bonhomie.
Some people really enjoy exercise. I do envy them. I remember overhearing Alistair telling Tom about a cathartic bike ride. "I'd had a shit day at work, but I got on my bike and really went at it, and I was like 'YES!'". I know the theory about endorphins, but I can honestly say that I have never experienced this -- and do bear in mind that I ran 400m at county level when I was at school. I suspect that just as some people can't take their drink, and others can tolerate mild electic shocks without flinching (I was astounded to see Claire complete this using only endurance, no skill), I don't react particularly strongly to endorphins. Desensitised by curry, maybe...
I think, as usual, I want what I can't have: I want an exercise I can enjoy for its own sake rather than tolerating it for the sake of the long-term benefits. I'd like it not to consume any of my spare time (impossible). I think, like Halo and the IBM Professions scheme, it's one of those things I'll never understand.
There's always DDR I suppose...
PermalinkLook away now if you're squeamish, or if you (understandably) find people going on about their ailments terribly dull.
Last night I developed a style of coughing whereby a fit of coughs would seamlessly morph into a retch. For sleep, I was banished to the spare room. I have spared you a photograph of the bucket of vomit and mucus I kept by the bed.
Don't worry, you can thank me later.
PermalinkBloglines seems to have forgotten about Gary's RSS feed. This is after it forgot about mine, I mailed them, they thanked me for telling them, then failed to fix it.
So, you can't rely on Bloglines, and really you want to be able to. I know most feeds are frivolous, but not all of them are, and frivolous or not, you want to at least know when you're missing out.
So, I've installed SharpReader, a standalone Windows application for aggregating RSS feeds. It seems to do what you'd expect, and the good news is that it can import a set of subscriptions exported from Bloglines.
I still like Blogline's "search feeds", so I'll continue to use it for that. If only the search feed could be delivered as RSS...
Wondering what on earth I'm talking about? The BBC can explain.
Update: per the comment attached to this post, Bloglines spotted this entry, and has now fixed the bug. Thanks! It did appear to take a public whinge to get that done however.
PermalinkThe Cake gig in November will be supported by The Decemberists. I investigated, and they were intriguing enough to warrant ordering some CDs (from the very reliable Caiman in Miami, via Amazon Marketplace).
Her Majesty The Decemberists arrived today. Someone else reviews it here (alongside a delectable SuicideGirls advert. Ooerr).
It's quirky, enjoyable stuff: a little twee in a way indie bands haven't been since the mid 80s -- the production may be a little weedy for my tastes. I've been scouring the lyric sheet for any anachronistic deviations from their 19th century theme, but nothing's leapt out.
The fold-out panoramic CD insert is really quite grand too, making this poster rather tempting.
It turns out we could have seen them in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago.
Update: it's been on my headphones most of the day, and I've decided I really like it.
PermalinkGuardian letters page, today:
It is not a gherkin. It is a suppository and the biggest joke ever played on Londoners. -- Dr JCV Mitchell, Midhurst, W SussexI think it's very pretty. Permalink
To be honest, I have to admit that the Goldie Lookin' Chain joke was starting to wear a bit thin, and with repeated listens, their back-catalogue was coming to sound rather amateurish (permissible, I suppose, since they were at the time amateurs). We'd committed to the gig tickets months ago, and I'd decided to maintain my enthusiasm until then, whatever mental strain it took. I viewed the gig as an opportuntity to end the whole thing with a bang and draw a line under the matter.
It turns out the GLC are outrageously entertaining live. Jokes you've heard before make you chuckle again. 13 men leaping up and down and shouting really can keep your attention for an hour and a half. What's more, in my opinion, enough of them have genuine rap skills to hold their heads high.
A special treat was "Taxi" breaking down into Gazza's rap version of "Fog on the Tyne". Also I enjoyed the enthusiasic crowd singalong to the chorus of "Shit to Me" (I am too coy to quote the lyrics that resonated so well here).
The two support acts -- Skinnyman and John the White Rapper -- I couldn't really relate to. Both of these were "serious" rap acts. "Serious" as in serious, not serious as in "serious clart, what it is roit?"... Both strode headlong into "issues" based poems that they'd really not thought through. Skinnyman railed against the teacher who expelled him from school -- but let's face it, they didn't throw him out apropos of nothing, did they? He recited a (true?) story about a girlfriend's life wrecked by heroin, ending "BURN THE POPPY FIELDS". As a sane drugs policy, that needs more thought.
My real problem with both of these was their willingness to lose the beats completely, and just rap acapella for minutes on end. It frankly reminded me of an open mic session at the Poetry and Words tent at Glastonbury -- or the spoken word performances of Atilla the Stockbroker or "Punk Poetess" Joolz, neither of which have ever impressed me as entertainment.
Both these acts might work as art -- but GLC are a party act, and they needed a lighter tone of support. They also did well to win back our respect after a ridiculous wait around between acts. They managed it because they are safe.
PermalinkWe're just back from a jaunt to Birmingham to see Goldie Lookin' Chain. They were "safe like Windsor Davies in Never The Twain".
More on this in the morning.
PermalinkI think everyone enjoyed themselves: first stuffing ourselves with Chinese food, then drinking a swift round of Margharitas at Chico's, then adventuring around the "functional" pubs of NorthEast Leamington. The Black Horse is an especially workmanlike establishment.
Many World Records were attempted.
By ten we'd returned to the safety of the town centre: but stuck with a traditional boozer - the Tavistock.
Losers went home, winners went on to Sugar.
Update: More pictures from Paul
PermalinkWe rented the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead last night, and a cracking tension-filled gorefest it was too. Little tip (and I know Debbie's already pointed this out) -- always wear a seatbelt when you're a passenger in a recklessly driven bus, especially when you're also trying to operate a chainsaw.
Anyway. I liked it. Extra credit for including Johnny Cash ("The Man Comes Around") and Richard Cheese (covering "Down with the Sickness") on the soundtrack.
PermalinkEven though rss2.xml and the new rss3.xml are bit-for-bit identical, Bloglines seems to work right with the latter, while not noticing updates to the former. Do with this information what you will.
PermalinkBloglines seems to have stopped noticing my RSS feed. I've mailed them about it, and they said they'd look at it, but nothing yet.
On a brighter note, that Bloglines "Leamington Search Feed" keeps throwing up interesting stuff. Here is a Warwick Uni student, living in Leamington, who can't stop going on about Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.
Now, SPF2T is among the greatest games ever created, but she's nigh on 8 years late, if she has the Playstation version. Maybe she has the Dreamcast version, but DC owners are thin on the ground these days... Maybe she has the Gameboy Advance version, but her blog implies multiplayer joy, so if so they're playing linkup, which doesn't sound all that sociable to me...
If I mail her to ask, will I seem like a terrible stalker?
PermalinkDebbie and I are both at home, nursing colds.
I usually feel like a bit of a fraud if I stay home from work with a cold, but since I went to bed at 10:30 and slept through to 1PM, there must be something wrong. Further, the double edged curse/blessing of ADSL means I've been working after all.
PermalinkPaul knows a good idea when he sees one, but maintains a misplaced affection for the wrong half of the Leamington/Warwick conurbation.
Still, I'd happily pay a tenner for a poster of those.
PermalinkExcerpts from today's Guardian letters page (excerpts with which, lest there is any ambiguity, I agree):
The bizarre decision to show the world the public face of English compassion with a one-minute silence in Ken Bigley's memory before the England-Wales football game was misplaced. Bigley made a choice to feather his nest amid the ruins of Iraq knowing the risks involved. He took a gamble and lost. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis who have died prematurely as a result of US- and UK-led sanctions and an illegal war and occupation had no such choice. A minute's silence in their memory would have been far more appropriate.
Alec Turner - London
A more brutal and pointless act than Ken Bigley's murder is hard to imagine. It feels as though humanity is bumping along on the bottom of it springs - no cushion of mercy or compassion left. We must find some. Let us all, individually, resolve to treat our fellows better.
Richard Clubley - Dronfield, Derbys
< pause for sober reflection >News of Ken Bigley's murder coincided with the news that American "precision bombing" of Falluja had killed 12 members of a wedding party and wounded 17. Two lines of WH Auden sprang to mind: Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.
Don Dale-Jones - Carmarthen, Wales
Further down the (printed) page, in "Corrections and clarifications":
The public lice referred to in our report headed The first humans shared head lice, should, of course, have been pubic lice (Life, page 7, October 7).Permalink
I would like it on record that I accompanied Debbie on only two of her four last binge drinking sessions.
PermalinkI've just been listening to the Super Furry Animal's live session from last Wednesday's John Peel show. It's a terrific set, and even makes a good introduction to the band if you're not familiar with the songs. It'll be available as RealAudio (spit) here until Wednesday.
By an accident of alphabetical ordering and the way I happened to select the file, "peel-2004-10-6" is followed on the iPod by Grieg's "Peer Gynt - Abduction and Ingrid's lament". So it seems I'm sitting at home listening to classical music. Stirring stuff!
PermalinkLaura popped in for a coffee, bearing posh biscuits and an early birthday present for little me, which I opened in front of her, so she could enjoy my ecstatic reaction.
It's a tray which is both kitch and arousing. Result. Unfortunately the flash glare in this photo obscures a saucily revealed thigh, knickers and suspender -- but on the other hand I suppose it looks as if the sun shines out of her behind.
Meanwhile, Debbie's attending a pub quiz with that odd man from next door. I'm not too worried about him, but there are some terribly virile young students in that pub.
Laura gets credit for the title pun.
PermalinkNow you might imagine that since AIX 5.3 is out, I'd have dabbled with AIX 5.2 long ago. Not so: like a tanker ship, we take a while to change direction.
Anyway, this week I was delighted to find that AIX 5.2 contains the greatest leap forward in operating system user interface since that little running man on the X11 version of SMIT:
Those diabolical Americans got to buy the new Cake album "Pressure Chief" on Tuesday. It's not out over here until a week on Monday. So, while Debbie lived it up in the nightlife of Leamington, I popped on an eyepatch, and set sail on the choppy seas of P2P.
It took a few hours (during which time I played some enjoyable OutRun 2 online) -- but I ended up with all but the last two tracks: adequate as a preview until Amazon bring me the real goods.
It's all good stuff. The sound has changed a little. It's a bit less polished sounding, and the reedy monophonic synth style from "Long Line of Cars" is back, and in evidence all over the album. So far I think "Guitar Man" is the stand-out track, but these things have a habit of changing.
In other music news, here is a new freely downloadable release from French fruitcake Chenard Walcker. I've not listened to it yet.
Update: listened to Chenard Walcker. It's good. Of course, it's just more of the same noodling cut & paste we've come to love, but this time there's the gimmick that it all samples labelmates on Comfort Stand (although, cheekily, this includes his own tracks, which in turn sample external sources). This time there's the odd bit of rock guitar in there. "Brown Baby" is back -- not sure if I'm bored of that, or whether like a Fast Show catchphrase, it's just maturing.
PermalinkI added a section "Custom Lists" to the iPod Not Perfect page.
PermalinkHere is a lady after my own heart. She needs to make a poster.
PermalinkA lot happened this weekend. I should really break this entry up, but I can't be bothered, so instead it will be long.
Themed PartyFirst of all, we went to Laura's student-themed party on Friday evening, intent on being responsible, because we wanted to be fit to drive at a reasonable hour on Saturday. Yes, "responsible" involves taking along a jar of alcohol soaked sugarlumps, but no harm was done. We met some nice new people, some nice old people, chatted and drank a sensible amount of Stones -- my cheap bitter of choice at university.
At one point the conversation turned to the Comfort Zone. This is the one usage of the word "comfort" where it is pejorative. If you're buying a sofa, a bed, a house, "comfort" is a good thing. Yet one quite often hears the mantra "you must stay out of your comfort zone". So why is comfort a bad thing? Anyhow, Andy is staying out of his comfort zone by -- commendibly -- switching to a three day week at IBM, to devote time to his pottery business. I wish him the best of luck (and look forward to seeing his pots). I suppose since he has ambitions, he needs to sacrifice comfort in order to acheive them.
I've just done a quick Google for "comfort zone", and I've not found the "drive yourself harder" material I was looking for... if it doesn't involve too much loss of comfort, I may look a little harder soonish.
Astonishingly, when our paltry reserve of Stones was depleted, we thanked Laura for a nice evening, said goodbye to all the nice people, and went home.
DelightDinner had been less filling than planned, so on our way home we felt a kebab was in order. As we rounded the corner of Bath Street, to our delight and astonishment, we saw that Tarsus Kebab had reopened. I find it difficult to emote how happy this makes me. Tarsus was there when I first lived in Leamington, and its Doner Kebabs are among the best I have ever tasted (though not quite up to Shahi Kebab (Handsworth), Kebab Island (Erdington) or the long departed Mr Brit's No. 1 Kebab House, Navigation St. Birmingham). When it closed down recently, it felt like there was a hole in Leamington. It's open, and most of the staff are still there. I left with a small doner and a big grin.
JollyfestThe morning found us driving to Milton Keynes to meet video gaming people from the Internet. Embarassing to type, but rather fun in fact. A number of machines (including my Gamecube, for Wario Ware shenanigans), were set up in the hall area of Bletchley Railwaymen's Club, and we whiled away 6 hours playing each others' games and chatting. Rarities and novelties on show included the Treamcast portable Dreamcast, a rather nifty screenless handheld Megadrive, Defender on Vectrex, and the dreadful and unreleased Flintstones racing game for Dreamcast.
I took a few pictures.
An Evening in Fenny StratfordWe stayed the night in the Campanile hotel in Fenny Stratford, the suburb of The Keynes neighbouring Bletchley. Gary and Marie Claire stayed there too, and we ate a workmanlike meal at the hotel restaurant. The Campanile is staffed almost entirely by French people: I wonder how that can be economical, but I assume they know what they're doing.
After food, the four of us ventured into Fenny Stratford, having a pint in a sterile bar with pretentions, followed by a rough boozer where an old man sang and played rhythm guitar to a backing track which included guitar solos. We ended up in the very pleasant Bull and Butcher, where having called Last Orders at 11:15, the barman popped his head round the corner and intimated that we could stay on if we so wished. Cheers!
Bletchley ParkSince Jollyfest was in Bletchley, and since cryptographic security is part of Gary's and my job, and since it's interesting anyway, it seemed rude not to pay a visit to Bletchley Park.
In keeping with this plan, we had a classic pub lunch (i.e. not a very good one) at the Enigma Tavern, nearby.
Now famous in a mainstream way because of the almost entirely fictional novel and film Enigma, this is the site of the codebreaking operation set up in the run up to the second world war in order to decipher enemy radio messages. The importance of the intelligence gained here is difficult to overstate. The technology developed was so secret, that in order to avoid it falling into Communist hands during the cold war, pretty much everything was destroyed after WW2. This included Colossus, the world's first electronic computer.
A member of our tour group took issue with this claim, muttering to the rest of his party about Babbage's difference engine. He must have not heard the word "electronic".
Expensive labours of love, working reproductions of both the electromechanical codebreaking "Bombe", and Colossus itself were on display, and very grand they were too.
QuizOn our return to Leamington, I cooked some spaghetti, we enjoyed it, and I was looking forward to a nice quiet rest. Then Steve asked us to join his pub quiz team. He did his puppy-dog-eyes routine (as well as can be done over MSN messenger) and we relented. This is how we found ourselves in The Well for the second Sunday running.
Bad news: we only came second.
Good news: first prize was a trip to Paris. Second prize was every team's entrance fee!
Bad news: we only came joint second.
Good news: my cream cracker eating skills left the other tie-breaker contenders reeling.
Not only did we get to share £80 prize money with Steve and Rich, but also we left long before closing time. Hooray!
PermalinkTom and Abbi came to dinner. To me, "fajitas" is the single word that sounds best in a Geordie accent. Talked, ate, drank. Thrashed Tom at Burnout 3 crash mode. Thrashed Tom at Burnout 3 Road Rage mode. Thrashed all comers at Wario Ware Survival Fever. Lost at Wario Ware Othello mode -- but only because of the daft rule where the winner takes on the robot at the end, and if he loses (as I did) he becomes the loser and everyone else wins. Grr.
PermalinkI made a lovely poster out of my Leamington Pubs pictures. (a scaled down preview image of the poster is also on that site).
Rather than just buy one for myself from Photobox at £20, I decided to get 20 in order to qualify for their quantity discount. This means I have 19 to sell. £20 each (since this is what you'd pay if you printed your own singly). £10 if you're a mate (if you read this blog, you probably are), since that's what you'd pay if you got 20 printed like I did. £15 if you're halfway between... Paul thinks I'm profiteering at the expense of my friends, but you understand, don't you?
They're 20x30 inch (508x762mm) matt colour prints, from a file at the very highest resolution their fancy printer can manage. I don't like to blow my own trumpet -- OK, I do -- but they look smashing.
PermalinkSome of us have enjoyed some banter, and some anal documenting of minor changes in Leamington and Warwick, in the Orkut "Warwick and Leamington Spa" community forum.
However, Orkut is a little non-inclusive* , and I stumbled on this 'ere messageboard. It's quiet. Too quiet. What say we all leap in and make some noise?
*I'd prefer to use the word "exclusive" rather than "non-inclusive", but for some reason "exclusive" has favourable connotations to many people, and I wanted it to sound pejorative. See also "proprietary".
PermalinkIt occurred to me last night that the order in which colours are used is not standardised. I think a start could be made by consolidating the colour orders in two important areas: martial arts belts, and snooker.
Hence, once my standard is adopted, trainees will start with a red belt, then progress through yellow, brown, green, blue, pink and finally black belt. This works nicely because the phrase "black belt" has entered the language, and will be unaffected by this change.
This could be an important boost to those who need that little boost to achieve black belt status, since until they do they will have to wear a pink belt. On the other hand, the truly macho may fail to progress from blue to pink.
One downside is that women's martial arts may suffer, since the ladies won't want to achieve black belt status, and lose their pretty pink belts.
If successful, the snooker standard could be applied to other sports, for example the colour of traps in greyhound racing.
PermalinkWe watched Tim Burton's Big Fish last night. During, I found myself strangely unimpressed, chuckling at the odd joke, but not totally satisfied. I think it might be that Santa Sangre set the standard for the exotica of the circus, so this couldn't compete there. Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney -- though both excellent (especially Finney) -- don't have particularly convincing Alabama accents. Nor does that Helena Bonham Carter...
But then, towards the end, it crept up on me, and I found myself genuinely weeping. So in fact it's a great film, and certainly a return to form after Planet of the Apes and even Sleepy Hollow (a self-describing film!).
In fact, dammit. I'm going to assert that Big Fish is a better film than Edward Scissorhands. There, I've done it. Leave my beloved Mars Attacks! out of this.
PermalinkThose bears certainly love to wear hats. No picnic basket is safe chez Vallins these days.
PermalinkHere is a rather interesting speech given by Some Bozo -- to actual record industry bigwigs -- about the futility of trying to staunch P2P music sharing, and how he thinks the music industry could continue to turn a profit in a world where sharing is ubiquitous.
However much one wishes to take the moral high ground, many of us find it so easy to give 100MB of data (approximate size of an album in MP3)... and more importantly so easy to receive that much data when it is handed to us on a plate, that it's almost impossible to avoid "stealing" music.
When this article projects the way we'll share data/music in five years' time, it's exhilarating. I think he's probably right that we'll have devices that fill up with music -- like a TiVo -- wirelessly, without our intervention. I think he's right that this will end up in devices we buy for other reasons, meaning we'll own them despite not making a conscious decision to aquire them.
I'm not sure I can accept his suggestion of a music tax, however. The counterargument "I don't have a car or children, but I pay for your schools and roads. Knowing roads and schools are there is an incentive to join you. It's a public good, [...]" doesn't cut it with me. I already resent seeing licence payers' money pay for BBC kids' TV programs which are all but adverts for bands whos only reason to exist are to leech pocket money from children. I don't see that Westlife are a "public good". I expect there are lots of people who wouldn't view Brain Donor as a "public good". I know which one gets Record Industry backing, and which one you can only buy from one website though.
PermalinkRoger makes fun funk music. Roger might be someone you've heard of.
PermalinkWe just watched Alien: Resurrection. We watched it for completeness. I'd seen it before and didn't remember it as being all that good. Imagine my surprise then, to find myself thoroughly enjoying myself throughout. Top stuff!
I particularly liked Sigourney Weaver's lizard-like demeanour throughout. I liked the action. I liked the dark humour. I liked the Poseidon Adventure tribute.
I think the problems first time around were partly that I hadn't seen all three prequels, and partly that since it was directed by Jeunet of Jeunet and Caro, I wanted a flavour of Delicatessen which would admittedly have been great, but would also have been wholly inappropriate.
PermalinkWhen I read this item about vague patents, I really hoped it would be along the lines of Mark and Lard's Vague News...
"An Apparatus for doing Something or Other with a Kind of Thing".
PermalinkHere's a discovery I should probably have found sooner. TheyWorkForYou.com is a volounteer-run site which digests debates, oral questions and written answers from Hansard (the official record of UK parliament) and presents it in a user-friendly manner. You can find statistics on your own MP's activities, view their recent contributions to the house, and subscribe to an RSS feed of their activities.
You don't need to know your MP's name. You don't even need to know the name of your consituency -- enter your postcode and you're away.
So, now neither James Plaskitt (Hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington) nor Simon Thomas (HMf. Ceredigion) can utter a word in parliament without my hearing about it. One of them works for me. The other, I suppose does not, strictly.
PermalinkI updated my iPod Not Perfect page in response to some comments made by strangers. I also added a comment link for every section, so that people can target their comments more specifically.
I am rather taken aback by the vehemence of some of the comments. I'm very clear on the fact that I don't hold the iPod to be an atrocious example of user interface design. It's just that everything I ever seem to read about it fawns about its " virtually flawless" user interface. All I've done is raise my hand and say that while usable, it's not flawless. It's not perfect.
PermalinkThe Big Cheese at There's Posh has somehow discovered this rather special site that lets you navigate a large collection of photos of West Wales as if you're strolling around.
Here's the view North from just South of the entrance to Mum and Dad's street. The grey building behind the lamp post is Capel y Garn. If you click "left" you see Cardi Cycles -- not "Cardau Cycles" as the site claims.
PermalinkPhil recommends Adblock, a Mozilla extension that filters out adverts.
I'm not so sure. I frequent quite a few web sites that are funded by adverts, and if it weren't for the adverts then either the site would not exist, or we'd have to pay for the content (hint: I wouldn't). If enough of us block ads, they'll no longer represent value for advertiser money, and that revenue will stop coming in.
Some of my own web stuff is indirectly funded by advertising -- a few links off this site are hosted by Tripod. They insert banner ads to each page, top and bottom. Cleverly, these ads are often rather apposite -- see my Deep South diary for an example. Tripod collect revenue for those adverts. If it wasn't for the adverts -- and for a reasonable number of eyes seeing those adverts -- I would have to pay money for the hosting.
Obviously, pop-ups are extraordinarily irritating, but Firefox blocks those anyway. I can live with banner ads: sometimes I'll even click through them and give the website I'm enjoying a little revenue.
PermalinkLast night we watched Alien3. This is the third in a series of films in which the protagonist advocates genocide. Indeed, characters who oppose genocide are portrayed as the bad guys.
True to the film's reputation, it's nowhere near as good as Alien or Aliens. I don't want to blame the director, David Fincher, for this. I think it's down to the script. There are only 25 prisoners on the planet. Apart from Charleses Dance and Dutton, they all remain ciphers until they die. Just a little characterisation, a little individuality, would have improved things greatly. Pete Postlethwaite is in it, for heaven's sake. One of the world's best character actors is given no opportunity to act a character.
The alien is far too reminiscent of a man in a rubber suit too. OK, maybe a somewhat lithe and athletic woman in a rubber suit... which is still not quite the image a terrifying alien should put across.
Oh, and we're never sure what the alien's motivation for killing is. Now you're saying, John, it kills because killing is what it does. But in the previous films, this was not the case. In Aliens, for example, victims were dragged off alive to be parasitic hosts. The aliens' motivation was reproduction.
All whingeing aside, it isn't a bad film. It's just overshadowed by the excellence of its predecessors.
In other news, I have just offended Dan so much, by telling him I don't love Star Wars, that he's stopped talking to me.
Update: A couple of points have come up. Firstly, the new alien's penchant for indiscriminate killing might me something to do with its gestating in a dog rather than a human. Secondly, there is apparently a much better "assembly cut" on DVD, which allows more time for characterisation. A number of the film's faults can be attributed to the fact that Fincher wanted to reshoot some scenes, the studio balked at the cost, so he abandoned ship and all but disowned the film.
PermalinkIn what was supposedly an IBM Club event -- though we recognised no other IBMers -- Debbie and I, Paul, Gary and MC went to Warwick Racecourse for the day. I forgot to take my camera. Again.
Debbie and I set an early budget of £30 between us -- amounting to a £2.50 each way bet for each of the six races. Early success allowed us to double that to a £2.50 each way bet each on the last two races. In the last race, my horse Bojangles came in first, with Debbie's Gustavo coming in second, a length behind.
I believe our winnings more or less covered our admission, bar bills, our tasty pie in the Old Fourpenny Shop, pre-race charity shop book buying, bus fare in and taxi home.
More or less. Hurray!
PermalinkI have no problems, but if I did, I would contact Good Advice for All. Whoever provides the advice seems to have their head screwed on.
PermalinkA menu is framed in our canteen. I quote parts of it below, verbatim. Lynn Truss would be proud. So would Norman Tebbitt.
I upgraded my Web browser from Firefox 0.9 to Firefox 1.0 Preview Release today.
Mostly everything ticks along as nicely as it used to. Two changes I've noticed, and liked are:
I also got Thunderbird 0.8, Firefox's news and email counterpart. This adds RSS support. I played with this for a while, but it's not mature enough just yet, so I'm sticking with Bloglines for now.
PermalinkToday's Guardian has a really depressing reality check on how things are going in Iraq.
PermalinkAfter a lateish evening in the office, I didn't even go home. I went straight to the Willoughby to meet Debbie and Gavin, before seeing Open Water at the Apollo.
Tip, if you go: minimise all risk of needing the loo during the film. I took a precautionary visit before going in, but even so, all that sloshing around on screen forced me out for a second visit.
It's filmed on digital video, and certainly the equipment they used isn't as high quality as film (unlike, say, the DV stuff they use for new Star Wars films!). The graininess put me off for a while, but I soon got used to it.
Everyone queries how interesting it can possibly be to watch two people bobbing around in an environment with no scenery for an hour -- and to be perfectly honest, while it's nowhere near as dull as it sounds, and it holds your attention throughout, it's not bombarding you with new sensations and ideas like a traditional film either.
You're wondering throughout how they're going to pull a realistic and satisfactory ending out of it. All I can tell you is that it's certainly unexpected.
PermalinkLast night, I signed on to Xbox Live, to try my hand at broadband online gaming. The game: Burnout 3.
Because our only phone socket is in the kitchen -- a long way from the TV -- we rely on wireless networking, and so the Xbox plugged into the wireless bridge normally reserved for the TiVo.
Signing on was not problematic, although entering all your details using an onscreen keyboard takes forever. It wasn't long before I was racing against strangers. Strangely, it looked as if they were talking (VU meters against their names in the pre-race menus) but there was no sound from my headset.
I disconnected then reconnected, and joined an "Optimatch(TM)" game -- supposedly against people of similar ranking to me. They were all foul-mouthed Americans, and after a couple of races I disconnected, and instead found a UK lobby, where I played Road Rage (wreck everyone else's car) with some South Walians ("serious").
Technically this is all very nice, but playing games against strangers with no social or competitive context does little for me. I look forward to playing with people I know, or maybe taking part in some kind of structured competition (preferably a minor league for low-skilled players...)
Here is my Burnout 3 Profile
PermalinkBlair turned up for coffee this afternoon -- "still carrying" his last five Yorkie bars -- bearing what might be the country's most effeminate coffee time snack: Sveltesse
"Liberate your belly button" quoth the packaging. Come on Blair -- get it out.
PermalinkChris, MD of Pug Fugly Games (new game, ChainSpace is intriguing!), and his lovely wife Rae came to visit.
In the evening, we invited some more people around, had a few drinks, argued about music, and eventually -- inevitably -- got Singstar out. There's a sequel out soonish. Can't wait. Photos were taken. Someone suggested (correctly) that when singing "The Ace of Spades", a tequila should be slammed in between "I don't wanna live forever" and "... and don't forget the Joker". This concept was (wrongly) extended to other songs. Maracas were produced. A good time was had by all.
I also want to plug the Things Floating Past gallery, since it's up to 11 floating items now.
Edit: According to GameFAQs, Singstar Party is out on October 22nd. However, it only shows up under "Also due this quarter" on the November page of Sony's release calendar. Fingers crossed it'll be ready for Rae and Chris's halloween party.
Edit 2: Amazon says November 5th. Shame.
PermalinkHere is a list of films with nothing in particular in common.
I have to respond to Debbie's accusation that I've decided I'm English not Welsh. I cling to my dual nationality.
However, I fully admit to not getting the hang of this supporting - your - team - through - thick - and - thin lark, and I don't really see the point of rooting for Wales when it's clear they're as likely to qualify for the World Cup as Leamington Brakes are to win the FA Cup. Judging by last night's performance both N. Ireland and Wales will crumble when faced with a real football team. In the unlikely event of either qualifying, they'll just humiliate themselves in the first round and make their country a laughing stock.
At least if I support England I can take part in some herd mentality when we watch it in the pub.
Of course, I can't support England against Wales. When they meet I will be a disinterested observer (unless England need the win to qualify -- in which case the polite thing would be for Wales to throw it.)
There. I've posted about Sport, against type. But at the same time I've ably demonstrated that I don't really understand it. Neat.
PermalinkBloglines watches blogs for me. It also keeps an eye out for any blog entries containing "Leamington". Mostly these days that means status reports on the World Women's Bowls.
Today though, it's brought up an interview with one Miss Frenchie, who is apparently resident DJ at Sugar in Leamington.
She's done some OK bootlegs: two at the bottom of the linked page.
PermalinkWe watched James Cameron's Aliens last night (while, unbeknownst to us, a pished up Amber bombarded my MSN Messenger), having watched Alien a few nights ago. It's really very good you know. I later found out that the special edition DVD we watched is the best bet, with some nice background about Ripley's daughter dying (age 65) while Ripley was in stasis, some very tense scenes of remote sentries using up ammo, and other things...
Aliens was made in 1986, and it's interesting to see how they imagined technology would progress (not that I'm sure when Aliens or Alien are meant to be set -- only that there is 57 years between them). Mankind has achieved a lot in the field of space travel; they scoot around the far reaches of the galaxy in enormous starships (the Nostromo was worth £47M ... a lot of money in 1986...), they routinely use video chat. However, most of their computer interfaces consist of green text on black (like my Linux desktop!) -- there is nothing akin to a window (unlike my Linux desktop). The video chat shows analogue distortion. It is on a fixed, but small (10" maybe) CRT screen. The marines have clunky big analogue video cameras mounted on the sides of their helmets -- way bigger than the average camera phone today.
So the makers of Alien(s) didn't forsee the miniaturisation and proliferation of digital technology and comms. Who could have expected them to?
As it happens, though, earlier in the evening I picked up The Media Lab by Stuart Brand, to browse while I was, um, otherwise engaged. I've had this book since 1989, when it was an enthralling account of the future as predicted by Nicholas Negroponte and his cronies at the MIT Media Lab.
So, like Alien, it's interesting to see what they got wrong and what they got right -- and the surprise here is that they got an awful lot right. They predicted the convergence of entertainment, computing and communication. Their experiments in multimedia are an eerily accurate vision of what the Web is today (Hypertext! Sound! -- Brand is very excited by this. Video -- Brand is astonished). MIT researchers were doing fancy stuff with video and graphics on multi-million dollar computers, stuff which the madmen at b3ta pull off in their coffee breaks nowadays.
The Media Lab spends some time discussing how "Information Wants to be Free" -- when it's easy to transmit information, it's very difficult to limit its dissemination. This accurately predicts not only the shady Warez scene, and P2P filesharing, but also the respectable Open Source phenomenon.
So, um, well done Cameron et al for a good action film, and well done Negroponte and MIT for predicting (and presumably shaping) the future.
PermalinkGame gave me a demo disk of Xbox Out Run 2, in exchange for a £3 deposit on the full version, which comes out in October.
It really is exactly what you'd want a modern sequel to Out Run to be. Bright, breezy music, pretty skies, and very fast driving.
The demo limits you to arcade mode and just one three-stage route. There is also Xbox Live play, but I'm not subscribing just for the sake of a demo.
PermalinkTo celebrate Mike and Kate's birthdays, Debbie and I went to Alton Towers with Tracy and Chelsea. OK, Mike, Kate, and all sorts of other people were there too, and we did see them there briefly, but for the most part we were a hardcore four-person team.
A good time was had by all, except for Chelsea's disappointment at not being tall enough for some of the rides. If you eat your crusts, Chelsea, maybe you'll grow 5cm by the next time you visit.
I think we were the last of the group to come home, and we didn't get much rest before heading out to Zest for the remainder of Kate and Mike's celebrations.
PermalinkIn preparation for our trip to Madrid, we bought books. I went straight for the three-for-two new paperbacks section, and bought three new paperbacks. They only charged me for two. I got started on the plane, read two and started a third during the holiday. I just finished the third, so let me tell you about them...
I found this to be a very easy-going and unchallenging read, but to be perfectly honest, Nigel Slater's childhood just isn't that interesting.
The gimmick here is that every chapter is a foodstuff, and his memories are triggered by their taste or their smell. Hence, he can make up for the somewhat mundane story, with some daring structure. But even in this he fails, because there are occasional non-food chapter headings. I was left feeling that my appetite hadn't been fully satisfied. That's the kind of clever-clever comment real reviewers put in, isn't it?
Now, this is more like it. It's still a very easy read -- many classify it as a children's book. We are introduced to the world as seen through the eyes of a 15 year old with Asperger's Syndrome.
It's fascinating to find out how such a person thinks, and one presumes that it's all been very carefully researched. For a story about an emotionally detached mind, it is a deeply emotional story -- about the effect such a troublesome child has on a marriage.
After finishing it I lent it to Suzanne, who is going to be teaching an autistic child. It turns out Aspergers is a specialised form of autism, so what Suzanne learns from this book may or may not apply.
The reviews were glowing, but could they be trusted?
This one was a little more challenging. I was able to read the other two books in a Madrid holiday appartment full of distractions. For D.B.C Pierre I needed a little peace and quiet to concentrate. This is mostly because of the dense and colourful language.
Vernon God Little is a vernacular monologue somewhat in the vein of Catcher in the Rye or Catch 22. I'd go so far as to say it's a better book than either (but this may be to do with it being set in an era with which I can identify).
Vernon Gregory Little is a schoolboy who is implicated in a Columbine-style mass shooting. We follow his thoughts as he copes with being accused of murders committed by his troubled -- now dead -- friend. As well as exploring Vernon's slightly twisted philosophy, the book also deals with what happens when reality TV and justice collide. It's thought provoking, tragic and laugh out loud funny in equal measure.
PermalinkAs I walked across the IBM site from bus to entrance, I heard the Captain Pugwash theme carried on the wind. From where and for what reason, I don't know.
PermalinkIf everyone -- everyone -- in Breeze were to stop dancing the moment any Phil Spector got played, and remained motionless and unsmiling throughout Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, then maybe -- just maybe -- they would take the hint and try something different the following week.
Join me, please.
PermalinkHere is a musician whos only instrument is Perl. He performs by editing perl scripts live on stage. He has his own text editor which executes the perl in the buffer without needing to save it. Some of his scripts edit themselves, giving progress reports in the form of comments in the code... I find this concept invigorating.
There are no samples to download however, so whether it's a cacophony or not, I can't tell you.
PermalinkNow that Goldie Lookin' Chain mania is subsiding (too mainstream... must remain interested until the Birmingham show, since we have tickets), it's time for a new Internet music obsession.
Chenard Walcker is a mad French cut & paste merchant. All a bit Big Chill, but I think it could be worth getting into. No decent catchphrases though. You knows it.
PermalinkGary is excited
about a character called Johnny Theremin. People on
this site seem to think Johnny Theremin is hard-boiled gumshoe.
I however see him as an energetic character who dances about
like a loon. He stars in a videogame where the player plays
theramin using a dedicated peripheral. Yes, like Samba de
Amigo, only with a theremin instead of maracas.
Note, I can't do hands.
Edit: and here is the peripheral required...
PermalinkI will allow Debbie to document in full the complete weirdness of last night.
For now, suffice to say there was skulking in bushes, the wrong side of a locked park gate, frenzied SMS negotiation resulting in a spectacular climbdown by the terrorists, triggered by our not insubstantial wit.
We only negotiate with terrorists when we know we have the upper hand...
PermalinkThat grammar checking thing was of course a collaborative achievement with Gary. I'm pleased to say that Ruth's Dave appreciated it too. However I had another stroke of genius all of my own. This time it's not funny, it's good.
I frequently want to drag and drop images into applications, but while the images are likely to be stored at 5 Megapixel resolution -- about 1MB -- for the purposes of this application I would like them at some lower resolution. A good example is when showing the image to someone on MSN Messenger. A 1MB file takes far too long to transfer, and a 640x480 picture at under 100KB would be fine.
Currently, I therefore have to resize the image in some other application, save the smaller image in a temporary file, drag this to the application, then remember to delete the temporary file.
It would be a much nicer interface if I could browse full size image files in an Explorer window (or something that looked like one), and when I dragged and dropped, the image would be resized on the fly. The exact nature and parameters for the conversion would be set in a dialogue available from the menu bar.
I am not a Windows programmer. Does anyone know of any software that does this, or nearly this? Or does anyone know how one would approach writing such a beast? Is Explorer extensible enough that it could be made to do this?
Edit: Apparently if you right-click an image in Windows XP, and select "send as email", it will prompt you to either send the file as-is or scale it -- so that's a step in the right direction.
PermalinkI have possibly perfected the Daquiri.
For two Daquiris: 2 fresh limes, 2 teaspoons of sugar syrup, 80ml gold rum. Shake well with ice -- so you get tiny shards of broken off ice -- and strain into martini glasses.
There's not a lot to it, but we've used white rum and caster sugar in the past, and gold rum and syrup make all the difference.
Edit: err, Juice of 2 fresh limes...
PermalinkWe watched Scooby Doo 2 tonight, since the first one was so good. This one has its moments (the gang is suck in a trap for unwelcome callers. The camera reveals a girl scout: "Would you like to buy a cookie?". The camera further reveals some evangelists: "Have you heard the good news?". Scooby says "Ryeah! Rere are Rookies!") ... but it's not a worthy sequel.
P.S. Which bridge in which park?
PermalinkWe went out this afternoon and photographed another 17 pubs, bringing the total to 74 and, I believe, every pub and nightclub in Leamington. Here they are.
There are some establishments that are a little hard to classify: Sip, Toyk and to a lesser extent Stresa might be pubs, or they might be cafes. Toyk especially is licenced, but has no bar service: just table service. Stresa serves beer and cocktails from a bar, so it's probably fine. Sip's signage claims it is a "bar + coffee shop", but it does not keep normal pub hours.
Today's outing was particularly interesting, since I'd never seen several of the Northeast Leamington pubs before. A sudden shower gave us an excuse to pop into the Somerville for a nice IPA each. Between the Black Horse and the Holly Bush, we stumbled on Campion Hills, with its fantastic view across Leamington and its strong potential for picnics and kite flying.
So, the project is basically complete. I may revisit some of these pubs where the light conditions were not ideal, or where I took the photo in portrait orientation -- because all landscape would tile better on a poster.
Although we don't generally like to talk about feelings... I feel pretty good about reaching this milestone.
PermalinkWe spent a very pleasant time with hordes of family at Una and Glenn's home in Monmouth. I forgot to take my camera, which is a great shame, and odd because I've been taking it everywhere recently.
On our return, we found a note in the "Ransom" font reading:
WE HAVE
SInGSTAR IF
yOu WAnT TO
HEAR IT SIng
AgAIN WE
dEmAnd 1
mILLIOn quId
OR A PHOTO OF
A KITTEn, A
BIg BAg OF SWEETS And A
COPY OF
TWInKLE. WE
WILL EXCHAngE
On TuESdAy BE
On THE BRIdgE
In THE PARK
AT 9PM
We do not negotiate with terrorists.
PermalinkSo goodbye then, Mark -- for whom the giant screen in Breeze displayed in dazzling moving text "BIG UP TO" ... "BAD" ... "BAD BAD MARK BROWN" ... "ON YOUR LEAVING DO".
Also, goodbye to Tom, in a way -- although his leaving IBM only means he'll be on one Instant Message service rather than two.
Yesterday, we attented a lunch to mark Tom's leaving, ably organised by his resource manager Dave. We balked at spending all afternoon at the pub, and instead I picked up Tom and Abbi in the evening, bagging a photo of the Coventry Arms on the way. 57. We played some Wario Ware Inc., some Mario Golf and a very little Singstar before moving on to TJ's (ruined by its dreadful sound system, turned up too loud) and The Jug.
We're off to Monmouth now.
PermalinkIdea: a plugin for Word's grammar checker which indicates a potential grammar problem if you use the word "invited" without preceding it with the word "cordially".
Gary had the idea. I am copyrighting it.
PermalinkI have some Gmail invitations to give out. If you know me, and you want one, just ask. Do think about privacy before embracing Gmail, though. I have, and I use it anyway.
PermalinkI was meant to be back at work today, but when I crawled out of bed and decided to work from home for the morning, my manager expressed surprise (via instant messaging) that I was back at work. So I asked for an extra day's holiday, and got it.
I spent the morning putting holiday snaps online. In the afternoon we went to Big W in Coventry to replace a broken mirror. Their mirrors are cheap. Afterwards, we drove around Leamington mopping up some outstanding pubs. Outstanding as in "not yet photographed", that is...
Today's tally is 7: New Binswood, Star and Garter, Woodland, Heathcote, Windmill, Wheatsheaf, and the Green Man. The Green Man was tricky to find. When I did find it, a chavette on a bike asked why I was photographing the pub -- loudly, across the street -- and was then keen to know whether I'd done the Grist Mill yet. It's on my list.
Running total: 56
PermalinkSteve very kindly checked up on our flat while we were away. We got a text message from him saying there was a sweet stand in our hallway - but then he also told us our goldfish was dead (we don't have one) and that the otters in the conservatory were doing well.
So we were still a little nonplussed to find this in our
communal area:
It turns out to belong to Adrian from upstairs. He's moved it off his damp, recently shampooed carpet.
PermalinkWe flew home yesterday, having had a great time: but I need time to recover.
I started keeping a diary, but it petered out. Instead, here are pictures of Ajay and Iciar's wedding, Segovia and everything else.
PermalinkThis afternoon we were meant to walk around the Northeast corner of Leamington photographing pubs. We didn't feel up to it. Instead, we went to Victoria Park with Tracy, Chelsea and Ian. I did get one pub photographed: The Cricketers. 49 so far. Gotta catch 'em all.
PermalinkI had some ASX. It worked so well that not only did I mop up the spilt wine, but I did some ivy pruning too!
PermalinkWe took a trip to The Keynes yesterday, primarily to buy clothes to wear at Ajay's wedding. I will be smart. Debbie will be beautiful.
When we got home, I put some chicken to marinade, and we sat in the conservatory reading and being generally civilised, planning to remain civilised for the rest of the evening.
Then our neighbour Steve called over from his garden, where he was drinking wine with Rich, and two new people: Lauren and Sarah. Before we knew it we were in the Hogshead. Vague, blurry things happened, and by 1 AM 10 (nice) people were in our house playing Singstar. I got to bed before many of them.
Nothing appears to be stolen, but there is a broken bottle in a puddle of wine in the conservatory.
PermalinkI got off the bus from work early, and I took a long and winding walk home, passing 16 pubs as varied in location and style as the White Horse and The Joiners Arms. Total is up to 48.
PermalinkWe were lured to Rio's last night, and actually had a surprisingly good time.
Getting up proved difficult this morning. Already late, when I got to the bus stop, I could see there was no bus on the horizon, so I walked to the next stop for a photo of Kelsey's. I gambled by crossing the road for a shot of the Royal Exchange, and lost: the bus I missed is in the photo I used.
With ten minutes to kill, I walked past the BBC (Breeze Bar and Club) and got yet another photo. 3 new pictures. 32 so far.
PermalinkI bagged another four on the way home: Moorings and Tiller Pin by car, then Sun in Splendour and Debonair on foot.
PermalinkBefore dinner, we went for a stroll down the canal, then back along various streets, bagging photos of another 11 pubs, making a total of 25 to date.
PermalinkWe went to see "I, Robot" at the newly refurbished Apollo last night. I'd been led to expect something quite bad, but I thought it was excellent: never boring, good action, far more intelligent than a summer blockbuster deserves to be. Certainly there were silly things (why is "decomissioning" a robot such an elaborate procedure, when smashing their head apart seems quite effective), but nothing too jarring, and all pretty much justified when the payout comes out later.
We had a pre-cinema drinks in the Willoughby, and I photographed all pubs, nightclubs and bars en-route, in order to start work on what should become a comprehensive Leamington Pubs Photo Archive.
PermalinkRichard Herring has completed CNPS. He must feel great. It's worth reading his earlier posts to see how serious CNPS is played: we don't go too far out of our way looking for numbers. He takes notes and devotes whole weekends to the game.
PermalinkHere is a potentially handy set of pictures of Warwickshire pubs. It's far from complete though. This could be perceived as a challenge.
PermalinkYou can all stop hassling me now: here are the pictures of Laura's boozy, laid back, millinery coup of a birthday party, in the Bowling Green's rather lovely beer garden.
PermalinkYesterday we celebrated Chelsea's birthday by going bowling then having a barbeque in Newbold Comyn.
Then we had a short time to recover before going to Chloe's 80s themed party, which it transpired was a birthday party. Happy birthday Chloe!
Those links are to picture galleries
PermalinkOn Wednesday, Laura borrowed our house, and us, and our neighbour, in order to hold her Murder Mystery party, set on mysterious Misty Island -- which we took to mean Hawaii. Here are some pictures.
In addition, I've started a gallery of things floating past our house.
PermalinkThis seems rather nice, if you're a gmail user.
PermalinkEmboldened by the graph paper experiments, we braved the crowds in Ikea, and came back with some shelves, a nifty planter, a plant, and some miscellaneous tat.
I put up half the shelves: easy does it.
We watched The Matrix: Revolutions in the evening, which was dismal.
PermalinkSaturday Evening: watched Goodbye Lenin -- in which a young man attempts to hide the reuinification of East and West Germany from his mother, who's come out of a coma and might not survive a surprise. It wasn't the laugh riot we'd been expecting from the trailer: it was better than that. Re-watching the trailer on the DVD, we found no reasonable grounds to say it was misleading.
I highly recommend it: it seems as if foreigners get all the best films. It has nothing at all to do with Gadael Lenin, with which I keep confusing the title.
PermalinkSaturday: went to town; bought some graph paper; left both Fopp and Game empty-handed; planted pots in small conservatory; used graph paper and scissors to ascertain that a certain configuration of Billy shelves would fit neatly into a living room alcove.
PermalinkMum and Dad came to visit on Wednesday evening, and stayed until this morning. Ruth made a flying visit on Wednesday too, because she was attending a conference in Birmingham.
We had a nice meal in Zest with Mum and Dad on Thursday, and on Friday I took the day off, we had lunch in the Falcon, and I got sage parental advice in a garden centre. Mum took to cleaning the ivy leaves in the consevatory with vigour.
Dad thrashed all of us at Settlers of Catan.
PermalinkLast night eight of us went to see The Station Agent at the Stratford Picture House.
It had a trestle bridge in it, which is a plus point in my book.
In some ways it reminded me of The Music of Chance: rural American setting, slim storyline, lots of character and situational stuff... Nice.
PermalinkOn this page, Cake will be streaming a song per week of their new album "Pressure Chief". If anything this will temper my excitement, by keeping me grounded in reality and keeping my expectations in check.
I've not developed an opinion about this week's track, "Wheels" yet: I'm sure like everything they've done it will be a grower.
PermalinkBrowsing my local sets of pictures, Debbie pointed out that I never put the pictures of our trip to the Eastern bits of the USA last year. So here they are.
PermalinkI went kiteboarding on Warwick racecourse with Tom this afternoon. Tom got the hang of it towards the end. I have video evidence. I also have video evidence of myself looking like an uncoordinated clot. When fotopic start hosting video (soon apparently) these may go online.
PermalinkOn the way to an unsuccessful forage for really cheap furniture in Coventry, we stopped for a picnic at Ryton Pools Country Park. We've never been before and it was pretty. The area where we sat looks like a good kiting venue too: I must try it out.
We went with Paul and Simon to find out what Warwick was like during the Folk festival. We infiltrated the Conservative Club for our first drink, and came out feeling a bit dirty. We failed to dress warmly enough to watch the outdoor stage on the Square, so instead we listened to amateurs "seshing" at the Zetland, the Roebuck and the New Bowling Green.
At the New Bowling Green I showed these folkies how to do it, when a 12 string guitar was forced upon me. Played them some Julian Cope. That'll larn 'em.
PermalinkYou can legally download MP3s of the Super Furry Animals' Slow Life EP. "Slow Life" is the best track on the album Phantom Power, and "Motherfokker" is their Goldie Lookin' Chain collaboration, so you can't go far wrong.
PermalinkMae'r cwmni meddalwedd "Meddal" wedi creu fersiwn Cymraeg o'r pecyn swyddfa "OpenOffice".
( The software company "Meddal" has created a Welsh version of the "OpenOffice" office package.)
PermalinkAfter the delights of his robot cats, Chris has unveiled the Pug Fugly games site, on which resides not only Robot Cats, but also Ambush in Sector 9 and a preview of The Adventures of Oliver Periwig.
My favourite bit of the site is in the description of Ambush: "Well, clearly Dirk is doomed."
PermalinkI was wondering whether Warning Forever would be improved by treating it as a console game, so I dug out my USB joypad, and the cables to hook my laptop up to the TV.
Conclusions: lots of fun, but it's not improved my hiscore.
Recommended controller mappings:| Movement: | Digital pad |
| Fire: | Lowest button |
| Change weapon: | Some other button -- who cares, you only use it once at the start of the game... |
| Slow movement: | Right shoulder button |
Today we watched the start of the Leamington Rotary Club's raft race in Jeffson Gardens, and I took some photos.
PermalinkI reverse engineered the Warning Forever hi score file. On the one hand, this means that if I wanted to I could falsify scores. On the other hand, it means I can extract the scores (and other stats) to HTML and publish them.
Now, if only I were good enough that my scores were worth publicising...
PermalinkOne day after I mentioned the exclusive Beta-testing programme, Chris has finished Attack of the Robot Cats from Mars. Since the version we've been playing, he's added sound and music, a hi-score table, the second-smallest cats do a little roll when you hit them the first time (if they're descending), and there's a nifty effect at the Game Over screen, which I saw too soon.
It's the best game ever written in a non-professional capacity by anyone I know, and you can download it here or here.
I will update with a hi-score when I'm satisfied with one.
(Promised update) I am ashamed of my hi-score, so all I'm going to say is that I'd love to reach 40,000 but I can't.
(Update 2) OK, I beat 40,000: 57,650. But Debbie got 106,550!
PermalinkWe played quite a lot of Chris's unfinished "Attack of the Robot Cats from Mars", and this prompted me to rediscover Warning Forever, a magnificent and innovative free Japanese shoot 'em up.
I don't think I ever gave it the attention it deserves. 6,141,800 is my top score so far. I'm sure you can all beat that. It's important to realise that the "D" key switches to a different weapon, so you can shoot from any direction.
PermalinkI stumbled on some pictures of my very own 30th birthday party, that I'd not seen before, on Dan's photo gallery.
(Update) It seems some people haven't seen Dave's pictures of that weekend either.
PermalinkI got into a nasty habit of starting one book before finishing the previous one, so I made everything right by finishing three I had on the go this week.
It's high concept! The Minotaur was not killed in the Labyrinth by Theseus -- he struck a deal and snuck out the back, and now he lives in the USA working as a chef and doing lots of car repairs. This is very easy reading, but being Literature with a capital "L", I'm not sure what it's about: Isolation? Prejudice? Romance? All of the above and more...
I have no idea where this came from. I quickly scanned the bookshelf (read: area of floor around a living room alcove) for something to take to Glastonbury in case of boredom, and there it was. Maybe it was a gift. Maybe someone left it with us by accident. Who knows?
It's a page-turner, anyhow. The back cover compares it to The Beach, and of course that will sell copies. All it has in common is a student-age protagonist and a developing world beach setting (Kenya here, not Thailand as in The Beach) for some of the time.
I'd compare it to The Magus, though. Both are tales of a young man drawn into layer upon onion-like layer of deception, led mainly by lust. There are nice references to Game Theory and it's applicability in real life. Richard Dawkins is namechecked both in the text and in the author's thanks. At one point my heart was racing at the sheer audacity of the deception, good work for the printed word.
Sean Condon is my discovery. Mine I tell you.
We bought Drive Thru America -- his travelogue of a drive around the USA with his mate David -- while researching our Route 66 trip, and from it we learned very little about America, but we laughed a lot in the process.
This led us to Sean and David's Long Drive, an earlier account of a drive around his local Australia with the same David. It's not as interesting, and not quite as funny -- probably because the roads of the Australian outback are not as interesting or funny as the USA, and of course he was still honing his skills in hilarity.
My 'Dam Life is about 3 years spent with his life living in Amsterdam. It's laugh out loud funny in places, but it has a sort of melancholy heart, since they are constantly threatened by residency laws and unstable employment status. Toilets in Amsterdam apparently have "inspection shelves". Handy!
That's enough reading for a while. Big Brother and When Buildings Fall Down for me! (Although the former is said to be inspired by some book or other).
PermalinkWe spent a very pleasant weekend visiting Chris and Rae at their new home in Blackwood, Gwent. It was their Bow wedding anniversary, so I gave Chris a 3 litre bottle of Bow to celebrate. And a pastry brush.
Many balloons were admired, much Singstar was played, and much jelly was consumed on Saturday night, when their deviant friends all came around for a combined housewarming and anniversary party.
Pictures (not many)
Queasy from Malibu Pineapple, I tried a McDonald's salad for Sunday Lunch and it was OK. Pretty greasy, mind you...
A moderately successful visit to Cardiff Ikea finished off the weekend. Ajay has still not provided me with evidence that Ikea is evil enough to boycott, and a cursory Google came up with nothing (Searching for "I Hate Ikea" just gets me a page where someone complains about the performance of the ikea.com website). Consequently, I get to buy a nice Hemnes chest of drawers with a clear conscience.
PermalinkWe went to the newly opened "Mumbai Bluu" bar in Leaminton last night, which used to be the Coach and Horses. I've posted my impressions in the Orkut "Warwick and Leaminton Spa" community forum, because I am a community minded man.
On the way out we met our neighbour Jo for the first time (having lived below her for 5 months). She seems nice, and she works at Warwickshire College.
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