Life-enriching
29/10/2007
I cannot recommend strongly enough that you go over to the bbc electric proms before November 4th. If you have a laptop at your disposal, I think the very best thing you could do would be to curl up in bed, turn off all the lights, and let Sigur Rós transport you to a better world... The 45minute set that you can stream from that link is the first time I've had the chance to see them perform a live set, and the sheer emotion is breathtaking. Perhaps what astounded me most was that, despite creating such a beautiful world for us in that 45 minutes, the vulnerability on Jonsi's face is palpable. Beautiful people... No wonder I'm so in love with Iceland.
Go now. If you want to read the rest of this that's fine, but it's not nearly as important.
Dont trust the setlist on that page - either it's in the wrong order, or they've cleverly re-cut the video so it doesn't match... Either way, if you fall in love with any particular track, I'm afraid you wont be able to work out from that what it's called. One thing that interested me was that it was undoubtedly filmed in the style of a classical concert - wide shots slowly zooming in on a performer, long slow pans, gradual focussing and de-focussing. Sigur Rós do seem to cause a problem for people that want to pigeon-hole everything, and that's got to be a good thing ;-).
Going back one step, I suppose that the perceptible lack of confidence of their front-man, while hugely endearing to people who're already fans, probably doesn't lead to people being quickly converted... Tho I suppose the nature of the music is that it doesn't shock you into loving it, and the nature of the band reflects that. But regardless, I love em ;-)
A tick in that box
25/10/2007
Rather a dull "what I did today" type post this time, but it's the sort of thing that probably merits recording. Took me driving theory test this evening - no trouble at all, so that's one step closer to being able to go and see my friends :-D
Lord of stickers
22/10/2007
Blimey... After all these years, I've finallly gone to a real job. I spent this morning at WHSmiths, and for the large part of my shift I was peeling off stickers that had the weekend's offers on them, then replacing them with new stickers for this weeks offers. I know, exciting innit. I feel I have now mastered everything they could throw at me in that respect :-) For now, tho, it feels good to be doing something, rather than rotting at home all day - although I suppose I've now reached a new world: the world where people worry about putting stuff about work on the internet... Although I can't think of anything I've done or will be doing that would be confidential/controversial/conspiratorial (or anything else beginning with con), you never know... There is, of course, the embargoed book shelf, but I dont think it'd be going too far to reveal that, ermm, there's nothing on there at the moment.
Oooh, just thought of something that I shouldn't tell you... That makes me feel much better (even if it is just the code for the doors :-S).
Fighting ghosts with butterflies
15/10/2007
Now that is a hell of a poetic title. What it denotes, though, is that I've been rediscovering the greatness of the original Pokémon games (red and blue) over the weekend. They really are the defining game for gameboy as far as I'm concerned (although I'm hardly a hardcore gamer... I own all of 7 games for the gameboy, and haven't played any of them for at least a year). But every time I leave it for a while, I come back to Pokémon and wonder why I haven't been playing it. Yeah the graphics are shocking (red and blue were designed for the original, black and white, gameboy - on the gameboy colour you just get most of the black replaced with shades of red :-S). Yeah, the grammar is shocking (every time the word "but" is used it has to be followed with a comma). And yeah, it's a little difficult to see why the character would chose to follow through the story... But none of that matters. Even when you've played it all the way through a dozen times, there's still enough new and interesting to not to notice that you've been here before - this time round I've even discovered a new little glitch in the game, which apparently lets you catch the mythical mew, thought to be impossible to find...
There are only a few games that I know that would stand in the same league. The James Bond Goldeneye game on N64 was the defining game for that console. Sonic on the MasterSystem - or better yet, Cosmic Spacehead, tho that one is a great secret: if anyone knows of an emulator to play it without tracking down both the game and a (working) MasterSystem then I'd love to hear about it. But none of them define a period quite as well as Pokémon. Between the gameboy game, the cards, and the TV series it dominated primary school for a good few years, and with good reason. Well, the TV series did suck, but the card game is still fun.
And anyway, where else do you get to say that your WARTORTLE is super-effective against things as diverse as VULPIX and GEODUDE? (No, I don't know why the names have to be in block caps either).
Another bloomin' power cut
12/10/2007
I don't know if any of you are familiar with the short film in which father christmas goes off for a holiday, returning with something akin to resignation to "another bloomin' Christmas". Good fun - see it if you get the chance. This is a roundabout way of saying "sorry if you couldn't get on the site today (around 4:30 - 6:00 this afternoon) - we had a power cut :-(". Really need to get round to buying a UPS...
Banned books
8/10/2007
Slashdot brings news of a sad, screwed up 17 year old who's been arrested on terrorism charges. What bothers me is that one of the two charges he's facing "relates to the collection or possession of information useful for the preparation of an act of terrorism". Apparently he had a copy of The Anarchists' Cookbook, which is by all accounts pretty useless as a reference manual - anyone trying to make the explosives described is much more likely to end up with their bedroom, and quite possibly their body, seriously redecorated than with a viable explosive (see some of the reviews on amazon, for example). But if "possession of information useful for the preparation of an act of terrorism" is a crime, then the Anarchists' Cookbook is illegal.
Now it seems that this particular kid was arrested more for the bomb making materials under his bed than for the book itself - and while he was probably (knowing 17 year-olds as I do) just trying to have a laugh, after a visit to Pakistan isn't a very clever time. So yeah, although he was pretty damn incompetent, he probably merited arresting. But that's not what this is about. The first of his charges, "possession of material for terrorist purposes", is arguably fair enough. But I'm seriously worried about the law if it is such that the second charge can be brought - it is a criminal offense to own a book, if it can be argued that it is "useful for the preparation of an act of terrorism". But a street map is "useful for the preparation of an act of terrorism"... God knows my A-level chemistry textbook contained far more useful information on making explosives than the Anarchists' Cookbook. And obviously, unlike if there were simply a list of banned books, you'll never know what you're not allowed until you're arrested for having it.
Anyone else get worried once the government has the power to limitlessly supress freedom of information?
What I'd love would be a list of all the books the home office thinks shouldn't be freely available. Firstly so that I could read them and, if at all possible, protect them by putting a copy on a server in a country that respects personal freedom... Unfortunately it's becomming increasingly difficult to think of one... Secondly to protect people from exactly the risk I've just described. And lastly because we could finally see their real position, and no amount of spin could defend that, at least to those of us that aren't taken in by terrorist paranoia.
And just a thought, but maybe, just possibly, if you think that anyone with the Anarchists' Cookbook is probably planning a terrorist attack, it might just be a good idea to, oh I dunno, do something about the fact that it's available from the world's biggest bookshop. Or maybe it's not really a dangerous book, but a convenient excuse.
pTerry
7/10/2007
The extra bonus yesterday was coming home to discover that some friends had called to offer me the chance to see Terry Pratchett speak. I'm sure you'll all have heard me talk several times about how much I love his books, and you'll probably also remember me posting about going to Discworld fan events down in Wincanton. In fact I've been to 3, and on each occasion I've either been there at the wrong time, or Mr P has had to pull out, so I'd never heard him speak. In the end, he came to me instead :-)
He was, of course, excellent - reminded me of how desperate I am to scrape together the funds to buy Making Money (the new Discworld book, for those uneducated in pTerry). And lots of teasers about the book he's working on at the moment, Nation, which is apparently not Discworld, and (although not set in this world exactly), very close to it. Even closer than normal that is - because one of the most impressive things about the Discworld is that, despite being a flat world floating through space on the back of a turtle, it nevertheless provides excellent opportunities to satirise the roundworld. Looks like he might be shining his light on religion again, as well, which would be very welcome.
So the only shame really was that the worthys of the town clearly dont appreciate him sufficiently - a man who inspired at least 500 people to travel to Wincanton, camp for a weekend, and do numerous loony things - didn't fill the theatre... Pity really, they'll never know what they missed.
Waking up
7/10/2007
Yesterday morning I woke up. At 5:45am. Deliberately. Yes, I know that sounds as if someone else has killed me and taken over this site, but it was worth it. I was going for a walk, up to the top of my hill (which despite having climbed dozens of times I still don't know the name of...), in the hope of watching the sunrise over the town. Unfortunately, despite being promised by various weather forecasters that there would be 0% cloud that morning, it in fact turned out to be as near as I could tell 100% cloud - certainly I didn't see the sun until much later in the day. And the birds weren't really too keen on making a dawn chorus for me to join, tho I tried to get them going with my flute... Not a great success in my intentions, then.
But as I say, it was worth it. The town was beautiful when lit up, with a proper autumn morning mist making the lights dance. But the best bit was actually as I left the house. Being awake at that time of day, exploring a whole new world... it was quite a feeling... Made better when I came back down, and for a lot of the way found the only set of footprints in the dew were mine. I love that feeling - it's the same thing I talked about when I got lost in Iceland.
Thinking about balls
3/10/2007
Some rather less introverted (and potentially emo) thoughts today - all about what happens when a geek's mind is left idle...