Gibson Gibson Gibson

Going to see William Gibson tonight, reading from his new book, Pattern Recognition. I am quite excited. Really quite excited…

shameless helicopter plug

If you are anything like me, you have always wanted to own a radio-controlled helicopter. Yeah? You could pretend Noel Edmonds was inside and crash it into a lake of molten lava, or something. But they are so damn expensive. Except not any more! Where, you wonder, could one buy such a desirable item for a very reasonably £85? Why, Firebox, of course!

Clutter

Clutter is a great little OS X add-on for iTunes which allows you to see the cover art for whatever album you are currently listening to. Better still, you can drag the album covers onto your desktop and double-click them to play them. What a brilliant idea! Apple’s strategy on encouraging independent developers seems to be paying off nicely.

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down the tubes

I decided to commute to work on my bike, which will [a] save me a lot of money (about £90 per month, which means I can get a road bike!), [b] get me fit (25-miles-a-day fit) and (c) allow me to get to know London better. The first two days were just great, perfect weather, didn't feel too tiring, I arrived at work feeling clear-headed, energized and insufferably smug. This morning I found I had a puncture. Arses! I must be the puncture king. I seem to get one a month. The time has come to invest in bullet-proof kevlar tyres, I think. Particularly after taking the tube in today. Boy, did that ever suck. Why on earth don't more people ride bikes in this city? It is nice and flat, after all. Maybe it is something to do with the psychotic traffic? Or are they all just lazy? Join us, oh benighted subterranean mole-people! Emerge blinking into the daylight, and discover the camaraderie of the brotherhood of urban cyclists! (I expect my tune will change the first time I have to ride in rain, but hey, I can legitimately buy some Gore-Tex trousers, result!)

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coffee geek

My second day of work here at firebox.com. I think I am going to enjoy it, a lot. And for all those people who have asked already, yes I do get discounts ;). As part of my remit, I am keeping an eagle eye out for cool gadgets, gizmos and toys which firebox could sell and of course I want you, dear friends, to feed me with suggestions. Firebox is a company which is very interested in memes, crazes, call them what you will, and what better place to keep track of the latest new things than blogland? I am planning to set up a new, gizmo-specific blog (similar to the excellent gizmodo.com, but with more focus on fun toys than electronics), which will give me an opportunity to do a moveable type installation. Fun!

Chris bought me a very clever Culinare 1-cup, which is a cafetiere/mug hybrid - a great idea (designed by Conran). But not as great as the USB coffee mug. (I love the Japanese! Coffeegeek are on the case…) I do hope they will come out with a FireWire version, as it would obviously keep the coffee warm faster. Er, I think…

Anyway, keep an eye out for stuff you think would be good for firebox, and let me know. I might be able to send little toys to winning suggestions! OR you can cut out the middle man and become an affiliate. Finally, please suggest gagdet/gizmo/toy websites/weblogs you recommend. Thenkyew.

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a weekend of canadian culture

Last night (and indeed this morning) was the best clubbing experience I have ever had – six hours of Richie Hawtin at The End = pure bliss. The man is a sonic scientist boffin genius, coaxing the most amazing, shuddering matrices of beats, crunches and crackles from his powerbook (running Live, of course). The soundsystem at The End is awesome – crystal clear and punchy. I felt very cyberpunk and had no choice but to dance my ass off, lost in a fugue state (but in a good way). Really, words cannot describe how awesome it was. I knew that there was no place on earth I would rather have been last night. Please Mr Hawtin, come to London every month! Oh, and as a side-effect, all of a sudden I really like living in London. Heh.

It was a very William Gibson-esque evening for me. Not only was the club full of beautiful people dancing to beautiful, state-of-th-art music, I experienced all manner of interesting visual effects from being ‘high on life™’ and from playing maybe a few hours too many of Metroid Prime (which is the best game I have ever played, already…) during the day.

All of which more than compensates for the awfulness of the Opera of The Handmaid’s Tale, which Adrienne and I saw on Friday, and which was an utter crock, I’m sorry to report. The costumes were good, as was the production design, but the music was dire - repetitive, boring, no discernable tunes, lots of atonality-lite (it’s a dystopia, see?) and a very lame English language libretto featuring such memorable lines as “I wan’t you to play Scrabble with me!” Oh dear. We left in the interval. I think it was best summed up by an elderly gentleman whom we overheard saying “The worst thing is one cannot even nod off…”

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fired up!

I am very happy to report that next monday I will be starting my new job as web designer/producer for Firebox.com, which is a rather splendid ecommerce site selling all manner of boys’ toys, clever gadgets, radio-controlled helicopters and so on. I’m sure this will be an extremely rewarding job as I will be getting to do quite a range of things, from web design through to digital photography, newsletters, copywriting, even some video. Plus other very cool ideas in future which I’d better not talk about. I am almost literally bouncing up and down with excitement, truth be told.

Freelance is nice and all, and I enjoyed many aspects of it, and I will continue doing selected projects, but I knew I had to go for this job. I am looking forward to working with intelligent, interesting, imaginative people. My own company can get a little tedious at times. Plus I might be able to buy some new shoes, now…

And in the spirit of celebration, we (me, Adrienne, Pier) will be attending Richie Hawtin’s mammoth 6-hour DJ set at The End this saturday. Rah!

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metal babies

I was at a baby shower yesterday, mercifully only the very end of it, when the presents were being unwrapped, and upon seeing the usual Baby Gap attire (havent these people read No Logo?) it suddenly occurred to me that what the world really needs is heavy metal t-shirts for babies. Of course, a cursory googling this morning reveals that someone has inevitably beaten me to the punch: metal babies.

I suppose there is always hardcore babies…a fugazi shirt would be perfect for little Piet Bischoff, son of my good friends Heiko and Lisa.

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workplace experiment

Much as I like getting up, having breakfast and then just working at the dining table all day, maybe not even leaving the house, becoming a hermit in the city, today I think I will try lugging my powerbook into town and working in a café. The idea of working in the Great Court of the British Museum has always appealed, I think I’ll give that a go. That way I don’t become cut off from the great mass of humanity and I can pretend I am living in some amazing future world like Logan’s Run or something. And I have to admit that not being plugged umbilically into a 1MB broadband connection all day tends to improve my productivity.

I kind of wish I knew of some locations in London which were frequented by freelance designer types, just so we could commune together in our lone-wolf, web-ronin solidarity. I guess Starbucks with WiFi access will be the places soon, but do any exist right now? Is anyone offering ’freelance cafés’, where one isn’t told off for using their precious electricity, just as an example? (I was told I couldn’t plug my laptop into the mains at the Starbucks-in-Borders in Cambridge as it was a ‘fire hazard’. Yeah, right. Bastards. Starbucks inside a Borders? That is like evil-squared! Apologies to Mike Lambe for being such a capitalist sell-out…)

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War, huh…etc

Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth has set up Protest Records, where you can download free protest songs of admittedly variable quality, plus stencils!

ISIS

I recently purchased Oceanic by ISIS, and, er, wow! A sort of ungodly hybrid of Tool, Slint, Neurosis, Mogwai and GYBE! (which is no bad thing in my mind), it is a sort of aquatic concept album (hence the name, duh!) featuring the most pleasing combination of brain-hookingly memorable riffs, bludgeoning intensity, pretty bits, swirling atmospherics and girly uluation that I have heard in recent months or even years. At first the SHOUTED hardcore style vocals put me off a little, but I am even starting to warm to them. I must admit to a guilty fondness for extremely aggressive music, and it seems that metal might be growing up. Rrroooaaaarrrrggghhh! Er, sorry about that. I’m also caning the beautiful new Jan Jelinek, La Nouvellé Pauvrete, which could hardly be less like ISIS. Just call me Mr Diverse and Eclectic.

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google cooking

When we have a few random ingredients laying around which we want to cook up, we like to put them into google and see what we find. As a result, tonight we will be enjoying Mchuzi wa Biringani, in order to use up our aubergines/eggplants/purple love balloons. Yum!

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HTTT

So, the new Radiohead album, Hail To The Thief, has been ‘leaked’ onto the internet, which I found out through guitarist Jonny Greenwood saying so at nme.com. I like to imagine that the headsters did it themselves – their albums always do seem to get leaked, eh? And they are into that whole Pynchonian W.A.S.T.E. thing*. And they called the album Hail To The Thief, which may well be a reference to GW Bush, but may also be an allusion to their tacit approval of naughty MP3 downloads.

Just as well it is available really, as rumour has it that EMI will be releasing it as a hobbled, drinks-coaster style copy-protected disc, which would mean I couldn’t put it on my iPod, even if I bought it, and it would maybe set my powerbook on fire or electrocute me through the keyboard if I tried. Or something. Well, it already is on my iPod, so yah boo sucks to EMI and their nasty letter writing minions. Of course, I’ll buy it when it comes out. Be rude not to.

Yes, it is quite good. I expect you want to know where to get it, don’t you?

* oh, just google it.

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Gwen Raverat Rocks!

I am happy to announce that another site I have been working on for some time, for Broughton House Gallery – located in Cambridge, UK – is nearing completion. The biggest part of the job was putting the entire archive of 500+ wood engravings by Cambridge-based artist Gwen Raverat online. This involved scanning all of the prints using a dodgy old iMac running OS 8.x and some very basic scanning software (whose name I have forgotten already), suffering numerous daily crashes as the clapped-out, wheezing machine struggled to keep up, but was still a great experience.

Gwen Raverat was the grand-daughter of Charles Darwin and almost singlehandedly revived wood engraving as an valid artform. Through the months I have been working on the archive I have grown to like her work very much, particularly the nature images which are often almost transcendental in their clarity of vision. And the good news is that they are all for sale! Most are priced very reasonably at around £100 to £200. Rosemary, the gallery owner has also recently published a book of selected Raverat engravings, priced at an even

The site is, of course, designed with valid XHTML and CSS. As usual, feedback very welcome, particularly from PC users who have any problems…

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ashframe is live

www.ashframe.com is a small site for a classic car broker which I have been working on, and which has just gone live. It doesn’t quite validate yet, but will soon.

Broughton House Gallery is also gradually approaching completion. Which is nice.

Please feel free to offer feedback.

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Did you know…

…penises have higher bandwidth than cable modems? According to Mr Gibson, who has been surfing diligently while convalescing.

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Spirited Away

I am delighted to see that the astonishing Spirited Away has won the Oscar for best animation. So far I have only seen an unsubtitled, dodgy MPEG DVD rip from edonkey, or somewhere, but even then it blew me away. Lets hope that it might get another cinematic release in the UK, prior to the Region 2 DVD. I just can’t justify the £36 for the Japanese DVD in Japan Centre. Maybe I should get a proper job?

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war dreams

I had my first Iraq war dream last night. This may be connected to the fact that I sit here all day, working, with BBC News24 on in the background. In an odd, even macabre kind of way, I find its endless repetition somehow relaxing. Anyway. So I was walking around outside a hotel in Baghdad when firebombs started to fall everywhere. People were running around screaming, their hair on fire; I could feel the heat, it was very real. And then the hotel started to go up in flames, which was bad, because I realised that Adrienne was inside. I started screaming her name, and to my immense relief I spotted her in the crowd of folks running to escape, and, in a bizarre dreamlogic twist, we rollerbladed away to safety. If only it were so easy.

My scariest and most intense war dream, however, was one in which vast alien spacecraft invaded Cambridge. The alien invasion dream is a recurring one, and often quite enjoyable in that I end up in tense laser battles and so on. Am I weird? I don’t think I have ever had a nuclear war dream…

I don’t quite know what to think about this war. In principle I opposed it as it seems to me to be a mere empire building exercise on behalf of you-know-who, and I hoped we had left that kind of stuff behind us, but of course if the regime, which is a very bad regime, is actually toppled, then that will be a good thing, whatever one thinks about the methodology. Hm, I think I will shut up now.

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why, it’s mexican microhouse, of course…

The more I listen to Martes by Murcof, the deeper I fall in love with it. Imagine Arvo Pärt played underwater by a funky insect band and you are there. Es muy bien!

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bill speaks

Excellent – and very funny – interview with ‘Bill’* Gibson at CBC, talking aboot™ Pattern Recognition, among other things. I love the internet!

Call me a geek (just call me!) but I am so very keen to read PR (as we insiders know it) that I have started dreaming about it. I am supposed to be receiving a REVIEW COPY any time now, keeping my fingers fully crossed it arrives soon. Why it should be published two months later than most of the rest of the world is frankly beyond me…

Bill is ill at the moment, but thankfully not with SARS. I hope. Because, you know, I have tickets for your gig at Foyle’s, Bill?!

* “saves on bandwidth”

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hippy nature boy

You know, I am increasingly thinking that maybe Dean has the right idea, moving to a small village in France. It’s really not a bad lifestyle at all, particularly if one is no longer into banging nightclubs and pubs, which I’m not. As long as I can get broadband for media fix purposes.

Maybe I will make lots of money, somehow (by inventing something brilliant and unneccesary, is my latest idea) and then set up a mountain bike guiding gîte in the French Alps…

Atkins Schmatkins

Adrienne and I are currently “doing Atkins”, in the style of numerous Hollywood stars, and I don’t think my intestines like it too much. Still, if I can lose a half a stone in two weeks it will be worth it. Alan Rickman lost a stone (14lb/6Kg) in that time, and if he can do it, I can do it!

I have to say, a diet without bread, cereal, milk, alcohol, potatoes and most fruit (for the induction period at least) is something I never thought I would attempt, being a fan of all the above, but so far, two days in, my resolve is steely and firm. Unlike my belly, which is slightly wobbly. Damn you, Roquefort and kebabs!

Anyway, I’m off for a run around ‘scenic’ Finsbury Park. It ain’t Stanley Park, but it will have to do…

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