about last note 28 november 2001
So the other day I'm out doing some Christmas shopping. And I hope I'm not giving anything away to the rellies by saying that I was shopping in a Virgin Music store (yes, you're all getting copies of The History of House Music). Anyway, I'm browsing through the store, and I spot the 'Video/DVD Bestsellers' section. And what do I see? Some opportunistic types at Warner Home Video have re-released Ralph Bakshi's seminal 1978 classic animated version of Lord of the Rings. Style! This is perhaps the worst animated version of anything that's ever been created ever. I saw this when I was a D&D-mad 10-year-old and was utterly disappointed (especially having seen Bakshi's other stuff, which I thought was well cool - hey, I was 10). Over the years, I've read a number of fairly scathing reviews of this turkey (for example, the It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Movie review and the classic Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, Part One: A Critique). It definitely stands tall in terms of duff movies. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Warner are going for as much cash as possible. Especially since the Peter Jackson version is courtesy of New Line, who (AFAICR) are affialiated with an entirely different studio...
The scent of blood is in the water! Our stock price has laboriously climbed above $30 again, and Chris from Work has got very twitchy. The price hit $31. His left eye started vibrating. It hit $32. And he ran out and bought a new car, filling in the stock option forms as he went. What makes this funny is that even with the stock, he still can't afford a new car. He's had to get out quite a hefty loan to cover the balance. Funny what the prospect of a few spare bob can do to people. Nice car, though.
Real-world statistics fun! The average London-based IT worker has to work for six minutes to be able to buy a pint of beer, while IT workers in scotland only have to work for five! And they get an extra day off at New Years too! Bastards! Right, that's it, we're moving up to Edinburgh. Statistics courtesy of a recent salary survey mentioned in The Register. Annoyingly, no stats for Cambridge.
Our internal emails from reception are getting more surreal:
we ran out of milk again today, Charlotte went out earlier to get some more and there is 4 pints in the downstairs fridge and 4 pints in the upstairs fridge, it is in plastic bottles, there seems to have been some confusion as to whether this could be used, incase it is someones personal milk. But it is for the use in the Westbrook
Let's just say that the notion of 'personal milk' caused a degree of hilarity. We are simple folk.
Cute article on Stuff today which combined a couple of interests of mine - home (NZ) and cycling. It's an intervie w with the bike mechanic at Penny Farthing Cycles in Wellington.
Is it me, or is pixelation the new black?
ride like the wind 26 november 2001
Met up with Josh over the weekend - the lad's now doing a postdoc at St Andrews up in Scotland. A nice weekend was had by all, involving much Cambridge tourism ("See that? It's bloody old. That? Old too. See that?..." and so on), much comment on the majestic East Anglian landscape ("See that direction? It's bloody flat. Over there? Flat. There?...") and much British pub culture ("See that? It's a good pint. That? Not a bad pint either. That?..."). I was quite chuffed when Josh had to send me a message via the landlord of the pub we were meeting in; the landlord found me in a crowded pub on the basis of "he's got a beard and long blonde hair". Always nice to know that I'm still vaguely distinctive.
It was the Marxist critic, Walter Benjamin ... who taught us how to "read" Paris. Those magnificently wide, long, and straight Haussman boulevards, Benjamin pointed out, were the state's response to revolution. Beautiful they may be; but the boulevards' primary purpose is to deny cover to insurgents and to facilitate the rapid deployment of police and army. They are counter-revolutionary urban planning.
The Guardian [source]
Unfortunately, the author of the article then goes on to fulminate against such horrors as the provision of cycle lanes (why, they use up valuable tarmac space that could be used by more cars!). You want more space for cars on the roads? Encourage more people to cycle. One more person on a bike is one less car stuck in front of you in traffic.
Three people around the office wear All Black rugby jerseys. None of them are kiwis. It's slightly disconcerting.
Fettled Heather's bike a bit on Friday. Merlin Cycles were flogging full Deore v-brake sets for cheap, so I bought a set and put them on her bike. Good fun - more work than you'd think, but satisfying. Still need a little tweaking (cable run isn't quite sweet yet), but a great improvement on what was on before. As Heather said, she now has a working rear brake. This is a good thing.
Neighbour fun! After having disappeared for a while, she's back. No amusing stories - she's being very, very quiet indeed at the moment - but she's still around. And here was me betting good money that she'd taken off to Ipswich again. More bulletins if she does anything amusing or legally actionable.
or your money back 22 november 2001
I spent most of last weekend reading Philip Pullman's books Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife. They're good. Very good. Very good indeed. And they seem to be becoming - as the Harry Potter marketing juggernaught cranks up to near-unbearable levels - the "young adults" fantasy books that it's OK for the highbrow to like. Harry Potter has become frightfully common - it's on McDonalds Happy Meals, sponsorship deal with Coke, et cetera. So the inevitable backlash starts, and in order to emphasise that they don't have anything against this kind of fiction per se people seize on Pullman's stuff. So much better than that overrated J K Rowling. What annoys me is that the people who say this have usually either not read any HP, or have only read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - which is not by any means the best of her books. Feh.
Which is not to say that Pullman isn't good. He is - bloody good. Quite literally, in many places. Very dark, very nasty, very well-done. Lots of classic tropes (possibly more even than HP, and that's saying something). Christian undercurrents everywhere - Chronicles of Narnia via E A Poe. Well worth reading.
Chris Morris, comedian
A comedian so powerful that networks fight not to be allowed to screen
his shows. No head of entertainment has ever been so relieved as the
BBC was when Morris took his ball over to Channel 4, where the suits
have been nervously switching on the lights before entering rooms ever
since. Judging by the number of people who claim to have been
intrinsic to the creation of The Day Today and Brass Eye, Morris is
actually one of the most collaborative and accessible people in
television. This, however, is clearly not the case and a lot of people
are liars.
The Guardian [source]
It's one of the better descriptions of Morris, anyway. When's the bleeding Brass Eye DVD coming out, eh?
Never, is the short answer. Mind you, Morris legendarily said that the original Brass Eye would never be rebroadcast - presumably due to the massive libel/character defamation lawsuits after each episode. Didn't stop Channel 4 earlier this year, now did it? But I think they'll definitely be going some to try and put out a DVD... especially if it includes the paedophilia show.
I haven't gotten any tattoos for a few years. Hmm. What's Alex Binnie's phone number again?
Fun stuff: The KLF's classic book The Manual: How To Have A Number One Hit Single The Easy Way is available online. If you've not read it, you should. A classic sociological treatise only matched by the Oxford Social Issues Research Centre's masterpiece, Passport to the Pub: A guide to British pub etiquette.
wtf?17 november 2001
So I looked over and I realised, I'm talking to Yoda. I'm tight with Yoda. There's no way they're cutting this scene! ... I'm like the second-in-command of the Jedi. I'm the second baddest fuck in the universe. Alright!
Samuel L Jackson
Samuel L was on Parkinson tonight. Coolest bastard ever. No question. Fun thing he mentioned: he asked if it was possible that his light saber could be purple. Just on a whim, mind. George Lucas shakes his head and goes, "No, no. The bad guys have one colour, the good guys have another. No-one has purple". He accepts this. And then a while later, he's in to see the new trailer for episode 2. George takes him aside and says, "Guess what?". And a lot of serious geeks are arguing over why Mace Windu's light saber is purple.
Like I said: coolest bastard ever. No question.
The flies left his mouth like tiny words.
Philip Pullman, Northern Lights
build a church with your fear 16 november 2001
When we were in court the other day, I was reading a car magazine. Well, I was bored. Anyway, I came across an interesting statistic: the average amount people pay to run the family car(s) is now over the average mortgage payment. Joe and Jane Average are now paying more for their car than their house. Not a nice statistic. The car magazine was merrily fulminating about the cost of petrol, ruinous road tax, exorbitant price of new cars in the UK, etc. I was thinking "Wow, my bike cost less than one month's mortgage payment." And I've not noticeably missed having a car.
That said, in the last five days two of my friends have had accidents on their bikes, in one case nearly suffering very serious injury (unfortunate bike/bus interface due to bus driver basically ignoring the inconvenient presence of a cyclist). Neither of my friends were hurt badly (Alison was slightly damaged - six hours in casualty, off work a few days, etc.), but both accidents were caused by drivers not paying attention - well, in the case of the bus driver, ignoring the cyclist and hoping they'd mysteriously evaporate. It's all a bit worrying.
Speaking of cyclists, found an excellent article by Jeremy Paxman (yes, the rude bugger off the telly) on cycling in London. A good read.
Watched an excellent Channel 4 documentary on the history of house music the other night. Taking it right back to the original history of chicago house - excellent stuff. It was kind of weird. All the people who were really involved in the house scene back in the early '80s are now in their forties. Seeing the interviews, I got the same feeling you get watching documentaries about Woodstock: that whole aging hippy feeling, watching people in their '40s talk about taking bucketloads of drugs and dancing for ten hours. OTOH, it's really cool watching the way people come alive describing the times that it all came together on the dancefloor: the DJ drops the right tune, the crowd goes mad, and it just slides into the groove. Nice.
I was sufficiently inspired to pop out and buy a compilation album of pop house fromm the late '80s/early '90s. Ah, it does you good to hear the classics again. Of course, I was 12 when all this shit came out immediately (and it didn't have any KLF! Where's the justice?), but it's pretty damn good stuff nonetheless. Groove is in the heart. Yeah.
Excellent article in The Register today about the lack of uptake of mobile data services such as GPRS. I'd love a portable, always-on data connection (pace certain obvious caveats such as having a reasonable sized screen to read the stuff on), but the cost does seem to be the main obstacle. Mobile operators have only recently realised that the best way to make money out of an established mobile network is to sell the hardware at a loss, price the calltime aggressively, and make it back in volume of calls and value added services such as txt. Once they can get the public used to the idea of mobile data services, and once they can get tariffs that people can actually afford, I think the uptake will be incredible. There's a definite niche for mobile data (look at how fast txt has taken off - imagine if everyone was carrying an always-on wireless email client); once the mobile companies stop smarting over the sheer volume of cash thrown away on 3G licenses and start pushing GPRS and associated services, it's all going to go ballistic.
In the meantime, with the average cost of a PDA/mobile combo such as the Nokia communicator or Trium Mondo lurking at around £650, it's going to be a while before this goes mass market. I give it 12-15 months, myself. Personally, I'm quite after a look at the new Handspring Treo PDA/phones. Ooh.
a white... 8 november 2001
Two weeks ago, I was in shorts. Now (11pm), it's snowing. Wow.
damp feat 8 november 2001
Jack, infirmation is in the eternal post today
I received the above missive in response to a request I made to our finance dept. It's a class above most typos.
I've got me tickets to Harry Potter. Life is good.
We've been to a couple of theatrical performances recently. They've followed a pattern: quick meal beforehand (Dojos noodle bar in Cambridge is particularly excellent for this purpose), 6-7pm. 7pm, meet friends in a pub (easiest gathering place). 7:30, off to the show. This means that you're standing around in a pub for about half an hour. You're in a quandary: what sort of drink to have? A pint? Do you trust your bladder? How much? Hmm. A half? Yeah, but you feel a wally ordering a half. The best solution I've found is to have a pint, neck it, and wear a jersey to the show. This makes you sweat a bit (theatres are always hot, aren't they?), which means that you don't spend 50 minutes praying for the intermission prior to a frenzied dash for the porcelain.
Trust me: anything rather than try and climb out of the middle of a row during a stand-up comic's routine.
Currently blatting away to Cut La Roc's excellent track, New York Pimp. It's all in the wrists, kids.
Neighbour news! As you may or may not know, we (well, Heather) is a witness in a police investigation of our neighbour. This lead to us spending most of last Friday morning sitting around the Cambridge Magistrates court waiting for Heather to be called in a court case. As it happens, our neighbour didn't show (quelle surprise). The reason for this would seem to be some complication related to her most recent pregnancy. Word on the street is that the father of her latest is one of the 16-year olds who hang around her place trying to cop off with her daughters. Interestingly, as Heather came home the other night, she encountered some relative of the neighbours helping the main daughter to move to Ipswich. Looks like a diaspora of the annoying is occurring. Or: move out now, before social services take you away! We watch the ongoing story with considerable interest. Not to say contempt.
Went down to London last weekend, after the non-starter court appearance. Good fun. Spent a couple of nights in a hotel, via Lastminute.com. Went to Discover Dogs, a dog advocacy show run by the Kennel Club. I've been for the last three years and it's always a damn fun day out. Lots of dogs of all breeds, lots of people who like dogs: I'm a dog person, fundamentally, and seeing all those happy furry faces cheers the hell out of me. Unfortunaely, I came down with the Mongolian Death Flu that's been going around, and spent most of the weekend producing mucus at a rate of knots. Anyway, the dogs were great - we were particularly impressed with the Tibetan Spaniels, which were very cute and very personable.
The rest of the London visit was good fun, pace the Mongolian Death Flu. Bit of shopping, look around Harrods (I always find it odd being in a shop that has bouncers), few drinks, some nice seafood, wander around the V&A. Fun.
blurgh5 november 2001
I'm home, I'm ill, I'm bored, it's Guy Fawkes, fireworks are going off everywhere around me, I'm producing huge amounts of phlegm. Feh. I'll write up recent events in a day or two. In the meantime, for my legion fans, here's a few treats.
Myself on Halloween. I came wearing a three-piece suit. No-one was scared.
Heather on Halloween. She came as a fly. People were scared.
Bonus! Click here for grainy mpeg video footage of me bobbing for apples. Includes victory dance and added bonus drunken hooting from onlookers! [440k-ish, if such things scare you]
Much respect to Lisa From Work, who took the photos/video.
Sometimes when I'm using a Unix prompt, I type 'exist' rather than 'exit' to log out. It's an odd reflex to have, I'll admit.
I have tickets for Harry Potter.
as the leaves fall / realisation 22 october 2001
In the spirit of international terror, I had a short crisis of faith the other day. I briefly considered moving home to New Zealand, to be safe during the inevitable upcoming apocalypse. Then I found out that John Banks is now the Mayor of Auckland. For the non-Kiwis amongst us: think Rush Limbaugh, except very slightly less self-parodic.
Well, I'm not moving home for a few years, then.
Dear fucking god.
Suddenly life in the fall-out footprint of a number of American airbases seems like a terribly attractive proposition.
Lisa From Work turned around the other day and suggested that if I ever become a rapper, I should use the name "2-ton Hydraulic Jack". It's kind of hard to argue with that.
It rained yesterday. As in, the average rainfall for October fell over the course of 24 hours. We were walking home from a party at 3am when it started raining softly. By the time we got home at 3:30, it was pissing down. When we finally crashed at 4:30, it was bucketing. When we woke up, it was still going. It kept a steady rain up throughout the day. As a consequence, we spent most of Sunday faffing around the house, vacuuming things. I washed a sock. It was a quiet day.
Picked my bike back up on Saturday, though. Nice. New 2002 Rockshox Judy XC fork, Shimano LX front v-brake. So a minor component upgrade there. God, it was good hopping back on the nice bike. Of course, the torrential rain yesterday meant that I couldn't take her out for a ride, but it's just nice having it around the house. Now I just need to sort out secure bike parking at work (hey kids! CCTV only works if it's actually turned on and pointing in the right direction!), and I'll be a happy bunny.
break! 15 october 2001
As we biked home today, we biked past the kids from next door who were presumably on their way for a quiet evening's shoplifting. One of them yelled "Hope you had a good party the other night!" as we went past. Well, now we know that they haven't been taken away by the Social Services. And we did have a damn good evening on Saturday. A cornucopia of fun, a barrel of laughs for one and all. A good few people came, which was cheerful. I'd indulged in a bit of lateral thinking, having noticed that people tend to turn up at parties at 9:15pm, and had told people that it started at 9pm. Of course, everyone turned up at bloody 10pm, didn't they? But a wonderful evening was had, certainly by meself and hopefully by the rest of those in attendance - well, they all looked pretty happy anyway. Ruth, who is a very nice person indeed, gave me a pewter tankard as a birthday present, and I spent most of the evening quaffing ale merrily, merrily. Surprisingly, I didn't get that drunk, though I do recall showing my nipples off to some of my coworkers. Anyway, I didn't feel that bad the next day.
Actually, I've had shooting pains in my right foot for the last week or so. Waking up on Sunday morning, I was basically unable to walk - the arch of my right foot was total agony. Managing to limp to the phone when Mum called (filial piety!), I got a snap diagnosis from the other side of the world: inflammation of one of the tendons in the arch of my foot. It's handy being related to a doctor; in this case, she told me to chow down on the anti-inflammatories, which is working pretty well. As in, I could actually move on Sunday, which was a Good Thing.
guaranteed hi-fi! 11 october 2001
The man best fitted to observe animals, to understand them emotionally as well as intellectually, would be a hungry and libidinous man, for he and the animals would have the same preoccupations. Perhaps we fulfilled these requirements as well as most.
Steinbeck & Ricketts (1941) Sea of Cortez
New Future Sound of London album, Translations, out at the end of the month. Oooh. New Amorphous Androgynous album at the start of next year. Ooooh. It's going to be a good few months, kids.
I scored a copy of the new Ninja Tune compilation Now Listen! yesterday. Very nice. Mixed by DJ Food and DK, it's basically a distillation of the weekly Solid Steel Radio Show. Nicely. I used to listen to the Solid Steel radio show every week back in Wellington on Radio Active. The idea is that the nice people over at Ninja Tune are releasing a series of mix albums based around the Solid Steel Radio Show. Based on this first one, it's style and a half. Reading the liner notes, you realise that these guys aren't just serious turntablists who know their music backwards, they're obsessive perfectionist serious turntablists etc etc. The album nearly deserves to be called handcrafted beats - these guys were perfectly willing to spend hours tweaking the composite tracks to get the perfect result. This included pitchshifting via turntables, recutting tracks to mix together better - in one case moving a track from 80bpm to 135bpm - and generally pulling serious anorak stickytape jobs on the original source material. The end result is pretty damn seamless, and pretty damn good. This week's recommendation for the hip young Modern Urbanists amongst us.
We've been invited to a party next week with the theme "Tube Stations". A quietly brilliant idea for a theme, if you ask me. Our current ideas for costumes include:
- Hugh Grant (Notting Hill)
- 12-ft pedastal, on which Heather could stand (Monument)
- 2 dozen sandbags (Embankment)
- Ringmaster carrying a copy of the OED (Oxford Circus)
- Pack of sausages and a compass (West Ham)
See how absorbing this is? Try it yourself! Hit up the Tube map site and see what you can come up with!
Speaking of the tube... Metro is one of the most useful Palm apps I've ever seen. Given any two tube stations in a number of metropolitan cities (I've only used London), it'll tell you the shortest route between 'em. Freeware, too. While the UI may not be the best (hey, it's on PalmOS), it's come in very very useful on a number of trips to The Big Smoke over the last year or two.
"People were ringing in hysterical on Monday morning," says a spokesman from Hardwear, a military surplus store in north London. "I had to take the gas mask out of the window. I'll carry on supplying fetishists, but I won't make money out of distressed parents wanting to fit them onto their kids."
The Guardian [source]
Now that's the kind of reaction to the international crisis that we need more of.
buttoned down solid 9 october 2001
Today, courtesy of birthday package from my sister & mother, I have mostly been listening to Che Fu's album Navigator. Nice. I'm not that hot on the R&B elements - not really my thing - but the slightly harder hip hop elements are nicely crunchy. Good ol' fashioned Kiwi hip hop. And I love the occasional 'C-Fu' references - nice little kung fu commentary there.
Speaking of birthdays... after drunkenly doing a 2-line update last night (below), I can confirm that yesterday was indeed my 26th birthday. Yikes! Looking back , I'd have to say that this year's birthday reaction is similar to last year's. Including - and an important one, this - another big shout out to Sizer Size for the postcard. Respect, and good luck to Sharyn for the bike ride. A number of people gave me a number of fun things. Award for best package has to far and away go to Charlotte and Mum, who sent a box that went beep at 5 minute intervals. Thank god, they posted it far enough in advance that it got here before September 11. Otherwise I shudder to think what the Royal Mail's reaction to a gently bleeping box would be at the moment: I'd probably have received a neatly bagged selection of charred cardboard fragments, courtesy of a controlled detonation. Still, it got through, and contained a number of fun goodies. Heather bought me a very sexy piece of bike kit - a Topeak Alien multitool. Lovely. We went out for dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant last night, and had some most excellent pizza. Mmm.
I think I mentioned just recently that when I was a kid I wished I could have a safety pin through my ear. Well, now I'm grown up and I know that sticking safety pins through parts of your body is dumb. So I went looking online for surgical-grade stainless steel safety pins made especially for that purpose.
Kirrily Roberts
And props to First Direct's home insurance section. A week after I lodged my first insurance claim on the forks on me bike, the cash is now winging its way into my account. I thus now have my order for a pair of nice shiny new sus forks in the pipeline; my bike shop has the kit on order. Nice. I shall soon again be bouncing around the wilds of King's Hedges, terrifying young and old alike. Or at least, swearing and running into things.
and now we are six 8 october 2001
I've had a lovely birthday.
not in a good mood 4 october 2001
Bugger it. I was all set to have a nice autumn - including my 26th birthday, which is on Monday. The weather is nice (ish), work is pretty interesting at the mo, and my zippy new bike was a constant source of fun.
The observant among you will have spotted the use of past tense in that last sentence.
At 5:15 on Thursday, my coworker Lisa rings me on my mobile and asks if I locked my bike up in an unusual way. I'm puzzled, reply no. She says that it looks like my front wheel has been unhooked. I go down to the underground carpark and discover that some unutterable shit has carefully taken the front forks off my bike. The front wheel was still locked in place. The frame carefully secured. And in between: a set of handlebars, the stem, and bugger all else. Someone had neatly stripped the forks. This means that they a) were carrying tools (albeit only an allan key set) and b) knew what they were doing. The forks - Rockshox Judy Cs - were a lovely bit of kit, and worth a good few bob.
So it's not as bad as it could be. I do still have most of my bike. Of course, it's completely unrideable. Our insurance is chugging away - unfortunately, FirstDirect, our insurance co, use Halfords as their preferred fulfilment agents for bike warranty claims. I'd far rather get the shop where I bought the bike (Howes Cycles in Cambridge) to replace 'em. So we're wrangling over how much the forks cost, but I'm sure it'll all work out.
Feh.
I was slightly bored the other day, and for various reasons (don't ask) I ended up reading the source to The Onion's front page. Their keywords meta tag is an education in itself:
The Onion, Onion, Harry Potter, Clinton, sex, Bill Clinton, Jesus, Bush, comedy, humor, publication, media, news, source, jokes, weekly, magazine, gay, what do you think, Christ, Savage Love, moon, God, Gore, all your base, ninja, fuck, baby, special olympics, Bill Gates, Herbert Kornfeld, Smoove B, Star Wars, horoscope, marijuana, infographic, drugs, Kornfeld, Canada, death, shit, Nader, area man, rush, Al Gore, election, phish, dolphin, Marilyn Manson, cock, babies, cat, NBA, homosexual, special forces, h-dog, microsoft, point, counterpoint, statshot, holy shit, babies, Jim Anchower, religion, monkey, college, Starbucks, children, porn, pope, Don King, penis, smoove, anchower, dog, kids, hell, school, death star, Christmas, Ralph Nader, computer, zweibel, vagina, eminem, bear, red meat, burger king, Serbia, homosexuals, metric, video game, drug war, columbine, beer, pot, masturbation, Bill Nye, trailer park, police, Britney Spears, Mr. T, ferret, Taco Bell, George W, AV Club, A.V. Club
There's a lesson in there for us all, kids.
a world of plain 21 september 2001
We've got one more day until the autumnal equinox, at which point I can start wearing long trousers again without feeling like I'm letting the side down. It's actually not too bad in shorts at the moment - 15-17 Celsius is quite doable. Mind you, some mornings are starting to feel decidedly dodgy, so I'm not too fussed about making the switch back to longs.
So last Saturday I got slightly foolish and went out and bought a pair of cycling shoes (Specialized Rockhopper boots - for some reason, I seem to be buying a lot of Specialized kit). Twenty minutes on Saturday night playing around with a 4mm Allan key, and I was ready to go out into the wilds and hurt myself.
Specifically, I was going to give my zippy new clipless pedals a go. Clipless pedals are a fun invention. They combine the safety and efficiency of cycle toeclips with the ease of use of ski bindings. However, there's an important caveat. Being attached to your pedals is indeed very safe for the following reasons:
- If your feet slip off the pedals while biking hard, your balance goes and you wobble like a bastard. This is dangerous at speed, more so in traffic.
- You don't get pedals kicking back and hitting you in the shin. Don't laugh. This really hurts.
- It allows a much more efficient transfer of power to the bike - thus, smoother acceleration and more control over your speed.
These advantages are counterbalanced by one significant disadvantage:
- You can't put your feet down. Thus, unless you've got a very finely developed sense of balance, stopping the bike means that you then slowly and majestically fall over to one side. Even if the fall doesn't hurt you, this has obvious negative utility in traffic, however light.
The designers of these things aren't stupid. The disadvantage is an obvious one, and so there's a simple way to click in/out of the pedals. To click in, you line your feet up on the pedals and push down. To click out, you twist your heel to the side, and your foot pops out. All with me so far? Good.
So to recap: I'm about to go out for the first time with my feet actually attached to the pedals. Fine. So I wheel the bike out, take it out to the local park, nervously get on. Righto. Left foot on pedal: snick! I start cycling slowly across the grass, trying to get me right foot in. Clunk clunk bugger clunk snick! Good. I am now firmly attached to my bike.
Quite how firmly attached I was unaware.
One of the useful features of these pedals (Shimano SPD M-515's if you're interested) is that the release tension is adjustable. Depending on how confident you are, you can make it easier or harder to clip out. The easier it is to clip out, the more likely it is that you'll do it by accident while riding along. In general, beginners take the tension right down so it's easy to get in/out, while more experienced riders tend to crank it up to prevent unexpected dismounts. I knew this. What I did not know was that as standard, new pedals are sold with the release tension cranked up to the maximum.
I became aware of this when I first tried to unclip one of my feet. And failed, utterly. Bugger! Fair enough, I thought, I'm not used to this sort of thing, I'll just have another go. Three minutes of frantically wrenching at my right heel later, I was getting bloody nervous. I'd been riding in circles around the local park and I was starting to get looks from the local kids. I ended up, still firmly clipped to my pedals, leaning against the back of a park bench and nearly dislocating my kneecap in an attempt to get my right foot free. Thank god, I managed it. I recall thinking that there must be a knack to this.
I then spent a total of half an hour buzzing around the local parks, swearing profusely and having a number of near misses. On one memorable occasion I stopped dead on an uphill slope, managed to unclip my right food, and promptly fell over to my left. As the evening faded in I returned home, chastened and slightly bruised.
After a bit of research on the web, I managed to adjust the tension on my pedals, and it's now much safer. I now wear the suckers while biking to work: I've not fallen off in traffic yet (honest Mum). Great fun. I biked halfway to Ely on the Sunday, and the pedals (and shoes) worked like a charm. Of course, I had a slow puncture six miles out of Cambridge, and had to bike back along the Cam towpath while stopping every three minutes to reinflat my tyre, but that's an entirely different kettle of fish. I now need to relearn the lesson that a good mate of mine learned a while back: always, always, always carry a spare tube as well as a patch kit.
Today, I have mostly been listening to the Gorillaz album, which I borrowed off the summer student at work. It's actually pretty stylee - lots of phat-ass beats. Good mix of styles - punk to funk, dub, hip-hop and indie-rock in the soup. Worth the price of admission. And I'll admit that the cheesy pop bouncealonga section of my soul loves the soulchild remix of 19-2000. I note with interest that they have a track named M1-A1, presumably after the American main battle tank of the same name... Jamie Hewlett can never quite let Tank Girl go, can he?
hell in a handbasket 14 september 2001
Some of the reactions that I've seen over the last few days.
We don't need long investigations of the forensic evidence to
determine with scientific accuracy the person or persons who ordered
this specific attack. We don't need an "international coalition." We
don't need a study on "terrorism." We certainly didn't need a
congressional resolution condemning the attack this week....
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them
to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing
only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we
killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.
Ann Coulter [source]
Heck, they started despising us because our values are different: our
women aren't clothed from head to toe, we don't worship Allah, we
don't dismember petty thieves, etc....
I think we need to kill all terrorists. If that means killing all
Muslims because they all stand up to replace the "martyrs", well, then
so be it. It's their choice to make.
Douglas S. Bailey
For a start: we know the places where they rejoiced and danced in the streets in celebration of the falling of the towers. Those streets and all their buildings should become monuments: not one stone stands upon another. Level the rubble so that a troop of cavalry could ride across where they stood and not one horse stumble. Then sow salt on those grounds. They will be left as monuments, visible from the air, visible from space: monuments to dead Americans.
Jerry Pournelle [source]
What's happened in the US is scary. But for sheer flesh-crawl, it's the reaction that frightens me.
This way the media is representing this whole thing is like a bizarre hybrid of the death of Princess Diana (national media frenzy, mourning, books of condolences, special acts of public grief by celebrities) and the recent paedophilia frenzy (excoriation of anonymous third parties, calls to action against unspecified enemy, enemy is defined as absolute evil that must be loathed by all right-thinking people).
Props to Rodger for a nice bit of analysis of counter-terrorism strategies. Good one.
goes like the clappers 11 september 2001
This weekend, I did something I've been meaning to do for a while. Yup, mowed the lawn. This was, however, eclipsed by my doing something else I'd been meaning to do for a while. Yup, buy a bike. Specifically, I bought a Specialized Rockhopper A1 FS Comp [reviews] - the v-brake model, not disks. This wasn't really one of the bikes that I'd been seriously looking at - it was over my price range. I'd been looking at the midrange hardtail sort of thing - I ended up test-riding a Marin Bear Valley, Orange Gringo, and a Specialized Rockhopper A1 FS. Saturday morning I test-rode the Rockhopper A1 FS, which the shop (Howes Bikes on Regent St in Cambridge) only had in 19". Ten minutes on the bike convinced me that this was not a goer. The frame was too large, and my shoulders and wrists hurt after being on for more than a few minutes. Plus, the 19" frame gave me little or no 'nad clearance when standing over the top tube - an important consideration if you're anticipating coming off now and then (hint: I was). After the test-ride, I was chatting to the lady in the shop, and basically saying that it was too big for me. The only 17" they had in the shop was the A1 FS Comp - similar bike, but with an upgraded spec (nicer bits). Nah, out of me price range sez I. £100 off, sez they. One quick test-ride later, I was noticeably poorer but with a big-ass grin on my face.
So I've got a whizzy new bike. Took it out for a bit of a blat on Sunday, and had good fun running it around some mild offroad stuff. This front suspension lark has a lot going for it, actually. ;) Now I have a good excuse to buy some zippy cycling kit. First on the list is going to be a good pair of cycling shoes - new bike comes with clipless pedals (i.e. ski boot style bindings allowing you to 'click' your shoes into the pedal - like toeclips, but much more efficient). For the spods amongst you, they're double-sided SPD/platform pedals. This means that I don't actually have to use special shoes, but I can if I want. I figure it'll be a laugh. I've heard that the realisation that you're fixed solidly to your pedals and can't just jump off if things go pear-shaped really helps you to concentrate in the difficult bits (or rush hour traffic, come to that).
So if you're living in North Cambridge and you see a grinning thing with a red beard on a blue bike going "Wheee!" and hopping kerbs, you know who it is.
I also note with interest that Cambridgeshire is now on the list of counties where the access is now completely open - no more path closure due to F&M. As compared to when we last tried to bike to Ely (a nice hour or two along the towpath by the Cam), when we got about five miles and then hit a closed path. So this weekend, weather willing, we may well take my zippy new bike off along the Ely towpath.
And to extend the odd cross-marketing theme, as last mentioned on August 10th, the new bike has a large 'Designed on Sun Microsystems' sticker on it (on the seat tube). Looks like Specialized are acknowledging Sun's influence on all their kit. It's a bit weird - why bother acknowledging the hardware platform you use to design your kit on? Sun's got to be giving them a rake-off - presumably cheap servers in exchange for the publicity. This means that Sun is effectively sponsoring Specialized as a whole. I suppose that I'm used to corporate sponsorship being limited to high-profile events or sports teams - a company sponsoring another company's entire product line jars slightly.
Having a deep voice and kind of being physically imposing, you tend to find that you can talk almost any old rubbish and can make it sound creepy.
Alan Moore
Autumn is well and truly hitting, though. The temperature is on a quick spiral down: a fortnight ago we were hitting temps of 30 celsius, today it's 18. Coupled with this we've got some lovely dull weather - imposing cloud, occasional showers, general pissy days. I've vowed to wear shorts until the Autumnal Equinox (22nd September). This could get chilly.
couple more photos 7 september 2001
A couple more photos, then.
Canada day celebrations in London. L -> R: Justine (Fiona's mate who accidentally smacked Fi in the face while playing hockey), Michelle (well-sorted ex Corpus lass, now curating things in rural Canada), Donald (ten jellies Maclaren), Heather (infamous), Jack (self), Blair (mad wicked props).
Jack and Heather at Jared & Sharyn's wedding.
The couple themselves - aftermath of Jared & Sharyn's wedding.
I don't usually do this.
he has good jazz ideas 7 september 2001
A woman walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a double entendre. So he gives her one.
It's the way I tell 'em, folks.
Meanwhile, in other news... Mike is trying to convince me to buy a trebuchet kit from trebuchet.com. Now there's a business model that badly deserves some VC funding: selling build-your-own Medieval siege weapon kits. Woo hoo! Unfortunately, they don't sell full size kits. The largest catapult you can get from them is only 5 1/2 feet tall. This limits you to weights of about a pound (500 grams). Mind you, you can hurl the little buggers quite a distance. On the other hand, the miniature mangonel looks well tasty - just the thing to terrify the programmers at work.
However, we live in a terraced house. Justifying the purchase of siege weaponry - even replica stuff that can't really hurl particularly large items - is difficult. Though it would be useful to keep the neighbours out of our garden.
And for their fans: latest neighbour update is "bugger all". They're being very quiet at the moment. There's at least one child in the house - an older girl (15/16 or so). Don't think I've seen her around before. I say this because last week when I came home from the gym at about 7:30pm she came out of the house while I was getting me keys out and asked if she could leave a housekey with us. Apparently Della was out, and they only have one housekey (!), so the daughter wanted to leave the key with us so she could go out with her mates (leaving a note on the door advising Della where the key was). This rather optimistic plan was shot down in flames when I politely refused. I was polite, and the phrase "your mad bitch of a mother" was not used at all.
Apart from that, we've not heard a damn thing from 'em. This is good. Though they have been seen to clean some bits of the house, which is a bit of a first.
And my horoscope from The Onion this week:
Libra: (Sept. 23-Oct. 23)
Much to your consternation, you discover that it takes more than
nudity, llamas, and gin to scandalize the British consulate.
the thing in itself 6 september 2001
Apparently, October 4th is National Poetry Day. Sharron From Work has been asked to come up with her favourite poem, for her children's school magazine. As she's about as poetical as a brick, she came to work and asked for ideas. We then spent a happy ten minutes merrily googling away to find interesting poems for Sharron to read. After recommending works by Ginsberg and Burroughs, I made a more serious suggestion in William Carlos Williams' poem, This is just to say. A nice well-known poem - but how many of you have read Kenneth Koch's "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams", eh?
Who says we have no culture on this site, then?
Sharron read "This is just to say" and said she didn't like it because it didn't rhyme. She's going with a poem from Winnie the Pooh.
We absentmindedly watched the local news last night. It was a total Bill Bryson moment - two articles on the news gave us one of those nice capsule summaries of village life in the UK that Mr Bryson so specialises in. When he's not slagging off cities for either a) being too modern and destroying all their lovely old buildings or b) being too old-fashioned and having no modern amenities - modern buildings, for instance. Anyway. Britain in a capsule:
- Bloke buys up a piece of land in a small village. Said piece of land has been used as a short-cut by the villagers since at least the '60s. Bloke builds his dream home on the land. City council then points out that there is in fact a historic public Right of Way through the property - straight through. Through his living room, dining room and back garden, in fact. Under British law it is an offence for a landowner to block access to a public right of way. That is, if anyone wants to walk through this guy's house, they are legally entitled to do so - and if he tries to stop them, he can be prosecuted for denying access to a public right of way. His attitude: this is patently ridiculous. The council's attitude: it's a pretty well-known piece of legislation, and you knew there was a footpath through the property when you bought it. Therefore, it's your fault, and thus your problem.
- Tescos build a big supermarket in medium-sized Cambridgeshire village. To do this, they have to demolish a couple of buildings, including the local pub. In order to get around the indignation of the local community, they promise to build another. 15 months later, the pub has been built, but is unlikely to open for another six months. The local community's reaction: we have been deprived of an essential amenity. To expect us to live without a pub is entirely, totally and utterly unreasonable. Something Must Be Done. A village without a local is, to use the aphorism, like a fish without a bicycle.
An odd set of laws and priorities.
i got a reason, now i got a reason 4 september 2001
I don't think I've linked this through here yet, so here it is: When I Am King is easily the best piece of work I've seen this year. No, I'm not exaggerating. It's wonderful. Try it. You'll like it. Or else.
The urge to purchase a new bicycle is becoming overwhelming. I spent much of Saturday biking around town on a variety of bicycles in an assortment of frames and specs. I started out on a Marin Bear Valley. Now, I'm currently riding a fully rigid 15-speed bike composed apparently of old drain pipes (i.e. it's bloody heavy), with nice grippy flat pedals. This was the first time I'd been on a bike with suspension of any sort, let alone a 27-speed gearset, lightweight steel frame, and toe clips. Bit of a learning curve. On a main street, on a Saturday morning, slap next to one of the main tourist attractions in Cambridge (King's College chapel). Whoop! OK, so it wasn't that bad, but I did have a few dodgy seconds puttering along the street trying to get my right foot into the bloody toeclip. Once I'd managed that, I had a lot of fun adjusting to the front suspension - the bouncy feeling kind of threw me off my stroke until I learned to adjust. Great fun to ride around on, though (much lighter/better than my current bike), but it was the little things that threw me. Like the toe clips. You're just going along nicely, then you need to coast to a stop, and you casually start to swing your leg around to dismount. Finding out halfway through shifting your balance that your foot is still stuck to the pedal is a) disconcerting and b) quite dangerous. Still, I managed to blat the bike around town for 45 minutes with only one comedy dismount (not counting a highly embarrassing moment at a traffic light when a four-year-old managed to beat me across the light - I forgot I was in toe clips, stuffed up my start when the light changed, took a few seconds to recover, and got beaten by someone 3ft tall with training wheels on his bike).
It took me a few minutes to get used to my bike again afterwards. Ah, the joy of being back on proper flat pedals. Oh, the terror when I realised that I once again had to grab a good handful of brake to get the bike to stop with alacrity. And groan at going back to a much, much smaller range of gears. Ah well.
a byword for enlightened care 31 august 2001
Went to the dentist on Wednesday. I'll be going again on Monday, too. Memo to self: don't put off going to the dentist for 3 years. I am now wallowing in a) self-pity and b) the system of dental care that has made Britain a byword for exemplary orthodonty throughout the civilised world. Ow.
Blair described me the other day as a powerhouse of a bodybuilding tattoo-clad cyclist and "herb-grower". Not quite how I'd have put it (one does not describe oneself as a "powerhouse" unless one is Henry Rollins or Lemmy), but a nice tribute. Heather was described as an intellectual, cyclist, musician and linguist, reading French at Corpus Christi for her Doctorate. As Spike Milligan once said, it's nice to get these unsolicited testimonials. He was talking about his knob size, mind, but the principle's sound.
You think I'm unemotional? I can be emotional! I cried like a baby at the end of Terminator 2!
Spaced
Ah, Spaced. One week - many months ago now - we saw a promo for the first episode of season 2. We'd never heard of it, and frankly it looked a bit crap from the promo. Self-consciously wacky. That sort of thing. And it was on at 9:30pm on a Friday. Fuck that, thought we, and merrily went out on the piss.
But the next week, we happened to be home on Friday night. And watching Friends (9pm) and Frasier (10pm). Come 9:30, Heather got up and made a cuppa. I sat like a lump on the couch, placidly watching whatever came on next. That, my friends, was Spaced, season 2, episode 2. Five minutes later Heather came in to find out why I was laughing non-stop. Twenty-five minutes later we each had grins that were wider than our heads. The one thought uppermost in our minds: "Fuckin' oath!"
Since then, we watched all the remaining season 2 episodes as they were broadcast. And now we've just got the season 1 DVD. And it all rocks, my little children, it all rocks most hard. Roll on season 2 DVD, sez us. If you've not seen it: definitely recommended.
Today's fucking brilliant idea:
- Get disk brakes on me bike.
- Get a custom disk rotor cut. Hope will cut phrases (up to 32 characters) into the brake rotor for an extra £20.
- Specifically, get the words 'om mani padme hum' cut into the brake rotor.
And there you are: the brakes on your bike now function as a Tibetan prayer wheel. Every revolution of your tires is now a prayer winging its way through the cosmos... which should come in quite handy if you're really hooning it around the place.
irregular spacing 29 august 2001
Now this is what late summer weather is supposed to be like. We've had two days over 30 celsius over the long weekend (August Bank Holiday - one of the semi-random UK days off). Lovely, lovely weather: not a cloud in the sky, baking sun, etc. So on Monday we went for a bit of a bike ride. We did a slight variant on the small loop from Edinburgh Bicycle's South Cambridgeshire route. Nice day out - did about 12-14 miles on the bike, over about two hours. The sun was beating down, there was a nice breeze, and we had a comprehensive O/S map and knew where the good pubs were. Nice.
It's one of the fun things about road cycling in the UK. It's perfectly possible to avoid the huge main roads, leaving you with the nice little roads that meander through villages. It's a really pleasant way to see the countryside - most villages are about 2-4 miles apart, so you're never far from civilisation (i.e. a pub). The roads have a nice meander, and if you've got some nice rolling countryside (as we do around Cambridge), you've got something nice to look at while you go. Lovely. To cap it nicely, the weather on Monday was just right - bloody sunny, but with a nice breeze so you don't overheat too much.
Of course, we're both massively sunburned today. Heather worse than me - her shoulders are bright red. I've just got a rather dramatic line on my legs where my bike shorts stopped. Let's just say that the macho kiwi attitude that you never get sunburn in the UK has now been conclusively disproved.
Anyway.
I've finally managed to locate a good, solid reference to the Dulux colour range that we mocked a while back. My personal favourite colour is in top right in the list.
Had a good one in the gym last night. As most gyms do, The Atrium has realised that sitting on an exercise bike is pretty damn dull, and you can only perv at the other people for so long. Hence, there's a wall with three huge video displays on it, so you can watch fun moving images while you're working out. There's three screens; the middle one tends to be Sky News or Eurosport (depending on who's on the front desk), and the other two are usually MTV. The soundtrack from the music screens is pumped into the gym itself, thus providing a bit of a beat while you're sweating your socks off. Anyway, I'm in the gym, merrily doing squats, and I suddenly realise that the music the TV's are playing is Devo. Whip it. Sweet.
One of the desk staff had changed the channel to VH1. Normally, this is the crusty oldies channel - what you're after if you really want to work out to crap '70s rock. However, this was their "Top 10: Electronic Pioneers" countdown, and lo! It cheered the stuffing out of me. C'mon: if you're going to be lifting large bits of metal and then putting 'em down again, Devo is a most excellent soundtrack. However, the highlight has to be them playing Kraftwerk's Tour de France when I was on the stepper. The glory. The terror. And to cap it all, they finished with the Pet Shop Boys...
One of the best workouts I've had in weeks, really. Seeing Neil Tennant on the big screen definitely inspired me to push myself into a panting, sweating heap. Focus the power of pop to facilitate effort, says us!
Oh, and there was a cute article in The Guardian last week about cycling in London.
calm after the storm 21 august 2001
Party last Friday went off pretty well. The party nominally started at 8pm, so at 9:15pm precisely everyone turned up. It was a nice night, so we ended up standing around in the garden. You'll be surprised to learn that despite the best efforts of approximately 40 or so of our mates (including IT workers and students), only about 25-30 pints of the 36 in the polypin were drunk. Jim From Work even brought 3 litres of White Lightning (mondo cheap white cider, favoured drink of tramps and 14 yr-olds). Unsurprisingly, this was untouched. Still, everyone seemed to have a good time. I was fairly drunk, and ended up thrashing the Ninja Tune 10th anniversary compilation, Xen Cuts at anyone who'd listen. Fun. The cleanup was even fairly uncomplicated the next morning. The kitchen was a tip (normal), but the rest of the house was OK (apart from a number of muddy bootprints in the bathroom - just what were you guys doing in there, anyway?). Having most of the action outside meant that all the spilled beer went on the proto-lawn. Simple and effective.
More neighbour fun! This was in the paper, so it's public record: our neighbour Della was done for shoplifting a £225 leather jacket from Marks and Spencer. According to her lawyer, this was as a way of drawing attention to her plight. Said plight being basically that she's a total headcase. She wasn't jailed, but the record's gotta be building up there...
Liquidated some of my stock options over the weekend. Basically, having committed the cardinal sin of working for the same IT company for the better part of 30 months, I got a cute 'get out of debt free' card. Not that I was particularly in debt, but it's nice to finally have such major events as house purchase, marriage and a couple of trips to New Zealand finally, comprehensively, and totally paid off. Now I can start saving for the new bike. Or redecorating the living room. Hey, a bit of redecoration should keep us nice and busy over the upcoming bank holiday weekend. Mind you, so would a new bike.
Or I could just buy a DVD player.
now he's on a mission from god
but he don't know whose and he don't know why
Shriekback, Fish Below the Ice
I'm currently listening to The Beta Band's second album, Hot Shots II. Odd stuff. Chris From Work - whose copy of the CD I've borrowed - swears that they're "completely unlike everything else, wonderfully eclectic". I think they're basically White Album-era Beatles meets UNKLE, with possibly a slight sprinkle of Beck on top (and a vaguely Doors-esque sound to the vocals - Eclipse sounds straight off the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now). Not bad for that, though.
Fuck it. I've bought a DVD player. I'll buy the new bike in the October sales. ;)
The only difference between you sober and drunk is that you're a little more hyper when you're drunk.
Lisa from Work, to me
tweak city 16 august 2001
A quiet few weeks on the Eastern front. Our psychotic neighbour has been pretty quiet for a while; the skinny that she'd moved to Ipswich seemed pretty reliable. The house stood empty. Now, after a wee chat with the police (we helped them with their enquiries), we've learned that our neighbour is being quietly done for fraud. Court appearances are in order. I'll be fairly nonspecific here for legal reasons (better safe than sorry), but suffice to say that a certain amount of kerfuffle later, our neighbour has reappeared next door. Anyone's guess how long she'll be there - certainly, from the rumours that we've heard from the rest of the street (and, indeed, from the police) she may well be back in jail fairly soon. It's definitely an interesting one here. Especially given that as far as we can tell, she doesn't have power in the house.
On this occasion, given the salacious nature of the accusations, it was distressing to watch them in front of the cameras, and it struck me that we had moved imperceptibly from reality TV to surreality TV.
Roy Greenslade, The Guardian
We're having a party tomorrow night. I've just popped out (courtesy of much help from Chris From Work) to the nice lads at the Milton Brewery and picked up a polypin (36 pints, 20 litres) of Cyclops. Lovely stuff. Should be a good gig tomorrow night: our 1-year anniversary in the house.
It certainly doesn't seem like it's been a year since we moved in. UpMyStreet now reckon that we're an Acorn Type 41 (up from Type 33!), 'Better-Off Council Areas, New Home Owners'. Though we're still supposed to like brown sauce, be uninterested in DIY and make 75% of our shopping trips by car. Clearly the neighbourhood hasn't gentrified all that much in the last year.
Annoyingly, I didn't think to date my first entry on this site. However, it's reasonably solid that tallpoppy has been up for over a year, which I'm slightly proud of. OK, so it's just a vanity site, but y'know... Of course, now I'm vaguely considering registering another domain just for the hell of it. I was torn between two phrases when I first registered tallpoppy.org (well, three, but all the TLD variants of 'somewhat' are gone). The second phrase is still around, which astonishes me: it's a dictionary word (albeit a fairly obscure one), and I thought they'd all been snapped up. Still.
gloria in excelsis whatsit 10 august 2001
I had my dot.com millionaire idea the other day: start a portal site which provides reviews of prostitutes across the UK. Prospective title: "What Ho?"
It's the way I tell 'em, folks.
Odd cross-marketing: I recently bought a new bicycle helmet (a Specialized Mountain Man). In these litigious days, I was unsurprised that the helmet came with a user manual. I was, however, astonished to find that the back page of the user manual was a rather large "Made on Sun Microsystems" logo and corresponding text touting the benefits of Sun hardware & Solaris. Obviously there's a degree of crossover between the mountainbiking and major corporate IT purchaser demographics.
Bike links! BikeMagic | Mountain Bike Review | Singletrack | What Should I Put On The Fence?
It should be borne in mind that regular exercise on the wheel promotes digestion, and the food is more thoroughly assimilated than it is probably in any other form of exercise except, perhaps, horseback riding. Bicycles, coupled with cold-water baths, constitute almost a certain panacea of all the ills that human flesh is heir to.
Geo. W. Blum, The Cycler's Guide and Road Book. (1895)
Off down to the Big Smoke tomorrow with Heather for a dirty weekend. Got bored on Monday and hit lastminute.com for cheap hotel reservations. Got a nice place in the West End for cheap, so we're off to experience the joys of London. We have our little checklist of things we'd like to see:
- Some form of theatre production (Art looks good)
- The London Aquarium
- The fleshpots of Soho
- Camden Park Market
- The inside of a couple of pubs
Should be good fun. London's a laugh, provided that you don't have to actually live there and can afford to only make the odd visit.
in the bath 6 august 2001
Had a slightly odd experience the other day. A couple of weeks ago we met this really nice bloke in the pub, had a fun conversation, and ended up drunkenly vowing to get together again at some point. As part of this, we swapped URLs. This is where having your own domain comes in useful - much easier to remember. Anyway, we wombled off and each read each other's sites prior to hooking up for another drink.
So this kind of weirded me out when I realised it (during the other drink). When I first started this, the only people who actually found out about the URL were our mates - people who we knew fairly well already. This naturally affected the writing on the site. You present yourself quite differently to your mates than to the world at large (just one reason why I don't put this URL on my CV). Since then, though, I've had a number of my mates back home read this site to keep up with what I'm up to, I've had one friend give his mother the URL, and I'm reasonably sure that my sister reads it. A wider audience, so to speak. I doubt I'll be slashdotted, though (although I have several friends who have been). ;) However, it's kind of disconcerting to be chatting to a relative stranger (lovely boy though he is), and realise that they've read about most of the stuff you've done over the last year.
And of course, since he's read my site and could well do so again, I'm just compounding the weirdness by talking about it here. Hey ho. If you're reading this, hi Ash! Anyway, if I didn't want people reading this stuff, I wouldn't write it. I've employed this tactic a fair bit over the last six months (family stuff), so I'm not really worried.
This week, I have mostly been listening to Lemon Jelly's album, lemonjelly.ky. It's a compilation of their three first EPs, and is definitely worth the price of admission. Nice downtempo stuff, fairly sample-based, with a certain amount of cut'n'paste giving the samples a bit of crunch. Not, however, unduly turntablistic: there's a solid track (including some rather nice basslines) under the sample layer, but the samples add a nice sense of whimsy to the whole thing. Ultramarine meets Mr Scruff, with a slight tinge of Boards of Canada (Chris keeps accusing me of making these bandnames up, you know). Stuie'd like it.
Related note: nice track titles. Homage to Patagonia, Kneel Before Your God... nice. Not quite in the stellarsphere of the Future Sound of London, mind. through your lungs i breathe, eyes pop skin explodes everybody dead, far out son of lung and the ramblings of a madman, everyone in the world is doing something without me... sheer class. But when's the next album coming out, eh? Eh?
We got an interesting tip-off the other day from our sources on the street. Literally: said sources are the local 8 year-old kids. They're normally pretty clued up on what's happening around the neighbourhood, and they reckon that Della (psychotic neighbour) has done a runner. As to how official this as (as in, does the city council know yet?), we're not sure. Still, as far as rumours go, it's a pretty encouraging one. We've not seen her for a few days, so we could well be lucky here. Cautious optimism is the order of the day. We'll celebrate when someone else moves in there, and not before.
I've also been spending a lot of time drooling over various bikes. A fatal move - I'm still reasonably insolvent, and reading the glowing reviews of the various steeds out there is doing me nut in. Current drool factors are the Cannondale Bad Boy, or the Kona Jake the Snake, on the basis that I'd like a bike that goes like the clappers on tarmac but can actually go offroad (or, indeed, hit potholes and hop curbs) without destroying itself or shaking me to bits. Ah well, a man can dream... roll on the stock options, sez me.
Wore a vaguely sporty top into work today. Got it at Fin Design, in the Wellington Market, about four years ago. Red/orange front, with red/white/black vertical stripes on the arms, and a stenciled flame pattern on the front. Chris' comment was that I looked like I'd just founded my own Rollerball team. Bless.
top quote 31 july 2001
Found this in The Decadent Gardener, lent to me by a coworker:
He was waiting impatiently for the plants that really enchanted him, the vegetable ghouls, the carnivores: the Antilles Flytrap with its shaggy limbs secreting a digestive liquid, armed with grilles of downward pointing thorns to imprison invading insects; Drosera, the peat-bog dweller, garnished with glandulous hairs; Sarracena [sic] and Cephalothus [sic], whose greedy trumpets are capable of digesting and absorbing whole lumps of meat; finally Nepenthes, its fantastic forms exceeding all known limits of eccentricity.
He turned the pot in his hands, tirelessly fascinated by this quivering floral extravagance. It looked like a rubber-plant with its long, dark metal-green leaves, but at the end of each dangled a verdant string, an umbilical cord attached to a mottled violent and green urn, a sort of German porcelain pipe, a strange bird's nest swinging softly from side to side, its interior carpeted with hairs.
'That really is special,' murmured Des Esseintes ...
::J-K Huysmans, A Rebours
Chelsea Flower Show, dead cars, and punt races.