January 29, 2003  

mantis slalom 28 january 2003

Bit of a dilemma, really. Am I unhinged enough to queue up at midnight for a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? Or am I going to be sensible and order it off Amazon, at half the price? The question basically boils down to, do I trust Amazon to get it to me on the day of release (as they promise)? Or do I want to take part in an indiscriminate scrum of frenzied small children and equally rabid adults?

It's a toughie.

Mind you, an indiscriminate scrum could be a laugh - particularly if I'm sufficiently lagered up beforehand. I'm sure Waterstones won't refuse midnight admission to customers who are obviously swigging from hip flasks.

Discovered yesterday that I can actually do a reasonable number of pull-ups. Result.

Is it me, or are The Datsuns Deep Purple hiding undercover?

You know you've been away from home for too long when: you go for walk. It starts to rain. Then it starts to rain harder, with big gusts of wind. Then the pounding rain turns to sleet. And there you are, walking through this windy, gusty sleetstorm, and you realise that you're grinning like a loon because it reminds you of home. Man, people look at you oddly when you're looking happy to be soaked to the skin.

Though it does mean that I smell funny in the office for a bit until I dry out.

Not really funny, y'know. Just that slightly odd smell that wet clothes get. I assure you, my personal hygiene is of the highest standard.

January 28, 2003  

a toe in the water 27 january 2003

OK, so there's still some good stuff out there in the wilds of usenet.

• Perennial debates - each group has 'em, and it's nice to have them summarised so you can avoid the tedious business of following the threads.
• Enterprising dogs - though this will seem less suprising to the Kiwis in the audience, who will remember Rastus (may he rest in peace).

Maybe the cycling bias is showing through again, eh? Other news: looks like Cannondale are up shit creek. The fact that they've launched an entire new product line, offroad motorbikes, which haemmorhaged cash from day 1 can't be helping. OK, so you expect to take a loss on a new venture, but still. I'll be sorry if they do end up going under - owning a Cannondale road bike has been one of my fantasies for about the last 18 months. Ah well. Time to look up the site and drool for a while.

January 21, 2003  

40oz for breakfast 20 january 2003

Good article from the New Republic reviewing Keith Bradsher's recent book, High and Mighty [Amazon]. The book is an analysis of the growth of SUVs in America, and why this might not be such a shit-hot idea. In the best tradition of academic book reviews, the review basically restates the good bits from the book, but it's still definitely worth reading. It's very Americentric, and a number of the points don't necessarily apply outside the US. However, even in these cases, there's a bit of knock-on. OK, US tax dodges that allow ridiculously huge SUVs to get get around standard taxes and emissions regulations don't necessarily affect anyone outside the US, but the general trends in SUV design knock-on around the world. And certainly some of the safety aspects etc make for fascinating reasoning, as does the marketing tactics. Mind you, car design has been largely rather aggressive for quite a while - you're never going to see the Ford Fluffy, are you?

And while we're on a motirised-transport tip: Welsh farmers have been running their cars on cooking oil. Apparently Mercedes engines will even run on lard. And Asda are converting their delivery vans in the UK to run on the left-over cooking oil from their shops. Yup, doughnut-powered delivery that doesn't involve a New York bicycle messenger. It's almost enough to make me shop at Asda - but since they're owned by Wal-Mart, it's not going to happen any time in the near future.

Related links: UK Veggies Biodesel Site.

What we're listening to: surprising thumbs up for Chicks on Speed Will Save Us All by Chicks on Speed. It's a lot better than I'd expected. Lo-fi electronica (yeah, yeah, electroclash, whatever), intermittent house, nasty. Some very nice little dark set pieces in there. Warm Leatherette is a damn fine track, as is Glamour Girl. OK, so bits of it are basically unlistenable avant-gard electro, but there's some quite sneaky beats in between. Worth it if you like really, really early period B52s, early '90s industrial house, or most of the early 80s electro, really.

Arlene McCarthy MEP asked: "Why is Bob Dylan taxed, but not Dylan Thomas; Paul McCartney but not pornography?"

The Guardian [source]

Am I missing something here? Is this just duff rhetoric, or is there some connection between Paul McCartney and porn that I don't know about? Red-hot ex-Beatle action?

I'm going to avoid making a joke comparing Paul McCartney's later solo work to some of the more extreme German fetish pornography (i.e. a load of crap), however.

Return of the fun search strings. It's been a bit quiet recently, and I got highly suspicious after Mike confessed to larding my logs with dummy search strings. Well, that explains why I kept getting results from the philosophy of language (e.g. 'gavagai'). But, y'know, "fc pornography fucked company" is just so haiku I've got to mention it. Now I want to form a football team and call it FC Pornography. And the vague suggestion that someone actually thought that Fuckedcompany was in some way a porn site... class. Of course, I have no idea how it ended up at me. I suspect Mike again. Mind you, I was interested to notice that I'm starting to get hits for "topless female boxing". Result!

Of course, I've got a way to go to beat Lisa's "Floatation device" fetish hits. Though, intriguingly, if you spell it 'flotation', you get some hits that look a little more worryingly genuine.

January 17, 2003  

wiggle room 16 january 2003

these words are not tools of communication
they are shards of metal dropped from eight-story windows
they are waterfalls and gas leaks
aged thoughts rolled in tobacco leaf

Saul Williams, in Release by Blackalicious [full text]

Highly recommend the abovesaid track. Saul Williams' spoken word poetry is astounding stuff. The written word just doesn't do it justice. And I speak as someone with a hearty distaste for most forms of poetry.

Another reason I like the UK: any country where you can buy premade rice pudding as a snack is OK by me.

OK, and staying on a music tip: is it me, or is the start of the Foo Fighters song Times Like These exactly the same as the Muttonbirds song Giant Friend? Not that I listen to the Foo Fighters, you understand, but a friend of mine lent me a CD full of MP3s, which included the FF as well as the new Underworld album.

Interesting night last night. We went off to the Arts Picturehouse to catch a film. I have a number of criteria by which I decide whether to see a movie. This one fulfilled two of the major ones:

1. Independant Canadian cinema.
2. Boobies.

The film in question, Punch [imdb], was pretty good. It was basically a family drama, with intermittant topless female boxing. It was the director's first feature, and occasionally felt like it, but overall was well worth the time. As far as the scripting and editing went, it was - well - punchy. Very tight. It makes a nice change seeing a movie that just sits down and takes you through a story in 90 minutes and then gets out. The acting was extremely good. Sonja Bennet - the director's daughter, hem hem - was surprisingly believable as the asocialised daughter, and Michael Riley was excellent as the father. Post-movie, there was a quick Q&A with Guy Bennett (the director) and Sonja Bennett (daughter, main character). The guy hosting it obviously liked the sound of his own voice and wasn't half as funny as he thought he was, but the others were great. Guy Bennett in particular was good - he happily admitted to being a media slut in his attempts to get publicity, and managed to combine a certain degree of intense self-involvement (goes with the turf) and a good sense of humour and pragmatism. I was particularly impressed with the fact that he stated explicitly that they'd had focus groups to sharpen up the editing of the film, losing a minor subplot in the process - none of this "I am the auteur, it's my vision being transcribed" bollocks. Refreshing, particularly given that this was basically a low-budget art-house movie (where that kind of directorial pretension is to be expected), and especially given that it was originally semi-autobiographical.

And the topless boxing is just a hook - it's not at all sexy, and definitely doesn't involve people just jiggling in place. Some of the boxing scenes were quite nasty, actually - very Fight Club.

The weather's taken a turn for the warmer. All the ice has melted, much to the distress of the children I saw hanging around on Midsummer Common the other lunchtime. They'd bought their sleds along, presumably to sled along the (horizontal) frozen puddles. Except the puddles had defrosted. Not to be deterred, the kids were hauling their sleds up the 3m high slope by Victoria Road Bridge, and sledding down the wet grass. Their expressions of grim determination convinced me that a new generation of British character was being built in front of my eyes. "We came here for snow and ice. There is no snow, nor ice. There are wet leaves. Very well. We shall sled on wet leaves." It's the spirit that built empire.

Well, when you combine it with "They have snow. They are not using it. We can take their snow. Then we could sled on it. For Queen and country!"

January 10, 2003  

industry standard edit 9 january 2003

It's definitely winter at the moment. The standing water on Jesus Green has frozen solid. Three days ago, it was 10cm of standing water left over from last week's flooding. Today, it's 5cm of standing water, covered with 5cm of ice. Which is comfortably enough to support my bodyweight. I know this because I went out at lunch and spent a few minutes wandering around on top of the ice. I'm enough of a kiwi to find the concept of ice that you can walk around on pretty damn cool. I even spent a minute vigorously jumping up and down, just to see how strong the ice was. Sorry, comedy fans, I didn't break through and have to spend the rest of the day with wet feet - which, frankly, is what I was expecting.

So it's damn cold. Which causes me a slight problem. My gym (the Atrium) is in a remodelled warehouse. Fine, cool, nice big space with plenty of room to put the kit. So far, so groovy. Except that this also means that it's quite hard to heat (or cool, in summer) the space effectively. So at the moment, it's a bit chilly. So it can get a bit uncomfortable when you're working out - for example, if you pause between sets for too long. This not being optimal, I thought I'd get meself some slightly warmer gear to work out in. A sweatshirt, say. Or some tracksuit pants. Something like that. And that's the problem: where the hell do you buy sports gear that you want to actually use for sports? Every single bloody shop I can find that sells "sportswear" is selling kit that divides neatly into two categories:

• Massively overpriced "name brand" clothes intended to be worn while hanging around outside the local corner shop with all your 14-year old mates and their pregnant 13-year old girlfriends.
• Replica football shirts.

It's doing me head in. I'm not paying bloody £25 for a sweatshirt with a fricking logo on it, I just want something that I can pull on to stop meself from freezing in between sets of military presses. Doesn't anyone sell sports kit that's designed for sports? No, because it's more lucrative to make your logo bigger, double the price, and flog it to schoolkids as trendy. Feh!

Having seen Chris's friend Shazzie on telly last night, I'd just like to link once more to Bratman's seminal article on orthorexia.

It's that time of year again - demobbed Christmas trees are starting to appear, abandoned on street corners. When you think about it, the disposal process must be quite involved. The average Christmas tree is about four to six feet high, and about three to four feet wide. Not really bin material, is it? So a number of these are just being dumped on the street. It's kind of like dumping unwanted Christmas puppies, but much less cruel. And more fir-y.

But of course, just because you don't want your tree, doesn't mean that someone else might not. I was out for a walk at lunch, and I noticed that someone had dumped a rather nice tree by the little park where the local homeless population sit of an afternoon and drink cheap cider. No-one was around, but it looks like the local homeless community have taken that tree to their hearts. It's standing, tall and proud, by the park benches on Mitcham's Corner, brightly decorated with empty lager cans hanging from the branches. Really - they've just poked holes in the sides of the empty cans and threaded them onto the branches. Skol and Special Brew make for surprisingly merry decorations, actually.

Radio 4 did a brief spot on gun violence in Britain and gangsta lyrics the other day. It was introduced by a medley from various rap songs around the place. I was gratified that they included a line from Straight Outta Compton by NWA - specifically, "AK47 is the tool... [FX gunshots]". Nice. So to illustrate a point about gun violence in the UK, they used a quote from a song from 1988, made by a group in LA, and they didn't even have the decency to finish the line ("...don't make me act the motherfucking fool"). Ah well.

January 08, 2003  

all still here 7 january 2003

Breakfast on Sunday was a plastic-wrapped sandwich from a hospital newsagent. And I'd just like to register my surprise at finding out that Addenbrookes Hospital has a larger food court than the local shopping mall. I suppose it makes sense, but I'm slightly stuck in my memories of Wellington Hospital in the mid '80s, when (from memory) the only source of food besides the cafeteria was a small kiosk similar to the type you'd find in a railway station, which also did duty as a sweetshop and florists. Thus, finding a hospital containing a branch of Burger King, two coffee shops, a gift shop, a florist, and a bank (full branch, including mortgage brokers) took me slightly by surprise.

Of course, I wasn't really in any shape to be taking this in, as I was worrying like hell at the time. The reason we were at Addenbrookes in the first place is that Heather suffered a severe muscle spasm in her lower back on Sunday morning - to the point where she couldn't actually move from the pain. Not the "couldn't get out of bed" sort of couldn't move, the "lying facedown and unable to move legs or torso" sort of couldn't move. A short call to the ambulance service later, a couple of nice young men were giving Heather nitrous oxide in order to alleviate the pain so she could roll over and sit up. After a slightly fraught ambulance ride and four hours of sitting in various sections of the Casualty department (it's nothing like on telly you know), she was diagnosed with a sprained back and prescribed some rather industrial strength muscle relaxants and painkillers.

So, y'know, Sunday was that interesting combination of mad panic and boredom that hospital visits usually are.

Other than that, it's all been pretty chilled out. Partially because Sunday kind of threw everything else into sharp relief, partially because it has been genuinely really cold.

And wet. As in, the river was up about a metre or so at the weekend. To everyone reading this who has seen southern England on the news and is under the impression that we're now aquatic, relax. While the river was indeed very high, we're quite a way from it. Mind you, on Saturday we went for a long walk around Cambridge, and the Grantchester meadows were completely submerged. The river had burst its banks, and was up and into the meadows. The river looked about 30m wide or so. Impressive stuff. As previously, the ducks are looking positively cocky - "Soon, lad, all this will be ours" and all that.

January 03, 2003  

they take a polaroid and let you go 2 january 2002

It's been a fairly mellow old couple of days. I'd got slightly more leave saved up from last year than my supervisor was comfortable with me carrying over, so I've ended up taking this entire week off. Thankfully, due to a fairly sane New Years' Eve with mates, I didn't need the whole week to get over the hangover. Nice.

One of the things I did over Christmas was start playing around with the settings in my email software. I discovered that the ntlword news server is actually reasonably reliable, and had a bit of a wander through the golden land of usenet. It really takes me back. I had a look at rec.arts.bodyart, which is where I used to spend much of my university-age lurking time (while theoretically writing my thesis). It's been four years since I last read r.a.b. And reading it again now, it's exactly the same people posting, having the exact same arguments, calling each other the exact same names. With, of course, a small floating population of newbies who read the group for a month or so, then get sick of the ridiculous clicquiness and bugger off to a less insular section of the web. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I stopped reading usenet four years ago.

Though that said, there's some good bits out there. Case in point: an explanation for why one of the letter boxes on Riverside in Cambridge has 2" spikes all over the lid.

The "spiked box" was at the top of Cheddars Lane. It was close to the wall behind which was the gas-works. It is said that the workers vaulted the wall and landed on the box to use the pub on the other corner without the need to clock-off and the spikes were added to stop the practice. The box was later moved to its present location.

The Letter Box Study Group, as quoted in cam.misc [source]

Nice one. I'd been wondering about that for years. The explanation that it's been moved is the piece we were looking for - where it is now, there's no obvious reason to for anyone to want to stand on top of it.

I got rather enthusiastic on New Years' Eve and ended up spending much of the afternoon zooming around the countryside. I decided to try whacking some fat tyres back on me bike and having a bit of a mud-fest. This certainly proved to be interesting, as the torrential rain we've been having recently meant that a number of the bridlepaths I was riding down were six inches deep in mud. I twice violated rule 57 of mountain biking: never ride through puddles deeper than the front hub of your bike. An interesting experience, which left me absolutely covered in mud (I'm not kidding here), my feet soaked through, and Heather a bit worried about where I'd got to. My bike was essentially indescribable at the end of the ride - and since I got home at 4pm, the end of the ride was in darkness. I thus spent the first part of New Years' Eve out the back of the house with a bucket and a brush, cleaning a vast amount of mud off my bike. Thanks to the miracle of Muc-Off, it only took about twenty minutes. And the garden now includes some value added high-quality muck.

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