November 22, 2003  

New thrill! List of prospective baby names to the right!

 

the dizzy gillespie effect 21 november 2003

If you've done much reading on early childhood development, or (are about to) have a young child, you'll probably have heard of 'the Mozart Effect'. The basic idea goes roughly as follows:

1. People who listen to Mozart then score slightly higher on specific tests of cognitive function.
2. This will work for children as well.
3. Therefore, buy this video with Mozart on it, and make your kid smarter!

The upshot of this is another bit of "buy this or you're a bad parent" consumerism. You can buy a lot of videos and CDs of Mozart "for kids!" - because of course, you don't actually want to listen to Mozart, you just want your kid to be smart. Now, this raises a couple of issues for me:

• Surely it's better for the kid to actually listen to a real recording of mozart, rather than some tinny electronic version accompanied by bright lights?
• OK, suppose this works with mozart. Does it work with anything else? Would it work, for example, with Bach? Rimsky-Korsakov? DJ Shadow? The Future Sound of London? Dizzy Gillespie? Miles Davis? Is it just suitably complex and subtle music, or what?

Personally, it all sounds a bit highly suspicious and convenient to me. Given that the term 'Mozart Effect' is copyrighted and is used to sell a variety of "educational" materials, it looks to me like someone's found a pseudo-scientific cash cow and is milking it for all they're worth. And I'm not the only one.

The Body Modification Ezine is running a series of autobiographical articles by Jim Ward. Jim Ward is one of the people largely responsible for the recent interest in piercing. As founder of The Gauntlet, he set up the first commerical piercing and body jewellery manufacturer in the US. The man's a pioneer, and is very well spoken to boot. Worth reading if you're after some background on the contemporary modern primitive movement - back when it was the province of big hairy gay bikers rather than your 13-year old cousin getting her bellybutton pierced.

Nice. Another in the line of Bikes I Like: if I was speccing an ultimate town bike, it'd have the following characteristics:

• Hub gears - much easier to maintain (as in, you can't - it's a sealed unit, if anything goes wrong you need to send it back to the manufacturer; but since it's a sealed unit, it's much less likely to go wrong, as it's not exposed to the elements).
• Disc brakes - better stopping power in the wet.
• Some front suspension.
• Dynamo lights.

And lo! Those sensible geezers at Cannondale have come through with the Cannondale Street Rohloff. 14-speed Rohloff hub gear, which gives you the same number of usable speeds as a 27-speed derailler setup (due to gear duplication across the range). Disk brakes, a Headshok front sus unit, and what looks like a dynamo front light. Can't work it out from the spec, but if it's not got one, the only change I'd make is to spec a SON hub dynamo to run the dynamo lights. Now that'd just be lovely.

I'm very tempted to get a hub dynamo setup on one of my bikes, actually. Problem is, I can't decide which one to stick it on. It'd save a lot of time and faffing around during winter, though, which is a big plus. And if I get into audax (which I'd like to, but circumstances are dictating otherwise) it'd be ideal. Mind you, I don't have £130 or so knocking around, so it's a bit academic. One for the savings book, eh?

As I was biking to the gym the other night, I had a brief reverie about what DJ monicker I'd use if I got into DJing. "DJ Hub Dynamo" has a certain ring to it; mind you, so does "DJ Deadlift". That said, I think I'd have to stick to the one Lisa suggested a while back: "Two Ton Hydraulic Jack".

November 18, 2003  

red-eared slider 17 november 2003

We spent the weekend in London doing a spot of Christmas shopping. Mission successful; now all we need to do is wrap the packages and post 'em off, and the extended families are catered for. You're all getting stuffed toy ducks - sorry to spoil the surprise.

I enjoy shopping trips to London. It's a good buzz to be on a crowded street, with the added high that you know that it's just temporary and you can zoom off home later. Ah, the anonymity of the heartless metropolis: it's good fun to dip a toe in.

Of course, any time from mid November is likely to be a bit crowded. The Christmas lights are up already. The shopping season has officially started. And boy, could you ever tell. We spent much of Saturday on Oxford Street (Selfridges is surprisingly good fun), and then made the mistake of going into Hamleys. Well, now I know what the 8th circle of Hell will look like. It's very crowded, and has lots of stressed parents, and small children running around bashing into you while screaming loudly and waving the Barbie Wedding Planner Book (Barbie and a friend go into business as wedding planners, and have fun adventures while wallowing in huge swathes of hegemonic feminity - I'm not making this up, though my description may differ from the manufacturer's). And you're on the 5th floor. My palms are sweating just thinking about. We didn't last all that long. I remember Hamleys when I was a kid: they had the best toys in the whole world, everything was much bigger, and you could easily dodge around the other people while you clutched your Star Wars figures. Now - the magic is gone. It's just a maelstrom of shrieking children, crass commercialism, and ratcheting credit card debt. Still, only a few years before I'll be obliged to go there to do the Christmas shopping for mini-Elder, eh?

We ended up in a small Italian restaurant off Regent St for dinner on Saturday night. Our hotel was off Oxford St, so this was pretty handy. Slightly unusual vibe in the Italian restaurant: the wall featured signed photographs of Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith (respectively, Bart (et al) and Lisa on the Simpsons) posing outside the restaurant. The soundtrack to the evening was hard European trance, to which the Maitre D' sang along. Still, the food was grand, and we weren't complaining.

On Sunday, we fell into our standard pattern when travelling:

• Get up late.
• Have breakfast about 10:30 - 11:30.
• Wander around doing stuff.
• About 3:30pm, realise that we're hungry.
• Frantically try to find somewhere that's still doing food.

So we did some good shopping around the place. Hit Carnaby Street (most impressive display of lights), had a good wander around Liberty, wandered down Oxford St again, bought Heather some good formal maternity clothes for the Christmas party season (harder than you'd think), then got to the "realise it's the middle of the afternoon and we're starving" phase.

We ended up finding the closest pub to the Mothercare branch at Marble Arch, which turned out to be the Marlborough Head. Random choice, but well worth it. It's owned by the Eerie Pub Co. I'd not encountered one of their pubs before, but their schtick is to do the pubs up in high Hammer horror gothic camp. It was, I swear to god, exactly like the Haunted House at Disneyland. Except with Kronenberg on tap. Gargoyles everywhere! Silly names for the food and cocktails! Toilets concealed behind hidden doors in the bookcases! Atmospheric music (screams, organs etc) piped into the toilets! I mean, I wouldn't like it as my local, but as a random drop-in pub it's absolutely hilarious. Recommended for a bit of a laugh.

Next weekend we're off down to London again, to see Discover Dogs. This will unfortunately coincide with most of central London being shut down for George Bush's state visit. We expect to get stuck between a huge mass of anti-US protesters and US secret service agents. The best thing to say is that although the secret service agents will be armed, they won't have diplomatic immunity - so they can't just shoot anyone they don't like the look of. Still, could all get a bit crowded in the Big Smoke, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.

I wore my big, thick woolly tramping socks to work the other day. No particular deal: ended up having slightly hot feet, but otherwise an average day. Then I got to the gym and realised that I was going to be doing a workout wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and big woolly socks that came halfway up my calves. I looked worryingly like the start of an '80s legwarmer revival. Got a few funny looks. Mind you, tramping socks in the gym wouldn't be anything odd back home.

And hey! The gym had VH1 on the telly, and they were playing a selection of late '80s classics. Mainly rather worrying stuff (Vanilla Ice! Milli Vanilli!), but it made up for it big style. I'd just picked up the bar and got into position for a heavy deadlift set, and lo, it did come on: Doctorin' The Tardis by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, aka the KLF. Talk about pumped!

On the headphones at the mo: DJ Yoda's How to Cut & Paste Mix Tape by DJ Yoda (vols 1 and 2). Damn fine hip-hop mixed tape, with a "real English sensibility" - c'mon, any mix tape that drops Tony Hancock over the Beatnuts is well styled. Grand hip-hop with a wicked sense of humour - I'm grinning like a loon just listening to it, to be honest.

November 13, 2003  

on a bare branch 12 november 2003

Yesterday, one of our family dogs had to be put down. Eric. He was a good dog. Certainly not the brightest of the bunch; the other dogs regularly ran rings around him. I've seen him outwitted by other dogs, hedgehogs, cat-flaps, and on one memorable occasion a set of French doors. He was a classic pekinese; absolutely conformed to the breed specification (as originally written by the Empress Dowager Ci Xi). Heck, he'd won a number of dog shows in his youth, and had fathered a few litters. Someone nicknamed him "the supermodel": absolutely lovely to look at, and dumb as a brick. But for all that, he had a gert huge heart, and an excess of soul. He'd come up to you and stare up at you with huge brown eyes until you patted him. If you stopped patting, he'd start emitting small high-pitched whines and sneezes until you started again. He was the only dog I've ever met who enjoyed being bathed; I think it was because he loved the attention during the lengthy process of being dried afterwards. Before Heather and I got married, all the dogs got baths, one a day on the three days leading up to the wedding. Eric was last and he spent the first two days sulking because he thought he was being left out and wasn't going to get a bath. He used to have a great flump on 'im: he'd spot a patch of floor that he fancied, then flump right down and stretch out. With the amount of fur he had, it was quite an impressive sight. One of the best-natured dogs I've ever met.

He was about twelve when he died, which is a reasonable age for a dog (especially a wee dog like him). In the end, it was cancer that did for him. Basically, a grossly malignant cancer that spread throughout his entire body until he was finally put down the other day. Poor wee bugger. I'll miss him.

The squirrel, leaping
between stark branches.
I watch from my desk.

Autumn's here.

November 08, 2003  

knuckling the sleep kebab 7 november 2003

Heather's belly is slowly swelling. We had to top up the bean bag last night to make it easier for her to stand up from it. No particularly odd cravings as yet, but we're still hopeful. It's interesting how much this encourages mild casual sexism. You know - "No, dear, you can't help me shovel this gravel. Get indoors and make us a cuppa, there's a good girl." That sort of thing. Still, I'm getting plenty of cups of tea, and I'm getting plenty of exercise. Shovelling a ton of gravel is good exercise, especially for the lower back. That's a literal, metric ton, by the way - turns out you don't just buy the stuff by the bucket. Who knew?

Oh, and another of my coworkers turns out to be pregnant. Maybe it's catching? She's a ginger too, so there may be something in the water.

Those of you who've not been to the UK may be thinking there's an obvious grammatical erro (sic) in that last sentence. Nope. UK English distinguishes between "ginger" ('jin-jer'), meaning red or rust-coloured, sharp-tasting aromatic root, etc., and "ginger" ('ging-er' - rhymes with 'singer'), meaning a person with red hair. The latter sense is faintly pejorative - kind of like referring to a bald bloke as a slaphead - and can be used both as an affectionate insult and a shortcut to fights in bars. Hence, why Chris Evans (and occasionally Geri Halliwell) was nicknamed the "ginger minger" ('ging-er ming-er', "very unattractive person with red hair"). And there ends today's lesson.

Speaking of building things, a lot of stuff is currently disappearing from our house. Specifically, walls. Not structural walls - or rather, not particularly structural walls. Nothing that can't be replaced with a lick and a prayer, some gaffer tape and a steel beam. Yup, our kitchen is currently being largely removed and replaced wholesale. So far our builder is an absolute whirlwind. He's been working for two days, and is two days ahead of schedule. Eh? Walls are falling like corn before the scythe, and new internal structures are springing up in their place. He's making sufficient progress that we've actually not gotten around to emptying some of the cupboards that he's subsequently demolished - we just get home and find a neat stack of our posessions next to where a solid concrete wall used to be. It's like having particularly butch elves in the house. Definitely looking as though the final barrier with the house might be the wait to get the units delivered - as long as B&Q don't stuff us around, we're looking good to be completed by early December, fingers crossed.

I always find that it's at moments like this that you realise there's a whole world of other stuff out there that you know nothing about. Lino, for instance. It's fairly tough and you walk on it. All you need to know, really. Until you decide to buy some more. And then you discover that there's a huge array of possible lino finishes, thicknesses, and patterns. Is there really a difference between 25mm textured slate-effect, 20mm silvery non-slip, or 35mm heavy-duty? And if so, does it matter given what you'll be using it for? It's like when you first look at baby equipment: here's a whole new array of stuff that you've never thought about and which you'll have to become expert at unless you want to be really irresponsible.

Went off to the fireworks the other night. A good firework display, a few good beers, and a mystifying glut of people we knew meeting in the same pub. It was like being back in Wellington: we got to the pub, and people we know just kept on walking in. Back home, this wouldn't be particularly surprising. Over here, it was almost worrying. I kept thinking this was some kind of surprise party I'd not heard about. The Woodhead Drive massive, various coworkers, ex-student mates, the Astronomy Boys Choir; all over the place. Still, they all stood their round, and that's the main thing.

I suppose that astronomers like watching fireworks because it's like their normal work, but with someone's finger on the FFWD button.

Headphones: Midnight in a Perfect World, DJ Shadow. What Time Is Love?, KLF. Ez On, Salmonella Dub. It's a hard life.

November 04, 2003  

laminated with fatigue 3 november 2003

Today's themes: My My Metrocard and Deceptacon by Le Tigre. I'm on a big shouty minimalist instrumentation chicks tip at the moment, is all I can say. But hey! Bouncy stripped back indie electro rocks!

So we've just bought a car (a Fiat Brava, which Parkers says has "Italian flair"). In order to buy the car, it needed to be insured (so we can get an updated tax disc). Righto. Heather - who got her driving license 18 years ago - gets on the phone and gets some insurance quotes. For a fairly standard insurance package, with Heather insured to drive it, it'll cost a medium whack. OK, so far, so good. She then asks how much extra it'll cost to get me added on once I pass my driving test. It turns out that I can be added as a learner (bonus!), and moreover that doing so will actually lower the cost of the insurance policy. What? How does adding an inexperienced driver make it less likely that we'll need to claim on the insurance? Still, I'm not complaining.

Feels a little odd having four wheels again, after living without a car for two years (and for god knows how long before that). Still, it's definitely more convenient. Certainly it's possible to live a car-free life in a modern English city the size of Cambridge, but a car can make certain situations more convenient. Of course, it also makes certain other situations massively less convenient: popping into town of a Saturday to do some shopping, for example (or: where the merry hell can we park?). The biggie is of course getting the groceries, which isn't that much of a problem any more. Many major supermarkets now take orders via the internet and deliver directly to your home. In the UK, both Tesco and Sainsburys do this for a fiver, and usually have some kind of voucher or money off scheme that lets you knock a couple of quid off the price. You can buy fresh fruit at the market, and order the bulky stuff online. It's kind of like getting a really big package from Amazon, but with eggs.

I've started talking to Heather's bump occasionally. Just quick snippets of a rather one-sided conversation; getting it used to my voice, that sort of thing. It's hard to think what to say to a bump, isn't it? I've started prefacing every utterance with "This is your captain speaking" to give me time to think of something else to say. I mean, you can't really start out by discussing the weather, can you?

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