Posts (page 2)

Just noticed this 'Videos' feature on Vox, but I'm not too sure how it's supposed to work. Is it a self-contained miniblog within my main Vox blog? Or just a way of inserting film images easily? Will this appear inline on my blog? Why on earth have they called it Videos instead of Films or Movies? Something against going to the cinema, or just confident that physical media *isn't* going to die off very soon?

On another (grumpy Sunday, sorry, I think I overslept) note, the Vox compose area has to be one of the most infuriating things I've ever had to struggle with (today). It continually deletes images I have inserted when I just want to place the cursor after it, has lousy focus and responsiveness, and generally treats me like a child by not allowing me any control over HTML. There are plenty of decent open source rich text editors available to hack away at, there's really no excuse.

Anyway, River and Tides, a documentary about the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. Magnificent stuff.

Kevin picked up a lovely old Canon AE-1 camera for me in a pawn shop a couple of years ago, and I've been dabbling with it on and off since.

It's fully manual, so naturally results can be and have been hit and miss. But by now I've fairly well managed to figure out how aperture and shutter speed relate to each other, know how depth of field works, how to use the tiny lightmeter through the viewfinder, and have a sense for the type of light that works. I've also managed to figure out that shooting film is much different to digital. Not just in terms of results (although film obviously lends itself more to the types lucky breaks and happy mistakes that someone at my level usually relies on), but also in terms of the process. Film demands respect and consideration in a way that shoot-from-the-hip digital can't compare to. Crank the wheel and feel the film roll away under your thumb, then press the button to hear the most wonderfully satisfying sound in the world. Although a greater degree of inginuity may have gone into building the chips in my digicam, I myself certainly can't seem to muster the same sense of awe as for the precisison engineering that makes all of the mecahnical parts of the inside of my camera come together so delicately, perfectly audible in the falling-clicking sound of the shutter.

Digital is fun, but I love my AE-1.

More AE-1 at Flickr.

I don't think a post-festival report could be made into compelling reading by even the finest of writers. However, it seems like a good way to kickstart posting again. Suffice to say that I was there, had three days of fun, and saw these bands:

Spank Rock, Deus, PJ Harvey, Massive Attack, The Redneck Manifesto, Jape, Gang of Four, Broken Social Scene, DJ Shadow, Belle and Sebastian, Super Furry Animals, Yo La Tengo, Bloc Party, New Order, Andy Wetherall, Giveamanakick, Hot Chip, Saul Williams, The Rapture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Pet Shop Boys, Modeselektor.

And so to bed. For a week.

Tell us a little something about your first car.  Do you have any photos you can share? 

The White Rider, El Blanco, a 1994 Fiesta.

Of course, she was prone to the occasional lapse in motor function, but in an endearing way. She served us well, and opened up the joys of weekend surfing trips for a summer. On one such occassion, we drove to Fanore beach, got suited up, and were about to get into the water when someone told us that the waves were much better on the other side of the head, in Lahinch. After a short conference, we decided to throw the boards in the back, and head inland, directly towards Lahinch.

About halfway there, I got a flat.

And so it happened that on a hot summer day in the middle of the Burren, miles from the nearest sign of water, a busload of puzzled Japanese tourists drove slowly past a brokendown car which, for some strange reason, was being attended to by two young men dressed entirely in wetsuits.

Open source Mac apps hate freedom.

If you had a band, what would you call yourselves?

I have actually been in many bands, each one (I would like to think) a little less terrible than the previous. Some names, in chronological order:

• The Banging Pandas
• The 10p Taytos
• The Swell
• Kerouac
• Headphones

Somehow, the names seemed to get worse as the music got better. There were many more variations over the years, but these are the ones that I can remember actually playing gigs under.

My next band would, I think, be called The Flatpack Revolution.

I was given the present of a mixtape once, "Kirsty's Jazz-Funk Fusion", cobbled together from it's curator's inherited 70s LP collection, complete with vinyl scratches bubbling away in the background. It was a grey Maxwell C-90. I had the tape for years, but I've long since lost it.

It was the first place I heard Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", and served as a reliable old workhorse for college house parties and later in the car during summer road trips. The main reason I remember it though, is "Expressway to Your Heart".

Until recently, I couldn't tell you who the song was by, the handwritten inlay card that came with the cassette long since misplaced and, despite my best efforts, entirely forgotten. It occurred to me to try searching online a couple of years back, and at one stage thought I'd found it, on a greatest hits compilation by someone named Karen Young. I previewed the song, and could tell straight away that it wasn't the version I was looking for. I didn't even bother ordering the CD. I forgot about it.

A couple of weeks ago I was pottering about on the iTunes music store. I've never bought music from it because I'd rather not be locked into the proprietary format that they sell their music in, but it's fun to browse. I've never caught onto buying single songs either, perhaps the music snob still hiding somewhere within me refusing to believe (or at least resisting the idea) that the album is dead. Or maybe I just hate the concept of listening to half an album. Anyway there I was, idly flicking through the racks, and... well, you know where this is going.

I don't know why I even thought of it (I had watched an interview with Gil Scott-Heron the week before on YouTube, could that be it?), but I found myself entering the song title into the search box. No preview necessary this time. I recognised the name straight away, that part of the cassette inlay suddenly unerased from my mind.

Margo Thunder. How could I forget a name like that?

99¢. "Buy Song".

I was somehow expecting an anticlimax. Last year I bought a cheap old NES on eBay, an attempt to reverse an ill-advised sale I made as a young man, but in the end it was kind of a letdown. Fun, but (of course) not quite as good as I had remembered. It was better in my memory.

Now, Expressway to Your Heart by Margo Thunder. Headphones on, press play. And as soon as I heard the intro, a flangy bassline and offkey horn stabs, then a sharp little drum fill, and... ah yes. The main hook, a simple, straight up ascending arpeggio for the horns with the matching bassline running little riffs around it. Classic funky drummer beat. And then Margo lets it rip. It's got a neat little low-tempo middle eight section and a cool descending refrain with a high chord piano throughout. Archetypal soul backing vocals. A key change! It was all just like I remembered it. I started giggling away to myself. It was great. It made me happy.

I'm not even recommending you go seek out this song; if you did, you'd almost surely be let down. It's just a standard soul song. It's not by any means the greatest ever written. But it is a cracking, funky little number.

And for some reason, I still love it, from it's very first line.

"I been tryin' to get to you for a long time..."

What is your current computer desktop image? Let's see it!

A photo I took last year on the beach in Lettergesh, Co. Mayo. Haven't been back since but we're going camping there this weekend... God bless bank holidays.

Note the text overlayed on the top and bottom left corners using the fan-tastic GeekTool -- system uptime, my todo.txt file, and this month's calendar.

Django finally released it's long-awaited stable-enough-for-me 0.95 version over the weekend, and last night I spent a couple of hours running through their initial setup tutorials. There were several parts that were so damn good that I just laughed out loud -- this thing is tight. And in Python!

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship. I look forward to seeing how the second date goes, and maybe never having to write another CRUDdy admin interface again.

</GPA>

If you could get someone in your life to start a blog, who would it be and why?

I'm not sure if "in your life" means someone I know of, or someone I know personally.

I think that Stewart Brand would write a kickin' blog. For some reasons why, see the footnote here. But I've never met the man, so if the strict rules pertaining to this question limit me to immediate acquaintances, I'd have to go for any of my close friends that no longer live in Ireland. We're all mostly terrible at emailing. The last time I saw Nick I mentioned that we hadn't spoken in ages, and he said that he feels like we're in touch all the time because he reads my blog.

Or else if animals could blog, like if I could somehow get a feed of my dog's daily activities delivered to my RSS reader (total yards run, balls fetched, overall mood, etc), that would also be cool. Or (although not technically an acquaintance), if the Jetsonesque dream of a robotic kitchen would please hurry up and realise itself, a blogging fridge would also be handy, and never again would I forget to buy milk when we are empty.