Weird is not an insult

OK, two thoughts for the price of one - why not check out Ray Manzarek on Spotify? His Carmina Burana album is something else!

An item from The Onion on National Awareness Month

There's an interesting article on Changes in the Japanese Language in the NY Times, discussing such trends as cellphone fiction, the effects of computers on the use of kanji etc

I've just installed Ethereal Dialpad that turns my SmartPhone into a synthesiser. Far out!

BBC4 did a very good documentary the other day on the Krautrock scene of the 60s to 80s. There were interviews with and performances by some of the major players including Faust playing the cement mixer. There seems to be a common thread of "Well, think that that's what happened, but we did smoke a lot in those days." Ee, I have fond memories of working my way through Stafford library's collection of Progrock / Krautrock. It's on again live on 8th Nov and more details, samples and information are available ( ... ). Alternatively there's quite of a lot of this genre cheap on Emusic.
There is an ongoing History of Private Life on radio 4, based on contemporary accounts of life at home in letters and diaries - quite fascinating. The one I listened to was about how upper class women occupied themselves. Apparently there was a fad for the gentry to study nature and the men would collect unusual animals and the ladies would draw them, press them, stuff them or make ornaments out of them as appropriate. While marriages were normally arranged, part of the prenuptial negotiations involved the decoration and furnishing of the home(s) - one fiancee wrote 'My dearest, how I tire of writing to you about houses!'

Found on grinding.be

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And Tomorrow is only a Vision;
But Today well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
- Kalidasa

Halcyonpoodle and I had a few days in Bruges and Ghent. Exciting adventures may be serialised here in day course, but in the mean time, here are some pictures.

I found this item on the LRB blog, giving the postal workers view on this strike.
Personally I think they'll do to them what they did to the miners.

We've just finished watching 'Electric Dreams' - a reality TV series where they regressed a household to 1970s style and technology then reintroduced gadgets at the rate of a year a day. Fascinating stuff - I remembered most of the gadgets, while Halcyonpoodle muttered "We didn't have those - we were poor!". The kids were quite shocked at having to all go into the living room to watch TV with only 3 channels in black and white, but one of them got into the spirit of things by just cycling into town, having typed out a note, but obviously not taking his mobile phone.
It does make me wonder what the reaction would be in 30 years time to today's tech.
Do you remember Twitter? You'd have to decide reach into your pocket, get your phone out, decide what to say then type it in? Young people don't appreciate how convenient and safe it is to have your implants broadcasting everything you think to your friends and family!
It seems strange to recall that at one time people actually used to not know things, before we all got Google for Brains(TM).
Those noughties HDTVs are quite useless nowadays, of course - they need electricity.

In WH Smiths, under mens interests - Model Tractor magazine
In Sainsburys - Space Hoppers!

There's an interesting item on this theme on the BBC site. When I was young, my parents had central heating to impress the neighbours, but they rarely switched it on (or maybe, given some of my father's attempts at plumbing, they were just covering up that it didn't work). As the article said, one consequence is that only one or two rooms would be anything like warm in the winter.

Do you remember the predictions in the 70's that thanks to automation we'd all be working part-time in future, if at all, and the main problem would be what to do with all the leisure? Oddly, it is the coke crazed gamblers in the financial services rather than the scientists who brought this about for me, but that's another matter. For some more misleading tips about the shape of things to come, there is now an online archive of the Best of Tomorrows World.

The 2009 Kinetica fair was extremely good. More fun and less pretentious than it sounds (though there probably will be a lot of thin people in black polo neck jumpers and berets). They're also doing workshops in Spitalfields Market on Tuesday if anyone is down that way.

Announcing Kinetica Art Fair 2010
4 - 7 February 2010

The fundamental aim for the Kinetica Art Fair is to bring together galleries, museums and organisations from around the world who specialise and focus on kinetic, electronic, robotic, light, sound, time-based and interdisciplinary new media art.

This unique event is designed to provide invaluable opportunities for new and dedicated collectors of these artworks, while promoting the mission of Kinetica Museum to support the development and commercial enterprise of kinetic, electronic and new media art.

Kinetica Art Fair 2010 will take place at P3, the 14,000 sq ft multi-disciplinary arts venue on Marylebone Rd (opposite Baker St tube).

Galleries, museums, art dealers, artists collectives, curatorial groups and individual artists are invited to participate. Publications and journals specialising in kinetic, electronic, robotic, sound, time-based and new media art are also invited to take part.

I don't usually do public education, but there's a very interesting link posted on Grinding.be on the subject of convergance.

One of the predictions is that most access to the Internet will be by mobile devices by 2020. I'd guess earlier than that - while the film concentrates on the USA, Netbook and Smartphone sales are rocketing in Asia. Most people in Japan already do all their Internet stuff on mobile phones.

This lady does rather angst ridden electropop. You can listen to some of her stuff on MySpace.

Barcode reader: Here's a neat little trick. There's a particular size storage box that I'm after. Googling proved difficult. Scanned the bar code with my camera. Bingo! 3 online suppliers found with prices half or less what I'd bought the original item for.

This free application for Android phones is supposed to save you the situation where you see an interesting book in shop, buy it and when you get home realise that you have the same book, but perhaps with a different cover. You scan the barcode with your camera and it will tell you whether it's already in your library. If not, you can get reviews of it. Having decided to purchase it, you add the scanned code to your library.
This works using the My Library area of Google Books and requires you to add your existing books into said list. You can do this using this tool or by typing the ISBN numbers in on the web page. As such it would seem a reasonably quick way of cataloging your collection (which can then be searched online), but there are flies in the ointment...

• Google doesn't recognise all ISBN numbers at present. I suspect it's only to be relied upon with books in print.


• I'm not sure what the privacy situation is. Sharing your literary tastes with your friends is one thing, but do you want your parents / employer etc to be able to google that you have an early edition Necronomicon, Mein Kampf and the pop-up Marquis De Sade Anthology?


• The buttons are yellow on lime green. Urgh!


• Does it work when there's no connectivity? I'll try it sometime in the basement of Forbidden Planet

I thought there was some excellent stuff