Month: February 2005

In the cold harsh light of Monday morning, there are a whole lot of photos from Friday night. Some of them are really good, some of them are not so. They’ll be up on My Flickr profile tomorrow and some may go up here depending on how much effort I put into them. A few need cleaning up but on the whole it’s a nice set with some friends having fun…and drinking alot.

I tag most things on flickr as friend only so you’ll have to be a contact to see the good ones. There are 99 from me to go up and another 60 from a friend here which I shall probably add up too. Some chaff but lots of wheat. It’s made the morning far more bearable here, there has been a lot of gathering and laughing at them. Some are really awful in a funny way and some are really quite sweet.

I’m liking my little camera quite a bit. I need to be doing some more stuff with it. I have gotten into the habit of carrying it, but not of ya know using it.

The rest of the weekend was quiet. Went along to Alex’s birthday party for a while on Saturday night but I really wasn’t in the mood so didn’t stay for too long. Tonight is V poll where I expect to loose pretty badly but it should be fun. Fun evening.

I finally got around to watching some of the Des Bishop DVD’s I picked up last time I was in Dublin. The standup was very funny in places and I’d like to get to see him live sometime. The RTE show I’m not sure on at all. The gist of it is a documentary following Des around while he spends a month working and living on minimum wage. Some of it goes as far as to be harrowing and in places resonates a little too closely, but it’s sometimes hard to forget that despite you see him suffering and surviving on very little cash, he’s a (presumably) well paid comedian making a TV show. It doesn’t always take away from it, and don’t get me wrong I think what is on screen is pretty genuine it’s just a little hard to feel so sorry for him…sometimes. Othertime’s it’s easy, too easy. Last episode to watch tonight after pool.

Optimism. It’s such a strange and unfamiliar feeling. And yet there it is, bubbling below the surface, well it’s way more than bubbling, it’s running rampant and it *really* needs to be slapped down. Or something along those lines.

I’m listening to, and enjoying the new Moby album a whole lot. I’m not sure it’s going to last more than a few listens, it’s catchy stuff possibly just fluff. I liked Play a whole lot. It’s overplayed because of the ad sales of course but it’s got some excellent tracks on there. 18 had some good moments but overall not as good an album. I think this one will fall in between that somewhere. I’d love to have gotten tickets to see him at Garage. I saw him at a big stadium a couple of years ago and it wasn’t bad, in as small a venue as the Garage, I’d say he would be excellent.

I’m loving Firefox more and more. It’s a fine fine browser and this particular extension is rapidly proving it’s worth Ad Block. It does exactly what it says on the tin but it does it really well. It’s wildcard blocking is really nice, just load up a few of the top level domains and band ads across the board just disappear. It has the added option of a flash overlay for easy right-click and block. I like that so much. My auto-update does not seem to be working tho. I know that 1.0.1 is out but I don’t seem to get anything when I go looking. It may well be due to language packs. I don’t want to do a manual install as I’ll overwrite all of my plugins.

Any moment in which you feel like dancing is a perfect moment.

That quote has in some way been staring me in the face for years. It’s on the blog of a friend and it may well have been in her sig. for some time. It struck me last night. I pasted it into notepad and left the window open to remind me of it. So I fired off an email to see what it’s etymology is. Turns out it’s not some old philosopher or the like, it just happens to be her. I suspect it’s tied into a Londo quote from Babylon 5 but the whole dancing thing seems to be a theme so maybe not.

Anyway the reason it struck me was the amount of dancing last night. I dispute the wording of the quote because most times I feel like dancing it’s due to booze. As per usual last night, I wasn’t dancing much, I was sat at the table talking away to whomever was around. Not making an effort not to dance (much…) but just not doing it. And then, all of a sudden I was dancing, I don’t remember what the track was that lead into it or anything but there was dancing and it continued on for hours and it was fun. It usually us but given I really can’t dance I avoid it lots.

But there are equally moments, rare rare moments where I find myself dancing (it’s not really dancing but it fits for purposes of this discussion). The last time was when I managed to actually book U2 tickets for Dublin. There was singing and shouting too. Moments like that can be perfect moments and I guess that’s what I’m trying to say, when that feeling, that dancy feeling happens, it is absolutely a perfect moment.

I was gonna use a Bowie lyric for this one, it should be pretty easy to guess from which song and then I thought I could work something else in a sentence, it would actually be the words I’m trying to show through my fingers, from I want to Dance With Somebody. So I googled it to make sure I had it right and this reminded me it’s a Whitney Houston song. I have way too much self respect to use a lyric from her up here so it’s back to Bowie. But when I go and actually listen to Magic Dance, well it’s just not going to work.

I had been starting to worry that I didn’t write anymore. Updates were less frequent and pretty light and I never seemed to be in the mood to sit down and write. There were bits and pieces but they weren’t really much. Anyway that’s changed alot this week and indeed part of last week and well the words are appearing on the page.

I’m very very hungover this morning. I got home around 4am from a party in town. We got an email in work yesterday morning saying that if the weather that was forecast did appear, the office would close a couple of hours early to let everyone get home. Of course the weather didn’t at all and the followup email later dryly noted this. Then said seen as everyone had been thinking about having a early start to the weekend we’d split the difference and close early anyway. Much chatting during the day had lead us to think they’d do this anyway. For the simple sake of a little good will. It’s funny how little things like this one add up to all the other little things and inspire some loyalty. It must be very hard to provide this kind of inspiration in p…

I really don’t know where I’m going with this by the way. It’s just we talked about this a lot yesterday and I wanted to see if I could figure something out on it. I’m not sure I can but I’m going to keep typing anyway.

Anyway like I was saying, it must be very hard to provide this kind of inspiration in particular at senior management levels where (unfortunately) more often than not there isn’t a positive view from down below. That in itself is a shame but it opens a gap and I guess makes it easier for someone to put some effort in by sending the emails like above and knowing everyone’s name and what’s going on and all the rest. It’s funny sometimes when our COO can provide me with an update on my project and always seems to know way more about it than the lower level senior management around me.

This is really going off track.

So anyway we got out early and went to the pub. There was a birthday party in town later that evening for one of the girls. I wasn’t planning on going along, it was to be a late night and the club wasn’t to my taste. But some people that I don’t get to see or go out with very often were going along and so I off I went.

And it was an excellent night. I have a whole load of photos from it but I can’t seem to find my camera lead right now so they’ll have to follow early next week when I get the one on my desk. I had a really really good night, suffering for it today of course, fucking happy hour cocktails. I think my wallet is suffering for it too. Two drinks by the end of the night was £15. I was going to balk loudly at this but I was more interested in getting the two drinks.

So anyway booked a couple more tickets yesterday. Kings of Leon in the Hammersmith Apollo in June and JJ72 in somewhere I’ve never heard of in a couple of months time. Also booked to go see Turner, Monet, Whistler on the day I have booked off to recover from the Camden Crawl. In other ticket news I have right now the physical tickets for U2 in Dublin. They arrived yesterday morning and man did that make me happy 🙂

Today I have spent catching up on the latest 24 and Lost. The latter being excellent. Probably this season’s best episode.Yunjin Kim I’m shortly going to go and read some comics and generally hide for a while. Then tonight is the pub (ugh) for my flatmate’s birthday drinks. Not not not having much.

It looks like I’m going to be working in Dublin for 3 days this week. Will tie a weekend into that aswell. Then a day or two in Bristol. Which I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I really don’t like Bristol as a city, it’s probably quite nice but commuting there for so long really killed it off for me. It killed off other things too and I’m never going to get into a situation like that again. It was a killer. I guess I don’t do so much with my time at the weekends but the regular 6 hour round trips on a shitty bus and missing the Friday nights and being so tired and so demoralised about it wasn’t fun. Of course that was all just the travel logistics.

Around the Sun has grown on me so much. I’m going with Electron Blue and Final Straw on repeat over and over. It’s probably just the hangover but I don’t want to hear anything but them. I even have my headphones on and the volume pushed up.

Really not with it today.

Slept a whole lot better last night which was good. I did finally finish Woken Furies just before midnight. I enjoyed it. Not as much as the other Kovacs books but it’s good fun. Not sure on the ending, I was liking it quite a bit but then…

I was thinking about HST some more last night. I’ve have been a lot this week and I’m not quite sure why. His death really got to me and it really shouldn’t have. I read and liked his books a whole lot but I’m a couple of generations past the “counterculture” that he inspired and was associated with. I’m not even sure they had a big impact on me. I have 5 or 6 of them but I never got around to picking up the rest, so why is it hitting me so?

Work is interesting. There still isn’t much going on, but what little that is going on is interesting. It looks like one of my projects might actually ramp up and take the single step forward that it really needs. That would be good news and so I’m pushing for it a lot but there seems to only be so much I can do.

Personalities along the same line are interesting. I was writing an email yesterday and I was making a suggestion that I knew was going to go down like a lead balloon in one of the groups. Not only that but I knew exactly what the line from that group was going to be (and I mean the words in reply) so I included it and suggested around it. Of course no-one has replied to it yet but a couple of people liked the email so that’s good. It’s good sometimes to have worked with people for so long to have that kind of familiarity. Other times it’s just challenging.

The company is throwing a party in a few weeks. We are 10 years old this year and the party is for anyone who has been working here for 5 or more years. That, rather scarily, includes me. It sounds like the stops have been pulled out and it’s going to be a good night. It’s also going to be the first party in a good couple of years where I should know everyone there. That will make a nice change. 3 of 6 on my team make the cut. Another two would but they left and came back so they don’t seem to count. It’s a little recognition a long time coming

Something has changed, I don’t know what. Yesterday was a little different from the normal day. I’m surprised by it and it’s not for the worse that much I’m sure of. I just don’t know where it came from and I don’t know where it is going.

An interesting end to the day. Now I’m going to bed, real early for a change and I hope to sleep easy. Tomorrow should be interesting in work, not least of all a meeting with the new full team. It’s a good start and something I should talk about sometime soon.

I was having trouble sleeping late last night..again. Given that I went to bed early as I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, that’s not good. I’m really tired this evening, hopefully I’ll sleep better tonight.

I read for a little while with some of R.E.M’s videos on in the background. It came to some tracks from their performance at the South Africa day in Trafalger Square a few years ago. They included Loosing My Religion and Man on The Moon. It had me thinking about what I said about them performing it over and over. I’m sure they must be bored of it by now but they look happy and they give it the same energy as anything else. They are both great tunes and they are loved by the crowd. The reaction is great and they really get into it and that, that is always a sight to behold. So it’s a good thing and although I may prefer to hear 3 other songs at a gig, the expierence just wouldn’t be the same and alot of it is about that.

Hmm, not sure all that makes complete sense, but there you go.

Work…getting interesting.

I was talking to a friend via email just before the weekend and for some reason she mentioned something about Aqua. Yes, the late 90’s euro-dance pop band that did Barbie Girl. I bought their album (shame) cheap (less shame) around the time as I really liked (and still do) Turn Back Time. It was a fun song with a deeper meaning…well maybe I was just reading a whole lot into it. So anyway I left with a deep desire to listen to it again. Of course I could not find my copy. I suspect it’s still somewhere in Dublin. Thinking that I’d struggle to find it on the internet I fired up Soulseek hoping to just find that track so I could kill the desire and move on. No joy, not even a single track. I figured I’d fire it into a torrent engine on a chance.

And yes, there was the entire album, well seeded and even more strange with a lot of leechers. So about 25 minutes later I had it again. I wasn’t able to listen to the whole thing, I had to change it and just pick my tune. It’s funny the internet. It’s funny how it all works. So the question is, I own the album, I actually bought it in a shop, the physical CD and case are somewhere in my belongings. Why couldn’t I have just downloaded it? Was it completely illegal or was it the same as getting someone to find the CD from my boxes back in Dublin and post it over to me? The internet is a complete joy, I will say that.

Well, it’s been a busy day up here. I’m procrastinating really. Some of it I wanted to get down, some of it has just drifted onto the page.

So a little more on HST. Big question, was there a note? Fantasies flowing over the web of his finest work being completed and then, then signed. I guess there will be some word about that as the days go on.

So lots of talking on the R.E.M. boards about pushing and shoving in the pit on Saturday night. What do people expect? It was one of the tamest I’ve seen but still a lot of people upset by the physicality. It’s not my favourite thing in the world so I tend to stay towards the edges. Unless it’s a blinding gig where movement is required (Pixies for example) and yes you get pushed around but lets face it, you are pushing people around too. Standing tickets with thousands of people around you…what do you expect? Glastonbury for Radiohead I was in the pit and that was scary for the first couple of songs but once you just go with it, you’ll be fine. Someone will catch you if you fall, you can usually bet on it.

So it’s snowing again. This time it actually looks like it may even snow for a while and perhaps even stick. That would be good. Although it is fucking cold out, snow makes everything better. Although in the time it took to type this out, clear skies have appeared.

I am delighted to have just read that the Hope Of the States gig I missed last week is being broadcast tonight on Radio 1. Hopefully in full and hopefully I’ll remember to get it going. I don’t remember the last time I listened to the radio. I use to on a regular basis but then music became shit and I need some control over what I have. iTunes shuffle is probably the way forward but I have a whole lotta shit I need to clear out from it too.

Every now and again I check my old email addresses. The ones going back 8 or so years. It’s a good thing to do. Some people just keep emailing them and sometimes it’s allowed contact to start up again. That’s certainly a good thing. One day I’ll give up on them but until the day when I’m busy and have other things I want to get to, I’ll keep checking. I tend to do it using Apple’s mail.app. It has a lovely lovely feature called bounce, which well does just that. It fakes the headers and bounces back the email as undelivered so it’s meant to help stop spam. I’m not sure it does but it makes me feel better than just deleting them. And at this stage that’s all there really is coming into these addresses. It’s also handy in that I don’t have to use the shitty webmail interfaces for them. When I want to quickly go through a couple of thousand messages, scrolling through 50 or 100 is not the way to go.

Spam really is going through the roof for me these days. I have some really good filters here in work but at home…not so much. A whole lot more gets through to them. I’ve spent a lot of time training them up but with no joy. I’m looking forward to the day that Thunderbird, comes with an import feature so that I can just download a listing and take it from there. It’s such a basic feature and something I would have thought that Mozilla would have been on top of but I guess not for a 1 point 0.

So it’s getting closer to that home time and I’m I really doing is sitting here hoping it will snow, really snow. The sky is getting darker and it certainly looks like there is a good chance it might. It’ll be cold on the way home yes, but so what? Once I get home I can get my hat and my gloves (note I’m not sure I have a hat but…) and go out onto Primrose Hill and just enjoy the elements. What else can one do? Of course I bet it’s just going to piss rain on me as soon as I get off the tube.

That reminds me actually. One night last week, sometime around 9 or 10 I guess I was sitting on my computer and I noticed a plane flying overhead. It’s unusual I don’t often see many going this way unless I’m at the top of Primrose Hill. Anyway seconds later there was a massive crash and the ground shook. I was sure for a second that the plane had crashed. It was too loud to be anything else, the ground had shaken for fuck sake. All around, car alarms were going off and dogs were howling. Of course when I got to the window, there was nothing and then seconds later there was a flash and another bang. So, just thunder but really fucking loud thunder.

(low) (high) (low) (high)

My sister’s just uploaded some of her photos from the Sapparo Snow Festival in Japan…It’s time’s like now that I love having an office job and working in London 🙁

Last night I read up to Lucifer #49. It’s not as bad as I expected. It’s not as good as the first 30 issues by a long shot but it’s not all that bad. In fact the ending of issue 49 was excellent. I think it was really the artwork that made it, two panels in particular (Elaine’s face half in the ground and Elaine holding the god of The Green) added a whole lot to it. A nice nice idea that worked really well.

Recently I’ve reread Peter Milligan’s The Human Target. It’s a shame this got canned. I’d like to see it go on as OGN’s, the trades must sell for there to have been 4 so far. My favourite piece of work from him is Skreemer, it’s an excellent book but it deals less so with identity than almost all of his other books. It’s a good theme, identity and he works it well. I have an urge to reread Enigmanow. I wonder if I’m searching for an identity of my own at the moment? I feel like maybe I have been for a while. Maybe I’m just boiling a hair cut down way too much but I’m not sure. The beard looks to be staying for a while, although that could change in a day. I guess I do regret having my hair cut and I would grow it again…except for the two years of effort it took to get it to a manageable length. I do not want to go back to that.

I fear I have lost my capacity for learning. I’ve certainly lost my motivation but at the same time I’ve lost my access. I need a driving reason to learn. Work gave me to me a few years ago and I learnt alot very quickly and very well. It’s all fading now and indeed it’s all useless now. If I had a reason, a real reason to apply that to something else I’m pretty sure I could do or learn anything. I’m actually not sure of that *right this instant* but I was not so long a time ago and given the right tools and the right situation I could be again. This time I’m going to have my college application in months in advance this year and I’m going to walk it to the college. Fucking Royal Mail has failed me way too much. I miss the skill and I miss the learning, it feels like a whole part of me is being wasted, hell it is being wasted.

So Hunter S. Thompson killed himself this morning, the bastard. I know he wanted to go out on his own terms at his own time but I never thought he’d kill himself. It’s disappointing and somewhat of a let down. I guess I expected better, I’m not even sure I ever thought he’d die. If anything in his books is to believed, he should have been dead ten times over by now, but he was never going to OD. HST just wouldn’t OD. I could have seen a prank or something like that going wrong and getting him or some loon, but putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger, man that sucks. God, I’ve love to have seen him speak at something. Learning about it because the first page to load up was LJ this morning, not so good. I should have read my emails first or just hit BBC news.

I didn’t sleep very well last night. It was late enough when I went to bed (1.30) and I read for at least an hour as I wanted to finish Lucifer off. But I was still awake after 4am and probably going close onto 5am. Not good for an 8.00am alarm clock. I was surprised I made it and that I made it into work. I don’t even feel so bad. It’s amazes me sometimes how much clarity of thought I can have when I’m not asleep. Everything can be seen, actions, reactions or to use a better phrase; cause and effect. Of course the best laid plans and they do go into some detail at these hours never survive the night. The memory and and ideas are intact but the bursts of willpower and determination and, indeed, courage never last past the final closing of the eyes for that night.

On a side note. I really dislike Google’s deal with Answers.com. I use to like the definition option alot. It was a good spellchecker and a good way to quickly get a term or a precise meaning. So when I said “cause and effect” a moment ago, being one of those things that I’m 95% sure on but not enough to go without checking, I thought it could be “cause and affect” and googled it to be sure. So the definition for “Cause and Effect” is a bloody Star Trek episode. Admittedly it’s a fine fine episode and one of my favourites but come on, that’s not a serious result I expect when I click definition. It’s annoying, I much prefered the straight dictionary interface.

Hunter S Thompson commits suicide

Hunter S Thompson, the American counterculture writer, has been found dead at his home in Colorado.

Thompson’s son, Juan, found his body. He said the 67-year-old shot himself.

He is best-known for his 1972 account of a drug-addled Nevada trip, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Other books are Hells Angels and Generation of Swine.

Thompson pioneered “gonzo journalism”, a factual style in which the writer was an essential part of the story, and was an acute observer of American life.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4282865.stm

That’s a really shitty start to the week.