Category: Musings

A fun night of music last night to top off the day after a morning filled with six and a half hours of driving from Montreal after being woken by the most amazing lightning and thunder at 4am. First up was Cat Power @ Hiro – I’ve never seen or heard her before, but she has an amazing blues voice and was singing alone with just a guitar or keyboard. At the start of the gig she got everyone in Hiro to sit down, and then when a small group of people near the front kept standing she got them to sit on stage behind her. Bless. What was most amazing was how noone in the entire venue was making a noise, and anyone who did was stared quickly into silent submission. Mmm… culty. Thanks to Gerald and Jeremy for the invite, unfortunately Cat herself had requested a no photo policy so no pics from that.

Having rudely pushed our way through the enraptured, seated throng, we headed down to APT for a free booze session followed by Daedelus. I’ve been wanting to see Daedelus live since his amazing ‘Just Briefly‘ video that I caught at RESfest last year. Luckily he didn’t disappoint, with an amazing electronica set (including Just Briefly) played on his Apple Powerbook and a strange device with flashing lights that he kept tapping at. Check out the photos here.

Good news electronica/hip hop fans – daedelus is playing APT in NYC on Tuesday. For those of you who’ve not heard his beautiful blend of sources check out this video of the amazing ‘just briefly‘.

The other day I spent a happy six or so hours driving up from New York to Montreal. It’s a pretty drive, and basically a straight line north once you hit the I87 just outside the George Washington Bridge. The total distance is 370 miles, and unfortunately this time the wait at customs was about 45 minutes (which has never happened before), which meant the journey took seven hours for a change.

Now apparently the 55mph limits that are imposed on a lot of the route, although 65mph is also common, is not now a federal requirement. According to this opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal all state governments have had the right to impose any speed limit they like since 1995. In fact Texas has an 80 mph limit on rural roads! If this were the case in New York states then I’d save an hour on that drive plus be a heckuva lot stressed about exceeding speed limits and be a lot safer by not slamming on the brakes whenever a state trooper pops up (I passed about 15 on the way up this time).

Just got back from the Siren Festival – where Art Brut continued to demonstrate their pure genius in every way. The whole crowd was going wild for the ‘spoken word’ antics of lead man Eddie Argos. Now I’m aching, tired and happy as f*ck. Go check out the first batch of photos of Eddie Argos in the crowd.

Sir Clive Sinclair, the genius who helped spawn a whole generation of British computer addicts with his Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and Spectrum (including me), has just launched his latest brain-fart – the ‘A-bike’.

Designed to be ‘easy to carry for commuters’ now that we live in the terrorist age, it seems to be a good idea at core but the execution looks bizarre. The wheels, about 6 inches in diameter, look like they would get caught in every slight pothole you came across – does he not realise it’s illegal to cycle on pavements (or sidewalks for my American chums)? I think the root problem here is that having made his fame in shrinking computers down to a reasonable size, Sir Clive seems to believe that making things smaller is the solution to everything…

Over the past few weeks I’ve really gotten into Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America. Gordon Ramsey is probably now one of the best known celebrity chefs in Britain, and soon the world judging by his current exposure on Hell’s Kitchen.

Each week in ‘Nightmares’ Gordon goes into a different struggling restaurant and offers advice, help, swearing and encouragement to get them on their feet and moving towards a better future. With his experience in many top restaurants, both successful and unsuccessful, he has seen it all and knows what works and doesn’t work – what makes this must see TV is that he is certainly not afraid to speak his mind, often swearingly unafraid, yet he tempers this with a genuine caring attitude towards helping everyone to be their best and achieve their goals.

Each week a number of similar themes come through based on his experience; keep the food simple, make sure your customers know about you and communicate effectively all the time. All of these seem really obvious, but what’s amazing is that in each of the restaurants he’s visited so far they all fall down on this in different ways. Watching Gordon preach his gospel is compelling viewing, and won’t just help you if you run a kitchen.

For example, Ramsey’s rules definately apply to online web services. At the moment there are definate movements towards the ‘keep it simple’ approach to user interface design in many of the bright, young things getting a lot of press these days. Making sure your customers know where you are and what you do is the realm of any number of search engine optimizers (SEOs) and as for communication, well that’s pretty obvious, but the trick is mediating between different skill sets in a business and ‘translating’ so that everyone is aligned and working effectively on their part.

Now the next question is whether anyone in the computer industry is as charismatic as Mr Ramsey to get their own ‘Dot Com Nightmares’ show…

Had a smashing time last night – went to see the Buzzcocks who were playing at Warsaw in Williamsburg. It’s a great venue that I’ve never been to before – a large open cinema/ballroom space that is nicely air conditioned (useful last night which was hella sweaty). The Buzzcocks started with a few of their songs but then quickly went onto their classics, instigating a large amount of over-zealous moshing down the front. The songs came thick and fast (I think none of them went over three minutes) – with the vocals alternating between Steve Diggle and Pete Shelley. Diggle was definately the best entertainer, mugging for the crowd, pulling classic guitar god poses and holding the mike out for everyone to sing along – but overall the band was tight, fun and looked like they were enjoying themselves, as were the crowd. Plus, of course, they played ‘Ever Fallen in Love’ in the encore – smashing. Plus a big side cheers to John Peel for pimping them back in the days – we miss you!

Check out my photos here.

Check out this amazing ‘rake art‘. Such a simple idea but done so well. [From metafilter]

Today’s gem – fresh from my inbox:

Travelling PROSTlITUTE adventure twice
Order status, nettle-stung
Generic Cialis, branded quality@
fwd july projections

Genius.

Today’s Dilbert suggests a sudden shift from office politics to global politics on the behalf of author Scott Adams. Next stop – ‘get your Dilbert on‘?