Category: Musings

After about 4,000 odd re-designs for my blog that have churned through the cycles and kept me off the streets I’ve finally plonked for something simple and blocky. Oh, and orangey browny yellowy. Please let me know if you experience any problems with this version.

At some point there are still more things to do: what I really really want to add is some sort of tag-cloud style navigation for posts and consolidate all of my miscellaneous blogs into one central feed (while still maintaining the focus of the sub-blogs) that can be read here. Unfortunately Blogger doesn’t let me do this right now which means, of course, a largish migration effort to either self-hosted blog software or learning a new open source package. Unless of course Blogger decides to add good tag support in the next few weeks…

Well the rain stopped for two seconds – long enough for me to wander out and grab a few piccies of the folks lining up (with their laptops) to be first into the great glass elevator. I mean apple store. Not too many folks there right now, which is good – because about 10 minutes after I took these the skies literally went black and the heavens opened again. Are Mac laptops waterproof? Guess we’ll find out.

Meanwhile, this Friday’s blogosphere entertainment/distraction is movie trailer mashups. Go feast your eyes on Must love jaws, 10 Things I hate about the 10 Commandments and The Shining (with thanks as often to metafilter and boingboing).

The torrential rain continues in NYC, in fact there was just a huge crack of thunder from lightning probably about half a mile from here. Sounded great as it rolled down the avenues bouncing off buildings.

Of course all this rain is not so good for the official opening of the new Mac store this afternoon. Still – at least it will be nice and clean…

As I type yet another ‘Maypril’ shower is torrenting down upon New York. Yesterday it looked like our week of grey, rainy weather had gone away and we were back on track for some beautiful sunny spring. But alas, no. The drip drip drop of little showers has gotten me thinking of England – funny how weather will do that. Then I came across this amazing photo of a crashed spaceship in London. Beautiful. It was all part of the Sultan’s Elephant – an in situ fairytale that was staged in London last week. Nice one red Ken!

Having had a lush-tasic weekend with Miette out at her folks in Oakville, we’re now hanging out at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. Very plush indeed and we’re staying in the Chinoiserie room which is beautful, if a little small (I keep slamming my shins into the bed corners). So in between working I’m doing the tourist thing, when the transit folks aren’t doing their random strike thing of course – perfect timing.

This is the first serious time I’ve spent in Toronto since my trip in ’94 – way back when I’d just finished my physics degree and was contemplating next steps. Working in Vancouver at that time I stumbled across a lot of west coast computer entrepreneurs and, rather than buy a few shares in Google & Microsoft, came back to England to do an MSc in Computer Science. Funny how things work out. Anyways, Toronto doesn’t seem to have changed so much in the downtown area, but in the outskirts there’s now a thriving art and design community along Queen Street which is a very vibrant and interesting. Plus there are a lot of cyclists, all struggling to avoid sticking in the tramlines as they cross them.

To be honest I’m not sure I could live here, it reminds me a lot of how I felt about Sydney – great town, but I preferred Melbourne. In this case Montreal seems more interesting to me at the moment, although like Melbourne it suffers from the worst of the weather. Unlike Melbourne neither of those Canadian cities is on the sea, something that I really love about New York (amongst many other things of course). Having wandered around the world a few times now you learn that wherever you are, you always have to make sacrifices – or buy your own private jet.

Depeche Mode played an amazing gig last night – pulling out all the stops and including pretty much all my favourite DM tracks. This was even more astounding considering Dave Gahan had pulled out of the last gig due to laryngitis combined with artic temperatures and driving winds off the sea at Jones Beach. Brrr.

On the subject of Jones Beach – here are some helpful hints if you go:

1. Allow 2 hours to travel: It’s a long way out. Allow a good 2 hours either way for travel – and the trains late at night only run every hour, so be on a bus by 10.45 if you want to get the 11.12. Best bet is to go right into Penn Station as from Jamaica late at night everything is running local and s l o o o w.
2. Eat before you come: Jones Beach seems to operate a policy of price gouging that is outrageous, especially for the quality of food you get. We had fish and chips (fries) for $9.50 and the fish was uncooked, greasy and basically a lump of batter plus the fries were cold. We’re talking $4 for a coffee, $8 for a small cheese pizza, $5 for a hot dog, etc. To add insult to injury the lines are crazy.
3. Bring many layers + a hat: Jones Beach can be cold, especially if you are in the mezzanine seats. You are near the sea and evening sea breezes can be bitter. Don’t worry if you forget though – Jones Beach sells thin blankets for ‘only’ $30. Guess it’s cheaper for them than than making warm seating…
4. Bring binoculars: Essential for the mezzanine seats: our seat was about 80m high from the stage and about 200m back.

A strange and hypnotic ‘trailer’ for a new Boards of Canada EP just landed in my inbox. Check it out here.

Lucasfilm has decided to release the original, un-touched (but re-mastered) version of the early Star Wars trilogy on DVD this Christmas. Makes me mildly glad I didn’t splash out on the re-mastered DVDs already. This is a very surprising move from Lucas who ‘cross my heart and hope to die’ declared emphatically that the originals would never ever EVER be released on DVD. Unless we want the money.

Just back from a lovely weekend up in Montreal with Miette. Smashing – and apparently my new passport works just fine, apart from Air Canada’s automated ticketing machine not letting me put a passport expiration date more than 10 years in advance, and my passport is valid till August 2016 since it’s an extension. Technology, eh.

Some bad news though: while I was sitting working at Miette’s apartment on Monday someone tried to break in as the yoga studio downstairs had left both outside doors propped open. Great stuff. At first I thought it was just someone going in next door, then the noise got louder and the door popped open – I said ‘Hello?’, they said ‘Sorry’ then they started running and I ran after, stopping after getting onto the street and loosing them round a corner. Exciting stuff indeed, or as Josh pointed out ‘that was stupid – they could have had a knife or gun’.

Flight back was uneventful except for turbulence and a 50 minute holding pattern that, after circling round north of Manhattan for a while, decided on a stunning route down the Hudson river before circling Staten Island twice then coming in to land. Stressful for the delay, but amazing views – check them out.

In other news: David Blaine unfortunately didn’t manage to break the record for holding breath under water, luckily he is still alive after his liver started to fail and his hands fell apart. Yeuch. Also, Colbert’s amazing roast of the President at the White House Press Assocation Dinner continues to be number 1 most popular Google video – and rightly so! Go watch it now if you haven’t already and keep it in public sight where it needs to be.

Last night I wandered down to see David Blaine‘s latest escapade – Drowned Alive. After his huge success at attracting unwanted attention from English drunken louts in a box over London, he’s now going for the slightly more down to earth approach of living in a ball of water for a week. Can’t he just get drunk like everyone else?

Anyways, went down there at night as the light looked interesting and unfortunately arrived just as he was getting his hands seen to by the doctor. You know. If you spend 20 minutes in the bath your hands go all pruned? So think what a few days underwater will do to them?

Ps, in other exciting news – just got my passport back from being renewed. Finally! It’s totally different from the old passports. The part with the photo is thick card containing an RFID chip (yay tracking!) and all very shiny with lots of birds on it. I asked for an extended passport, which apparently I got charged for, but still seems to be pretty skimpy on the pages compared to my old passport. The good news is that the royal crest on the front has not worn off like it had on my old one from too much bar hopping.