dawn

Out this morning just after dawn, meandering around byways on my bicycle. There's something pleasant about the early morning before too many people are about when the main sounds are birdsong and the nearest things to pedestrians are rabbits and squirrels. Today I also spotted a very large bird of prey circling around by a railway cutting. Unfortunately I was not able to take a photo, but here's another view of the still deserted M3 motorway, which leads into London.

And now, onwards into the day, but I already feel as if I have had a mini adventure, with (a) getting lost (b) climbing over a fence with my bicycle (c) still getting back before most people are awake.

clean

A smile in the traffic jams on the M25 this evening was a couple of wickedcampers on their way to the south. One was driving "sex object" and the other was in the above camper van with the lyrics from "star star" on the side. Lets just say that this is not a typical radio airplay tune. I can recite the first lines without blushing...

Baby, baby, I've been so sad since you've been gone
Way back to New York City
Where you do belong

Dont click the van unless you want to see the(tsk tsk) full lyrics, also here for the music.

Thursday Thirteen (V27)

1) I haven't posted a Thursday Thirteen for several weeks.
2) Its about a year since the first time I posted a Thursday Thirteen and as I've posted 27, then I seem to be averaging one post every two weeks (although it has slowed down recently)
3) I have been rushing about again over the last few weeks. My working role has changed somewhat and that implies I will need to do some more travelling, although I do try to use audio and video conferences when possible.
4) I've also had to provide personal identity to three different organisations over the last 2-3 weeks. In one case I''ve had to send away my passport and driving licence as well as a utility bill. I have another session like this in a few days time. I'm told it is related to money laundering and other anti-societal acts.
5) This weekend I will try to finish an edit of the Warhol DVD from Edinburgh. I have three separate video streams, two of which I have already uploaded and the third is another hour of cutaways to be dropped into the main storyline. I must try to remember to upload the last tape tomorrow evening, so that it is ready for editing.
6) My car needs to be serviced. The little spanner indicator has lit up and the other day it went into 'get you home' mode which basically means it lost its acceleration until i switched it off and on again. This is something they program into modern cars as a safety feature. I wonder if they also encourage it to kick in just after the service interval has passed?
7) I have been working with a lot of American people recently and it has shifted my work day towards Eastern Standard Time - as I live in the UK, does this mean I should get up later in the morning?
8) I've run out of milk so I'm drinking strawberry, blackcurrant and banana smoothie when I really would like a cup of English style tea with milk.
9) September is the month I usually see a few spiders wandering about indoors. True to form, there have been a few weaving improbable webs over the last few days.
10) Next week I will be in the UK all week, but the following week is looking like Antwerp, Paris, Frankfurt and maybe Helsinki. I've only been to Helsinki once before and then I spent most of the time in a Russian tea room.
11) There's a lot in the news about global warming this week and how something needs to change in the next four years. Popular estimates are that the Universe is 13.5 billion years old and the Earth around 4.5 billion years old. It kinda makes four years seem rather a short time.
12) There has also been a lot about Banksy the urban artist now in California and his new work called "elephant in the room" which is about global attitudes to poverty, hunger and similar large scale but often ignored problems.
13) Time for bed

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Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday

a winter's trail?

The season seems to be changing faster than normal. Tonight, I flicked past two different sitcoms running Christmas episodes and an advertisement using snowmen. Have I missed Autumn? We still have leaves on trees around here.

iDeas

I like the new iTunes- which Apple announced today and is already sitting on my machines. It fixes a couple of old problems like listening to albums without gaps between tracks. Some concept albums and many mix albums play smoothly now. But the best piece is the new shiny eye candy for riffling through CD covers in a juke-box style. It much more fun to spin through cover art on a laptop, select tracks to play and then to beam them direct to a hi-fi. rashbre central has worked that way for a couple of years for casual listening. I'm not sure why Bjork and Moby seem to come up on unassigned covers though.

The related iPod updates are presumably the pre-Christmas versions with better video resolution ad the new tiny wearable nano, which has the same form factor as the iPod radio.

I'm undecided about the iTV. Its a slim enough box to integrate with a TV system, but I can' think why they wouldn't also include a DVD player/recorder on it. DVD players are about £35 in Tescos, so a simple reader or even better a reader/writer would be more useful. I know it then starts to sound like a mac mini, but I suppose a mac mini that doesnt need a normal keyboard and screen may also be an interesting direction to take the technology. I expect Apple has a pricepoint in mind so that may rule out some of these ideas.

But later - maybe a 12cm square, 4 cm high box, connected to television, with HDTV, internet/broadband, hard disk storage, TV recording, cut to DVD/CD, wifi, mp3 playback and it starts to get interesting. I suppose that will be release 2.

Anyway thats enough geekiness for one evening - Long Good Friday is on...I think I'll watch a few gangsters blowing each other up.

offish

Having to re-install a perfectly licenced copy of Microsoft Office 2004 yesterday three times before it passed the licencing test reminded me of this little Letterman episode with our friend Bill Gates.

Most of my mac software just works, usually without any sort of installation ritual, but Office put up quite a fight eventually forcing me to run 'remove office' several times to clear up all of the vestiges of the trial version and a prior installation. And Microsoft's site seemed to acknowledge there was some type of problem and a special update to install, but unfortunately when I clicked through I got a 'page not found' error.

story time

I suppose the current UK party political war brightens up copy for the domestic newspaper editors. The stage has been set with a couple of long time sparring partners getting ready for another round, a disgruntled ex cabinet minister who won't be coming back and a leader who has been dropping hints about dropping out for at least a year.

So the paperboys have something to write about. Who is doing what to whom and whose side is everybody on? Bliar has gone so far as to apologise for his party's behaviour over the last few days, and politicos of the others are acting as if this is a really big deal. Brown is probably quietly sponsoring the turmoil, because maybe he believes it plays to his own position, but strong rumours suggest that Brown isn't really that well liked in his own party because he plays a lone game.

The chatterati need a couple of ferrets in a sack to drive their banter, but ultimately its a soap opera until the next set of leaders step properly forward. Presumably the writers of the third estate have a stack of copy ready to deploy at the first sign of anyone particularly odious getting out in front. A lot of what we are seeing seems to be driven by personal ambition over ideals, notwithstanding the headlining. As an (ahem) orderly transition, it will probably become a case study.

So whilst this story sucks all the energy out of reportage of the global agenda, Mr Bush continues to move his soldiers around the board.

pop idol?

I thought it was about time I wrote another book review which I will, in turn donate to Bob’s Books. For somewhat arcane reasons I was reminded recently of a story in which a man takes the persona of a female singer. The writer of the book is Gordon Burn and it is about Alma Cogan, a popular British singer from the 1950s.

Burn moves the persona of Alma forward into a later time and then intertwines a story linked with mystery and crime of the 1980s.

Burn is a clever writer and there are some amusing asides in a book which ultimately has a strong and macabre backdrop. On perfume “You want a man to like it, go after the food groups” was Alma’s mother’s advice on a cantelope and orange scent.

I originally read this book some time ago and remember some of the phrases and scenes, but then blasted through it again now for a second time. I found a haunting quality about the descriptions of the early popular music world and some crossover with clubland London books like "The long firm" and some parts of Martin Amis’s work.

Alma also showed her 50s innocence towards ‘Jazz Woodbines’ new kinds of tea (made with benzedrine) and wholesome advice which would nowadays fit well on daytime television or maybe into a new age tent “Never collect inanimate objects, or in the end they will possess you and you will lose your freedom”.

But Burn’s Alma is past her singing best in the 1980s (in real life she died in 1966) and her visits to old haunts and to the places of her catalogued past are creepy, alongside references to (for example) a Marc Bolan glitzy suit and to varied other celebrity remnants of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

Burn speaks through Alma’s voice and there is much around faded celebrity as well as the tightening of the story which transitions in the second part of the book into a linkage with moors murderer Myra Hindley.

I found the book in the back of a shelf with other books piled in front of it. That I sought it out for a re-read and that I still find it intriguing is, for me a good sign.

A recent blogging encounter reminded me of this story of a female pop icon told very effectively via a man's writing.

Kate & Neal Photos

I've been asked to add a few more full resolution pictures from Kate and Neal's Wedding last Thursday to the blog, so here's the link across to my flickr account where they are stored.

cosmic

We should all sometimes stare at the sky in wonder and today's picture is from the way out cosmos. Its a galaxy filmed by the Hubble Space Telescope called NGC5866 and is a so-called disk galaxy, which is the same type as our own Milky Way Galaxy, in which our own sun is a part.

Its a disk galaxy (like a CD and we are looking at the edge) So imagine a view of our own galaxy 'from the edge' and it would look something like this. To get an idea of size, light takes about 60,000 years to cross NGC 5866, whereas in the Milky Way it would take about 80,000 years.

Makes us kinda small, doesnt it?

Kate & Neal

A magical wedding day yesterday for Kate and Neal.

Kate the beautiful princess, to Neal her dashing prince.

Congratulations and love.

the kitchen sync

I've been somewhat busy over the last couple of weeks and so the blog has languished with occasional hastily constructed entries. I've also been using several different computers and been in different locations, so my normal photo files, handy short cuts and so forth have been mainly elsewhere.

Then I remembered Sync which is now just a standard function on macs. It allows me to reference the synchronised copy of all of my settings which live somewhere in mac-land and to use them on another machine.

So less excuses, I suppose.