open mike night

I've been whizzing back and forth through Heathrow the last few days and not had much time for blogging activities although the little kerfuffle yesterday with unexpected open microphones reached my ears.

The "brown toast" headlines and similar are good at keeping the main agenda away from any proper debates and its almost as if the main parties have decided to stay away from anything too difficult or to brush it away in a non-auditable soundbite.

Is the economy is really all messed up? Is the public sector out of scale? Is the private sector struggling? Are the banks operating like pirates? Can the rich operate offshore for a modest payment to the political party of their choice? Could errant MPs retire with cash and free access to Parliament? Have house price changes created huge negative equity? Are there more people unemployed than at any time since 1994? Can new entrants to the job market get work?

We can all fill in our own answers to these kind of questions, but I'm not really seeing through the bickering to concrete examples of how anything is supposed to get fixed. It begs a question about who presided over us getting to the current position, but an equally important one about who could get us to a better place.

I'm out and about again tomorrow, so it will be a whole week since I've seen the rashbre duck house.

chipping in

Well, I said I'd use my novel royalties in a way that captured the spirit of the original writing experience. So I did decide to gamble the initial royalty cheque and to see what would happen.

I'm pleased to say I'm ahead at the moment. Let's say the original stake was extremely modest in any case and I've spread out its deployment over a number of weeks. The good, though hardly life changing, news is that I actually won some cash at the weekend.

It's a small amount, but still a three times multiple of the original royalty cheque. Thank you, lotto.

shoemending time

Time for some background computer tasks today. Hole prevention.

Its mainly my photo library which has become quite large so I've decided to split it into some smaller pieces. The simple reason is the manageability of it on computer disks. Modern cameras produce large images and my snapshot library is now about a third of a terabyte.

It still works but starts to make its management for backup and similar purposes rather lengthy. Making a full copy is about 4 hours and will only get longer. So its time to chop it into a few pieces. I think archival by year is the simplest and kind of operates at a human level.

Still, its turning sunny, so I can leave the computer to burble away whilst I head outdoors.

Melissa auf der Maur

Turns out there's been quite a few people stuck in the Ash Cloud over the last few days. I was a day ahead of the Ash in getting back to UK, although I did momentarily muse that the Norwegian skies were pretty with streaks of unaccountable grey across them.

Others ahead of the curve managed to get back with long distance taxis (Amsterdam to Calais for one friend, a hire van from Dusseldorf to LHR in another case).

And it disrupted the music we were seeing earlier this week, when half the act couldn't get to the venue. Ironically, the skies over London have been crystal clear and sunny for several days, so I guess the Icelandic stuff is hiding somewhere.

Anyway, one of the acts we saw was Melissa auf der Maur. Her original gigs were cancelled when she became stranded in Helsinki, but when she did get to London she ran a great set on borrowed equipment.

So that's my picture above, from the gig, but below is a short video from earlier, in Helsinki, when the Cloud had grounded Melissa's tour ahead of Oslo and Cargo in London. The hastily assembled video shoot has come out rather well. Whoever had the camera by the bass bin has some intriguingly wobbly shots. All good and check Melissa's website here for some fine wood chopping.

MAdM FINLAND from MAdM OOOM on Vimeo.

so much you can learn, when you're on a pachyderm

I seemed to be awake extra early this morning after dreaming of elephants and frogs.

But I see from twitter that I was not alone.

Have you seen my sister Evelyn?

As I was explaining yesterday, the original objective of visiting the Koko was to see the Evelyn Evelyn act which requires both of the Evelyn sisters in the same place at the same time.

The trouble was, because of the aircraft delays as a result of the swirling clouds of ash, it meant that the second Evelyn was stuck on a 747 somewhere over the Atlantic.

Undeterred, this became an excuse for some complicated technology and so with the power of borrowed London equipment, some wet string and an improbably large aerial, a link was established with Evelyn (Jason Webley) sitting on the plane.

He reached up into the overhead and found a guitar and then, before you knew it, with Amanda Palmer in Camden and him elsewhere, there was singing and general merriment.

Evelyn Evelyn may not have been as together as they would normally appear, but there was still a way to make music. the little video below captures the general chaos of the moment. I do also have another when Jason found the accordion so that they could sing The Elephant Song, but that will be reserved for youtube.

Amanda Palmer at Koko - Volcanic

A gang of us headed to Koko in Camden for the Evelyn Evelyn show yesterday, which was somewhat affected by the Volcanic Ash Cloud, because part of the act couldn't show up and appeared to be on a plane over the Atlantic - more of that later.

The situation created a brilliant and engaging alternative performance with Amanda Palmer mixing some Evelyn Evelyn songs with pieces from Dresden Dolls and WKAP.

I don't really have time right now to write in any detail about what was an excellent evening, with everyone on stage fully on form, Amanda borrowing instruments "does anyone have a nine-volt battery?" - someone did - (probably an effects pedal too). The borrowing later included a brace of ukelele finally tuning one to perform Radiohead's 'Fake Plastic Trees'.

But enough for now, and here's my handheld capture of Amanda introducing and singing the somewhat spontaneous 'country' Volcano Ash Song during the gig.

a fearful frail tour (anag)

"A future fair for all" seems to be the Labour slogan.

There's plenty of anagrams. Here's a few.

A Failure Flat Furor
A Tearful Fail Furor
At foul ruler affair
Our true fall affair
Area liar fluff tour
A fearful frail tour
For a fearful ritual

I know there are plenty more.

And one for Tony Blair:

A fruitful role afar?

Conservative?... vote for change or...

Changeover oft
Craven the goof
Gotcha for even
Hot Fever conga
Oft green Havoc
Arch event goof
Fat Chevron ego

And if they win then maybe...
Torch of Avenge?

And in the interests of balance and fairness I have excluded the Liberal Democrats. I know, too much Chateau de Surville this evening.

quiet pint

Sometimes there's nothing for it but to sit down in the reddening evening sunshine and have a quiet pint.

vitamin D boost

Out before much traffic today, for a spin around a few sunny lanes. There may have been sunshine, but my first few tee-shirt minutes felt distinctly cold until the general brilliance of the scenes took over.

There's still late daffodils and at home the garden is displaying yellow tulips which are just preparing for their main display. Most trees are still only hinting at spring, but in two weeks I suspect the scene will be very different. The blackbird nest in the jasmine is hardly camouflaged at all until more leaves grow.

In the adjacent fields, large machines were cutting the hedgerows or priming the ground and ahead of me a horse was being led, with two excited dogs attempting to keep everything shepherded neatly.

I've a busy day ahead of this early morning country snapshot.

eclectic dreams

A couple of television shows that I've watched during the week included the three-nighter called Electric Dreams about consumer technology progress from 1970-2000 and the remake of the originally influential series 'The Prisoner'.

I'm not sure if the first show was even advertised and it seemed to be badged as a BBC4 programme, but does have its own microsite and full iPlayer repeats. The premise was simple. Take a modern gadget-enriched family and propel them back to 1970, then take a daily update of their environment, based upon the technology of the year.

The program started by ejecting he family, reconstructing their home as a 1970s house (smaller rooms and tiny kitchen) retro wallpaper and furnishings and the most elaborate technology was probably a valve operated radiogram and a hosepipe based toploader washing machine. Cue return of family who observe their ancient but shiny Ford Cortina parked in the drive and surprisingly avant garde domestic decoration.

Along the daily chase through the years, more items arrive, with big resets every 10 days as a new decade creates an entire house makeover. Unlike the shows filled with repeats and recaps, there was enough content to keep it lively. A suitably enthusiastic backup technology team digging out and restoring the once commonplace artifacts from museums, collectors and eBay. "Let's cover it in sticky back plastic to make it look more seventies"...

Entertaining interchange between the family, forced again to talk to one another in the device barren early years. Even greater outdoor freedom for the children as the chopper bikes arrived before the electronic harnesses of mobile phones.

Some elements were a little contrived, like the shopping using pagers and payphones, but the ever increasing pace was interesting, with the mid 1980s providing many gadgets, but also many which didn't really work properly.

The mid nineties was where the connected world started to kick in again, with satellite TV channels, mobile phones, SMS texting and a fledgling modem operated world-wide web. And as it became more up-to-date (still some 10-15 years ago), the family became more separated into different rooms and timelines, some of which was impractical in the wintry 1970's house without its central heating.

A fascinating dip into some rather recent history and a glimpse at the acceleration.

Less so with The Prisoner.

Originally written in the days of black-and-white television and probably predating the era of the Electric Dreams, it has received a significant makeover, which included its Americanisation. I've visited the original Italianate whimsical village set in Portmierion, Wales (love that it has webcams nowadays!) and even got an old video of part of the series. Original, iconic, inventive, menacing, mysterious, manic. A few words that fitted the original.

Lost meets The Trueman Show (In the Desert). My quick explanation of the first episode of the new series.

I can see there was a clumsy reference to the Patrick McGoohan character from the original (based upon the bearded chap with the white edged blazer being chased at the start). The Simpsons did it better.

I'm not sure I'd have killed him off though. Bad Karma for the series.

Will it invent or twist enough to sustain interest? I'm not sure - the main actor is a bit too interchangeable with a temporary male lead from desperate housewives. Maybe thats what a post modernist spy is supposed to look like?

Still, it gives an excuse for someone to reshow the old series to see if it makes any more sense to a modern audience.

political daleks

Spotted in WH Smiths...It looks as if even the daleks are joining in with election fever.