I managed to get car wash wet during Monday, when I took some time out for a little ride in the country. It was pleasant enough when I started, but by the time I was a few miles along, the rain had decided to excel.
My last recent downpour had felt like rods of stinging ice, but this time it was pleasantly warm. I'm guessing the difference has more to do with a cooler air temperature rather than warmer rain.
I'd thought about taking waterproofs before I started, but decided to go tee-shirt light. It's probably an early warning of the need to be slightly more sensible.
In the event, I finally surrendered to the water when I couldn't really see the road and found a handy canopy of trees until the rain subsided. My patience paid off, and a short time later there was again a hint of better sky to keep me in a good mood for my return journey.
The DVD of “My Last Five Girlfriends” arrived a couple of days ago and I’ve now had a chance to watch it.
The movie probably wouldn’t be on my usual radar but what with fellow blogger Daniel being in it and all, it becomes essential viewing.
The cover-art suggests regular rom-com, but the film has some interesting surreal sections. Instead of direct action a la Hugh Grant movies or 'talk to camera' like High Fidelity, this one had whole sequences that were really the inside of someone’s head.
If anyone has seen “Pete meets Life”, which is showing on TV the moment, you’ll get an idea of the way that gameshow hosts can overlay commentary on the way someone is behaving.
In this movie there is also a complete tour of an imaginary fun-fair depicting the main character's fortunes as well as some 'confide to camera' moments. One could say all the bases have been covered.
The main subject of the piece is Duncan and the story revolves around the various mishaps of his last few relationships. I’m not sure if he was supposed to be likable but I must admit I struggled.
That didn’t seem to be a problem for the various girlfriends who would link with him in minutes before things progressively spiralled into various quirky behaviours and ultimate disaster.
In the midst of this Duncan is architecting a new building and it is as his accomplice that designer Daniel appears and hits it off with his girlfriend of the moment.
I’ll admit an inward “Yay!” when expansively thatched Daniel first appeared in an elevator and, although he was initially filmed deep in the scenes, he soon progressed to rooms and cocktails alone with the Gemma the girlfriend.
It was all proper acting and realistically delivered - I’ve seen Daniel acting funny (so to speak), but this required a much straighter style. I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say Daniel is a material element.
The director Julian Kemp packed in quite a few techniques along the 'time for a montage' line although I don’t think there were any spinning newspapers. I liked the sense of “London” it included, although the theme park was presumably elsewhere.
The interesting thing is that "My Last Five Girlfriends" seems to be becoming a slow-burn success. It’s moved from limited UK release to full US distribution as a DVD and just hit the UK shores in the same way. Heck - it can be seen on shelves in supermarkets and was reviewed in the Big Papers.
Let’s hope that it also gets another television exposure for Daniel, before the year is out!
Here's not the trailer, but the Film24 extract which opens the film clip with Daniel and one of the girlfriends...
As I started out for an early morning spin, a nearby neighbour was just returning home from their Saturday evening. We exchanged a quick "Hi" as I whizzed past.
I'm not sure if it's a just past dawn thing, but people do seem to greet each other more in the early hours. I suppose it is a function of not so many people around. More wildlife than human today including a sparrowhawk hunting ahead of me along the hedgerow and an impressive squadron of swans flying noisily overhead.
Worth the time to stop and gaze and I'll pretend its not just because I'd just climbed a rather steep hill.
I happened to catch the end of the new Xfactor this evening.
They've wound the melodrama to 11 - I saw a terminally bad pop trio followed by an improbably silent audience ("Don't Clap" cards?). Next a styled quirky girl being given multiple attempts to sound good. Finally a singer with a freestyled version of a Duffy song - Mercy - which seemed an appropriate plea.
My ears picked up what sounded like autotuning during the broadcast. I've used Autotune for fun as a post-production plug-in when I mix music, but this appeared to be used live. I'll speculate it was an Antares AVOX AVP-1, which is a rack-mounted box, rather than the bit of software, but they obviously hadn't read the manual to slow down the retune speed properly.
I suppose it must have been post-processed or only added to the recorded track because otherwise the word would be out from the audience at the recorded show. Surprising no-one bothered to listen to the "Kittens in Autotune" quality playback.
I can understand the use of the technology for correction, but unconvinced of its use in the audition phase of a singing context? Maybe a short note to viewerservices@itv.com is required?
I decided to create a possible response using the Cowellisms application.
“Well you know what, we want to make the show relevant. Let’s put things in perspective, its only a microphone, not like someone fell off a mountain.
Maybe we misunderestimated the British public’s reaction, but let’s face it, we’re going outside some peoples’ comfort zone with some of the acts.
If the singers can’t make the song their own it might be controversial and that's going to get attention in any case.
You know what? You still have to judge everything based upon personal taste. That's why the public voting is so important.
I’ve seen those articles in the Press, all that extra coverage all week about a little button pressed by accident. You know what, we should just wipe the slate clean.
This week I’m going to judge it just on what I see in these performances and let the public decide.”
...and as an addendum, here's one of The Gregory Brothers examples of autotuning a C-SPAN congressional report on building a turtle fence.
The well known cliche is occurring as someone nearby is embarking on a particularly ambitious amount of light engineering, from within their garage.
It’s got those whirring buzzing metallic sounds, plus an occasional hammering and a crackle like some sort of arc of electricity.
There’s something that sounds like bowling balls being dropped and rolled around from time to time and a low bass note that pulses.
There’s also been some spectacular broken glass sounds like bottles being stirred in an upright washing machine. Tom Waits had a similar experience.
I’ll probably try to get a peek at what's happening later, but I suppose in the tradition of such things I should wait until midnight and for a small crack of light from a paraffin stove or candle.
I have a slight sense of disquiet as I notice that google adverts are targeting me with 15-25% discounts on bicycle chainrings as I browse haphazardly around sites. Not just one cog, but a whole series of “offers”.
I should probably clean out my browser cache or reset the cookies to get back to more mainstream offers. I can only think the sensitivity is based upon my recent postings about cycling, but it’s uncannily close to the mark.
Either that or its just the subjective thing, like the way that an iPod Shuffle will sometimes play ten or twenty songs that are just right for the mood. But come to think of it, I remember a recent car journey where we seemed to be surviving on bangin’ club tunes however many times we hit the ‘next’ button.
Today I’ve been throwing stuff away again. It's a chain reaction. I was handed some discarded stuff to check before disposal and it created a yearning for some further rationalisation around the place. I can best measure it in wheely bins and let’s just say we’re full plus an eclectic selection of items for a charity shop or two.
There’s too much to take away on the bike, though, so maybe mentioning ‘car’ a few times will change the advertising.
Update: as a footnote, after this and the above post, I'm getting adverts for Laboratory Waste Disposal.
I'll need to break away from my obsessive series of posts about the fixed wheel bicycle restoration project, but not until I've had a chance to Juice Lube the orange pedals and apply them symmetrically.
I realise it's a whimsical cartoon look, what with the green rims, white chain and an inexpensive but essential retro purple bit in the back wheel. I'm hunting around for a brown saddle, which is somewhere in the recesses of the garage and will add further weirdness.
I know that this candy coloured thing won't blend inconspicuously into the scenery like my faux-scungy chameleonesque MTB parked secretly in a useful place, but it's a different sort of project.
Anyone who has seen the rashbre central garage will know it struggles to keep way too many items contained and its been a long time since a car was allowed inside.
This has meant the refurbishment of the black bike and the repairs to the silver one have taken longer than anticipated because I can't locate any of the toolsets or spare parts to make things good.
Luckily I keep a small gadget-driver in a separate backpack and the gadget can usefully undo and re-tighten most bits of a bike. Consequently both bikes have a serviceable array of parts even if some aren't the intended ones. Today's breakthrough was the location of the orange pedals I've been planning to put onto the black bike.
Next is to find a saddle that doesn't resemble a sponge.
Back from some cycling this morning, before most of the area is properly awake.
I wasn't in much of a hurry and even returned once to swap bikes because I'm still breaking in an experimental single speeder which seems to need more fixin'-up work to be done to it than my usual multi speeder.
Frankly the fixie is a bit of an economically assembled amalgam of parts, so it's not that surprising that it is protesting a little. The chain is making unfortunate crunching sounds, its got some temporary pedals and the saddle is a kind of cloth which seems to suck in the slightest amount of rain.
I'd pinged on the Cyclemeter iPhone app before I started and of course it then worked out the route for the two bikes together and even sent me an unexpected email afterwards analysing my progress and showing my route on a little map.
Another week dashes past and could have led to the start of some holiday time, but the Fates have contrived other things because of some immediate work commitments. I'm sure we'll be rescheduling something else later but short term I'll continue to keep nose and grindstone aligned.
Today I'd considered a spot of cycling but I'll admit the incessant downpours tricked me into submission. I'll be out in the morning though, whatever the weather.
The email from the bike scheme today said that Londoners have cycled 100k journeys now in the first two weeks, which is in keeping with my average of 2 journeys as one of the 45,000 members. My journeys have also been in the sub 30 minute range but unlike others I've been lucky with finding bikes and docking stations probably because one of my journeys was on a Sunday and the other in the early afternoon.
I suspect its a good decision to start the scheme in mid Summer without allowing casual users, so that the teething problems of full docking stations, unpredictable usage patterns and erratic software can be ironed out ready for a more concerted use on 2011.
If the scheme introduces a new layer to the London transport infrastructure, alongside private bikes, then it will be a good addition.
Accentuate the positive. So I'll be thinking of my current additional working interlude in terms of the Graces, rather then the Fates. Joy, beauty and charm.
There I was, at around three thirty am, staggering around the house in the dark. I'd woken and decided it was worth a look outside because I'd heard on the news about the Perseid metoer shower being at its best around now.
I wandered to the kitchen, which has a big glass door from where I looked upwards to the night sky, partly obscured by light cloud cover, but with a few of the big stars shining through. I could indeed make out the Plough (which I'm told isn't even a full constellation, but part of something else) and also the North star - for starters.
Then as I was looking around to get orientated, I noticed a little flash of a line in the sky. Quite faint, very fast and only lasting a mere blink of an eye - more like dim very straight lightning at an angle to the earth. I wasn't sure whether I'd imagined it.
I kept looking, wondering whether it was the meteor dust or simply my tired eyes. Then a couple of minutes later I saw another one - or maybe imagined another one. It was quite a short line in the sky and only lasted a tiny amount of time. A speck of dust burning at 1600 degrees Celsius or my tired eyes?
They'd both had quite a steep angle to the sky and were some way to the right of the Plough. The six mile diameter comet that created the dust isn't due around here again until abour 2126, and its near miss with the earth isn't until 3044. Its supposed to be about the same size as the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
I wondered whether there would be any iPhone applications to support the new London Cycle Hire scheme and it turns out there's already about half a dozen. I plumped for the first one I spotted, but actually it didn't work very well, so I then decided to read a couple of the reviews.
The one called London Cycle: Maps and Routes seems to work well and has quite a few features such as a live map of the docking stations and numbers of bikes available, a route planner and even estimated times for journeys. There's also a countdown timer to show how much time left in the 'free' period.
The application also looks useful for general surface route planning, whether using a hire cycle or not. I'm guessing that these applications will eventually overlap with the ones that provide information about pubs, coffee shops and train stations. Otherwise I'll need a whole page for all of the iPhone travel in London applications.
But I'm not complaining, and - guess what? - the application is free.
