As usual, beatworm.co.uk is the last site with the news.
The baby finally came. We have a daughter. She's called Ada. I love middle initials, I enjoy my 'M' so much that I thought she might like one too, so she's Ada May. Her birthday is the 23rd of October. She came one day early.
Lots of people have spotted the connection to the proto-programmer and feminist icon , or the programming language that took her name. Truth be told, these are excellent associations, but supplementary; the original inspiration came from a pop song I was very taken with. It's got Sufjan Stevens on piano, you know.
These photos are all taken at the "Woah dude, I've got a baby!" and "troops of admiring relatives" ' phases, and are a few weeks old. We're currently at the "Oh bugger, she actually isn't going to sleep for more than 30 minutes in 24 hours" phase, and photo-ops have been pushed far from mind.
Back at the start of the summer, I went back to Barcelona, for a second visit to the very wonderful Primavera Sound festival. I travelled with the rather pregnant Mrs S., and (Uncle) Danny came along for the latter half of the stay, and also joined us for the festival.
Barcelona is still a marvellous city, and Primavera is still my favourite rock festival. While we were out there, Barcelona FC won the champions league . I can't pretend that I have any sympathy, interest, or even understanding of football, but I really enjoyed the electric city-wide atmosphere on the day; silent, tense and concentrating, as countless viewers watched the televised match, suddenly punctuated by sighs and unison cheers as chances were missed, and goals won; culminating in the riot of celebration erupting from every door and window onto the streets when the final victory was realised.
The festival was another success. The personal highlight, for me was the chance to finally see Lightning Bolt , unusually for them, an on-stage performance, that was one of the most exhilarating live shows I have ever seen. Shellac , playing again on the same ATP stage as last year, as good value as always, another chance to see Oneida , and sample some of the "heritage" acts, giving it some legend, like Sonic Youth , Throwing Muses , and Neil Young . A suprisingly energetic Michael Nyman band set in the indoor auditori was an unexpected highlight, as were a couple of new-to-me performances from Andrew Bird , and Gang Gang Dance . I was amused by Sunn O))) , but sadly unable to persuade either of my companions to stay and watch more than ten minutes of their set.
More disappointing were Marnie Stern , who I'd been looking forward to seeing again, seemed to be suffering from terrible sound and equipment problems, Deerhunter transforming a great album into a weak coldplay-lite live experience, an uninspired and frankly routine Art Brut performance, and a generically dull Jarvis set.
It turns out that I edited and uploaded my photos to flickr shortly after returning to the UK, but what with all the busying and rushing around re-organising and home renovating, I seem to have forgotten to switch the set to public, at least until now.
It's not exactly the done thing on today's web, but I'm a huge believer in paying for web services. I've never been comfortable with the ad-supported web. When pure advertising is the only revenue stream supporting a product or service I worry about the deleterious effect upon that product or service.
I don't like the implication that they're really working for their sponsor's interests ahead of mine. I don't like the mental effort of hunting down all the opt-outs, of second-guessing potential consequences of the creepy data-mining and covert information sharing with networks of 'trusted partners'. More straightforwardly, for many cases, I suspect the numbers don't really balance; I find it difficult to rely heavily on something with a potentially precarious revenue stream. I don't want to push too much content into, or build infrastructure around things that won't necessarily be around in a year or two.
Paying directly for things makes everything seem more explicit and straightforward. I'm the customer. I can make informed decisions about the cost and usefulness of the thing. It's in the better interests of the service provider not to abuse the relationship. A product unspoilt and unhindered by commercial marriages should stand a better chance of evolving towards it's essential form. So I'm a relatively easy sell as a consumer. Offer me a useful service, at a reasonable price, and I'm quite likely to pay you for it.
The flipside of this is that I'm really cautious about the reverse. Purely ad-supported sites, especially ones that seem to be offering far too much for free without being noticeably saturated with advertising make me feel slightly paranoid. I like to see which way the money flows.
Here's a list of the sort of internety things I currently pay for, and will happily endorse.
Spotify - I'm a long-time tenner a month customer. I think it's too expensive, but I somehow never quite unsubscribe.
DynDNS - I have a paid account, which gets me DNS zone hosting as well as a dynamic hostname
Pinboard.in - I like this bookmarking service. I was a very early adopter, and therefore my account cost a pittance due to the unique way pinboard is funded.
Lastpass - I like this service so much I subscribed, just to do my bit to ensure they stay in business
Linode - my internet hosts are linux virtual machines hosted with this service. Linode is excellent.
Word Podcast : I subscribed to the (now sadly folded) Word Magazine, primarily to access their very enjoyable podcast.
Metafilter : I don't use this site very much any more, but back in the old days, I got so much surfing out of it, I eventually bought a paid account just to contribute back.
Reddit : Similarly, I bought a founder Reddit Gold account when they appealed for cash, because I really enjoyed Reddit back before the eternal September.
iTunes : I use iTunes for quite a lot of things, apps, movie rentals and purchases, music purchases, and I have an iTunes Match subscription. If you have enough Apple gear to make an 'ecosystem', it's a good service.
Amazon Prime : I love Amazon. Some days, I wish I still worked for them.
App.net : - I signed up for an app.net account the second I heard about it.
It's not a huge list. I'd like it to be larger. There's whole categories of things I'd probably cheerfully pay for should they exist. I'd pay a subscription for a decent search engine that wasn't a front for a creepy advertising juggernaut. I might pay for a subscription 'social' network, maybe something like a family-focused Yammer . I'd love something like a cheaper netflix that just focused on pre-1960s movies and archive TV. I'd like something like the old programming.reddit or hacker news. I'd love a smart news aggregator, and if I can't find one to pay for soon, I may have to invent one.
In the olden times, there was a lot of talk about internet micropayments , and about how they couldn't possibly work, or how they were imminent and essential to safeguard the future of the web . They never really quite happened, and the shiny allure of the internet as a huge content pipe of free everything triumphed over all, but lately it feels to me like the mood is perhaps shifting a little.
People seem to be wising up to some of the privacy considerations of infinitely free stuff that is only ever paid for covertly. The mobile app store culture has engendered a user community more acclimatised to fee-paying for services. Kindle is powering a minor revolution in self-publishing . Finally, there's Kickstarter , which is perhaps the most interesting current development in internet financing.
There's nothing particularly new about the thinking behind Kickstarter. Through a combination of great execution and timing, it seems to have hit critical mass over the last 12 months. In the midst of all the long-tail nerd-bait (I recently signed on for my first funding ) and snake oil there are signs of some interesting funding efforts converging towards the mainstream. Champion self-publicist Amanda Palmer recently powered her project past the magical $1,000,000 mark, to flurries of 'old media' press interest.
App.net is a manifest demonstration that I'm not completely alone in this line of thinking. Launched slightly before twitter's recent frantic, shark-jumping, repositioning of it's terms of service , it seemed a futile, quixotic gesture when I signed up to fund it on it's kickstarter-esque ( apparently kickstarter's TOS precludes funding things like ongoing businesses, so they rolled their own thing ) signup page . I fully expected it to fall short of it's goal, but maybe pick up some positive news coverage as it flamed out, much like Diaspora did before. To my surprise it charged past the funding target ahead of the deadline, and closed way ahead of the target figure. Since then, they've launched the API, and built a sort of twitter clone built across it at alpha.app.net , which is busy enough to be an almost useful, slightly cliquey chit-chat network of it's own. It seems like app.net has the potential to self-host itself as at least a niche social network for privacy nerds and web developers. For some, that might be good enough, but I suspect the real power of app.net lies within it's potential to become a kind of ad-hoc real-time message bus for higher layered services over it's API. It remains to be seen if it can gather enough developer / user mindshare to deliver on the potential.
The most high-profile campaign I've yet seen is the Penny Arcade Sells Out . High profile, high traffic funny-picture sites are the gold-standard of high volume ad serving, with content that massive audiences enjoy, but are used to reading for "free". Although they fell short of their more extravagant targets, including the 'complete ad removal', they hit their funding target, and raised half a million dollars. An A-lister website demonstrating the ability to generate competitive income with top level ad-sales entirely from direct user funding? Nearly. Is the tide turning? I don't know, but I can feel it pull.
Dodgem Logic : Alan Moore is preparing to launch a new "underground magazine", with a mixture of content, including comics, and an intriguing sounding eight-page swappable insert for "local content"
We have recently had a wood-burning stove installed. With a baby on the way, I understand it's traditional to frantically embark on home improvement. Our house is old and draughty, as homes built around open fireplaces, one in every room, must be. The current central heating isn't very optimised for heat delivery, especially since we removed a good portion of the internal doors, and have yet to get around to replacing them.
The chimney breast, in what has become the main living room needed some attention, having suffered some water damage long ago, due to leaking. The leaks are gone, but the brickwork and surface plaster were left saturated and continued to deteriorate. Rounding it all off, it was mounted with a bulky, mantelpiece of slate, with ugly pseudo-wood veneer, and filled with garish orange ceramic tiles.
Installing the stove was a way of addressing these issues simultaneously. When fired up, it should produce a generous heat in the centre of the house, well suited to the original building design and airflow. As part of the installation, we've had the chimney lined, the fireplace and hearth reconstructed, and the chimney breast re-surfaced. We ordered the stove from Kindle in Bristol , and they also managed all the installation work, which only took a couple of days.
The stove is a ClearView Pioneer 400 . A clean-burn design, and the installation is certified for use in smokeless zones, such as Bristol. It's a multi-fuel configuration, which can be used to burn (smokeless) coal as well as firewood. We've built a small log store in the back yard, and filled it with a metre-cubed of sawn firewood.
Due to the unseasonably hot weather, I've not had too much of a chance to get it up and running, aside from a few test sessions. I'm not yet sure what our practical fuel consumption will resolve to. In my tests, I've so far determined that it is capable of generating a startling amount of heat after just a few hours of operation.
On a less practical note, it is simply enormous fun having a large burning fire you can fiddle about with, sitting within easy reach. It's very easy to get hypnotised by the thing, when it's burning. I find it considerably more interesting to watch than most things that are on the television.
Beehaus : Urban dwellers are being encouraged to keep bees by Natural England , with the launch of the Beehaus, an new user-friendly urban beehouse design from the firm Omlet .
Electric suicide ants : Colonies of lasius neglectus , the poison-resistant "Asian super ant", whose magnetic compulsion for electricity sources is so strong they can represent a fire hazard, have been identified in the UK for the first time.
3. On a nearby OS X Leopard notebook, setup a new bluetooth serial port, type RS232. ( System preferences -> Bluetooth -> Advanced ). Call it something like 'Bluetooth-console'. Ensure the Mac is paired with the phone.
4. In a terminal, run ' screen /dev/tty.Bluetooth-console '
5. Set your Mac's bluetooth to 'discoverable'
6. Launch the Python application you've just installed on your phone. Select Options -> Bluetooth Console -> Other. Choose your Mac, and then select the Bluetooth-console serial port as the device.
7. Meanwhile, back on the Mac: a python shell will start in your screen session after a small delay.
8. In the python session, " import audio "
9. In the python session, " audio.say('I never realised my phone had a built-in speech synthesizer') "
I've not posted a gig write up in a long time. One day I might get around to post-documenting some of the backlog. However, here's something very fresh.
Last night I went to see Fever Ray . Fever Ray is the assumed band name of Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of the strange and compelling Swedish brother-sister art-electronica duo, The Knife .
The ticket price for this one was fairly steep. Seventeen pounds is a lot to ask for an debut act, on a Bristol weekday evening. Knowing the Knife to have something of a penchant for staginess and performance statements , I figured that the cost of admission might indicate a more elaborate performance spectacle than the routine Academy show. It wasn't a terribly full crowd, which may have also had something to do with the ticket price. Luckily my expectations of an interesting presentation were met, more than satisfactorily.
A stage swathed in as much machine-made fog as I've seen since I last watched the Sisters Of Mercy, decades ago. For readers unfamiliar with the Sisters' stage ouevre, let me clarify; this means a lot of fog . The five-piece band only identifiable as bizarre silhouettes suggestive of a dark circus. Improbably tall hats, shadowy pierrot faces, frock coats, hunched shoulders. Karin, stage center shrouded in an enormous cowled cloak , the headress simultaneously suggesting fur and antlers and briar-hedge basketwork, her peculiar outline only really humanised by oversized white gloved hands. During the second song, she cleverly unfurled her cloak a little, a sudden backlight creating a surprising stained-glass panel effect that seemed to shine from inside her.
The whole performance was a meticulously staged progression, slowly opening up the initial murk. At the start the overhead fog was scissored dramatically by a pair of slow moving laser beams. By the second song, they'd each expanded to a pair of fan shapes. Later on these picked up oscillating movement, and eventually traced out colour shifts in the waves of fog. Within the on-stage gloom, the odd sight of a dozen or so standard-lamps, pulsing away in time to the beats through thick lampshades. I didn't have my camera with me, although I expect it would have struggled to capture any of this well. Quite a few people have submitted photos of previous shows to flickr .
As the show progressed, the stage was slowly up-lit from the back with soft blue and yellow glows. The cloak was shed, placed on a stand just behind front of stage, it still loomed, like some kind of shadowy spirit-familiar. Gradually we could see a little more of the performers, jigging around, wildly shaking shamanistic totem-sticks, pounding away on congas and toms, yet still the lighting and smoke effects kept them essentially obscured and anonymous.
The short set stuck solidly to the album, without encores, which was fine by me. My attention didn't wander, nor did I tire of standing in place. My only complaints would be with the slightly murky sound, which isn't that unusual for the Academy, and that the music didn't really connect as terribly live, aside from the vocals; pitch-shifted, yet weirdly still human and very real. I think this was probably down to a combination of the very programmed sounds, and the distancing effect of the theatrics. It was something more like watching a stage-show display set to a musical playback, than a rock music show. I took it as an opportunity to watch something a little out of the ordinary, and enjoyed myself.
The album is ace, and I recommend it to anyone. You can find it on spotify .
The video for "Triangle Walks" gives an impression quite close to the live show. There are some other videos available on the band site which give a good sense of the Fever Ray aesthetic.
