I’ve nominated the spitblog to be for “interesting” entries - i.e. those helpful for people who are going to be playing with their own spitfires, technical data, findings and experiences of working on the car. In addition, I will try to be very thorough on that blog. Any stuff that is humanly interesting rather than techy will be on this blog, so no need to bore yourself to tears unles you’re looking for techie details!
Rah! Took delivery of my new toy! Broke it!
Full story on my spitfire blog.
Also see photos of the car.
Current score:
Joy: 2 Hours
Pain: 4 Hours
I AM DEATH, COME UPON THEE
Or something…
Matt & Jen came to visit at the weekend, during which I mentioned that I had been intending to visit asia again this year but was cancelling due to SARS. They kindly invited me to go visit them. In Toronto. The next day news broke about the SARS outbreak in Toronto. Be warned everybody! I’m intending to take up scuba so in a couple of months the oceans won’t be safe! Or am I getting a little carried away there… Perhap’s I’d better wait and see…
One of my tunes got picked up by local label minimism and submitted with 4 other tracks for inclusion on a fanzine coverdisk. The fanzine guy singled it out (well, doubled it out really) as one of his two faves..! Shame I’ve only really got one tune like it… Still, my tricks with hats tune (in a completely different style: very derivative of Propellerheads’ Spybreak) seems to have gone down well with LP so things are looking good on the music front generally. At some point I will overcome the reticence and do a gig - though in yet another style… I’m bursting to play more at scratch DJing and beatmatching but haven’t managed to justifiy the extravagance yet. Don’t worry, I’ll find a way :-)
wow, best part of two days with NOOOO internet! That was hard work. Have a couple of entries I did on my palm over the weekend:
11/4/03 16:15 so the Merkins “won” the war on Tuesday huh? Idiots… There was great footage here in the UK of a bbc team arriving at the end of the four-hour firefight at the mosque. The marines had imposed a sort of “no drive zone” in front of the mosque because they were having trouble differentiating civilians and soldiers and were worried about potential suicide carbombs and other unconventional attack.
Of course they did this in English.
So they waved and shouted at the guy in the VW beetle, who waved back and drove on… The next car was less fortunate and the driver was shot. When the BBC showed up they had a translator with them, who went over to the car with a white flag and pulled out a 6-year old girl still alive with a head wound. It was not reported how long she’d been there. The BBC reporter said that wherever they went, their translator became the liaison. WHAT KIND OF “BENEVOLENT” FORCE GOES IN WITHOUT SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE?
Honestly. The americans have probably done enough to manage domestic public opinion, but if they really want a stable middle east (and that is a big “if”) they ought to be at least giving a thought to the arabs as people, rather than as statistics. This insensitivity was also shown by the American UN envoy [IIRC... he was speaking in Paris I think] who, when trying to reassure the world about American intentions in Iraq used the Bible in a metaphor… HELLO?! The whole world is watching you and you are claiming to be sympathetic to muslems then you go and use a religious idiom? Bong.
12/4/03 9:21 bleurgh! what a night!
Yesterday I got a free day off work so decided to go through with the whole BJC thing. So took a train down to london and stopped off at the B3ta party in Soho en route. this was the first time I’d ever met anyone who I’d met online first, and it was doubly strange with my being an infrequent poster (and having given up B3ta for lent) so not even *really* knowing anyone online either… What a lovely bunch of people! Barnesy and Lukas were there so I had some support as it were, but I think I’d probably have been fine even if I’d just showed up off the street! Pep was extremely helpful when I showed up early with a pack on my back including the largest tent I’ve ever seen on a rucsack, then went for a pre-party drink in the pub over the road.
I reached the “everybody loves everybody” stage of being drunk and then was bought another scotch before I had a chance to get any soft drinks down me, so I’m not sure what time I found myself trying to stagger down the length of a narrow rickety shuttle train to brighton carrying my refugee pack, but it was somewhere around 3am when I was putting up my tent, then it was off to meet up with everyone and watch some of the renegade show. there seemed to be a good atmosphere in there but maybe it was the booze cos not everyoneseemed to agree. Highlight for me was some kid singing “Stand By Your Man” to a random drum-n-bass/ska backing track. Low points came moments later with a camp mime who seemed to be pouring 700 bottles of honey while suffering some kind of spastic muscle disorder and chronic bone & joint disease. I think it was 700, I lost interest after 2. He got half a dozen bonus points for his silver coulottes with black inserts, but quickly used them up with the pacing of his act. Final nail in the coffin was Ross with his poetry. Now I liked ross’s poetry. Some of it was a little near the knuckle but it was fresh and new and had interesting rhythms and some clever constructions.. Two years ago. Ross: WRITE SOME NEW MATERIAL if you’re going to play to the same crowd year in year out. He was also flogging a CD which I might’ve bought had he not been utterly rude to me at the last bristol.
Woo! I’m going to BJC! I’m going to BJC!
Well, work pulled a rabbit out of the hat today by mentioning that friday would consist of packing up stuff in the morning, then mostly going home. So this suddenly tipped the scale the other way. This means I get to see Bro & Sarah, meet the B3tans (though they probably won’t even be aware of me since I gave up b3ta for lent and was hardly a frequent poster before that), meet Pitr, possibly go and look at this car in hastings, see the fantastic (sounding) show, see lorri’s spain photos, and partake in the assorted levity that tends to accompany these meetings. Mine will be a relatively swift visit, from late Friday to mid Sunday, whereas the hard core (those with seemingly inexhaustible leave allowances) will be there from Wed night (bonkerskrazymad!)
Now I just have to chuck a couple of hundred quid at transport and tickets and stuff, and get packing!
Today is the dawn of a New Era. My blog finally works on my website after a 3 month hiatus. Hopefully I’ll start posting to it again and who knows! At some point it may contain something interesting.
Latest Stuff In The Life Of Steve: well, the glory of photomash has now passed. After making the b3ta newsletter I exceeded 4.5 GB traffic in 10 days! [GEEK ALARM]My account limit is 1GB. The newletter came out on Friday 28th Feb, and did 1.1GB traffic that day, over half the month’s traffic and taking me nicely into the red. But that was the last day of feb and I was due a new month’s bandwidth tomorrow. By Monday, the 3rd March, I’d exceeded march’s allocation too! So I moved all the large images to LP’s server (he’s nice like that) and just hosted the index and thumbs. In the period to the 7th (when the next b3ta newsletter came out) I did 3.4Gb, then it dropped off to almost the level it had been before (2-7Mb/Day before … 200-800Mb During … 10-20Mb/day after).[END GEEK]
Been playing with some tunes (again/still) having trouble convincing myself that it’s good enough to gig it… but then knowing the way I work, I’ll wait till I have a gig before I really focus and make things work. Spent Real Money(TM) on Reason 2 and Recycle so have some great new toys for making sounds. So far with the new software I’ve made four tunes: two appalling ones (which may nonetheless be enjoyed by some) one propellerheads-style thing as a candidate for a juggling video (I cannot say more at this stage - hush hush) and a quite pretty, pensive tune that didn’t quite work as an idea for Mamph to juggle to.
Finally, I’m in the process of getting broadband at home, so I will effectively have an unlimited hosting space for tunes and media, if hopelessly slow. Then I will start to share my stuff and you can have a listen.
That’s all for now. Y’all come back now ya hear?