Saint or sinner? (mp3 player)
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
Fire flower dwarfs the moon
First, a big *THANK YOU* to Damian for driving me home last night – I’m so used to the Underworld where doors at seven means ‘kicking out at 10 so we can run another club after’.
I got to Camden early so I could take a proper look around and get lost in the market – I don’t think I’ve been there since I got back from Tokyo – its all gone rather…permanent, hasn’t it? Everywhere seems to have been replaced with glass and pine, its lost some of its sleaze. I’m not quite sure what to think of it, its not what I was expecting, and I suspect something needed to be done. Hmmm, what does everyone else think of it?
Then time to meet Matti and Daymo, and try to remember where the Roundhouse was. We found it, with a huge queue outside – I’m still not quite used to the idea of going to events that require queues. Still, it was fairly quick moving and we were inside where the madness began.
It started with an assault from someone armed with a bubble gun, then a poor girl got lost in a box, and stilts and paper hearts and watching and people ignoring the bubble gun and lets go and find out what that noise is and wow, what a fabulous building and strange cinema. Sometime around here reality moved around 10 degrees to the left.
Last nights post was a picture of a ‘circus composer’, who makes noise from all sorts of things, including taping a microphone to the wrong end of a flute and megaphone harmonica. And where did all that bass come from? I can’t describe his performance, and I’m sure that a recording of it wouldn’t do it justice. I can’t remember his name otherwise I would recommend going to see him. (ETA: Sxip Shirey…with thanks to cherylbird)
There were a few other acts, of variable quality, including some people from the Legendary Pink Dots (soporiphic, good but not right for the moment), a wig juggler (entertaining), a man with lots of hair (odd, but not in a good way), a French girl with a black and white face (sad, but very good), a small dance troupe (undescribable but good) and a fan dancer with a little surprise (unexpected).
And then the Dresden Dolls were on stage. The show was being filmed so they were putting on even more of a show than normal –
with a number of guests on stage during various songs. They started with a stonking version of “Sex changes” – where else could they start? They were in fine form, putting on a show, not just a gig.
Tonight I took a walk up to the hill above Ashtead – to watch the fireworks from the hilltop. Unfortunately most of the path is wooded and you can’t see anything interesting, there is, though, a horse field (which has notices authorising walking but reserving priority for horses) from which the view across the Ashtead valley was wonderful.
My views on fireworks have changed somewhat, I’ve not really liked the noisy ones for a long time, but watching them from an aeroplane and seeing the display over Tokyo harbour have shown me that there is nothing we can do in this country which will ever get anywhere close to what they can be. And while I think they’re quite pretty, I worry that it is environmentally inconsiderate to continue using them.
up past the chemical works, where the sky turns green at night
Its so easy to spook yourself walking a moonlit path, isn’t it? Especially when you can feel the eyes of the works following you, a shadowy figure disappearing into the darkness along their boundary. Still, its quite a view from up here and there’s noone else watching. Everything is distant, so the sound and the light are divorced.
I think my reality just slipped.
Back soon. Maybe.
What a beautiful spring morning? A touch of frost in the air, enough to wake you up but not enough to make you cold. Bright blue sky full of aeroplanes heading to wonderful exciting foreign places. Shame its november, isn’t it?
Better send a meat truck, Charlies copped a saucepan in the throat
What happens next? Who can say? Its been a day of two halves, one upside one down.
Right now down is winning. Still, like last time, I can take this as an opportunity to spectate on the demise of others, happy in the knowlege that I can jump ship when necessary.
Book review: Flashbacks, an autobiography by Timothy Leary
My expectation, when selecting this book, was that I would be reading another account of the life of a drugged out hippy. This is very far from what it contains.
Its a little oddly laid out, with two parallel stories in the first half, Leary as a troublemaker in the army and his joining Harvard as a psychologist. The second half covers his exploration of drugs and the trouble it lands him in. Throughout there are little biographies of people important to the ongoing story, and the social circle he moved in during the 50s and 60s was made of an impressive list of famous names.
There are a lot of nice details, but most importantly you get the feeling that its written by a lucid and vibrant scientist, someone who values understanding, and sharing of the results he has understood for the benefit of society, higher than any regard for the powers that be.
His enthusiasm for the vision he has felt when taking LSD is nearly unstoppable, its the same story I’ve heard a hundred times from people trying to pursuade me that taking drugs is a good thing to do. Its the same story, but its told so much better. Somehow it makes more sense when its not being slurred out by someone for whom the only thing that matters is where next hit is coming from.
In some ways this book has reinforced my view that drugs have a place in modern society – not a place in my life, but in society as a whole – and that with appropriate social and legal structures around them they would significantly enhance life for a large number of people.
One thing that became clear while reading his descriptions of some of his trips is that there is some kind of transcendance state in our minds, which LSD unlocks, but which is available through other means too, its a kind of flow state, where the thoughts are coming thick and fast, theres nothing to stop you, you can take over the world. Maybe there is a way to unlock that door without having to take perception altering drugs – the things you find beyond will be far more useful if you can take advantage of them with all faculties intact.
There is also a reasonable overlap between this and “Brainwash“, which gives at least some credence to that book.
Who should read this book? Everyone. Especially people who are in some sense ‘anti-drug’.
[Money] This weeks thoughts
(bearing in mind that it takes me a while to read about these things, none of this information in new, its based on things that have been available for a few weeks now)
Only two potentially interesting things this week.
Tanfield group, the milk float maker have recently launched a 7.5 tonne delivery truck aimed at the courier market, and theres quite a positive vibe about electric vehicles at the moment. The FT chart shows that the price has risen somewhat over the last few months, with a slight fall back in the last week or so. I would consider this a good time to buy. The fundamentals look good and theres plenty of potential for interesting things in the future.
The results from Waterman Group are the kind of thing I’m looking for, advancing turnover, profit, earnings and dividend, albeit only by between 4% and 15%. I’m somewhat opposed to consultancy as a general rule, since most seem to be money grabbing, but that doesn’t mean they’re all bad, and they are making steady progress on the rest of the fundamentals. I don’t know enough about their field of expertise to know whether they’re good or not.
Of these Tanfield are looking more interesting to me, interesting enough that I would buy some but they’re traded on AIM so cannot be held in my ISA. Waterman aren’t the kind of thing I’m looking for at the moment, they’re too safe, I’m after something a little more exciting.
(Geekery warning, worksafe)
This is somewhat perverse – what kind of person builds a 120Tb array from 250Gb disks without understanding what they’re doing? Thats 640 disks, which I reckon will give you a failure rate of about 1 per day on average, but they’re likely to be bunched somewhat since they’re almost certain to have been shipped in the same crate. You’re going to spend your entire life trying to rebuild bits of your file system.
Linkblast
This is not a photo opportunity