Caravan park (erm, park in a caravan)
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
I should give out *point*s for identifying song (or sometimes film) references in my posts, shouldn’t I?
Any Java and/or Flash developers out there interested in making us a game?
I woke still half-dreaming I was falling out of the trees
Last nights gig at Southampton was an unusual affair – it was in a rock pub somewhere on the outskirts of the town. The venue is quite nice in a pub-with-backroom kind of way, nice large stage so you don’t have to put the guitarist in the audience because he doesn’t fit on stage.
I arrived in time for Tracer, if the billing order I have to hand is anything to go by. They were awful. The kind of awful that is somehow inspiring, because if they can be not-bottom of the bill that means theres a space in this world for someone as musically untalented as me.
Next, after a somewhat disorganised pizza break, were Voices of Masada, who appear not to have left the late 80s underground goth scene, its a nice big sound, all full of reverb and guitars that don’t know when to stop. The incident with the pants and the mohawk happened sometime around here, but they deserve it for being too serious.
Then DUST, driven entirely by enthusiasm, or maybe drugs, its a bit difficult to tell. I don’t really have much to say about these guys – they’re more of the same. It was about this time I regretted not joining the pizza run.
Finally Screaming Banshee Aircrew. I love these guys, they’re enthusiastic, not too serious and have some damned fine music. Ed went on a walkabout to find the range of his wireless microphone, and the set culminated in the collection of a number of dancers from the audience to join the band on stage…somewhat depleting the crowd. The CDs are fabulous – I’ve heard them in a club context before but listening to them in the car on the way home they’ve got far more edge than live, and they’re pretty edgy in the flesh.
Todays fashion tip: don’t mix mohawk and underpants.
Linkblast mini
“For professional Funeral Directors wishing to enhance their service we provide unique and tasteful motorcycle hearses”
I’ve just tagged all my book reviews, so the following are available for borrowing should you be interested (I think a couple of them belong to evilmattikinz but I’m not sure I can remember which ones, and I’m sure he’d be happy to let you borrow them anyway):
Book review: JPod by Douglas Coupland
Theres something easy about reading Coupland. His work is quite disposable at some level but at another it describes people who are enough like me that I can feel myself being drawn into their world.
This book takes us into the world of a games development company, with a small group of six developers stuck in a corner of the building working on their own project. It follows their lives over the course of the project, through its invasion by turtles to a hilarious climax involving an oriental fir tree.
It is a little self-referential, in that Coupland turns up in the book, but its nicely done, and in such a way that its a bit difficult to work out which bits are fiction, which are ‘fiction in the fictional world’ and which are real (I suspect none).
There are some nice touches, like the guy who is drive mad by the sound of the coffee machine idling (it emits a sound every 45 seconds that noone else can hear), and fantasies about Ronald McDonald. All of which is both plausible and utterly absurd.
Who should read this book: anyone geeky or who wants to understand us geeky people.
What kind of person reads “Neurolinguistic Programming for Dummies” on the train?
In unrelated news, I’m feeling a bit stupid today. I managed to scrape the side of my car on the fencepost at the back of my flat last night. The parking area is a bit on the small side and there are now three cars regularly left in the area. Technically I have a garage but its still full of my landlords things so I just park my car as out the way as I can get it. But last night it was a bit tight up there and it was very dark when I got back (so much for light pollution, eh?).
I’ve not had a chance to look at it in daylight to see how bad it is, I suspect its not pretty but I’m hoping that its not structural – I think I misjudged the corner by about 1cm, but that can leave the paintwork in quite a mess if its the wrong 1cm. As long as its all basically functional I’m not going to bother fixing it – the car is going to be replaced at some point soon anyway, so in some ways its good to get these things out the way with a car thats not so precious.
So, anyone got any suggestions for ways to make the corner of the fence less dangerous to the sides of cars? One obvious one is to arrive in daylight when I can see what is going on. But thats not always practical. So I was considering trying to find a bell, a bracket and a piece of string, such that if you got too close the string would pull the bell and ring without damaging the car. But I’m not quite sure how to rig it, or where to buy a bell.
“Saturday morning John Doran, of Baraga while measuring lumber, was suddenly taken with a fit and fell into the lake and was drowned”
Slashcast (if you don’t know what thats likely to be you probably don’t want to follow the link – passed on for the sheer wrongness)
Last one standing has no socks (when knitters and gamers meet)