Neil Hopcroft

Big Head Hello Kitty Fan

“SMILE! JESUS LOVES YOU!” BOOMERANGS

One of my action points from todays meeting was to find some music to replace those clips we currently use for testing.

“Keep the death metal song, but the rest can go…please”

Last time anyone let me do that my contribution was hirezs “Sack of Hammers (remix)”, which was never quite understood by anyone I worked with, but they used it for testing anyway. Indeed, it was quite an interesting piece for testing because of its range of unusual sounds, nice and challenging for a phone speaker.

The danger with the cutups I’m getting into right now (Negativland, Cassette Boy, etc) is that there is so much in the way of level shifts and poor cuts that we can’t tell which is the music and which is the software.

So, I suppose I’m soliciting for suggestions for appropriate pieces of music for testing audio software. Any ideas folks?

I know, its my own fault. I shouldn’t have bought sweets called ‘Skum Bananer‘, should I?

Well, admit it, you would’ve bought them too? Wouldn’t you?

Copy this list.
Leave in the bands you’ve seen perform live.
Delete the ones you haven’t and add new ones that you have seen until you reach 25.
An asterisk means the previous person had it on their list.
Two asterisks means the last two people who did this before you had that band on their list.
(I’ve made a minor cheat of adding two peoples lists together)

Alien Sex Fiend ******
The Chaos Engine *****
Sisters of Mercy *****
Sunshine Blind ****
The Marionettes ***
Rosetta Stone ***
Pop Will Eat Itself ***
New Model Army ***
Faith and the Muse ***
Children on Stun ***
The Tortured (Nervosa as was and is) **
Sigue Sigue Sputnik **
Manuskript **
Earth Calling Angela **
Dream Disciples **
Blyth Power **
Red Hot Chilli Peppers **
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult *
The Cure *
Carter USM *
Christian Death *
Girls Under Glass *
Crüxshadows *
Inkubus Sukkubus *
Dr and the Medics

Cock lantern (Worksafe)

Pink tank

Divine interventions (*NOT* worksafe)

As you know I’m going to be in Stockholm for a while, which has left me with something of a quandry about what to do with my car. Its somewhat past its best but it basically still works, so scrapping it seems a bit wasteful. Therefore, I wondered if anyone would be interested in it? If you’re going to use it I’ll give it to you.

It is a 1994 Laguna 2.0L – thats the old 8v 2 litre engine, developing something around 115 bhp, not the newer 16v/135bhp version. RXE ‘airflow’ trim level (though it no longer has the spoiler or functional aircon that the ‘airflow’ implies). Its got 145k Miles on the clock, has had a new clutch about a year ago. Bodywork ‘has character’. In fact whole car has character, but bodywork in particular.

It is currently in Leatherhead but will probably be going to live with my sister in Woking if it doesn’t find another home quickly – it can stay in Woking for a while but she’ll want her parking space back at some point and she already has a car so doesn’t need another.

Let me know if you’re interested (or if you know someone who is), either in the whole car or some bits from it.

There’s something so wrong about drinking mango lassie from a paper cup.

Theres something really pleasing about exploring new cities – especially when they are, like Stockholm, rather different to any cities you know already. Called the Venice of the North it is built around the meeting points of north and south landmasses in the centre of a considerable archipelago – some 24000 islands in total.

I popped into the city one evening last week, really as much to find out about trains as anything else – so I headed in on the overground ‘pendaltag’ or J-Train, getting off at T-Centralen for a walk around.

I found a weird cafe that from the outside looked rather run down and a bit grotty, but when you actually sat down inside it became clear it had been designed to look that way, very peculiar but also quite pleasant. Then back on the T-bana (‘tunnel train’) to Husby, the station nearest my hotel.

The on saturday I got a 24 hour ticket to give me a chance to explore properly. I started in Gamla Stan, the old town built on one of the main islands in the centre of the city. This is an area full of small streets and old buildings, though the sheer number of Americans drove me out of the area as soon as I’d had lunch.

Down to the waterfront where I discovered all sorts of oddnesses. Starting with a UN military band parading in front of their boat. Next was a ‘mods and rockers’ biker rally, which back home would have been an open invite for a riot but here passed off without any apparent bloodshed.

A little further along I discovered a wedding party boarding their boat, and beyond that was something europop which might or might not have been some members of Abba (it all sounds the same to me) celebrating the start of the Stockholm half marathon. Around the corner from there I found a wildlife photo exhibition.

I wandered some more around the city, encountering bits of road shut off for the marathon runners to pass.

Sunday I headed for Valhalla Avenue, which isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds, but I couldn’t not go, could I? It does contain both an olympic stadium (from 1912, I believe, so its rather smaller than any other such stadiums I’ve seen) and ‘Valhalla Grillen’, which seems to be where the Polis hang out while they’re waiting to be called to catch villains.

At the end of the avenue there are three standing stones, only I don’t think they’re stones but rather piece of concrete, marking the start of some parkland. Some parkland with Brazil Jacks Circus on it. Not now, its midday and I’m hungry and they’re not open, so maybe another time but they’ll probably have gone by then.

So back to the waterfront and I find a pair of ‘data obelisks’ “Data is supplied continuously to this obelisk by Stockholm Water Co”. Remarkably I can’t find anything about them on the net except for a mention on Page 28 of a .pdf file – perhaps I’ve just had a temporary lapse of google-fu.

Finally, time to head home, tired and ready for a rest.

I’ve been here in Stockholm just over a week now, and I’m sure you’re all keen to hear how things are going?

Where to start? I could pick up after the last installment, I was awaiting my baggage at the time, which arrived shortly after I sent that entry. Outside to find a taxi, I ended up in a Volvo driven by someone who thought he was in the film, whisking me along the highway at 160km/h flashing his fellow taxi drivers to get out the way. I survived, but was slightly more full of adrenaline than I would perhaps have liked given it was time to sleep.

Up early for work the next day, and I was rather surprised to find that my boss was actually expecting my arrival that day, somehow I’d gotten it into my head that there was a disconnect in the message somewhere in the sea of agents between me and him. He introduced me to a number of people whose names I’d forgotten by the time he finished, and then sat me in a meeting room with a tatty printed document while I waited the arrival of my computer. This is typical of tech companies – less typically the computer actually arrived before lunch. The next day I was joined in my meeting room by another new starter. Then over this weekend we moved to our new locations, along with the rest of the team, one floor down.

I’m not sure theres a great deal more to say about the work or the office – I suppose I could tell you how everyone speaks very good English, although some of the people from other places get confused about which language they are speaking, both Swedish and English being foreign to them, they start speaking in the wrong one sometimes, but soon realise that I don’t understand them.

Lunch is at the cafeteria in a building over the road, Ericsson seem to occupy half of the buildings in the area of Kista (pronounced Shista), with Sony Ericsson only having three or four, other notable presences in the area are Nokia, Flextronics, Saab Technologies and IBM.

Kista is very much tech central, there are plenty of the above kinds of tech companies, theres a technical university and theres a whole bunch of new development, it seems everything here has been built in the last thirty or fourty years. And with that, the whole area is laid out with large roads and a wonderful network of cycle and pedestrian pathways. Although a number of the cyclepaths are closed at the moment because of various pieces of building works going on.

It takes me 20 minutes to walk from the hotel to the office, which is quite a pleasant distance except when the weather is being miserable.

Around Kista station is the Galleria, a shopping centre containing a good selection of shops and a fairly extensive food court.