Russell Davies

sunday weather

like the opposite of an analogy

This is just a thing that happened. It's not interesting. It's blogging.

I went to see The Necks last night with my friend Ben. (Not that Ben.) Ben's been known to do some professional reviewing in his life but this was a night off, he was just there to spectate, so we joked that he should try not to have any opinions or come up with any analogies, since it was a night off. (I say joked...)

Which reminded me of the Analogy Library, so we talked about that for a bit, and I couldn't remember any of the examples, so we looked it up and there, right there, were the Borromean rings - "a configuration of three rings arranged so that no two rings are interlocked but all three together are".

Haha, we thought, The Necks are a trio, this'd be applicable. But, actually, The Normally Excellent Necks seemed (to me at least) to be having a bit of an off night. They were like the opposite of that - each of two rings were interlocking, but all three weren't. D'yasee?

Like I say, just a thing, not interesting, blogging. You've got to have this stuff if you want the other stuff.

 

 

 

on terms with tools

I didn't get to dConstruct, which was a shame, I was especially looking forward to Tom Armitage. Fortunately, the audio of his talk is available here. It's lovely, it made me think of this moment from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy:

"Taking the marble he slowly rolled it round his hard, powdery palm and Roach knew at once that he was very skilful at all sorts of things; that he was the kind of man who lived on terms with tools and objects generally."

 

big-town folksy

Scamp has started blogging again. Which is nice.

He's written something thoughtful about capturing 'tone of voice' which reminded me that pithy statements of tone are things I collect.

Here's the latest I've found, from Nicholson Baker's The Way The World Works:

John Updike described the tone of the New Yorker as "big-town folksy".

Isn't that perfect? Big-town folksy.

daylight music

I went to see Richard play at the Union Chapel today as part of the Daylight Music thing. It was at noon.

He was very good. Quiet and acoustic but rigorous, controlled, not soft and folky - building loops and phrases rather than ordinary songs. Perfect.

I've never been much for going out in the evenings. I'd always rather be at home, so I miss a lot of stuff I'd like. And this reminded I've always wanted to go to gigs in the morning. Before work. Before school. While it's still cold and the streets are still quiet. The Russell Square cafe would be perfect. Outside. Music like Richard's would be perfect.

It might deliver a feeling like the start of Birth Of A New School from A Moveable Feast:

"The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful), the marble-topped tables, the smell of café crèmes, the smell of early morning sweeping out and mopping and luck were all you needed."

Maybe it wouldn't just be music. Could be talks, readings. But, early, so there's something under your belt before you start the day. With coffee.

that was a good summer

balloons, slow data sounds, locks

A fascinating day at EMFcamp with Paul, Tom and Arthur.

Excellent talk about High Altitude Balloon and Rocket launching and tracking from Adam Greig of CUSF.

 

Practical demo.

Listening to the radio tracking being decoded.

  

Also, lock-picking:

meanwhile in robot news

I tried a little experiment last week. Mucking about with text to speech, music and sound.

I made a minute every day of 'news' or 'radio' or somewhere between the two, or outside of the two. I tried to make sure I took no more than 20 minutes doing it.

I wanted to see if roboty/markovy autogenerated speech radio was possible, and listenable. Whether you could set up some parameters and make it so - I think you could. I did it by hand, but I think you could do it with software if you wanted. And it'd work for at least a minute.

And I'd also hoped to explore compression - I get really frustrated by the flabbiness of a lot of factual radio and TV, endless repetition, exposition and shots/sounds of people on mountains - I think we can all work a lot harder than that, and that really dense chunks of media might be a new, interesting, thing. Think Pop Up video or Network 7, but really, really thick with information. I haven't got the time to try that with video so I thought I'd try it with sound. I didn't really though, didn't have enough content or time. Maybe another time.

I think there's something in this. I'm going to try again sometime. It's not quite media invention, maybe it's media tinkering, but it's fun.

good job london

Dawn on the last day. Good job London. Very nicely done.

coming top at culture

The opening ceremony was, of course, brilliant. Moving, funny, clever, all that stuff. Just brilliant.

What else can you expect from the man who wrote Damon and Debbie?

And, watching the telly and following twitter I thought I recognised something else happening - I thought I saw a generation realising that it was now Top at Culture. 30/40 somethings were suddenly seeing the stuff they liked, that they grew up with, was now the dominant cultural stuff. Their favourite things are now 'officially' mainstream, dominant culture. It's not alternative. It's it.

It made me think of Things Can Only Get Bitter and its hypothesis that a generation turned away from politics and decided, instead, to get good at culture.

It made me think of the global success of house music. It's so good and so overwhelming because it can absorb anything, any musical culture, in a way that rock never could.

It made me realise that the boomers have been gently elbowed aside. The sixties stuff was given a roughly equivalent prominence to Tiger Feet and Macca seemed a grudging concession to the grandparents; like playing some Mrs Mills at the end of a party. Hey Jude now signals that the fun's over and it's time to go home.

And it made me worry about geek triumphalism. The dominant culture - the culture of the Olympic opening ceremony - is now a culture that recognises Tim Berners Lee and a NeXTcube on sight and is aghast and appalled that other people don't. In loads of ways that's great. Fantastic. And I would think that wouldn't I? But there's also a danger that the geeks won't just be the next bankers, they(/we?) might also be the next boomers, squatting jealously over the culture, so good at it that no one else will get a look in for years.

But, overall, it made me absolutely bloody delighted and happy and proud. Millions and millions and millions of people also love Gregory's Girl and OMD and Brookside and Underworld and Evelyn Glennie and the shipping forecast and that is deeply joyous and important.