Someone, somewhere must have uploaded End of Part One to the net by now. I've tried, believe me, but without a UKNova or TheBox login, I think I've hit a dead end. If anybody does have an idea where I can either download some episodes or obtain a bootleg, it'd be great. There's a couple of bits on YouTube, but nothing approaching complete programmes...
Recently in General Category
And first up, a heartly welcome back to Robin Carmody, who has a new blog. No joke - while I know he's an acquired taste, I've always loved reading his unique take on children's telefantasy, pop music, and British politics. Hurrah for 2009 already!
Well, I can tell Aardman exactly where the 'leaked' clips came from. The whole episode of A Matter of Loaf and Death was broadcast in Australia two months ago (and in HD, no less), and is happily all over the torrent networks. Though I wonder whether the report is more about the BBC trying not to reveal that their Christmas Day premiere has been gazumped.
I find it somewhat amusing that in order to guarantee me getting a copy of Phonogram: The Singles Club #1, I'm going to be picking it up from a comic shop 5,000 miles away from where I am now.
Bless Chapel Hill Comics and all who sail in her! Admittedly, I won't be able to read it for a month, but as Kieron says it has been under-ordered, better to be safe than sorry.
(so yes, if you do see it in the shops tomorrow - do grab it while you can)
Is using The Flaming Lips's Do You Realize? sending out the right happy notes? Really?
I hope you enjoyed the first day of your Advent calendars today, everybody!
I know you're all itching for my year in review. Itching to an extent that even calamine lotion can't salve the irritation. You might want to hang onto the bottle until the weekend. I will say that most of my music choices won't surprise anybody, though I seem to be continuing my tilt back towards indie-r waters...
2009: Bring back The Reynolds Girls!
Well, perhaps Woolworths can take some solace that their name lasted longer than their American parent (which became Foot Locker many years ago).
Comedians: ready your pick'n'mix jokes!
- No, really, it's not a 30 Rock joke. It existed. And you think NBC sucks today.
- Didn't anyone stop to pause and think 'no, actually, this is the worse idea ever'?
- I propose Rule 35: no matter how bad, there is always an Internet fansite for any TV show.
- I'm hoping for a remake; it can't be worse than Survivors, can it?
- Support the DVD campaign!
Still, if we need a new energy source in a hurry, we can always hook a generator up to Milton Friedman's spinning grave...
The Actor Kevin Eldon as an EVIL HYPNOTIST in New Tricks.Next week: INTERNATIONAL STARING!
The USA may speak loftily of ideals, but you should know by now that they will not come to your aid in times of serious trouble. And it doesn't help if you shoot first at an enemy that really wants to remind the world it's a superpower.
(really, I know it's a complex situation and the Russians are no angels in this, but Georgia did start this off last week, so I'm wondering why it seems to be all Russia's fault in the eyes of the media?)
- Photochromatic inks on postcards
- Screen-printing chocolate with coloured white chocolate
- Lilypads
- Stealing the last bendy-bus in London and taking it on a tour of the UK...
- What to do for Hallowe'en?
- SexyRobot @ Franklin. Sometime after The Great Grits Getaway!
- Job security in SF.
Forgive me. I seem to be addicted to concrete. And LEDs. In the past year, my bookshelves have been swelled by works on architecture, radical typographical manifestos, the mystery of the Factory Records numbering system, and computer processing. It's got to lead somewhere.
Saint Etienne at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in September for a start, I guess.
"Did you know you can rent a generator for $52 and set up and play ANYWHERE until the cops come?"
I was in the Prague Centre for Contemporary Arts and trapped on certain floors due to a bizarre ticketing method. I found myself confronted on all sides by beautiful brutalist models of Soviet architecture from the 1960s and was reminded, of all things, of the start of The Likely Lads; the old pub being demolished to make way for high-rise flats. The urbanism of the 1960s failed in this country, but why? Failure of upkeep? Building the high-rises while neglecting the other parts of Le Corbusier's vision which made Unité d'Habitation a success where others failed? Or are we just bad at doing things?
"I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul"
Or perhaps he just saw Georgia burning. An awkward moment in Beijing today, I imagine.
"Turn on the real drums"
Online dating sites are just odd. Though my faith in the country is heartened by people that are even more left-wing than I am. Watts Breakaway on iTunes, which is probably a sign that I should stop typing and return to Nixonland.
We all knew there was something about John Edwards, didn't we?
Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again.
Well, it wasn't supposed to be, but I forgot that my MovableType settings are to show only the last (x) days, so as I haven't been posting for the post month, it looks a bit like a clean slate. Never fear, the previous six years of blathering are still around. They're just a little harder to get to right now.
The new design is a mixture of inspiration from Subtraction, Jan Tschichold's The New Typography (yes, that was me reading it on the bus this week, 27A Stagecoach fans!) and Kenickie's Get In album. I was thinking about having a jQuery-powered accordion menu on the right-hand-side of the page, but after playing about with a Last.fm widget for about five minutes, I decided just to have the flickr and dopplr boxes for the moment. That may change in the future.
It's still a work in progress, and it's still not entirely finished, but I think it's at the point where it can be used while I go back and fill in the missing bits (archives, comment response pages, etc) later. That's the plan, anyhow. I may get distracted by shiny things in the meantime.
Comments, complaints, and anything else appreciated!
I mean, really? Violent videogames and skunk? Why not coke and a copy of Don't Believe The Truth
Things are probably going to remain quiet for a bit. I'm off to Europe next week for a fortnight, but don't know how much I'll be able to update, but we'll see. I have at long last settled on a site redesign, mind you, so you might see that in August. No promises, though.
It really is bobbins, isn't it? Ten minutes from first start-up to getting to a Desktop, Internet Explorer doing odd things with downloads, the whole thing shuddering to a halt when I plugged in a USB mouse…
EDIT…and then it through up a UAC dialog to change the name of an icon. Now, I can rationalise why it did that, but my goodness, the UAC implementation is annoying.
I will run right back into the arms of my Mac, thank you very much...
Sorry, got a little busy this past week. And four weeks from now, I'll be packing my bags somewhere in Dublin in preparation to get to Prague. Can't quite get my head around that right now.
My love for The Style Council is deep and embarrassing. Just the thing to kick off the new week, I think…
Meanwhile, this Johnny Foreigner album is pretty good, isn't it?
Is the UK whining about it year after year. Unless the Eastern bloc have somehow managed to hypnotise their phone-owning population into voting for their neighbours…
(I think we also got a preview via France of how Mr. Jarvis Cocker would perform in such a situation. But yay for trying, Sébastien!)
I think Walky says it all:
American portion sizes over the last few decades.
And Cadburys are so lying about how Curly-Wurlys haven't got smaller…
I continued to be amused at how often dating sites match me with girls who, let's just say, prefer the company of girls. The Computer is trying to tell me something, obviously...
(and you'd think that the matching algorithm for that would be a fairly simple one, wouldn't you? Especially since I seem to have the right settings on my side!)
A phone box rings on a street corner somewhere in Berlin. The ring continues as people walk by. JULIE, an American tourist with a Canadian flag patch affixed to her backpack, walks past the booth. She pauses, walks back, opens the door and picks up the phone.
JULIE: Hello?
A pause.
JULIE: Oh, it's just on the left. No, underneath the sink. Yes, that's it! Bye!
JULIE hangs up the phone and walks off the stage.
If no sexual offence is being committed it seems very odd indeed that there should be an offence for having an image of something which was not an offence
But this week is turning out bad politically on both sides of the Atlantic so far...
The fact that in a year's time, I'm going to fall off the end of that line scares me a little.
BUT NOW I HAVE A CANDY FLOSS MACHINE. HO. HO. HO.
Jack McCoy will sell you some:
Last year, three armed ground bots were deployed to Iraq. But the remote-operated SWORDS units were almost immediately pulled off the battlefield, before firing a single shot at the enemy. Here at the conference, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Forces, Kevin Fahey, was asked what happened to SWORDS. After all, no specific reason for the 11th-hour withdrawal ever came from the military or its contractors at Foster-Miller. Fahey’s answer was vague, but he confirmed that the robots never opened fire when they weren’t supposed to. His understanding is that “the gun started moving when it was not intended to move.”
THEY WILL RISE!
Have you been into a Woolworths recently? Did you have the same odd feeling? That you could feel the shop aging around you? That once well-arranged aisles are now dilapidated and strewn with disorganised and out-of-season items (specifically the toy section, obviously)? The pick'n'mix section of the shop seems to be collapsing in on itself; a tiny little island of sweets holding out against the encroaching racks of Wii games and mobile phones. A desultory selection of contemporary CDs fighting for space alongside ancient compilations reduced to clear. Chad Valley disappearing in favour of simple, plain white packaging; efficient and soulless.
Let's go to town and switch the magazines.
I'm probably just getting old. But it feels like the chain is dying a slow lingering death.
Even though we're 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29!
It's a good thing that I checked Kieron's weblog, because he seems to have said most of the things that I was going to say about American Demo, damn him. Even the bloody Nick Cohen comment!
(essentially, my problem with Cohen's Left, from what little I know about it, is that while there are some on the Left who will always see America as the Great Evil, there's a big section of us who, while sympathetic and enthusiastic to the cause spreading of democracy, wonder how we've managed to end up with an America that tries to split hairs over whether controlled drowning is torture and turning a country into a playground for lackeys and the latest insanity from the University of Chicago Economics department. But hey. Another argument for another time.)
So, er, yes. I really like American Demo, as it manages to cut me to my core at various points. Especially Sixteen.
And Los Campesinos. Okay, I admit, I avoided them for a long time, for reasons that I can't really remember right now. But I bought the album a couple of weeks ago...it's quite fabulous, isn't it? At first, I thought it was an album that I would have loved if I was currently in the Sixth Form, but on the other hand, are Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia big names in 16-18 set right now? I am sceptical. So I'm coming around to the idea that they're the flipside to The Indelicates' cynicism, a glorious jangle of xkcd-like adventures, twenty-something reference points like ATP and K Records, and the feeling that I get when I hear Come Out 2Nite. Which is pretty awesome.
And this song will be four years old this year. YEAH! YEAH!
Lord Scarman called for a new emphasis on community policing and said more people from ethnic minorities should be recruited to the force.He also advised the government to end racial disadvantage and tackle the disproportionately high level of unemployment among young black men - as high as 50% in Brixton.
The report has been widely welcomed by senior policeman and government ministers.
Or we could just make fun of him by putting his fictional avatar in a cell with...HORROR...GAY PEOPLE! LAUGH AT TOM ROBINSON! VOTE TORY!
It's Bodger & Badger's Dream Show!
In Columbus,MS & wondering how somebody who's in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who's in first place. Vote Tues!
Is BedroomTV the creepiest thing on British television since MiniPops?
Some people get drunk, others buy clothes. Some buy chocolates. This is what I got:
FEAR MY AGAR POWER.
Do the Kennedys have any pull in the 21st century? I've started my ever-four-years read-through of Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail, where the spectre of Ted Kennedy looms large all over the primaries. Thirty-six years later, and the power of The Kennedy Who Wasn't has waned considerably. But Camelot is Camelot, and the sight of the Democratic elders switching to the new guard must be a little worrying for Hillary...
This is tapioca maltodextrin.
It's a starch that bonds really well to fatty foods. In the fancy-free world of molecular gastronomy, it has been used for weird and wonderful things like making peanut butter powder; I just had to have a go.
On the left we have 40g of nutella, whereas on the right there's 26g of maltodextrin. You put them in a food processor, blend until mixed, and then sift them out into a contain. BEHOLD, LOOK WHAT I HAVE CREATED!
It's a rather odd sensation; the powder recombines in your mouth and tastes exactly like nutella, albeit somewhat less strong than if you just have it straight. For those of you wondering just what use this is, erm...I'll come up with something eventually.
That is olive oil powder. I'm still struggling to think of any use for this, but think! You can carry olive oil on a plane now! (okay, so maybe security might wonder what the mysterious unmarked powder is, but I'll sure they'll be understanding...)
For my next trick, I mixed chocolate with space dust (or pop rocks, as they're known in the US). My theory was that the dust reacts with water, but as there's no water in chocolate, it would set until it was eaten. I was partially right; some of the rocks starting popping as I poured the bag into the melted chocolate, but enough of them stayed dormant to make the finished sweets rather interesting (the flavour of the rocks seems to get washed away in the process, but the popping still works wonderfully!). Just wait until I conquer tempering.
My repeat of the aero experiment from North Carolina failed miserably. I'm not quite sure why. At the moment, I'm thinking that I didn't shake the whipper enough (one recipe says to do it for a minute, whereas the iSI instructions say only 3-4 times). That and maybe plain chocolate works better, so I'll try it again next weekend!
The final experiment for this weekend was Salmiakki Koskenkorva. It's the drink that I had on New Year's Eve at Christa's (remember?), a mixture of Finnish liquorice and vodka. You can see why it appeals to me.
The most difficult part was obtaining the sweets (I eventually tracked them down via eBay). After that, it was simply a matter of pouring the broken liquorice into a bottle of vodka, giving it a vigourous shake, and leaving it all to dissolve. Hurrah!
Next week: the next attempt at aero chocolate, and SPHERES!
Replace the cast of Grange Hill will finger puppets!
We didn't want to move too far from the programme's intentions and will still cover things like teenage pregnancy and losing your virginity, but these will have to be told through the eyes of younger characters and usually within a comic framework."
You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll kick the baby all across the gym with hilarious results!
I have enough bile to vent on this subject for hours, but it'll undercut the Christmas cheer, so I'll seethe quietly in the corner...
For Advent, I've switched on the job queue feature of Movable Type 4 so I can schedule entries. One rather unpleasant side-effect (which I don't think is present in WordPress) is that the blog checks for new events every ten minutes, so if you post a comment, don't be surprised if it doesn't show up right away.
I have MovableType 4 installed. Current damage seems to be limited to the comment template. which I'll try to have a look at during the weekend.
I was also promising a new design, but I'm concerned that my Futura-heavy idea is a little behind the times these days. Back to the drawing board...
Also, I seem to be having a few troubles with Dreamhost and Gmail. I can't log into Gmail at all right now, and Dreamhost is about 24 hours behind on forwarding mail to my account. So if I'm a little tardy in replying, I swear it's not my fault…
Update: Gmail seems to be back, so if you want to mail there, I'll get the message a lot quicker!
I will, at some point (possibly Friday, maybe Saturday) install Movable Type 4 so commenting can come back. The site may look hideous for a week or two, but you will be able to comment on the Top 20-or-so rundown of the year! I bet you're excited!
Roll on Torchwood!
SELECT * FROM BIG_DATABASE
vs.
SELECT CHILD_NAME, NI FROM BIG_DATABASE
Does EDS really charge that much? Really?
So far, three stars in:
- I have fed a creature so much he turned into a planet
- I went into the centre of another planet to deactivate its star core
- Running around a planet where gravity changes from one zone to another
- I have just become BEE MARIO
You can almost see the hearts popping around my head...
25m records down and they've pretty much destroyed the ID Card plan. I am impressed. Take that, No2ID! (Though I did pay you £10 yesterday...)
Gilmore Girls: The only TV series where teenagers slow dance to a Billy Bragg song…
UPDATE: Oh, yes, and Black Box Recorder's Child Psychologist making an appearance.
(there's a case to be made, if one had the time and inclination, that GG probably has the most British indie/punk soundtrack of any show since, well, The Young Ones?)
Secondly: Where has Nutella been all my life? I SHOULD HAVE BEEN TOLD.
Reasons why Tangled Up hasn't leaked yet, despite it coming out on Friday in Ireland:
- Who knew that OiNK really was that important?
- Pirate groups still annoyed about the lame cover.
- Rachel Stevens has hijacked the shipment from the distributors and won't let them go until her and Lily Allen are allowed to compete in a fight to the death to decide who will be the next Doctor Who assistant.
- Xenomania has incrimating photographs on every journalist in the nation. I'm hearing something about Alexis Petridis, a bottle of vimto and a gerbil...
Moments of self-realisation: Waiting for the 1808 train to London at Bicester North, en route to see The National at Shepherd's Bush Empire.
My mind's not right
My mind's not right
Abel, come on, give me the keys, man
Everything has all gone down wrong
Abel, come on, give me the keys, man
Everything has all gone down wrong
BBC One is showing a shortened version of Helvetica tonight. Worth the license fee all by itself (perhaps). And for those of you wondering just how a documentary about a font could give way to such a warning…you haven't met Erik Spiekermann yet...
Up the WGA! I'm actually quite impressed; there hasn't been a television strike on the same level in this country since the ITV strike of 1979, and I was all of two months old back then. Again, I was young (nine) during the last WGA strike in 1988, but I have this feeling that UK networks weren't quite so exposed as they are currently. Though if it causes Sky One to have troubles after spending so much money to poach Prison Break, I will enjoy a hearty laugh.
Hurrah for Jon Stewart, as ever.
(Also, I love the idea of John Oliver as union rabble-rouser. I want Scargill-inspired shorts when you come back!)
And all this for eight cents…
It says that it includes green tea. Which means that the bright spark that came up with Coke Blãk must still be with the company. They've obviously got good blackmail material on the CEO.
Diet Coke Plus (antioxidant) is a mixture of normal Diet Coke, green tea, and 175% of your recommended daily amount of Vitamin C (if you manage to finish an entire bottle). It's healthy! Much better than pesky orange juice!
I know what you're wondering - how does it taste? Hrm. Bizarrely, it seems to taste like carbonated flat cola, if such a thing could exist. That might be the tea taking the edge of the usual flavour, I guess. On the bright side, it didn't make me want to go down to Atlanta with a shotgun like the Coke Blãk experience…
But there's still enough of an unpleasant aftertaste to make finishing a full bottle a chore. But I managed two-thirds! That has to count for something! At least I've had a lot of vitamin C!
NBC U wanted to explore higher pricing for hit shows such as "Heroes" by raising the price from Apple's standard $1.99 to $2.99 on an experimental basis. "We wanted to take one show, it didn't matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99," he said. "We made that offer for months and they said no."
Apple wouldn't let us fleece the customers! Waaaah! Waaaah!
In lieu of more flexibility on pricing, NBC U sought a cut of Apple's hardware sales."Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content, and made a lot of money," Zucker said. "They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing."
And when we're done, JVC, Panasonic, LG, we're coming for you! We've heard about these 'VCR' machines! We want our share!
Zucker took on a wide range of questions from Auletta and the audience, including whether NBC U would be spun off from GE and what he thinks of the newly launched Fox Business Network.
Hi, I'm Jeff Zucker. I took NBC from ruling all in its path to turning into a laughing stock! And I can still screw up the Leno/O'Brien deal! Just watch me!
Mighty Morphing Power Rangers in the Whoverse.
The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis, or what happens when comic geeks watch too much TV.
You know, I'm a black turtle-necker sweater away from being an Apple fanatic, and yes, the news today that MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard) is coming out in a few weeks is exciting, but I'm starting to think that it's going to be a bit of a disappointment.
Apple are going out of their way to emphasise the 300 (insert Sparta joke here. Or perhaps not) new features of the operating system, but, eh, most of them aren't all that interesting. Woo! Mail can now use hideous stationary! iCal probably doesn't completely suck! 'Descriptive Error Messages' in AppleScript!
Even some of the new features that I was looking forward to, like Time Machine, now seem a bit limited. Oh sure, I have a large external disk sitting around that I can convert to HFS+ and render it unusable to all other computer systems (except for Linux, of course, but even there, HFS+ support wasn't perfect last time I checked). Also, given that ZFS is looming on the horizon, surely this is going to be a bit of a problem?
Still, it's not all bad. Spaces looks rather useful, and Xcode continues to impress (Ruby and Python are now first-class citizens in Cocoa, so I might have a little dabble!). But it's more of a gradual advance rather than a revolution.
Maybe they've fixed the Finder, though…
# 42 SEX PISTOLS GOD SAVE THE QUEEN
I'm sure EMI are pleased that the NME talked them into releasing the single…
But this isn't quite 1995 again. York, the promoter, doesn't see a demand for bands with "no artistic merit"; he mentions Echobelly and Sleeper.
Still no girls allowed, I see. Yay for misogyny!
There is so much joy in these two images. I can't wait....
BUY ME! BUY ME! BUY ME!
As Simon rightfully points out, the best part of Radiohead's release strategy is that it's brought back a touch of mystique. Normally, we're assaulted by a barrage of interviews, selective tracks previewed on Pitchfork, followed by a leak of the album's contents, anywhere from a month to six months away from a physical CD release.
"Our new album is out in ten days."
Today, then, was the great leveller; the media experiencing for the first time as we did, getting our emails at six in the morning and downloading the 160k MP3 tracks from their webserver. And perhaps it shows once again how far the NME are behind the curve, fighting a pointless battle to try and relive 1977:
He added: It wasn't even the music necessarily, it was the thought that went into the Sex Pistols that was important. But buying the single will at least be the first step to realising that for anyone who doesn't know the band's history or legacy.
Is that really what they've come to? I understand that every ex-NME reader has to go through a process of dismissing the paper after they stop buying it (though I do recognise that the period that I bought it was far from a golden age), but really? We have to buy the record to understand their legacy? How punk.
Anyway, In Rainbows. It's still settling in, I have to say. It's sparse where Hail To The Thief is dense, warm where Kid A is cold. Zigs where it should zags. But still Radiohead. Even if they have added some laughter (sampled, obviously).
A full review, however, seems pointless. Go over to the site and download it for yourself.
Paul Morley talks about In Rainbows. By which, I mean, that Paul Morley talks about In Rainbows.. Meaning, Paul Morley talks about In Rainbows.
…of a postal strike is that on Wednesday, I may drown in an avalanche of Amazon-related parcels. Still, up the workers and all that ;).
Stupid wisdom teeth. Ow.
That is all.
Except that I've just created the most wonderful Mary Sue for a story…