Fingers crossed for Keith Alexander, wishing him a speedy recovery.
The Flaming Lips grin
If I seem unusually serene today, it’s because I’m wearing the customary post-Flaming-Lips-gig grin.
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New music – ‘Knitting with Spoons’
Oh, I forgot to mention… I made new music.
Like most of my output in the past year (I promise to exercise some self-motivation soon) it’s the result of a task in the Recording Collective. The idea was that each musical part or instrument could only play one note at a time, thus suggesting a layered approach.
serialism with a fairly obvious King Crimson (early 80s period) influence thrown in as well.
I started off with the insistent 16-note pattern you hear first… the main guitar panned to the left plays that throughout. The main guitar to the right does the same, but with one slight difference… its pattern is in 17/16 time and has one extra note tagged onto the end. Playing their parts consistently, the two guitars align ever 16 passes of the four-bar phrase, meaning that you get a whole load of unexpected counterpoints in between. The other guitar and bass parts are all playing sections of the tone row, in different registers and speeds.
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The phony war against spam
As is my weekly habit, I browsed the Online section of the Guardian yesterday…
The increasing regularity of spam-related articles suggests that the feature writers, if not the government, are starting to realise what a huuuuuge problem it has become. The latest article tells of the legislation for an “opt in” system for email marketing. So far so good. But get this…
“The exception to this is in cases where a commercial relationship already exists… it will be OK to send email updates on similar products without permission.”
So the EU directive enacted by the new legislation sounds somewhat limp and half-hearted, doesn’t it? If you buy something from a company and give them an email address (for confirmations, delivery reports or whatever) they’ll still be entitled to send you marketing email. Great. And will that be limited to the *actual brand name* (bad enough, if you ask me) or could you conceivably buy something from Woolworths and end up receiving “helpful” product updates from B&Q, Superdrug and whatever else the Kingfisher Group own?
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Filler
Sorry… no excuses for the lack of content over the past seven days. Except that I can’t actually think of anything worth writing. The news seems to be either gruesomely unsurprising, stultifyingly boring or just “who cares?”
So, by way of space-filler, I am…
- Listening to a selection of tracks by Esquivel
- Reading (although not at this precise moment) ‘Cryptonomicon’ by Neal Stephenson
- Drinking coffee (Cafe Direct instant, because I forgot to buy beans yesterday)
- Suffering from a slight cold
- Working on editing a few bits of text for the next issue of Guitarist
- Waiting for the toaster to cook my toast
- Dreading the job of customising and tweaking Windows XP on the laptop, having had to reinstall it to save it from its own crapness
- Dreading equally the thought of having to get it to talk wirelessly to the Mac again
- Congratulating Apple for Panther
- Eating peanut butter on toast (yeah, the toaster’s done now)
- Looking forward to seeing The Flaming Lips next Monday. Must be the fifth or sixth time, but they’re always a delight to see
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I hate Hotmail
I hate Hotmail. I despise it. Normally, with something so insignificant (at least in relation to my everyday life) I’d just avoid it. But I have to use Hotmail. Hotmail, and webmail in general, is how email should not work. Ideally, I’d rather use my POP3 mailbox all the time, as that is, to me, how email *should* work. I don’t have to wait every time I want to open a new message or return to my inbox; I just press the button marked “HELL YEAH!” and all the kind words and pictures from my many friends all over the world come flooding direct into my computer. Yes, you’re experiencing hyperbole. It’ll pass.
The trouble is, I feel quite protective towards my POP3 account. There’s enough drivel pouring into it from imbeciles around the world (well, okay… Boca Raton, Florida) as it is, although Apple’s Mail deals with that pretty well. I’m just not prepared to open up that mailbox to the risk of more spam by giving out my “proper” email address online. For that purpose, I use Hotmail. And because, once in a while, I get legitimate responses, I have to check my Hotmail account.
Spam is clearly the main obstacle to smooth and efficient email use, but I can’t see that MSN/Hotmail are doing anything about it. There’s junk filtering in Hotmail, but it’s ineffectual, and the spam blocking system is only rudimentary. A cursory glance through my junk folder on any given day reveals six or seven fake “return to sender” messages from various (bogus) addresses, all 144k in size… doubtless a virus of some sort, and all instantly deleted by me, but why are they even getting to my mailboxes? These emails follow a totally obvious pattern. Hell, could it be a conspiracy by MSN? Fill your mailbox with junk so you’ll buy their extra storage space?
I know Hotmail isn’t the only web-based option. Believe me, I’ve tried several, but I have to grudgingly admit that Hotmail works, insofar as these things can be said to “work”. The alternatives are either broken or involve paying for anything more than the most fundamental features. So Hotmail it is. But with great reluctance.
Posted in Drivel, Technology
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Where’s Corporal Whitcomb?
Colonel Cathcart sat down at his desk with a determined air and cleared a large neat space in his blotter. When he had finished, he tapped his finger inside it. “Starting tomorrow,” he said, “I want you and Corporal Whitcomb to write a letter of condolence for me to the next of kin of every man in the group who’s killed, wounded or taken prisoner. I want those letters to be sincere letters. I want them filled up with lots of personal details so there’ll be no doubt I mean every word you say. Is that clear?”
The chaplain stepped forward impulsively to remonstrate. “But, sir, that’s impossible!” he blurted out. “We don’t even know all the men that well.”
“What difference does that make?” Colonel Cathcart demanded, and then smiled amicably. “Corporal Whitcomb brought me this basic form letter that takes care of just about every situation. Listen: ‘Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action.’ And so on.”
Worryingly, life seems to be imitating art in the US military.
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“His name is Rio,” etc
They sail today for Istanbul
While one of them must stay at home
He failed to do things by the book
But does the punishment match the crime?
Well, that’s my contribution to National Poetry Day, anyway. The whole Rio Ferdinand affair is becoming more complicated by the hour, and I’m not entirely sure I know what to think.
It’s clear that Ferdinand was initially in the wrong. By missing his drug test, he risked (albeit in a small way) jeopardising the necessary atmosphere of mutual trust that a rigorous testing system can maintain around modern sports. And at that point, preventing him from joining the squad was the FA’s only option. Keeping quiet would have been too risky… imagine if Ferdinand had subsequently been found guilty of drug offences, having played in an England victory against Turkey.
However, it seems that, on realising his error, Ferdinand offered to take the test later that day and indeed did take (and pass) a test the next day. Given this, the FA’s hasty response seems particularly heavy-handed. Withdrawal would have been justifiable in the light of a positive drug test, but in terms of the drug laws, no harm had been done. Ferdinand was still guilty of a minor behavioural offence, for which a fine would surely have been appropriate punishment.
The whole strike threat, I think, was something of a red herring. I doubt that the members of the Players’ Committee (such as David Beckham and Gary Neville) would ever seriously have carried out their threats; instead, the suggestion of a boycott seems to have increased the feeling of camaraderie within the squad. Nonetheless, the press have taken the very question of a strike as the signal for a ludicrous display of petulance. To see the high wages of top players being criticised by the tabloid media, who played a large part in creating the big business side of modern football, is particularly pathetic.
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Go private, young man!
Why am I getting this strange sense of déjà vu? Could it be that the new policies on health revealed at the Tory party conference are making me feel like we’re right back in the dark days again? It’s like 1997 never happened; like we never had that sought-after Labour government… oh, but of course, we never did, really, did we? What’s doubly worrying about this “let them eat cake” style of health policy is that it could as easily come from John Reid as from Liam Fox.
It’s one of those nasty reminders of how the Tories view us collectively, looking out of the windows of Smith Square and seeing a nation full of smiling middle-class people, waiting for their chance to spend their earnings on a better class of healthcare. Here are some figures, rounded up or down to the nearest hundred pounds sterling…
Repair of hernia – 1200-2600
Hysterectomy – 5000-6000
Hip replacement – 6000-13000
With 60% of those fees paid by the government under the Tories’ proposal, you’re left with average costs to the patient of 760, 2200 and 3800. Fine for those of us on decent incomes, or in double-income households, but still (apart from maybe the hernia operation) way beyond the means of pensioners, social security claimants and low-income households in general. It’s so smugly naive, it’s scary.
Also notable is the presumptuous tone of Liam Fox… “It is not the government’s money, it is taxpayers’ money”. He’d do well to remember that, and consider whether the taxpayers might just have paid that money on the understanding that it was for a comprehensive public healthcare system.
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Band list meme
“Your meme, should you choose to accept it, is to rank the following bands in order, from couldn’t live without to couldn’t care less. To add value to this process, you must also add one band to the list, and remove one band from the list, before passing the meme on (including these instructions).”
Here’s my list…
Sonic Youth (my addition)
Radiohead
Pink Floyd
Nirvana
Harem Scarem
The Red Hot Chilli Peppers
REM
Fleetwood Mac
The Sex Pistols
Queen
I removed the Beatles. They’re one of the most important and influential bands in the history of rock music, I own all their albums and like them very much, but… bringing up the Beatles always seems to render a discussion pointless, a kind of musical Godwin’s Law. I added Sonic Youth, partly because they came quickly to mind and partly because the list lacked any truly *alternative* bands, so to speak. I’m fairly indifferent to most of the bands listed, so the order is somewhat arbitrary.
There’s another version by Mark…
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