Planet Afterlife

Last Friday my job title changed. Twice! From "associate client-side developer" to just "client-side developer" and then to "front-end developer". Either way my lack of noobness has been officially recognised, which is nice. On the other hand my parents, having no knowledge of the industry, just think "front-end developer" sounds a bit rude. They might have a point.

by Dan Govan at July 09, 2007 08:40 AM

When your business model involves a young lady wearing mostly pink driving around the country telling kids how cool your product is, you know: the bubble is ON.

Not that I'm complaining, mind.

by Seldo at July 07, 2007 05:07 AM

/* */

1981:

I arrived in the world 2 weeks late, in the middle of September. By the miracle of caesarean technology, I did not kill my mother in the process. She said when she woke up I was already awake and looking at her, smugly. Thus the tone was set for the rest of my life.

1982 (zero):

Since I was the third baby, my parents had got bored of taking pictures. There's not a lot of record of this period.

1983 (one):

Learned to walk, I guess. My parents do not remember my first words. Third baby.

1984 (two):

Learned to swim. I remember having inflatable armbands, and not needing them.

1985 (three):

A blue cookie monster birthday cake would have been the best cake ever had the icing not been made of coconut shavings, which I hated. My dear aunt who made it for me wasn't to know.

1986 (four):

A red tricycle featured heavily in my existence. It was the "fastest bike in the world".

1987 (five):

I fell in love with a girl. She left at the end of the school year, and I still wonder what happened to her. She sent me a few postcards. Zosia, do you remember me?

1988 (six):

I went from reading books to devouring them. Matilda, by Roald Dahl, was a particular favourite. She was smarter than everybody else and she had super powers. I totally wished myself there.

1989 (seven):

I started building fake computers by getting boxes and drawing patterns of boxes and screens on them. I spent hours and hours trying out new designs for the interface. Seriously. Culminated in inventing a wristwatch computer, which consisted of the plastic cover from a pack of AA batteries with a small paper interface inserted inside it.

1990 (eight):

Trinidad had an attempted coup by a fundamentalist Islamic group. It failed almost immediately, but plunged the nation into chaos. I remember the smoke from the burning capital; the looters walking calmly down the road with whole beds balanced on their heads; a lady dropped to her knees and begging for her life as a policeman pointed a gun at her.

1991 (nine):

Somebody called me "gay" for the first time. I had no idea what the word meant, but it sounded rude. I went to computer camp, and won a scholarship to come back the next year.

1992 (ten):

I stopped going to the playground and started staying in at lunchtimes to read books. I got my first computer for my 11th birthday.

1993 (eleven):

I used my computer to write and very crudely illustrate stories. I went to sailing camp. I was dreadful, but I won the prize for "most intellectual". The long nightmare that was secondary school began.

1994 (twelve):

My fundamental sense of honesty forced me to answer "non" in French class when asked "aimes-tu des filles?" I learned to suppress my fundamental sense of honesty.

1995 (thirteen):

I skipped a grade at school. Suddenly, I was even smaller and less popular than before. The beatings began. This was tempered by meeting and forming friendships with the very small handful of friends I was to have at that school, who shaped my life, and who are still my friends today.

1996 (fourteen):

The Internet arrived in January. Everything, absolutely everything, changed. It was like somebody took a bag off my head and I saw where I was -- namely, very far away from everything interesting. I looked at Yahoo.com and thought "Damn, I'd like to work for these guys, but they've already built their site, why would they need another HTML guy?" I searched Infoseek for "gay" and discovered what it really meant. "Seldo" the Internet personality was born to keep a barrier of anonymity between the gay teenager and me.

1997 (fifteen):

The nadir of my life. Crying in the shower, I admitted to myself that I was gay. I repulsed myself. I poured my sob stories out over mailing lists on the Internet to keep me sane, and cried myself to sleep more times than I can count. I planned to commit suicide on my 16th birthday -- I had a detailed plan and a note. On the day, I got distracted. Then I had my first kiss, with a boy who wasn't ready to admit he kissed boys, which gave me something else to worry about.

1998 (sixteen):

I discovered that I liked dancing, and that people liked me when I was dancing. My handful of friends ballooned into a posse of twenty-five. Through one of that crowd, I also discovered sex. School continued to be an ongoing nightmare, but evenings and weekends were much improved.

1999 (seventeen):

The long nightmare was finally over. I spent nine months earning pocket change doing personal Internet literacy training for adults and building websites for various clueless companies. I watched Columbine unfold and was bemused at people asking "how could they do it?". Had these people never been to high school? The wonder is that everybody doesn't do it. At the end of the year I left for London.

2000 (eighteen):

BOOM! Eighteen years old and no experience, but you say you know PHP and HTML? No problemo! Sign on the dotted line! Funded by the irrational exuberance of crazed VCs and a white-hot job market I took cabs everywhere and went clubbing 'til 4am twice a week. I also went on my first-ever "date". I wrote an email home to friends: "Know this: now, if at no other time in my life, I am truly happy". As the boom turned to bust, I entered university.

2001 (nineteen):

At university, I became Seldo full-time. I had my first serious relationship. I discovered that I was not nearly as clever as I thought I was. I went dancing three or four times a week. I got a lot better at it. I also met two people who were to become central to my life for the next half a decade. Al-Qaeda struck the towers a few days before my birthday, and changed the world forever.

2002 (twenty):

I came to the sad realization that the people who ran the world were no smarter than most of the people around me. Meanwhile, my antics had got people calling me "boy-band boy". I pretended to be displeased. In a flash of insight, I scribbled out twenty pages of notes and diagrams that described a new way of the web could work, but with no idea how to implement it. A couple years later, people implemented something that looked a lot like it and called it "Ajax".

2003 (twenty-one):

I graduated from Warwick, and with the job market still soft after the bust, I grabbed the first half-decent thing I could find, which was a dreadful mistake. I also met M, who became my constant companion for years afterwards. We fell in love with London together, and my parents got false hope from me spending so much time with a girl.

2004 (twenty-two):

After a year of hating my job, my boss from back in the boom came and rescued me with a lead to a much better job in an expanding, if evil, industry. My days became filled with the tinny sounds of ringtones and an endless supply of tea but my nights were filled with the sound of violent domestic arguments between a flatmate and his girlfriend, so it was time to go.

2005 (twenty-three):

The year of good music and guest list entry. Two DJs/writers for housemates was a lot of fun; I was not nearly cool enough to live with them. The bombs in July freaked me the hell out for months afterwards, and then Katrina drove me to tears of frustrated rage. A call out of the blue asked if I wanted to work for Yahoo!.

2006 (twenty-four):

A rollercoaster year. My longest and best relationship, followed by the breakup. Job security and house-hunting, suddenly whisked out from under my feet and replaced with an even better job, but half the world away. A goodbye to London and a whole culture.

2007 (twenty-five):

The adventure continues.

by Seldo at July 06, 2007 08:07 AM

What makes a Muslim Radical? A Gallup world poll has some interesting answers. As usual the preconceptions are wrong.

by Dan Govan at July 05, 2007 01:37 PM

David Saw
Random acoustic dude we saw on our wanderings. Just him and a dude on a double bass. Really good stuff but only caught a couple of his songs. ****

Andy Parsons
We were only there because we had heard that Bill Bailey was to do a set at that tent, but I think we must have seen almost all of Andy's set, which was lucky coz it was bloody brilliant. Definitely my kind of humour, was aching from laughing so much. *****

Bill Bailey
Woot woot Bill Bailey! The material was old, audience participation was throwing him, and there was a constant ruckas from the edge of the tent as wardens kept having to remove people sneaking in as the tent was at capacity. It was still BILL BAILEY though!! #I got ham, but I'm not a hamster!# Sweet. ****

Shirley Bassey
Hahahahahaha! It's Shirley Bassey! Doing air guitar!! Bwahahahahaah! So she was brilliant and the crowd loved it. From opening with her cover of Pink's Get The Party Started to Gold Finger to Big Spender (TWICE). Hitting all the notes and winding around like a snake. Not bad for a septuagenarian! *****

Manic Street Preachers
Can't dis' the Manics, right? There was no way I was not going to go see them. But after a few songs it got uncomfortable. There seemed to be precious little chemistry between the band and the crowd; indifference reigned. And then of course you've got the fact that all their good songs are over a decade old! It was great to see Australia live, and it seems they played La Tristesse Durera after we left which I'm disappointed I didn't see; BUT OMG MOVE ON! So we did. I had planned to see the whole thing, but it was getting depressing and the go team were on at the other stage... **

The Go! Team
...Who were great! My pick of the festival. Their music is so upbeat and positive anyway, and it was really nice to see that they were even more so live, getting the crowd dancing and in the mud. As I've said I like it when musicians swap instruments, and there was plenty of that, it seemed like some of them were doing a circuit of the drum kits, guitars, and keyboard. But they took it to the next level; swapping mid-tune. When one of them suddenly dropped his guitar, pegged it across the stage, picked up a drum stick and did a flying jump to hit a symbol, before seating himself and taking up the second drum kit... Well that was pretty sweet. If you don't know what I'm on about or if you're just curious, here's the last song of their set; Ladyflash, on youtube. *****

The View
Admittedly we didn't really know who they were before we started watching them, but after a couple of songs we concluded that they were crap and we moved on. *

Radio Luxembourg
While everyone else was at the final headliners we went wandering through the dark and deserted mud fields and stumbled across a random band playing at a random stage being watched by about a dozen people, and were totally glad we did. These welsh kids were just great; kind of a cross between the Fratellies and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, which lots of random bouncing in welsh.*****

Gruff Rhys
(He's the lead singer from Super Furry Animals, if anyone's wondering.) The first set we went to on Thursday was a random welsh dude with a repeater, and so it was nice that we ended the festival on a similar note. He did go on a bit with a couple of songs but this might have been exsaserbated by his set being cut short by the 12:30 curfew. Damn locals! Despite it being sooooo wet by that point I really enjoyed it, I guess the free 3-d specs handed out at the beginning must have helped. ****

by Dan Govan at July 05, 2007 09:05 AM

As much I disagree with doing anything to celebrate Diana’s life, the bits of Concert For Diana that I saw were hilarious - drunk princes dancing, P Diddy being very unBritish, Kanye’s amazing medley and Ricky Gervais finally being exposed as not actually very funny. Anyway, I was a bit bored so sent in a bbc complaint email about Gervais because reading the complaints log and the mentalness of the complaints always used to amuse me when I was at the beeb.

But funnier than me hamming it up as a mental is the somewhat illiterate reply. Ricki? Ho ho.

Thank you for your e-mail regarding ‘Concert for Diana’.

I understand that you felt that Ricki Gervais could have had some material prepared for his time on stage.

However this was a live event and whilst Ricki Gervais was to introduce Elton John a technical fault occurred, therefore he had to hold the stage until it was fixed.

Ricki Gervais then sang a song and done the famous dance from his hit series ‘The Office’. A lot of people found this very entertaining, and Ricki did deal with the situation as best he could.

I do hope that you can appreciate that it was a live event and matters such as this can occur with out any notice.

I also note that you feel that Will Young or Girls Aloud could have filled this space, but as mentioned before, it was a live event and the team were unaware that a technical fault was to occur.

I do hope apart from this that you enjoyed the programme.

Your comments have been fully registered on our daily audience log. This internal document will be made available to the ‘Concert for Diana’ production team and Senior BBC Management.

by trixie at July 04, 2007 10:43 AM

CSS
Not actually that good, shockingly! They were really trying, bless 'em; throwing bubble-makers into the crowd and generally trying their hardest to engage. They'd probably be much better in a smaller venue where that kind of infectious energy would be more appropriate and likely to take root in the audience. As it was their tunes were all over the place. Pity.**

Calvin Harris
I wanted to see this chancer with my own eyes. We arrived just as they were starting with that 80s song, which was excellent. We stayed for the one after out of politeness, but as we only really came to do gurning club-singer impressions of that one song: mission accomplished in record time, and we moved on through the mud lakes.***

Pirates of the Caribbean 2
Our explorations took us to the cinema tent! Where we watched some buckling of swash and had a rare sit-down. For 15 minutes or so anyway. Yay!

Guillemots
Sound was bad and we'd seen them before anyways, in a much smaller venue with much less rain. And they insisted on playing that "She's evil" song which everyone hated. ***

Babyshambles
After catching the start of their set we listened to the rest of it from our tent, where we went for a quick nap. I was just thinking that the libertine were so much better, when they finished on a libertines song. Hah! ***

Maximo Park
Passed by Maximo Park just as they were playing Our Velocity, so yet another uber-efficient set watching as that was pretty much the only song I wanted to see. Yay! ****

Patrick Wolf
Genius. Boy has a lot of energy, climbing on the scaffolds and jumping around the place. (Yeah the music was great too.) Apart from one act we saw on the Sunday this was far and away my favorite set of the festival. Totally blew us away. *****

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.
Suffered a lot from being just after Patrick, probably would have been pretty good otherwise, but in (unfair) comparison it was a little dull. ***

Iggy and the Stooges
We saw Iggy Pop hump a speaker stack! Didn't really stop to listen though.

Rodrigo y Gabriella.Took aaaages to come on due to "technical difficulties", and then were pretty underwhelming. Nice music and impressive musicianship, but hardly stadium stuff IMO. Maybe it would have been better if they weren't so late, or if it hadn't been so muddy/wet at the time, or if they had engaged the crowd at all. At the end of the day there's only so many things you can do with a couple of flamenco guitars, though respect to them for doing all of those and then some more. We totally should have gone to see The Killers, prosaic though that decision would have been. Anyways we soon cut our losses and took advantage of a friend's backstage passes to go check out flushable toilets and large amounts of beer. *

by Dan Govan at July 04, 2007 09:55 AM

Ramesh Kallidai, secretary general of the Hindu Forum of Britain, has a piece on the Guardian’s Comment is Free today, called “On the horns of a dilemma” (So. Many. Opportunities. For. Cow. Puns. Can’t. Resist.) Of course it’s all about Shambo, the Welsh bull cow which may or may not have TB, and the Hindu monks who don’t want him put down.

Kallidai makes out as if there is a colossal moral dilemma here, even comparing it to an episode in the Bhagavad-gita in which “Arjuna, the warrior king, felt torn between two courses of action, both of which felt right. Should he fight an invading army and perform his duty to save his country? Or should he renounce his claim over his kingdom, retire to the forest, and thereby save thousands of soldiers, including members of his own family from certain death?”

Is that really a fair comparison to the question of whether or not to put down one cow. I went to a BBQ at the weekend, and ate beef burgers. The moral significance of this would have to blow Ramesh Kallidai away!

Kallidai reports that “The monks at the temple have made it clear that they do not want to compromise on their core principle of sanctity of life”. But later he states that “At the core of the issue is the place accorded to the cow and the bull in the Hindu tradition.” It’s not really about the “sanctity of life” for these monks at all. It’s about the delusional unerring sanctity afforded to a specific species of bovine mammal.

If it was just about the “sanctity of life” in general then the Hindu protesters would doubtless be able to see that sacrificing one cow for the sake of many is a fair, utilitarian trade-off designed to maximize the chances of other sacred lives (and farmers’ livelihoods) not being destroyed by an epidemic. It’s only their fetishization of the cow which blinds them to this.

As the protesters struggle to defend their bias in favour of cows, the argument takes on a medical form.

Then the tuberculin skin test does not identify whether an animal is infected with TB - it only identifies possible exposure to the bTB bacteria. Presently, Shambo is in perfect health and shows no sign of the disease. There is a clear medical consideration that reaction to the skin test may be caused by many other factors such as a cross-reaction to other environmental micro-bacteria. A key criticism of any decision would be the subjectivity, and hence unreliability, of the test. Producers point out that animals have tested positive and subsequently slaughtered but on post-mortem were found to be free of the disease.

The Skanda Vale Community has asked for other tests to be undertaken, as well as offered to fund other private treatment should Shambo ever contract the disease. In the meantime, the temple obtained expert veterinary advice and drew up a proposal to isolate Shambo, and has taken all the requested bio-security measures to minimise any risk to animal and human life.

All well and good, one might argue. There really is an actual, scientific reason why Shambo might not be carrying the cow plague, and there are actual real medical steps which can be taken to preserve his divine life.

But this only reinforces the suspicion that the cowiness of this cow is central to the Hindus’ protests, as opposed to the “sanctity” of life in general.

Because if one was primarily interested in the sanctity of all life, one could spend all that money — the funds that it takes to run multiple tests, biomedically isolate a cow, and potentially undertake (relatively) expensive treatment — on a cause more likely to preserve sacred life. For example, one could publicize the shortage of organ donors for dying little girls, or spend the money on medicine for people needlessly, painfully dying of AIDs in Africa, or heck, you could even spend it on humans suffering from TB, rather than on cows suffering from TB.

Whether he’s got the disease or not, the best thing you can do to preserve the “sanctity” of life is to put him down, not to waste potentially life-saving funds on a what is, after all, a cow.

Look at the cow again (well, bull, but you get the idea). Look at the picture carefully. What do you notice?

Have you spotted it…?

Shambo — a named cow — is dressed up in a wreath, and is wearing some makeup on his forehead.

Compare to:

I know some people will rankle at my total lack of “respect” for this religious belief… the belief that cows are magic. After all, you might say, Kallidai’s article is respectful and attempts to be balanced in tone.

But, seriously…? Do I have to “respect” it?

Shambo is a dressed up cow! And if there is one thing worse than deifying a cow, it is anthropomorphizing a cow.

Richard Dawkins got in all manner of trouble for using the word “delusion” to describe superstitious, supernaturalistic religious beliefs. Perhaps by mocking the supposed divinity of cows I’m doing the same thing. But this is a serious issue! In fact it is exactly as serious as the monks think it is. But for the wrong reasons. They think it is a serious issue because the powers that be might execute their divine pet cow. I think it is a serious issue because of all the money and medical time that could be thrown away to preserve a single cow just because a cult maintains the delusional proposition that a particular barnyard animal is a magical transcendent being.

Calling this a “delusion” is the only kind thing to say. The alternative to having a mild form of psychotic misclassification disorder is… what? Stupidity? Ignorance? Whatever disease the people who dress up their dogs as a medieval knight have?

by Bob at July 03, 2007 12:40 PM

People keep asking about the keyboard, so here's my thoughts.

Bottom line (conveniently at the top): it’s really very good. I’ve been using all weekend and I am much faster with it than I ever was with T9, and I was really good at T9. It’s deceptive, because the interface encourages you to type a lot more, so it feels like it’s the same speed, but you’re actually typing a lot more in the same time. I have entered flickr comments and blog edits, which are unbelievably painful on any other device.

There’s no tactile feedback when you hit a key; it will click if you like but I find that distracting so it’s usually off.

In the browser, when you switch to landscape mode (i.e. put the phone on its side), the keyboard shifts too. This makes it go from a little uncomfortable to totally excellent -- the extra 3cm makes the difference. Unfortunately this great keyboard is not available in other apps; I want it in mail.

The keyboard only has letters most of the time - to get numbers or punctuation, you hit a key, and to get symbols and brackets another key after that. Switching to separate keysets for punctuation is a bit of a pain, but is offset by two features: (1) you don’t need to do it for words like "don’t" and "won’t": just type "wont" and it autocorrects (if you type "as is my wont" a lot you can decline autocorrection, but correcting is the default action). (2) for entering URLs and email addresses the keyboard remaps a bit, so dots, slashes and @s are readily available in those contexts.

In general, the web is usable enough that I occasionally find myself using iPhone as just an extra tab; a third screen. Can you imagine doing that with another phone? I tried to use my old phone and accidentally tried to click the screen -- once you've found you can do it, you try to do it everywhere. I think beginners might even like it on an actual PC -- maybe a laptop. Look out for an Apple tablet PC with motion sensing and a huge multitouch interface.

by Seldo at July 02, 2007 07:07 AM

• All apps: landscape mode keyboarding. It's great in Safari; I want it in email at the very least
• All apps: Cut-and-paste (yes, I can see it's probably tricky)
• SMS: Send-to-many (this, on the other hand, is simple)
• SMS: Send again (no, seriously, why would you leave that out?)
• SMS: character count on the send screen (or some other way to auto-limit my SMS so they don't overflow on twitter)
• An iPhone-compatible calendar app for Windows (calling Yahoo! Calendar... you can do the contacts but not the calendar?)
• Weather: live icon update (you do it for calendar and SMS!)

That's it so far.

(I've hopped months -- see previous excited coverage).

Update: I sorted out the wi-fi. It turns out there's a difference between "password" and "HEX/ASCII password". I'm not certain what the difference between an ASCII and a non-ASCII password is when they're both numbers, but hey, whatever, it works now.

by Seldo at July 01, 2007 09:07 PM

Thursday:
Rod Thomas
One-man-band with few instruments and a repeater repeater repeater. This was only the second time I'd seen a repeater being used live, first being Imogen Heap (which I wrote about at the time and was all kinds of awesome) but even she had a band-on-a-leash for a bit of variety. Rod's got a great voice, a couple of excellent songs, a few meh ones, and probably needs a band-on-a-leash. ****

Lana
She was mental. We ignored her and got down to some serious cider drinking. *

Friday:
Modest Mouse
I like these guys a lot, but they're pretty laid back and the sameyness of their songs doesn't really bear close scrutiny, so I don't think playing to a stadium-like venue where the punters were getting pelted by some obscenely hard rain was really fair to them. Give us a drink, an armchair and some low lighting (indoors) and we'll see. We left to find shelter maybe half-way through the set. ***

!!!
(Pronounced "chk chk chk" BTW) They were going apeshit in a jazzy Primal Scream kind of way; I only barely recognised their songs. Fair enough if you're a big fan, but I've only been listening to them for a few weeks so we moved on pretty quickly. Also the drug-fuelled self-satisfaction of the people in the dance tent was just weird. **

Bloc Party
We'd been wanting to see these people for months so it was great that we finally got the chance . They didn't disappoint either, Kele was a great front-man with a good way with the crowd and a stunning voice, and most importantly he really looked like he was enjoying himself. The rest of the band were tight, though they hardly moved in comparison to Keke. All in all brilliant. *****

Rufus Wainwright
Rufus is the man! I think he carried this set off by sheer force or personality, he was beset by sound problems throughout, and the temptation to make jokes about cold remedies ruining his career proved too strong. (He has a really nasal voice.) I didn't hate his version of hallelujah, even though I'm all about the Jeff Buckley version. He ended on a stroke of genius though; dressing as Judy Garland and doing "Get Happy", while his band did the actions of her dancers from the film in a comedy manner. Predictably it's on YouTube so check it out. *****

Arcade Fire
I've never really clicked with Arcade Fire, they sound too similar to a bunch of other bands like the Decemberists or Broken Social Scene and I keep mistaking their songs for other people's. But they were stonking live, 11 of them (?) and their assorted equipment filling the big stage nicely. I like any band where people play various instruments throughout instead of just standing there strumming the same tired guitar; bring on the accordions! ****

Bjork
It was Bjork! ZOMG! AKA a really small pixie in a huge dress a long way away hugging people at length for no real reason... Was really surprised she did a lot of old favourites and it was a real treat to see them live, but I didn't know any of the new material. Voice was great, band was weird, electro-base GUI thing was sweet, her banter was odd though. As she is I guess. Very enjoyable, but it wasn't all that. ****

by Dan Govan at July 01, 2007 04:34 PM

Let's party like it's 1994

I'm going to be spending some time listening to this all-day old-skool and nu-skool extravaganza today. It features some of the most popular DJs from the new hardcore breaks underground scene that I've mentioned before, and is likelt to be more exciting than most Sunday afternoons, for sure.

If any like-minded individuals fancy stopping by and joining me on IRC or just the stream, please do!

(Click image for a bigger version)

July 01, 2007 01:14 PM

I am so fucking pleased with this device. It was worth every penny. It would be worth twice what I paid. It's awesome. It's god in the machine.

• It can't find my wifi network for more than 10 seconds, which is really irritating because it means I can't YouTube.
• Tabbed fucking web browsing in a phone? Are you shitting me? That's so awesome I practically came.
• The headphones suck! Why? Why do you consistently release sucky headphones, Apple? And my existing nice Bose headphones don't fit into your new curvy socket. Adapter-buying is tomorrow's activity, along with bugging the Genius Bar about why my phone can't find the freaking network.
• Landscape mode is wonderful
• Coverflow is very pretty but remains not so useful
• It's a much better phone than it is an iPod, and thankfully so. I already have an iPod; what I wanted was a kick-ass portable Internet device. And that's what it is.
• Calls? Of course I haven't made any. I have sent dozens of text messages.
• Unlimited data! Unlimited text messages! Oh hell yes!
• It's reassuringly heavy
• The picture of the phone on the cover of the box it comes in has a little indent where the Home button is. Surprise and delight me, baby.
• The blank row between the main 12 icons and the 4 function buttons is conspicuously empty. They clearly have plans for that.
• Pinching and squeezing to zoom in and out is extremely intuitive.
• It interferes with my speakers like no other phone has before. Is it broadcasting significantly more powerful a signal?
• Mapping is great.
• The photo-taking interface is generally great, which makes it once again puzzling that the picture quality is so mediocre. iCamera seems even more inevitable
• Except taking selfpics is extremely hard, because the take-photo button is a soft button, so you can't see how to press it when you're pointing the camera at yourself
• Video playback (from side-loaded videos) is awesome. Even the sound quality from the loudspeaker is good.
• It automatically grabs all my contacts from Yahoo! Calendar! Schweet! Free online syncing! (And a serious win for Y!Cal, go team!)
• God damn you, wireless! Connect!

More to come, I'm sure...

Update: Oh yeah, photos!

by Seldo at June 30, 2007 07:06 AM

If you don’t already know, Sarah Nixey is the former vocalist of utterly ace Black Box Recorder. She’s been making waves with a small solo career recently, if you’ve not heard her in simplest terms think Sophie Ellis Bextor with a Phd. It’s intelligent pop music when on the album, but live it’s a whole other experience as her band transform the music into hypnotic electro stompers.

Now I’m involved because Sarah is playing the Luminaire in Kilburn on Wednesday night, and I will be the gig DJ. I’m quite excited because this will be a gig where I don’t have to make the audience dance. I can play anything I want - and I think that may turn out to lie quite majorly around Scandanavian, obscure 80s or motown music. A fun combination I dare say. Also playing are two bands I know nothing about - the electronic Trademark and the special looking Mister Solo.

So my dears, I’m telling you all this because if you are in London then you should come along! Tickets are on sale for £6 or £7 on the door. Also I have some guestlist so message me for that!

For more about Sarah, the ever brilliant XO London has an interview with her.

by trixie at June 30, 2007 04:14 AM

Yesterday I went to the Spice Girls press conference at the Vue Cinema in the 02 in Greenwich. Not very handily located for the mainly W1 based press crew, the location was all based around some strange longitude/latitude thing the pr company had come up with. The conference was due to start at 12.30 but was delayed till slightly after 1 (some say due to the cinema not being full enough) . Richard E Grant introduced a video to ‘remind’ us who the Spice Girls were, and then brought them on stage.

• The photographers were allowed 5 mins of flash time with all the girls together before the talky bit of the conference began. It was a bit chaotic, with people shouting “VICTORIA! VICTORIA OVER HERE! LOOK RIGHT!” constantly. This seems to have lead to no photos having them all looking in the same direction. As the paps were told to sit down, one of them collapsed and all the photographer started taking photos of this dude on the floor. It was completely inexplicable.

• Victoria’s breasts looked ridiculous, Mel C still had that bad fringe, Geri was hippy but amazing, Emma was mega pregnant, and Mel B looked hot!

• I was a bit scared to ask anything because of my bloody beef.

• Victoria barely said anything, to the point where Mel B had to prompt her directly. Geri basically took over.

• Mel C looked a bit uncomfortable all the way through it. She was only there because Geri “had a gun under the table”

• Emma looked the dictionary definition of a beaming mum to be.

• They did actually seem like a bunch of friends meeting up for the first time in ages pissing about. It was just like being back in 1996.

Anyway, everything is in the news. You know the score. But it was utterly amazing to be there. I was a massive fan of the band in their day (just ask to see my special scrapbook!) and it was hard to not whoop and squeak all the way through it. Seriously one of the best hours of my life. Photos here onwards.

by trixie at June 29, 2007 10:23 PM

So label boss Clive Davis hates this album so much he offered Kelly $10 million to drop five tracks and let them be replaced by Dr Luke ones. That’s some hatred! It’s not an easy album to like by any means but if you give it a chance I really think it will grow on you.

Despite the darkness, My December isn’t completely full of slow burning slowies. While bouncy, the 80s influenced “One Minute” sounds like it could have come off any Ashlee, Lindsay identikit rock-pop album, the best stomper is “Judas”. A woman betrayed, Kelly sings with passion over a pulsating guitars and a synthy verse.

Read the rest at BBC Music

by trixie at June 29, 2007 09:57 PM

I just heard on the radio, FOPP have closed down! Britain’s largest independent chain of music stores, after having trebled the number of shops in February it looks like they've suddenly gone tits-up. And now they're gone. All 107 of them Every one. It's a sad day. Hopefully something will rise from the ashes and the name will live on. Hopefully.

by Dan Govan at June 29, 2007 04:17 PM

So, I promised myself that the earliest I would be prepared to line up for the damn phone was 5pm, given that they start selling them at 6pm. But now there are already lines at the Apple stores in SF it seems I might have to start a little earlier. Grrr. Stupid more-fanboy-than-me fanboys.

Gotta have one. Oh, so gotta.

Update: currently blogging from 76th place in line at Burlingame Apple store, where the line is significantly shorter than on Market Street in SF. Is there free wifi in the line? Of course there is...

Update: GOT ONE! Wooooo! An update containing impressions etc. will be forthcoming.

by Seldo at June 29, 2007 08:06 AM

My friend (and transatlantic web host) Seldo, blogged yesterday analyzing the phenomenon of gay pride. “Pride” has often been considered an odd word to use. Civil liberties and equal rights movements didn’t traditionally campaign on the basis that they were proud to be whatever they are. In fact the term “black pride” is often considered pejorative and racist, and yet gay Pride parades are a symbol of liberal democratic extravagance, banned in religiously homophobic countries like Israel, or attacked in socially repressive countries like Russia. Will a time come when “gay pride” is regarded as equally obnoxious and seclusive as “black pride”?

Maybe the whole point is to reach that point. Seldo suggests that:

Even if all you want to do is live within ordinary boundaries, you have to push them a little further than you intend to go so that you’re not hemmed in. You need radical feminists, so that ordinary feminists can get on with their lives without anybody calling them “baby” (unless they feel like it).

So my support for Pride, while nuanced, remains firm. Even if I only get around to it once a year, I still have a duty to push back the boundaries a little further so there’s room for everyone.

I will even tolerate the silly rainbows.

Maybe the point, then, is to push the boundaries far enough that the elastic wears thin. When the elastic snaps — when it’s no longer quite necessary to push the boundaries further than they ought to go, taking pride in your prejudiced-against race suddenly becomes insidious “black pride”.

But there’s a difference of course. Taking “pride” in your race has become offensive anywhichway you look at it, but Seldo is not suggesting that at some future point it would be wrong for anyone to camp it up in an outrageous tranny-on-a-truck-float scenario. “Black pride” had to retract itself into a new pair of trousers when the elastic broke. But “gay pride” in the extremes of queer living needs to keep the flexibility in place. Because while there might down the line be something wrong with being strictly “proud” of your sexuality, there’s nothing wrong with being a  leather-clad, exhibitionist, polysexual love-fiend, while there is something wrong with being a racist.

Now, Sam Harris has used a similar pushing-the-boundaries defence to qualify the excesses in his anti-religious books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. He is “making space” for people less hyper-critical of religion than himself. His own real actual views, as a clever academic philosopher, may be a little more nuanced than those of Sam Harris-the-polemicist.

The question is, what kind of boundary-pushing maneuver is Harris’s? Is it (like “black pride”) the kind of thing that future campaigners on the same issue (secularism, in this case) will eventually be a bit embarrassed about? Or is it (like “gay pride”) the kind of thing that opens up a space for the everyday chap while simultaneously supporting the extreme of the position? (Does Harris want some of the people in the future to still be touting his exact message in his exact tone? or would the future see no necessity for it? or even be embarrassed by it?)

Unfortunately, I think it’s a bit of both. Harris isn’t so much advocating for a prejudiced-against minority group as arguing an intellectual case, so whether or not he is “black pride” or “gay pride” depends on the truth of what he’s saying. Sometimes Harris is genuine and correct. This can be so even if he sounds to some ears like he is always intolerant and bigoted because he is criticizing sacred cows and when you do that it’s hard not to sound like you hate all cows if your audience isn’t used to hearing any cow-based criticism (I hope you kept up with that metaphor).

But at other times, is he being too hard on religion? Is he blaming it for nearly all world ills, when it’s actually only responsible for many world ills? Does he casually inflate — in his own mind and in the minds of his readership — the number and extent of extreme Islamist believers? Is he unable to recognize that most moderate religious believers aren’t idiots, even if their beliefs are clearly wrong? How coherent is his own brand of humanism?

Because he bears an intellectual/social message rather than straight-down-the-line advocacy, the truth of these questions is important. Can you push a rational philosophical, self-critical, intellectually honest approach to the world, while at the same time admitting that you inflate your case rhetorically in order to “make space” for less fierce critics of religion? Isn’t the “making a space” defence a bit like saying that you’re appealing to the irrational part of people, being un-self-critical, and being intellectually dishonest?

by Bob at June 28, 2007 03:37 PM

Facebook applications are buying each other? No, seriously? For $60,000 a pop?

When one business-model-free, revenue-free, loss-making company buys another business-model-free, revenue-free, loss-making company, you know the bubble is well and truly on.

Relatedly, in Alert #3 I predicted that on current trends, a Bubble 2.0 company is due to be bought for 24x revenue sometime in September. Business.com is currently tipped to sell for exactly that multiplier; let's see if I get the date right as well.

by Seldo at June 28, 2007 06:06 AM

One minor thing about the iPhone that a lot of people have asked: why is the camera no good? A 2 megapixel camera makes it better than the Blackberry, the Treo and the other major smartphone devices, but not lots better. It's not like a 4 MP camera takes up much extra space, so why cripple the camera?

The answer: the iCamera. If Apple is no longer Apple Computer, then you have to consider them branching into any big consumer niche. And they've already got iPod, iPhone and iTunes, all of which have a bunch of mysteriously prominent photo-management tools.

An iCamera is the next logical step. A big screen, on-board photo management tools using the point-and-drag interface that we're seeing on the iPhone, easy syncing to your computer using your existing iPod connector... and you're done. A category-changing step forward in usability is exactly what cameras today are crying out for.

So that's what's next for Apple.

by Seldo at June 28, 2007 03:06 AM

Minority Report type computers may be closer than I thought! Wootsauce. Now if they can only invent one that you can use sitting down, and without getting RSI, that would be good. Speaking of which, the bloody iPhone is out in a couple of days on the other side of the pond, and the gadget freaks are all a flutter. It won't be over here for a few months yet, but am I bothered? Hah! As if I could afford one anyway. Besides, I'd much rather have a big-assed table.

by Dan Govan at June 27, 2007 06:05 PM

(I am way below quota on blog entries this month folks; sorry!)

This weekend was my first Gay Pride weekend in San Francisco, and as is customary around this time, one stops to think about the whole concept of being "proud" of one's sexuality. What's it about, really?

For one thing, having a big parade where everybody goes overboard with stereotypes -- dykes on bikes, muscle marys, leather daddies, drag queens and twinks (sexy though they may be) -- doesn't exactly send the right message about what gay people are really like. Of course, a parade that accurately represented homosexuals would be 90% completely ordinary people, and that would make for a pretty dull parade ("...and here come the gay accountants!").

For another, having a big parade where people go over the top to show how WONDERFUL it is to be gay smacks a little -- no, a lot -- of over-compensation. There is no reason life as a homosexual cannot be absolutely as fun, fulfilling and happy as life as a heterosexual can be. Going on endlessly about how faaaaaabulous it is, disparaging comments about how straight sex must be boring and how unlucky the breeders are, and how we are so much better at throwing a party than the straights are may not be helping get across that message. Pretending being gay is somehow better detracts from the sincerity of the truth that it is merely the same.

Gay Pride also has the unfortunate side-effect of reinforcing the notion that homosexuals are defined by their sexuality above all other things. For me, the fact that I'm gay is important in that's it's shaped my life and my choices and says a lot about my background. I won't deny that I talk about it a lot. But it's roughly on a par with my nationality (which I also mention a lot). Before I am either gay or Trinidadian I'm a geek and a economic libertarian and a social liberal and an intellectual snob and an arrogant bastard with a serious weakness for exaggeration, and all of those things have a lot more bearing on my day-to-day interactions with people. If you talk to me online* you're much more likely to find out those other things first**.

But while it's true that it's just as possible to have a happy, fulfilling life whether you're gay or straight or any other combination of gender and orientation you find yourself saddled with, the truth is that it's harder if you're gay. Sometimes it's little things, like wondering if the guy you're about to hire is going to become impossible to work with once he finds out. Sometimes it's big things, like hearing that the majority of the public would rather you weren't able to marry the person you love. If you're not lucky enough to live in a liberal society, sometimes it's really big things, like worrying that the police will catch you and your boyfriend and have you executed. Straight people generally don't need to consider the legality of their sex lives when planning a holiday.

Most of the reasons it's harder lie in unequal treatment in law and social stigmatization***, and -- as the last 40 years have so dramatically shown -- those things can be changed, sometimes very rapidly. And that's why Pride is still important as a movement. Even if all you want to do is live within ordinary boundaries, you have to push them a little further than you intend to go so that you're not hemmed in. You need radical feminists, so that ordinary feminists can get on with their lives without anybody calling them "baby" (unless they feel like it).

So my support for Pride, while nuanced, remains firm. Even if I only get around to it once a year, I still have a duty to push back the boundaries a little further so there's room for everyone.

I will even tolerate the silly rainbows.

* i.e. via a medium in which my fashion choices and voice would not be able to tip you off. I dispute the voice thing though.

** although you may have to spend some quality time with Wikipedia and a chat log before you work out the last one, as I'm pretty good at bullshitting to support a point. That's why I have a blog.

*** the remainder are to do with the hassle of working out if someone's gay (instead of being able to assume they're straight). But even most of that can be chalked down to social stigma making it tricky to just ask "hey, do you like boys?".

by Seldo at June 27, 2007 06:06 AM

Back from Glastonbury, and with no injuries to speak of! No trench foot and no pneumonia. No bruises, blisters or broken bones! Nuffin! Nary a sniffle! On the other hand I'm not sure if my phone survived the pervasive wetness, and Simon broke his ridiculously expensive glasses, but they were both ancient relics anyway. So yay!

Yes it was a lot of mud but Micheal Eavis's measures against the flooding of 2005 seemed to have worked, as it wasn't The-Battle-of-the-Somme-revisited as was feared. What it was is a rollocking good time! Hurrah! I'll do some mini-reviews for each act I saw here, and some photos are up here with more to follow.

by Dan Govan at June 26, 2007 08:56 AM

Glastonbury flew by. I have to go to work tomorrow but my mind is still stuck there in that rain-soaked field. I can’t describe what happened there in words - it was just magic.

Specific Things That Were Good included:

• The rain - I’ve not seen that much water drop out of the sky in a very long time. It really started teeming down as The Who played last night, but I don’t think anybody really cared
• The wonderful Dame Shirley Bassey - proving that she very much still has what it takes.
• Making a flag! And making sure that Ricky from the Kaisers noticed it when he came down to meet-and-greet the crowd. That’s mine in the middle of the shot!
• The food - we’re not talking gourmet by any stretch, but all things considered I’ve not eaten badly at all over the last five days.
• Cider, beer, vodka and coke and G&Ts. Not that pear cider though - I’m staying away from that one in future.
• The people. And their unrelenting determination to keep on going despite everything.

I am officially no longer a music festival virgin. Go me.

by Will at June 25, 2007 08:27 PM

Popcorn starts on Tuesday. As we all know, acting is a hobby (or indeed a job) for lazy, egotistical morons. It is therefore ironic that acting is actually quite hard work, often knocks the ego, and requires a lot of brain power. (Alistair McGowan notwithstanding.)

Today I spent the hours between 9am and about 3pm at the Worcester Arts Fair, tending the theatre company’s stall and handing out Popcorn fliers — a thankless, hateful job which earns you the scoffs and tuts of total strangers for no good reason. (Or, even worse, for the perfectly good reason that you are a marketing scum ball who is probably trying to sell them something and is definitely getting in their way.) Feeding fliers to human cattle is a job I haven’t done since I was about fifteen, and I’m not especially keen to repeat it again any time soon.

Actually, I say all that, but it was kinda fun. I phrased my leaflet-proffering gambit in the form of a question: “Are you interested in the theatre at all?” which meant that in order to turn down my flier people first had to admit that they are artless plebians who would sooner pop a Soma than dare to partake of a live drama that didn’t have a cameo from Sharon Osbourne in it.

In the run-up to Popcorn — as well as learning lines and going to rehearsals, of course — I’ve also started a new website, edited graphics for marketing lit and props, given an interview and pushed other stories to the local press, been on the radio, and tried to push our group online. And tomorrow morning, before the technical rehearsal (which is always lengthy, arduous, and friendship-destroying) I am helping to move Andy’s set from the workshop to the stage and rig it. (The poor guy has yet again painstakingly built it from scratch, on a shoestring; the guy is a hero.)

According to my Popcorn Facebook Event there are (at time of writing) 35 confirmed guests (38 minus the 3 of us that are in it!) and 40 “Maybes”. Obviously this in no way reflects the ticket sales which are handled through the Worcester Live box office. Unfortunately, however, I do know what the ticket sales are like, and if every single one of those “Attendings” and “Maybes” from the Facebook Event did turn up, those 75 people would (so far) be about the equivalent of our ticket sales for the first two and half nights (that’s half the run)!

We do get people turn up on the door, and there’s still another radio competition to go out which I’ve organized for Tuesday, plus — heck — maybe today’s 500 fliers will reap a massive 1% success rate, in which case another whole 5 people will turn up. But at the moment it looks like we’ll be playing to a house, five nights in a row, that is at best about one third full.

And that would actually be better than a lot of recent plays at the Swan have managed; not just the amateur productions but even professional tours of quite popular plays like Art have bombed.

I was speaking to a pretty big player in the (pretty small-fry) Worcester arts scene recently who told me that the only way to guarantee a full house is male nudity. It’s all about the horny, straight chick pound, apparently. Worcester Operatic and Drama Society’s production of The Full Monty this year was so popular that (a little bird tells me) it may well be back to haunt the theatre again next year. Puppetry of the Penis also somehow manages to sell out Worcester’s Swan Theatre every year. And in the Autumn some time we’re going to be blessed with a visit from an American male vocal group who sing… and are naked. And that, apparently, is their act.

And all power to them — and to their aesthetic whoredom. But things are getting desperate. Today my charming, nearly bald Popcorn co-star, Chris, was trying to think of ways to get me naked for a future production. It’s come to something when anyone in the local arts community suggests putting on Equus with me dressed up as the character Harry Potter, in a highly confused attempt to recapture the media hype around Daniel Radcliffe’s tinky-winky.

The Swan Theatre in Worcester actually closed a few years ago. It had to be financially rescued. And I hear mixed messages from all over the pseudo-political arena that is the local arts scene, about who was responsible, whether the team that saved it are doing the best possible job they could, and where it will all end. Like any insular community there are factions and friendships, betrayals and alliances, idiots and geniuses, rumours and distortions, giant egos and thankless folk who volunteer to pull a lever once in the middle of a three hour show for nothing but their love of theatre… and the fact that someone has probably bullied them into it. I still don’t understand how the company I’m playing with works, let alone the way the Swan deals with that company, or what the relationship is with other companies, or what the heck the Worcester Arts Council even do. It seems to take about five years to actually understand the layout of the performing arts terrain in a city like Worcester. My first show here was less than a year ago.

All I do know, is that for the next week, I am Wayne Hudson, a seriously fucked up, heartless, psychopathic murderer. I am Wayne Hudson, possessed of a gory, juvenile sense of humour, three guns, a black vest, and a hot girlfriend that I can’t possibly understand. I am Wayne Hudson, she is my sugar pie lover, and he is Bruce Delamitri, the Hollywood God. I am Wayne Hudson, and I have a plan for salvation, a plan to save us from the chair, so my eyeballs won’t melt as I fry. I am Wayne Hudson: maniac, anti-hero, Mall Murderer.

If you just so happen to be local and not yet coming to Popcorn, then there are details (including box office number) here. If you are already coming, then have you really asked everyone you know if they’d like to come? and if not, why not?

by Bob at June 23, 2007 08:46 PM

“The Spice Girls are set to make an official announcement to the world regarding future plans on Thursday 28th June.”

This is one press conference I am making sure I am at. ! x 1 million. I’m a bit scared the whole thing is going to be an unparallelled disaster, but I’m currently unable to concentrate with excitement.

by trixie at June 22, 2007 04:21 PM

I’ve finally started reading the amazing It’s a Trap blog which kind of aggregates all Scandinavian music news - new songs appearing, tour dates and the like. Anyway it just reminded me of the existance of Junior Senior. In the UK they’ll probably only be remembered for Move Your Feet which hit #3 in 2003, but both “Itch You Can’t Scratch” and “Can I Get Get Get” are even better which makes me think their albums could possibly be amazing. Are they worth buying?

Here is the video for “Can I Get Get Get” which had Junior Senior teaming up with friend of the Karinski household JD Samson of Le Tigre. It’s a cute, little rapping song which just oozes happiness and has become a favourite of ours to play at Miss-Shapes. Although the video isn’t that amazing (despite featuring a cameo from Peaches), it’s worth a look just to hear the brilliant song.

I’ve never managed to catch them live, but now they’re on my must see list. If you’re in America though you’re in luck as they’ve just announced 4 dates. Laurie, Greg -  get your asses to Popscene on  Aug 16 and report back

by trixie at June 21, 2007 09:58 AM

After a late-night trip around Tesco to pick up snack foods, alcohol and make-shift sanitation we're finally packed and ready for Glasto! All being well we should be on our way first thing at the ungodly hour of 6:30am, off to the west-country and the land of mud and music. I really don't know what I'll find to be honest; I'm trying to keep a open mind. It might be a nightmare or phenomenal. Or both. Woot!

by Dan Govan at June 20, 2007 11:44 PM

As much as it pains me, actually pains me, to say it, I shall be taking a trip to the sinful container of G-A-Y on July 21st. I’ve been once before to see Sophie Ellis Bextor, and while it wasn’t as dreadful as I was expecting, I do not want to live the life of a traitor.

But on that date something marvellous is happening: the amazing Alcazar are playing. Alcazar probably kick started my love of Scandanavian pop with the camp disco classic “Crying At The Discoteque”. Rik and I used to play it near on every week on our student radio show “Lost In Music” so long along back in 2000 partly because we loved it and partly because our fellow student radio buddy Pat found it a little annoying (but this is a man who played “Help Me! I’m a Fish” constantly for about a month so his opinion is not to be trusted.)

Accompanying Alcazar will be fellow Swedes BWO and Army of Lovers. Now rest assured, if you don’t like Alcazar, you won’t like these bands as they’re all produced by Alexander Bard (who’s in both AoL and BWO).

There’s a veritable posse of us going, so you can break through the club pain by being with a group of friends. Fancy it?

by trixie at June 20, 2007 09:34 PM

I'm supposed to be packing for the muddy horror that is Glastonbury but instead I've been mucking around with Fireworks, Photoshop and Word making a bit of progress on a new design for here. I've also been playing a bit of (the magnificent) Knights of the Old Republic, watching some of (the disappointing) Curse of the Golden Flower and looking askance at Facebook. Which might well be taking over the world.

And now I think I'm coming down with a cold. Good. Bring on the mud.

by Dan Govan at June 19, 2007 11:15 PM

“Umbrella” is still number 1, five weeks after release, and amazingly it still hasn’t grown dull. There’s nothing like wandering around town going “ella, ella, ella” continuously. I even heard someone doing it in Paris (from where I have just returned).

Fabulously the album it’s taken from, “Good Girl Gone Bad”, is stonking.

And if New Order weren’t big enough to sample, prepare yourself for the sweltering disco grind of “Don’t Stop The Music”. Finely weaving the hypnotising “ma ma say, ma ma sa” bit of Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Starting Somethin” into the melody, by the time it finishes, we dare you not to be racing around the dancefloor arms flailing.

Read my review of it at BBC Music.

by trixie at June 18, 2007 09:40 PM

So I signed up for Facebook Mobile. This allows you to get mail from other members and alerts sent as text messages to your phone and is generally well-executed. In addition to the other stuff, I also get text messages whenever people poke me on Facebook -- which is weird, because my phone is always on vibrate in my pocket, so when people in the UK poke me, I actually feel it. It's pretty weird, but also really cool. I can't wait for someone to invent some kind of peripheral that can transmit hugs as well.

In other news, I had a pretty good weekend. I was zonked on Friday, but Saturday I caught a sneak preview of Ratatouille (don't watch that trailer, it ruins all the funny bits) with GB, Nick, and a trio of geeks he'd picked up at WWDC. Today we rented some bikes and went... well... all over the place, apparently more than 11 miles, starting at Golden Gate park, hanging out at the beach for a bit and then getting more than slightly lost in the little woods at the point, but managing to take in an unintentionally hilarious war memorial. Much fun though, and I felt like I really earned the giant lunch I then rewarded myself with.

Next weekend is Pride! Oh dear...

by Seldo at June 18, 2007 03:06 AM

I played World of Warcraft during American Beta in mid 2004, then again in European Beta, then I bought it on the morning of the day it came out (having gotten the time off work) and have been playing it on and off ever since. My exploits have taken me from anonymity to virtual notoriety and back again. I've played Hardcore, Casual, Raider, PvPer and theory-crafter. I know the "Feral Druid" backwards, forwards and sideways, the percentages and the optimal combinations of armour, very involved and in-depth knowledge that's totally non-transferable and completely pointless anywhere but in-game, and even then only to a minority class. I've constructed hideously complex spreadsheets on (among other things) where agility begins to give more DPS per point than strength, and what equipment will provide it. I literally have YEARS of experience of running around killing things in the form of a black panther with glowing eyes and pointy ears and OMG WHO CARES?



Sorta gotten bored of it now though. Le sigh. I had a demo of another MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) game called City of Heroes, but my 2-week trial-run ran out a couple of weeks ago while I wasn't looking; I only realised because they emailed me about it. If I want to play more I'll have to pay a subscription fee! I don't think I'll bother.

I've just received a very similar email about my 1-month trial run for Lord of the Rings Online (another MMO) which I'm a little more annoyed about because I actually paid for that game, I've hardly played it at all, and now I can't play it any more! Not that I had been, to be honest. I suppose I might buy a month of game time sometime in the future if I want to give it a second chance, but for the moment I'll definitely leave it. I've also got a trial-run for Guild Wars (Yeah, it's another MMO), but at only 10 hours long it hardly even counts.

Meanwhile my subscription for the infamous World of Warcraft runs out in three weeks, and I've hardly played it in months.

by Dan Govan at June 16, 2007 07:53 PM

On Apple.com’s new look-and-feel, discovered via Laurie.

First thoughts: it looks like someone’s just found the Colors > Invert menu item in Photoshop. Is black really back in again? I thought we’d seen the end of back of white-on-black text, banished along with circa-1998 websites and MS-DOS windows. Sure, it looks different from the old design, but not vastly so and I’d actually say it’s a step back in terms of the nice minimalistic look they previously had going on.

Their news ticker is neat, although it looks rather similar to our own.

Overall I give them seven out of ten - but only because it was so good before, they haven’t changed it that much and their small army of graphic designers seem to be able to make anything look good. Even if it is in black.

by Will at June 12, 2007 11:35 PM

I was back on local radio again today, this time advertising Popcorn with the director, Marc, and fellow acting chum Chris, who is, it must be said, of comparable acting genius to myself.

You can download an MP3 of the radio spot from the STAC website. We got about 11 minutes of air time, which is quite good. The download includes a reading from the play, carefully selected so as not to include explicit sexual content, illegally bad language, or insinuations of overt violence.

by Bob at June 12, 2007 09:18 PM

Admin rights on the company blog are always fun, and it gives me an opportunity to muck around with WordPress a bit. The catch is I'm moderately obligated to occasionally write something topical for it. Web 2.0 is always a good way to go, linking the "The Machine is Us" vid from a while ago == easy brownie points. Or it would have been easy if I hadn't felt the need to re-write the entry a dozen times, after all people might actually see it there!

Of course now I've faffed about with putting together a new site in Wordpress so much that they're finally updating Movable type, with open source goodness and everything! I'm still going to make the change though, as the bottom line is I need to know about PHP much more than I need to know about Perl.

Glastonbury minus 9 days. It will probably rain. Grump.

by Dan Govan at June 12, 2007 11:38 AM

Must try harder

As Seldo noted last night (and I was too tired to blog about), Safari has been released for WIndows. Shame it doesn't work - it does this on both of the PCs I've tested it on...

Ideas? 

June 12, 2007 09:59 AM

Oh, great... another A-grade browser to support.

I suppose I sort of have to say something about today's WWDC releases. The release of Leopard is mainly a great big yawn. The interesting things were:

1. Safari for Windows. This is... odd. I have trouble working out their motivations. It seems to be a combination of the fact that the port was relatively easy (since KHTML already exists for Windows, and in fact some people were already distributing browsers for Windows based on it) and a desire to gain support for Safari by increasing its market share. And I suppose, by making it easier to test Safari web apps on Windows, they're widening the developer base for the next item...
2. Web apps on the iPhone. They've gotten around the security problem of third-party applications on a smartphone by making the only third-party apps allowed be web apps. One assumes they'll be making some kind of JavaScript API available to allow you to make calls and use the other features of the iPhone as they claim will be possible, but I'm not sure how they intend to make that secure... if you ever visit this site on a iPhone, it will automatically dial 1-900-CASH-GRAB.
3. The new Apple.Com features a totally new look and JavaScript out the wazoo. It looks superficially very Web2.0, although there's actually no Ajax to be found, and zero social interaction, so it's entirely cosmetic. However, it's very slick indeed, and built on the deservingly well-regarded script.aculo.us javascript library (although oddly they don't seem to have noticed yet). I have to say that while it's very well implemented, the white-on-black text is painful to read and it's dreadfully busy for a site that used to be famous for clarity and minimalism. Perhaps it will grow on me. Certainly its looks and those snazzy script.aculo.us controls will be stolen by every half-assed designer in the industry now (on the instructions of their clueless CEO) so get ready for every site on the web to start looking like this.

So... nothing really earth-shaking. But quite cool.

by Seldo at June 12, 2007 08:06 AM

Monday is particularly Mondayish today, I'm all sleepy like, it's muggy and grim outside, and it's an inexplicable 31 degrees at my desk. To me AC is just something that happens to other people. Thankfully emergency deployment of coffee, pastries and "Mr Blue Sky" have averted disaster.

In other news, I got a totally top tip for loud gigs while seeing The Thermals yesterday: toilet paper in the ears! Insta-ear-plugs! GENIUS!!!

Will attempt to blog about the festival-tastic summer later. Stay tooned.

by Dan Govan at June 11, 2007 10:07 AM

So, he's basically the world's biggest puppy:

Clueless, dumb, totally pretty. It's like Smallville without the stupid kryptonite-based plots (but still plenty of homoeroticism). I recommend it as a great way of turning off your brain for 40 minutes. Having burned through the entire 6.5 hours of season 1 in the last 4 days, I'm all prepped for season 2, which starts tomorrow.

by Seldo at June 11, 2007 04:06 AM

9 minutes of the Simpsons playing an warcraft-ish MMO. Mmm, zeitgeisty goodness.

by Dan Govan at June 10, 2007 11:17 PM

Love XKCD

by Dan Govan at June 09, 2007 10:40 AM

by Seldo at June 09, 2007 03:06 AM

The newspaper has covered Mat’s aforementioned attempt to date five new real girls on five real actual dates to Popcorn, in five nights: “I’m going to spend 5 nights at the theatre on 5 different dates“. (Also see STAC blog.)

This is my favorite bit:

Mr Read, a bowling alley manager, says he was inspired by the Greek hero Heracles.

“As well as having to clear out stables and kill monsters, one of his labours was to impregnate 50 women,” said Mr Read. According to the myth, the young Heracles did this in one night.

“Obviously, I’ve scaled it down a bit,” said Mr Read. “I’m looking for anyone aged between 20 and 30 and preferably a non-smoker.[”]

Scaled it down a bit… but still intending to impregnate them?

Go on my son.

by Bob at June 07, 2007 10:57 PM

I foolishly forgot to blog about Tigerpicks - “Disco Punk Electro Funk” when it came out intitally labelling it as a bit messy and a Robots in Disguise rip-off. One thing I never disputed though, was the brilliance of the video.

The Tigerpicks are Frankie, Martyn and Emma, and they’re working with none other than Richard X on their debut album. Naturally this single flopped bigtime on sales, but in reality I’ve never known any little-known track fill a dancefloor so consistantly.

It could be the soundtrack to a computer game, but I think this is kind of what I was expecting Wigwam to sound like. There’s no London dates booked in at the moment but when there are, I SHALL BE THERE.

by trixie at June 07, 2007 01:56 PM

When I was 16 I hated the Manics. They stopped George Michael’s “Outside” going to #1 with some old political twaddle and filled my teenage pop blood with rage. Then when I went to university, student radio opened my ears to all music beyond pure pop. And just as most people began to think they’d jumped the shark, Know Your Enemy and the likes of “So Why So Sad” and “Ocean Spray” got me leaping about proclaiming their brilliance.So who would have thought a few years later I’d be reviewing their latest album for the Beeb. I feel a bit uneasy about that review as I don’t really know their heritage that well, but Send Away The Tigers really is a great album. If you’re yet to hear it then try out the grand “Autumn Song” as a taster.

To consumate my new found love, gaypop and I headed up to the barren land of Kentish Town to see MSP play the first of three London dates. The Forum is a pretty nice, large venue, much preferable to the likes of Brixton Academy, and suited the band perfectly. Despite no Nina and a hell of a lot of songs I didn’t know, this certainly chucks itself up my best gigs ever list. Amazing things included (bare in mind I was a Manics gig virgin):

• The hilarious height difference between Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield.
• Nicky’s gigantic scissor jumps
• Watching Simon Price going mental to “Stay Beautiful”
• “You Stole The Sun From My Heart”
• James singing Nina’s bits in YLAINE in a girly manner.
• and many more I forgot to write down…

by trixie at June 07, 2007 12:23 PM

I'm sure every non-troglodyte has heard of the mystical iPhone with it's amazing power to bring breakfast in bed and cure cancer. There were rumors a couple of weeks ago that Microsoft were working on a competitor to said fabled iPhone (blessed be Steve Jobs), but it turned out to be an iTable! Huzzah! Well not really; they call it a Microsoft Surface, but it sure looks like an iTable to me.

In any case they're not stopping there. Just around the corner is iToaster! Ha, take that Apple! Well not necessarily; it's still mostly guesswork at the moment. But they are cooking up a kitchen client! And if Microsoft Kitchen doesn't put an LCD screen on the side of a toaster and have it tell you when your toast is burning then they're missing a trick.

by Dan Govan at June 07, 2007 09:47 AM

Private equity investors have paid a little over $1 billion for (two-thirds of) NexTag, another warmed-over relic from the last boom, founded in 1999 and then reinvented after its original model failed spectacularly.

According to that GigaOm article above, NexTag have "revenues of $200m" (per month? per quarter? per year?). Nielsen//NetRatings, who publish monthly reports on advertisers, say they are spending $60m a month on advertising. They themselves claim to have been profitable every month since October, 2001 -- a pretty unlikely month to have a turnaround, given that the rest of the market was melted at that point, and in 2003 they were boasting about 450% growth that year.

So say Om's figure is quarterly (and I have no idea if it is, but that's the period for which these figures make the most sense). Then they're spending maybe $180m every quarter to make profits of, again very roughly, $20m. So at an unusably poor level of certainty, that's $80m in profits a year, which given their $1.5 billion pricetag gives them a valuation of something like 19x earnings -- compared to 14x earnings for aQuantive about two months ago and 10x earnings for DoubleClick a little over a month before that.

That's some bubble we've got going there. If there's an acquisition for something like 24x earnings in early September I am going to proclaim myself a guru and start GigaSeldo.

P.S. It's developer day tomorrow! Woo!

by Seldo at June 07, 2007 05:06 AM

So, how much for a peerage? Just how much did you raise from selling your old headquarters? What do you think about grammar schools? I don’t see Dave’s bike parked outside, does he really cycle in every day? Unfortunatly I chickened out, complimented him on his coffee mugs (CCHQ mugs have pretty pictures of trees on theirs) and asked [...]

by M at June 05, 2007 08:22 PM

Unklejam’s amazing 2nd single is finally out to buy on download this week. Love Ya flopped for no reason but What Am I Fighting For has been everywhere. It it’s not in the charts by the end of next week then my belief in the UK buying public will be withdrawn!

Camp futuristic disco pop - amazing.

by trixie at June 05, 2007 02:21 AM

What I bought at bi-rite last weekend:

• brie
• gruyere
• pate de campagne
• hummus
• olives
• mixed salad leaves
• pita bread
• pasta
• organic pasta sauce
• green peppers

What I bought at the corner store this weekend:

• 2 litres of coke
• load of Wonder bread
• peanut butter
• jelly
• large packet oreos
• large packet chips ahoy
• gallon of milk

by Seldo at June 04, 2007 03:06 AM

Winnar

by Dan Govan at June 02, 2007 05:27 PM

Having tentatively outed Postman Pat, Big Bird, Dogtanian and the panther guy out of Thundercats (whose name is “Panthro”, my researchers tell me) I have been asked to make some clarifications.

“Rick” has pointed out to me that new-fangled Postman Pat has got married and has had a child since last we knew him. According to the website his wife (or should I say “token wife”) is one Sara Clifton. She is a “modern mother, works part-time at the station cafe.” Their son is called Julian.

None of this necessarily invalidates my considered opinion that Pat is gay. For three reasons.

One: Pat could well be in denial. His sudden new-found over-stated pseudo-heterosexuality after years of living alone with his cat is a clear act of denial. In the years between real Postman Pat and the new-fangled Postman Pat, he obviously had some kind of breakdown — which is why he was off our screens for so long (see it all fits) — and then finally he sold-out to heterosexist marital convention. A success for Polish children everywhere.

Two: Sara Clifton (right) looks like a man anyway.

Three: Their son is called Julian.

And as Ewa Sowinska is no doubt aware, Julian is a gay name.

Now, another friend, Mat, has told me to reconsider Dogtanian.

There are a number of reasons for this.

If any of the Muskehounds is gay, goes the argument, then it’s got to be Aramis. Admittedly he is the most effeminate Muskehound, his ears/hair are frankly beautiful. But that doesn’t necessarily make him gay. One’s gaydar can be more finely attuned than that. The guy is religious, reads poetry, and is constantly trying to seduce women. Some would call it all over-compensation, and I can’t deny that it could look like that.

But there are subtleties to sexuality beyond such crass over-generalizations. Just because he’s effeminate and seemingly a little bit too overt with the ladies doesn’t mean he is a gay, (and even if he was, there is no logical implication that just because Aramis is gay, Dogtanian couldn’t be).

Dogtanian of course spends most of the time pining over this bitch.

The bitch’s name is of course Juliette (ha ha, do you see, I mean literally she is a female dog. I bet you couldn’t have thought of that.)

Again, there’s no knock-down argument here. But if we’re going to witch hunt gay children’s TV characters, Ewa Sowinska, then like any good witch hunt, it’s important to rely in large part on “intuition” (by which I mean “pointless unfounded speculation based on arbitrary criteria of your own selection”). Frankly, Dogtanian just seems scrappy and tom-boyish in just the right quantities that he blips my (admittedly straight and therefore inferior) gaydar. So that’s the matter settled.

No one has objected to Big Bird being gay nor Panthro being bi. Therefore, just like Teletubbies, both Sesame Street and Thundercats are clearly pushing an insidious, liberal, un-anti-gay agenda. I hope Ewa Sowinska realizes this and does something about it, for the sake of Polish children everywhere.

Let the tubby chromedome burn, Ewa Sowinska. Let us roadblock and blitz so-called Sesame Street — it’s just an American analogy to Old Compton Street, after all. Leave the Thundercats stranded on their distant planet, with only Snarf and their broken hopes and dreams for company. This is a purge we can accomplish, Ewa Sowinska, if only we keep pressing, interrogating, bearing in mind the question “Is s/he a bit gay?” every time we meet a new children’s TV character. Let us remain vigilant. Children’s conceptions of the validity of non-heterosexual identities is at stake, after all.

by Bob at June 02, 2007 12:12 PM

The Register say it's a bubble (and it's not Andrew Orlowski, so it's not just automatic gainsaying of whatever the world is saying).

BusinessWeek starts off saying don't call it a bubble, but by the end of the article says the market is "frothy" and a "correction is inevitable", which is the same as saying "the bubble isn't as big as it was last time". To which I say: yet.

by Seldo at June 02, 2007 08:06 AM

I never actually said “I am relishing the chance to be a killer”. I don’t think that’s quite how I would have put it.

But here is a copy of the article from today’s paper at the Worcester News Internet Edition: “I’m looking forward to playing a raging psycho“.

Also see the STAC blog for the unedited text of the interview.

by Bob at June 01, 2007 12:42 PM

Things I want to see:
Thursday: Nothing much. Mostly setting up tents and wandering around I guess?
Friday: Bloc Party, The Fratellis, Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, Modest Mouse, The Automatic, Bright Eyes, Super Furry Animals, The Coral, Rufus Wainwright, Arcade Fire, Bjork, AIM, The New Pornographers, Martha Wainwright, MIA, Spiritualized, Damien Rice, !!!, Four Tet.
Saturday: The Pipettes, The Guillemots, Lilly Allen, The Kooks, The Killers, The Switches, The Breaks, The Long Blondes, Biffy Cliro, CSS, Klaxons, Babyshambles, Maximo Park, Editors, Calvin Harris, Pigeon Detectives, Patrick Wolf, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Ed Harcourt, Mika, Mr Scruff
Sunday:Dame Shirley Bassey, Manic Street Preachers, Kaiser Chiefs, Aqualung, The Noisettes, Rumble Strips, Young Knives, The Gossip, KT Tunstall, Dragonette

Add a fair amount of wandering about checking stuff out, chilling and chatting, not to mention seeing bands I've never heard of, and I'll be lucky to see a fraction of the above. Nightmare!

by Dan Govan at June 01, 2007 09:52 AM

Well done Mr. Eavis - this year’s line-up looks amazing. Now can I have my tickets please?

by Will at June 01, 2007 07:34 AM

I haven’t had a drink since Sunday night - not a single glass of wine or a sniff of a gin and tonic has passed my lips. It was a sort of deliberate attempt to be nicer to myself for a week or so, I was going to go to bed early, eat more [...]

by M at May 31, 2007 07:38 PM

Excellent 5-minute video basically explaining the current "Web-two-oh" state of the net. Apparently it was doing the rounds a couple of months ago, but it totally passed me by, so if you haven't seen it already you're in for a treat! It's both funny and educational; bargain!

Speaking of, I just bought dangovan.com. When I started out I used Mynciboi and then Mochaholic as pseudonyms as they were fairly unique phrases, easily trackable. But as I'm already top result for Dan Govan, totally by accident, as well as for mynciboi and mochaholic, I figured it might be time to ditch the hard-to-spell monikers. So it's new-site-time again, and this time I'm hoping to get well past the PhotoShop stage! The world is my oyster card.

by Dan Govan at May 31, 2007 05:16 PM