| finally... |
[Feb. 1st, 2004|01:54 am] |
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Having had this machine for a week, I've finally managed to get the mini-itx going. Simple - just turn off the ACPI and install the harddisk drivers for the Seagate disk from Seagate. Woohoo. Only took a whole day of frustration.... |
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| Peter Riley/Peter Hughes Cambridge Reading at Kings, 9/11/2003 |
[Dec. 10th, 2003|07:51 am] |
| [ | music |
| | France Inter news | ] |
Cambridge center where the colleges cluster always affects the air medieval this time of year. The street lights are low-key, the cobbles are slippery from the dark and it's dark, very dark. Of course, we first managed to get the wrong college - Trinity rather Kings...but onward. The munby room wasn't that crowd - at this time of year, there are children's parties and productions everywhere, I heard.
The headline act - Peter Hughes, who had just published his "selected" - came first. Neat, early middle-aged, a russet-coloured crew-neck jumper, green cords and brown shoes. Earnest with lennon-glasses. He read a 4-part poem, quite long, which suffered because of a lack of voice. The last part was better, although, in retrospect, I'm not sure whether this was due to a renewed vigour but also because it was centered around a character which seemed to give the reading more force. The rest seemed a little bland, I thought.
The warm-up - Peter Riley - came second. He was dressed in the same manner as PH, but in all respects, a shade darker. Spooky. PR has that English charm which did him in good stead as he choose a 31-part poem, each part ending in the same ryhme-scheme, but also dealing with different approaches to the same set of gates (shades of "13 ways of looking at a blackbird"?). His reading was good, if a little fey, which was at odds with the occasionally very concrete content. However, I have to question it's choice as a warm-up - at 17 minutes, a tad long I think. Luckily, he came second. |
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| black armbands |
[Sep. 12th, 2003|10:59 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | funereal | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Sunday Morning Coming Down | ] |
Johnny Cash 1932-2003
Man in Black
Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.
I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.
I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.
Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.
I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.
And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen' that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen' that we all were on their side.
Well, there's things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin' everywhere you go,
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.
Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black.
Man In Black
By: John R. Cash, (c) 1971 House of Cash, Inc.
Recorded February 16, 1971
Number 3 - Country Charts; Number 58 - Pop Charts
Big River
Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry,
And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky.
And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River.
Then I'm gonna sit right here until I die.
I met her accidentally in St. Paul (Minnesota).
And it tore me up every time I heard her drawl, Southern drawl.
Then I heard my dream was back Downstream cavortin' in Davenport,
And I followed you, Big River, when you called.
Then you took me to St. Louis later on (down the river).
A freighter said she's been here
But she's gone, boy, she's gone.
I found her trail in Memphis,
But she just walked up the block.
She raised a few eyebrows and then she went on down alone.
Now, won't you batter down by Baton Rouge,
River Queen, roll it on.
Take that woman on down to New Orleans, New Orleans.
Go on, I've had enough;
Dump my blues down in the gulf.
She loves you, Big River, more than me.
Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry,
And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky.
And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River.
Then I'm gonna sit right here until I die.
--Johnny Cash |
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| monsters |
[Sep. 9th, 2003|12:15 pm] |
Leni Riefenstahl is dead. The articles are here [bunte.de] and here [BBC].
Reading David Thomson in the IOS, Leni Riefenstahl and Teller were compared. The quote from LR was "at least I did not help build the bomb". Interestingly, this "defence" pops up in the play "Copenhagen" via Heisenberg, where he tries to claim that he tried to hinder the production of the German bomb. He throws this back at Niels Bohr: why didn't you try and stop the bomb? Niels solved a few problems regarding the bomb, as well as producing a lot of the maths. Niels Bohr - Stephen Rea looking very weary - gives a weary answer: "I was helping to stop a monster".
Simon Raven has one of his characters in the "Dance to the Music of Time" kill himself before he revealed the secrets of his research into a terrifying weapon. Besides the unlikelihood of one such researcher stopping a broad-band of research, what would I do? If I was in the position of Bohr, would I identify the monsters that clearly? I guess that his position is fairly clear, with the aspect of a German army lording it through the streets and the killing of Jews. In contrast, look at those in the 30's who raised Stalin to a plinth. There was a lot of warmth for the Russian effort during the war. There would have been less, I suspect, if the truth about the gulags had been abroad. Which is why, at the end of the day, Saddam was raised as a monster - a world-devouring type of monster - as an excuse for BP and Exxon.
That, really, you need some good PR if you are to be a successful tyrant in the modern mode. |
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| news |
[Sep. 8th, 2003|01:34 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  chipper | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Mahler Symphony No 4 | ] |
Warren Zevron is dead [NY times] I recently bought his "An Excitable Boy" album; it was still brilliant after all these years.
The scientologists get to pay a large bill: Excellent! [spaink.net]
and
Socialist Internet [guardian.co.uk] |
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| hates spielberg/lucas |
[Sep. 6th, 2003|10:00 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | butterfield blues band: love march | ] |
It's surprising how much shlock Spielberg has done: http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/
"Catch me if you can?" anybody? I thought not. The man is a *player*, though.
Reading of Spielberg's techniques for "Saving Private Ryan" brought back to me my main complaint against Lucas - who is a two-trick pony
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000184/
- neither of them particularly attractive, partcularly when it gets to the racisim in the 2nd IJ movie (if he was making a B-movie for the 80's, why didn't he update the ideology as well?) - whose main technique is to gloss his films with the techniques of the past. For Saving thingummy, S went back to the old war films and made it to look exactly like those films, down to the drained washed-out colours. Which is *exactly* the same "methodology" that Lucas used for the original Starwars - vintage fighter movies etc. Quite what Lucas used for the Ewoks movies is another thing entirely. By the time the, uh, Starwars prequels come out, he's well into Joseph Campbell self-mythologising crap.
It is interesting that there's no attempt to make these journeys afresh, rather, to make them familiar. The audience in this view is already acclimatized to the look-and-feel - there is no "shock of the new", no shocking juxtaposition of familiar elements, rather you are pre-disposed to *not* feel any shock at seeing his films. At the end of the movie, and the final feel-good-frames hove into view, there's less of a disjoint more of a preparation. On your way out, tick those happy-boxes!
Both Lucas and Spielberg make "player" movies, no doubt. Drill-ground sergeants of the celluloid. To give him his due, Lucas can see where the market is headed - the latest starwars bollocks was simul-launched across *all* the MPAA regions, thus avoiding the embarassment of pirated-editions appearing in region A before region B. Heh.
For ET, it occured to me today that I cannot recall any male figures older than 18 in the movie, who do not consitute a threat to the central family unit. |
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| analysis mannequins |
[Sep. 6th, 2003|09:52 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  drunk | ] |
| [ | music |
| | john b sebastien - rainbows all over your blues | ] |
It's always been my thought that economics would be a better discipline if it dropped it's idea of the "rational actor". Who the fuck consumer is rational? To my mind, any political (or economic) analysis that places the feelings/motivations of it's main participants in a subordinate position hasn't much going for it.
As a side comment, sticking all that human messy stuff within a containment field does seem a particularly *male* view.
The current capitalist (and political) thinking seems to be the focus group where id-mining goes on. The irrational - and in this context people are viewed as totally irrational - is tapped and tamed, desire given full reign. If this packet of washing-up powder were a cloud, what sort of cloud would it be? Apparently Clinton towards the end of his first term did *nothing* without consulting a focus group.
The view of people as *wholly* irrational does seem a wilful simplification. |
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| Web Services |
[Sep. 3rd, 2003|01:07 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  confused | ] |
Microsoft goes: "Me too, Me too!" Because, as we all know, it has to compete, it has to dominate on everything... |
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| TMA frenzy |
[Sep. 1st, 2003|12:15 am] |
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Received results from last batch, sending off new batch. Still having problems with Perfect/Imperfect in french. Found some sort of explanation here: Imperfect/Perfect so I then found myself trying to work out verb conjugation fitted - particularly on "actions which advance the story"... |
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| glasses |
[Aug. 29th, 2003|09:53 pm] |
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Started wearing reading glasses == I can now read dictionary. I just didn't realise how blind I was getting. |
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| "the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" |
[Aug. 28th, 2003|09:01 pm] |
As you do when making the office tea round, I was looking vacantly at the chestnut trees outside the office kitchen when I noticed a suspicious tinge of yellow mixed in the dusty summer greens. On looking closer, I thought, umm. It's distinctly cooler, I'm wearing a sweatshirt and a tee-shirt. Swallows have been gathering for the past couple of weeks. Rain is forecast for the first time in months. Ah. Autumn.
This weekend we harvest the last of the apples and pears. |
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| master blaster |
[Aug. 26th, 2003|10:14 pm] |
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All day spent delousing PC build servers of the Blaster virus. Uck. I hate PCs. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 25th, 2003|04:34 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  numb | ] |
Yet another milestone yesterday - last year it was Building a 6' Fence
with my father (his bruises have healed, thankyou) now I've just an
eyesight test for reading specs. They didn't have anything like the
ones Michael Caine wore as Palmer so I choose a pair which I think look
like the ones my favourite German hood used to wear in those cold war
movies.The glasses have a heavy bar across the top and very little
frame underlining the lenses. TIME MARCHES ON, as they said in the
movies. BTW, I hadn't realised that building a 6' fence was such a Big
Thing. Wonder why?
Having a hard time trying to get my head around this: BBC Creative Archive. Every time I think yeah, the cynic in me wells up and says yeah, but. I'll believe it when I see it.
Part of my problem is political. Greg Dyke & Blair are buddies so, for me, things become tinged with the whole spin generation. He talks the talk but will he walk the walk? Also, for the BBC, there is self-interest: this is a great rebuttal to all the commercial organisations who usually whinge at the BBC re-purposing and adding content. For example: sometimes, the BBC will produce a magazine to go with a program - Cookery, Gardening and Cars being 3 such combos. Each of the commercial alternatives have whinged mightily at this, for obvious reasons. So, the BBC defence is: look at all my free content.
MIT have a similar project, as per a wired article
French diet paradox.
couriel (the french for email) meet pourriel, or junk mail - a contraction of POUbelle and couRRIEL. See granddictionaire.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 23rd, 2003|09:58 pm] |
so,
I posted my last TMA, then I realise that the next one is due on Sep 4.
Still, that large-scale map of Caen that Sue got me looks pretty cool.
And the 1944 battles around Caen do interest me. Just how hard can it be? Famous last words.
it's ou its: la vue française |
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cannery's journal