Month: June 2013

backpeddle

I decided the responsive theme was too much like joining the Borg. There was no easy way to modify it. It’s like those new cars that have the engine bay all locked up in plastic and you need a qualification in rocket science to make any changes to it. So, it’s back to the old style, but with more motivation to update it.

Similarly, I wake to find that self-preservation has spurred the labor party to stick kruddy back into nerd postition no.1 up there in nerdcity. Because being out of power is a great motivator.

alien autopsy-turvey

Lately I’ve been tempted to put an ‘amazon wishlist’ widget on here but there’s no way I can justify asking people to buy stuff for me when all I am doing is being a lazy bugger and not offering up anything of use to anyone at all. However, if I was not a lazy bugger and was in-fact contributing something to universal human endovour then right now I’d be asking the universe to furnish me with a DVD copy of <a href=”http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/59122/korg-70000-bc-the-complete-series-warner-archive-collection/”>Korg: 70,000 B.C.</a>.

<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/IM_bnN_IiG4″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

I remember seeing an episode or two of this on BTV6 Ballarat back in the dark ages when I was a little kid. I was reminded of it recently when watching part of a new release movie, _10000 BC_, which is shite. It’s pretty much irrefutable in my book, old rubbish is better than new rubbish. It’s a shame that given what the internet is capable of that buying a 25buck dvd is the only way I can watch Korg.

rolling with the cafenol

The hipstamatic app is still my favourite toy and to a small extent it’s got me interested in the history of photography. Some of the lenses and film types usable in the camera app are based on old, sometimes cheap cameras that are no longer made (at least not in the way they originally were). Info on those is fairly easy to come by. For example the Helga lens = <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holga”>Holga camera</a> and the Jane lens I’m pretty sure is based on the <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_camera”>Diana</a> camera.

Naturally some looks or combinations have become my favourites but I muck around with it quite a bit and am left with enough time to sit with the filters that I’ve never really found a use for, and to try them again.  <a href=”http://wiki.hipstamatic.com/index.php?title=Cano_Cafenol_Film”>Cano Cafenol</a> is one such film. It was named after a photography business guy, Gabriel Cano who created a technique whereby photos are developed in a solution of <a href=”http://forums.photographyreview.com/film-photography/cafenol-new-coffee-film-developer-53121.html”>instant coffee, washing soda and vitamin C</a> which used to be called Cafenol but is now titled <a href=”http://www.colorservices.com/Film-Processing.html”>coffee processing</a>.

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunnybreaks/9090669642/” title=”Cano set by esquimauxpie, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7436/9090669642_3d5db929b7.jpg” width=”500″ height=”500″ alt=”Cano set”></a>

I took one shot with Cano Cafenol and each of the currently available 29 lenses to see which one I liked with it best. <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunnybreaks/sets/72157634225769850/”>The results: inconclusive</a>. As is often the case it’s not the look of the image, it’s whether or not there’s actually something interesting going on in it.

cars coffee and so on

I only just came across this, Jerry Seinfeld’s <a href=”http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/”>http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com</a> last week but I ended up watching them all in one go. Some of the people are unknowns, and some of the vids fall a bit flat but a few of them are real gems. In particular I liked:

1. with Michael Richards. It was kind of sad to hear the story of where he’s at now. It sounds like he doesn’t go out much. Pretty refreshing to come across something that seemed as honest as that was. The one with Larry David, the other writer of the Seinfeld TV series was similar in how it showed how neuroses-riddled the Hollywood area of LA must be.

2. with Alec Baldwin, who seemed to be one of the only interviews that really comfortable to be interviewed by Seinfeld. I like how he basically put jerry on the spot and asked him why is isn’t doing more. Baldwin is funny and came across as one of the least self-obsessed of the people on there.

3. with Karl Reiner and Mel Brooks. This one was the best, and I haven’t even seen the Dick van dyke show, and you know I don’t know if I’ve ever seen _Blazing Saddles_ all the way through (although I will soon now). I read through both guys’ wikipedia pages after this — and you really have to respect Mel Brooks for trying so many non-mainstream things during his career. I liked the real life element to it as well — these guys are _old_. Both of their wives passed away in the last ten years — and now Mel comes over to Karl’s house each night and they watch DVDs together. Brooks is still funny as hell, but everyone gets old and eventually ends up talking with a bit of food stuck on their face.

If you’ve got a spare hour or so you definitely should watch at least those three — it’s way better than the shit-sandwiched between the same commercials on TV these days.

Tomorrow’s Harvest: Boards Of Canada

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunnybreaks/9037852344/” title=”Tomorrow’s Harvest by esquimauxpie, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2827/9037852344_c1baea8f9a.jpg” width=”500″ height=”500″ alt=”Tomorrow’s Harvest”></a>

After six or seven years BOC finally released their next full-length album. It’s been a long wait. From memory, the last one, The Campfire Headphase, was one of the first things I purchased over the internet with my (then) newly-minted credit card (really just a debit card but whatever).

<a href=”https://bleep.com/”>Bleep.com</a>, a digital music store, sent me the link to my purchased download last Friday night — much earlier than I was expecting! And so, each day for the last week I’ve been having a listen to the album to get a feel for it. BOC’s stuff is anti-pop. Pop and successful TV jingles succeed because you can hear them once and they dig into the memory. The melodies and chord progressions in Boards of Canada’s music are much subtler and take time to come out. But this means they also have a much greater longevity and relistenability.

Tomorrow’s Harvest I would say is more of the same, in that the sound of it is similar to their stuff in the past. The last most recent, Campfire Headphase, had a fair bit of guitar used in looping ways which made it a bit different but it was still clearly BOC. “More of the same” isn’t a negative judgment at all, because for the last 6 years fans everywhere have been waiting for more of the same. It’s because of this that they become my number 1 favourite musical performer. Amon Tobin used to be it but then he went off in ambient, unmelodic directions.

This new album, if anything reminds me a bit of their 2002 album, Geogaddi because of the ‘bad trip’ overtones. BOC’s music is often generalised as psychedelic trip music but then sometimes it’s not all happy sounding.

And I think that’s what’s happening with Tomorrow’s Harvest. *My take is that it’s a nuclear apocalypse concept album.* The artwork: sunrise in San Francisco, but then it looks a bit like an A-bomb just about to go mushroom too. Then there’s the titles of some of the tracks: Reach For The Dead, Cold Earth, Sick Times, Collapse, New Seeds, Come To Dust. New Seeds is interesting because it’s one that really sounds like the title – it reminds me of science and robots planting things on Mars or something.

The music by itself is just music and doesn’t sound down particularly when compared to other BOC stuff, but there’s no samples of kids’ voices counting numbers or singing rhymes. There’s no samples of the original <a href=”http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/20bedce20c/caught-in-the-act”>Boards of Canada Public Service Announcements</a> — or if there are they’re so distorted that I can’t tell what they’re saying yet.

From what I’ve read in the rare, odd interview they’ve done, they’re the kind of group that only releases 10% of what they produce, and it may well be possible that this music was made years and years ago. Anyway, I’m really liking the album and I just hope it’s not another 7 years til we hear from Michael and Marcus again.

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunnybreaks/9035839345/” title=”sandisons by esquimauxpie, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2829/9035839345_fe12689f8f_m.jpg” width=”240″ height=”160″ alt=”sandisons”></a>

Ps. (minor congratz to bleep.com on having their shit together better than those idiots at topspin media.)

39: feelin’ fine

Oddly enough I experienced none of the angst this year that I did the last few years on the same day. I think it’s that this year I know I really am doing nothing whereas before I was under the illusion I was doing something because I spending a few hours a week at a ‘job’. I’ve been thinking of different jobs I could do, like recording those in-shop messages that come over the intercom saying, “store security to department 3”, and then a minute later [more urgently] “Security, department 3″. Or I could roam around eliminating wrongly placed apostrophes from signboards and other public places. I’d need a govt grant for that. I’ve noticed via Twitter that pretty much _all_ the V8 supercar drivers are apostrophe abusers but Lewis Hamilton, of F1 fame, knows well how to place the ‘stroph.

This link is already on the <a href=”http://previous.delicious.com/yaksox”>delicious feed</a> (right) but I am quite inspired by <a href=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22766029″>this 15thC. boy</a> and his diligence in documenting his own fashion sense. I may do the same since I got some clothes for my birthday.

Also I wanted to show and tell my piggy plate. I got it as part of a set of four at a garage sale. The others are sheep, cow and chicken. Piggy is the stand out, partly because he is wearing a napkin as if he is about to have a meal rather than be the meal as the collection would suggest. They were made in Indo-nesia.

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunnybreaks/9022514026/” title=”They say it’s ur b’day by esquimauxpie, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5349/9022514026_6338ff6ac3_n.jpg” width=”320″ height=”320″ alt=”They say it’s ur b’day”></a>

deledy is a place where the golden fields roll right down to the vast inland sea

I can’t get used to the fact that it’s winter now but I am still getting sunburned if I am outside for too long during the day without wearing sunscreen. I don’t like sunscreen and it’s an alarming thought that I might have to wear it every day. I wear a daggy hat sometimes but don’t feel like wearing it every day. Non-daggy hats are useless because they don’t shade the face. There is no answer to this problem. Either the sun is getting hotter or the environment has changed. I’m sure it’s not that my skin has become more sensitive. It may have a little, but not that much in such a short time — a matter of years — since I can remember being out in the sun at this time of year and not feeling the sting of it after a few hours. I am reminded of an episode of ST:TNG where captain picard is transported to an alien world and lives a whole life in a different culture where the sun is slowly going supernova which effects the planet and eventually destroys it. This is demonstrated by gradually turning up the contrast/brightness in the camera. I may have blogged about this before.

*New shoes:*

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunnybreaks/8992145360/” title=”Cruises in new shoeses by esquimauxpie, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2873/8992145360_e20aa44a77_n.jpg” width=”320″ height=”320″ alt=”Cruises in new shoeses”></a>

There’s a New Balance clearance centre on smith street collingwood with 574s for 80bucks, so ebay sellers who advertise products they don’t have can go to oblivion. I couldn’t get the exact colour I was after but I am satisfied.

J-e got a job last week! [at cryptic clue: “to grok” (less deep)] I always knew that when we came here, her job-skills would be more marketable than mine. Her team is Team Baby. If it was me I would insist it be called Team: Baby! or at least Baby team alpha. Anyway, this is good news financially and so one thing we have been sorely lacking is a decent couch. We got a futon sofa couch from Back To The Futon in Preston. It’ll be delivered next week and is sure to do wonders for my posture and productivity.