Sunny Breaks

There is indeed a reason for the Alta Vista search engine to keep on existing — and it is its cataloging of audio on the net. Like this for example.
I’d never realised how many wacky DJ names there were out there, from DJ Disc Jockey to DJ Pooh. There’s even a DJ name generator for prospective DJs stuck for a name, but really anything goes — just look around you for inspiration – DJ coffee table, DJ floppy disk, DJ Keens Mustard – and so on and so forth. I bags the reflexive sounding ‘DJ Names’ – if not for me then at least for a fictional character.

From what I looked/listened through, I liked DJ fish finger, DJ Dentist and DJ Sergei/DJ Kalaschnikow in a dodgey kind of way, sort of.
Okay stop saying DJ now.

Dr. Doolittle may be fictional, but David Attenborough is pretty close – and real. He’s not talking to them, but he’s mastered the fine art of Hanging Out with the animals. He’s always just popping up next to them – what a dude.
And in one of those minor magical moments – I saw this image on telly earlier tonight and thought it’d be great if there was a still of that somewhere on the internet.
[[image:damitmeerkat.jpg:meerkat:center:1]]
It’s like the more I’m able to see things from different perspectives, the more I’m spun out by the diversity of weird and wonderful animals on the planet.

“Evans, too, says he has had some concern over this particular trend and what it all means. ”I do worry sometimes that parents are giving the message that children are possessions,“ he says.” – from here (article about using brand names as first names), reminds me a bit of a para in that Salon.com article I linked to a while back about the ‘metrosexual’ and how beckham had got tattoos of his kid(s?) names – ‘wearing them like a trophy’ – if I remember correctly. And, as you can imagine, that’s taken off as a trend bigtime.
And there’s all these people who are making up weblogs and writing them pretending to be their toddler. There’s a bunch of them in the Melbourne Blogs list. Maybe it’s a different issue – but it still seems like a kinda dipppy thing to do. And there was a lot of people subscribing to Triple R FM (during the last radiothon) who were subscribing in their child’s name — not that it got them a discount or anything – just to be cute I s’pose. The Breakfasters made a competition out of it – the youngest subscriber — and someone rang up from hospital and subscribed their 1-2 hour old kid. ?

Ps. – I would relink to that salon article but it’s saying ‘it can’t find that particular article now’ — which is something I’ve been coming across quite a bit with news sites — seriously fast link rot.

I heard the other day that next year’s tour de france is starting in Belgium. And when paying a little more attention to it all this year I found out that they have a tour de spain and and italian version too.
And so I propose that they combine all of these and maybe just call it ‘le tour’ because it was heading that way anyway — and have the cyclists ride around europe all year round. During the height of summer it could cruise up through scandenavia and then in winter it could stick to the southern bits like spain and the bottom of the boot. When riders collapse permenently they could be replaced by others to keep their teams going. It’d be a huge ratings success.

I don’t make a habit of regurging other people’s writing, but this is really nice non-fiction – from the ‘Unwrapping Use Value’ chapter of Susan Willis’ A Primer for Daily Life (1991) :

“Of all the attributes of mass-produced commodity packaging today, the most important is the use of plastic. The plastic cover acts as a barrier between the consumer and the product, while at the same time it offers up a naked view of the commodity to the consumer’s gaze. Sometimes the plastic covering is moulded to fit the contours of the commodity and acts like a transparent skin between the consumer’s hand and the object. Shaped and naked, but veiled and withheld, the display of commodities is sexualised. Plastic packaging defines a game of cache – cache where sexual desire triggers both masculine and feminine fantasies. Strip-tease or veiled phallus – packaging conflates a want for a particular object with a sexualised form of desire.”

“Packaging prolongs the process of coming into possesion of the commodity. A buyer selects a particular item, pays for it, but does not fully possess it until he or she pulls open it’s plastic case or cardboard box. Possession delivers a commodity’s use value into the hands of the consumer. Packaging acts to seperate the consumer from the realisation of the use value and heightens his or her anticipation of having and using a particular commodity. Packaging may stimulate associations with gift-wrapped Christmas and birthday presents. However, plastic commodity packaging reveals what gift-wrapping hides. The anticipation we associate with the gift-wrapped present is for the unknown object. In anticipating a plastic-wrapped commodity, we imagine the experience of its use since its identidy is already revealed.”

“In all our experience of consumption, we are little different from the child who convinces his mother to buy the latest Ghostbuster action figure. From the moment he picks the packaged toy off the shelf, to the moment he passes through the checkout, he will trace the contours of the package with his hands, attempt to scrutinise the toy’s detail with his eyes, and lose himself in imagining how it will finally feel to push the lever that makes the Ghostbuster’s hair stand on end and eyes pop out with fright at the delightfully cold and gelatinous slime – also included in the package, but not yet available to the touch.”

My question is, what does this say about those people who collect toys but then don’t open them?

Always feel better about having a buzz around the internet when it’s after doing what I’ve suppose to have done, as is the case right now. Was having some serious freak-out moments yesterday about workload.

More on the Australian ethos: this story is fantastic because it includes (not one but) two key elements of the Australian Character — kleptomania, and having a stuffed lion in your lounge room.

From the article, “at times he used museum vehicles to remove specimens and displayed in his home a large stuffed lion that was a museum heritage item first exhibited in 1911”.
I also think it’s great because he was the museum Bug Extermination Guy. Just like in the movie version of Naked Lunch.
And because no serious harm was done and everything was recovered (thanks to the mass media) we can all have a bit of a laugh at this guy and his mental problems.

The October LinuxFormat mag. has FreeBSD 4.8 on it – pretty neat. Never had a go at BSD, but will in approx. 7 weeks.

Channel ten lost ys at 7pm a couple of months ago when the plunged into big brother. Where could I go? That half hour can be pretty barren. I ended up watching sbs world sport. I’m not much interested in soccer or swimming or netball or grid-iron or rugby or anything else where there’s no chance of something exploding into flame. But I do really like the fact that they cover those sports. According to the commercial stations there’s nothing else except AFL lately. Not that I’ve been meaning to dis football — what I forgot to say is that as a sporting pursuit I find it infinitely more admirable than cricket, which is full of crones and thugs. At least those footy blokes exercise.
If there was ever something that needed some heavy duty spin-doctoring, it’s international cricket.

Anyway, I mean to say – Les Murray was back on World Sports tonight and I really get my jollies from hearing him pronounce “Juan Pablo Montoya” — which he did. Such Gusto!

Continuing the music from the invisible – The Go! Team – Ladyflash, at short fuse. I’m diggin’ that Archie Bell n’ the Drells sample.

Bob has stuck up a couple of Morcheeba acoustic+live tracks here. I’ve never really listened to morcheeba, but that song ‘the sea’ is very recognisable. Recorded somewhere in western europe and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s difficult to get here.

Meanwhile, I’ve Gone to Find Myself. If I Get Back Before I’ve Found Me, Please Keep Me Here.

This is in part a test if the backpack trings feature of Pivot. But I also have to say about a little of this post of jon’s at the Spork — the movie The Italian Job – I haven’t seen it, and wondered about how much to it there could be if they use footage from the same car chase scene twice in the one 15-20 second tv commercial. :)

I haven’t bothered to look it up, but this must be another remake a la Ocean’s Eleven. I remember at some point in kidhood seeing this Brit movie about a bank job or heist or something, and the criminals/heroes getting away in a trio of mini minors, red white, blue. A big chase scene – through giant stormwater tunnels, just like the ad. for this current movie.

The thing about that bit of old footage is that it’s the only example of ‘sampling’ in tv/film I’ve seen. That whole car chase was reused in an episode of McGuyver. I’m sure the ideas and technical set ups for action scenes are borrowed all the time but this was completely lifted.

comments:
Jon
email:
url: the spork
date: 2003-08-27-23-16
Didn’t seem to backtrack but oh well =). The italian job feels like it could be a remake of Oceans Eleven – only that the inherent Calm/Coolness of George Clooney isn’t there. It says at imdb that Ed norton did this movie “under duress” .. it sure looks like that.

yak sox
date: 2003-08-28-00-01
Yeh – I meant Ocean’s eleven was a remake of a 60s movie, same as this probably was.
I’d heard it said that Ed Norton was one of the few lucky actors have not been in a dud movie to date — but maybe this was his first.

Will have to notify the coders of the t/b glitch.

Oh boy there’s something getting in the roof again. Sounds bigger than a rat, bigger than a cat. I think it’s a mountain lion.
A hectic kind of day. A bit here on CORE about how ‘they’ are adding WiFi technology to the australian V8 racing cars. For some reason the whole wireless bit about computers eludes me [hehe – which bit doesn’t?!] — It’s like philosophy. Maybe if I saw it in action.

Anyway – I don’t see the difference between that and the normal way cameras are set up in racing cars now.
I was actually thinking about how with things that are broadcast live, that have no plot (like – all sporting events, and (shudder) big brother) could really throw open the way they broadcast – so the viewer could chose how actively they wanted to view. Example: from as it is now – through to choosing which camera view you wanted to watch. You’d have a smaller auxillary screen with all the camera shots in a grid (like on pay tv, with that ‘what channel do you wanna watch now?’ thing) – press one of them to see it on the bigger screen.

This way, you choose who the “star/hero” is. Watch what’s happening at the head of the field/centre of play … or wherever else.
And even better than that – if the tv channels would throw open the commentary thing so that anybody with a little bit of hardware at home could offer their own commentary to the event, and the viewer could tune into that instead of the tv station schmoes if they wanted. Sure, there’d be a lot of dips out there getting into it, but you don’t have to listen to crappy radio just because it’s on the air.
There could well also be some really intelligent experts out there (you know what sport’s fanatics are like – so much brain used for so little) who aren’t as ego driven as people like ur.. well, like eddy mcguire for one.

Of course the tv stations would never go for it because they’d lose their revenue stream, but there’s probably some happy medium.

comments:

Jon
url: Core
date: 2003-08-22-15-23
You know – wireless is actually quitre nice – because once you have it setup – you can forget about it. Literally no need for cables. Imagine if you like how you’d feel about truely wireless headphones.

yak sox
date: 2003-08-22-21-05
Funny you should mention that — I was looking at a pair of them in a junkmail catalogue yesterday. They’re definitely something that the benefits of wirless become obvious quickly

I bought the new b(if)tek album today. I wasn’t really planning to, but it caught me by surprise in the music store, the visiting of which was also unplanned.
It’s called Frequencies Will Move Together – a CD and an extra CD of 12 remixes by other folk, including Architecture in Helsinki, monolake and telemetry orchestra.
Get this – from the sleeve: “This album was partly funded by a grant from the Australia Council to research the effects of low hertz frequencies in music. Frequencies Will Move Together contains deep bass frequencies from a series of our field recordings of both natural and mechanical sources. The field recordings include: cats purring, electricity sub-station, thunder, helicopters, trains and aeroplanes. They have been digitally manipulated, and in some cases, emulated by a collection of analogue synthesisers. We hope these sounds will entrain you.”

comments:

Jon
url: core
date: 2003-08-20-17-26
BT makes some comments about the subsonic sound thingie in a DVD I am watching atm (better living thought electronic circuitry)

yak sox
date: 2003-08-21-19-35
I take it you mean b(if)tek and not British telecom? :^)
Yeah – for musicians, they’re outspoken. I remember them appearing in an The Age magazine article about sampling and its legalities/ramifications too.

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This is really interesting, despite the fact that I’ve never seen a TiVo — and don’t know that they’re even for sale here yet. What I understand of what they do is kind of like a VCR… um.

But that’s not important. What I’m really wondering about is the intentions and forethought of the people who invent these things. I don’t think I have a wild imagination in thinking that while they are deciding what these things will be capable of (I’m talking about each device or bit of software) — that they don’t have access to all the other existing bits. I’m sure they sit around in the laboratory and plug them all into each other and realise what they are doing. And you can bet that folk like the Murdochs aren’t happy because (same with other technologies like those that record/play music) the nature of the technology is shifting gradually but drastically.

The alpha-numeric writing system is a technology. At one stage in western history it was pretty much owned by the Church — and so was a form of power. But eventually it was given over and now people don’t really have to pay to be able to use it. The Man likes even the drones to be able to write their name on documents.

But anyway, without overbaking this — that’s the way music/(tele)vision and the things that capture/play it with are going. I think. I don’t know. My head hurts.

I went stalking my cultural studies teacher’s office to see if I could pay for my mark this semester. He wasn’t there but there was a photocopy of the ‘if you see da police, Warn A Brother’ picture and a whole bunch of teachers’ union stuff there so I guess all the althusser stuff isn’t a ploy to get us to parrot it back without thinking after all. They do that sometimes, sneaky bastards.
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I mentioned Amon Tobin a week and a bit back. He’s on the NinjaTune record label, and at their site there’s a couple of Tobin tracks for download (on a different site here – on the discography page, down near the bottom: ‘Verbal’ featuring MC Decimal R and a remix of ‘people like Frank (except they spelled it franck) by some French dude) plus a whole bunch of other neat stuff like wallpapers, .mpegs, videos and screensavers — of other artists on the label too.

I found out which is the nation of Boom-Cha! – it’s Italy. They play it at the Formula One when the driver is driving a Ferrari because of the Italian connection.

Sad to see Jan Ullrich have a stack earlier this evening on the tour de france highlights. I was thinking, very few people can relate to smashing up a racing car (or perhaps a few more – smashing up their own car at speed) but nearly everyone can relate to coming a cropper on a pushbike.

Jon Harsem
url: http://www.core.org.au
date: 2003-07-27-18-37
I am from the relaive region were the Tour De France should make me wanna watch it but somehow it doesn’t appeal to me. I dunno why .. it’s curious in fact. You’re probably right about stacking it on the bike… except of course there aren’t usually 20 people running over your you afterwards ..

yak sox
url: www.spouting.net
date: 2003-07-27-19-07
True. I haven’t had a bingle at 60km/h either, which isn’t rare for them.
Those pile ups looked nasty. Motor-bikes move a lot faster, but they have leather too..

Via Cybbis – there’s this finnish pop-rock song that supposedly had sentences in it when played backwards. Finnish sounds about the same to me forwards or backwards. It’s at Palikka – no permalink but scroll til you see ‘PMMP’. Sounds a bit like Garbage — the band, not the evaluative adjective.

Jaybird of bird on the moon posted a song featuring Muhhammed Ali here. In some ways it doesn’t sound all that odd. If he was at his peak in this era he’d probably have a multi-album recording contract.

What’s the deal with courgette over zuccini? Why is ‘zuccini’ no good and un-hip to say anymore? hhmm.

I realised what one of my problems with following recipes is this evening : measurements. I don’t have any measuring implements and my guestimates are wildly inaccurate.

I watched the first double kicker episode of ‘Andromeda’ (from the makers of star trek) the other night. It’s good ja. At first I was thinking it was like MacGuyver meets Farscape, but then i realised the lead actor was Kevin Sorbo, who was Hercules in that tv series a few years back. Make fun of me if you will, but I thought that series was okay, and he (along with a whole bunch of other things) is exactly what Star Trek needed. Things like getting rid of absolutely everything that’s ever been in or connected with every other carnation of ST. I think Andromeda is scheduled to start airing on channel nine in 2009.

Unfortunately the RSS feed for here is malformed at the moment but i’m asking the people what must be done.

Comments:

Graham
url: grudnuk.com/
date: 2003-07-18-04-56
Bloody Jamie Oliver and all these other pom chefs, that’s who. I think I was going to get around to the zucchini/courgette thing myself, having written something up as a draft but I don’t think I actually put it online. I believe Australians say zucchini because it was Italian and Greek migrants who first popularised the vegetable here. Goes well with the trad meat and three veg, tho’.

yak sox
date: 2003-07-18-05-08
Yeh – I had to look it up but found the Italian bit interesting. From a more objective point of view, the italians and their words are just as sexy and cosmopolitan as the French. But perhaps it’s the fact that a whole bunch of them migrated here last century that maybe faded the mystique.
Yet it’d be the other way ‘round if a bunch of dirty frenchies had come instead.