Todays Haul

Actually a slight cheat as it arrived yesterday, but I now have in my hands William Gibson's new novel Zero History.



I bought Neuromancer on Brighton Railway Station in 1984. I opened it read the first line 'The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel'. That started a love affair thats continued to this day. While his books have gradually moved away from Science fiction to be set in the increasingly complex world we live in the poetry and beauty of his style holds me as tightly as ever.

And by coincidence I finished the new Neal Asher yesterday :-)

My other haul, in this case a bargain, was the second hand gorgeous boxed limited edition set of My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade.

The album which I love deeply is the same, in this case it's the box itself that is so exceptional. Including a book about the album and it's concepts by the band the whole style is Victorian/Steampunk/Faulkner. it reminds me of those deep south funeral 'pictures' made of plaited twisted hair and dried flowers



Actually even the fact that it's second hand is fitting :-)

My Chemical romance have become one of my latest obsessions. There may be more mentions...

update

I have had a countdown clock on my desktop for the last 10 months. From a count of over 300 days we are now down (at the time of writing)to 14 days 10 hours 53 minutes.

MUSE at Wembley. Announced at the O2 10 months ago we are now nearly there.

While these days I have a new album by My Chemical Romance to look forward to. Flamingo (and subsequent tour) by Brandon Flowers and even Roxy Music next January at the O2 (the last time they toured as a band my mother wouldn't let me go) Muse are my first love.

After much panicking my tickets finally arrived yesterday. And now it's real.

There will be more..

Scrappy

This is very scrappy, I may get better if I can get back into the swing of it.

It's been so long since I posted an entry Google had forgotten who I was. Just as well I remembered my password right..

Talking of Passwords, I recently read the Cuckoo's egg by Cliff Stoll. An account of chasing the first real hackers through a mid '80's landscape of DEC Vax's and Unix. Things have certainly changed since those days of 'proper' computing, and certainly some of the conclusions drawn at the end of the book are actually laughable in hindsight but it did hammer home the need for passwords to be non dictionary words..

I do now have a desire for tie dye tee shirts, and maybe it's just as well I don't have enough hair to grow (well with any hope of attractiveness anyway)

Last night I fully tested out my refurbished B&W DM2 speakers Built in 1972, they really don't make them like that any more. Huge by todays standards, while the technology of manufacturing speakers has improved, it almost seems to be in inverse proportion to their ability to play music.

I started off with some Portishead on vinyl, went on to Bowie and could actually have sat there all night playing album after album. Oh yes and nothing beats the 12" album for sheer musical ability either..



LCD Soundsystem are 'attacked' in this video for 'drunk girls' buy guys in panda type costumes. I am sure they are some sort of art terrorist group. Or something. anyway I wouldn't fancy them let loose on me..

BBC 6Music

It's been called the BBC's secret station, due probably to being launched in 2002 onto the unknown and unused DAB digital radio network.

I suspect a few more people now know of it's existence since the Times 'leaked' a BBC report that it was due to be closed along with Asian network and a lot of it's online presence.

The howls of protest have been staggering, and none have been more surprised then the stations presenters themselves. Shaun Keavney on Friday morning was quite choked up, and this was a mere couple of hours after the leakage... since then we on the twitter #save6music and #savebbc6music groups have *really* got going.

We have support from Rock stars like David Bowie on down, the NUJ is on our side along with hosts of comedians celebrities and the like. We now even have a number of MP's.The only real silence has been from those you would have thought would be the most vocal, presenters from the other stations, most notably Radio 1. Jealous perhaps.

I have written to the Mark Thompson himself, to the BBC and to the board of governors along with several MP's and ministers, the BBC complaints department, signed petitions and constantly tweeted and Facebook'd on the subject.

And why would I bother, what is the magic of BBC 6music? I mean it's only a bleedin' radio station...

Probably 10 years ago I'd stopped listening to music. Strange but true. For years I didn't even have anything to play it on. There was a half hearted 'cinema' thing in the living room and that was it. I listened to Radio 4 and everything else was at most relegated to the loft. The albums went down the dump... (I know)

I'm not even sure why it happened now. I just thought that nobody was making music for me and that I'd better face it, ageing and time for talk only radio.

in my 40's and not dead yet. Way past radio1 and it's non stop banalities and diet of stock aitken and Waterman (now simon cowell) and/or rap/dance and *never* ready for the suburban wasteland that is radio2. My time was over.

Now I'm not saying that it was 6music that changed this bleak outlook, but suddenly something changed. All I know is that they have fed into my renewed passion for music. I have NEVER bought so much, NEVER listened to so much. I have been to concerts, I have 4 *count then4!* full on Hi Fi systems with facilities for every format. I have an iPod that I could not live without.

6music is the Radio 3 for the Rock & Pop generation (a fact I see is being picked up by more and more people) it is clever, passionate, they care about music and what they play. And most importantly they play music for me and people like me, music that is not covered by and other radio station anywhere.

It is thanks to 6music I discovered MUSE.

This cultural vandalism must not happen, and by god if I have anything to do with it, it won't.

eventually

Everything seems to take way more time then you'd have thought, but at last the ceiling is more or less finished.

I did change to solvent free adhesive and found I had been led astray by my online builder buddies (who would have thought it?) Solvent free far from being the inferior sibling is in fact way better at the job then the hallucination inducing stuff. Maybe builders just like being off their heads. (that explains much)

There is now a vastly reduced visibility hatch to the loft room/loft which is now much bigger, way heavier and looks as impressive as a Sylvia Anderson bank vault door due to the massive slabs of polystyrene insulation glued to the back side.

Now it'll be a trip to Ikea. My stylish 1960's style drum light may look very scandi-stylish but gives a light so dull in that position I just want to kill myself. A common occurrence I find with these horrible compact fluorescent bulbs.

Halogens. That's the only option :-)I used to love proper downlighters, R63 and PAR38 spot bulbs, and what ever happened to parabolic reflectors and track lighting?.. #sigh#

I'm after a pair of speakers on eBay but people keep bidding on them. Even though it's very small bids it's very depressing. I'm not going to say what they are as I'm getting paranoid.

If I get them I'll tell you all about it.

And If I don't I'll still tell you all about it.

But I better had. GRRR!

Stoned

Not as exciting as it sounds.

I'm putting a new ceiling up on the top hall. What that means is gluing pine panelling over the artex that's already there.

Very retro I know, but I am very retro.

The worst thing is the 'no more nails' used to do it with. It's hideously full of solvent, you can almost see the air vibrate as you use it. And very quickly you find your mood changing, and you start getting very clumsy and dizzy. I didn't even think products like that were legal any more.

Incidentally should you ever do this yourself, the trick is not only to stick it to the surface with a 'grab adhesive' (I'd recommend using some other product, preferably water based) but also to glue each plank to the previous using wood glue in the groove. I've seen some horrible shrunken panelling. It never happens to mine.

Of course you could do it the old way with battens and the like and that would avoid possibly falling off the working platform & down the stairs because you are so stoned.

What I want

What I want is a limitless tab at Amazon.

I've just had the last fruit of my Christmas Amazon voucher and from now on it's strictly actual money.

This year I've done really well with n'er a wrong move, but I love the feeling that the latest click on 'add to basket' isn't costing actual cash.

What did I get I hear you cry.. well the Arcade Fire, The Big Pink and initial forays into Depeche Mode you already know about

My latest Haul has been more Depeche Mode (wow have I got into them, I hadn't realised what I was missing), The Killers live at the Albert all. I've not heard/seen it yet, but I'm assured it is, well, Killer.

Also the new Massive Attack, Heligoland. I like it. Mezzanine is definitely one of my all time favourite albums and the new Sade, Soldier of Love. People say all her stuff sounds the same. I prefer consistent. Late nights and red wine. Just never play her during daylight hours or you'll feel kind of hung over.

My book haul has been less extensive, none of my favourite authors seems to have anything new right now but I did get This is Not a Game from Walter Jon Williams. It's a kind of game/real life crossover novel like Charles Stross did in Halting State and I loved that. I'd love to find more authors I like so I can feed my habit more reliably.

Especially since Alistair Reynolds has dropped off the list, publishing what I strongly suspect is old garbage he found at the bottom of his reject drawer in the hopes of refilling his credit crunched bank account. Doesn't work Alistair, sorry. I'm not getting caught again.

Next is a 'tv tie in' (GASP) The memoir Beautiful People by Simon Doonan. It was made into a stunning charming and very funny series by the BBC.. And finally The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. A real life spy/hacker chase thriller through early computer networks by someone who was actually there and really did it. Recommended by this guy on Twitter...