Monthly Archives: September 2010

How to annoy your girlfriend and make a new pop filter

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Today I needed to record a podcast for a work project and fortunately I own an appropriate microphone, but during recording it was quite obvious that an abundance of the letter ‘p’ in my text a pop filter was necessary. The only problem is of course that here in the apocalyptical desert of South East Essex there is a void where good music shops should be. So I had to find another way. Fortunately the essentials were all available. Much to the annoyance of the best girlfriend ever, who is now one sock down.

Voila. One pop filter a la mode.

Through the Jungle of Krefeld I Walked

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Today I did some (rather embarrassingly unsuccessful) geocaching around the beautiful Niepkuhlen, a collection of former Rhine tributaries. While rather disgruntled, I had to hand to those lower rhine Germans: they do keep their cities beautiful, with lovely walkways, a minimum of garbage of the streets and some of the most lovely parks and nature reserves you can wish for. I think we might have to send the mayor of Tower Hamlets on a fact finding mission.

Matt Bianco @ Jazz Cafe Camden, 17.9.2010

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Pic by Isobel Kellermann

Pic by Isobel Kellermann

The second Matt Bianco concert within a year in London! It’s quite obvious that the band is slowly but surely happy to play in the UK again, and the capacity crowd at the Jazz Cafe was utterly delighted to have their heroes back. It’s quite rare to see Mark Fisher and Mark Reilly smile at the same time, but there they were, beaming like Cheshire Cats, infused by an appreciative audience which went completely mad from the first minute of the gig, singing in happy unison with Reilly, Sim and Foster and spurning on the soloists. The setlist was the by now well rehearsed mix of classics and the recent Hifi Bossanova but with an exciting new take on ‘Half a Minute’, inspired by the recent Joey Negro remix. It’s interesting which of the 11 studio albums don’t make it on the setlist anymore: there were no songs from ‘Rico’, ‘Echoes’, ‘Another Time Another Place’ and ‘Samba in your casa’ which shows a certain negligence of their ‘naughties’ period.  Fortunately they did not drop their best live song, the brillant ‘Lost in You’ which with an extended Salsa section in the middle and Mark Fisher’s long piano solo continues to be the highlight of each show. ‘Fordiebianco’s law’ states that the quality of each Matt Bianco gig can be ascertained by Mark Fisher’s keyboard solo during ‘Lost in You’. If he’s really into it and sparks fly he’s been infused by the audience’s vibe and is obviously enjoying himself, but if it’s a lacklustre affair the gig was obviously not as enjoyable for everybody.

So for Fisher’s performance on a scale of 10, Friday’s was a 24 and the same can be said for the rest of the gig. Which again shows that Fordiebianco’s law is valid. Even Danny White was seen enjoying himself!

Quod erat demostrandum.

It was an absolute joy to see this much loved band play in front of a happy hame crowd, and I can only hope that there will be many more London gigs in the future.

I Shall Wear Midnight

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The arrival of a new Pratchett is always a big deal here in our tiny refuge within the hellish suburbian post-industrial wastelands that they call South-East Essex. It pretty much means that I will not be available for any chores within the house, including picking up the phone, answer emails or at all rise from the sofa. After me finishing The Book, it’s the best girlfriend’s ever turn to take over the tome and to indulge in a brief spell of escapism full of politically incorrect witches, moronic right wing types, ghosts with OCD and anarchic gnomes. So this time it was the teenage witch Tiffany to take over the helm in the protagonist’s chair and as before she seems to bring out Pratchett’s more introspective side. Why this book is labelled ‘for young adults’ (like the previous Tiffany novels) is beyond me. First, you could very well argue that all of Pratchett’s books appeal to young adults (and middle aged adults and older adults and decrepit old fogies like myself). Second, Tiffany always seems to bring out Prattchett’s philosophical side, making the books arguably more attractive to an older audience. Third, the distiction is completely arbitrary.

Anyway, the book is (as usual) a cracker. It covers all the usual, recurring issues that Pratchett (understandably) has been grappling with repeatedly in his last novels: Hate, tolerance, feminism, death, pre- and postmarital sex are all covered with Pratchett’s usual deftness and it’s hard not to feel both elated and shed a tear at the end of the novel.

I remain convinced that if more people would read Pratchett (especially Teaparty conservatives), the world would surely a better place, but that remains a pipe dream as he is surely blacklisted for these guys, just like that dangerous indoctrinator J.K. Rowling.

Opentech

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Yesterday UKUUG and the government (in form of data.gov.uk) held Opentech 2010. It was the usual mixture of very thin hirsute and bald overweight (that would be me) men and a suprisingly respectable amount of respectable women. The nutter index was unusually low and the questions asked during the Q&A session were all exceedingly sensible.

Highlight of the day was without question a joint session with my favourite media geek, the indomitable Bill Thompson and the CEO of environmental consultancy AMEE. Unsurprisngly, the chap from AMEE wanted us to do something to preserve the future, while Uncle Bill (who, btw, does his best work for the best podcast on the web, Radio New Zealand’s ‘This way up‘) wanted us to lobby the media to preserve the the slowly decaying content of their archives. Fair enough.

OpenTech resembled your typical male geek: excellent intellectual content with a shambolic exterior. The cafe didn’t deliver, people didn’t get their food, the place looked like a bomb exploded and there were no facilities (apart from a nearby pub) to make oneself comfy and discuss php with one’s peers.

If they could that right, I am sure the guest list might look even better, and the attendance would go up as well. Nevertheless, Opentech delivered. A bit like a slightly smelly IT-chap in a dirty thinkgeek t-shirt popping around your workplace and fixing your printer, while making surprisingly intelligent conversation about data mining and role playing games.