Season's Greetings!

and a festive start to the new Gregorian calendar year. We shall be here. Oh yes.
R
Lots of love to Dave, our regular reader.

The Arcade Fire!, Harry Partch!, Chris Clark!

Yo homies. My newst favourite band used to be the arcade fire, who, i have just discovered, have a charming website. Flash, but full of hidden treasures... You want the band site, not the fansite, although thats more useful for things like tourdates and stuff. Great band. Seemingly with connections to Supersilent and Deathprod of Norwegian fame..

Also, my friend Kath has just directed me to an archive of interactive instruments based on those created by American composer Harry Partch (1901-1974). You casn play em all!

Chris Clark (see earlier post) is playing at the Liquid Lounge, Glasgow this Thursday 11-3am, £6. If anyone would like to join me, I'll probably be goin'n
.
R

Paper Sculptures

more, and more specifically:

http://www.petercallesen.com/

Return

Hello. Gaz has reminded me of your existence, blog. It is indeed odd at the topsy turviness of the commercial sector lobbying harder than government in this particular area. My apathy says that its not really surprising from this government. the wrong attitude?

Today I have been recording with Adam Beattie. A good day, and chat often returned to general electronica themes and Chris Clark in particular, who, it turns out, Chris the guitarist has met and knows from his childhood days. How odd. I was told about him by Greg, my friend in Minnesota. A long way for a st. Albans lad to go. Chris Clark is playing at the Liquid Lounge here in GLasgow on December 8th, to which I shall go.
Anyway, this was partly why Adam and I were inspired to spend an hour tonight building contact microphones from piezoelectric transducers. The results were interesting, if surprisingly unversatile however.
I also returned to try my hand at a little electronic noise making as I have been meaning to do for ages. The results are here, on the newly rehosted thesound, and were made from the sound of my new printer (thankyou neel!) turning on.

Will you come to our party this saturday?

And have you met my nephew, Rowan?

And have you seen my business site?

So many new things.

lots of love
R

I got Picasa...

 Well lets see if this here works...
 

mnk::scanjam::words

mnk::scanjam::words

Adventures in Catherine Alice Kunguland

Adventures in Catherine Alice Kunguland

For those of you who haven't heard, Cathy, the beautiful and loving singer in our band, died two weeks ago after a long fight against leukemia.

There will be a tribute fundraiser in Glasgow around the end of July/ start of August, donations are welcome for the hospice where she stayed for a wee while. I''ll put up the details as and when.

www.strath.ac.uk

www.strath.ac.uk: "White band of support for poverty campaign

theSound has enjoyed an update: - I spent my Sunday playing around with pictures of my sanctuary like room with photoshop and autostitch

dBass remixes give preview of the much anticipated demo/EP

I don't know if they count as remixes since the original mix itself still isn't finished. Maybe these are the originals, and the dBass EP if it ever appears will be a remix...

Anyway, Quest (AKA Matt the beatboxer) has interpretated two of our newer songs...

IQ.mp3 which is sounding quite Nitin Sawhneyesque.
MutedMusic.mp3 which sounds nothing like the original Fraser's choon.

These tracks are copyright of Quest primarily and dBass secondarily cos all the playing I think comes from our sessions. Please respect that and don't go distributin' without creditin'.

PS. speaking of the Sawhney, he's playing the Arches this Monday: check it out. further upcoming gigs in Glasgow:
Esbjorn Svensson Trio, 21st May @ Arches, we've got our tickets have you got yours?
Ben Folds, Juneish(?), Royal COncert Hall, ditto
Sigur Ros, July 7th @Carling Academy, cannae go unfortunately.
Any other gigs of note Gaz?

mossgraffiti

mossgraffiti

... a mixture of the urban and rural, the vandal and the gardener?...

zero-waste

If anyone else is at all interested, a few weeks back I started another blog on the topic of my particular areas of thinking and interest, that is sustainable and open source design. For my own benefit but could be of interest. I should really put tangible interaction in there too - I keep finding inspiring stuff on that... There are already enough blogs on the web surely without me adding to the chaff.

I'm secretly quite happy that the success of my degree has basically come down to how quickly and well I can learn to sew. I am now about 7 hours in to my sewing career and its going quite promisingly, although I have an inkling that the thing may end up a coupla inches smaller than oringally planned...

Just me and a 'Pfaff' sewing machine (surprisingly little of that activity with it though) and my entire jazz collection which I'm wading through. So far we've had Esbjorn Svensson Trio, Brad Mehldau, Urban Connection, Miroslav Vitous, Miles Davis, Thelonious, Thelonious AND Art - moving on to just Art next, then maybe Art and Marsalis, then straight Marsalis, then back to the Davis I presume. I like to follow a fluid flow of players in my listening...

What I like about Thelonious is that, I'm sure entirely indeliberately, he hides little gems of genius within a whole heap of dire, blundering playing. In my humble opinion of course.

Make you rown Tory poster

She Only Says 'I Love You' When She's Drunk

Fantastic new theatrical experience coming to the Glasgow QMU Next Sunday and Monday, 24th and 25th April and in St. Andrew's on the 29th. Be there or be quadriequilateral

Intelligent plastics change shape with light

Intelligent plastics change shape with light - MIT News Office

Wow, how cool. Applications? Mapping wallets that automatically take strike and dip readings under certain lighting conditions? Or something less geeky?... Shoes whose (nice bit o rhyming) laces automatically undo under a certain invisible UV light, thus rendering the unsuspecting freedom fighter shoe less while fleeing... Cars with window blinds that automatically respond to sunlight but not street lights.... Protective packaging for , er, things that shouldn't be expoised to certain wavelengths. like paintings in museums. Arms that automatically slap any inconsiderate flash photographers in the theatre...
thats enough for me.

The Complete Guide to Isometric Pixel Art

The Complete Guide to Isometric Pixel Art Like it says... One to come back to.

Taste for Makers

An interesting essay on taste/'good' design? are they equivalent?

theSlog News of the Weird returns...

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Beds/Bucks/Herts | Biscuit-eating dummy tests crumbs

This calls for the resurrection of the title, 'theSlog News of the Weird' again, methinks.

The Observer | Review | Magnetic personalities:

"'We shower light rays on to a scene and analyse what happens as they interact with materials,' Wedge explains, grateful after his patient slog of the past 20 years that computer technology has finally made 3-D film-making so much easier. 'We had no idea what we were in for when we started Blue Sky,' says Wedge. 'We just had an idea of what we wanted to do. When we got to a point where it seemed impossible, we just kept doing it. After 18 years, we have a lot of it done.'"

Chris Wedge, animator of Robots (the new film from Ice Age creators)

What a lovely way to describe ray-tracing. And an inspiring comment.

The Postmodernism Generator: Communications From Elsewhere

A new postodernism essay with every hit. spot the difference?

The Observer Bloggin good

including amusing discourse on the nature of the blog and just how not-for-profit theObserver may or may not be..

http://www.worldjumpday.org/ Teehee.

Ex rector of glasgow uni writing about the nee dfor a play ethic as opposed to a work ethic.: playjournal

Vhairi's started up an excellent wee blog, namely 6amthoughts

Hark! Glad folk of woe, your confused meandering little minds wander. BUT never fear, I, grand caped master of pancakery, have found the cure. Always check the backs of your tiny ears. In the ways of our ancestors, "crumble!" but also "crumble!"

Word. BO!
Grand central conquistador, roy and little tiny insignificant miniscule wee infinitessimal bean. (pea)

Another great photo blog to feast yer eyes upon:

Express Train

Submit Response

A very well kept Glasgow blog. You may or may not find things of interest. Plenty of pics.

A new candidate for visuals? I really like these New York pinhole camera photos, what do you think? Good mix of London and NYC too.

Basically I'd like to link to most things I find through Jason Kottke (left, mumblings). worth checking out, normally his leftover links are better than his posts..

Gilly is back on the blog.

Its been a while, for obvious festive season reasons. One exam left now, my last ever. hopefully. Well, Its not like anyone resits their final year, do they? I son't think I'd want to anyway. Once is quite enough, whatever the result. Lasers and Optical Systems, the only thing between me and doing something interesting/useful/what i came to uni to do.

New year's res: get on top of the web thing again.