Shaun Ryder/Grandpa Simpson?

Via Guy Garvey on 6music. Is Shaun Ryder actually Grandpa Simpson? Listen here about 40 seconds in.

g.

Oh to have co-workers to kill.

Which might seem like a harsh title for a post were it not in response to this:

Flying Lotus - Kill Your Co-Workers from Warp Records on Vimeo.

Alternatively: "What happens when one of my fave animators makes a video for one of my fave musicians? A CGI bloodbath in this case."

I was gently chastised yesterday by Brother Neel (as only brothers can) for writing that he described as 'terse': In my mind I have simply been reducing the mass of information we are increasingly expected to deal with, but I concur that this may have been at the cost of quality entertainment here at the Slog. Thankfully Dr. Dawg (that's right, DOCTOR) is reliably verbose (when he's not writing theses).

So, some further nuggets:
1. Kill Your Co-workers to me is another installment of wonderfully confident video game tinged upstep from Flying Lotus, whose faultlessly well appointed album Cosmogramma has been on repeat in the studio before and will be again.
2. I have complained to the unresponsive ears of the Facebook feed before about 6music's inability to count the members of Flying Lotus (one).
3. I am unreliably informed that Mr. Lotus is the great-nephew of the late Alice Coltrane and John Coltrane.
4. Beeple first came to my attention for drumming reasons with this CG folly.
5. I suspect Mr. B. Eeple may have come across Kritchard's robotic kreations before, and if not, should do.

To return to the title, a large part of the reason I have stopped blogging in general so much is that I have been in search of co-workers, indeed work of any kind, but co-workers in particular would be nice. I have come across some in Dundee, in Brian and Hamish, and indeed at the Studios, but would still on the whole prefer to be one of a full-time design team and to have a more steady, sensible working routine. This is such that I can a) preserve my sanity, b) actually make a living rather than scrape a survival, and c) have more time for making things and not talking about making things (or at least talk about it in the sense of analysis rather than marketing). The whole reason I'm in this untenable position is due to the addiction that is semi-professional musicianship of course. But I think a happy life/work/music (NB. music = life NOR work) balance is still possible with the support of the right others.

owzat?

this has been a post by ROY and took MORE THAN AN HOUR. geez.

Illuminating, on Type

A good Guardian read, extracted from Just My Type: A book about fonts, by Simon Garfield

Roy

N_ILK!

As they say, if you weren't there, you missed yourself (which doesn't make any sense as a saying I know, but it's not for the first time).

N_ILK: Loops Haunt - Radiohead refix, Hurache and Rubber Sun Grenade remix from Paul Gault on Vimeo.

N_ILK: Inspector Tapehead - A Fillet of Bozo & WCMJ from Paul Gault on Vimeo.

Roy

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole

For all you typography geeks.

by Gareth via Steve W.

Ahoy me hearties

Follow Pa johnson on his round britain sailing adventure here... In his words:
"Since my unfortunate M.I. earlier this month, I’ve decided to complete my rehab by sailing non-stop around Britain, anticlockwise, leaving tomorrow (Tuesday 31st August). My friend, Keith Patrick and I, will leave from Dunoon marina in the Holy Loch at about 5pm and expect to take around 17 days.
We will publish a blog at http://yewdap283.blogspot.com as and when we have a mobile and internet connection – please feel free to leave comments there or to my alternative email address johnson.iain@gmail.com if you wish.
The passage plan takes us down the Irish sea, around the Scilly Isles, up the English Channel, the North Sea to above Shetland, out to St. Kilda and, depending on time & weather either back through the North Channel or round the south of Eire and back up the Irish sea to Whitehaven."

David McCandless (Information is Beautiful) on TED

TheSlog favourite David McCandless gave a TED talk recently - its great to hear him explain some of his visualisations and how he got into doing them. Thanks to Georgey for first pointing out his blog.

Inspector Tapehead's album crawls into the ether!

But where can I buy it?

Here!

Will it come with any hand crafted Roy typography?

Yes!

What's it like writing the numbers 1 to 300 and the number 300 300 times in 2 hours?

Surprisingly OK!

So what's the album like?

Surprisingly OK!

Is there an expertly timed video for promotional purposes only?




Roy is in good spirits.

Garden EP by dBass - you got yours?

Just a wee reminder that the dBass EP is available now via Bandcamp..

If it was my home

A scary tool that shows you how big the gulf oil spill would be if it was centered on your home.

gareth

New pics up

Have had an evening of sorting through photos and as such have updated my Flickr for the first time in a while! Too much to talk about but shall list the sets:
Homegame, Whitehills windfarm, Edale, Scope, Love Calculator, Dundee, Dumfries and Galloway before Christmas, and even Paris!

Here's one at random:


I am Roy.

Haarfest announced.

Fence Records News � Haarfest!

Fence's Haarfest festival has been announced for Monday 16th to Saturday 21st of August, and as a pleasant surprise confirmation to me, features both Inspector Tapehead, and a certain Jon Rogers and pals of Product Design in Dundee. Good times.

Roy

Allotment tonight

This is very late, having done one of these gigs already, but allow me to publicise tonight's performance of Allotment 4 at least.



NTS say:

Produced by Angie Bual and Caroline Newall, the final Allotment offers an alternative night out by embracing cyberspace and the phenomena of social networking. An artistic take on websites including Facebook, MySpace and My Single Friend, Allotment will bring virtual networking experiences to life. Through live music, art and performance, the final Allotment experience will enable punters to reclaim the art of conversation, make new friends and take part in some dating games. As the night unfolds, three secret locations will also be brought in to the mix.

I say, I would never dream on basing a piece of musical work on a website, so can't really back up that statement! Fergus and I are, however, interested in the social dynamics of immprovisation, and as such we are putting on a version of Scope, the jam session where visual and musical improv coalesce. Following the practices we did last summer, this idea has come to fruition in a modified form, with Inspector Tapehead forming the core band. There are three 20minute sessions throughout the night, each time with the lineup including a different guest musician and visual artist. So at Allotment we can offer you:

Fergus Dunnet
Inspector Tapehead (Jonnie Common, Chris Croasdale and me, Roy)
Stuart Macpherson (dbass/JSS/formerly of Engine)
Justin Eade (Glimpse)
George Murray (dBass/One Ensemble/GIO)
Aby Vulliamy (One Ensemble/Nalle)
Jenny Soep (Drawing the experience)
and last night we had the percussive prowess of Peter Kelly (Moon Unit/ formerly of Galchen).

Check out this link for the event info, it's in Govancross Shopping Centre from 8pm tonight and last night was a corker.

Roy

Mr. Murphy on the Shanghai Expo

entschwindet und vergeht: Shanghai Expo - Armchair Review!

I think it is safe to say that Murphy is the only person capable of writing an architecture review that makes me laugh out loud.

That might have been read as it being the quality of his writing that is laughable, but I must stress that is not the case: it's purely the wit. Read it, chump.

Roy

A picture of my favourite pavilion follows..



Hoho. Seriously though, the Danes win hands down:

Janelle Monáe - Tightrope - Late Show with David Letterman

This just has to be seen to be believed! I wish I was in her band..

Roy

Eyjafjallaj�kull and Maths Sculpture � Maxwell’s Demon

Eyjafjallaj�kull and Maths Sculpture � Maxwell’s Demon

On the topic of that volcano..

Found this great image while surfing on the topic of hexayurts: mathematician Edmund Harriss, who has an interesting blog here, and has done some new layouts for hexayurts.

What the real big society means for the economy, charities and copyright

Two excellent mini docs just posted to the Guardian videostream from Heydon Prowse and William Pine:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2010/may/11/ethical-living-diy-big-society

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2010/may/12/ethical-living-real-big-society-two



These make essential viewing in my opinion, if only to come some some way to understanding where I'm coming from: ie. spending my time and earnings on the sometimes seemingly pointless area of open design. Its the empowerment stupid.

Roy

the coalition on CCS

What do certain sloggers make of this extract from our new government's new manifesto?

• The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient CCS to meet the emissions performance standard

• Continuation of the present government's proposals for public sector investment in CCS technology for four coal-fired power stations; and a specific commitment to reduce central government carbon emissions by 10% within 12 months.

We are agreed that we would seek to increase the target for energy from renewable sources, subject to the advice of the climate change committee.

Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction. Conservatives, by contrast, are committed to allowing the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects (under a new national planning statement) and provided also that they receive no public subsidy.

We have agreed a process that will allow Liberal Democrats to maintain their opposition to nuclear power while permitting the government to bring forward the national planning statement for ratification by parliament so that new nuclear construction becomes possible.

This process will involve:

• The government completing the drafting of a national planning statement and putting it before parliament

• Specific agreement that a Liberal Democrat spokesman will speak against the planning statement, but that Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain; and clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence.

My questions: is this wildly different to current policy? And what on earth do the last paragraphs mean in practical terms??

Roy

Maps!

Delightful exhibit on at the British Library until September: Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art. For those that haven't figured it out yet, yes I am a map addict, but bias aside, I love this map. Click through to explore...

gareth

Enez myspace up

The demo for Enez is now up on myspace here, we'll be doing our second performance ever at Moniaive Folk Festival on the 8th May. All comments welcomed..

Climate Tricks - Update

Well 2009 is truly over so I thought I'd update that image from the post I made pre-christmas without dropping 2009 data. Doesn't help does it? Dang. Perhaps this will become a yearly effort, that way, every new year of data I post in isolation of any trend, the greater chance I have of proving global warming stopped after 1998. Come on Eyjafjallajokull I know you want to help me out in 2010.

How do you cut UK emissions 80%?

Nice interactive on the guardian website that allows you to play being the PM by dragging sliders to try and cut UK emissions by 80% by 2050. It also demands that you balance the electricity demand from different sources (though it is not exhaustive: no gas/coal/biomass with ccs). Anyway, I tried to do it without limiting consumption and travel. Answer, impossible. And as for flying, I'm going to climate hell...

Another fine graphic

From Mr. McCandless, brought to my attention by George, another great infographic on a rather pertinent topic..
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/

Aural Dispatch

Some new Canadian indie finds from a recent Jason Collett gig. Collett was good but I was equally, if not more, impressed by sometimes Feist band-member Afie Jurvanen recording as Bahamas and the Collett backing band in and of themselves, Zeus, were a joy to listen too.

Good gig.

gareth

Malcolm's Missives

Is anyone reading Malcolm Tuckers Election Briefing over at the graun? Singularly the best take on the election I've read...

With props to the real Malcolm: Jesse Armstrong.

gareth

three happenings in three days

1. Love Calculator @ The Forest Fringe @ The Arches, Glasgow.

- Fergus Dunnet and Angie Bual present a machine that *will* calculate
your match, as part of this microfestival in The Arches. I'm providing
the sounds for it!
Friday and Saturday from 7.30, £10/£5. flyer here.

2. Ganghut @ GI @ Southside Studios, Glasgow.

- The southide's opening for the Glasgow International Festival of
Visual Art, with Dundee's Ganghut presenting their musical/
environmental/ performance based endeavours along with the usual
southside shenanigans.
Saturday from 7. Featuring homemade pizza, all free.
Exhibition open everyday until the 30th, when there will also be a
closing party.



3. Inspector Tapehead @ The Gentle Invasion @ The Roxy Room (formerly
The Bowery), Edinburgh.

- It's a gig. With Inspector Tapehead, Nathalie Stern and the Japanese
War Effort, Tapehead premiering some new stuff ahead of the album
release this summer.
Sunday from 7.30, £5.

Love Calculator at Forest Fringe

I have built a few wee noisemakers for an interactive piece of theatre to be part of The Forest Fringe microfestival at the Arches at the end of this week. I shall actually be in it too playing said instruments. The piece is called the Love Calculator and is amongst a whole host of other wee happenings in the festival - flyer above, tickets here

Roy

Openthing revamp

Have given Openthing a bit of a revamp this week, from the comfort of my home and the discomfort of a stomach bug. Any comments welcomed, whether they be on the site, niftymitter or open design in general.
Roy

>> Sorry, have fixed that link now. That was a bit embarrassing.

Map Envelope

A wee bout of beeb hate

Linuxcentre

We here at theSlog are very fond of the BBC, but frankly, they seem to be putting every foot wrong these days. The latest being BBC Online coming down squarely on the 'closed' side of the open source debate. Basically their stance is, 'we like to make use of open source software but we won't give any back, and more than that, we will block anyone else from doing it for us' - and hence the excellent GET iPlayer is no more. For now at least.

Between dangling the dagger over 6music, the Asian Network, BBC Online, and now the means by which we can access most of it, I can't see how they will soon be able to claim to be a public service provider and not a commercial media network like any other. Well, at least it leaves things open for, I don't know, more open TV networks perhaps?

a cheesed off Roy.

beeple - the work of mike winkelmann

beeple - the work of mike winkelmann

via Make, some charming wee videos, firstly this one, then that one and finally the other.

Point to C on Solid Steel

May I thoroughly and wholeheartedly recommend this most recent Point to C mix for Solid Steel? Ta:

Ninja Tune - Solid Steel Radio Show 5/3/2010 Part 3 4 - Point to C & Neotropic - SoundCloud

Roymo

Typeface

Roymo

Robin Friend, photographer

Mr. Murphy links in his most recent post to photographer Robin Friend, with some beautifully haunting pictures such as this:



Apparently Murphy has reviewed his work in Hotshoe magazine but I can't find the article on't web on the first search, so must keep an eye out. Its so much more expensive, the whole magazine world, when you can't stand in Borders shamelessly dog-earing the periodicals. I guess that's why there are no more Borders (the shops, not the boundaries)..

Roy

Grampian Mountains

The newest link on theSlog blog (from whence these posts come, for those of you viewing this on facebook) is Grampian Mountains, the blog of Glasgow based graphic designer and disc jockey Point to C, whom I had the pleasure of meeting recently. Very tasty photos and compositions alike.. checky:
http://grampianmountains.blogspot.com/

Roy

Southside Studios opening this weekend

Merlin James / Andrew Taylor / Tom Varley

Preview - Saturday 27 February 2010 - 7pm

Southside Gallery, 17 Westmoreland Street, Govanhill, Glasgow, G42 8LL

www.southsidestudios.org

The Show will run from 2nd March till 16th March 2010.

by appointment only, please call 077927 39788

Fun Occult - Recoat opening on Friday

Sent to you by Roy via Google Reader:

Fun Occult

via recoat by Recoat Gallery on 19/02/10

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to recoat using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favourite sites

The Do Lectures

"The Do lectures are all about getting a handful of speakers together in one place, in the hope that they may inspire you to go Do something. To give you the tools and the desire to change the things you care about."

Inspector Tapehead in album completion shocker.

Reuters:

Glasgow, UK

Hello everybody

Just writing to say that we have well and truly and utterly finished our debut album 'Duress Code'. We have given the tracks we had up [on the myspace] before a rather thorough remixing and also worked away at the fresher stuff, before getting the whole lot (ten tracks altogether) mastered by Jon Astley. We are now putting it about with some hope of getting it released in early summer. Those who have picked up an album sampler from us at a gig, containing early mixes of the first three songs we recorded, may recall us printing an original release date of 'Summer 2008'. Let us assure you all that we will never be this optimistic again.

Anyway, to mark the occasion we are putting up three tracks from the finished article. We hope that you enjoy them and we will keep you posted on any developments regarding the release.

Over and out,

Insp. Tapehead.

Gie us a shot on yer wee friendly indie label mate!
www.inspectortapehead.com

How I Met My Wife

Linked by g, words by Jack Winter.

Brilliant piece of writing on that subject of words that don't have an antipode as prompted by a tomasky blog.

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate...

Stirling Engine

Words by Gareth, patent by Roger Stirling.

I was introduced to the Stirling Engine last autumn and was amazed that I'd never heard of one before. What have the slogistas heard? I'd like to think there's scope for microgeneration from waste heat in many homes. How about the self sufficient fridge, computer, kettle, air conditioner? Where's the main limitation? Batteries? kwh produced per engine size? Thoughts anyone?

By the way, the image is from: stirlingengine.com where you can procure said engines...

Inspector Tapehead Vid #4 and NEWS

I'm catching up with a few things here: Forgot to post Mr. Common's latest Tapehead video, from our sojourn to Stoke Newington (LDN) / Borough (LDN) / Withington (MAN):


That brings the total number of tapehead vids to 4, all viewable on Inspector Tapehead's channel here.

and NEWS:
Chris rang not but an hour ago, fresh out of a day's mastering of the album, Duress Code. Things are sounding very tasty indeed, let me tell you. I don't think the others will let me publicly announce a possible ETA for the album given that we're 18 months past the first estimate already. But soon.

East West Quintet

Just listening to some East West Quintet, courtesy of Mr. Johnson. Not sure if he's linked already, but if not, well worth checking out.

A pleasant melding of sax/piano/drums with something of a rock flavour, and all the jazzy noodling one would hope for. Kinda reminds me equally of Employee of the Month and the more visceral moments of EST.

Roy

Fergus ont' web

Meant to post this a while back - Fergus has updates his website with some pics from Allotment back in November - or was it October? Good times, and a great looking website.

http://fergus-dunnet.weebly.com/

Climate Information is Beautiful/Terrifying

George sent me a great link:

David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer for the Guardian and Wired amongst others, has been putting together some very good graphics on the subject of climate change of late. They are over on his blog, Information is Beautiful. The corker is this post depicting typical arguments and counter arguments between skeptics and the science - would be very interested to hear people's / Gaz's views.

Not the Gaz ain't a person, but you know what I mean..

Roy, and thanks to George!

A Euler massage

UPDATE - it turns out that the diagram I previously posted is a Euler diagram, rather than a Venn diagram. Apologies for my ignorance. Here's another handy one to make up for it:


from hand of Roy:

Wyn [of Reith days, from whence NYK first sprang] sent me this extremely useful diagram, having fallen foul of my pedantry:



It's amazing how a good diagram can ease one's understanding. I thought I was pretty up to speed on the whole issue of British borders, but this brought added clarity to the whole thing - it'll will make good recommended reading the next time I have to explain to any newbies how I can be British and English, whilst also coming from Scotland.

It doesn't however help explain why I sometimes have to edit that description depending on the company I'm in. Or how I'm at once one half Scottish, one half Indian and one whole English, yet am just one Briton! I need my own Euler diagram.

Climate Tricks

By Gareth. i.e. verbose entry warning...

I watched a debate the other night between amongst others George Monbiot on one side and Lord Nigel Lawson on the other (Maggie's chancellor of the exchequer) and something Lawson kept bringing up that was not properly refuted by Monbiot bugged me. It was this: "Global warming has stopped in the last decade". Monbiot's refutation was that 8 out of 10 of the hottest years on record have been since 2001. Which is absolutely correct, but argued Lawson, using an analogy, if population growth stopped in 2000 the last few years would still have the highest recorded number of people on the planet (ie growth stagnated). So, with that in mind I thought I'd get hold of any evidence Lawson had to prove his point then look at the data which exists in the public realm to try and back that up. With a little help from a timely Guardian article I found that Lawson is Chairman of the board of trustees of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and that their website hosts the image I've added below showing an apparent cooling or end of global warming on the header of each page (sorry it's small go to the website to see it more clearly). So here it is, Lawson's evidence for the end of global warming.


Next step, try and reproduce it using any of the global datasets that exist. I.e. the ones from the UK Met Office (HadCRUT), NASA (GISS) and the National Climatic Data Center in the US (NOAA).

I've attached another two images. The first is the entire record of temperature on land and ocean for the last 100+ years (depending on dataset, e.g HadCRUT goes back to 1850) for all three datasets. This is no small piece of work, it comes from multiple measurements and many stations around the globe and has nicely been hosted for us all to look at at the above websites (who said we couldn't get access to this stuff?!).


The first thing to point out is that any monkey could tell you that the overall trend here is 'up' ie warmer and that if you took any one ten-year section you could probably find a decrease in temperature and conclude that global warming had stopped when the overall trend is still, our monkey tells us, UP. In other words we have natural variability in the climate. But let us ignore that for it is not convenient in my search for something to back up the claim that global warming has stopped in the last ten years. How best to do this? Well, the best way I can think to do this is pick the hottest year on record (that has the biggest positive anomaly from the baseline), from the one data set that works best for us to be our starting point, then see the decline from here on in. To do this we have to ignore the NOAA and GISS datasets as they have 2005 as the hottest year and it's quite tricky to claim global warming has ended when the hottest year on record is within your frame of reference. No, much better would be to pick the the HadCRUT data (red line on above figure) as this has 1998 as the hottest year, and well, it's British so it must be better. Now, what else can we do? Well, 2009 so far is looking pretty warm on the grand scheme (see that awkward upwards tick at the end of the red line above), and you know it's only December, so we don't have a full years record yet so let's drop that point and just use 1998 to 2008 and have a look at the beautiful decline like on Lawson's website header.


Wait, what's that? Even when I do that (last image) I STILL get an upwards trend on all three datasets. Bugger. Oh well, maybe I'll just re-draw my own image with fictitious points to match my argument (you'll note that as the Guardian article above points out this image has 2003 and 2005 level pegging for temp on their image, they aren't, and 2006 and 2007 warmer than 2004, again they're not) and put that on the top of my website, much better.

UPDATE: I just noticed, after having written this, that real climate beat me to it a few months back. Still it's good to do these things for yourself every now and then huh?!

Reel to Reel

IMG_5185
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy

Some photos from Forth St, specifically a lovely reel-to-reel tape machine Gal has there, uploaded to Flickr..
Roy

Woohoo!

I'm not sure quite why this excites me so much, but it does..

Roy

Streetview!

Now available in Calgary...

Walkability

Cool tool assessing the walkability of where you live. I.e. how many destinations can you get to without the need to get in a car. It's not perfect (uses as crow flies distances) but certainly gives you a flavour of how walkable a place can be.

p.s. our house gets a "very walkable" 71 whilst the old rupert street pad scores a "walkers paradise" at 93. Unfortunately the comparison tool only works for US cities, maybe they'll get on that and we can see how we rank compared to our urban neighbours....

Cybraphon and Found

Battle of the Bands: Cybraphon v FOUND from New Media Scotland on Vimeo.

Dots

Dots
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy

I did a recording for Aby on Thursday - have uploaded some photos to Flickr, plus a load of other random ones from this summer so far - turning out to be a good un!

How to attain material wealth, and more..

This is the protocol that I am increasingly using whenever I decide that I need something:

borrow it (added bonus: interacting with humanity) - friends and hirers are a wonderful thing! NB: you can't google for friends, you can google for hirers. I mean you can google for friends, but you shouldn't need to.

make it (added bonus: interacting with your brain) - google for how tos or look on instructables/makezine

get it for free - look on freecycle/gumtree free stuff, check the streets the night before bulk uplift day

get it second hand - look on gumtree/ebay, check the charity shops/bulletin boards

get it cheap - froogle it, or look on amazon marketplace/buy online

get it expensively (added, debatable, bonus: interacting with the physical world) - go to an actual shop!

Obviously it depends what it is and why you want it, but it's amazing how often this can be applied to a want!

A Fine Hour Indeed

I must say I have been enjoying Guy Garvey's Finest Hour on 6Music of late. Almost makes me think that the British implementation of digital radio has been worthwhile. No, hang on, nothing will make me think that.

NYC from the point of view of street furniture

via Why, That's Delightful!

How to Think, Say, or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion

Brilliant paper in this week's Science (which you probably can't read unless you have a subscription) dealing with our inability to avoid the things (thoughts, actions, comments) we actively wish to avoid. Or in the words of the author:

"... the precisely counterintentional error. This is when we manage to do the worst possible thing, the blunder so outrageous that we think about it in advance and resolve not to let that happen."

I can't help but to think of certain scenarios I've experienced where this is exactly the consequence of suppression of thoughts. 'I couldn't be more embarrassed right now' said the friend who's skirt promptly fell to the ground in a room full of people. And as for the spilling red wine example, I honestly don't think I spill many liquids at all in my life, but give me a glass of red wine and a white carpet to walk over and it's almost a guarantee.

I'll leave you with an urge to read the paper and one of my favourite lines from it:

"Ironic lapses of mental control often appear when we attempt to be socially desirable, as when we try to keep our minds out of the gutter."

Wegner, Daniel, M., 2009. How to Think, Say, or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion. Science: Vol. 325. no. 5936, pp. 48 - 50 DOI: 10.1126/science.1167346

Guardian Bike Blog

Not sure what happened to Two wheels but here's a new guardian bike blog to add to the ol' blogroll

Spring in the Rockies

Mount Indefatigable
Originally uploaded by ofreflection

Dumped some photos over at flickr from some great camping/hiking last weekend. We headed out to Kananaskis for Sean's birthday and our first summer outing to the mountains for the year. Camping in the shoulder season can always be interesting given the amount of snow still on the ground, but thankfully we're a little older and wiser and have some pretty kick-ass camping pads to take the edge of the chill. The best part of the weekend though was the amount of wildlife we saw. Sadly not many photos of said encounters due to general flightiness of the wildlife or the scarediness of the photo-takers... Ignoring the marmots/ground squirrels, jays, deer, elk and sheep, because, well, they're just not that interesting, we had a very near encounter with a Grizzly, what we probably think was a Moose and a not so near miss with a Black bear. All of which neither of us have ever seen in our 2.5 years here so far. The Grizzly was spotted about 50m up the ridge from us, before disappearing into the woods. Seems he didn't want to see us either. We made a hellova noise clasped our bear spray and pushed on when we thought he'd gone, but not 100m further on strange noises were emanating from the trees beside us. At this point, we're almost literally in between a rock and a hard place, the rock being the cliff off to our right and the hard place the noises from the trees to our left. With the assistance of Sean's penchant for photographing shit (literally) and a handy 'identifying shit' card in the campsite we came to the conclusion that we'd had a near miss with a Moose. A Moose is probably more dangerous than a Grizzly and so the hike was aborted. Grizzly plus Moose was enough for one hike. We moved off and did another hike to a frozen lake where we were all jubilant that the snow was still on the ground and thus we could see any prints - there were none. Jo reported the bear sighting and was then told that not long after we'd seen the Grizzly it (assuming it was the same one is probably fair) had popped out of the woods on some unsuspecting fishermen below the ridge we'd been hiking. Apparently they weren't too happy we'd scared it off the mountain... To top the weekend off, the next day we saw a Black Bear running across the ice on the half-frozen lake we were lazing around by. This time we were much more pleased to see the bear, we had about 300m of open water between us and a car parked not 10m behind us. Even in my decrepit state i figured i could make that 10m before he swam his 300 but thankfully we didn't have to race. Instead we watched from afar and played on the beach. Good times. You should come visit.

Tapehead on tour

Not really, but we went to Manchester and Jonnie, though rather irritatingly at the time, beautifully documented the whole affair in this handy video, which contains one rude gesture, one reference to a dog's penis and much hilarity.

Anyone for pies?

Mr. Kipling has posted a fine set of his early mixes, before he got into all this techno rubbish..

http://trombonesintechno.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/mr-kipling-selection-pack/

Skye

IMG_4682
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy

Images from my weekend in Skye with Naeeda, Nyrika, David and Shiraz are up at Flickr.

Get her George!

This from Sloggee, Gilligan:

have you seen this? a further response to monbiot's feud with blears as mentioned on the slog -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/video/2009/apr/25/monbiot-meets-hazel-blears

Hindi Indie

Just watched Tinselworm and thought this bit would interest some of the slog readers. The rest of the dvd is pretty good too...

Kite flying the Neel

Image014
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy

Have posted some pics from my Easter weekend in the St. Annes set.

Colourblind, moi?

Yes, this *is* how my co-writer and I see the world. Its terrible, give us cake.

via Mr. Kipling.

dBass upgrade

Wow. I just spent much of the day re-writing dBass' website for Blogger. Do let me know what you think of it, it still needs some tweaks but I'm done for the day!

The full joke, courtesy of the Adam & Joe Show Radiogram

After both amusing and annoying myself all week with merely a punchline, I had to go back to check the setup for that joke:

What do you call a Scottish cow sitting down?

A-knee-lin'-ox
(ie. Annie Lennox)

Ludacrous.

If any of your are not familiar with the Big British Castle's Adam and Joe Show Radiogram, you should be, it's excellent. Thankfully there's always listen again, or the podcast which features all the best chat and some extra chat.

Simply Gorgeous

Timelapsed Tilt and Shift videos from Keith Loutit, via Why That's Delightful (Graham Linehan's blog).

This is indeed delightful:


Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

I wonder if Linehan loves it because it reminds him of the Big Train DVD menu design!

Look out for the NYK reference in the above video! Nice soundtrack too - from one Megan Washington.

Some are doing something at least

Originally uploaded by selimski

Selimski covering a recent memorial event in London..

Canadians love rocks

I thought this might be relevant to the readership..

Democracy?

I meant to put a link up to this article by George Monbiot a week or so ago, it being an interesting comment on political disenfranchisement and on the UK learning from the recent transformation of American politics. I forgot about the article but have now posted it as it has since turned into a reply from Hazel Blears and a second absolutley scathing reply from Mr Monbiot. If you've got 10 minutes i sincerely urge you to read each article.

Photo dump

Flickr is being flaky and not letting me imbed a photo post so here are some links to:

Photos from Inspector Tapehead's recent Limbo gig in Edinburger they are good.

Suzy G's photos from our trip into the hills on Saturday it was snowy.

My photos from recording at Garmelow manor a couple of weeks back it was fun.

I've been pretty lucky with doing fun stuff recently, it's true. Its been hard work too though.

Theres probably no...

background

Sheddy

I just spent the entire weekend at the Shearer/Ling Cottage homestead in Norfolk, much of which was spent helping to put a roof shaped thing on Neel's 'shed' - photies here:
http://tinyurl.com/sheddy

It was great fun all round, thank you chaps.

Twits

Lots of people have asked for news of the Roald Dahl party that Suzfergilly hosted. Gilly has the evidence on her flickr in this set, check em oot.

Qoral Reef shameless punting

It occurred to me tonight that I might have failed to tell anyone that dBass released a single back in August. Still, better late than never:

Qoral Reef single available now on Collective. Buy the limited edition vinyl or download digitally at onthejukebox.com, on iTunes or on Amazon
"a platter of off-kilter, late-night soul with a jazzy garnish on top." The List

Bangladeshi Brickie

via El Chimpadour!

Manufacture @ The Fridge Gallery

Manufacture @ The Fridge Gallery
Originally uploaded by Zero-waste Design

This Sat 22nd Nov from 7pm - all welcome!

Southside Studios, 17 Westmoreland St, Glasgow, G42 8LL

Vroom!

Vroom!
Originally uploaded by dr_colossus★

A new candidate for the Ol' Blogroll:

Suzy G's sister's boyfriend Ollie's Flickr Stream will now be getting my newsreader's attention. And thus ocasionally mine.

O Canada!

Favourite view of the day
Originally uploaded by ofreflection

The Dawg has kindly posted some photos from my recent visit to him and the J dawg in Canada. Very shrewd as I take it my counterpart detected the pitiful shitness of my Virgin Media ADSL internet (that's right - I said it!) through my inability to upload anything, a full month later! It was great by the way.

Stick figure in major peril!

Over at the AceJet blog!

Some decidedly British politics

Well, I'm back. And what nicer to return to than 'Just a Minute' on the wireless and another bit of spot on satire from Great Aunt Henrietta:

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson has shocked political pundits by pronouncing himself “Queen of London” and sacking the Labour Government – a move described by Johnson himself as “constitutionally bold”. He then went on to establish an “Interim Protectorate”, which will handle the day-to-day running of the country “until the democratic process delivers a nice Conservative government.”

Folk Fest '08

Some music we liked form this year's Folk Fest, in no particular order:

Carolina Chocolate Drops From the website: "The Carolina Chocolate Drops are a group of young African-American stringband musicians that have come to together to play the rich tradition of fiddle and banjo music in Carolinas piedmont." And the jugs and the bones, cool.

No Luck Club "An instrumental Hip Hop Band" from Vancouver, have been described as a mix of RJD2, Kid Koala, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, not bad then.

The Weakerthans A Canadian Indie-pop outfit...

Kara Keith Alternative Singer songwriter

Woodpigeon My new favourite Calgary band. Think Broken Social Scene.

Andrew Bird Brilliant experimental, looping music, swhirly gramaphones included!

Basia Bulat Folk n' roll singer songwriter.

Socalled Crazy, Hip Hop indy experimental stuff.

Beija Flor Calgarian indy rock outfit

Jayme Stone and Mansa Sissoko Jazz/Bluegrass Banjo Virtuoso with an African twist (kora and storytelling)

Going to the end of the line

A great multimedia feature of the New York City subway

Vicky Ling's Photos - ling fest 08 | Facebook

Vicky Ling's Photos - ling fest 08 | Facebook

And some more..

Ling Fest 08 - a set on Flickr

Ling Fest 08 - a set on Flickr

The first photos from the first and possibly last Ling Fest are up!

Applied Math | Futility Closet

Applied Math | Futility Closet

A nice mathematical co-inkidink.

Extreme climbing

Extreme climbing
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy

Brand new photos up at Roy's Flickr! This one's from the weekend in Ardnamurchan, when Gaz showed off his climbing prowess.

The Tech Horn

I'd like to draw your attention to The Tech Horn, Chris Croasdale's brother Richard's blog. Of late I have been enjoying its Simcity2000esque journalistic reportage on technology/culture/whimsy with much gusto.

LIFE IS NOT A JOURNEY TO THE GRAVE WITH THE

INTENTION OF ARRIVING SAFELY IN A PRETTY AND

WELL PRESERVED BODY, BUT RATHER TO SKID IN

SIDEWAYS, THOROUGHLY USED, TOTALLY WORN OUT

AND LOUDLY PROCLAIMING

"WOW WHAT A RIDE"

Anon.

Save words!

Its a long shot, but I'm warmed by the invitation I received to sign a petition on the subject of typography.

From the intriguing Type Museum.

I love this story, cos it means I can bring my bike with a bit more peace of mind..

Bike-theft saga takes a turn toward the strange

Murphy and friends have been busy..

Sound of jelly wobbling recorded for architects' competition - Telegraph

Wii Hack

350

There seem to be endless campaigns for climate change and the environment, (we, the climate project, the big ask etc etc) but I like the simplicity of this one. And something about using numerals and sign language to reach as many people as possible is neat. How the heck we get to 350 is another question...

TubeJP: London Tube Map & Journey Planner

TubeJP: London Tube Map & Journey Planner

This is a very handy site. If you're in London. Would be handier if it was portable too!

Big Ideas (don't get any)

If this hasn't got round to you yet, it will. I mean other than now.

Surely has got to be the star of this year's degree show, which incidentally starts this Thursday for a week.


Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

James says:

I'm a student graduating from the Glasgow School of Art's visual communication course in a few days. This is my final project.

Radiohead held an online contest to remix "Nude" from their album - "In Rainbows" This was quite a difficult task for everybody that entered, as Nude is in 6/8 timing, and 63bpm. Most music that's played in clubs is around 120bpm and usually 4/4 timing. It's pretty difficult to seamlessly mix a waltz beat into a DJ set.

This resulted in lots of generic entries consisting of a typical 4/4 beat, but with arbitrary clips from "Nude" thrown in so that they qualified for the contest.

Thom Yorke joked at the ridiculousness of it in an interview for NPR radio, hinting that they set the competition to find out how people would approach such a challenging task.

I decided to take the piss a bit, as the contest seemed to be in that spirit.

Based on the lyric (and alternate title) "Big Ideas: Don't get any" I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they're trying their best to do something that they're not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.

It doesn't sound great, as it's not supposed to.

I missed the contest deadline, so I'm offering it here for you to enjoy.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums
HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX

Quick off the mark as ever, Creative Review have already interviewed Houston, read it here.

Mashup!

Here's a rather fun mashup mix from DJ Food, feat. excerpts of Paul Morley reading from his book on the history of sound manipulation, Words & Music. Its messed up.

Thank you Jonnie!

via the supreme ubu.com [<-tracklist here]

I knew you'd like that Radiohead/brubeck mashup Dave!

40 storeys bad, 20 storeys good

I find this site FASCINATING. Top picture: The future of Gibson St.

And for all your insider demolition news, this thread seems to be the one to follow - watch out, its three years long! Bottom picture: The past of the Gorbals, to be repeated later this morning.