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.

Almost genius: Radiohead vs Dave Brubeck - Five Step

strange things

My mate Tom bought a whole load of someone else's photos off ebay. which I thought was pretty weird, but then I found these:

http://tinyurl.com/4lbyr4
http://tinyurl.com/436tqx
http://tinyurl.com/4aeqc2

Friends of Earth charter freakin' huowge plane

Friends of Earth - The Big Ask

I do like the FOE's recentest online campaign.

Glass harmonica

Glass harmonica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

These are cool, but may cause insanity.

Genius.

Ponoko Blog

Ponoko Blog

I'm starting in a new role writing blog posts for Ponoko this week - should be fun and a good opportunity to write and think more about OSPD. It certainly means writing more!

TGKW

Rik and Martha
Originally uploaded by TGKW

This chap is annoyingly young and talented but takes good photies. Of Glasgow. and its people.

New photos on Roy's Flickr

Shields Rd
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy

From a few recent days out and last week's holiday down south.

Things to say about Hauntology

when you don't really know anything about it:

Hauntology: its so passé.

or

As far as I can tell, hauntology is just a new word for old-skool!

Zero-waste Design update

Have updated www.zero-waste.co.uk - particularly the projects page brings people more up to date with my design happenings

Drawing Radiohead

green plastic radiohead: Drawing Radiohead

An interesting 6 minute video showing Stanley Donwood doing a run of screenprints in his studio.

Progress.

via core77

Obsession Mk II

Following Gilly's wanton criticism of my personal ramblings, I am updating my three quality bottom line of obsession to exhilaration, elegance and community. I couldn't find an appropriate word beginning with e.

In this current trend for wielding the philosophical knife, I am tagging posts such as these, ersatz-philosophy.

voice in smoke

entschwindet und vergeht: Ghost Voices

Murphy blogged recently the earliest recording of a human voice..

Obsession

There are three qualities that motivate me in any activity: exhilaration, elegance, and sharing.

When cycling, I like to cycle fast, feeling the exhilaration of the wind in my face. I ride a fixie, the simplest, most elegant form of bike. I bought it from a social enterprise in Maryhill, sharing the assembly with those who can benefit most from the experience. I love the closeness of the messenger/fixie community in Glasgow, and how the best way to do anything with bikes here is to talk to someone else about it.

When doing design work, I am obsessed with elegance, and seek out the exhilaration one feels when having created anything. I strive for a more sharing community in industrial design, hence Zero-waste.

As for music, this is where all three are inextricably bound up. Playing for excitement, for beauty and for the act of interaction with players and audience, altogether, makes perfect sense to me.

I could go on, applying this thinking to why I do and don't like flying kites, why I like travelling, why I like staying in one place, why I'm unsure about moving flats.

The bottom line is that I'm not hyperactive - I'm obsessive, and will pursue any activity to satisfy these obsessions.

I want this, but its sold out.

The Designing Automata Kit, Sold Out £44.50

and I especially would like one of these ones!

non news

I've rearranged all my collections on my Flickr page so that they make more sense. At least I didn't geo-tag them, that would be sad.

New House!

This is our new house, professionally guided by Katrina, who incidentally isn't moving in with us...

Kewl Typographical Goings On

Check it oot:


and this too:


G.R.L. @ M.o.M.A. from fi5e on Vimeo.

I saw a funny thing today.

It was this:

Getting Things Done: An Alternative Model Mark 1

Jimi's good friend Dave is a evangelistic exponent of 'Getting Things Done'. I happened across his workflow diagram as it was discreetly emblazoned around his office, and we got to talking about how mine might compare to his, and the relative merits or lack thereof.

Here's the popular one:












And here's what I came up with:

Inspector Tapehead

MySpace.com - Inspector Tapehead - Glasgow, UK - www.myspace.com/inspectortapehead

Hello. If you haven't heard, I'm in a new trio entitled Inspector Tapehead, headed up by Chris Croasdale of Adam Beattie's Consultants, and Jonnie Common of Down the Tiny Steps. I recommend that you go to the above myspace page for aural delight. Huw Stevens likes it, as does the entire Bulgarian music industry.

R

YouTube - Music for one apartment

via Matt of 17th letter

Bye bye Snap Anywhere

I've finally removed Snap Anywhere (those little callouts that popped up over links) from this blog because they were really pissing me off, and not being very useful with it. Hope you don't mind, I severely doubt if anyone will.

A web 2.0 mix CD

dBass are doing another mix CD swap, and here are the tracks I'm choosing:

Burial - Distant Lights
Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto - Moon
Radiohead - Faust Arp
Radiohead - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Trilok Gurtu - Kermansah
Chris Clark - Gob Coitus
Chris Clark - Empty The Bones Of You
CocoRosie - By Your Side
Subtle - The Long Vein Of The Law
Röyksopp - Circuit Breaker
4Hero - Hold It Down
Dirty Three - I Really Should've Gone Out Last Night
Tortoise - A Simple Way to Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

the forgotten sound mirrors

deputydog | the forgotten sound mirrors

Some Animations

I made some animations out of my pictures from India, using my new camera's capacity to take many pictures in quick succession:

This is one of my mum.

This is one of my cousin Yael.

This is one of my nephew enjoying his lunch.

This is one of his parents rocking him to sleep.

This is one of Neel getting a face massage.

This is one of all my family at new year.

This is one of everyone at various points over Christmas, taken from the same vantage point each time.

This is one of a spinning top.

This is one of a game of scrabble, this time done using the timelapse function, which resulted in me only being able to compress it into a .wmv, not an .avi as for the other animations.

Lemon Drizzle cake, by Mark - 99ACOAC

Sweet, certainly. also hard and eggy however, diminuitive in size. Not good, I'm afraid. But hey, they can only improve from here, Mark.

Dave's photography site

Yo.

Some of my photos are featured on Dave Green's spanking new photography site, Bezkonca. Check it oot, he's done a great job.

India Dec 07 - Jan 08

Uncle Vijay
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy

I have uploaded my photos from my Christmas hols, including Freyan and Cyrille's wedding.

A list of soul songs

that we may or may not be doing at Rio on the 22nd Feb

Musical goodness

Can't remeber if I've posted either of these before. Check em oot.

Dan le sac Vs Scroobius Pip - Letter from God to Man

Hard and Phirm - Rodeohead

Aquaduct

A very neat idea...

Ayla's birthday cake by Kasbah, Delhi: 3ACAOC

A very chilled affair, straight forward chocolate sponge with one layer of chocolate filling and chocolate icing, so not very imaginative either. Competent, tasty, heavy texture. It was iced with Ayla's name at very short notice however, which is worth something.