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We saw a gig advertised in the local paper that was to be held at one of our local pubs: an American acoustic Blues guitarist called Ben Andrews. He got a rave review, and as we both love Blues music, we decided it was too good an opportunity to let pass.

Sometimes fate doesn’t treat our attempts to see live music kindly. On this occasion, we got to the venue a little early to pick up our tickets, only to be greeted with, “Oh, you haven’t heard? Ben Andrews has cancelled his tour.” It was a real disappointment, but The Sutton Blues Collective—who organised the gig—rose to the challenge of over 70 very disappointed customers masterfully. Several local artists played a free concert instead, and we had a great night.

I think my favourites were Fret & Fiddle. They played a wide variety of styles, but mainly a kind of gypsy jazz or swing in the style of Django Reinhardt. They were fabulous, and it was impossible not to smile and at least tap a toe. Had there been room, I might have felt the urge to get up and dance. When I Get A Turntable¹, I’m definitely going to seek out some old Django recordings, or at least some music in that style. It’s the kind of thing that would certainly enjoy the warmth and crackle of good old vinyl. I think we’ll also be going along to some more of the gigs. They are very reasonably priced given the quality of the artists, and the pub in which they are held sells Leffe on tap. What more could you ask?

¹ This has become a bit of a refrain of mine, hence the title case.

I’ve had a couple of reports of things looking crufty more crufty than usual in Internet Explorer 6. This is a bit baffling as I haven’t done anything with either the layout or the CSS for a while. I’ve tidied up a few minor issues with both XHTML and CSS validation which had crept in (both validate properly now), and also tidied up a few long URLs in the ‘Recent comments’ section¹. I even went so far as to sign up for a trial account with Browsercam to see how it looked. The main body seems fine, but the sidebar seems to disappear (or perhaps just display under the main content), and the thumbnails from Wings Open Wide don’t display. Does this tally with what other IE users find?

While I don’t want to lock out anyone unfortunate enough not to be able to choose their browser, I’m loathe to break the site validation just so that a cludge works in IE. The Browsercam showed that it looked just fine in every other Windows browser and Konqueror in Linux. Does anyone have a valid fix which will magically solve my problem?

¹ A small plea: if you enter a URL in the comments, can you please encode it as a proper HTML link? e.g. a link. Otherwise it hangs uncouthly outside my sidebar. Thank you.

I was watching a programme—with featuring Ray Mears—about bush-craft and survival in the rainforest, and caught myself avidly trying to work out how he made his hammock knots. “When”, I thought to myself with a smile, “am I going to have to tie a hammock knot?” But ever since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by learning how to do things. It doesn’t really matter if I’ll never have to use that knowledge, or if I can get along fine without it.

I used to have a book called ‘How to Survive’, which detailed all kinds of techniques for surviving in the wild, like first aid using plants, starting fires with no matches, and building shelters. The chances of me needing to build a bivouac out of pine branches, a solar still to collect water or a rabbit snare out of saplings in suburban Surrey were extremely slim, but I just loved learning how to do those very practical, very basic things. I spent hours trying to knapp flint at the top of the garden, but only succeeded in producing very blunt fragments which wouldn’t cut butter.

I think that my current interest in learning programming languages is just an extension of my flint-knapping attempts. I will probably never be an expert, but I love the process of learning a skill, and being able to do something for myself, rather than waiting for another programmer to produce something I need. We all depend on objects we haven’t made, food we haven’t grown and machines that we don’t really understand the workings of. It’s good to get a little control and understanding back, even if it’s very limited.

Sometimes a Unix-based system can be a beautiful thing. Take a little problem and solution I came across today. I had been writing some notes on a paper I was reading in the Vim Outliner, and wanted to paste a paragraph or two into the notes section of Endnote (a reference manager). But there was immediately an irksome problem: Endnote doesn’t understand Unix line endings, and my notes were also hard-wrapped to 72 characters, with a ‘pipe’ character (|) and tab before each line of text. Worse still, Endnote doesn’t have a find and replace command¹. I could have opened up BBEdit or something similar and constructed the appropriate find and replace there, but that seemed annoyingly long-winded. Then I remembered that you can access the contents of the system clipboard directly using the commands pbpaste and pbcopy. Because they work like standard Unix commands, you can pipe other commands to them, and so build up a useful tool from a chain of smaller commands. This example shows you how to filter the text on the clipboard through a command to munge it in some way, and then put it back on the clipboard ready for pasting—no intermediate files required!

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Matt Henderson has written an interesting entry on Getting Things Done:

According to Peter Drucker, one of the defining aspects of our generation is the fact that, as a society of information workers, many of us are responsible for defining both what we do, and how we get it done. Complicating matters, many of us work in environments (i.e. in front of internet-connected desktop computers) that provide us with a continual barrage of inputs (email, chats, browsing, RSS feeds, phone calls, etc.). Defining what we should do, how should do it, and then getting (the right) things done are some of the biggest challenges we face.

He goes on to describe his system which primarily uses Life Balance in conjunction with Hog Bay Notebook. I find the details of how people manage and organise their lives fascinating. Matt’s implementation of GTD is much more structured than mine, but that’s probably a good way to get into a routine and increases confidence in the security of the system. I’m finding that confidence in the system is almost the most important thing. The minute I think that something might be slipping through the net, the whole system tends to start to fall apart. However, my trusty paper notebook is working out well, and I’m getting into the habit of carrying it all the time.

It’s been a fantastic couple of days for great MacOS X software. First, Tinderbox 2.3 was released. The thing that immediately struck me was that the text is rendered much better, so notes are pretty to look at now. It seems like a minor point, but it was something that bugged me slightly before. There are a lot of much less visible changes to the kinds of attributes you can use, and to the actions and agents. I’m looking forward to digging a bit deeper into it in the next few weeks.

Then Ranchero Software released the public beta of NetNewsWire 2 and the new weblog editor, MarsEdit. NetNewsWire has some nice new features like Smart Lists (which work like Smart Playlists in iTunes), flagging of feeds and Search Engine subscriptions (so that you can search a huge number of feeds for entries on a particular topic). It seems to work very smoothly, and also—as you might expect—it interacts very well with MarsEdit. You can select an item in NNW and send it to MarsEdit, which opens a post with all the relevant URLs filled in. You can also set up a template so that entries generated in this way have a particular format. Both applications have gorgeous new icons designed by Bryan Bell and Jon Hicks—the MarsEdit one is really cute, with a chubby little rocket orbiting a shiny Mars.

All I need now is for Macromates to release TextMate, and I’d be a really happy little geek.

Daydreaming (as usual) on my daily commute, listening to my iPod, I had an idea for a creative experiment. I’d like to make a film on an ordinary journey to a random iPod playlist. “Pfft,” I hear you cry “What’s so special about that?” I’m glad you asked.

The wrinkle would be that the camera (or just a very small lens on an umbilical) would be strapped to my head so that the shot would consist of whatever I was looking at, and I wouldn’t be allowed to cut either the soundtrack or the visuals after shooting. I would have to spontaneously orchestrate the shots live by looking at whatever I thought best embodied or carried the mood of the music that happened to be playing at the time. I also wouldn’t be allowed to choose the tracks in advance: it would have to be the entire contents of my iPod (minus Classical music tracks, which would be too long) on shuffle.

The results might well be unwatchable or just plain dull, but I think it would be an exciting exercise. Lacking either a DV camera or the means to pipe my iPod direct to the tape, I’ve been making this film in my head for the past few days. Some trips work out better than others in terms of the synchronicity between the audio and visuals, but it certainly makes you notice even the smallest detail. It also emphasises the difference between looking and seeing, and the meaning you end up overlaying on what you see can be quite interesting. If I only had a Firewire port in my skull, I could download the results to share with you.

My parents came to stay this weekend, so I gave them the grand tour around Birmingham. We went from the very new and shiny—but slightly soulless—Bullring, to the chaotic, noisy, vibrant indoor markets. I needed to buy some salmon fillets, so I asked at one of the many fishmongers’ stalls in the market for “just over a kilo” of salmon. He duly weighed out the fish, then said, “Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. That’s just under a kilo—see the price there?” He pointed at the readout on the scales, and I nodded, waiting for the sales pitch. “I’ll put on 3 extra fillets, which comes to £10.50, but I’ll only charge you £8.50. Is it a deal?” I was so charmed, and it was such a bargain that I gave in with a grin. While he was wrapping up my purchase, he noticed my parents looking at the chicken on his stall (he also sold meat), and started another sales pitch involving an enormous quantity of chicken for a knock-down price. My Mum politely explained that they wouldn’t buy any as they were going to stay with my brother afterwards and so the refrigeration requirements would be a bit complicated. The guy looked at me steadily and said—with one of the best deadpan expressions I’ve ever seen—”Don’t bring them again.”

That’s what I miss about new shopping malls—the human interaction. You would never get that combination of bargain prices and comedy in the new stores. The markets are full of the shouts of stall-holders yelling out their offers, bright colours, tacky products, cows feet, caribbean bread, wild mixtures of smells and the bustle and banter of people. It makes the Bullring—and the even more upmarket Mailbox—seem cold and sterile by comparison. I took some pictures on my camera phone in both places, so you can judge the atmosphere for yourself on my flickr page.

Before I start, if you don’t know what Getting Things Done is, you might like to read my previous entry.

I was planning to describe how I actually use the GTD system, but before I had before I had put fingers to keyboard, I saw this entry on Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders blog, in which he invited readers to respond with their GTD methods. So, here’s how I do it.

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I have a real problem with self-help books. The buzz-word laden jargon, excessive capitalisation to Make Ordinary Ideas Seem Great, and the utter tosh that often appears on their pages makes me want to set fire to the entire shelf in the bookshop. But I’ve just succumbed and bought what is my very first self-help book. I’d been hearing a lot of geek love for the book Getting Things Done (usually abbreviated to GTD) by David Allen. Then I came across Merlin’s excellent 43 folders blog, and his praise of the system intrigued me enough to get me to brave the dreaded self-help aisle in the bookshop and buy a copy. I also had a hunch that it would be a bit of a treat for my inner megapode, which turned out to be correct.

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It occurred to me yesterday (while watching the original 1997 version of Insomnia) that there are very few cover versions of songs or remakes of films that are worth spending your precious time on. I can only think of a handful of songs (and no films) for which a subsequent cover or remake actually improved on the original. On the other hand, it’s very easy to think of covers and remakes which should never have been made. Insomnia particularly puzzles me. The original is stylish, chilling and very atmospheric, but the remake (made only 5 years later) added only some big name Hollywood actors and removed the subtitles. In this case, I wasn’t even swayed by the usual primacy effect (you prefer the first version you experienced) because I saw the 2002 Insomnia first. I enjoyed it at the time, but watching the original made me aware what a pale imitation it was.

I’ve wracked my brains, and here are my choices for exceptions to the ‘never try to do it twice’ rule. Johnny Cash’s version of the Nine Inch Nails song ‘Hurt’ was completely brilliant. I know that the lyrics are about drug addiction, but hearing an old man—at the end of his life—singing the song was really powerful, and added several additional layers to the song. He really knew about loss and regret. Every time I listen to it, his shaky, angry voice moves me all over again.

And then there’s ‘Mad World’ covered by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules. The original was really good song, hidden under a thick blanket of slightly over-wrought vocals and too many synths. The cover stripped it back to basics and revealed the emotional power of the lyrics. I might also add ‘Romeo and Juliet’: a cover version of the Dire Straits track by the Indigo Girls. This one might be a matter of taste, because Amy Ray gets a bit shouty on it, but she certainly gives it a lot more impact that the original.

Despite a lot of thought, I can’t think of a single film remake which has been better than the original.

One of the things that I’ve missed a lot since I got my 12” PowerBook is my old MacNTouch keyboard. I had grown very comfortable with using the keyboard, but the only downside to getting my new 12” was that the keyboard wouldn’t fit in the new machine. It is about the right dimensions, but the USB ports are on the right side of the machine, rather than the back as before, so the keyboard couldn’t be plugged in in situ. This was something of a downer.

However, one day (and I’m very disappointed with myself for not thinking of this before) I realised that it should be possible to use the MacNTouch as an external keyboard (like Fingerworks TouchStream LP). Sure, it’s not as convenient as having it built-in, but it’s a heck of a lot better than not using it at all. The keyboard itself is basically some clever electronics sandwiched by a circuit board on the bottom and a sheet of thin Perspex (Lexan for my American readers) on top. The only physical connection to the Mac comes through a very short and thin USB ribbon cable. If I plugged the cable into a USB extension cable, I ought to be able to use the keyboard with it just sitting on the desk.

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I love Caribbean accents. The other day, on the bus, I was eavesdropping on a conversation between a Jamaican couple. I do try not to earwig in on other people’s conversations if I can help it, but I find the Jamaican accent so mellifluous that I couldn’t help myself.

I think that they were talking about doing the laundry and related problems. At any rate, at one point, the guy said,

“De water shrink ‘im.”

while referring to his jumper.

I’m firmly of the belief that you can never learn too many programming languages¹. For one thing, each new language you learn teaches you more about the general principles of programming, which aren’t specific to any one language, and makes you think about general problem-solving approaches. Also, no one language—even my beloved Perl—is perfect for every eventuality, and all have their strengths and weaknesses. So recently, I’ve been looking at Ruby. A comment by Nathan mentioned a review of TextMate, which in turn put me on to Rails—a web application framework for Ruby.

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We’ve had a very peripatetic end of the week and weekend, driving (it seemed) half way across the country a couple of times on various errands. I’m not particularly keen on driving at the best of times, but I feel like I don’t want to get back into my car for a least a couple of weeks. Part of this aversion is down to an unfortunate odour we picked up in Staffordshire.

As we were driving along, we smelt a very strong ‘country smell’. When it didn’t go away after a couple of miles, we began to think that perhaps all this was just the normal honk of Staffordshire. After we’d got back, I went back to the car to empty it out, and nearly keeled over with the stench of manure. It turns out that we were carrying the smell around with us; we followed a tractor for a while, and some splashes of the brown stuff seem to have made their way into every nook and cranny of our car, including the air intake. Every time we switch the air blowers on, we get blast of ‘eau du vache’ along with the cool air. I washed the car this morning, but this doesn’t seem to have eliminated the smell. Oh well, it will wear off eventually, I suppose, and we might be able to grow some prize tomatoes in the engine.