John Adams

I had a great treat yesterday: I went to a performance of three of John Adams' pieces, conducted by the composer with the LSO and featuring Joanna MacGregor. The pieces were Lollapalooza, Century Rolls and Harmonielehre - all wonderful uplifting, joyful bits of music. Lollapalooza is a very jolly, rambunctious, almost jazz-like piece, with an incredibly complex rhythm. It's quite short, but a lot of fun. Century Rolls features a solo piano, and was inspired by piano roll recordings of famous performers and composers from the last century. The first and last movements are fiendishly complex and fast, and it was fascinating watching Joanna MacGregor's hands blurring over the keyboard at an unbelievable rate. She really is a superb performer, a million miles away from the stuffed shirts you normally associate with solo piano. Her braided hair flew around as she bopped and bounced along with the rhythms, smiling and almost laughing out loud at the pleasure of playing something so hard so well. Harmonielehre was even more superb. It's a huge feel-good piece, with an enormous ensemble, where brass and percussion (and two harps - how's that for extravagance!) feature strongly. Apparently the first movement was inspired by a vision John had of a supertanker emerging out of the sea at great speed - like a Saturn space rocket. It starts and ends with enormous energy, and you find yourself holding your breath with excitement without realizing it. When it ends, you suddenly remember that your body does actually need oxygen, and gasp for air.

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John Adams - Harmonium/The Klinghoffer Choruses

This is one of John Adams' earliest pieces, and one of my favourites. Harmonium is a three part choral piece, set to poems by John Donne (Negative Love) and Emily Dickinson (Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Wild Nights). Even if you think you don't like classical music, or contemporary classical music, do give this a try.

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Apple and Victorian engineers

A thought struck me yesterday about the similarities between Apple and Victorian engineers. Unlikely, you might be thinking, but bear with me. The Business Design Centre used to be an agricultural hall - basically, a glorified barn for markets and shows, and was built in the 19th Century. But if you look at the roof from the inside, you can see that the engineers thought that there was nothing incongruous about a practical, functional building with humble origins also being beautiful. As you can see from the photo, the structural steel roof beams are studded with iron flowers, and some of the supporting brackets are very ornate.

It seems to me that Apple does something similar. Its products are very functional, and designed with ease-of-use in mind, but they realised with the original iMac that functional things can also be beautiful, and even have personality. I’ve always loved the attention to detail, like the coloured apple symbol on the back of the keyboard. You hardly ever see it, but the back of the keyboard is as pretty as the front - that’s a very Victorian sensibility.

MacExpo

Today I took the day off work and travelled to London to go to MacExpo at the Business Design Centre in Islington. Going up the escalator into the main hall was to enter MacGeek heaven, valhalla and nirvana, all at the same time. Choc full of geeky goodness.

There were many highlights of the day: getting my hands on one of the new 17″ iMacs was great fun, as was seeing rows of people in the mirrored drive door G4 games arcade blasting seven bells out of all manner of demons, aliens and Nazis. I must also thank the nice women at Crumpler Bags, who were very good about me repeatedly destroying their stand.

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Death and showman

So, in the end Gunther von Hagens didn't get arrested at his little freakshow, I mean educational event. Should he have been arrested? It's true that the the average member of the public (if there is such a thing) has a shocking lack of knowledge about his or her own body. This must contribute to health problems and to exacerbate fear when something goes wrong. If a doctor tells you that your spleen is damaged and may have to be removed - and you don't know what the hell your spleen is or whether you can live without it - it's very frightening. So better knowledge of anatomy and medicine can only be a good thing. But... It's obvious to anyone with a brain (still in their skull and not removed with a hacksaw and a spoon) that von Hagens was in this for the publicity, whatever he says. The "Bodyworlds" logo on his gown was a bit of a give away, to be honest. And that can't be right.

Teething troubles

There seem to be some teething problems with comments. You may encounter a "500 Internal Server Error" if you click a comments link. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Who knows why. If you try again later, it will probably work. It's a very general error (basically it means that something went wrong when a perl script was run), and is thus rather tricky to pin down.

Digital brain

The Microsoft Media Presence lab is developing something called MyLifeBits, a multimedia database to store everything that ever happens to you. The idea is that you can then easily find what you're looking for.

"The motivation? Microsoft argues that our memories often deceive us: experiences get exaggerated, we muddle the timing of events and simply forget stuff. Much better, says the firm, to junk such unreliable interpretations and instead build a faithful memory on that most reliable of entities, the PC."

Eeek. PCs, reliable? I can just imagine the lawsuits when someone's whole life goes up in digital smoke. It would give a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of Death. Not the mention the total spookiness of Microsoft having even more control over your life.

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Open ocean

I’m currently reading “The Science of Discworld” by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. It’s a really fun and surprisingly thought-provoking book, using Discworld as a model to discuss important issues in science in our world ("Roundworld"). I might write a longer post on it later when I finish it, but one quote in particular (about Unseen University on Discworld) struck a chord:

“A university is very much like a coral reef. It provides calm waters and food particles for delicate yet marvellously constructed organisms that could not possibly survive in the pounding surf of reality, where people ask questions like, ‘Is what you do of any use?’ and other nonsense.” p. 142-143

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Mac lover

Oh my. It looks like I might have to stop describing myself as a Mac lover. I don't take it quite that far, though. True, I have been known to stroke my TiBook lovingly, but there's nothing going on between us. We're just good friends, aren't we darling? Take a look at the picture of "iMac Boy" that accompanies the piece, and answer me this question: why does his mouse look so angry?

Feeling deflated

A few days ago, I stepped on a wood staple in my Nike Air trainers. The inevitable happened, and my air reservoir got a puncture. I was a bit sceptical that the air thingy did anything at all, but now that I'm listing to starboard with a deflation induced limp, I can appreciate that they did actually have some purpose.

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A new look again

I've been tinkering again. I decided to switch the publishing of this site over to Moveabletype, and in the process, I redesigned the appearance a little bit again. It should have substantially the same feel, but hopefully it won't suffer from the same bugs in IE6. That's my hope, anyway. The move to Moveabletype (MT) shouldn't be seen as any kind of negative commentary on Tinderbox. I'm still writing and organizing the site on Tinderbox, then dragging and dropping the notes into MT. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but by this method I get the best of both worlds. I can write and organize the site on my own machine, but can also publish from an internet cafe when on the move. MT also gives me an easy way for people to post comments (see the comment links under each post), and other ways to archive posts. None of which I couldn't do with TB with a little effort, but I'm lazy. The old archive file is still available, so if you've linked to any of my posts, that link won't break. I've also imported the old posts so that they're available here too. You can still use the old URL, which will be redirected here. Let me know what you think of the new look, and tell me whether I've broken anything.

Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Child (especially Disc 2, the live one)

Ah, there's nothing like a bit of Jimi as the nights are drawing in. Remasterings don't always work well, but this one has kept the spontaneity of the original, and everything (particularly the live material) sounds fresh and funky. If there's any music that could tempt me to get my air guitar out of the cupboard, Crosstown Traffic or Foxey Lady is it. I still find it hard to believe that there's only one person playing lead guitar…

Beck - Sea Change

I was really surprised by this one. My brother recommended it to me, but never having liked Beck much before, I wasn't at all sure that I would like it. I couldn't have been more wrong. It's a trippy, mellow album, with bitter-sweet lyrics and is surprisingly tuneful. There are also some very nice string arrangements which add some depth and complexity.

A moment

I missed capturing a moment as a digital image today, because I didn't have my camera with me. So, here it is translated by my brain from the image formed in my eyes. Our bus approached a deep flood in the road, water arcing up on each side. Kids in grey hoodies ran alongside, exhilarated, trying to get soaked, dolphins surfing the bow wave. Sun shattered the water drops into sparks, igniting their smiles. I realized afterwards, with sadness, that I've reached an age where I would have been angry, not excited if I were in their position. But, I did see the moment of beauty and appreciate it, so perhaps I'm not irredeemably lost.

Mittens

What you really need on a Friday night is some Spicy Brains. Don't be put off by the twee beginnings -- trust me, it gets very weird. Hehehehe. I'm evidently in dire need of brains of some sort. I managed to burn my hand badly on the oven door this evening. Arse. Oven. Hot. Burns.

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