Its been one of those weeks. Loads of work, a bit of stress , less sleep than I would like etc. etc. Still loads to do as well. Oh well that’s the way it goes sometimes.
This week I accidentally read The Da Vinci Code which is that most rare of things an eminently readable and very bad book. I say accidentally read because I started reading it and couldn’t stop – no doubt about it, it’s a page turner. However despite that its very badly written. The plot is constructed from the Children’s A,B,C book of Conspiracy theories (ie. all the obvious and easy ones). It has more exposition in it than an episode of Neighbours (and its all really obviously done). The characterisation is very poor indeed. One of the main characters is a well educated French woman. However she just comes across like a teenage American straight from a movie. In fact the whole book is very American – even the French police say “You kidding right?”. Expect to see a block buster movie of this sometime soon. However don’t read it.
As you can see there is now a box dynamically showing my last three logs (obviously there is only one at the moment) at Artima. How cool is Python and Rss.
Well, its been a while. I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit of writing here. So time to get back into it.
The ongoing saga of Broadband took a dramatic and unexpected twist last week. While reading an article about broadband coverage in the UK on the BBC website I became angry about the whole situation again and decided to phone up NTL for an argument about why they didn’t supply broadband to my house. I went through the various options on the phone system and spoke to a call center operative. “I would like broadband please” “Certainly whats your postcode?” …. “Yes we can supply you with broadband..”. Now these are the same people who told me a month or so ago that there wasn’t broadband in my area and there wouldn’t be for two years! The long and short of it is we are now connected to the internet properly and its cheaper than the BT dialup (plus we get a month free).
Working on a number of things as ever. The whole music thing is a bit of an issue in that I don’t really get the time to work on it at the moment – it needs dedicated uninterrupted time and that’s what I have least of. So music is on the back burner a bit at the moment.
So that leaves writing and programming. The poetry project is still on going and there will be something to read later on this year, there are a couple of short stories that may be good enough to see the light of day – not sure yet. Programming wise most of my projects are currently private – more may be announced in future however I have been invited to submit a software development weblog to Artima. The details haven’t been worked out yet but if all goes well it will give me an outlet for material unsuitable for this website.
I am toying with the idea of a website redesign. I don’t suppose it will be hugely different from the current junklight brand: greyscale/Garamond but I am playing with Maya and some tasteful 3d stuff.
I have been rereading the wonderful Nights Dawn Trilogy. Rip roaring page turning space opera written on a huge scale with characters you really care about and just what you need as bed time reading. I have also been reading Donald NormansThings that make us smart a great book about how our tools help and hinder us. Essential reading for anyone that makes things for other people to use.
Music wise I have one essential recommendation. The new David Sylvian album - Blemish. A stunning stripped back work featuring mostly guitar (inc. three tracks with the wonderful Derek Bailey), electronics and Voice. Sylvian has taken some of the more interesting strands of modern experimental music and built a mature, accessible and very beautiful collection of songs.