Saturday, September 22, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Ingredients
...for pancakes, courtesy of a South African genius, my last morning in Greenwich. Well, not ever. Just this summer.
First warm night, barbecue - flame effects 7
Yes, those have been a lot of flame photos. You have to wait for it to burn down to embers before cooking anything.
First warm night, barbecue
It was also my last night in Greenwich, so we decided to stay home and do something special.
Twisty turny Pavilion, Kensington Gardens, 2007
...with a disappointed Jonathan in the foreground. They actually close the pavilion at 6pm daily and we got there at 6.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Guru Paws
Sissie's brother, who appears to be cunningly imitating a wicker chair. Greenwich, this afternoon.
Homeward bound
Well, tomorrow morning I shall be winging my way to London. There is a fifty per cent chance of photo posts, which may or may not be properly tagged and fleshed out with info. Or perhaps the other fifty per cent chance - not much at all. We will see...
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Ephemera
First of all, many, many apologies to everyone who still reads this blog for the silence. I haven’t died, nor have I become brain-dead, although a distinct sense of slowness in the brain department after coming back from work these days is chiefly to blame. Anyway, on with the post.
I’ll start up again slowly today, with a few interesting links. In the history of both Windows and Mac OSes, one of the most user-customised features has been the background image on the desktop: the wallpaper. And here is a web-based wallpaper search tool which operates via a flickr API to allow you to search for your choice of wallpaper by pixel resolution, image format and keyword. Of course, you’re restricted to the images available on flickr but that’s hardly a disadvantage. I have a marvellous Japanese moss garden to soothe and cheer me when I power up the silicon beast.
I’m going to have a dinner party on the Tube just like this one when I go to London. No, I didn’t say absolutely the next time I go to London, but sometime. And here’s a mimic. And here’s an interesting piece of psychology.
Finally, if you’ve watched the last few clips and wouldn’t mind leaning back to enjoy them again, but this time with a drink in your hand, do learn a little more about an essential cocktail ingredient.
More soon.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Radical beauty
I rarely review organ CDs on the blog — or, indeed, anywhere. There are several good reasons why. Organ music isn’t popular. It is exclusively classical, and classical music isn’t popular among you — by which I mean readers of blogs. Classical music CDs are rarely truly superb enough for me to try to interest classical–sceptic readers in any but the best of them.
These CDs, Messiaen’s complete organ works, played by Olivier Latry in Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, count among the best. A small but significant number of organ CDs suffer from one of two problems: the playing is not good enough to prevent the sound of the organ being the main attraction, or the playing is excellent and the music is the centre of attention, but there is a problem with the organ, or recording, or both.
Here, the organ is wonderful. Notre-Dame’s instrument has thousands upon thousands of pipes within it, able to produce delicate, silvery tinkling, savage snarls, ethereal whispers, firm harmonies, shudders of the air around you, searing single notes like the primal idea of the note itself, heartbreakingly beautiful and hovering flute solos... the list goes on.
The musician is as expert, musical, restrained, soulful and daring on the organ as Keith Jarrett is on jazz piano, Stephen Hough on classical piano, Steve Vai on electric guitar, Jan Garbarek on saxophone. At no point does he show off. At every point the music comes first. And always there is a sense that he is serenely capable of astounding miracles which would set the world on its ear, but chooses not to employ them because we’d all explode into atomic particles if he did, and he just wants us to enjoy the music instead.
Yes, my tongue was in my cheek in that last sentence, but only a bit. Messiaen’s music is very difficult to get your hands around, and sometimes to get your eyes around on the page. It specifically calls for masses of colour in terms of the sounds available (and since Messiaen suffered from synaesthesia, it has more significance than just a gimmick). It is filled with bizarre rhythms from other countries and other times. It can be soothing or serene or emphatic or happy or frightening. His music demands your attention. From the sleeve notes:
The religious topics he chose to write about all bear on a theme particularly suited to music, that of contact between the everyday and the eternal. Though he was a christian, he was no means writing just for his own church. As Messiaen went on, he drew more and more into his music the songs of birds and the rhythms of medieval India, modern serialism and the sounds of wind or water. The "church" for which he was writing became the world.
Have a listen here to some samples by clicking ‘Track Listing’ on the left. And then go buy for a very reasonable price from some online store or other.
tags: [music] [classical] [organ] [colour] [paris] [notre-dame] [messiaen] [latry]
Sunday, April 29, 2007
She didn't need Money.
“She didn’t need another man. She just needed kicks. What she called The Big Bounce.” Absolutely classic. More here.
An interview with Crown Prince Haakon (such a cool name) of Norway, in Monocle magazine, honouring his country’s fantastic standard of living — because, well, a fantastic standard of living is worth smiling over when you’re being interviewed for a Tyler Brûlé mag.
Having said that, Germany seems to be pretty high up there these days, what with the Waldspirale. Wow.
tags: [books] [pulp] [royalty] [norway] [magazine] [germany]
Monday, April 02, 2007
Miscellany
I haven’t completely lost my desire to blog. Honest. I’ve just had a lot going on in the past few weeks, what with job, a man, a painful back, etc. None of which stop a person from blogging — it just gets easier to slide. So I’m sorry, and here is a selection of interesting links. Mostly so that you can go ‘cool, that’s interesting’ but also so I can know I provided them.
The precise reasons for having a full-size missile mounted on a train escape me. Mostly because a missile can’t really do a very tight u-turn in the air to obliterate the troops that are chasing the retreating train. Hmm.
Carniola doesn’t much like Austrian prisons. Well, that’s unfair — clearly this blogger likes the prisons very much. As do I. It’s just that the concept of giving prisoners quality surroundings in return for their own self-sponsored rehab is lightyears away from the clunky, violent reality of most Western systems.
Now that we’ve had a couple of clear sunny days and clear cold nights, I’ve got interested in what exactly I’m looking at when I crane upwards. Is it a plane? A satellite? A real star? WikiSky will tell you, in a nice star-mapped kind of way.
Be Jackson Pollock - take a splodge for a walk. If you move your mouse quickly, you’ll be amazed and enchanted and generally wonder why this hasn’t been everyone’s favourite pastime since forever. Then, as a suitable jolt into the other side of human endeavour, take a look at a tool for making big holes. Wow, and ugh.
If you have ever had vertigo, or a fear of dark gaping chasms, don’t visit Mirny, Russia. You probably will, anyway, just like a kid can’t stop watching a very scary film, or like I couldn’t stop looking down dark corridors when I was very little.
I assume this is Quartz. Via this site.
Music scores are meant to be played. Occasionally you will listen along with the score in front of you and wonder, in the name of all that’s human, how anyone is able to translate one thing to another. But this score — of the marvellously refined piece Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz, is definitely a feast for the eyes.
Crane and Container Ships. Big ones. I swear, it’s good. And so are these signs. Bon voyage!
tags: [miscellany]
Friday, March 02, 2007
The calculated risk...
...of sounding melodramatic has been taken, and so I’m feeling able to tell you that no, I’m not dead, but that during the past 2 weeks I have: 1. Turned 29; 2. started a scary new job; 3. had my niece visiting; 4. been involved in a car crash; 5. had something very like the winter vomiting virus; and 6. after consequently hanging around toilets with an expression of foreboding on my face and then recovering, I got a nasty cold to top it all off.
So that’s why there’s been a lack of posting here — please don’t think I’ve stopped. It’s just been somewhat nightmarish. Full service will resume when my body stops being sick and worrying about things!
Sunday, February 11, 2007
That restaurant was shit...
...but no, we can’t let you publish that in your newspaper, I’m afraid.
I have never eaten in Goodfellas on Kennedy Way in Belfast, but if a restaurant reviewer has, after due consideration of their responsibilities, decided to say in print that they didn’t have a good experience there, they are entitled to say it as long as it is true and fair comment.
A jury recently disagreed with that, saying that the Irish News was defamatory in its review. This will have a chilling effect on Northern Ireland’s newspaper reviews of restaurants, and that is wrong.
To correct the balance a little, I’ll make a few comments. First: all restaurants should be obliged to let people bring their own wine if they wish, because markups on wine lists are completely unreasonable. If I can buy a wine out of Sainsbury’s for £6.99, I don’t expect to have to pay double for it simply because a waiter brings it to me, uncorks it and pours some into a glass.
Second: save us from the tyranny of having 2 fixed-length sittings for dinner in average restaurants in Belfast. Deane’s Deli is a star offender here: it serves very good food, yes, and is popular; but it is not popular or superb enough to justify having to cram people in for only 2 hours per meal. And if it was that superb, giving diners only 2 hours would be virtually a crime.
Third: if your restaurant must have a bar, make it a bar. Reasonably-priced drinks and staff who know what they are serving and are always behind the bar. Your bar staff should not have to serve diners their drinks and deal with people having aperitifs or a few for the road as well.
Fourth: wobbly tables. Am I to enjoy my meal fully when the act of spearing food with my fork creates disturbances of a kind last seen off the island of Java on Boxing Day 2004? Will I delight when a tsunami of Riesling from an upended glass threatens to topple my precariously-arranged main course, leaving me with no choice but to soldier on and eat the resulting mush because they need the table in half an hour?
Friday, January 26, 2007
The usefulness of Occam's Razor
Having quietly simmered all week over the gay adoption row currently enlivening the op-ed columns, I think the application of Occam’s Razor is called for.
Let’s peel away the first layer of superfluity: this row takes place within the context of an Act which does not legislate on adoption per se, but on the unacceptable presence of discrimination against lesbian, gay and bi people in the provision of goods and services in general. The Act, and in particular the proposed Regulations, state that, broadly speaking, refusing to offer any service of any kind to anyone on the basis of their sexuality will be illegal. That is the wider context of this particular row.
Applying our honed blade to the next layer, it becomes apparent that the Churches’ choice of Church-based adoption agencies as a stick with which to beat the Act is very deliberate. Adoption is an obviously emotive issue even if you remove the sexuality complication — it involves vulnerable children and all kinds of imaginary threatening demons are being conjured up by using it as the particular locus for discussion. The implication is that predatory people of the worst kind would be able to adopt children if the Act’s provisions removed the Church’s trusty protection of proper values in its own adoption agencies.
Why is the Church arguing on this issue? Is it that they genuinely feel the chalice of religious freedom will be dashed to the ground by the Act? If so, why do they not argue so publicly and ferociously against other laws?
The Razor says: they do not wish to be forced to act impartially towards people of different sexualities, and this is because they are homophobic.
Homophobia is the vein running under everything in this row; it is the vein which sustains the row. The question at issue is whether an organisation should be exempted from having to observe human rights because it is, to a greater or lesser extent, institutionally and traditionally homophobic.
The point of the legislation is that there is no place for homophobia in the ethics of equality. The Churches which raise objections do not do so out of a regard for the welfare of children. Their distaste for gay people is their motivation, and this should not be sanctioned by the law of the land.
tags: [gay] [sexuality] [religion] [rights] [homophobia] [church] [equality]
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Info - Orange network down in Belfast!
What a bummer. And there I was, all ready to give them hell for accidentally barring my phone or something. So in case Google reaches this in time for it to be of any use, I’ve just talked to Orange, and they said the network is down in Belfast and will be down for possibly the rest of tonight, but will definitely be restored tomorrow.
Does anyone know how to claim money back from mobile networks in compensation for lost network time?
Friday, January 19, 2007
Lucombe Oak fallen!
Belvoir Forest’s Lucombe Oak (Quercus x hispanica ‘Lucombeana’) has fallen! Peripathetic is told that it was standing yesterday, and we didn’t notice any massively violent winds last night, despite the forecast, but there it is: a very rare and large tree, a shoot from the original Exeter hybrid, lost. :o(
Oh well. Wind, eh?
tags: [trees] [oak] [lucombe] [dendrology]
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Miscellany
Did anyone know about Camden Town tube station in London being covered with rather exuberant graffiti over Christmas? I didn't, but the results are... colourful. Can’t say I think they’re art, but I do like it when staid British authority gets sneaked up on and laughed at every now and then. Unless, of course, the taggers in question actually damaged any tiles or fixtures, in which case I’ll ’ave ’em myself!
The BBC has compiled a list of 100 things it didn’t know this time last year. I’m assuming that’s the same as 100 things everyone didn’t know, but looking at some entries I’m not so sure. But they’re diverse — the torrid revelation that most Indian guys find standard condoms too big (can’t say the same), the worrying stat about hospital keyboards and MRSA, ditto cow farts.
Others I definitely did know — the consistency of the brain, coprolalia, cats frightening bears, the medical benefits of music, and that thinking about muscle can make you stronger.
A landscape architecture blog has a magnificent photo of a bit of the new machine inside CERN’s Large Hadron [*] Collider, while ages I posted a photo of a huge cavernous chamber there.
[*] I typed that, first, as Hardon Collider. Heh. Heheheh.
Get all your South Park episodes. And here too. Videos of cool and freaky physical properties here. Finally, if you like rocks and intrigue, read about Cerro Torre.
tags: [london underground] [tube] [weird] [cern] [southpark] [science] [climbing]
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