pontefract

jwz @ 1:59am: dnalounge update

DNA Lounge update, wherein mostly photos are presented.

jwz @ 11:39pm: Fortune

lidbert @ 9:45am: I could do with another w/end to recover from this w/end!

Friday night was a short choir practice followed by the end of term BBQ at the vicarage. I made my apologies and started pulling up carpets. Yay.

The chap came to fit the new gates first thing Saturday morning (who needs a lie-in anyway??) so we carried on removing carpets and then took them to the tip. We also had to buy a new padlock for the gate, as typically the existing one was ever so slightly too small. Gah.

Sunday morning was the usual singing thing, followed by an afternoon of filmage. First we saw Kung Fu Panda and then with an hour to spare before Hancock plumped for a swift BK. It was not particularly swift however, because the chap'd have one of burgers ready, then by the time the 2nd one was ready, someone else had snaffled the 1st one because he'd left it on the heat. This happened several times, but he was so apologetic that when he finally secured a complete set of burgers for us, we didn't have the heart (or the time) to tell him he'd given us the wrong ones!

This haphazard service continued into the evening when we met up with twig_wonderkid to celebrate him passing his driving test. We decided on Tampopo, being nice and light, but they didn't appear to be quite with it. First they brought Mr W the wrong drink. Then they brought Mr B the wrong starter. Then they only brought 2 out of the 3 requested drinks in our second round. At the end, they brought us the bill for a different table. Then they brought us our bill, but as well as what we'd ordered, they'd charged us for all the wrong things they'd brought over the course of evening. 3rd bill (and 9 Fox's Glacier Mints) later we finally got out of the restaurant, but then couldn't get out of the Trafford Centre as they'd blocked off the exit to our car park. We had to go all 'round the houses to get back to the car. Bastards.

So now I am very bruised (my wrists and thighs are almost completely black from balancing furniture upon them) and sore and tired. And we've got to do it all again... twice... on Wednesday when the carpets are actually fitted! Yay!

jwz @ 4:03am: mixtape 040

Please enjoy jwz mixtape 040.

Tonight was the final Pop Roxx event.

To commemorate this, we gave away a bunch of compilation CDs of most of the bands who have played at Pop Roxx over the last two and a half years. It wasn't all of the bands, because there were too many to fit on an audio CD, so I had to leave a few off.

This week's mixtape is the "director's cut" of that CD: it's almost the complete set of Pop Roxx bands. (And yeah, I'm slightly breaking my "C90" rule for this one.) I'm only missing tracks by three bands (Pretty Vicious, Landshark, and Sunday Drivers). Somehow I managed not to get CDs by those bands, and I wasn't able to track down MP3s by them this week, alas.

We had a lot of great bands at Pop Roxx! I'll miss it.

jwz @ 3:58pm: Tentacles?

suitandtieguy @ 7:56pm: holy shit
apparently Delia Derbyshire had another 276 tapes in her attic. this is good news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7512072.stm

jwz @ 12:07pm: ninety-sixopus

jwz @ 12:04pm: "George W. Bush Sewage Plant" makes the ballot

Satire at the ballot box to 'honor' Bush

They want to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant come January, when the next president is sworn in. During the inauguration, the group also wants supporters to participate in a "synchronized flush" -- a way to send a gift to the renamed plant, which supporters say, would be a "fitting monument to this president's work."

It sounds like a harmless joke, or maybe a college civics lesson gone awry. But they have already collected 8,500 signatures in support of the plan - 1,300 more than the minimum needed to put the question to city voters in November.

The biggest opposition in this Democratic stronghold, McConnell said, is people who oppose naming anything after the 43rd president.

Officials at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which owns the plant, say they get the humorous intent. But they note that the plant is an award-winning facility that keeps the city's streets and the ocean clean.

"If you are looking for a place to make a negative statement about the Bush administration's impact on the environment, this would be the last place to do it," agency spokesman Tony Winnicker said.

jwz @ 11:54am: smoking ban: level up!

HELL YES:

San Francisco smokers are already banned from lighting up inside restaurants, bars and public buildings. Now Supervisor Chris Daly is proposing tougher restrictions, including no smoking in taxicabs, at outdoor cafes, in lines at the ATM, at farmer's markets and within 20 feet of the entrance to businesses.

The city's Department of Public Health says there's no safe level of second-hand smoke. "There's been research that shows the exposure in outdoor areas. The levels can be as toxic as indoor levels," said Alyonik Hrushow from the San Francisco Health Department.

Smokers may feel like pariahs in this city, but according to the American Lung Association, San Francisco is behind other cities including Belmont, Berkeley and Ross when it comes to trying to limit second-hand smoke.

This will be a slight hassle for us at the club, since we'll have to make people move farther down the block to smoke, but that's fine with me, because I find it absolutely disgusting to have to walk through that gauntlet of stench on the sidewalk in front of the exit door.

You're welcome to smoke, and to play with your own poop. Just keep your smoke, and your poop, off of me.

lidbert @ 11:04am: Organs
Last night, Mr I've-got-a-Big-Organ came up to try out St Anne's organ with a view to doing a recital as a fund-raiser for the choir.

He did, sickeningly marvellously, and then we stuffed him full of Amercian Diner-esque nosh and plied him with wine before breaking the news that he'd have to be up at half 6 to get a lift back to Wales with Mr W. Mwah ha ha hah!

lidbert @ 7:34am: Fail
We tried to go to the cinema the other night, and in one sense, it was a success as we actually made it out of the house and all the way over there. But in another, more important sense, it was a complete failure because we couldn't park anywhere. We were forced to pick up a takeaway on the way home to cheer ourselves up.
*sigh*

So I read instead.
I finished Laurell K Hamilton's Incubus Dreams and read half of Gerald Durrell's Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons.

mr_williams_law went on a mission to see if he could find any of our worn-out VHSes for a decent price on DVD. He did. Quite a lot. As they're always packaged and delivered seperately, I surmise that the postman will not be loving us this week. *evil grin*

jwz @ 2:58pm: XScreenSaver 5.06

XScreenSaver 5.06 out now. Only one new hack this time, but it's a fine one, if I do say so myself. Also this includes a bunch of fixes related to adding, removing and resizing monitors (RANDR/Xinerama) on X11 systems, as I mentioned earlier. So please stress-test that junk. Or be devoured.

jeremy_5x5 @ 8:28pm: Brain asplode
This video is what the phrase "WTF?" was MADE for:



I am going to lie awake tonight trying to figure out what the blinking flip is going on here.

jwz @ 11:48am: Did you know that cable cars poop sand?

There's something you don't see every day:

A Powell-Mason cable car jumped the tracks while turning onto Powell Street just before midnight Sunday night, July 13, 2008, leaving at least four people injured.

I assumed they were, you know, attached.

Which led to me learning about that sand thing:

The track brake does the lion's share of the work. The friction between wood and steel is what primarily stops the car. Make that dry wood and dry steel. Wet equals slick... this is not good.

This is where sand comes to the rescue. A small pedal on the floor is pressed to drop sand on the rails. The wheels crush the sand into powder, the powder soaks up the moisture and provides -- the magic word -- friction!

jwz @ 11:39am: frickin' russian ravers with frickin' laserbeams in their eyes

Blind Russian Ravers

Ravers at the Aquamarine Open Air Festival in Kirzhach, 80 kilometres northeast of Moscow, began seeking medical help days after the show, complaining of eye and vision problems.

"They all have retinal burns, scarring is visible on them. Loss of vision in individual cases is as high as 80%, and regaining it is already impossible," Kommersant quoted a treating ophthalmologist as saying.

Partygoers say heavy rains forced organisers to erect massive tents for the all-night dance party. The damage seems to have been caused when laser beams that were intended for outdoor use to illuminate the sky, were somehow turned or reflected onto the crowd.

fleetfootmike @ 8:48am: Revision
For those interested, I rewrote the last verse of A Little Bit Of England on the train this morning. Works better, methinks.

fleetfootmike @ 10:22pm: Moleskine time again :)
I went out for a walk from work at lunchtime. There's a very.. London, very English thing that happens on the corner of Shaftesbury Ave and Charing Cross Road just about all day every day - someone is handing out free phonecards for some company or other.

And they're almost never English.

I was reminded of a Radio 5 feature on Polish students doing work on farms in England - someone asked the local unemployed teenagers if they'd do the jobs, and the answer was 'no way'.

I'm not xenophobic, or racist. This song is more me wondering aloud.
And it's bloody hard to remember chunks of lyrics when you're driving! :)

( Lyrics behind the cut )

lidbert @ 5:37pm: Imposter!
Saturday night I had a Band and a Choir concert at the same time (a good trick if you can do it), but the Band one was open air, and what with the weather I wimped out and went with the singing.

On the way out, I saw Tank coming home without his clothes on, and looking at the sky I knew he wouldn't be able to get in if it rained. So I got out of the car and opened the front door for him. He did his usual running away and hiding under a bush, so I did my usual impatient ushering of him in. He shrugged and did what I asked.

As I drove away, I saw Tank walking up the road with his collar on. [double take] Who had I just let in?? [/double take] I didn't have enough time to investigate, so I crossed my fingers that there wouldn't be any dismemberment and went off on my slightly-less-merry way.

When I got back home, all was quiet, so I visited the facilities as is my wont. While sat musing, the collarless cat came in and licked my knees (as Tank does, disturbingly) and when chastised, rolled over to show me his tummy (as Tank does). Then my two cats came up the stairs, growling and hissing and carrying on, so Black Cat C shot under the bed, hotly pursued by Black Cats A and B. I had to pull the bed out to get at him as he sensibly wasn't coming out with my two on the warpath. He let me pick him up, carry him downstairs and shove him out of the catflap while my two tried to trip me up and throw me down the stairs in their efforts to get at him en route.

It's just so odd: from a distance, a black cat is a black cat. But even close up, this one had me fooled: his face was Tank's, his habits, his dropped-on-his-head-when-kitteny oddness... all of it. Seeing them together, he was slightly smaller, but otherwise I still couldn't tell the difference.

One of my neighbours must be cloning kitties in a frenzy of mad scientistiness. That's the only logical explanation.

fleetfootmike @ 2:14pm: AKICOLJ
Does anyone know of any print-on-demand services that fulfil ALL the following:

a) link to an online shop so I can sell the damn thing?
b) handles both US and UK customers without killing one or other with postage charges?
c) allows me to use my own ISBN?
d) will do spiral/wire binding?

suitandtieguy @ 2:06am: squibcake update
i added a mediafire link for the entire album to that last entry. it makes the download easier for you and my host.

jwz @ 10:50am: dnalounge update

DNA Lounge update, wherein the clock ticks.

suitandtieguy @ 5:45am: thank you, very quite seriously, for making the greatest album ever even better.


i just wanted to say that i think it's quite amazing that Squib Cake: A Tribute To Jenni Black's Ass is completely invisible and non-existant according to Wikipædia, Goggle, and Pitchfork Media.

it just means the hundreds of people who enjoy this, the shining jewel of glory in the crown of Peoria punk rock, keep it a secret because they are terrified the world will find out what an amazing record it is. the record pretty much pisses all over "Now Playing In Peoria", "Corvette Summer", and "State Of Peoria: May 1997" and people who weren't involved with the record feel threatened by this reality. this is FUCKING AWESOME.

oh ... you don't have it? check this out:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ml5d1jldsej

and if you won't take my word for it, keep in mind that girlafraid is all over it, being sexy as all get-out. i'm sure that's enough to make you listen.

jwz @ 2:46am: mixtape 039

Please enjoy jwz mixtape 039.

lidbert @ 3:02pm: Last night, we went to see One Man Star Wars at The Lowry. We were beset by Star Wars characters in the bar before the show, and there was also a warm-up comedian who was very good but whose name I didn't catch. (He was Canadian, but I'm assuming that won't narrow it down very much). Charles Ross was really entertaining, although I'm glad we weren't in the front row because they got quite wet. My favourite quote was "if you've learned anything from the Star Wars movies it's that you should never kiss your sister like that". I nearly ruptured sommat vital.

I have been doing many other things, including getting a new boss; going to Buxton in the rain; seeing The Mist with rfbooth in Bolton preceeded by fantastically fantastic spicy nosh; and... oh actually, that's it. Hmmm... I felt a lot busier...

lidbert @ 1:54pm: Erm...
Alrighty then...