1. Ladytron - He Took Her To A Movie
2. Devo - Whip It
3. Flaming Lips - Race For The Prize
4. Modest Mouse - Float On
5. Sonic Youth - Silver Rocket
Archive for November, 2006
1. Modest Mouse - Black Cadillacs
2. N*E*R*D - Provider
3. The Rapture - Killing
4. Belle & Sebastian - Dress Up In You
5. Radiohead - Talk Show Host
…Liverpool, December 2004 - June 2005.
1. Fischerspooner - L.A Song
2. Interpol - NYC
3. Arcade Fire - Neighbourhood
4. Athlete - Vehicles And Animals
5. The Dears - We Can Have It
1. Dead Kennedys - Holiday In Cambodia
2. Sonic Youth - 100%
3. NOFX - Perfect Government
4. Mudhoney - In ‘n’ Out Of Grace
5. Sonic Youth - Silver Rocket
All being well, I should have payed off my overdraft by Christmas (remember last years extravagant purchases: a laptop and digital SLR two weeks before Christmas!) and my 21st birthday (January 16th) gives me the perfect excuse to make some choice expenditures:
1. Apple MacBook (The basic £650 education only model) - Because the only portable I own is a PC. I might wait for Leopard though.
2. Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium (Yes, the £180 student edition) - Because I wish this was available when I started college. I may also invest in the Macromedia Studio 8 suite whilst I’m at it.
3. Western Digital 320Gb MyBook External Hard Disk - Because 180GB I have shared between four computer isn’t quite cutting it.
Then that’s it for the next twelve months.
1. Zelda
2. Final Fantasy
3. Street Fighter
4. Lemmings
5. Resident Evil
I had really strange taste.
1. Dunlop String Winder
This was free with a magazine. It’s supposed to speed up the process of changing strings. I change me strings so rarely that it never really made much difference.
2. Morley Pro Series II Wah Wah Pedal
I was listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins back then. Whilst they make everything you play sound amazing to people who like Hendrix it’s main use has always been for reaching a certain level of feedback when the sound guy has put your amplifier so far from the microphone that you can hardly hear it yourself.
3. Cable Tidy
One of those plastic things with a handle in the middle and some Velcro around the middle. It’s hard not to look like a prick when you have a special tool for winding your cables.
4. Plectrum Holder
See “Cable Tidy”.
5. Boss HM-2 “Heavy Metal” Distortion Pedal
I mentioned I was looking at a “Metal Zone” on eBay (as used by Jonny Greenwood) and this guy said he’d sell me his. When it turned up it was a really bad 80’s pedal that sounded horrible. I’d seen Dave Grohl with a delay pedal on the body of his guitar, so I took it apart and did the same. The SG were heavy enough without it and it’s currently in bits in the old studio.
I’m testing something! This is a very tired me doing what I do when I get in from university.
Praktica Webcam, MacCam, and iMovie.
Over the last few weeks I have seen a few TV advertisements for dual core computers. The scene is usually some cheerful and uncharacteristically helpful saleswoman helping some thirty-something male buy a new computer for “Work and music”. The line that seems to come up in them all is “This ones dual core, meaning you can run two programs at once. Like checking your email whilst listening to music.” Or something like that.
Okay, I’ve studied computer architecture enough to understand how processors deal with tasks. The more cores, the more operations it can perform simultaneously - but not since the Acorn BBC we used in primary school have I had any trouble running multiple applications at once. In fact, I have a single processor machine and I am currently browsing the Internet, checking my mail, running a web server, connected to MSN, downloading Podcasts and listening to music in iTunes, simultaneously.
The target audience of any television advertisement for computer hardware are those that don’t know enough to be able to say “That’s BS!” - and suggesting to them that in order to multi-task then you must purchase a more expensive dual core computer. It’s fair enough to say that this is the way that computers are going, and that they dramatically improve performance, but anyone taken in by such a statement probably wont be running After Effects.
I hate computer retailers.
Firstly, I have another twelve months left on my phone contract until I am eligible for an upgrade, so I’m not one of the many people cursing at Apple for not disclosing anything about this product (well, supposed product) and praying it comes before their Samsung bites the dust and they are forced to upgrade to a D900 or something. I’m not holding my credit card and watching my RSS feeds in my boxer shorts every time there is an Apple conference.
I do, however, really want one.
You see, I didn’t like the iPod at first. I thought it was a stupid idea to rip 10GB of your music to a lossy compression rate and stick it on a £300 jukebox when I could grab my Diskman, put in a CD, and that would entertain me on the way into college. I used one, I got one, I discovered iTunes, and Podcasts, and I fell in love. I guess if it wasn’t for the iPod I wouldn’t have bought a Mac.
So now I have this great computer that compliments my lifestyle perfectly. My iPod that plugs in and automatically updates my updated songs and Podcasts, and will even sync with iCal! But you know, I still have to have my phone with me all the time. It’s good, but it need a separate charger, and it’s one more thing to carry around, and I don’t know how to copy the photos from it in OSX, and when I turn my iPod on I need to put my phone on silent, and it’s kinda as though the phone is this spare part that doesn’t really get used to it’s full potential just because the people who designed it didn’t think about Mac users.
When I bought this phone, the Nokia 6111, I said “I want the smallest thing you sell. I don’t care about playing MP3. I just want a phone”. This is what I got, and I still stand by that decision, and my thoughts are echoed by a huge amount of people right now. The reason is, as I’m sure you will have experienced, there aren’t any phones that play music as well as an iPod. Many of the iPhone’s critics are saying the same thing.
But the iPhone is something that I would use for a) the fact that I don’t have to carry, update, charge two devices and b) it would have the same intuitive interface/connectivity that the iPod already has. However, I think Apple need to pitch at least one of the phones (there are supposedly two phones on the way) at the Nano market, rather than the Smart Phone market:
1) Form factor no bigger than the iPod Mini
2) 4GB storage
3) Video
4) Cellphone-like battery life
I’m being realistic: I can’t see anyone wanting to buy a 30GB iPod with a phone built in. It would be too big, too expensive, the battery wouldn’t last - and if you are the sort of person who uses the new video iPods then the chances are you don’t mind a bit of extra plastic in your pockets. But I can see a lot of people like me, who love the size (physical and capacity) of the Nanos and Minis picking a device that does the job of two over a similarly priced iPod video.
Whatever happens, I’d be interested to see how Apple market this one, given they dominate the portable audio space and they aren’t going to want to give that up to a cellular telephone. It could be the “iPod Phone” I guess, as long as it’s designed from a phone perspective, rather than an iPod with a phone as an afterthought.
It’s the iPod that will bring people, but I hope it’s the phone that makes it live up to the hype.
