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::Tuesday, September 30, 2003::
㊁
I Forget...
...that if you do something nice for me, it's also nice for you.
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2:12:45 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
::Monday, September 29, 2003::
㉽
Importance vs Difficulty
Is the difficulty involved in achieving something proportional to its importance? Is it not true that the more work you put into something, the more it means to you?
I think this is a major problem for artists. You so often have to destroy something that was very difficult to create - killing things/entities that you care about - you MUST be able to let go.
Sometimes it's like killing your only child, sometimes it's just like the endless cell-shedding of bodies - death is a necessary function in any creative process.
Create. Kill. Create. Kill. Round and round, iterating onwards... improving? I think so.
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12:00:37 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
::Sunday, September 28, 2003::
㊮
Fairy Tales
I went clubbing last night [so my head's not settled back to normal quite yet, so this entry might be a bit messy]. They had a 'live' section from 3-6. It was psytrance [which is cool in that it dispenses, for the most part, the 'warm-pad-002' phenomenon - instead of 'uplifting' keyboard punching in the breaks, it goes all swooshy and weird; much better]... the liveness was pretty undetectable - the dj/producers were more focussed on keeping everything continuous than doing anything particularly inspiring musically. I could feel how memorable a session I could do in that slot... Even an hour or something - I could see people getting excited about a bit of a change - a performance... But of course, they all want to DANCE. I decided to find a friend of mine who knows the people who put it on, initially with the intention of getting them to let me do a session at a night like this. As I was trying to sell myself, I realised that my experience keeping a thing like this going is very limited, so I was talking about trying to do something smaller to start with. So he's said I can come and play a warehouse party whenever I like... Which is really really perfect... And resets the timescales I was imagining to much sooner. So I'm gonna start putting together a proper live set. I like the idea that there will probably be other musicians there, who could join in, and I wouldn't be all lonely on the stage. I've got strong ideas about how I'd link my stuff into the club-music-continuum. It's an exciting opportunity. Wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow.
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1:30:55 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Music
::Thursday, September 25, 2003::
㉵
Anybody need a room?
Kaye's moving out, so if you want to come and live in a small room on Brixton Road (4 mins from tube) for £280/month, then send me an email...
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8:51:48 PM :: permalink
Keywords:
㉷
Template Changes
It's meant to put up a random (circled) japanese character... Let me know if you're just getting a grey box at the top of each item (not that it looks particularly bad like that!). I've started using titles in the blogger template, so there are currently unsightly bad spaces above each entry. I may well go through all my most recent posts transferring the titles into the correct box...
And how do you like the comments coming up against each entry..?
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4:26:04 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Blogging
㊘
Amazon Associates
Just got an email from Amazon saying:
"I've just finished reviewing your application to become an Amazon.co.uk Associate and I have looked through the Web pages where you plan to add your links.
In the online copy of the operating agreement, linked to from the application form, you may not have noticed this provision:
------------------------------------------
Sites that Do Not Qualify for the Amazon.co.uk Associates Programme
include:
* sites that promote sexually explicit material
* sites that promote violence
* sites that promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disability, sexual orientation or age
* sites that promote illegal activities
------------------------------------------
Unfortunately your site does contain some of the material listed above, which means we are unable to accept your site as an Associate."
Huh?
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1:45:00 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Cinestatic
㊠
Okay, people...
...I respect all of your opinions. Lots of you seem to be into reviewing music. So tell me... Can you see any value to my continuing with my musicianly aspirations? Fucking HURT ME if you have to. I just need to know what to follow; what's me, and what's 'me' trying to do something I know nothing about. The demo (i.e. Three representative tracks to distribute to potential allies) I have been writing consists of the following tracks:
1. Human Thing -- I am comfortable expressing aggression. (Musically, of course). This feels watered-down the more I listen to it, but it should at least serve as a taste.
2. Caught in the Bitstream -- Much bouncier. Attemptions of beat science. And my first try at making the trumpet a lead part. I was singing to myself to do this. It's meant to be simple. I know it's hardly a virtuoso performance, but I cried while I was building myself up to recording that line...
3. Fuck Freestyle Knap Rap -- Yes, this has been around for a while, but it shows I can collaborate. Albeit by being a cheeky bastard.
My 'biography' is here . Look at this too. My sister did the drawing at the top of the page, and people have said that it's very 'me'. Which is cool, cos I like it. If you want to hear any of my older stuff, see my Diskography.
I want to play live. With my laptop and trumpet and effects unit. In London. But I'm a fucking coward and I've been too scared so far to give out more than ONE demo to anybody that MIGHT be able to help me.
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1:07:19 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Wednesday, September 24, 2003::
㉣
Amazon...
How about this: Amazon Associates..? I keep seeing bloggers trying to think of a way to make actual money from writing this stuff - why not like this?! Basically, if someone buys a book or something that you've recommended, you get 15%. If someone happens to buy something else on a session you started for them, you get 6%. WHAT'S THE CATCH?! Amazon have always treated me okay... The only real gripe I have is the way they advertise rare stuff and you don't notice that the 'availability' thing says '6-8 weeks' or 'special order', so for anything obscure (like what we bloggers would be recommending), most people would be better off going to a proper shop. But I dunno... it's intriguing to think that if lots of people started recommending and buying weird things from Amazon, they might start stocking more of this stuff, and recommending it to other people - it's very rhizomatic... A shifting undercurrent in the extra-flexible marketplace that Amazon provides.
Do you see what I'm talking about, or shall I explain it some more..?
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5:34:56 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Cinestatic
㉥
Template Phun
I'm experimenting with a white background... Obviously.
:.
12:31:29 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Blogging
::Tuesday, September 23, 2003::
㊩
I Ching Response
Here was the answer, if you're interested:
Too much detail to go into though.
:.
12:07:01 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Religion
㉻
Following up 'how long?' (and hopefully drawing a conclusion)
I really need to do that post justice. Because it was important. The I Ching response is almost irrelevant if I don't first explain what I meant by the question in more detail. The trouble with explaining it is that it keeps slipping out of focus since I did the I Ching. So I need to try to remember the state I was in before I did it - I wanted to print stickers and plaster them over the door of the church downstairs.
How long have you got...
1 :: ...before you die?
2 :: ...to achieve your ambitions?
3 :: ...after you die?
4 :: ...before you HAVE to make up your mind?
5 :: ...before you have to compromise and make the best of what you have?
6 :: ...before you have to stop learning, and start DOING?
7 :: ..., and therefore where should you set your hopes?*
For me, this became a very pertinent question because of my difficulty gauging what is practical and what isn't. If only I knew how long I have, I would be able to manage my time and feel like I made the most of my life. But without knowing the deadline (...shiver...), it's very tempting to spend too much time on learning and 'research'. I don't want to be putting off the most difficult parts of the creative process, finishing and presentation (and then subjection to criticism when I KNOW IT'S NOT FUCKING PERFECT!)... because I don't want to end up having put it off indefinitely by default. [Implication: Killed crossing road. Caught in crossfire of Brixton shooting. Etc...]. If there was cancer, or an approaching asteroid, or death threats, at least I'd have SOME IDEA. Some way of managing my time. Maybe that's why I smoke. 'For the love of god, God, give me a deadline!'
I got Mycelium finished because of the deadline on the availability of the computer and the rest of Gaijin the week before we moved out of our shared house in Leamington. And that turned to be more 'dead' than 'line' [*sob*], but it was something FINISHED. Something to leave behind. Something to reference. Something that fairly represented our abilities, using new methods with obvious and explosive scope for growth, refinement and exploration. Here's Mark's review.
I got shunted back to square one again, and I'm waiting for a deadline. But afraid to make one for myself. I want other people (or aliens or the cosmos or whatever) else to force them on me.
Anyway... a bit on religion: Religions tend to have a way of either answering this question, or taking attention away from it. Christianity says "you've got forever, as long as you fill up all of your earthly time with these rituals". An effective memetical method for hogging your host's time... wasted, wasted lives... It's a similar story with lots of other religions. "Bury your heads in the sand and waste your life." ///// / ///// //// ---- stopping there ----- // / // //
I mean to get on to the subject of religion properly at some point, but it's one of these things that you have to explain a lot to have a chance of showing anybody that they are being manipulated by parasitic memes... Some good quotes here though: Celebrity Atheists.
I digress.
Oh wait - I already digressed.
I've confused myself with nests. LEAVE ME ALONE I'M TRYING TO WORK!
*Turn page upside down to read answers.
:.
11:57:55 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Life Rants
::Monday, September 22, 2003::
㊖
What's wrong, and what to do about it?
http://www.funkymonkeyspunk.blogspot.com
This is very good! [Link stolen from Angus]
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4:23:26 PM :: permalink
Keywords: OtherBlogs
::Wednesday, September 17, 2003::
㉩
shõrai-teki
Unbounding the Future - the Nanotechnology Revolution: "Curiously, the Japanese language seems to lack a disparaging word for 'futurelike.' Ideas for future technologies may be termed mirai no ('of the future,' a hope or a goal), shõrai-teki (an expected development, which might be twenty years away), or kûsõ no ('imaginary' only, because contrary to physical law or economics). To think about the future, we need to distinguish mirai no and shõrai-teki, like nanotechnology, from mere kûsõ no, like antigravity boots. "
:.
11:33:07 AM :: permalink
Keywords: TechStuff
::Monday, September 15, 2003::
㊋
Deadlines
I splurged and splurged and splurged. Everything I could think of. To myself. I haven't done that for a while. Not since the blogging. I haven't sat with my pad and written everything down. Sometimes you can't couch this all in terms that are inoffensive to all potential readers. So I just wrote and wrote. Typed into an email to nobody.
In twenty minutes I wrote 1,062 words. 31 different names of people who affect my life. And many who's names were merely implied.
40 questions in all.
And I froze on the last:
How long have I got?
It froze me and then I decided to write this blog. Because I don't know if it's a question that one can ask the Oracle.
I Ching... can you help me? It doesn't seem that likely. Is there enough time for an answer to evolve for that question? With wisdom gained, even over all the time in the universe, over all the people in the universe, all the crazy events possible, in all the infinite unpredictability of it, could this question ever be answered?
It's worth a shot.
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11:32:47 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life Rants
::Friday, September 12, 2003::
㊧
Pesky Biography!
First person or third person?! First person sounds like a CV and limits enthusiasm... third person is silly because I'm the one writing it. HELP!
:.
5:46:30 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
㊇
Printers
So I realised on Wednesday night that I haven't actually sent off a single demo to anyone in the 'industry' at all yet. So I decided 'that's it then' and set about preparing a one-page biography with fancy graphics and so on. So I tried printing it off to see how it looked on paper and I got a friendly message from Windows "spoolsv.exe has generated errors and will be shut down". So I Googled till I could Google no more, updated system files, virus checked, edited the registry, wiggled leads, tried a different computer, tried a different printer, and it still kept doing the same thing. Spent several frustrating hours last night trying to fix it and failed. Today I tried, and I did it. There print-monitoring software was getting confused by the 'out of ink' messages coming from the printer (I'd bought new ink cartridges, knowing this) and with an update of this file, it was able to ask for more ink, and now.. it is able to print. Sorted. Respect due.
So... there's nothing else left between me and serial humiliation at the hands of A&R men then.
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3:03:45 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Wednesday, September 10, 2003::
㉡
Balls.
I put an order on Amazon and the process was so efficient that I failed to spot that the delivery address was not the same as the invoice address so now my £50 dvd box set is heading to my old flat to be sat on by the obnoxious evil landlady stripper bitch from hell who I never wanted to talk to ever again, and who I've already lost hundreds of pounds to as it is. Shitting shit it.
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11:12:34 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
::Tuesday, September 09, 2003::
㊋
Been a bit reluctant to look at this page for the last couple of days. I was feeling bitter.
:.
11:35:52 AM :: permalink
Keywords:
::Monday, September 08, 2003::
㊉
MCA from the Beastie Boys, in 1999, (just after Hello Nasty - in an interview on channel four) on the Nature of Ideas
"I think it's like tuning in on the wavelength...
A lot of times, you think of an idea and then if you don't do it right away then some other fool comes and busts out that idea - that shit happens all the time. [...] Like sometimes it's just like an idea that's come of it's time and somebody's gonna drop it"
Since I started making music, I've come across this phenomenon time and time again. Either you think of something and then somebody else does it before you can, OR ... you do something and everyone's like "what?" and then 2 years later suddenly everyone's doing it and you're like "hey!".
I heard El-P use my Raymond Scott sample (from the Dream track) at All Tomorrow's Parties earlier this year - I've been sitting on that for nearly 3 years now - so that was annoying. But he just used it straight, where I've been trying to do something interesting with it.
Thing is, for a lot of the ideas I have, the technology isn't quite ready yet (well, it is, but I can't afford it), so there's an aspect to all this, expanding on mister Yauch's metaphor, that you need the right equipment to tune in on the wavelength. Or different wavelengths. Or something.
Right place, right time, right production values ... how do you make it all fit? My housemates think I'm better off going all out as myself, rather than trying to fit into any style, because the music tends to drag them in the direction I want regardless. More advocates of the "Just make what you LOVE" approach. Which I know to be the only way to do this, but ... accessibility... what can you do?!
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1:33:32 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Music
::Saturday, September 06, 2003::
㊉
I don't know. You just slave and slave over this shit. And what do you end up with? Some fucking pointless commodity for whoever to stick on the background or talk about. Or talk about what it sounds like. Talking.
Talking about it or talking over it. What's the difference?
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5:20:56 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Rants
㉧
Another one
Have it. Another track. Watch that bass on your little speakers. Caught in the Bitstream. What do I care?
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5:14:19 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Friday, September 05, 2003::
㊕
I've had an idea music-internet-dj-performance idea of some excite.
But it's made me realise that I need some kind of input device - a touchscreen or something - that can sense multiple finger-touches - I did a search and discovered that some other musical people are thinking along the same lines. Here is
A document explaining what I found myself needing.
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1:28:35 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk Techstuff
::Thursday, September 04, 2003::
㊨
Dolmetsch Online - Music Theory Online Contents
Here's a site with actual information (as opposed to links to books you can buy) - it looks quite helpful, although this stuff makes my brain hurt after a while.
:.
2:27:00 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Music
㊞
On Business
I came up with this theory today on the way to the tube coming home from work.
"The larger a company gets, the more work each employee has to do."
It's tied into the problem of 'change control', the management of increasingly complex systems, and, primarily, the need to EXPLAIN WHAT YOU'VE DONE to someone else, once it's got too big to fit into your own brain.
I tend to come up with on-the-spot inventive little hacks to solve problems every day. But I forget that that's what I do, and then I try to do something again, expecting it to be easy because I've done it before, but I can't remember what little tricks I came up with, and when I can I realise I haven't logged which of those tricks gave a successful result, so I have to do the whole inventing thing all over again. It was alright when I didn't have that many different pots on the boil, but now it's too much. So I'm trying to write down what I've done - instructions to myself next time I have to do it, and it's doubling the amount of time it takes me to do things.
Now we are all endlessly subject to the phenomenon that has arisen to do something about this sticky knoblem: the Formal System... A great source of frustration, with multitudes of multitudes of sects religiously denying it's utility/angrily reacting against its flaws, its naivity to the complexities of Real Life. Its fundamental inability to take stock of itself, this inability being directly opposed to the most basic quality of human intelligence, the ability to look in on itself from the outside. Hofstadter (buy it!) describes this along the lines of "a computer will endlessly persist with a pointless enterprise and NEVER realise that it is pointless" - directly opposing this to the most simple of simpleton's ability to stop after a while and find a shortcut (or give up). It's annoying KNOWING that formal systems are INHERENTLY FLAWED in a way that can be RATIONALLY DEMOSTRATED, yet finding myself every day in situations where I NEED them.
We need (un)systems that are capable of changing and evolving at the rates WE are changing and evolving (and technology is evolving us). A way to keep up. This applies to everything. Especially politics, especially in the workplace, especially in law... Some workable alternative. Some sophisticated anarchy colliding with somehow formal self-aware organic unrules.
Any ideas?
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1:26:12 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Work Techstuff
㊖
RE: Nutty page
Note to Bloggers - don't put any overlength words in your fixed width tables! (That aaaaarggghhh was longer before, and internet explorer didn't wrap it, so all the text got wider than the background). Not 'too munted' after all then.
STOP ME! This geekery.
:.
1:00:11 AM :: permalink
Keywords:
㊊
Arfg! What the heck's happened to my Blogger template?! My page has gone all nutty! I didn't touch it! Too munted to do anything about it now though.
:.
12:56:34 AM :: permalink
Keywords:
㉭
Googlephysics
The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web - Page, Brin, Motwani, Winograd (ResearchIndex): "Abstract: The importance of a Web page is an inherently subjective matter, which depends on the readers interests, knowledge and attitudes. But there is still much that can be said objectively about the relative importance of Web pages. This paper describes PageRank, a method for rating Web pages objectively and mechanically, effectively measuring the human interest and attention devoted to them. We compare PageRank to an idealized random Web surfer. We show how to efficiently compute PageRank for large... "
So I'm trying to get to grips with this but I am both drunk and stoned... Basically, it's the Google 'relevance' algorithm. It's using the same mathematical methods as the quantum mechanics course that I couldn't quite get to grips with at university, despite my intrigue in the subject. I blamed the teacher (it was pretty shocking - the guy basically parroted the text book, explaining the easy bits in great detail, and then glossing over the difficult bits - it was the only course I ever read up on in advance - I got to the point where I felt I needed some help, and I remember thinking to myself -"yay! that's what the lectures are for!" . But I was shocked and angered by the laziness with which the lecturer presented course - it was painfully obvious that he didn't really understand the core of the subject matter, so even if my introvert nature wasn't enough to stop me grilling him, the pointlessness of it did. Um, anyway...), so the bonus with this is that it is clearly (yet formally) written, and, most important in my attempts to understand things, has a tangible application.
I got to this page, by the way, because I looked up "Parallel Architecture", to see what explanation would be given to someone investigating my claims on the home page of my site here. I'm thinking I've got a long way to go before I can really make this claim with any seriousness, but I know that the fact that it's in my subconscious with anything I do on this site will eventually mean that I have something here that I can argue as an example of a successful and interesting application of this philosophy... It's encouraging - the (only) sponsored link I followed was intriguingly unique : "Jobs at Google".
Really not sure why the text of the document is presented as blocky bitmap images, rather than hypertext... I'm thinking some sort of protection from web robots or something (in a difficult-to-OCR kinda way). And they've got this weird "submit corrections to this abstract/document" thing that comes up... some sort of iterative process-enabler that allows a scientific document to evolve closer to TRUTH?
Anyway. Once I understand this I will find a way to apply it to Buffy, and everyone's happy.
Label me a Geek. (aaaaaaaaaargggghhhhhhhhh)
:.
12:31:56 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Techstuff
::Tuesday, September 02, 2003::
㉶
Feeling a bit better today after a night of drinking to excess and coming to my new office where there are people and the prospect of a sandwich that doesn't taste like sand. And lots of space, and despite the open-plan-ness still nobody can really see what I'm doing!
Just prevented a colleague from emailing a hoax email to everybody in the office - "Mobile phones ignite petrol fumes" (myth)
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12:30:38 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Work
::Monday, September 01, 2003::
㉲
Ever have one of those days...
...when everything's too hard? For no obvious reason?
I'm in limbo - am I "working from home" or "doing music"? I'm waiting for my boss to get back to an email I sent, and if he does then I'll feel guilty about spending the afternoon pissing about. Or if he says 'don't bother' then I'll be pissed off that I didn't make better use of MY time.
I don't feel tired - I just can't think in straight lines.
Chain smoking too.
Can't wipe this scowl off my face.
It's not just that - the mood swings are too much - happy as a twat one second, curling up in foetal terror the next. A waste of space.
:.
3:30:07 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Rants
㊈
:.
1:32:24 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
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Care to comment?
