welcome to the transmission party, I love your friends they're all so arty

Usual mixed bag of material this week

in trains - a work in progress
some jottings entered as a separate blog entry
these are just random jottings inspired by the time I spend on trains, which is a lot of time. Except for the black train, which is about suffering from migraines, which has the relentlessness of an unwanted train journey.

@work
finally getting on top of what seemed like an endless volume of work, but I need to find fresh challenges, though not sure what they are. Overall getting itchy feet for some new issues to get my teeth into, it all feels a bit too quiet.

apple store
dropped in at the local apple store again. What an odd shop. I really don't think that it is about selling stuff. I cannot imagine that they actually make money. Rather they are about ensuring that Apple products are displayed to their best possible advantage, something that retailers have signally failed to do in the past. There is a long history of retailers stocking apple, then failing to display properly, or have any knowledgeable staff, then wondering why they don't sell any. Even at John Lewis, when buying an iMac, they had to call out a techie in a overcoat to talk to me about it, and even then he did not have one at home himself. Other stores were even worse, with apple computers stuck at some Sad Mac prompt - sitting there unloved.

What sold me on the iPod was when my daughter instantly got how it worked without any instruction, seeing a demo model at the local Currys. If a child can get the clickwheel, and love it, then apple is doing something right.

The perennial downside is that there is not much software, but with the growing role of cloudware, and online purchasing, then it really is not that much of a problem now. And to be honest, the off the shelf iMac now comes with a tremendous suite of software, you don't need that much more, unless you are getting pretty specialised.

I suppose that I am an apple fanboy, but would like to see them doing more to put worth back in the hands of users, some of their activities feel more like revenue streams.

I have just heard that new Apple Chips will come out in mid November, so another reason to postpone buying a new Macintosh. Perfect knowledge just makes life so much more complicated!

Note to self, I would like to get some shares in apple sometime.

mountain goat - going to scotland
from the blogosphere, and forums it sounds like my current favourite band, the Mountain Goats will be Going to Scotland.

They are very impressive live, so I am strongly thinking about getting tickets. Probably a mountain of logistics to worry about, particularly now I have a job, and children, but hey, what is life without a little mid life rebellion.

Stewart Brand supports nuclear power
I heard on an Economist podcast that Stewart Brand, one of the people I list as an inspiration, has now come to the view that nuclear power is sufficiently safe, and climate change sufficiently threatening, that he now supports nuclear power. I'll have to dig up the original quote for myself, but certainly an interesting view. I have been somewhat torn on nuclear power for some time now. I was impressed with the professionalism of the people working in nuclear power when I met them through work, and although my preference would clearly be for everyone to reduce their demand for energy to sustainable levels, I really don't see that happening any time soon. Therefore we will probably need nuclear power in the short term to help transition us to less intensive energy use. I actually see the growth in broadband and computers as a positive thing, if we start living our lives more virtually, then audiobooks replace dead tree books, downloads replace CDs, broadband replaces unwanted journeys. I don't think a world where we are all housebound is desirable, but getting rid on unwanted trips cannot be bad.

I hold a modest shareholding in a nuclear power generator, and have found it difficult to square this with my desire to hug trees, but I am coming round to it not just being a pragmatic move, but an important gesture too.

Nature seems increasingly out of whack these days, if cars were elephants, we would be petrified at the sheer number of these hungry beasts tearing up our environment, but they are not flesh and blood, but iron and oil, and we don't even notice them. My intuition is that a system will struggle, struggle, and fail catastrophically, like collapsing fisheries, we are all on that brink of environmental catastrophe.

writing losing definition - books that inspire me
I have decided to start work on another novel, with a working title of Losing Definition. The title refers to how your sight loses its sharpness as you age, and similarly issues and opinions also become less clear cut. I suppose that the temptation is to withdraw within yourself, or a fantasy world. I'll probably just assemble it as a collection of blog style entries, and then reorder them until I am happy. I'll probably take some stuff from here, but writing as fiction would loosen it up a bit, and make for more fun.

I worry that it should have more of a plot, but I'm really not that bothered with plot, characters, or dialogue, so it will just be what it is, rather than some mainstream genre. If seeking inspiration, or parallels, then I suppose my little shelf of wonderful books would be
Confessions of Zeno - by Italo Svevo
Tristram Shandy - by Laurence Sterne
Jonathan Wild - by Henry Fielding
Way of all Flesh - by Samuel Butler
Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is laid - by Malcolm Lowry
m - by John Cage
jPod/Microserf - by Douglas Coupland

also a dash of science fiction, that most liberating of mediums, recent reading of ten best science fiction novels, included,
the following films
the Saragossa Manuscripts
the Falls
Wim Wenders - road movies, especially the State of Things
Art films I saw at University generally

and finally a dash of Burroughs, Ballard and Sladek.

As none of these have hit the mainstream, I will write to suit myself, and aim for self publishing onto the web, rather than anything more lavish. However I have enough to live by, and would prefer to write what I want anyway.

Fonts and Clifford
I remain very confused about all the different versions of the Clifford font that you can get, but have decided to buy a couple of the individual styles for use as my default font. Until now I have used Palatino as my default typeface. Also checking out the various half remembered theory behind fonts, etc, for example how we now use font to mean typeface. It is curious how fonts seem to have gone from calligraphy, to hot metal, to digital printing, to lcd screens, without any big issues, when so many other information mediums have made such heavy weather of the issues of transition. And strange that I am coming back to a typeface based on calligraphy, for displaying on my iMac screen, or printing on an inkjet printer.

One of the words we should all know is skeuomorph

we surround ourselves with comforting skeuomorphs, are we afraid of the new.

in trains - a work in progress

#mist
trees standing out like polluted lungs in the mist

#dusk
harbour full of sand
a ghostly bus
perfect houses round an empty street
paired moons all racing each other
strangers checking timetables
shadow people explode across walls
lit windows, conjure jewellery in the velvetty dark
an amber necklace of distant street lamps
night takes colour from my world
and light creates unseen forms

#leaving the family behind for work
we pass quiet cities in the night

#migraine
riding on the black train
head rotten with pain
mouth full of headstones

Life Game™ Alert

You have exceeded your discretionary spending limit for this session of Life Game™

Click [Restart] to restart game, all saved settings will be lost, click [Resume] to resume game, no discretionary spending will be permitted until existing Life Game™ debts are cleared, and fresh Life Game™ funds have been accumulated. Many attractive features and items of functionality are hereby disabled, including, Life Game™ Impulse Purchase, Life Game™ Social Life, and Life Game™ Fun.

[RESTART]
[RESUME]
[CANCEL]

most fun art supply ever

Quick diary style update - for yesterday

yesterday I had a day off, my wife was working, so I was looking after the girls in the morning, and my wife got back in the afternoon.

Usually looking after the girls goes better when you try and stick some sort of structure on it, balancing out the fun, and the not so fun.

Started off by getting them to do the vacuum cleaning, while I did some other cleaning up round the house. If I get them to vacuum clean the house every week, hopefully the fact that they don't do that good a job, will be balanced off by the fact that it is done reasonably often. Had a quick trip out to dump stuff in the recycling point by the railway station, and pick up a big sack of leaves for my chicken wire leaf mould maker.

Then took a juice/tea break, and got them looking at the FontShop website looking at different fonts, for ideas. Got them to write their names in their own special fonts. Megan did a rather angular font, which I could easily imagine as a professional font. Hannah wrote her name using animals in the shape of the letters. As ever a lot of fun, but frustration along the way, when letters were too big, so a whole name could not fit onto the one page.

That pretty much took us to lunchtime, though I had also bought some broken oil pastels from the local arts shop, for them to experiment with.

In the afternoon, my wife got back, and we settled down to watch Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, which I saw twenty years ago, and thought was very good. Pleased to see that it really was still very good, everyone enjoyed it, though truth be told my wife probably fell asleep during some of it. Big pile of family on the sofas, along with sleepy dog, laughing at some very silly stuff, and arguing over who all the stars were that had been pasted into the film, my wife being far better at recognising them than I was.

Then family tea, of splashy spaghetti bolognese.

Also watched a couple of episodes of Sledgehammer, I bought both series ages ago, and we watch a few episodes every now and a again, whenever the girls nagging gets too much! They do like Sledgehammer, from the classic openning theme, to the completely daft humour. Also watched some old Whose Line is it Anyway, which the girls did not quite understand, but seemed to get into eventually.

Also reading JPod, wrote a quick blog entry in the style of Douglas Coupland and usual playing about on the computer. Delighted to find Pilot Gel Marker Pens for sale on the internet, as they are simply the most fun art supply ever. I'll need to put in an order.

Also launch date for Leopard is now out, so I will be buying a new computer soon!!! Yeee Haaa!!!

Having bought JPod,

Yesterday I bought JPod by Douglas Coupland, not Copland as in the operating sytem (?), composer, and previous entries herein.

This was a bad idea because,...

• I paid cash, when I had some book tokens sitting in an envelope next to my LaCie hard-drive, and therefore could easily have used them.
• It was on three for two, and I only bought the single book, but these three for twos, usually mean that you end up with stuff you don't want anyway.
• I am trying to reject materialism, and so don't feel that I need to treat myself to an impulse purchase each Friday, as a 'reward'.

Of course yesterday was not Friday, it was Thursday, but it was deemed to be a Friday, as I am on annual leave today.

Having bought JPod, which clearly was a bad idea, I now cannot in clear conscience treat myself to another impulse purchase,

if I were to treat myself to an impulse purchase it might be

• Clifford Font by Akira Kobayashi - one of the ones with big caps and little caps, but there are so many, it is confusing me
• the Martial Arts Weekend album by the Extra Glenns, which feature John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats,
• a self designed tee shirt from one of those places which lets you design your own tee shirt
• Macintosh laptop

However buying JPod was a good idea, because I am enjoying reading it, I really enjoyed Microserfs, which it is an obvious successor to, Generation X was okay, but not as geeky as Microserfs. I think I must have thrown out my copy of Microserfs and of Generation X, because I cannot find them, but if I do buy new copies, then they might turn up. I read them when I lived in Aberdeen, and I have a clear memory of walking down a street to buy a chinese takeaway, thinking in the style of Douglas Coupland.

Similarly I remember Paul Auster's writing infecting my imagination.

I was thinking of writing an ongoing blog entry as a detailed parody of JPod, but clearly as my parents have not inadvertantly murdered anyone, and I am not actually a code monkey, it might lose some of the particulars.

I have been listening to a lot of Mountain Goat's music recently, and the particular syntax of those, and JPod, and being tired, rather loops round in your head, and you start feeling like a character in someone else's imagination.

Things that bother me about Douglas Coupland

• I bought copies of Microserfs and Generation X, and now I cannot find them
• he makes lots of references to products etc, which I don't ordinarily like, but it works really well in his books, without seeming tacky
• the lego mini figs on the cover, in isometric projection are drawn wrong, the arms should be further forward, and the heads should be further forward, probably with visible necks
• he always seems really miserable in his interviews, as if he really hates writing, or really hates interviews, but he must be really rich, and could live in shed in the middle of nowhere with a laptop and never need to work again, so why should he bother writing books if he does not want to, or doing interviews if he does not want to,
• he has written way too many books, if he had only written a couple, then we would all think that they were the best thing since sliced bread

Last point, cross refer with Carl Hiaisen, (not spelt like that) and pretty much everyone else who writes nowadays.

I rather like the asceticism

Doing a bit of tidying up today, (wet day)

• surprised by just how many items of each type of clothing I actually owned, once I sorted out all the polo shirts, or shorts into a single pile, it was incredible. And of course while there are some examples that I really like, mostly I'd forgotten I had them, and don't particularly care for them one way or the other.
• I suppose like everyone, I have a few clothes that I basically wear almost all the time, and a few that I also wear, and then there is the vast remainder
• lots of stuff too tatty to be smart, but too smart for the garden.
• got rid of some stuff, though probably not enough, it never is, really
• Also nice getting away from iGTD which has a long list of stuff to do, but rather sucks the fun out of anything.
• struck by the fact that I have a huge pile of surplus shoelaces and bootlaces, and never seem to buy them anymore, BECAUSE nowadays the laces last longer than the shoes. Something wrong there.
• cut up some old stuff for sticking in the composter, taking off the buttons first. In theory, if buttons were infinitely expensive, you could have a finite number of buttons to last a lifetime, and simply take them off your worn out clothes, and put them onto your new buttonless purchases.
• I generally have four shoes, two black, two brown, though in practice it is slightly more, as leather shoes gently fade into soggy footed uselessness

Took the dog out for a rather wet walk, he loved it as ever, sniffing and peeing everywhere, something that not many of us can get away with these days. Up on the hilltop, looking over the town to the distant bridges and slight hints of more distant hills through the mist.

Caught up with some emails, it is always quite nice to bottom out the email intray every week.

Looking over the FontShop website reading about Akira Kobayashi - though to be honest I had to google akira clifford to remind myself of his surname. His most famous creation is the clifford font, which is rather nice. I like Japanese woodwork tools, and they have an interesting approach to making things. Accordingly intriguing to read about how he approached font creation, he spent five years designing clifford. And yet it did not seem to be a pretentious noodling away design process, or endless craft for the sake of it. It is an exceptionally fine font. I rather like the asceticism of spending all that time on something so everyday that most people would never even notice it.

Trying to find a big ceramic bowl, which we must have chucked out years ago, so that I could put all the fruit into one really big bowl, rather than the current array of smaller bowls which means you inevitably forget some musty oranges someone else bought. Anyway. Annoyed that I could not find it, but more importantly I really want all the fruit in the same bowl. Same principle as putting all the shorts into one big pile, how do you know what you have unless you can see it all at the same time.

Been getting a bit annoyed with a few things, where it just seems that no matter how much I do, by and large nothing much happens, however things now vastly improved on various fronts as the work is shared out better and a few of things that have been sitting around unloved, seem to have started to sort themselves out. At root it is not really the amount of work that is annoying, it is feeling that you are doing it all, and no one else is, and the frustration of seeing the same stuff sitting and sitting.

The Old Machines ...

have no visible controls
are made of stone
just whisper now, when once they shouted

are making lost spirits flesh
are some one else's loose ends
once fixed our geography