Posts filed under "cerebral-interviews"
There is NOTHING I like more during the summer than a cold Greek salad. It’s no wonder I’ll buy all the ingredients on the Monday and make myself one every day at work. However I find it mind boggling that I can’t seem to be able to buy a decent Greek salad in any restaurant that I’ve been to, Greek or otherwise. To spread the love I’m going to give everyone explicit details on how to make the simplest and healthiest dish this side of the Mediterranean.
The ingredients are very simple, for a decent sizes salad (1-2 people) you’ll need the following:
2 or 3 large tomatoes. They have to be the LARGE variety. No cherry tomatoes, no small piddly little tomatoes either. They have to be the big and ripe variety. Pay the extra, get the good stuff. This represents the bulk of the salad so don’t skimp on this ingredient.
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/2 a cucumber. Generally speaking it’s 1 small cucumber, but for some reason I can’t seem to be able to get these over here in UK supermarkets so I tend to use half of the ones available.
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1/4 or a red onion. Don’t get the white ones, go for the red ones. It’s all about the correct flavours and this is pretty important. You can have as many or as little as you like, however I find that if you put more it ends up left at the end.
1/2 a green pepper. You can try and use a sweet yellow or red pepper, but honestly it won’t be the same. The green pepper provides it with that savory taste that you need.
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Oregano. You’ll need lots of this, the dried variety.
Black Kalamata Olives. Yes you could try for another kind of olive. Maybe something in green, or even something stuffed. Rubbish. Get those ideas out of your head. It has to be a black olive. It has to be big and it has to be full of flavour.
Feta cheese. Lots of this stuff.
Olive oil. The more the better. You could make the whole salad swim in the stuff or you could be measured with the amounts. If you’re Greek, you go mental with the olive oil. If you’re a bit more concerned about your waistline, then be slightly more conservative. At least 5 tablespoons I would imagine, although I’ll be honest I never measure, I just pour until I think it’s about right.
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Fresh bread. Yes you heard me. Go to the bakery, go to the supermarket, go to the Deli down the road and get yourself a fresh loaf. It’s got to be a big loaf so you can enjoy soaking in all the olive oil left at the end of the salad. Trust me on this, it’s one of the single best parts of eating this.
Ok so now that we’ve got our ingredients, it’s time to understand the other aspect of what makes it a good Greek salad. It’s all about how you cut the ingredients. I know it sounds slightly strange but it’s true.
Tomatoes - The way to cut these is very simple. Each tomato has to be cut into 12 pieces. The way to do this is to cut the tomato in half. From their each half will be cut into six pieces. You might want to get rid of the central piece that is where it was attached to the vine. I find this piece to be a bit chewy and stringy in texture. Some people don’t seem to mind it, I’m not so keen on this part.
Cucumber - It’s really up to you how you want to eat this, you can either peel the cucumber or you can leave the skin on. I tend to alternate depending on my mood at the time. However the proper way to cut the cucumber is first down the length of the cucumber, so that you’ve got two long halves. From there you start chopping each half so that you’re left with semi-circular wedges about 0.5cm thick.
Pepper - Really there is two ways to cut this, both are acceptable. The first is to cut them as full rings. These should be again about 0.5cm thick. The other option is to cut the pepper down it’s length and then have thin strips of pepper from that half; again cut down their length.
Onion - After you’ve cut the onion in half, cut it in half again. From there you’ll cut thin strips (as in the picture above). Make sure that they’re split from each other (unlike the picture above).
Feta - Again there are two schools of thought about how to present this. Either you have it in a big chunk (or a series of big chunks) or alternatively you crumble the feta cheese (with your fingers) so that it’s all over the salad. I’m again impartial to either fashion, although if it’s a quick job I go for the easier option which is to have big chunks.
Add the olives, sprinkle the oregano, pour the oil, tear off some bread and dig right in.
Summer on a plate.
So you might have noticed a certain lull in activity on the Kode. The main reason is the fact that I’m EXTREMELY busy at work right now. It’s been absolutely insane. The thing is though, it’s pretty standard fare for the summer as most people with kids tend to take their holidays in and around the same time which makes the rest of us crazy ones that are left behind to hold the fort in the meanwhile. The good news is that I’m actually enjoying a lot of the work that I’ve been involved with (not that I haven’t enjoyed my previous work). One of my latest projects is this tiny little project in Egypt. The architects on the project are Michael Graves. We went to see them in Princeton last week and that was actually pretty cool. My first visit back to the states since last year when I went to my brother’s graduation.
I honestly doubt that I’ll be blogging much during August, as I’ve got very little to say and generally soo tired, I can’t even talk. The thing is though that I really miss my website. I miss the interaction with all the crazy cats and dogs on the net. I miss being involved. Hopefully come September I can have more time to remedy this situation.
I rarely pimp the company (in fact I never mention the company except in my contact page) but you can find 72 pages from the much larger Arup Design Yearbook 2007. There’s also a sampler of last years book which has got some pretty cool things to look at as well.
Update: Seems the website is down,…now that is might strange indeed. In any case you can also get a link to the pdf from here (that’s still working).
Last night in Athens, and I’ve started thinking about what I’m leaving behind and what I’ve got to look forward to. I know everything seems soo much more soft and squishy when you’re on holiday and god only knows how much I needed this break. Actually scrap that, all my friends know full well as I’ve been pretty on edge these last few months as it’s been a pretty tough time for me at work.
Originally I was meant to be back on Monday evening, I extended the flight for another 5 days and I’m really glad I did. This trip has been an eye opener in many respects, as I’ve had the chance too look around me and take in the quality of life that people over here take for granted.
Friday night drinking is non-existant.
Binge drinking doesn’t really come into play.
Personnal time feels extended as the coffee shops and bars are open well into the night.
- Food has that colour that I’ve become greatly accustomed to.
Outdoor basketball courts have got that quality sheen on them.
Girls are oh so much prettier.
The weather is so much more consistant and brighter.
In short the quality of life just seems more in tune with what I’ve been brought up to expect. So what is actually missing here? Loads. The issue is that my balance for what I want and expect in life however is still found elsewhere. I guess there will come a time when that balance will fall in the other direction but I guess it’s good to remember the good things. I needed to be reminded of the good things and if anything this trip definitely showed this to me.
Just got back from watching the Transformers with Yanni. To be honest, I really don’t think I could have watched this movie and enjoyed it as much as I did with anyone but Yanni. See we both grew up watching and playing with the Transformers. We’ve had countless arguments about them , with them and because of them.
So what did I think of the movie? First off, this isn’t a movie for everyone. Not everyone is going to appreciate the whole idea of transforming robots. If you’re a guy in your mid to late 20s this movie was made for you and me. Classic lines like:
You’ve failed me once again Starscream.
Echo straight out of the cartoons we would watch on a Saturday morning. The story was adequate in that it chugged along and there was something there in-between the awe-inspiring action scenes. I don’t usually get like this, but this movie was all about the robots, transforming and kicking the shit out of each other.
Forget the bullshit attempts at humour, I swear that asshole who tried to write the American Pie riff needs to be taken outside and given a good kicking. It had absolutely no place in this movie. I’m sure it was some toss-jockey producer saying that they need more humour in the movie. Some of the humour was done well, like with Bubblebee and his great music choices at the beginning of the movie.
Can someone explain the relevance of the Australian chick and the fat man? Comic relief and what exactly? Easily the most REDUNDANT characters I’ve ever seen in any movie. Also I’ve got to say that John Turturro’s role was a tad bit annoying. I love John (Big Lebowski being his crowning achievement as far as I’m concerned) but what the hell was this role all about?
Anywho, enough about the peripheral characters, lets concentrate on the stars of this movie, namely the Autobots. It’s great how they explained the whole morphing into cars and whatnot, that was very nicely done. What I didn’t really care for was the whole product placement within the actual fekking movie. Was it really necessary to have the whole Ebay thing? Or every car being a GMC? Or what about Nokia being Japanese as well? Or the Pepto Bismol? I mean seriously great chunks of this movie was nothing more than one big advert.
However all of that disappeared, the second you saw Bubblebee transform into the newly supped up version of himself. Or Optimus Prime transforming for the first time. Starscream and Megatron transforming in mid air, combined with the sound effects and the music is enough to make you forget about all the short comings of the movie, because basically they COMPLETELY kicked it out of the whole theatre. I’ve never seen anything like that. It was meant to be larger than life and the effects delivered every step of the way.
Bring on the sequel.
In Greece for a little while. I’ve not been on any sort of break since November (even Christmas was a limited affair as I didn’t travel anywhere). I was kinda reminded why the hell I don’t like to travel, it’s all the airport hassle.
Get to the actual checking and I had the woman my passport and ticket and I’m just playing around with my phone while she checks the validity of all my information and whatever, so I take out my phone and start playing, to which she asks me to stop pointing my phone in her face, sorry what? That was weird.
Then I get to security check in:
“You’re carrying two bags sir.” “One is a bag the other one simple holds a laptop, nothing else.” “Ok, put the laptop carrier in your other bag and hold the laptop.”
Do you have any aerosol cans (which oddly enough you could buy within the airport terminal in any case). Taking off my shoes was something I’ve not had to do; I started thinking about how much more stringent things are becoming with respect to flying places and how much more of a fucking hassle the whole tedious process actually is.
Get on the plane, plastic food, rude air stewards, babies crying, shitty inflight entertainment, 1 hour waiting for you bags at the end.
God, it’s like pulling teeth. I’m only writing this for prosperity sake and to read back in a couple of years when flying will become even more unbearable as they being to anally probe you and make sure that you are completely and utterly incapacitated throughout the entire journey, and think about the good old days when all I had to do was take my shoes off.
Oh Brave New World.
In ancient Athens, the single worst punishment you could impose on anyone was to exile them from the city; they were no longer Athenians. For the past 9 years I haven’t really considered myself an Athenian and more a citizen of the world. I can’t claim to be a complete Londoner. Could I ever truly consider myself as a Saidaewi (he who is from Saida)?
The real issue here is that I’m from all these places and yet I’m a mixture of all these places into one. Each place has had a direct influence on me. The people around me, the situations around me and my environment have all contributed to the person I am today. The added advantage I suppose of being from all these places and from none of them is the plane fact that I had what others that consider themselves from one particular city, country or village…perspective.
Because of my nomadic life, I’ve been able to gain a unique perspective of places and am able to not only appreciate all that is great and beautiful; but also what does not work and what could be enhanced or bettered. I don’t do this because of malicious intent, but rather the complete opposite.
The older I get the more I start believing that I am indeed a citizen of the world rather than confined to one place.
When asked whether he felt more from England or from Scotland, George Galloway responded:
“My flag is red, my country is the future”
Somehow that quote always resonates with me.
Rarely, someone says something to me that really resonates with me completely and changes the way in which I think. It’s not often, but when it is said generally speaking it will have a lasting effect on me for a great long time. One example of this I can give is when I saw Michael Moore in early 2003 when he was living in London and doing a serious of ‘talks’…more like sessions where he talked about whatever was on his mind. We were able to get tickets for his last ever performance. A lot of things stick out in my mind from seeing him live, but one of the things that he harped on about that remains in my mind is loyalty cards. I honestly thought these things where American inventions (as did most of the people in the audience as well), but apparently they are clearly a British thing.
For those wondering what loyalty cards actually are, they’re basically store cards that enable you to accumulate points which later on you can cash in, you get 1 point for every £1 you spend. Every 100 points you get £1 back or something like that. Anyway after his rant (which involved talking about people’s privacy and information theft and other some such) I’ve NEVER carried a loyalty card in my life… I didn’t carry many back then but I did have a couple, all where thrown into the crowd (he was collecting them back then).
Anyway recently Fern was talking about the amount of plastic that we as human beings use in our everyday life, for food packaging. Open your bags after you come from the store, if you’re as bad as I am, almost 90% of the stuff you’ve bought is covered in plastic in one for or another. Water, humous, vegetables, orange juice, etc. She then started talking about how there have been cases where the amount of plastic starts infiltrating your system, tiny particles that eventually make it to your eyes, which are then covered in a thin film of plastic.
Needless to say that sort of freaked me out and it’s stuck in my mind. Unfortunately I’ve got to work extra hard now to find a method to try and change the packaging in which I actually buy things, or consume thing. It’s incredibly hard, I’ve got to say. In my life I have boycotted several things. Coca cola (I used to drink 1 a day, at least), Marks and Spencers, Danone, L’Oreal , Nestle (except for Kit Kats) and a few other things. It was very difficult to do this but I managed and it’s a habit. How the fuck are you supposed to stop using plastic?
The good news I guess is that plastic is being made from things other than petrolum oils and rather using different more organic elements, however I’ve not really found out any more about it and so I sit here looking at my plastic containers thinking of my eye balls. Sometimes ignorance is complete bliss.
You know what REALLY pisses me off? I don’t know if this phenomenon has translated itself to other countries out of the UK, but over here we’ve got 16-19 year olds using their mobile phones as bloody boom boxes. I’m serious. It’s easily the stupidest thing I’ve had to experience in my life. We’re talking the tingy, shitty-sounding, bile-churning, ear-hurting-noise, blasting out of some of the shittiest speakers off some phone. See even if the music that they were blasting was the good stuff I’d still be annoyed. To add insult to injury, you’ve got some of the most unlistenable crap being pumped out and these assholes are actually comfortable in making the world listen to their garbage. I swear if it was me, I’d be pretty self conscious if I had such rubbish taste in music much less make sure everyone around me know it as well. I honestly have no idea what the appeal is? I know I’m not getting old because I’ve heard the complaint from a bunch of people of varying ages. Fucking morons. Smack!
Just sorting out the html and slowly hacking the css file. The idea is to slowly chip away at the actual code slowly but surely. I’m not in much of a hurry as I’ve got SOO much stuff left but I find that I enjoy writing more by actually having this new evolving design live.
I’ve never been anally probed (nor do I ever wish to be) but I doubt it feels quiet as bad as I feel right now. The Smashing Pumpkins are playing at Shepherd’s Bush as I type this. I was outside the venue trying to get tickets. Needless to say we didn’t get any tickets as they which were going for £150 each. Let me say that again, one hundred and fifty pounds each. Fucking touts. Seriously. I don’t have any overtly elaborate ways to describe what I’d like to do to you assholes because I’m pretty angry at the moment. I was there along with another 3 people who knew just how much I love the pumpkins trying to get tickets for me as well, but the tickets were ‘sold out’ in a matter of seconds. So how do these fucking shit-stain leeches on the green puss that comes out of a gangrene wound that’s eaten by a fly that’s about to die because it’s gotten violated by a camel get a hold of so many tickets between them?
And to pour piss and vinager over the wound, Pearl Jam played London Wembley Arena yesterday and I only fucking found out today. I’d have given my left nut to watch Pearl Jam live as I’ve never had the chance (even though a couple of years I was actually thinking about going to a festival just for them). Man that really upset me this afternoon when I found. Genuinely was upset about that. I didn’t think I could get more hurt but today was obviously just one big day of disappointments.
So what next? We’re thinking about going to the Reading Festival. That’s in August, however all the tickets are OBVIOUSLY sold out. Yeah of course. I doubt it would have made ANY difference if I had tried to get tickets on the day that they came out. So I guess Ebay is the only route forward.
This is part of the reason I don’t generally go to live concerts.
It’s a funny thing about how much information your brain can actually hope to take in a single moment, a single day, or a single experience. For me this is made clearest when I go to Fopp. For those in the dark, Fopp is a store in Britain, which I believe (but this could be COMPLETE bollocks as Kevin told me this) started off in the back of this guy’s car in Glasgow selling music and other assorted greatness a reasonable, stable prices, without the stupid .99 bullshit. Yeah like 11.99 will make me think it’s £11 rather than £12 I mean seriously stop insulting my intelligence you asshats. Anyway, Fopp’s opened this massive megastore on Tottenham Court Road. This place is pretty huge. Originally I thought that was great. Bigger is better right? Wrong.
It’s completely overwhelming. I go in there and I’m completely lost in a sea of music and books that I have no hope of trying to whittle down myself. I end up actually buying nothing because I’m completely at a loss as to what seems like a good deal and what I feel I’d get just because it’s at a decent price. Also I don’t want to think about the range of stuff that I don’t get because I don’t actually see it.
Back to the original topic though, I’m glad when I found out that I’m not the only weird person out there that has people in his MSN contacts list. They’ve been sitting there for years and I’ve never once had the inclination to use the function to contact these people. I can’t explain it, they sit there and part of me would like to know what they’re up to but at the same time another part of me feels a certain comfort that they’re there anyway. It does sound strange and maybe a bit anti-social but like I said, your brain can only take on so much information, before it’s on complete overload.
Ice underneath the seats in the London underground? Summer is finally here and it’s pretty fucking disgusting on the tube. It’s hot, it’s stuffy, it’s sweaty and it’s 8:30 in the morning so the trains are rammed. It’s also more humid as well so people (myself included) are sweating perfusely. There’s been loads of talk about what to do about it, but it seems that there might be some kind of solution in the future. It’s an interesting solution and one I honestly hope actually works because there’s currently two ways people address the issue, and that is to effectively miss the traffic. Either get up earlier or go to work much later, but even then that’s not really addressing thet problem.
That’s MUCH better. After the complete and utter BOREDOM that was the Monaco grand prix, the Canadian Grand Prix delivered in spades. I seriously enjoyed this race for more than one reason. I’m a bit disappointed for Nico Rosberg, whom I think is an exceptional little driver and seriously one of the future stars of Formula One. He had it there to be much higher up there, but alas if Mclaren can get it wrong for Alonso, I think I can accept that the Williams team fucked it up for him and caused him to get a 10second stop go penalty.
However good on Wurz for coming out of friggin NOWHERE and claiming third. The guy was 20th on the bloody grid. That is a superb drive all around, no matter how fortunate you get with the safety cars etc. Speaking of safety cars, 4 of them. There was more crashes in this race then I can care to remember. Some of them were seriously lame, others like Robert Kubica’s unbelievable take off into the walls was pretty scary. Crashes on the race track are only acceptable (it’s part of racing at 320km/hr) when the guy in the cockpit gets out shakes the dust off and gets onto a motorcycle back to the paddock. Good to hear that the man got off pretty lightly with just a broken leg. Ralf never really recovered from the crash in America a few years ago.
Tomorrow however you know that all the news will be on Lewis Hamilton’s maiden victory. It’s amazing if you think about it since he’s only driven 6 F1 races in his life, so rather than wait 100 races or whatever he’s had it in the first 6. That’s pretty amazing and probably going to raise all expectations that he could be a world champion this year. The thing is and I know it’s not his fault, but I’m REALLY starting to get pissed off at the ITV coverage. They’ll spend something like 30 minutes before the race concentrating on Lewis and asking the drivers and everyone about him rather than concentrating on other aspects of the sport and other drivers. It’s really over hyping and it’s just getting annoying. Yes he’s having an exceptional debut, yes the story leading up to him getting the drive is great, but honestly how many bloody times do I have to hear it again and again.
Archie’s in town from Madrid, so we met up for some breakfast, shoot the fat, catch up since I haven’t seen him since December some time and I start telling him about my brother and how he’s moved back to Greece from the lovely and quaint place that is LA.
Actually scrap that, I was actually bad mouthing LA, but rather in that special fashion that I learnt from the great Bill Hicks. In fact I was probably trying to quote the man, and failing miserably I might add, but ultimately the gist was there for those to understand. Bearing in mind I swear like a sailor, the word shithole didn’t come out of my mouth, although that’s kinda what I was thinking about, but rather said it’s pretty terrible and the sooner it drops into the ocean the better this world will be.
Queue loner guy sitting just next to us (late 40s, early 50s, as he waves his hand in our general direction as in a manner of disapproval or something. Then he gets up and starts to talk to us. Man’s not from LA, he wasn’t from London, in fact I have no idea where he was from, but there he was and he’s talking and within a little while he started approving with our point of view. This is where the subject changed and from what I gathered he started to talk of some form of seminar that he runs or some such. Was he trying to recruit from the beginning? I honestly have no idea what he was actually talking about, at which stage it was time to go. London is a strange place.
So I’m standing the waiting line at Sainsbury’s (for those in the dark, it’s second largest supermarket chain in the UK), ready to buy my caramelised nut and jumbo flame raisin crunchy cereal, which I usually consume first thing in the office around 8:30ish. My overall sharpness isn’t exactly at it’s peak since neither breakfast or coffee has been consumed.
Anyway just before I walk into the store I notice a shifty guy walk into the store right behind me. I walk in and hear some commotion going on in the back of the store (it’s not very big at all). Security guard walks over to see what’s going on, shifty guy walks in the opposite direction towards the drugs section (it’s got your average painkillers, panadol, lemsip, cough medicine that sort of stuff), right next to it is the heavier liquor cabinet, JD, Johnny Walker, Cauntro that sort of shit. Shifty guy continues his shifty behaviour in front of the drugs section, sneaks his hand, grabs a bottle of booze and then goes out the front door.
Now I saw this, and I’m pretty sure everyone else saw this as well, since it was a pretty classic staged event to be honest, but I didn’t do anything about it, and nobody else did either. Now was it because we couldn’t be bothered? Probably. Was it because we were scared that the guy would come after us later on outside the store? Maybe. The thing is if it was a local store which was a family business then I might have actually said something. The thing part of me still feels a bit weak for not saying anything. We all know it’s wrong to steal, and it’s not like this guy was trying to get bread to feed his family or something. He was stealing to sustain his drinking habit, so he’s actively doing two things that I don’t agree with and don’t contribute to the world in anyway.
Interesting developments over at Six Apart. Lets dig up some of the things I said back in the day about this shall we. For all those in the dark, MT was the defacto CMS you would choose if you were in the market to get yourself a blog with comments setup on your server back in 2003-2004. Of course what happened was the Six Apart crew got a bit greedy at the time and all this free effort by the community was kind of slapped in their collective faces when they introduced the updated version 3.0 which was built off the backs of the community and sold back to them. The original pricing scheme was a complete farce but they revised it when they got the unexpected (erm yeah) response.
What this did was move all those people who were originally using MT to convert to an alternative. Some went to Textpattern, most went to WordPress.
3 years on, SA are now doing what they should have done way back for version 3 and maybe have kept some form of dominance. Currently however I feel it’s far too little too late. Do I give a shit about MT? Not really. I’m not interested in remembering how to write templates using MT-Tags and other bullshit. I’m not interested in revisiting the past. I will say however that the admin looks nice, and it’s also very cool that the actual engine dealing with that is the same as the one dealing with the blog itself, so I’m definitely going to bring that up with the Habari folk.
Ah yes, Habari, whatever happened to that initiative you might ask? Loads have been happening in the background but nothing massive for me to personally talk about. I’m sure once I get some more free time I’ll return to more active contribution and discussion, but I’ll leave that post for another day.
So I’ve decided on the final design (after something like 19 iterations all of which I will show everyone in due course) but I feel some of the html that I have been using on my site is slightly out dated since to be honest I have definitely not been keeping track of the comings and goings of the wordpress software and a lot of that code was based on practices of version 1.5 and before.
So the question I pose to everyone is what is the most up to date theme that has super simple html markup and most importantly doesn’t try to do too much. What I mean by that is a theme that has not been designed with additional cruft to include for an admin options panel, hooks for widgets that fit within wordpress.com etc. I’m not looking for a mod like K2, although I’ll be sure to have a look at some of the things done on K2 for inspiration. I’m looking for something that I can use and modify myself. The look is completely irrelevant as I’ll be dumping the css file straight away anyway and starting fresh.
Any recommendations ?
The new London 2012 branding was unveiled today and seriously, it’s very funny how the organisers have got this soo spectacularly wrong. I don’t even know what the fuck this piece of shit is actually meant to be (also check out the absolutely heinous website) .
Update: Seems they’ve launched the site 4 days early since they saw what an absolute pile of shit their ‘placeholder’ actually was. I mean my placeholder is not better but at least you can read the text and it doesn’t hurt your eyes from the sheer stupid colour choices.
I’m to understand that it says 2012 but I mean seriously, what the hell were they thinking.
What I find really ironic is how the British design press (Creative Review, I’m looking at you) kept harping on how the Athens Olympics logo just wasn’t all that great. Personally and I’ll admit that my opinion on the subject may be slightly biased but I thought the Athens Olympic logo was miles better, miles and miles better.
So I’m reading the Eddie Campbell interview on CBR and he’s talking about his recent love for blogging. As such he’s still got that amazing enthusiasm for the whole experience that I feel, over 750 posts and three and a half years of doing this, I might have lost a little bit of it. I can’t imagine Broken Kode not existing in one form or another but it’s definitely not as regular as it used to be. However one part of the interview that got to me was when he says:
I feel exhilarated by the challenge of writing something interesting every day of my life.
See that is a challenge isn’t it. Every day; something interesting. I’ve not had that sort of thinking in ages. Back in the day I used to wake up early blog for like 15minutes or something. Now instead I wake up in the morning and read my feeds. Expect a little bit more traffic from the Kode.
Oh my god I think I just wet my pants. I’ve not had this feeling in FUCKING YEARS!!!! Just downloaded the Pumpkin’s latest single from their upcoming zeitgeist and I’ve got to say it’s hot milk with honey on a cool spring evening. Seriously this song’s taken me back like about 10 years when music actually was exciting and actually inspired you to get on with things and actually meant something to someone like me.
Is it a return to form? Well from the very first beat which comes in with the UNMISTAKABLE Jimmy Chamberlin drum beat all the way to the slight guitar solo. The fact that there is no real chorus, but rather one long stream of song, all very definitive pumpkin songs. Billy’s mixed it in nicely with something new. He generally doesn’t get backing vocals or his own voice playing in the background as the next stage comes in so that was interesting to hear as well.
Also there’s something less sharp about his voice. He’s less angry and you can hear it but that just makes his voice slightly softer something as I grow older (and obviously him as well) makes the sound flow better.
Traditionally the single is always one of the better songs in the entire album but if the rest of the album comes close to this level then we’re in for a real treat.
So a couple of weeks back (maybe it’s more, I’ve got far more annoying things in my life at the moment to really remember the time lines for shit like this) Bryan’s girlfriend Jen posted on his website (that was taken offline at the time) that things were not going well with him at the moment and that Avalonstar might continue and it might not, and it was all terribly cryptic and oh so very very O_o.
What many of those outside didn’t see was what went on behind the scenes, on the 9rules member’s message board and obviously in many people’s email boxes. Scrivs is a bit pissed off at Bryan for many reasons and I got to thinking about this very slightly and I think there’s really two sides to this story with some leeway afforded to both parties, all depending on your perspective I guess.
So what’s the deal you ask? In a nutshell, we’ve got Bryan’s girlfriend posted that he (Bryan) was taking the site down for reasons undisclosed. Didn’t really say why or what the actual reasons were but I guess if you always have the worst thing on your mind you might be forgiven to think that there was some SERIOUS shit going down. Subsequently what happened, IMHO was COMPLETELY over the top. When people tried to contact him, they got no response, which perpetuated the worry/curiosity . Presents were discussed, wallpapers, cards, a website was built to make sure he understood that he had support. Does that sound a little overboard to everyone? I thought so too. I’ve got to say though it’s a terribly nice gesture and it shows that a community does exist for those in 9rules and that they are willing to support one another, which is kinda where some of the resentment is coming from I guess. All this support for false pretences of the equivalent of a bad hairday.
The thing is though, Bryan didn’t actually ask for any of this. Bryan didn’t say “Hey guys, see you later, shit has hit the fan, but if you feel the need to ask what’s going on, don’t email me because I’m not going to be discussing it at all, but email Scrivs, Tyme and Mike over at the 9rules network, or Jon Snook while you’re at it, since I’m part of that company, or Matt Mullenweg since I used to work for him.”
He didn’t ask for people to react in the way that they did. He didn’t ask for all of love that was sent his way (some would now argue that he doesn’t deserve that love anymore). I guess he couldn’t really predict what would happen or how things would shape out. Did he mitigate that? He did eventually but I guess based on the original reaction I guess he might have been feeling a bit like people were going to rip him a new asshole for being so melodramatic about the whole thing and therefore thought it best to keep shut and let people try and forget about the whole thing. Yes, he could have been a lot less cryptic in the first place and decided to take the site down and put it on hold and tell everyone that this is what he wanted to do for a little while because the design of the site was giving him some serious issues that he needed to sort out or whatever. He didn’t for whatever reason. It’s his site, he’s free to do whatever he wants. I mean Oxton did something similar a year ago or whatever.
The thing is that if you reacted to the message in any way, you reacted of your own accord. What I mean by that is that you chose to give this your time, effort and energy to whatever this situation. I personally chose to ignore it and I guess that’s why I don’t feel like my emotions have been cheated. I’ve been on the net a while and have read loads of things. Some nice things, some not so nice things. I’ve read about people’s mother dying, their wife having a miscarriage, loosing their jobs, divorcing one another and the list goes on. People sometime write about these things because it helps them get things clearer in their minds. Maybe helps them get over things. That’s part of what blogging is all about. I feel that when people are ready to talk about things on their sites they will do so (or not) in their own time. Once those things are open for discussion by the person that originated them then it’s an incredible boost if there is additional support from strangers on the net.
Having said all that, I can definitely count at least 5 people on the net that I’ve never met, and whom I may never meet (although it would be damn cool if we did in the future) whom I would really go out of my way to help them out if they so much as whispered it in my direction. These people I consider my friends, but I haven’t placed that level of trust with anyone. Like I said I’ve been reading and doing this for a while now that I know it’s a bit of a waste of time and effort to place that emotion for everyone and anyone, it can be misguided at best or make you feel cheated in the worst case.
I’m going to post a collection of one liners that are rattling in my head, probably going to make it into a regular sunday evening thing:
The Offspring Greatest hits album dualdisc is pretty damn good listening. Reminds me back to when I was 13 and was about to take on the world. 30 was a lifetime away.
So we’re talking with Rosie and Dom about ethnic minorities and how it’s actually a lot less than you might expect. I know that statistics are made on the spot in general, but the one quoted seemed a bit low, which lead to us talking about the first wave of the black community into Britain in the 50s and 60s and how people of a certain age who had not seen black people until that stage felt/dealt/reacted with the new world order. Which then triggered the memory of me meeting my first black man, must have been 12 years old or something; I honestly can’t remember his name, but he was from Mauritius. I remember he was a very softly spoken guy and very very gentle in nature. The only thing that made an impression on me was his hands and how the palms were slightly coarser than mine. Such a strange thing to take back.
Lewis Hamilton is a great little rookie, however I’m really not liking the shitty HYPE that British media seems intent on throwing his way. I mean seriously you see this shit year after year. They build them up just so that they can slap them down when they put a foot wrong. Really shitty as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t blame Ron Dennis trying to shield his driver from all that bullshit.
Clerks II is how a DVD should be made. It’s got about 6hours of extra material and Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier have seriously spent a lot of time to make it a special experience. You’re not buying the DVD just to watch the movie a couple of times. It’s really about the DVD experience and really using it, with multiple commentaries, bloopers, interviews, behind the scene footage and the list goes on. I put this up as one of the great DVDs of last year, easily.
Just watched Christopher Nolan’s first movie, Following. Seriously, it’s one of the better indie films I’ve seen in a really long time. Black and white, shot in various locations in and around London, check it out, great little twist at the end.
Diet is going well. I must have had a serious fat day last Sunday because I’m about 2kg less this week. Part of that I guess is the running, part is the diet changes, part is the psychology as well I guess. I’ll keep the updates on this going.
I bought an ipod shuffle last week, first Apple product I’ve ever bought myself, and I’ve got to say I’m loving the size. It’s like part of my clothing now. It never runs out of juice and it stores enough music to last me my runs, my trips to work and around the place. It would be nice to have a display but when it comes right down to it I don’t think it’s completely necessary for the function that I am using it in. Does this mean an Apple mac isn’t far behind,…hmm probably not.
So Ubuntu Feisty Fawn came out this week. I downloaded it for my laptop. They still hadn’t sorted out the bugs that I had reported that I had confirmed that had tried to help solve, that worked in 2 previous versions. I’m talking my laptop into the office to get Windows installed on the machine. I want to swear at Canonical, but alas it’s not completely their fault, although it’s really annoying not to have this sorted. Renders my laptop really annoying to use to be honest, so much so that I haven’t been using it for the past couple of months properly.
SMODCAST (love that name as well, especially how Kevin introduces it and everything). Easily one of the best podcast’s I’ve heard in a really long time (thanks for the heads up Michael). I’ve gotten into listening to dvd commentary while working on something as I can actually get through a lot of things, and listen the plethora of commentaries that I generally have no real time to listen to.
I got onto the scales this morning and swear to god I think I heard the scales sigh. When the hell did I gain so much weight? Over the last couple of months I’ve definitely noticed that my trousers have been shrinking in the wash more and more every day but I think yesterday I felt it the most. Summer is in the air and I’m the heaviest I’ve been in YEARS. Part of this I guess can be attributed to the general lack of exercise, another part of this can be attributed to the general amount of rubbish I’ve been eating at work, and even more can be attributed to the snacks I’ve been taking on in between meals, after meals and during meals (I know, how the hell do you snack during meals?).
Needless to say I need to do something about this and bloody soon. I’ve been down this road before, I’m prone to gaining weight, however I know EXACTLY what needs to be done to loose weight and sustain it for a good long time rather than these crash course diets. This isn’t for everyone, this is what has worked in the past for me, so I’m writing this down to make sure I REMEMBER my list every time I try and break it, and I will try and break it over the next week where my mood will no doubt be pretty foul for a little while until I get used to it all.
Item one - Stop eating junk. Seriously it all fucking adds up. That little bit of chocolate at 11 from a colleague to that additional biscuit at around 11:30 to that kit kat at 3pm and the list goes on. Part of the main reason I guess is boredom and just wanting to get something done. So I’m going to have to get myself a whole bunch of fruit every Monday, every time someone has got their birthday cakes I grab an apple or something. I’m allowed one chocolate sweet thing a week and that’s about it.
Item two - This is an important one and probably the one that’s going to be the hardest to maintain. Eat smaller portions. Don’t get second helpings. It’s OK to feel hungry every once in a while. There are loads of ways that will make you achieve this. Some have tried using smaller plates. I’m more of the thought that you should balance it out as best you can and keep it smaller than usual.
Item three - Eat everything I’ve been eating but with care to item two, however include for removal of deep fried things like fried potatoes, etc. Keep the bread consumptions down to a smaller amount, in fact a lot lot less. Don’t eat the loafs, eat wraps exclusively and those Swedish style cracker things (they’re not all that tasty but they give the impression you’re eating bread and for next few months that should be ok, I’ve had my fair share of bread these last 27 years it’s time to take a break).
Item four - Drink more fluids, cut the bloody sugar from the coffee and the tea. Four years ago I used to have 3 sugars in my tea and coffee, now I’m down to 1. I think it’s time to cut it down all the way to 0. This is a small thing but I think one that I’ve been thinking about for a good long time and I think it’s time I actually implemented, seeing as I’m on a roll right now anyway.
Item five - Last item, but definitely not least, I’ve got to get back to exercising more regularly. Currently I’ll run sporadically and then I’ll play basketball once every other week for a couple of hours, get a crap and generally be slow as fuck on the court. It’s time to move it up a notch and have my 30 minutes run in the morning every morning. Combined with the above I’m pretty sure I can get to shape and loose the excess kilos that are hanging off me right now.
Currently my target is 12kg. If I get there it’ll be the least I’ve ever been and the target weight I’ve always wanted to be. Traditionally the first 6kg are moderately easy as my body has store an immense amount of crap so it’ll shed that faster than the last 6kg which will be pretty tough to get rid of. I’ll keep everyone posted with mini posts from now on regarding my progress. Is there any clever little php scripts that I can record all of this down? I’m pretty sure I saw something on someone’s blog a while back that was tracking his weight loss progress as well.
So I’m talking to Fern yesterday on Facebook, and when I say talking I actually mean ‘Wall-ing’ her (yeah it’s not the technical term for it but alas it sounds funnier). Anyway, so she’s dissing 300 and calling it gay porn or some such rubbish, so we started talking movies. I asked her whether or not she was excited for the new Chinese flick that’s getting prepped for release in the UK this weekend, Curse of the Golden Flower. Her response, I’m quoting here:
It’s one of those Chinese films for foreigners. The trailer didn’t even have any words! Even if it features Jay Chow.
See the thing is I’ve heard this kind of response nearly EVERY time I’ve asked someone Chinese about a Chinese movies that makes it into Western theatres. For most people the Chinese outbreak came with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee a few years ago. I was raised on a staple diet of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies. So much so that my parents have had to watch Drunken Master 1 & 2 several times over with me because I kept renting it from the video store again and again, mainly because I’d seen all the ones in the store and because I loved the interaction with his Master when he was training him. I also loved the food scenes, where you know he’s going to eat the entire house, then get drunk, then not have any money to pay then have a big massive fight. To be fair though I’d not really experienced the full extent of Asian cinema, not by a long shot.
So today I decided to goad Irene into telling me what the deal was with the dislike of Chinese people to exported certain exported Chinese films. So she gave me the standard foreigners line, followed by a curve ball (I’m not actually quoting Irene here but work with me people I’m getting to my point):
It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, since the 1950s. In fact some of the better stuff weren’t movies but TV series.
That’s fucking interesting. Where the hell are they? What are they called? What’s the deal? Name them. Of course they’ve all got Chinese names. C’mon guys it’s not my fault I’m not Chinese, I’ve come to accept that you’ll never hand me the Chinese menu at the restaurant (you know the one with all the authentic good stuff), why are you being stingy with your bloody cinema and tv programmes?
So I’m asking everyone that knows of any good Chinese series (preferably set in the Emperor Chinese era) that are actually ‘good’ and not for foreigners (but with subtitles) for me to get into. After all Battlestar Galactica won’t be back for like at least 6 months, Prison Break won’t be back for a similar amount of time and Lost can only keep my attention for like 45 minutes a week.