http://cnr.lwlss.net

I am hoping that tumblr is some kind of nice way of consolidating stuff related to or done by me on the internet. As a means of finding out whether this is the case, I have made a tumblr thing:

http://cnr.tumblr.com/

Phil has put some of his banjo music on last.fm in such a way that one can totally download it for like free.

http://www.last.fm/music/Phil+Tyler

Well, last night I went along to the Edinburgh Playhouse to see and hear Mr Tom Waits.

The ticket was expensive, but I like his music, and I'd heard so much about how incredible his live performances were that I thought I would go along for a look.

Overall, it was pretty disappointing. After forking out so many clams to go, I expected better than being crammed into a roasting hot venue, surrounded by fawning, sweaty 50-something male fans screaming "We love you Tom!" and attempting to give him a standing ovation every time he moved. It was alot more like a Take That concert than I ever would have guessed. I suspect I might have been seated in fanman ground zero as I was sad enough to go online to buy tickets the second they were released. I was in the 6th row. It was a bit depressing to realise that I had something in common with these guys.

The man himself was pretty impressive, with his impossibly gravelly voice and his odd monologues, but I was less impressed with the band he had gathered around him. They were technically very good, but overly precise, with little of the broken-down sound that I like in his music. I especially didn't like the 80's advert/stadium rock drumming that was coming from Casey Waits.

I guess really, I was expecting to be in a small smoky jazz club somewhere sipping some bourbon and listening to some old dudes playing along with Tom and his broken piano, instead of sweltering in a packed, grotty, soulless theatre.

Briefly, on Friday, I spoke with one of the people in my office about playing Tetris on the Nintendo GameBoy. A few months ago, I had gotten my hands on a GameBoy emulator for my PC.

So, exhausted after running, and while avoiding writing some code yesterday, I fired it up. My 14 year old self had trained up to be able to complete Level 9 High 5 (the most fupping hardcore level the game has) fairly regularly. I played it until this skill returned. It took about 3 hours solid!

Eventually, I got to see the treat Tetris has for completing this level:

There's also some funky Russian music. And I was RELEIVED, and a little proud to see it finally, because I was beginning to doubt my ability to beat 14 year old Conor.

Strangely though, while my fingers remembered how to twitch at the appropriate speed to achieve this, I realised that I had a very different view of the game now compared to when I played it all those years ago. Then, and now, I sort of anthromorphisise the blocks, but whereas previously, I thought of some of them as being friendly, and others out to get me, and make sure I failed to complete the level, this time I thought that they were ALL out to get me. I didn't like a single one of them. Previously I would be relieved to get the simplest shapes, the square block or the long block, but now I could see the disadvantages of all of them, and I didn't see any of them as being "good". Does this mean I am more cynical and paranoid now? Does it mean I was a dumbass when I was 14?

I think it does mean I should stop playing again. At least this time I'm not seeing little blocks falling every time I close my eyes.

You can download some of my videos which have been especially formatted for the IRiver Clix 2 here. They're also small enough to view pretty easily directly in the internet:

http://lwlss.net/IRiverClix

What am I thinking?! You can download them right here if you want:

I've been taking some timelapse photos of the tower block next door lately. The final video looks like this:

Daytime from Conor on Vimeo.

I've also taken these and made four timeslice photographs out of them. In this example image, as you move from left to right, you are changing from day into night time:

You can see them arranged all together here:

http://lwlss.net/SpitalTonguesTimeLapse/

The amazing Cath & Phil are playing at the Green Man this year, on August 15th in the Green Man Café. It was bloody good last year, despite all the rainings. The Green Man Café stage was definitely the best place to hear new music. If you can't wait, or can't make it, their new record, Dumb Supper is out now on no-fi records, and is for sale at alt.vinyl and even in this place.

Their MySpace thing.

I got very excited last night when I returned to find a mysterious package from Russia:

It's not often that you get a parcel from Russia. It was the catalogue for the Illuminators exhibition of round images and videos which is going on in Yekaterinburg airport. There are some reports about the opening here.

James and I submitted a circly image, and I sent off one of my Photovinyl images. The organisers emailed me back to say that something had been accepted several weeks ago, and that they were sending on the catalogue soon. Looking at the catalogue I discovered that they managed quite a spectacular mangling of the two submissions:

The errors I can spot so far: James does not look like me. The image was created by James and I, not me alone. The title of the image was not Barrel. The English description under the image applies to the other submission which was not accepted. I don't know what the Russian description says.

Still, it's nice to think that there's a circly beachball looking thing hanging up in the airport over there. I was quite pleased with the description I had written for it. All about 3D vs 2D.

One of the bad things about having long hair is the accumulation of hair bunnies on the carpet. They roll around like tumbleweed in a cheap western, and people tell me that they are bad, and that I should get rid of them.

Well, they are not all bad.

If you let them accumulate for long enough, all the other carpet dirt gets trapped in them. Then, wearing a pair of running spikes, you can quickly scrape your feet around the carpet and hey presto! No need to hoover any more. You can do the moonwalk here if you're into that.

I don't like hoovers.