Month: October 2003

Some time ago, I was listening to the incomparable Secret Agent stream from SomaFM, when a terrific track came along. After a while I pinned it down to one Tommy Guerrero, pro-skateboarder turned muso, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Partly because I like his albums, but also because practically every track sounds like terrific backing to some scene or other.

Tonight, for the first time, I heard one of his album tracks in a TV show. In Sex and the City, alongside a bunch of Zero7 songs.

Bear in mind that the last time I felt this way about music, the song in question was A Little Less Conversation. Which, contrary to popular opinion, kicked off long before the Gilliam-directed Nike advert. So keep an eye on Guerrero. Maybe, just maybe…

…on Islay? I can’t believe I missed this story until now.

As the dedicated reader may remember, I’ve retained my childhood fascination with flight simulators, my current favourite being X-Plane. A curious product, it’s written by essentially one chap, by the name of Austin Meyer.

Austin’s just bought himself a real aeroplane, a Cirrus Design SR22 Centennial Edition. Niiiice.

Jealous? Me? Er… yeah, OK. A little. 🙂

My God, it’s full of stars.

Is this the most beautiful blog out there?

I just paged through my junk-filtered mail folder looking for false positives, then purged the remainder. I found two mails that shouldn’t have been labelled ‘junk’ – and binned 3124 messages. This since September 1st.

Bleurgh.

[update, ten minutes later: Argghh! 83 more!]

A little while ago, I posted a scathing little knee-jerk entry about the ‘transposed letters’ meme that was flying around on the net. If you’ve not followed the discussion that ensued in the comments, it’s worth a look. First, ex-colleague of mine Sophia Collins (great to hear from you, chuck – sorry I haven’t replied – being as crap as usual) did what nobody else online seemed to, and tracked down the original paper. Then somebody else weighed in.

And now the original author himself has showed up. Read on. Oh, and er… I think it’s me that’s had the bouffant hair, though unusually not at present.

Shock! Derren Brown’s Russian Roulette stunt might have been a trick? No! Really?

Seriously – if you were the producer, how could you possibly sign off on the risk assessment?

dit dit de dee dit dee de dit de…

Here are the headlines from the last five days of Jonathan’s life:

BONG! Mortgage offer received, paperwork in final throes!

BONG! Amusing Get Shorty-inspired car hire moment, as Fiesta turns into gigantic and hideously ugly people carrier!

BONG! Steve and Amanda finally married. Nation says: about bloody time too!

BONG! Lovely event, by the way; ballroom dancing not quite as rusty as feared; oft-missed friends still officially Top People!

BONG! Old chum Ben seen for first time in five years!

BONG! Decisions made at work, progress believed imminent!

BONG! Drop by Alan & Jules’ place, give them a hug!

BONG! Mija joins deletetheweb community!

And finally… I’ve found a small metallic disc that goes ‘ping!’ and jumps two feet in the air. Which is nice.

‘It’s never dull in Hull‘, apparently.

But hey, I’ve done the fish trail – and the brown dust is, I believe, ‘seasoning salt,’ a mix of salt, pepper, and paprika. Must be a new thing – I don’t recall it being common around East Park in the 70s/80s.

‘What the hell is wrong with Apple?‘ asks Mark Morford of the SF Gate Chronicle. Hear, hear.

My friend Violet was so excited by her new PowerBook’s box, she had to hide it from herself and wait for company to arrive before she even opened it. As for iPods – the experience of unpacking one should be on the national curriculum.

They don’t call us ‘Apple Evangelists’ for nothing.