March 2003 Archives

Fav. track off new 'heads (radio, not talking) album: A punch up at the wedding.

In case you hadn't heard. Radiohead's new CD is available from your nearest copyright infringing outlet. Mine's an alt.binaries.sounds. mp3.complete_cd

NOT the ABC News Online: Rumsfeld replaced by a duck. It's that time of the year again. Well, it is in Australia.

I didn't shed nowt. I had an ice cream and a stroll around the park. Then I came back and wrote 90% of the 'bits and pieces'. And then I wrote to the publisher to ask for two more weeks to tie up all the loose ends. You see, if I had nothing to do for the next two weeks, I'd just be sitting here moping about turning 40.

I just wrote the final word of the entry for the final concert of the Elevation tour. This doesn't mean the book is finished. There are bits and pieces to be written and photo research to be completed. But the bulk of the text is done. I'm going for a walk. Maybe shed a few.

Someone nearby is making toast - it's a lovely smell to wake up to. Must. have. some.

Daylight bloody saving, wtf!

Look mum, I was a good, productive girl yesterday.

On my top 10 list of things I want to do is karaoke singing. I'd probably take it all too seriously, but still -- I'd love to try. Tonight, some of my Minimeet friends are going to do it in a place quite close by here in Amsterdam. And I really, really, want to go. But I can't. Hello, deadline. You know, any normal person would tell their publisher 'look, I need more time' - but no, I'm embarrassed to and have to at least try and make it.

Three Degrees: When will I see you again.

I am angry with my body clock telling me 'your 8 hours for today are up - please engage in relaxing activities'

Going to see Ladytron next week Friday and Interpol on April 9. I feel oh so modern.

I love this tune by The Three Degrees. Was just reminded of it because Bono sang bits of it, in memory of his father at a few concerts in 2001. I couldn't find a site to link to that didn't have horrible pop ups, etc, so here's the text: When will I see you again.

R.E.M. have just announced their North American tour. Now... remember I said I had some news for June? Well, you didn't hear this from me, but R.E.M. will be playing Utrecht and Amsterdam on June 21 and 23. They haven't played The Netherlands properly since 1987 (!), and only one festival appearance since. On their two other tours, they had to cancel their Dutch shows due to various members being ill. Needless to say, I'm thrilled and I can't wait to see them again. But anyway. You didn't hear this from me. OK?

Hello world. Anybody out there? I haven't been outside this house, haven't spoken to anyone in the flesh in a couple of days. Living in a vacuum.

It's a boy. Cordy has a babby.

Started working at 11 am. It's now 11pm and I'm not particularly tired yet. 12 hours, 12 gigs written up, 21 to go on this leg. Dinner is an option.

I'm starting to love my own WHEDONesque.com so much: "While the author of the article Ghoul power questions Whedon's commitment to feminism and social status, I think more attention should be paid to his truly racist and degrading depiction of green people."

There's a show on Dutch TV called "Neuken doe je zo". Loosely translated: "This is the way to fuck". OK, while that's sunk in, it's aimed at 'young' people (but apparently the demographic they're reaching is 55 year old men). Anyway. There's this girl on it now who's getting a piercing. Through the hood of her clitoris. OK, seen that before. Not particularly shocking. But. Her run of the mill, couch potato type of dad's come along to hold her hand. He's always been interested in "people who manifest their bodies". Ooookay.

I've been battling my migraines without the wonderful Maxalt tablets I was prescribed a year or two ago, because they're so damn expensive. This morning, having tossed the little there was in my stomach and grasping my head in despair, I rang the doctor for a new prescription. A walk in the sun (welcome, but a little hard on the eyes and the brain right now) later, I held 12 new minty flavoured tablets in my hand. My wallet remained in my back pocket. The new insurance covers 'em. Oh bliss. So I sit here, feeling the drug take effect. It's like putting in ear plugs, dimming the noise. The pain is still there, but the brain registers less and less of it, until - hopefully - it is entirely gone. This week, meant to be dedicated exclusively to book work, is not starting off too well.

When You're Twenty-One, You're No Fun. Chris, now officially an adult, no longer straight edge. Happy birthday!

Who exactly is your audience? Do they enter your site via the front page? Do you come up high in Google searches? If you do, here's some good tips from Tom: Designing for extreme readers...

Finally integrated Andromeda into the site's look 'n' feel. Andromeda's a nifty piece of PHP software to organise and stream audio files on your site. I'm using a free fully working beta that's no longer available. The current demo version only plays every other mp3. The newer version cheapest option costs 35 dollars.

If there's one thing the Hothouse Flowers' did well, it was b-sides. This Gil Scott Heron cover, Better Days Ahead, is just gorgeous.

The Hothouse Flowers 'People' is one of the best debut albums I've heard. They got their start on U2's failed 'Mother' records and then a big break playing 'Don't Go' live during the intermission of 1988's Eurovision songfestival - foreshadowing Riverdance's later success in that same spot. There's an audience out there just craving celtic fulfillment. The album delivered on the band's obvious promise. A timeless disc that hints at their live prowess, with slight hippy influences and one or two filler tracks, but otherwise an abundance of uplifting tunes touching on people-themes. Life, love and everything, you know, beautifully brought to you by Liam's Buckley-esque tones. The band dominated the Dublin scene in the early 90s. Too bad they went entirely up their own arse almost immediately after - they've released a string of directionless shite since and ditched their fabulous saxophonist and talented drummer. Still, check out 'People' if you get the chance.

missiledickchicks (via Kottke's great photo coverage of the NYC anti-war march.

How to write a book in 10 days

I can't find a proper picture, but this'll do: Bordeau Chesnel - La véritable rillette du Mans. Rillette is "a soft shredded pork slow-cooked and preserved in pork fat". It's probably very, very bad for you - but it's incredibly tasty especially on sour dough bread. The ridiculously expensive butcher on Utrechtsestraat in Amsterdam makes his own. I got a chunk of it plus some of their bread for lunch.

Giddy-up slap happy vibe of a Saturday morning. Early shift after yesterday's mega-long day, up at the crack o' dawn to catch the news and work on the job's Iraq site, photoshop and other duties. Still reeling a bit from last night and the wine (have become unused to drinking, must catch up) and now the E-bay thing on top. Going to take it easy when the shift ends at 1, stroll into town - get tickets for Interpol's gig at the Milky Way on April 9, then find brunch. Party tonight at Zaal 100 (a record launch cum b-day), but I may just collapse before that.

A promotional 'BLAD' (book lay out and design) for the book we're working on is being auctioned on Ebay: eBay item 2517786008 (Ends Mar-31-03 13:44:46 PST ) - very rare U2 book promotional item - mint!!

Ugh. I'm getting the old 'why are you editing our comments, we have freedom of speech' baloney on one of my weblogs. It's as boring as Godwin's law and 'if it weren't for us you'd all be speaking German' (my usual reply: "I do speak German, thanks all the same.") Anyone know a good rebuttal? I gave 'em the 'you are a guest in our house, we expect our guests to be civil towards us and our other guests'- line.

Massive Attack's 3-D innocent of Internet porn offences.

Kevin Sites Blog: looks like CNN don't like their children speaking up.

Fact: I wore my glasses while at work all week. Fact: I did not have a single headache/migraine. Are the two related? I'm only spec-ulatin'.

What a lovely full stop to this aching week. Just got This Mortal Coil's Song to the Siren dedicated to me live on RTE radio. Audio proof (mp3, 4.9mb)

Does anyone else get a little thrill out of seeing William Gibson in their blogroll list? As in 'oooh, Mr Gibson update 3 minutes ago!'. Anyway he blogs a lot like the rest of us.

For a break away from all things War, you can tune into to RTÉ Radio One's Mystery Train tonight between 7-9pm GMT. Gavin Friday will be spinning his favourite music for you for two hours. They've a live stream too.

I was deeply impressed with British school children as I watched BBC news last night. Not sure if there's been any mention of this on our (Dutch) channels. Here's a bit about it on the BBC website: School children march against war. They say it's 'hundreds', but it looked like thousands to me, all over Britain, out on the streets, demonstrating - defying police. They showed police having to physically remove the children. In Edinburgh the kids caused extensive disruption in the city. There were 'several arrests'. More than 1,000 students and schoolchildren held a sit down protest in Belfast.

Caterina lists some blogs in Iraq. On September 11 last year, I was surprised to see my work colleagues rush to watch basically uninformed news reports on Dutch television, while I was getting a better view through mailing lists and eyewitness blogs. Same thing's happening again. I rather read 'Where is Raed' (fake or not - it feels real) than watch the umpteenth repeat of a 'news' report on the telly that's on at all times in our office. Is it the dreaded 'human interest' angle that wooes me? No. I tend to care about people, not countries. Family, rather than governments. You can watch the green sky light up with FLAK and listen to the sirens howl, but the pictures don't change much whether GWI or GWII. Same old bloody propganda, filtered for your fun. I want to to hear the story not the news.

'It's the middle of the night over there, isn't it?' I heard today - but Iraq's only GMT+3. I joked 'they're basically our neighbours', but I meant it.

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins gave the battlegroup of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish the pep talk: "I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts, I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them." Blimey, does that man have a way with words. Let's hope the men remember what he said.

One month from now I will turn 40. D.V.

Mini interview per SMS:
"When did u support d Clash?"
"78 and we was great."
"ok, thanx"
"Why d Clash, u know i have cred"
"jus checkn. mmmmplastic pants..."
"and dey split revealin d real spire..."
"well, a miniature version..."
":-)"

I believe this is the very first time, ever, The Onion made me smile: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.' (via Textism).

I often wonder why I can't write big essays, have big thoughts. Have an opinion with something to back it up. (like Tom, or Jason who can write stuff and make a lot of sense to me.) Perhaps because I didn't go to university. I'm not an academic and I don't dissect things academically. Big scary gut feelings get in the way of my thinking -- well that, and a reluctance to read the papers on a regular basis for something other than the music reviews. All I know is right now I think we should be frightened. I know I am. 'Where is Raed' (a blog from Iraq) has two entries (1, 2) that are making a lot of sense to me too.

12 years ago I spent most of the Gulf War glued to our dinky TV, eventhough we weren't shown a damn thing. It was the only source of information we had. Detachment occurred. Watching bombings as if they were fireworks -- sipping our tea on the couch. "Holy cow!" But the older you get... Things are different. The world is smaller. Then we had 'the Iraqis', now we have one bloke in Bagdad writing entries while the troops are crossing the border. When the bombs fall, it's on our heads too.

Exactitudes: Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek were inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups which they have systematically documented. (via chchchanges.com)

I suppose these are exciting times for journalists, but I'm not sure this is my idea of fun in the newsroom.

As a child touching age we think that its so
That life love and everything is easy to know
The old, they can't reach us,
Their ways are not ours
Though they furrowed our futures
Our freedom they bore

The older we get the further we see
The more we mean to each other
The more you mean to me

I believe in these people
I believe in this age
Though I hear about torment in life's lonely page
Yet still we walk strong
We'll remember we're free
For the truth we are given
For what we believe

Chorus: The older...

I have searched out the answers
To the mysteries the laws
Though I still find barriers
Yet still I would fall
But I struggle on
The truth that I seek
But I must remain strong
For the lonely the weak the weak the old

( streaming mp3)

O'Maonlai/O'Braonain/O'Toole 1988

o2bee: "The only day he tolerated our Irish heritage was on St. Patrick's Day. He let my mother make a fool out of herself, and in turn, he called her names like "Irish Bastard" and "Fucking Mick." Yes, my family was your typical Ozzie and Harriet."

PainInTheEnglish.com: "designed for English learners to keep a database of things that they have learned."

He said: "Will you be wearing your Paddy's hat next week?" I said: "Fuck that." But other than that, darlings, happy Paddy's Day and up the Spire!

Meg's find, Mr Nice, thrice reminds me of an evening with my good friend John. A voracious reader, he would once every while just toss out every book he owned. Empty shelves, to be filled again - quite rapidly, with newer acquisitions. He stood in the middle of his living room, frowning, thinking. "There's this book I want to read... by this guy... he was at a reading I was at once... can't think of his name." In once of those eerie mind melds friends can have I said: "Howard Marks?" because I'd just fingered his book in Waterstones a few weeks earlier - thinking of buying it. John looked at me, astonished. I don't know if he ever read the book, and I can't ask him. I never did buy it. I miss John. A lot.

One more week. One more week of the dayjob and then I can devote myself to the book for a full week. About bloody time too, should have taken the whole month off. Oh the pressure. (ssh, secretly lovin' it...)

Very pretty patterns. (Via a.whole)

Hey, when did A Whole Lotta Nothing redesign? Nice one.

Really, if even strange men called Willie start telling you to go out and take a break, you know you're overdoing it.

Parteee at Tom's! Seriously, applause for Tom's parents -- just amazing.

This little engine's running out of steam.

Putting a bit of passion back into U2log.com.

How to make RealOne behave nicely. How to get rid of that damn message center, instructions from one of the Real software engineers. (via LinkMachineGo)

Oh the child bride, in her nightie...

She can't be more than 17, pushing her pram onto the metro. She and her partner sit down at the back of the carriage.

She's Asian, Thai perhaps or one of the Indonesian islands and he's a Dutchman twice her age and twice her size. They clash in every way. Management material and Lolita from the kampong. He's in a dark blue wooly coat, a quiet man. She's wearing teenage clobber and she's bubbly.

He minds the beautiful boy they made, she doesn't.

She chatters all the time, in a language that approaches English, about girlie things. Shopping, jeans, boots, shawls. He listens with just half an ear.

"How many drinks did you have?", he asks, kissing the baby's head. She doesn't understand.

Speaking a little more slowly he rephrases the question. "Wine. How many glasses?"

She puts up two fingers, giggling.

Catalogue romance or true love?

I wonder what their story is.

NSLog();: Starting a Blog (with MovableType). (via Antipixel)

English Sans French. Fry that! (via ext|circ)

Just a minute ago I got some music related news that has me absolutely jumping for joy. Sworn to secrecy. Dutch people will hear soon enough, I'm sure. I'd be careful booking holidays in June if I were you. I would um, stand in the place where, you know, you live...

Tom's microcampaign to turn on autodiscovery... explains the usefulness of Trackback when it's used properly. I have struggled with the feature. I like it, but it's not particularly useful on my site as I very seldom engage in cross blog conversations, and Tom makes a very good case for peeps like me switching it off. Anyway, Bob recently said he didn't see the point of the feature at all because referrer logs do a better job of catching the links back to your post. As usual I was unable to articulate in favour of trackback. Tom - articulate being his middle name - does better. 's Not about links. 's About maintaining a thread of a conversation. So there. (And I won't be pinging Tom's article.)

Not one for the barricades, but sometimes you have to show your colours. The 'no war' image is my compromise for chickening out on sticking it on U2log.com. I can't really do it there because I don't want to presume speaking for all my staff. Secondly, it would probably unleash hell on the site -- it's frightening how many pro-war (as in 'and let's nuke France while we're at it, like, if we can find it on the map") U2 fans there are. I have to shut down comments on half the posts because the readers manage to turn everything into an us vs them argument. "Charlie Darwin I believe you now. Put the monkeys in a uniform. Stormin' Norman up on the hill. Twenty rounds with Georgie B. Let 'em choke on coke 'n' oil. Sweet revenge just one calorie..."

Things to consider this weekend: Spring. SPRING! Smell the flowers. Enjoy the silence. Don't mention the war.

We have it on good authority that our site, U2log.com, is used as an example in the book Dreamweaver Mx Design Projects.

Hello. Yes, you. You there, lurking in the background. You, reading this site. Never commenting. Stunned by Mike's 250 comments triumph of the will, I can't help but wonder -- where are all the prolific.org readers? Speak up now, I can't hear you. I don't bite. Not very often, anyway.

Mister Johnny Cash covers The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face: And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave. To the night and the empty skies my love.

235 comments by midnight on Friday means One Hundred Quid to Comic Relief. Go comment on the post that's linked. You're allowed five posts.

I'm tired of having three different blogs on one site. Must have just one blog with perhaps one sideblog containing just links. Everything's cumbersome about my current set up. Still using both MT and Blogger. Still using separate hells of archives. In the second half of this year I will 1. redesign U2log 2. redo prolific.org 3. completely rebuild gavinfriday.com and make it a lean mean gav-machine. 4. get a life.

Over drinks in last night, I told my companion 'Have you noticed, this place is full of... (stage whisper) older women?' Just like ourselves.

Older women meeting other older women. Money in the pocket. Cup of tea, glass of wine. How are you? I'm fine.

I am fine. Upstanding citizen. Deep down a prude. Not a vice to speak of. Never done an A-class drug.

"You are boring," the younger friend once said. But he's dead.

I'm alive. I struggle with the notion of the green eyed monster. It starts kicking and screaming each time that young one rears her pretty little head. Half my age, a million times my fortune. Oh envy. Oh want. Oh achy breaky heart and little sodding death.

But does it matter, really, when he does remember every single thing I tell him true or false? And he does regale me, all stream-of-concious-like, of all his one-step-forwards, two-steps-backs?

Oh man, oh victim of the power dress, oh traitor, oh turn coat, oh heroes always disappoint you in the end. But he hasn't.

Does it matter when we spin our mad tales for each other, mickey taking, side splitting, for fun, in jest, in awe: "First the Oscars, then he'll stop the war. He'll sit them down, make them talk and guarantee world peace. Then he'll succeed the Dalai Lama."

We are older people still making like the play ground. Make each other laugh. And love.

Oh manchild to my matriarch. Oh brother, uncle, son.

Does it? Matter?

I think not.

Two tips I got I haven't been able to check out yet. The City of God soundtrack and Junior Senior (... supposed to be very tacky and apparently I'll hate it cause I hated the Flaming Lips). Fab website, though.

With the cocaine and Courvoisier, But you build more bombs as you get more bold, As your mid-life crisis war unfolds, All you want to do is take control. In A World Gone Mad. "This song is not an anti-American or pro-Saddam Hussein statement. This is a statement against an unjustified war." - Adam Horovitz. The Beastie Boys' old-school statement.

Roogle :: RSS Search Engine. Add your rss feed.

Extra, extra! (boom boom) On April 12 and April 13 I'll be "acting" in "Passie Spel" (Passion play) by Peter Nichols, in the Polanentheater in Amsterdam.

Dutch readers of a certain age... I just heard the single 'This is welfare' on the radio. Who, when, where again? The Div? Same year as Human League's The Lebanon?

Fact: support for the book we're doing is world wide. Even former 'enemies' have sent in their well wishes and have offered help. Fact: the few discouraging comments have been anonymous. Fact: all the discouraging comments are Dutch. (IP check reveals). It reminds me of something. Can't think of what, really. Something with weblo.... No... it escapes me. Anyway. What a small country in every sense. Small people. What small, mean-spirited, cowardly, begrudging creatures we are.

A colleague just introduced me to KDX. Must investigate. (For this reason: "KDX is great for accessing files that are at work and keeping in touch with the office. You can run a KDX Server at work, and then connect to it remotely to continue your work.") [update: it's a lot like Hotline. With less porn. Don't worry, that will come. Easy to install, easy to operate.]

Midnight, is when the day begins. Nearly there, the clock is ticking. I've been working, writing since 10 AM this morning - straight out of bed. That's thirteen and a half hours and I'm in no way tired or willing to stop. Not now when I've got a flow going. But the early shift awaits in the morning. Torn between two lovers, one or the other will have to suffer.

Friend Merel was on her way to the airport two days ago for a holiday in Tuscany when her backpack with everything. EVERYTHING was stolen. Money, credit cards, passport, drivers license, tickets, discman, brandnew digital cam and god knows what else. With no passport or drivers license she had no way of identifying herself, and no way to travel. Today, she fixed a temp passport against all odds and she's off to Tuscany for a few days anyway. Big round of applause. I would have stayed at home and wallowed in self pity and written really moany posts about it.

Squeal! I'd forgotten the 3rd season of Six Feet Under has started in America. /me rushes over to Usenet...

I've been doing photo research for the book. I hate it because it involves having to haggle with people over money. I'm uncomfortable with money matters. Some people donate their photos for free. Others want to see cash. I would always be in the first group. I find asking money for things... distasteful. I don't know what that makes me. An idiot, I suppose. (I don't mind paying people who make a living off photography, I'm talking about fans taking snapshots at a gig.)

Cole Wide Web - the Cole Porter Resource Site, bookmarked for future perusing.

Congrats to the winners (yay for Dean!) at the Bloggies and SXSW. As predicted, we won nothing. Not sorry for prolific.org or U2log.com, but I would have liked Whedonesque.com to get a little attention. We've a really nice thing going there, not a lot of trouble and some very keen posters. It's building slowly and it won't become huge, not with Buffy ending this season. Which is good.

Sleep is fucking pointless isn't it? It should be eradicated. I'm all for ending sleep. www.theendofsleep.com. I mean, I need to work -- but my body is telling me it needs to go lie down and do fuck all for 7 hours. SEVEN hours of precious time wasted on sweet f.a. Sleep and the day job are the curse of the moonlighting classes.

The hair don't work, but our Gav's got the bluest eyes on the planet.

It's an oldie, sorry folks: St Brendan... (It's got present/past tense issues that I've been meaning to fix since 94, and haven't.)

I met St. Brendan of Sir John Rogerson's Quay in a pub, on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, any day. Does it matter when? We met. It was a day like any other.

I was sitting there, drinking. On my own. My shoulders hunched up, muscles tight, aware, defences up, like a snail in a shell, like a little hedgehog curled up. Alone. St. Brendan came in with a friend, the two of them bound by booze-induced silence. Composed and deliberate, he sat down, misjudging the distance by an inch: Thud!

He sat still for a while, then ordered drinks for himself and younger friend -- even more drunk, a glazed look in his eyes. St. Brendan was skinny, forty-ish, badly dressed. Thin hair of indefinite colour. A shabby Irishman. He looked like he had just been raking dung, or flogging sheep at a market. I glanced at them over my drink, a bit shy, sussing them out. The verdict: quiet drunks, not dangerous. St. Brendan caught my eye, he sneers, he puts me down.

'Pfff,' says he, and sips his drink. Immediately I'm sorry that I even glanced. I look into my pint and know my evening will be spoilt. I can see him shaking his head. 'Shit,' I think, 'now I've done it.'

'Why are you iffy?' St. Brendan says. I feel a finger within that question, prodding me accusingly.
'I'm not.'
'Yes, you are.'
'I'm not iffy.'
'You're iffy.'

He is probably right and he prods on, shamelessly. I get annoyed, because the more he asks, the more I begin to believe he is right, and I start questioning myself. Why am I iffy? What's iffy, exactly? His hands go up.

'Sorry... sorry... I talk too much,' he pauses, 'still, you're iffy.' He laughs. He thinks he's funny. I suppose he is. I look into my drink some more.
'So what do you do?'

He won't let go.

'I'm here for two months.'
'And?'
'I start a new job when I go back.'
'Yeah, and?'

He somehow knows I'm holding back on him? I hesitate. I feel pretentious when I say my next line.

'I write.'

He nods as if he knew what the answer was going to be.

'What do you write?'
'Things...,' again I hesitate, take a deep breath and say: 'I've written a book.'
'What about?'
'Uh, it's about uh, it's sort of a biography.'
'About who?'

I have two questions for my more technically apt readers. 1. How do I make an alias for running an application on a Unix machine? I.e. I want to run this programme in this directory with these attributes... with a single command. 2. My MSIE browser suddenly has problems loading spacer gifs and other small images. Any ideas?

World of Ends: "Nobody owns it, everybody can use it, anybody can improve it."

Getting very long and in need of a brush...

"You can't even remember, what I'm trying to forget." A quote that has nothing to do with the following, but it made me think of it: Hydra remembers more about MY webblog history than I do myself. When we're old and grey, Mr Hg will know where we've come from. Reading through log.nu archives I'm surprised some of it is still interesting -- and has a quality I'd like to return to. I'm breaking my head about Hg's last sentence and have no clue at all.

Something I've noticed: real photographers always ask 'What is the picture for, how is it going to be printed, what kind of book is it going to be?'. Amateurs ask for money first.

Charles Shaar ("award winning author and critic")Murray "a childless fifty-something who, despite a lifetime fondness for fantasy and science fiction, nevertheless reads proper books and watches proper movies", is a Buffy addict and says "Bon Voyage."

Metafilter Wiki: MoJo... I'm so out of the loop. Someone please tell me what MoJo is. Ah, here's what it is. Collaborative online journalism. Sounds wicked. Discussion of the project. A site that runs on Freefilter, open source community software.

This weekend, on Sunday to be precise, both the winners of the Bloggies and the SXSW /interactive/web_awards will be announced at SXSW, in Austin, Texas. We're in the running with this here scrapheap of a site, U2log and -- most importantly, WHEDONesque.com. Safe prediction: we will win nowt whatsoever.

One shimmer of hope in the otherwise abysmal Friday afternoon was the arrival of a possible book cover photograph (we had been on a quest), straight from U2's own HQ in Dublin, no less. We think it could work - fingers crossed, our publishers tend to think... differently.

It's close to 4am. I came home from work yesterday, having been given a lift from a colleague who dropped me off at Oosterpark, a block away from where I live. Say, have you people seen The Exorcist? I was, like, totally pulling a Linda Blair there on the street corner in a projectile vomiting kind of way. Migraines really are a bitch. I stumbled to my appartment and fell into bed after a quick phonecall to cancel the lovely dinnerdate I had. Slept like a baby and woke at 3, I wouldn't say invigorated, but at least thumping, screaming, headache-free. Time for a cuppa.

Jason plays with David's mickey.

Excellent! Luka Bloom's concert in the Carre in Amsterdam in 2002 - which I attended, enjoyed but neglected to record, will be released on CD in April.

Top 50 SF and Fantasy books I've only read 8 of these. Six of which are in the top 10. Why is Zelazny's Amber series not in it?

Smart men are sexy.

I've mentioned stuff here over the past few months, but here's what we've been doing with our time, for real: U2 Live - A Concert Documentary: What we do, how we do it.

The superfluous is very necessary. (Voltaire)

oh bah (Ok, let's be a little more coherent about this. IMHO Mr Hg's going through all the phases of the typical weblogger (deja deja deja vu) and my primary reactions is typical too, I'm afraid and it involves much eye rolling - he'll probably hate me for it. I've always ignored them, those phases. No hiatussussusususus here. Ever. I may want one ocassionally, but I will never bother my readers with 'em. I promiss. Also... not joining the well meant 'bring back Hg campaign', cause if the man wants a break, give him a break, for chrissakes. And yes, I'm cranky today.)

Dit is een test

The nature of my current job encourages me to think/write more in Dutch. I have no idea how many Dutch readers I have. Not a whole lot, I'm sure. Anyway, I tend to post any Dutch content I have (not a whole lot) elsewhere. I'm wondering whether or not to make this site bilingual.

See the winner of the Dutch National Songfestival, Esther Hart.

See both clips (male 1/female 2) for Massive Attack's Special Cases (sung by Sinead O'Connor) on the VPRO site.

I've always considered U2log.com a weblog. Not a 'zine, not a fansite. Because one or two of my editors are on walkabout, the essence of the site, which was to provide U2 news with a wink (a bit of a breather from regular fan run music sites) , is lost. I'm not a funny person, a lot of the time, I think. The site misses the quirk it used to have. It's gained something else. A new collaboration has meant a shift in focus. We're not just linkin'n'loggin anymore, we're actively reporting on events (not just any old events either), with press credentials and photo passes, etc. No weblog. No magazine. What the hell are we? Where the hell are we? I don't think we're in Kansas anymore... Whatever we are, sending out my old friend PL to cover the Meteor Awards in Dublin is a sweet thing after all these years.

2 8 M M . O R G: March issue - looking really good. Best issue so far? "Aged", "Foreign Faces"...

Blixa Bargeld to leave Bad Seeds

Remember this one?

eyes on a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbour in the tempest
... your story to remain untold.

Joss Whedon: "Men, we're going to take that hill ... well, probably not, most of us will probably die, we probably won't take the hill ... we don't need the hill to win the war, I don't think morally we should win the war and, anyway, I'm afraid of hills ..."

He: "You like BUFFY?" Me: "Yes. Obsessed with it." He: " The acting is crap." Me: "No, it isn't, really, have you...". He: (cutting me off) "It's crap. That girl can't act." Me: "She's a really good actress and there's so much to this series, you...." He: (cutting me off) "She's crap." End of conversation. Back to work, in even worse mood than before.

He doesn't deserve it, but I couldn't resist. Ordered "The Ziggy Collection", a set of enamel badges, for a friend. Cause giving's better than receiving.

"Come away for a drink, human child" they said, "just the one." "Bloody Irish friends and their siren song," she mumbled, stumbling about trying to keep her brekkie down.