November 2001 Archives
Ian McKellen reviews LOTR.
JAZZ... Argentinian design magazine.
TECHNOEROTICA- Failing at Respectability... looks nice, must remember to visit.
Symantec Security Response - W32.Badtrans.B@mm... I'm getting TONS of these.
It's probably going to be a bit quiet here for the next couple of days. Back on Sunday evening. I have chaperonnes this time to keep me away from internet cafes.
Aren't those pills calledecstasy?
DiViDo, region free dvd player... getting this when I come back from Dublin. Just got a little cheque from a fairy godmother. I could do with a bigger telly for this purpose but that'll have to wait.
She just reminded me that I'm always worried and that all will be well. Ok then.
I'd cross my fingers but that would mean I wouldn't be able to work all day. Not that I'm able for it anyway. Muttering 'fuckfuckfuckfuck' under my breath. Well, if I was nervous before, I'm bloody wrecked now.
Jo Whiley Interviews Madonna. Haven't heard it yet.
Jeffrey looking younger by the minute. There must be a portrait in the attic somewhere.
Been toying with RSS Monkey. I have this mad idea of bringing all my sites together instead of scattering them around the web - prolific portal. Eek. I could do it, running everything off Movable Type. I would probably also need to quit the day job to get it all done.
Talent is the sexiest thing on earth.
When I was in college, I lived in a student flat with fifteen other people. I lived in that flat for nine years (83-92), way beyond my college years, and I lived with a whole lot of fifteen other people.
It was in the city of Utrecht, on a student flat project called 'IBB' - apparently the oldest student flats in this country. It showed.
Our rooms were 3.5x3.5 square meters, we shared a kitchen cum communal room and two bathrooms. We drank a lot of alcohol, played a lot of cards and watched a lot of television. You haven't lived if you haven't seen young men cry watching 'Little House on the Prairie' on a Sunday afternoon.
There was a club on the grounds called 'Chez BB'. It took my flat mates a while to convince me to go there, but I ended up most Friday nights in there, with three glasses of beer tucked under my arm, or dancing to bad 80s disco music, falling over legless, crawling my way back to my flat and making some very bad decisions regarding my choice of men.
I've just come back from a 'reunion', organised by the people who ran the club at the time.
I had hoped to meet some of my old flat mates, find out what life has brought them, see how they are doing. I'm still in touch with the people that mattered the most at the time, but there's one or two I'd lost contact with as soon as they moved out of the flat. I was particularly interested in meeting an old fling. You can't help but wonder 'what if' and whether you'd still have that spark.
I showed up early and saw lots of familiar faces, but not many from my flat. Talked with the ones that were there for a bit and then found out that I haven't really changed much, that I'm not one for parties - that I stick to the wall, prefer sitting down and not mingling, that I'm still painfully shy and awkward and that I must have spent most of my years there doing my best NOT to get to know anybody. I left early.
My old fling didn't show.
More LOTR movie clips available at the official soundtrack site.
The lost pages of Vindication of Eternity... has a lovely new home.
Special warning for Rings film, "It's better than Harry Potter"?
The Perils of Leisure: Volume 3... oh that looks good.
Redesigning. Hmmm.
Mary Whitehouse dies. Mary tried to ban the Virgin Prunes from appearing on BBC television in 1983. It gave them more publicity than they could ever hope for. Here's to you, Mary.
I suppose I'll have to explain why I hated the Harry Potter fillum. Well... they weren't storytelling, they filmed 50 scenes and stuck them together. There was no passion, no excitement, no characterisation. I couldn't empathise with anybody, the music was standard Hollywood schmalz, the kids couldn't act, Daniel whatsisface just stood with this mouth agape a lot. It was a Sunday afternoon bad children's TV movie.
And Alan Rickman didn't get enough screen time.
Never go into record shops on your lunch break. You end up spending your day's earnings. Radiohead: I Might Be Wrong (Live Recordings), Neubauten: Strategies against Architecture 1991-2001, and Gare du Nord: In Search of Excellounge (heard it last night in the pub and M. knew what it was.)
Just listening to Neubauten now and the first three tracks make this thing worthwhile already. Absolutely stunning.
When cultures clash... Metafilter readers are voting for Wil Wheaton for Entertainer of the Year, while on the Buffy related mailing lists I'm on they're trying to push Joss Whedon and wondering 'Why is Wil Wheaton scoring so high, what has he done this year???' I'd explain, but then I'd probably also have to explain what weblogging is too, and ... oh dear. I'll watch from a distance and be very, very amused.
Nice meeting ya, Ecritures.
... so I asked W. what good films we've seen this year, and lo and behold, there was 'Almost Famous'. Oh yes, definite favourite of the year.
Two words: Harry Potter Alan Rickman.
Shite film. Good company.
11 minute preview of Suede's new DVD... see I REALLY need a DVD player. Beautiful rendition of my favourite Suede song 'Europe is Our Playground'.
I wish I had better memory, so I could fill in some of those enticing year lists. 2001, for me, was mostly about Buffy, gigs, RSI, new, old and deepening friendships, and Japanese food. I didn't read enough books, didn't see enough films, and spent rather too much time blogging. I had the best summer ever.
One week to go.
The new U2 DVD looks fabulous. I'm going to have to buy a player. AAAARGH.
{fray} drugs - things given. What your lovers give you.
If you have any.
... I am manually editing 1200 imported posts in Movable Type. I've done 175 posts. That's less than two months. 15 months to go.
Hmm... seriously contemplating using Movable Type as a CMT for all of GavinFriday.com. With the developments suggested here, I don't know what I'm waiting for. Other than having some faint wish to have all the info in a database.
Are you in bed?
No.
Are you working?
No, it's ok, I can talk.
Are you staying away from computers?
No!
Not following my advice then...
No.
[ ... ]
I'll see ya soon
If Aer Lingus don't go on strike.
If they still exist!
My step mum's probably out of work... Swissair no longer exists.
Well, here's to a wonderful 2002... when everybody we know will be on the dole.
noah grey... hey, new stuff!
Le Cadavre/Exquise/Boira/le Vin/Nouveau... new corpse, bloody gorgeous.
's amazing how little things can put a spark in the eyes. After 6 months of waiting I finally got a new computer at work. Lovely monitor too. No more 'disk full', no more 'out of memory'. Wow, I'll actually be able to do my job.
All week I've been listening to people go on and on about how sexy and wonderful that girl from No Doubt is. 1. Their music is shite. 2. Sexy? Sorry, you all are insane,
Enjoy your break, Daniel, do be back.
:: Netzministerium :: ::, happy birthday to you. (One year old today).
I added another song to the tunes in the list at the bottom of the page. It's from the musical 'Around the World in 80 Days'. 'In the Depth of Night,' sung by Tony Head. It's an old fashioned show tune and it's mushy and I love it. I'm a sap.
I especially like the freaky, otherwordly, threatening string section about 30-45 seconds into the song. Maybe not such a sap afterall.
I sent some questions to Dreamhost support and they answered one today. One that I had asked two years ago. I'm not joking. They answered a question that I asked about a domain that I had for a couple of months, a couple of years ao. I no longer have the domain and they already answered the question at the time.
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul... quite nice above the fold, but below... hmm.
Could somebody explain to me what 'sweeps' are, with regard to U.S. televison? [ update: Chris enlightened me. The mind boggles. ]
I'm just counting the days, really, that's all I'm doing.
glassdog.HOME: London is overrun with pasty people with horrible dental issues and an overwhelming desire for tea.
Lance has take the date off his front page, so I don't know when this update appeared.
TCN : Quiz ... I scored 7/10.
tomcosgrave.com --> Irish net access sucks, writes Tom in his latest entry (permalink doesn't work). I will never ever move to Ireland as long as this isn't resolved.
From David Bowie's journal (members only): [ Toni Visconti's treatments of DB's new album ] tickled Pete Townshend so much, when, on hearing rough mixes, he raised his arms and cried, 'it's Franz Kafka meets Ed Wood'.
Absolutely annoying: people who use forums as chat rooms, using only the subject line. What a fucking waste of space.
Secret Santa... very cool.
Metrosexuality... 'congratulations, you are a happy and well adjusted hetero'.
clearlycalm.com: The thing that really needles me about my sodding car is that short of asking my wife to sleep with Jeremy Clarkson, I did EVERYTHING 'right' when I bought it.
Nokia 7650 Demo... what I want for Christmas pt II.
Interesting... Frank Boeijen, opinions in English.
Um... shiver. Puke. General misery & aches. Flu? Bugger.
Is it just me or has Dreamhost gone completely arseways? It's time to move. I'm just not looking forward to moving 5 or more domains.
What I want for Christmas: Mrs Kennedy by Barbara Leaming: The President's procurers would go trawling among the tourist tours of the White House to pick up women. He used his wife's bed for screwathons so numerous that Kennedy called most of his women 'kid' because he could not remember their names. Cad.
sacha: the unofficial Sacha Baron Cohen Homepage... the guy behind Ali G.
Oh... if you came here for the Buffy news and updates... I'm now posting that elsewhere. I'll post the URL once the domain is live. (It's here (http://66.39.88.96/ashes/) temporarily.
Pivot-log new Pivot beta available. Christ, this year's all about updating my blog software.
gotthetime.com... Martijn's new project... first I heard about it.
Finally got off my lazy arse and brought the new U2log.com on line.
ASHES... hmm, wonder who made that.
Nifty. dMP3Lister, from: The Programming Playground of Benjamin Kuz. PHP index file. Just drop in a directory, and it lists whatever MP3s you have in there - details and all. Like so.
Monkey see, monkey come... a spoof sets off the haiku beast.
Hospitals first, then... detective agencies.
Seen the new Star Wars trailer? I bet somewhere in the middle of the film he will take her down to the servant's quarters and teach her to dance an Irish jig.
Oh, and the Deathstar sinks.
The richest painter in Britain can't afford decent webhosting. (Yahoo webhosting, exceeded data transfer when I clicked the link)
Do you enjoy the money? "Of course I do. I am not very British in that I am not ashamed of being rich."
I haven't seen the paintings... so I can't crack the joke.
Web design companies are like children. You can tell them things won't work 100 times, but they still have to make their own mistakes and find out for themselves.
A handful of Buffy script writers posted to The Bronze: Beta today. Unfortunately, they didn't post anything interesting.
Room for Living: The thing seems to be that we keep going, that we forgive others and ourselves, that we do what we think is right even when it’s hard and even when it hurts.
pyRads :: web advertising that doesn't suck... and they will be offering it as a service. That is cool. Bookmarked. Will use.
BLOGGER - Micro Ads... juss like MF.
Bon voyage to Whil Weaton who will be journeying on Star Trek X.
I am so in need of a life. Anyway, this must be the funniest thing I've read all week - and I've read funny shit this week. MBTV Forums - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - General Gabbery - "Tabula Rasa" 11/13/01:
"Please please *please*, don't let Buffy turn into Dawson's Undead Creek."
==> brainsluice : delicious detritus.... belated happy domain-day, Dave.
Fallen Thyme... now that'd be nice if I wanted to do something gothic.
A history of BBC 2 Idents.
kristoffbertram / Tekst. San630's main man writes. In Dutch.
'Over his dead, golden throated, sexy British body' This review of 'Once More, with Feeling' is possibly more entertaining than the musical itself.
In 8 months with my company as a 'web developer', the thing I'm most proud of is a little pay off I thought up while doing part of our corporate site. Figures.
I've been redesigning U2log.com. Here's a preview:
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I have always had a soft spot for John Simpson (BBC reporter), though I was not entirely sure why. Reading this Guardian profile on him things fall into place. Heh.
BBC Cult Once More, With Feeling special. Info about the 8 minute cuts made in the syndicated version.
Yahoo Groups mail has been on its ass all day. No idea what's going on there.
tntmagazine.com - Have you become a Pom?... I scored 14 on this quiz which is meant for Aussies living in the UK. I have NO idea what that means for me. [ oh, via meg, natch ]
It's all about the subtext, baby.
The Future Independent Web: Visions Of What's To Come! Independents Day has started. And they're talking about it.
Ebb Tide:
A beach bleak and windy
That moans the whole day long.
Today's 'POTW' is gorgeous.
Let's follow that up with the shallowest thing possibleSexiest Men Gallery... 25 guys. I don't find any of them attractive. (seriously) Except #1. Though not in that particular shot.
Fucking hell. Fucking, fucking hell.
// stares at mobile phone //
... just read the wildfeed spoilers for BtVS 6x08, 'Tabula Rasa' which is annoyingly written by a W/T fan... so the really important part of the episode is covered in a single sentence. Grr.
Anyway, this is the last episode (for a while?) that features ASH so I'll probably stop being so obsessive. (I can hear applause)
... which is where I find this link to some of the best icecream on the planet: Australian Homemade. Which I've never seen outside Holland.
Sakaama's blog... new English language Dutch blog. From Amsterdam. Groovy.
'Dropdead monstrous' Buffy slays academics. Yeah, yeah, yeah - empower women. Sure, that's part of it. I'm more interested in the underlying currents of loneliness and aging that goes on in this series.
Pleasantly and slightly embarrasingly surprised to find myself in Chris's 'who do you admire' list, stuck between the B man and Mr Gahan - (which I'm not sure is a place I'd like to be - I've enough trouble dealing with me own ego).
Meg asked about mothers. I wrote something
User Interface Engineering, lots of UI stuff, haven't read it.
DHTML Kitchen: Forms with style. Nifty css stuff. Bookmark. Copy. Paste.
We're having problems with a dhtml menu on MSIE/mac & I don't really know how to solve it. If there's someone out there who'd like to take a look, drop me a line & I'll give the URL.
“glocalization” – the capacity of the Internet to expand users’ social worlds to faraway people and simultaneously to bind them more deeply to the place where they live: Online Communities: Netwrks that nurture long-distance relationships and local ties. (pdf, via De Lijst)
I wrote this article (50k Word doc) called "Berlin, Benares, Ballymun" about the six shows I saw in Dublin last month. Originally for the website and also commissioned by a German webzine, but it's too long for the site and too obscure for the zine and I'm not sure what to do with it. Maybe I'll just keep it somewhere safe for later use.
annelizabeth : life through a lens : words... nice blog, hadn't seen before.
I wasted the long weekend. I should have got wasted.
Brand Ben Brown :: Content Management, Community & XML Software: RSS Monkey.
God, I should learn about all of this, but I really can't be arsed at the moment.
I've spent all day trawling through sites for rare mp3s, etc, and I don't understand how anyone can stand having their site on Geocities, or FortuneCity or any or those crap services. It's infuriating.
Chicks that rub me the wrong way. 1. Andrea Corr. Saw her on TOTP last night. She's 25 going on 48, she's got awful stringy hair, she looks like a panda, her voice is weedy, she's a stick figure in a flimsy dress. Her music is the essence of shite. Yet guys drool all over her. Bitca.
And what's with Natalie Imbruglia... is she trying to be PJ Harvey doing impressions of Patti Smith?
I got some e-mail from Nikolai who said he'd figured out what 'After the floods' refers to, namely U2's Beautiful Day. But that's not really where I got it from, in fact it never crossed my mind. 'After the floods' is part of an ungoing Dutch waterworks allusion going on on my blogs. Prolific.com carries the pay off 'Beyond the polder', my Dutch blog which I closed down for a while but can't seem to find the willpower to get going again, was called 'Binnen de Dijken' (Within the dikes). When I closed it down, I started 'After the floods'.
FUCK MTV! reviews the new Bjork video for Pagan Poetry. I just watched the video, haven't heard the album. I seem to have built up some sort of allergy to Bjork's voice over the years. This is one of the cases where I like the 'idea' of an artist and appreciate them being out there, but I don't really want to buy their stuff. Even in the Sugarcubes I much preferred Einar's antics to Bjork's hollering.
I wonder if the new video was influenced by Matthew Barney, the visual artist she appears to be dating. From what I've heard from Gav who was a judge on the 2001 Glen Dimplex awards, which Barney won, his work was reminiscent of what the Virgin Prunes got up to ('and you'd like it').
I met my dad in town for lunch.
We don't often meet like that, just the two of us. I don't know why.
It was brief, as he was uncharacteristically late. We met on 'Spui', a small square in town. He was attending an ex-colleague's oration in the neighbourhood later in the day.
I bought my Whitman at Athenaeum book shop. Always a good place to spot the literary elite. A publisher and one of his author were buzzing around the shop, smoking cigars, asking the staff whether they had copies of the author's book. They didn't. Later, Michael Zeeman whirled by - presenter of a literary tv programme - he's always got the same coat on and never quite manages to look as dashing as his predecessor.
Best of MTVe VMA awards? Kylie Minogue and Rammstein. Whatcha mean, eclectic? ALso intrigued by Fred Durst / Jimmy Page 'duet' but it would have been so much better without His Limpness.
In a timed but not completely coordinated effort, fans off my Heaven mailing list, plus assorted friends managed to buy all the seats at at least 3 and a half front row tables in Vicar Street for the gig on the 29th. We'll be looking around us knowing absolutely everybody in sight. How very odd.
Just pre-ordered Music for Elevators.
Independents Day: Celebrating the Independent Web... Essays by independent web artists and writers will begin appearing at http://independentsday.org/ on Monday, November 12 10am EST (GMT-5), with a new essay appearing every six hours.
Ali G is presenting the MTV Europe Awards. They'll have to cut most of him out of what they're going to show around the world. Heh heh.
Salon loves it: But "Once More with Feeling" works mostly because the musical numbers are keyed right into the heartbeat of the show, a show whose mythology, by now, in the midst of the sixth season, is so rich and deliciously Byzantine that you could almost design a college course around it.
I watched the whole thing in sad Quicktime mini format, but am getting a video sent from the States for full screen pleasure.
Looks like I'm going to have to give this Weblogmeeting in Belgium a miss on account of finances.
Holy shit, yet another old friend will be joining us for the gig in Dublin. I have this huge grin on my face. I'm sure my co-workers think 'what on earth is she smirking about'. If they took notice of me at all.
Now if only Chris could make it over as well.
BBC - BBCi - the UK's number one digital destination... um, yeah, redesign. You know... that's actually kind of sexy.
Torch Gallery in Amsterdam represent a number of artists, including Anton Corbijn. The 'Torch Test' pop up is kinda cute.
New fonts at fountain.nu
Um, obsess much?
Here's a better, longer mp3 (5mb) of ASH & Amber Benson's solo/duet. Cuz it's gorgeous. I wouldn't mind more musical episodes.
'Innocence', scene by scene with Joss Whedon.
Apparently, so many people have been e-mailing the BBC about the still undecided 'Ripper' tv series, they have now taken to phoning people back instead of e