Spam

I'm trying out a new service that'll group my tweets together daily and put them into a blog post. It's a bit temperamental, so apologies if you see a few hundred identical posts cropping up..

In other spam related news, Tie-Dye Heart should now be free of, and fully protected from, the various Viagra adverts that kept our readers firmly glued to the comments section. Maybe people will look at the drawings instead now - like the new sketch we put up yesterday to celebrate the 100th update!

I'm Right & You're Wrong

In the following phrase;

"..may be followed by three minutes silence",

an apostrophe is missing. The fragment should read;

"..may be followed by three minutes' silence".

You may disagree. Most people I've shown this to disagree. I am right. If you disagree, you are wrong. If you agree, you are right. Comments are disabled for this post.

I've emailed the editors of the Oxford Guide to English, and the honorary secretary of that most venerable of institutions, the Queen's English Society. If those two, in a vastly improbable move, inform me that I, am in fact, wrong on this matter, then consider this post my retirement from the internet.

Finally, is anyone else annoyed by the fact that the specification for URLs (and, whilst we're at it, many common file system restrictions/issues) leads to poor grammar in digital files? Even the QES has to endure the horrors of the following URL:

http://www.queens-english-society.com/.

Apparently not even I'm safe either - just look at the URL of this very post! Such a terrifying time we live in.

LolHymns

The LolCat Bible project that I mentioned a while back is coming along well, with 61% of the Bible now translated into kittah speeks.

People have also started adding some fringe stuff too, including translating a few hymns into Lolhymns. There's only 11 up there right now, so it's a great time to get involved - there's a short guide to speaking lolcat available too, for the uninitiated.

I'll leave you with the utterly fantastic hymn, 'All Fings Brite an Purdyful';

All Fings Brite an Purtyful

All fings brite an purtyful,

    All kittehs big an small, 

    All fings wize an wunnerful, 

    Ceiling Cat mekked dem all. 


Teh teeny flwrs dat open,

    Teh burds an flying fings, 

    He mekked ther tasty gudness, 

    He mekked ther teeny wings. 

    All fings brite ... 


Teh hoomans wiv big howses,

    Teh ones livin on teh street, 

    Dey has difrent siez burgers, 

    But all can stil has eats. 

    All fings brite ... 


Teh big hills an teh mountins,

    Teh deep sea an teh ground, 

    Teh Lolrus an his bukkit, 

    Dat nevar wil be found;− 

    All fings brite ... 


Teh chilly winz in wintar,

    Teh niec wawm summy sun, 

    Teh ripe noms an teh catnip,− 

    He mekked dem evry wun: 

    All fings brite ... 


Teh Caturdays iz win-ful,

    He mekked Cat Monorail, 

    He mekked teh lolz an capshuns, 

    Wivout dem we has a Fail;− 

    All fings brite ... 


Dees fings iz not invisible,

    Cos He givved us eyez to see, 

    Epic Ceiling Cat iz Epic, 

    Cos He invntd ICHC! 

    All fings brite ... 

    (Akitteh) 

Martin Amis

With a spate of his books rejoining my collection after holidays of varying lengths in other folks' houses, I've started re-reading some of my Martin Amis paperbacks. I love the writing - the thoughts it provokes, the images it conjures up and the truths it forces irrevocably into my head...but the chap does tend to be almost overly prosaic and literary in his writing from time to time. Take the following sentence I spent a few minutes reading just now:

"Sometimes, when the sky is as grey as this - impeccably grey, a denial, really, of the very concept of colour - and the stooped millions lift their heads, it's hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt."

Aside from the happy relief I got from reading 'grey', as opposed to the horrible Americanised spelling of the 'color'; 'gray' - this sentence didn't exactly thrill me as I first read it (nor, as I pondered over it for the tenth time, oddly enough).

Having ascertained from a dictionary that a curlicue was a 'fancy, swirling pattern' and reminded myself quite what pattern was represented by 'paisley' (see below if it's irking you as much as it did me), I had one final stab at the sentence.


_Paisley

The image Mr. Amis was trying to produce simply wouldn't come however, and I'm having the write that one off and move on. It must be noted that this isn't a one-off, and that it really does help to have a solid grasp of either the English language, or a good dictionary if you want to get far with his writing. Being the kind hearted soul that I am, I've taken the more 'interesting' words from the last two pages I've read (turned out to be a relatively tame example), and listed them below:

• corralled


• primped


• omniscient


• boudoir


• premonitory


• braiding [No, not like that, 'To mingle (discrete elements, for example) as if by such interweaving']


• superannuation

I'll be disappointed if any of the above, with the possibly exception of that last one cause you any trouble.

Back to my reading..

BBC News

Via Graham Lineham:



Simply wonderful :)

Trendy new business cards

No longer able to simply click a button or two at work and have a stack of business cards sent to my desk, I decided to try my hand at designing a few of my own.

Moo.com is a great little site that makes the whole design aspect fun - not to mention the fact that they've also get very cheap prices and high quality.

_{Coming to a wallet near you..}

Plus, you can't beat Moo minicards (half-size business cards) for looking young and modern and hip. I got a hundred of those, plus a snazzy little holder, plus postage - all for £16. Apparently you can get a different design on every single card at no extra cost if you so desire, but I didn't have quite that much time to waste..

Phew, got through an entire post about Moo.com without using the word 'trendy'...

Dr. Horrible & Digital Rights

As I mentioned, Joss Whedon's recently released three-part online musical entitled Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is an absolute masterpiece, and I fell completely in love with it the first time I saw it, and have been continually re-watching it since.

If you visit the site now, however, you'll notice that the entire show has been taken offline - and is now only available to purchase on iTunes (and currently, in the US only). Whether or not I do purchase it on iTunes, once it's available in the UK is still under consideration - mostly due to the fact that I don't particularly want to install iTunes, or have some annoyingly DRMified version of the video.

There's also the consideration that, let's face it, in this digital age I don't really need to go and buy the video if I want to watch it - despite the fact that it's been taken down from the main site. I'm watching it on YouTube right now - and although it'll soon be pulled, I'm sure I could find somewhere else to download it all with tiny amounts of effort.

It should also be noted that anything, anything that I play on my computer becomes, from a digital (if not legal) perspective, my property. In order for the three videos I originally watched to come out on my screen and speakers, they had to be downloaded, in some form, to my computer. Had I wanted, I could have 'stolen' all three back when they were all up online for free by exploiting that fact. Does making copies of them in this way even count as theft? It's questionable.

What I'll mostly likely do, if it seems feasible in this scenario, is what I often do with indie artists of any ilk who bring me pleasure. I'll find some method of direct donation (PayPal is most popular) with which to reimburse them, and then 'steal' the content from an external source. The artist gets a slightly higher cut of the profit, I get a version of the content that's not nerfed by Digital Rights Management and doesn't require iTunes or some other proprietary software.

Legal? Probably not. Moral acceptable? I think so.

Start A Band

I recently stumbled across a post by a friend and avid musician entitled, rather surprisingly (given the individual's participation in so many ensembles); 'Don't Start A Band'.

I won't link, as the post is only really half-formed and half-finished - but the upshot is that the author has been reading a lot of books about the music industry and become rather disillusioned with the way in which it operates. The chances of 'making it' are extremely low, the cut of the profits you'll get are appalling, the creative freedom limited...and many other lows.

Andrew Dubber, a prominent writer and lecturer in the field was the source of much of this discomfort, but it should be noted that his thoughts aren't all negative. I'd recommend reading some of his books if you're interested in the modern industry, or trying The Label if you're more interested in the industry as it was.



I, however, am of the opinion that none of this is relevant. Let me elaborate.

Music, and more importantly the creation of music is one of the very few pure things in my life. This writing? Well, I can't be too outrageous here - future employers may be reading after all. Coding? I'm constrained by a massive range of factors. And on, and on. But,

Music Is Pure

There's simply nothing than can contend with the joy of playing music with like-minded people. I won't even say friends, as that's by no means a prerequisite (but often a consequence). Simply note the faces, and body language of musicians playing for pleasure (jam nights and free gigs are the best places to find such specimens) - there's no other scenario in which they'd willingly abandon all pride and look quite so ridiculous, and it's simply because they're so into the music.

It can be an immediate outlet for the expression of any emotion, and one which provokes not generic sympathy or fake delight - but genuine empathy and understanding. Trying to cleanly play a technical piece/lesson offers the chance to noticeably improve skills and meet a challenge that humans so often seem to seek out - whether for self gratification or to impress others.

With all this, who needs a record deal? I actively look for unpaid gigs to play over paid ones, as there's no expectation - at an unpaid gig you have full freedom to play whatever you wish.

Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog

I don't click every link people send me online - if I did then I'd never have time to send other people links and pretend that I found them myself.

However, when three very separate, and generally quite switched-on folks sent me a link to the following, I had to go view it, and I'm glad I did.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog

Made up of three short videos (the third's not out yet), and apparently only online for a limited time, this is some kind of upbeat mix of a Monty Python Sketch, the Rocky Horror Picture Show and an episode of one of those uncomfortable British Comedies - Peep Show perhaps.

Amazing. If you click one link today, make it this one.

Digsby

I love Digsby.

Where to chat online has always been a problem for me. I loved the beauty, cleanness and simplicity of IRC - but it lacked a few of the features I'd like from a chat client - and had a userbase exclusively made up of geeks.


_IRC

I went to MSN (later Windows Live) Messenger for a while, but the only thing that ever kept me there was the userbase (and lack of decent third party clients for it, only Trillian came close). I mean, sure I could chat to anyone I wanted, but was it really worth it when the chat client was so bloated and poorly customisable?

No.

Google Talk was my next choice, and had some great features - such as Twitter integration, a built in chat window on my inbox and a return to simplicity. The chat window had somewhere to enter text, somewhere to display text, and not a lot else. Great...but only a handful of my friends used it.

Then, along came...


_{Does this remind you of the Ammo from Superfrog?}

Digsby!

Digsby allows you to fully customise how it looks, where it goes on your page, where notifications come up, how notifications come up, what notifications come up - beautiful. Although, a lot of the defaults are sensible and quite pretty too.

Furthermore, it allows you to connect to pretty much any IM network you want (most of them through the Jabber protocol, and then a few that don't follow standards such as MSN Messenger too). This is all slick and seamless, and you never have to even care what network people are on when you talk to them. You can give your contacts nicknames (to hide the crap they generally put as 'display name', and group them together as you wish.

There's also support for Facebook, pretty much any email service and my beloved twitter too! I can find out who's dating who, send a tweet about it, get an email in return and delete that email all from one little auto-hiding window at the right hand side of my screen! Then, I can get a flood of messages from people on Messenger, Google Talk and others telling me I shouldn't gossip. Brilliant!

I highly recommend you go try Digsby now. You can turn on only the features you want, so don't be worried you'll just get spammed by messages all day..

You can even get yourself a Digsby Widget (like the one now on the side of my blog - go try it out), which functions like the Google Talk ChatBack I used to have, but works right there on the page, and is a lot slicker from my end.

Yet another reason not to use Hotmail

I use Gmail to put all of my email into one, nice, web-accessible place. It's great - people send email to one of about 12 different addresses I hand out (each for slightly different purposes) and I can reply from the same address, without ever even bothering to look which address the mail was sent to.

I can then read my emails through Digsby (more on that in a mo), and do plenty of cool things with them without ever even opening my inbox. The email search is, as one would expect from Google, perfect - and many other great reasons. If you're still on Hotmail rather than Gmail right now, you're an idiot.

Some people, however, want to keep their Hotmail accounts active for a bit, whilst making the move to Gmail. Others (inexplicably), want to have the access/reply centrally thing I mentioned at the start going on between Hotmail and Gmail. Well, why not? It works with every email provider there is...almost:

Warning You're only able to forward mail to a custom domain or an e-mail address that ends in hotmail.com, msn.com, or live.com. Please try again.

_{From Hotmail, when trying to set up a Hotmail/Gmail link}
That's bizarre...it seems the forwarding ability is there. They're just locking out domains that 'aren't custom' and 'aren't hotmail' - ie: any of their major competitors. Classy work there, really classy. To me that's just another reason to jump off a sinking ship before they become more and more Draconian in trying to stop you moving on to greener pastures.

Please, ditch Hotmail. Feel free to contact me if you need help doing so.

The Ultimate Rant

"Nothing keeps a relationship on its toes so much as lively debate. Fortunate, then, that my girlfriend and I agree on absolutely nothing. At all.

Combine utter, polar disagreement on everything, ever, with the fact that I am a text-book Only Child, and she is a violent psychopath, and we're warming up. Then factor in my being English while she is German, which not only makes each one of us personally and absolutely responsible for the history, and the social and cultural mores of our respective countries, but also opens up a whole field of sub-arguments grounded in grammatical and semantic disputes and, well, just try saying anything and walking away."

The above is the introduction to the dangerously long rant entitled Things My Girlfriend & I Have Argued About.

I found this rant, one happy day, many years ago on the internet and it took pride of place in my reading habits for many months, before I mislaid the link at some point. I've tried to find it at various points since, but could never quite remember the title, or Margaret's name, or anything else of use.

I recently stumbled across it again, and even though most of the content has been removed (a significant amount still exists), there's now a mailing list where you can get a bunch of the extra content. I'd highly recommend signing up.

Enjoy :)

Just got the best voicemail left for me...

3 year olds are so cool:

Have a listen. :)

_{I left him a toy car I found in my room, apparently he quite liked it}

When I tweeted that I'd just gotten 'the best voicemail from a 3 year old' I received the following in reply:



Hopefully anyone reading here will be a bit more polite ;)

Use Notepad++

Do Not Use Microsoft Notepad.



Folks over on UNIX have a range of good Notepad tools - from KATE through to Emacs, but even those barely compare to my favourite little Windows tool. Presenting...

Notepad++

"Notepad++ is a free (free as in "free speech", but also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment."

_{Click to embiggen.}

Before I get a bit geeky, let me assure you that Notepad++ isn't some over-the-top tool for programmers alone, it's also just a great, handy little notepad. It comes with tabs (just like those in your web browser of choice), and handy little features like the 'find and replace in all open documents' one, that makes changing the same thing lots of times a doddle.

Even better, it has a vast range of languages supported with syntax highlighting. So, just open up a HTML file in Notepad++ and all of the tags will be one colour, all the strings another colour, all the comments a bit smaller and another colour...you get the idea.

It also has a good concept of nesting. If you have an XML style list, with elements inside other elements, you can click on a little '+/-' to hide all the elements you don't want to see - ideal for working with big chunks of XML or HTML.

There's loads more too - go try it out. You can thank me later :)

Me^6 & Back To The Future Drinking Games

I'm 22 years old...aaah! I did, however, have an awesome birthday to make up for this scary fact - and it started off with a bit of dress-up. Now, some people like to have fancy dress themes for their parties, and may choose 'rave' or 'western' or '90s' or something boring and impersonal like that. People will then pop out to a fancy dress shop, grab some tacky mass-produced rubbish and spent the night looking a fool.

Not at my party.

Hours of effort went into making wonderful masks featuring the star of the night, so everyone could revel in the joy of looking this beautiful, albeit just for one night, and just above the neck. Naturally, I understand that you'll want to do the same next time you have a special occasion, and have created a guide to creating your own Ina Mask


_{After much deliberation, it was decided I probably didn't need a mask of my own}

You may think that, being vain, I'd have been in my element surrounded entirely by people wearing my face - but I should point out that it was a profoundly disturbing experience, and one I'm not sure I'd recommend. I'm used to seeing other people's faces walking around, on top of bodies...I'm not used to seeing my own. Times six. With dark holes where the eyes should have been.


_{The looks we got walking down the road were priceless}

We went out for curry like that, and had some great fun with the proprietor of the establishment (though I did worry he'd think we were going to rob the place). The next morning we decided to hang up the masks around the place, as well as putting the copies of the photo that didn't make it onto a mask up. The entire place now has a very Orwellian feel to it, with my face watching you wherever you go.

The whole thing's doing wonders for fuelling my dreams of being a fascist dictator. One that dresses like a hippy. Reconcile that one sociologists.


_{I'm thinking of starting an entire range of branded accessories}

Once this was all over, it was time to watch Back To The Future, with drinking games. I'm afraid I've lost our exact rules, but here's a close approximation of what to do when you hear certain things:

Marty - Play air guitar - last one to play (or least rocking out) drinks.
Doc - Girls drink.
McFly - Everyone shout 'Great Scott!'
Great Scott! - Boys drink.
1.21 Gigawatts - Shark attack - anyone touching the floor drinks.
88mph - Surf's up - anyone not touching the floor drinks.

There were some more, but I forget them - one is possibly related to the other. Great night, having your own version of it is highly recommended.

--

Remember - if you want your own Ina Mask, I've created a guide to producing your own. Enjoy, send me pictures.

Imagine Cup 2008

Having paid a short visit to the finals of the Imagine Cup 2008 - as well as working across the office from the folks organising the UK's contribution to the whole shindig for the year, I thought I'd share a few of the more interesting entries I came across in this annual student technology competition, with a 2008 theme of 'Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment'.

Project SOAK

Overall winners, and a group of thoroughly nice chaps, the team behind Project SOAK decided to have a crack at reducing some of the water wastage used in agriculture (70% of water used on the planet goes into agriculture, don'tcha know?).



A range of sensors, displays and automated irrigation/hydration systems ensure that water isn't just needlessly dumped on ground that doesn't have enough - and also ensures that dry areas get enough of the stuff, so that crops don't wither away and die. It even ties in with mapping software, weather reports and SMS (for those emergency reports). Pretty cool stuff.

AcidRain

Ah, the Irish - everyone loves the Irish. These chaps, I believe, showed so much dedication to their project and faith in their work that they could easily have won the overall prize.

Their project, AcidRain, consists of a 'one size fits all' conversion kit which can get any diesel engine running on just vegetable oil - better for the environment and certainly better for the pocket. They're using Windows CE for the whole system - and no, Windows crashing wasn't the reason a tow truck had to come out at one point during their journey.

Their journey, that is - from Ireland all the way down to Paris. In their own car, which they'd fitted with their vegetable oil system. Hardcore.


_{The journey}

Team Austria - Photography

All of the entries for the photography competition came up with some impressive stuff, but my personal favourites were the folks from Austria. I'd recommend you view Team Austria's Photos yourself, complete with obligatory environmentalist sublines. I can't pick a personal fave, but here's just one example of their work:



City Rain

Built by some absolutely crazy Brazilians, City Rain is a SimCity-esque game focused around urbanism and sustainability. There's a quick video below, or you can just download the game and have a quick play yourself.



TreeTalk

Team TreeTalk from Korea literally listen to trees. Seriously. Apparently the electrical impulses produced by a sick tree are different those produced by a healthy tree, and by feeding these impulses into an algorithm they've invented, they can tell the difference, and monitor the health of a forest remotely. Leet or what? I get how all the technology works - but how on earth did they find out that trees produce these impulses in the first place?

--

That's that, you might want to browse the main site for details of some other cool stuff that people have made. I'll possibly be entering next year with a cool little idea I've come up with, assuming I can fit it to the theme and find a team to build it with me (along with the time myself!) - more on that if I do get around to it - would rather not publish the idea right now.

Gatecrashing and other Parisienne Adventures

I hate to disillusion anyone, but my recent trip to Paris wasn't entirely spent sitting in a corner of a room writing, writing and writing about the United Nations Education Leaders' Forum that was going on in front of me.


_{Real time analysis, research and inventive writing requires concentration...and silly faces}

There was also a 'networking' aspect to the proceedings, which in the first instance required me to visit a lovely restaurant that was located on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately, once I'd gotten up this high, and consuming a certain amount of champagne, I was seemingly unable to persuade those I was with that yes - I really didn't like heights, and no - I really didn't want to go on top of the tower.


_{The rave lighting's even better when you're actually on the tower}

Once the conference was over, we decided to stick around and gatecrash a party for the Imagine Cup (a bit more on that in another post methinks) that Microsoft were throwing simultaneously in Paris. We popped into the awards ceremony, which - as you can see, was a bit more chaotic than the ordered UN meeting of ministers and the like:


_{The Brazilians were so much fun during this chaos}

The awards were given out by a range of minor celebrities, each with their own unintentional level of comedy. From the professional snowboarder who was very clearly ill at ease with public speaking (or numeracy, telling the first place team they'd won third...) to the French cabinet minister with the translator from a student party.

This particularly serious politician had to give his speech in French, as government policy dictated. The translator, who'd been with students all week decided to add a level of 'pep' to his talk, by rephrasing half his sentences and adding in her own little bits (even referring to herself in the third person a fair few times) whenever she thought it might be amusing. Given that the minister probably spoke flawless English, I dread to think what happened afterwards...

Later that evening, there was a party for the ~400 students and Microsoft staff that had made up the finals of the Imagine Cup, and worked hard all year (and especially hard all week) for the privilege of an open bar with good music and great food, all in a trendy little club underneath the Seine. Quite noticeably not on the guest list was...me - but little things like that shouldn't spoil the night.

After talking my way past the first two 'layers' of security outside the club, I arrived at the reception desk - which had yet more security folks with lists in front of it. A quick complaint about the poor listing system, and the hold up from the first two sets of security and I had a blue armband, which apparently was some form of party ID meaning 'let this guy in' - gatecrashing with style.

The party was great, all the people I met over the few days were great, the two hours of sleep before my flight was not great and when can I go back to Paris please? :)

Back in sweet Paris (pronounced 'pah-ree' thank you very much)

Ah, how I love Paris. The beautiful architecture wherever one chooses to look, the superb food (let's not mention that 4 figure bill though), the gorgeous clothes and the unique air of contempt for everyone that each and every Parisienne manages to harbour.

I'm sitting in the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) HQ at the moment, listening to some light jazz (Wes Montgomery if I'm not mistaken) and being paid for the priviledge too.

Soon enough it'll be back to work - I'm doing a stint as the official blogger for the Education Leaders' Forum, where a group of Secretaries, Director Generals, Ministers and suchlike are getting together to discuss the future of Higher Education (at the University level in particular). What's up there right now is just stream of consciousness almost - but by the time I'm complete it should be a fairly full reference guide for these important folks to review, get underlings to read and research - all that jazz.

It's also a great way to insert a student bias into the proceedings (given that it's my future they're all talking about!) and I'm also trying to make it fairly light and readable - providing links to the detailed and in depth resources as and where appropriate.

One of the coolest things I've heard discussed so far is the concept of Virtual Universities - already thriving in many places. There's also been some very cool discussions around the future of distributed learning, and collaboration, sounds like the future will be far cooler than the lectures I'm used to.

Back to work for me now anyway, but I'm off for a meal on the Eiffel Tower tonight, and I'm gatecrashing the Imagine Cup party in the Louvre tomorrow :)

Manu Delago

A couple of months back I posted up what I thought was one of the most beautiful videos on YouTube - Manu Delago playing the Hang.

Since then, I've emailed Manu a bit and bought all of his stuff - through the indie artists' new haven; PayPal and International Postage. It took two weeks to get here from Austria!

Now that I've finally settled down somewhere for a short while and had a chance to listen to things, I'm thrilled by not only how technically superb all of his material is - but also how aesthetically amazing it all sounds, and feels. I can't listen to anything else at the moment - it just pales in comparison.

In order to try, vainly, to give you a taste of what I mean, here's a quick run through & review of the three discs I've got.

Handmade



This package features both a live DVD, and a CD recording of Manu's 'Handmade' quartet playing live in Austria. Manu himself is playing the Hang, along with some beautiful yet haunting jazz piano. We've also got bass and percussion from two other chaps - along with singing, violin and piano from Isa Kurz.

The violin and piano are, naturally, top-notch, but I'm completely entranced by Isa's voice and if I could ever pick out quite what the words were, I'd be singing nothing else to myself. The melody of the vocals alone would hold the attention, but the lyrics are also very well formed and give cause for thought too - superb.



There's a sample of Handmade above - the second track on there, 'Looking For The Core' (with Manu playing piano and the girl singing) is swiftly becoming one of my favourite pieces ever. Feel free to pop me an email and I'll happily share it if you're thinking about buying any of his stuff yourself.

Living Room



I wish, I really do wish, that I could be enough of a musician to make demands that seem to verge on the ridiculous, for the purity of music. I've heard of vocalists who'll only sing with their head inside a grand piano, for the particular quality of reverb it provides, I've heard of guitarists who only play with year-old strings and cellists who insist on having a new bow for every piece they play...and now this.


_{A bass clarinet - quite large and simply sumptuous to listen to}

Manu Delago and Christoph Pepe Auer (playing the Bass Clarinet [above] and Glockenspiel) decided that the only way to achieve the particular ambience, mood and sound for their duet recording would be to do so in a living room. Not just any living room either, the pair searched low and high to find one that was Just Right.

The results are, I admit, superb - though I'm not sure I'm quite talented enough to discern the parts improved by the presence of say, a leather sofa. The bass clarinet is a beautiful and rarely heard instrument, which makes it the ideal partner for the obscure Hang. Both are played technically superbly, and the result is something that anyone can enjoy - but especially a musician.

Made In Silence



This mostly features Manu playing the Hang solo, with one track featuring some bass clarinet (see below) and one featuring a digeridoo. If anything this is the most technical and least 'accessible' (to non-musicians) of the three discs, but features some absolutely gorgeous music that simply can't be classified under any genre I can think of. I'm sure some of the themes are heavily influenced by JS Bach, but the tone and percussion given by the Hang bring a whole new life to them.

Living like a student

Having thrown away twelve Microsoft branded pieces of clothing today, I'm pretty close to resuming a proper student lifestyle after a year's work. For those in a similar situation, here's a few tips:

• Don't go to sleep before 2am. Never wake up before 10am.


• If you accidentally wake early, on no account leave the bed. Not even to pee.


• If you don't wake up with a hangover, you're still drunk. Whatever you do, don't try to walk anywhere for a few hours.


• Tea must be consumed at least 5 times a day. Don't bother washing the mug inbetween brews.


• Spend no more than 3 seconds planning what clothes you'll wear. Aim to have either your thighs or nipples covered.


• It's always perfectly acceptable to wear sandals, wherever you're going.


• Plan the time of your shower carefully, it's the only thing you'll have to do all day, other than play XBox and watch Jeremy Kyle.


• The words 'in a minute' immediately absolve you of all responsibility for any household task.


• The words 'in a minute' immediately absolve me of all responsibility for any household task. Go do the dishes, it's your turn.


• Supermarket shopping should take at least three hours. Check every brand of every item - aim for exactly 100% of your RDA of a random mineral each day.


• Experiment. See which computer game you do best at by making the cat walk over the controllers. Mix all the out of date foods with one another.


• Opening your window counts as getting enough fresh air for the day. Rock Band counts as exercise.

Hope this helps, I'm off to throw away more junk that I've accumulated over the past year. I'm letting myself keep one pointless item per three I throw away. Sort of. Unless they're cool. All my stuff is cool.