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Home Improvement

I've been on a home improvement kick the last few weeks--nothing serious, mind you. Not like repainting or retiling the bathroom or rebuilding the kitchen... none of the big projects that this place REALLY needs.

But I got the Harman/Kardons set up (which was a painful project because of the dodgy acoustics in my apartment, and the surprising lack of flexibility of the H/Ks. If you don't want to set them up right next to your computer, it rapidly becomes a drag to get them sorted out).

And now I've run cables through the walls to the kitchen, where I set up the old Creative speakers in an unobtrusive corner. I figured I'd just run music or the newsfeed to the kitchen while I was cooking, but the additional sound coming from the extra speakers is making the whole place sound much better. The place, like, resonates now. I like happy surprises... I'm listening to a Nicky Skopelitis/Bill Laswell dub right now, and it sounds great!

Also finally got some blue lights up in the bedroom (Deborah, turns out Cecilie gave me a big pack of blue lights for Christmas, so I didn't lose out by forgetting to buy any in Vancouver- talk about synchronicity!). Now I can turn all the other lights off except the blue ones and imagine I'm sitting on the bridge of the mothership. I mentioned this idea in passing to one of my coworkers the other day, and now it seems she's started rumors about me.

I'm still completely high from the espresso beans...

Yakovlev

O god... I just ate like half a kilo of chocolate covered espresso beans. Now I don't know if I want to run around the block a few times or lie absolutely still clutching my stomach.

You'd think I'd have learned from the last few times I did this...

Catching up

Another crazy week--by the time I finish the work I have to do this weekend, I'll have topped 70 hours this week. Not my idea of fun, Fuck knows. I did catch a little break last night for a dinner and coctail party at Klaus and Zorana's place, with some of the crowd from my old Danish class that I haven't seen for a while. I only survived till about 1.30 though- I'm definitely out of practice. Or maybe just exhausted. At least I got to try out a downtempo dinner mix I made for the New Year's party but never got a chance to use (see below).

I spent an hour this morning treasure hunting on Epitonic and found this great remix by Adult. and Solvent called "Flexidisc." The music is kinda glitchy electronics, but the vocals are classic Nicola Kuperus. Monotone and staccato, good for increasing anxiety. Go to Epitonic and search for Adult. and Solvent, and while you're there, check for G.D. Deluxe and Junior Communist Club... Good stuff altogether!

I found an Aspera ad Astra track called Tin Pan Miracles, too. I'd heard good things about Aspera ad Astra but this is the first I've listened to them. It's okay, like very early Cocteau Twins if Robin or Simon were doing vocals instead of Liz Fraser.

I also seem to have knocked my iPod out of the bad mood it's been in lately. Had to reformat the thing (using the iPod updater utility--never, ever, reformat an iPod through the Finder or on a PC!!), but I think it's okay now. For the last few weeks it would lock up when I tried to connect it to the Mac, and I'd have to manually reset it a few times before it would finally make the connection.

Then yesterday when I connected, it knocked the Mac's whole operating system into the "Grey screen of Death," which scared the hell out of me since I'd never seen it before. I ended up having to reformat the iPod three times in a row before it started behaving normally again, but so far, so good.

In other gadget news, I just got an HP iPaq 2210 cheap through Cecilie's job at Danmarks Radio. It's pretty cool- a lot more advanced than the Palm V I've been using since San Francisco. I had bought it with the intention of just using it for work (the Palm V doesn't synch with Outlook, and my schedule is so crazy these days I really need something to start screaming at me when a meeting's running long and I need to be somewhere else). But then I read that there's this "Missing Synch" software you can use to connect it to OS X, which is even cooler! Now I just need to figure out how to synch both my work laptop and the iMac to the thing.

It's a lot easier to read from when I'm standing on the train or bus too, which is a big plus. I've gotten into the habit of saving articles from NY Times, Janes or Salon or wherever onto the PDA and reading them later on the commute. It's the only chance I get lately.

Finally, I'm really impressed with the upgrade of my weblog software. It's a lot easier, especially the commenting system (sorry again for making you wait to see a comment you've posted).

Now the playlist...

Downtempo Party 2005

1. Arling & Cameron- "Voulez Vous," from Wallpaper* Mach 1.5
2. Kruder & Dorfmeister- "Bass And Several Cars," from DJ Kicks- Kruder & Dorfmeister
3. Peter Kruder- "Tanto Tempo," from Tanto Tempo Remixes
4. Bomb The Bass- "Bug Powder Dust," from the K&D Sessions
5. Statik Sound System- "Amazed by You (AIM Mix)," from the Remix Selection
6. Abraham- "Magpie (Morgan Geist Remix)," from Blue Room : Radio 1 & Muzik
7. Alex Reece- "Jazz Master," from the K&D Sessions
8. The Gentle People- "Mr. Whiskey," from Simply Faboo
9. Hooverphonic- "Tuna," from Blue Wonder Power Milk
10. Ian Pooley- "Coracao Tambor," from Fashion TV - Spring 2001
11. Johny Fiasco- "Fallin," from Cafè del Mar - Chill House Mix (Disc 1)
12. Tosca- "Annanas," from Suzuki
13. Ananda Project- "Alguem," from Tanto Tempo Remixes

Here we go again

Hey everybody- with the new blog tools I now have a comment approval system, so that you submit a comment, it gets put in a holding pen until the next time I log on, and then I approve it and it goes up. So there will be a delay of hours (or longer, depending on how busy I am) between the time you post the comment and the time it appears.

I do apologize for the additional hassle, but for the past few months I've been getting buried in comment spam. Evil. Evil.

So I'm back to this again... no sleep.

Friends in Strange Places

I saw this amazing story on the New York Times site when I was at work today, and haven't had a chance to read through the whole thing yet.

During the pro-Yushchenko election protests in Kiev last month, a lot of people were holding their breath, dreading the moment when the Ukrainian Spetznaz or the military would show up in force and start liquidating the protesters. It never happened and we all breathed a sigh of relief (and Yushchenko is now the President of the country).

According to this story though, the Ukrainian interior ministry was actually saddled up and ready to march on the demonstrators, but the country's intelligence services actively and effectively convinced the interior ministry to send their troops home. It's an amazing story, especially considering some pretty convincing rumors that a detachment of heavily armed Russian Spetznaz special ops guys were securing the parliament buildings and protecting Kuchma at the time. You'd think the intelligence services of Russia and Ukraine would be in bed with each other, but apparently not. Or maybe they are in bed but have just had some kind of weird lovers' spat.

I'd give a molar to have been there when it happened.

Huygens on Titan

One thing that has my rapt attention right now is the landing of the Huygens probe on Titan. Yesterday I went to the European Space Agency site and listened to the audio recording taken by Huygens as it descended through Titan's atmosphere. It was grainy white noise, badly distorted by compression artifacts. But still, it just blows me away that I could sit in my living room and listen to sound recorded in the atmosphere of the largest moon around Saturn. I'm proud that we could pull this off.

Online, briefly

So the last two weeks basically exploded at work, and I've had to maintain complete radio silence to all my friends. What else is new.

There's a lot going on though. I just upgraded this site to Movable Type 3.x, which is making it a whole lot easier to deal with the flood of comment spam I used to get. When I get a chance I'll unlock all the old posts again, but true to form I've only got a little window tonight to work on my own projects. I need to learn the new tools though, and I'm not home often enough to really play with it.

Speaking of not being home enough, as a way of apologizing for my extended absences, I took Cecilie to Alberto K last night, this posh restaurant on the top floor of the SAS Radisson. I've been wanting to go to this place for a while, and it was a real treat. Everything in the place, from the building to the furniture to the tableware and glasses were designed by Arne Jacobsen, and the food and service were exquisite.

We also went on a little spending spree (I think I was so happy to have a whole day off work that I just went a little crazy). I picked up a set of Harman/Kardon speakers for the computer. I don't play CDs any more, or use a DVD player. I just run all the home entertainment through the iMac. So I've been getting tired of listening to the crummy computer speakers that I've had since Holland.

The H/Ks are great (and they look fantastic), but what I really wish is that someone would design a standard set of two tweeter, two woofer stereo speakers designed to be run off of a computer. The fact that the H/Ks only have the one big subwoofer makes the acoustics really tricky, and the acoustics in my apartment aren't that great to begin with. I guess the answer would be to get a normal stereo receiver and run the output from the computer into that, and then run standard speakers from the receiver. But without knowing it would work I've been hesitant to experiment.

Basically though I wanted to say hi to everyone (who can still be bothered to check if this site is getting updated from time to time), and say that I love you all just as much as ever. It's not you, it's me.

Angst

I was having this awesome dream last night that I was the bass guitar player in a glitterpunk band.

Now I'm sitting in my office fretting about software release cycles.

Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Errgh.

Pics up

One other thing I worked on this past week was to finally get the rest of the photos from 2004 online. I managed to put up New York from April, Amsterdam and Utrecht from June, Toronto from July, San Francisco also from July, Vancouver from a few weeks ago, and the New Year's Eve party from last night. I had already put up Paris, Dublin and Chicago a few months ago.

My New Year's 2005 Top 20 Uptempo playlist (mod 0):

1. Adult.- Skinlike
   
2. Alpinestars- Cresta la Wave
   
3. Hexstatic- Robopop
   
4. Adult.- Nite Life
   
5. Dondolo- Peng
   
6. Ladytron- Paco
   
7. Franka Potente- Believe (Run Lola Run soundtrack)
   
8. Ladytron- Playgirl
   
9. Orbital- Doctor
   
10. Die Warzau- All Good Girls (Dave Bascombe Remix)
    
11. Future Sound of London- Papua New Guinea (Dumb Child of Q Remix)
    
12. Baraka- Song to the Siren (Filterheads Undercurrent Vocal Mix)
    
13. New Order- Crystal (Lee Coombs Remix)
    
14. Karsh Kale- Distance (Banco de Gaia Remix)
    
15. Opus III- It's a Fine Day For Halcyon (Orbital Remix)
    
16. Tori Amos- Blue Sky (Deep Dish Blue Phunk Remix)
    
17. Banco de Gaia- I Love Baby Cheesy
    
18. Dinky- American Guy
    
19. Telepopmusik- Dance Me
    
20. 808 State- Bond
    

Once More around the Sun

A new year now, and I've taken the past week off work to get some headspace, to try to process the year that just went by, and to find some direction for the year to come.

What was the theme of 2004? Saturation. The year was like a flood of compressed experiences with no time to process any of it. All these cities, and the only time I had to think about any of it was during the long flights. Never enough peace. Never enough space. Never enough time.

I didn't get anywhere with my writing last year, though I did take many pages of notes. If there's anything like a new direction I want to try in 2005, it will be to try to fix the work/life balance, and use whatever surplus energy and empathy I can derive from that to go somewhere more interesting with this book I'm working on. I'm not really optimistic about my chances, but I'm hopeful. I've got to find some way to keep myself from getting distracted, but I honestly don't know how.