No Style :: No Content

No sleep till Porto!

Heading off with Cecilie to Porto in the early morning for a reunion of our old Journalism school class. It's the third time we've gotten together since we graduated in 2001 - first time in Holland, second time in Denmark, and now in Portugal. We agreed to meet up every other year and so far it's worked. I was really lucky to be part of such a tight group of people. It's funny looking at photos from the old dorms - it looks like baby pictures now.

So much has happened since 2001. It seems like a million years ago now, and everyone else seems to have had an intense six years as well - folks bouncing from country to country on international assignments, jumping in and out of the private sector, having babies, tracking down abandoned Russian nuclear material (hi Marton!), getting falsely arrested by the tactical squad while covering Autonome protests (hi Toby!). Doesn't sound like it's been boring for anyone.

Can't wait to see the crowd again - we'll be right back into drinkin' and telling stories like the old days. Some days I really miss journalism.

Kuang Grade Mark Eleven

Story from Techworld via SDR::

China's Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) is contining to develop viruses to attack computer systems, warned the US Department of Defense (DoD).

"The PLA has established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks," the annual DoD report on China's military warned.

Link

So of course I'm thinking of Neuromancer, gloriously dense prose on the Chinese virus. Clear influence of Burroughs here::

"What is this thing?" he asked the Hosaka. "Parcel for me."

"Yes."

Crazy to think that was written more than twenty years ago. I wonder what designation the Chinese use for their military virus units?

Desktops for your pleasure

I've been wanting to transform some of my pics into desktop images for a long time, and finally got around to it over the long weekend. None of these are modified in Photoshop, except for a few autocontrast & sharpen effects. It was fun to do a little image work for a change - it exercises a different part of the brain than I've been using lately. I used to be a webguy a million years ago in a former life, and it feels good to get a little taste of that again.

Take a look at what's here and please download and use them as you wish.

There are some travel shots, and then a batch of sky shots from airplanes - these last can make good desktops because of the visual smoothness of the images.

Drop me a line if you like them!

Useless

Just got back from the States. Feel like someone's been beating me with a stick.

Hotel life

One trend I'm seeing lately is that hotel "elevator music" has gotten a lot more advanced since I left the States. It's really common to hear decent downtempo like Gotan Project & Jazzanova at biz hotels in the US these days, and a couple of trips ago I even heard Orbital in a hotel lobby (!). Yesterday I was walking across the hallway of the conference center of the Westin in Bellevue, near Seattle, and they were playing Kahimi Karie - never would have expected to hear a relatively obscure act like that in this setting. I guess people from our generation are picking out the music and making the playlists now.

Strange world.

Cheesy Euro Goodness

Good weekend so far. Friday night had dinner & Trivial Pursuit with Steen, Dana & friends, and we never get to see those guys as much as we'd like to.

Saturday morning went with Shanti to the Design Forum - a semiannual convention where clothes designers like Lindbergh, Ben Sherman, Paul Frank, Junk DeLuxe, etc. sell off their samples and overstocks for crazy cheap prices. I blew around 4000 kroner but won't have to go clothes shopping again for at least another year. I really shouldn't enjoy shopping as much as I do, but it was like the hand of the Divine was on me - everything I tried on fit, and it's usually hard to find stuff that fits me, especially trousers. So out came the charge card.

Last night was Aco's place for cheesy Eurovision goodness. This is something else I really shouldn't enjoy as much as I do. I guess it's a sign I've been living in Europe too long (but hey, if Tyler Brûlé of all people can wax enthusiastically about it, perhaps I can be forgiven). The key to enjoying Eurovision is to give up any preconceptions about the musical ability of the performers or fairness of the voting system.

The music is almost always cringingly bad, and the judging is purely a politically-inspired popularity contest more or less divorced from any sense of the quality of the music. The Scandinavians always vote for each other, as do the Balkans, the Baltics, the CIS countries, and Cyprus and Greece. The Turkish immigrant vote always results in high scores for Turkey coming from countries like France and Germany.

But all that is completely besides the point. The glory of Eurovision comes out when one country or another sends an act that "gets it," and feeds off the camp value of the spectacle with some self-ironic bit of kitch theatre. This year we were blessed by several acts that "got it" - first off, the balls-out madness of the Ukrainian "Verka Serdyuchka," which you really have to see - words won't do it justice here (best I can do is suggest you imagine a post-Soviet drag queen review held in a space station about a hundred years from now). I'm just not sure why they're singing in German, but that's part of the gag too.

The Brits nailed it as well with an over the top skit based on air travel (I especially dig the little flight attendant outfits). And even the French came through with a piece of irony based, as far as I can tell, on the bad pronunciation of the French language. Both had us laughing our asses off (and we weren't even too deep into the G&Ts at that point). And that's what it's about, spending time with friends and being entertained.

I guess the biggest surprise this year was that some of the bands were actually not bad - the singers from Finland, Georgia and Moldova had objectively decent voices, and even though the Balkan republics from the former Yugoslav shatterzone have a built in advantage (because there are so many of them and they all vote for each other) I think Serbia deserved their win because the act was really pretty good.

Not to get deep here but I'm also really happy Serbia won because it means next years Eurovision will be held in Belgrade. Given the dicey political situation there after the latest election, I think more European presence and attention spent on Serbia might just make a difference in turning the politics towards a positive pan-European direction and away from radical isolationism. We shall see. Anyway, If I can work it out I'm hoping to be in Belgrade in person next year for the show. The Serbs really know how to party.

That's it for now - I'm off to Seattle for a week, leaving in half an hour. Probably radio silence again for a little while. Love you all.

Congratulations Natasha

Pozdravlyayu, Natasha! Thanks for the wedding pics. Saint Petersburg looks lovely in springtime and you look even lovelier!

Best wishes and kind fortune. I hope to deliver congratulations in person sometime.

Now that's just painful

When doing some research for my book, I just found out that the current Foreign Minister of Estonia is two years younger than I am.

Now that just hurts. I guess age-envy revelations like this are only going to get more common from now on. Honestly, when I was younger I never worried about it because I just didn't think civilization was going to hold together this long.

Sigh.

A Screaming Comes Across the Sky

I'm sitting at work here and the air raid sirens all just started screaming across the city- it's a test they do at noon on the first Wednesday of every month. The sound still scared the piss out of me, at least for the first few seconds. Real fight or flight response.

Been a long time since the Cold War but old habits die hard.