I’ve set up a little webcam, taking in the view across Dunfermline from the spare room in my flat. It will update the image at a maximum rate of once every 30 seconds, when anyone refreshes the image:
My Dunfermline geography is still a bit patchy, but I think it’s looking towards Garvock Hill – where the houses are – and Hill of Beath in the distance (during the day).
Geek corner: I had a lot of fun in PHP writing a wrapper for gd to make it easier to use, the incredible results of which you can see in the text overlaid onto the live image. And don’t even think about hotlinking the image, unless you want to see the special giant banner I designed to ward off hotlinkers.
Apart from a few excellent singles/albums, I can’t help feeling this has been a fairly meagre year for good music. I spent a good while thinking about what releases from this year impressed me most, but had to discard most of them beacuse they were from 2008. Here’s the few things I really liked that came out this year:
1. Tim Exile – Family Galaxy (Warp)
I wasn’t such a big fan of the album, but this track is brilliant, applying the lyrics’ theme of ‘keep changing everything’ to the music. Wasn’t too sure about the vocals to begin with, but they do work.
Since I’m moving south in a couple of weeks (or sooner), I’ve started getting a few homeware-type things. I saw this Green Man doormat in Past Times and, being very interested in British folklore and mythology, simply had to have it. Even better, it came up half price on the till and they let me have it for that price.
I’m also looking for some way to use the internet when I move into my new place; I’m currently split between a wifi router or one of those new-fangled ones that sends the network down your power sockets.
Google Books now has many, many (all?) back issues of Weekly World News in its online archive.
For those who don’t know, WWN was a newspaper where every story was entirely fictitious. I used to get it, in the early 1990s, when – rather inexplicably – our local Somerfield used to stock it. Getting access to this archive has confirmed what I thought about the Weekly World News – namely that it used to be a lot more believable back then. I think it was published by the same people as the National Inquirer, the only other US tabloid which was available in the UK. It was featured as the only source of ‘real’ news in the cinematic landmark ‘Men In Black’, too.
WWN came to an end a couple of years ago, after declining and becoming increasingly unbelievable. At some point in the late 90s, they clearly decided to completely do away with the pretense that they weren’t lying, and by the end were even putting a ‘this is all a load of cobblers’ disclaimer in each issue. The quality of the stories suffered as a result.
If you flick back to the early 90s issues (around page 20 of the results), though, you’re in for a treat.
Picked up this slightly bizarre record in the charity shop just before Christmas.
It has a superb cover, and I was hoping the 80s hip hop/ska/African military dictator look of the three gentlemen pictured would be reflected in the music. Unfortunately, it’s mainly traditional music of Soweto, although a few of the tracks veer towards a sort of reggae.
I was interested to see this is ‘Zulu Jive Volume Two’ – presumably there was a whole series of these records. The back cover states:
The first ‘Bantu’ recordings in South Africa were made in 1912/13 by the visiting British Zonophone Company Recording Unit. It was in 1931 that Gallo Ltd set up the first South African recording studio in Johannesburg. Initially these studios recorded material from all over Anglophone Central Africa but after 1970 Zulu and South Sotho material began to dominate the recording industry.
After the 2nd World War in the townships that services the gold mines and industrial heartland of the Witwatersrand, the traditional music of the Zulu and Sotho collided with the Afro American rhythm and blues, jazz and blues of the period to form new urban styles such as township jazz, the pennywhistle street music, kwela, and the shebeen inspired marabi [??]. Mbqanga drew upon all these forms for inspiration to become a powerful new urban pop style.
It’s 3:30am on Boxing Day and I can’t sleep. What better time to post a rambling blog entry?
I’ve had one too many turkey sandwiches, experienced the huge anticlimax which inevitably follows the yearly present-unwrapping ceremony, and driven my cousin’s sprained finger to A+E through the extremely unfamiliar streets of Birmingham’s suburbs.
This year’s unexpected surprise from the annual haul has to be a Discovery Channel DVD called
Have Aliens Invaded Scotland?*. Presented in a slimline case, presumably as it was originally part of a wider Aliens: What Can We Make Up? series, the cover features a photo of a betweeded gent in front of a Bonnybridge sign. Given Bonnybridge has been absent from UFO news for a good few years, that rather dates the documentary, but I’m still certain it’ll be brilliant. Did you know, Scotland has “more sightings than any other country”? Is there a portal to another dimension in the heart of Scotland? [Insert your own joke about one of Scotland's many weirder locales.]
Other items included seasons 4 and 5 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, A Chocolate Orange, and the Faber & Faber Eighty Years of Book Cover Design book, which is excellent, though not quite as good as Penguin By Design. The Faber one suffers from not having more in-depth discussion of the history and evolution of the designs, although you could argue Faber’s covers haven’t evolved nearly as much as Penguin’s.
Also, I got a new job, which I’m really excited about, and which entails me moving down to Fife in the very near future (for non-Scots, that’s the area from just south of Dundee down to the Forth Bridge). Not the best time of year to undertake the logistical side of moving, but I’m going to have to give it a go. Roll on 2010……..
This one is always very inquisitve (and tall enough to see over the wall). There’s a lot more about llamas on this site.
Hello, by the way, I’ve decided to start blogging again: this time with a sparkly new, good-looking – and working – website, which I spent the better part of three nights making. Blog begin!
