It happened like this……I was back in New Zealand on vacation and someone picked up on the fact that – despite the bona fide accent – I wasn't local. "You must be from away, then" she said……..
About half a million folks voted in the New Hampshire primaries.
The margin between Clinton and Obama was 2 percentage points.
8000 votes. Out of 287,000
In mediaspeak, this is an “amazing comeback”
The margin between McCain and Romney was 6 percentage points. 8000 votes. Out of 238,000.
In mediaspeak, this was a “Lazarus-like victory”.
That both Clinton and McCain won is mathematically indisputable.
I just don’t don’t get the fact that the votes of New Hampshire – that’s 0.017% of the US population – can result in some sort of “momentum” that’s going to heavily influence the continuing political process.
Take 2 design students with a brilliant idea, a box measuring 120*80*90 cm and 8 minutes and you’ve got everything you need for a nomadic existence.
A bed, a desk and stool, shelves, a wardrobe with drawers and a couple of stools for visitors.
All in a standardised (Euro pallet) format with stowage space for bits and pieces. Move it between any 2 points in Germany for about €80
Marcel Krings and Sebastian Mühlhäuser, students at the Cologne International School of Design, designed Casulo – Portugese for “cocoon” – as their dissertation project.
And promptly won the Abraham & David Roentgen Award 2007.
They were on SWR, our regional TV channel last night, haven’t a clue what it’s going to cost when it goes into production (because they’re still looking for manufacturing and marketing partners) and don’t realise how HUGE it’s going to be.
>I have difficulty understanding how 2 absolutely non-representative and demographically diametrically opposed states (and has heard anyone mention “sample size” recently ..?) can have such leverage in the primaries.
I also have difficulty understanding the headlines – both in the States and in Europe – along the lines of “Hillary cries herself to the nomination”
If this is acting, I’ve just lost my faith in humanity…
That’s what Amazon reckoned anyway when I had a look at Wisely’s eponymous albumbefore its release.
I couldn’t work it out at the time, but then it clicked .
No-one had actually BOUGHT the album, so Amazon’s smart search machine looks at the tracks, sees “Cracked World View” and says
“Released early January, Christmas season – “Completely Cracked Christmas” sounds good to me”.
A couple of tracks down – “Nothing but wind”.
You can probably guess the rest….
Talking of flatulence – the Aussies reckon that – given that bovine methane makes up around 15% of their greenhouse gas emissions and the fact that kangaroo farts are methane-free – it’d be a good idea to cross a cow with a kangaroo.
The ever excellent Jeff Giles – now at Popdose with a bunch of his mates – came up with Love is wrong from SHE” on one of his Friday (now Sunday) Mixtapes over at the legendary Jefitoblog. And then Through Any Window from Parador
I gave up looking in record stores, went to the website, bought pretty much his entire back catalogue and now I’m just waiting the new eponymously titled album – released today, you can buy it on Amazon – to appear there That’ll make my day.
Not from a usability perspective – I wouldn’t DREAM of going back to the Dark Side – but the personal interactive experience is a bit naff.
1. Bought a PowerBook back in 2005 and just loved it.
Then figured that I’d take the plunge and move over entirely. No real problems, but there are 2 programs that Mac doesn’t have an equivalent for:
Money (and PLEASE don’t suggest Quicken – they only support 2 currencies and I regularly work with 6 or 7)
CD Trustee which has the best media databasing program around and there – believe me – IS no Mac equivalent.
I’d been running them under Virtual PC (which is as slow as a wet week) but I’ve heard rumours that the new MacMini is going to be Intel-based and the gurus reckon that I’ll probably be able to run XP on it natively.
Call up the Apple Hotline:
“No, the new Intel MacMini won’t be on the market for AT LEAST a year”
Order the PowerPC version and a week later – A WEEK LATER – they release the Intel machine.
Will they take it back? Of course they won’t.
Even if they lied to me? Even if they lied to me.
2. The iSight disappears from the market just as I’m about to buy it.
Prices now run at $500 at Amazon so I talk to George in one of the Apple Stores in New England. I’ve done a bit of research and I know that a webcam needs to be FireWire-enabled to work with iMovie (which is what I want to use it for)
George (not his real name) brings out a USB webcam that I KNOW doesn’t work.
“Oh, but it’ll DEFINITELY work with Leopard” “Actually, I think you’re wrong. Are you SURE it’ll work with iMovie? “Well, pretty sure…” and then we do some more talking and research and Fred finds out that it WON’T work after all and the conversation turns to the weather and how do I like it in New England
Go figure.
(Didn’t want to say “I told you so” but I told him so…)
3 Decide to upgrade to Leopard and ask – a different store this time – one of their people if there are any known issues with Virtual PC or general constraints.
“None that I’m aware of” Bullshit detectors go off the dial
I indicate that I’d like a bit more assurance than that, he looks at the packaging and says “Well, your G4 PowerBook’s gonna work just fine, according to this…” So I do some more research in-store on the Web, determine it looks OK and go to buy it.
4 “Can I please see a photo ID” “Why’s that” “I can’t sell you anything without a photo ID. That’s our policy”
And here’s me, having just spent a shit load of money on credit cards up and down the coast and never having been asked once for ID , and Apple wants ID for an $129 item?
“You can pay cash” “I think I’ll take the iPhone too, then” “Ah, you can’t pay cash for the iPhone….”
>“For me, a great rock song is a good tune, plus some inspired irritant – a shout, a noise, an enigmatic line, a raucous solo.”
John Pareles – now the chief music critic of the Arts section of the New York Times – wrote that when he was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone in the 1980s.
I clipped it and it’s stayed on my pinboard to this day.
There are songs that – when I hear them – I instantly know where I was when I first heard them. They’re indelibly linked to the taste of the air or the person I was with or the taste of the coffee or the record store I subsequently bought the album from. Or. Or. Or
Tracks that literally stopped me in my tracks
My “Stop you in your tracks²
#4 in a series of n
January 1991
This was the first terrorist crisis. Flights were EMPTY. You have absolutely no idea.
Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, the hot (air) war had started, Scuds were zapping Tel Aviv and the jihadists (although they weren’t called that back then) were threatening to blow up commercial aircraft.
Passengers stayed away in droves.
Frank and I had a Revenue Management road show trip planned to Atlanta, Miami and Dallas to convince the regional sales organisation that it would be a Good Thing if they would have absolutely NO SAY in future as to which traffic was accepted (and which wasn’t…) and that this BIG MACHINE with flashing lights and Artificial Intelligence and other good shit that we were building in Frankfurt would be a LOT SMARTER than they were.
So we front up at the airport 3 hours before the flight for the “enhanced security procedures”.(Sound familiar….?)
20 minutes later we’re at the gate. And the place is deserted.
So we pretty much survived the stoning and lynch mobs in Atlanta, Miami and Dallas (mostly by lying and telling them “Of COURSE you’ll still have control over your sales. That will NEVER change”) and the excessive hospitality from people who were figuring “Shit, we’d better be NICE to these guys. They appear to be BIG SHOTS”
(This was the trip on which Diane told us what MARTA really stands for – Moving African-Americans Rapidly Through Atlanta, Feli told us what Pontiac really stands for – Poor Old N…… Thinks It’s ACadillac) – I’ve never claimed that this place was even VAGUELY politically correct – and some bird in the bar at the hotel in Dallas (who had Frank picked out as The Target For Tonight) came across with the lamest pick-up line ever:
“I always thought Germans were darker” she said
“No, that would be Africans….” I said ” They’re certainly dark. For sure”
Laughing was unkind, I know, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t get it anyway.)
So we get to Dallas airport absolutely stuffed – we’ve only been away for a few days, still jetlagged to hell, spent all the time in airplanes, hotels and offices, you’re presenting and on edge all the time dodging the stones and lying to the lynch mobs, all that hospitality, and to top it off we’ve come straight to the airport from having been out with Schnookie’s big sister Feli and her Texan husband Jerry (which is ALWAYS too much fun than’s good for you) at a Mexican restaurant – so all I REALLY want to do is get on the flight and fall asleep.
Except someone knows someone and – all of a sudden – we’re in First Class (which is all very nice, but they just don’t leave you alone) and the crew’s all over us with “Can-I-get-you-some-champagne-and-what-would-you-like-for-dinner-we-have-the-usual-7-course-menu-with-caviar-to-start” and we’re quoting Little Feat with “Haven’t slept for a week, my shoes feel like a part of my feet” and “Look, it’s not that we don’t appreciate it, but we’re just so bloody tired. Can we please just sleep?”
I honestly thought that they were going to cry.
They’d been away from base for going on for a week, this was their 4th flight and we were their VERY FIRST passengers.
So what do you do?
Settle back with a glass of champagne and some caviar, slip on the Sennheiser headphones and … BANG….
I’d had it as a vinyl since it came out, but I’d forgotten how truly great it is.
>“For me, a great rock song is a good tune, plus some inspired irritant – a shout, a noise, an enigmatic line, a raucous solo.”
John Pareles – now the chief music critic of the Arts section of the New York Times – wrote that when he was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone in the 1980s.
I clipped it and it’s stayed on my pinboard to this day.
There are songs that – when I hear them – I instantly know where I was when I first heard them. They’re indelibly linked to the taste of the air or the person I was with or the taste of the coffee or the record store I subsequently bought the album from. Or. Or. Or
This song to this day brings tears to my eyes. Takes my breath away, too.
I grew up in Northcote, a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand,
I lived right next door – literally – to Northcote College, the local co-ed secondary school. My parents (for all the wrong reasons, but -as it turned out – with the right results) sent me to Westlake Boys High School, 5 km away. There was a bus service of sorts, but – this being New Zealand in the 1960s – the unions determined randomly that the bus drivers couldn’t pick up passengers in Onewa Road, so you’d (correction – I’d) be stuck there at 8 in the morning with assembly at 8:45 and the only bus that would get you me on time disappearing into the distance.
So it was the bicycle. 3 speed Sturmey Archer gears.
Between the ages of 13 and 18, I’d ride 10 km a day in all weathers.
Along the yellow line.
Out of the gate, then a left into Onewa Road, past the Catholic church with all the convent girls (lust, lust), then coast down to the primary school and as fast as you could go around the hairpin bend (foot down, like cinder track speedway rider) and then pedal like crazy to get as much momentum as you could to take you up the other side of the dip on Lake Road. Partly, anyway. Get on the pedals for the rest of the climb. Over the top, down past Northcote Internediate and then it’s pretty flat past Ocean View onto Northcote Road where a couple of other guys would join the trek and down past the golf course, left onto Wairau Road, past Westlake Girls – as cool as you could manage, given the hormonal levels -, past Jock Bleakley’s garage and then onto the pedals for the climb up Forrest Hill.
Quite a bunch of us by this time – all the guys from Taka and Milford – and we’d be singing what we’d heard on the radio.
1964. I’d be 16 and in my University Entrance year. “All day and all of the night” was controversial. And thus a favourite.
WE knew what it meant, and the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation THOUGHT they did but weren’t QUITE sure, so they hadn’t banned it yet (Banning songs? These things happened all the time in New Zealand in the 60s and 70s….).
So there’s about 10 of us heading up the hill, on the pedals, racing each other and chorusing
Girl I want to be with you all of the time All day and all of the night All day and all of the night All day and all of the night
Then one of the cotter pins that fix the pedals to the chain ring broke.
Gravity proceeded to propel me unimpeded at increasing speed from a great height until my balls hit the crossbar, followed closely by the rest of me in rapid deceleration mode.
Everything went blank. I had no idea anything could hurt that much.
Falling off a ladder and breaking ribs comes close.
It’s a cycle of 6 cantatas, each characterised by a related key structure and different orchestral resources and intended to be heard on a different day – 25 December, 26 December, 27 December, New Year’s Day, the first Sunday in the New Year and the Feast of Epiphany
Given that the last two events this year fall on the same day, i.e. today :
here’s the 1977 recording (96KHz/24bit) in the St. Emmeran church in Augsburg in the authentic scoring and on period instruments.
>“For me, a great rock song is a good tune, plus some inspired irritant – a shout, a noise, an enigmatic line, a raucous solo.”
John Pareles – now the chief music critic of the Arts section of the New York Times – wrote that when he was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone in the 1980s.
I clipped it and it’s stayed on my pinboard to this day.
There are songs that – when I hear them – I instantly know where I was when I first heard them. They’re indelibly linked to the taste of the air or the person I was with or the taste of the coffee or the record store I subsequently bought the album from. Or. Or. Or
Tracks that literally stopped me in my tracks
My “Stop you in your tracks²“ #2 in a series of n
I walked into the living room at the Station Road Post Office that Uncle Frank, Dad’s older brother, ran together with Aunt Margaret in Horsforth in 1970
Free was on Top of the Pops.
“Epiphanal” is an overused word, but not in this context. I just stopped, watched and listened.
This song smells like the smoke from coal fires on a damp Yorkshire evening and tastes like Tetley’s bitter. That, and blackberry and apple pie. There was always one of those in the freezer, just in case I visited.
You must be logged in to post a comment.