This is very cool: Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital’s chic 16th arrondissement.
I want to join a secret society that has hidden underground cinemas. That rules.
There are few bands who can follow a support act which consists of a guy who looks like an 80s metal star playing Queen covers and songs about someone who looks like Gary Busey on an accordian (his name is Corn Mo, and he is a genius). By an extraordinary coincidence, one of those bands – They Might Be Giants – is exactly who did follow said support act. Which is lucky, really, because that’s what it said on the tickets for the gig, too.
(not that I actually had a ticket, mind you – a friend of a friend who used to be on the Union exec or something managed to blag me in, and so she’s now my new best friend and is owed several pints of her preferred beverage if I ever see her again)
Opening with their new single, Experimental Film, and then ploughing through a mix of new material and their fairly extensive back catalogue, including a frankly astonishing live version of Fingertips – astonishing purely because they did it live – Particle Man (featuring Corn Mo on guest accordian) and the obligatory Birdhouse in your Soul, this was very much a fan’s gig (as also evidenced by the rather intimate venue) – but of course, TMBG have always been very much a fan’s band (massive mainstream success has never been easy when you sing songs about purple toupees, exploding heads and lighthouses as seen from the perspective of a nightlight shaped like a canary).
Live, they are polished but approachable – good humoured and hugely talented all at once, and between songs, the banter flowed comfortably back and forth between the band members and the audience. And ultimately, I don’t believe a single person left that gig without a big silly grin on their face. They’re just that kind of band.
There’s something strangely unsatisfying about a piece of hardware that does exactly what it says on the tin without messing around with system settings or crashing your machine horribly: I’m so used to installing PC hardware being a horrendous ordeal, at the end of which having the hardware doing anything remotely like it claims to almost seems like reward enough in itself. When everything goes smoothly and works first time, you can’t help but feel slightly cheated, in a way. That’s how it is with my new toy, the Edirol UA-5 USB audio interface.
I’ve been after a new audio interface for my laptop for a while – the onboard sound is frankly rubbish (and the latency sucks some major ass), and this has limited any compositional activities to using software synths and samples I found on the internet. Which is fine, but a little limiting, especially when you’ve got a stack of other instruments and outboard synths and things gathering dust, waiting to be used. So when the UA-5 appeared on Academy of Sound‘s website for nearly £150 less than usual, I figured it was too good a deal to pass up and snapped it up.
Edirol call the UA-5 an “Audio Capture” device, and given the plethora of input options, this is understandable: two channel input via digital optical and coaxial or analogue XLR (with optional 48V phantom power for ribbon and capacitor mics), 1/4″ jack (balanced or unbalanced, optional hi-z) and coxial analogue, sampling at 44.1kHz, 48kHz or 96kHz at up to 24bit – basically, if you’ve got something that makes a sound, this thing will record it. However, the output options are only slightly less impressive: analogue via stereo jack, and two pairs of coaxials, and digital via optical or coax. All this comes in a half-rack width box which plugs into a standard USB 2 port (although an external power supply is needed) and comes supplied with the now essential low-latency ASIO drivers, along with the standard WDM and MME drivers (although quite why you’d want to use those is beyond me).
The thing is, though, for all that impressive specification, there isn’t really much you can say beyond the fact that it works, and it works well. There’s no buzz, hum or hiss; the sound quality is crisp and clean; the ASIO drivers are stable and fast. It does exactly what it claims to, with no fuss or hassle.
But, to be fair – what else does it need to do? This isn’t a consumer soundcard – in fact, it is the very antithesis of the consumer soundcard. It doesn’t have surround outputs. It doesn’t come bundled with games to show off its special effects capabilities, because it has none. It doesn’t have a huge speaker setup application. It has no need for hundreds of megabytes of silly bundled apps that make your MP3s sound like they’re being played back in a cave, underwater, by Alvin and the Chipmunks. This is a box for getting sound in and out of your computer quickly, cleanly and without fuss. And that’s exactly what it does, and it does it very well indeed.
(via Tim) Folding t-shirts, Japanese style.
This just briefly killed all productivity in our office whilst we tried to figure out how she did it using a freebie ATI t-shirt which no-one wants to wear. I am proud to say that I figured it out and I am now a black-belt in Japanese T-Shirt Origami-fu. You don’t see that on Mind, Body and Kickass Moves.
Subject: It’s cheating, but it works!
Well, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of point in cheating if it didn’t work.
It occurs to me that Chris has been linking to me for rather a while, so it’s probably only polite to link back. I work with him, which makes thejourney through his warped and fragile mind that his website provides all the more fascinating for me.
I am convinced that women have some inbuilt psychic ability to detect when the least appropriate moment to interrupt or talk over the top of a TV programme is, and then to choose that moment to do just that – even if they’re not in the same physical locality as you. Case in point: whilst she was away visiting family in Ireland a few weeks ago, my dearly beloved managed to ring me in the middle of an interesting or entertaining programme nearly every time she called – never during Newsnight or anything like that, but always during The Smoking Room or Top Gear or something.
Of course, you can’t ask them to call back or talk after the programme has finished, because that means that you think the TV is more important than they are, and that’s obviously just Bad and Wrong, so you have to talk, but then you get into trouble for being grumpy with them or giving them short answers or not paying attention or something. There’s just no way you can win.
And now, I’m going to go and get into trouble for having written this, rather than talking to her.
Somewhere in a secret underground lab in Guildford:
Dr Demis “Evil” Hassibis, PhD: “It seems that Project Republic, our attempt to conquer the world by brainwashing them into believing that playing as a communist dictator might be in some way cool or entertaining, has failed. We need a new plan. Gather round my minions, and bring your suggestions to me! MUWUHAHAHAHA!”
Minion 1: “We could construct an elaborate network of underground tunnels, encircling the globe. Once those are complete, we build underground oil pumps, steal the world’s supply of oil and hold the world to ransom! Without oil, they will be POWERLESS! HAHAHAHA!”
Hassibis: “Riiiiiight. And what happens when they discover vegetable oil, hmmm? Didn’t think of that one, did you, number 1? Guards! Have him liquidated. Now, who’s next?”
Minion 2: “We build a giant ‘laser’, and mount it on the ‘moon’, and then we demand one biiiiillion dollars, or we fire it at the earth!”
Hassibis: “And what happens when someone else builds a bigger ‘laser’, and mounts it on Mars? Hmm? Didn’t think of that one, did we, Mr Clever? Go and feed yourself to the ill-tempered sea bass. What else do we have?”
Minion 3: “I think very much you vill be liking my idea, Dr Eefil. Ve vill be taking einen old und succesful game like, say, Dungeon Keeper Zwei. Then to be changink ze graphics, und adding some ‘groofy’ music, und zen ve sell it to everyone all over again! Und zen, when they tiring of this are beink, ve do it again! Und again! Und ewentually, no-one haffink any more money vill be, und ve vill haff it all!”
Hassibis: “And how will we change the graphics, hmmm?”
Minion 3: “Ve can turn it into a simulation of… you!”
Hassibis: “World domination /and/ pandering to my already grotesquely overinflated ego? Minion 3, I think I may actually love you and your slightly offensive overblown stereotypical Bavarian accent. In a strictly platonic and nonsexual way, of course. Now, go and oil yourself up and be in my chambers in 30 minutes wearing nothing but a meat helmet and carrying a bag of agitated mongeese. Mongooses. Mongii. Whatever.”
[SCREEN FADES]