Category: personal

George Oates worked in our office a couple of weeks ago, researching photos for the Flickr Commons. She interviewed various members of the web team. Notice how I cunningly evade her piercing questions – by giggling like an eejit.

Having some problems with Movable Type on a shared host, so I’m giving WordPress a go instead. It’s all very strange and new.

My 18 year-old Vasque Sundowners have finally given up the ghost. Three miles into a ten mile walk, the sole of the left boot came away from the rest of the boot, flopping about as I walked. I tied the sole back onto the boot with an old shoelace and finished the walk. Time for some new boots, I think.

In their time, these boots have:

• kept my feet warm and dry through a series of cold, cold Wisconsin winters.
• taken me to the top of the tallest mountain in the lower 48, and back down again.
• hiked a small part of the Appalachian Trail.
• carried me speedily away from a bear on the selfsame trail.

I love Fear is the Key.

Just messing about with the guitar and wondering how Movable Type handles mp3 uploads:
test.mp3

Photo credit: Dawn Sutter Madell

A couple of you (mr g. and k.r.) might remember my first venture into writing HTML – a few pages about the band Antietam, written in 1994 or 95 and hosted on geocities. Those pages moved to a home on demon internet in 1996 and lasted, more or less unchanged, until around 2005, when I bought eatyourgreens.org.uk. Well, the pages themselves still exist and you can nose around on them here. My favourites are the first appearance of the phrase ‘eat your greens!’ and a Guitar Player interview where Tara Key gets technical about amps and effects pedals. What’s not to love about a librarian who plays guitar like Neil Young and waxes lyrical about Les Pauls?

Anyway, enough nostalgia. Antietam have a myspace page now and a new album, Opus Mixtum, which I just got hold of and have been playing pretty constantly for the last 3 days. 26 songs (11 of them instrumentals) sprawling over 2 CDs, it takes a while to sink in but first impressions are that this is a great record. It’s an eclectic range of sounds, but no less powerful for it. There’s Crazy Horse style rock, reminiscent of Rope A Dope or Burgoo, mixed with gentle acoustic guitar and piano that could have come from Tara’s solo albums, Bourbon County and Ear and Echo. I think this is going to be one of my favourite records of 2008.

If you’re in New York, Antietam are playing outside the Brooklyn Public Library on 31st May. More info on myspace.

Musical excellence, I think, from mjhibbett.com

“I bet you could rip that out with a claw hammer”, said Neil C. He was right too…

So I’ve spent my Easter Sunday ripping the flat apart with my bare hands. Cos I’m a man, baby… There’s something quite satisfying about demolishing 30-year-old DIY.

Blair Millen tagged me to write six unimportant things so here goes:

• My favourite record at the moment is Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!.
• I was born, and grew up, in Nottingham.
• I spent a semester of grad school on academic probation, with the threat of being kicked off my PhD if I didn’t improve my grades.
• I spent this afternoon painting the spare room.
• I first used e-mail in 1989. No internet back then, as I recall.
• I’m about to make a nice cup of fairtrade tea. Cheers!

So, in the end, I skipped SemanticCamp this weekend to concentrate on working on the flat. After five years of thinking “I must do something about the polystyrene ceiling tiles” I have a new ceiling in the hall. Photos of the work, so far, are on flickr.