General Blogging – Page 28

Do me a favour: Fight Crime!

Posted on November 15, 2006 by Alasdair

The They Fight Crime! synopsis generator has a new home.

The reason I mention this is that it had fallen off the internet for a while (I’m currently wrangling to get my black-ink.org domain back up and running). In fact, it’s been gone for over six months. And in the interim, a load of people who have basically done nothing other than rip off the original and remove the credit, have started to clog up the google listings for “they fight crime”. And I object to other people thinking it’s OK to steal Andrew’s and my work (mostly Andrew’s), remove the authorial credit, and (in some cases) make money off it via ads, when the original was free.

So, if anyone fancies posting the link up in forums, blogs, LJs, myspace, with the usual “Here’s a funny link” nonsense, and perhaps a few choice generated phrases, that’d be ace. If you felt like explaining the reason I’d like the link to do the rounds again, including words like “The original they fight crime generator is back”, or similar, and generally encouraging people to send it about so that we get back to our fair place, that’d be great, too.

Thanks, folks.

A few from the archives:

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Alasdair

I don’t expect anyone else will give much of a shit, but I’m delighted about this.

About what?

Well, a few years back, a database that held the only copies of a few things I’d written crashed and died, and I had no backup. I had assumed they were lost. But the wayback machine came up in conversation this afternoon, and on a whim, I plugged an old url into it.

Result.

I’ve managed to scrape 8 bits of my lost writing out of it – some of it stuff I wrote almost ten years ago, most of it stuff I still like. I’ve slapped it up in no particular order on http://www.dead-air.org just while I work out what, if anything to do with it. (Both the writing and the domain.)

Slightly depressing thing though: I’m sure I wrote better a few years ago that I do now. Or at least, about more interesting things. I know I’ve burbled in the past about the deformative effect of livejournal on the things I write, though – I’m much more willing to talk about absurdities when I don’t know the people that are watching by name. I think I may try dusting Dead Air off properly, and giving myself a blog site back, rather than being part of this terrible “community” nonsense. At worst, it’ll just confirm the diagnosis, and I’ll come sauntering back.

The Heart Of The World

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Alasdair

Jhayne Holmes (porphyre) is one of the more interesting strangers on my friends list, and she would like your help.

She’s found an old theatre for sale in Vancouver, a place where acts like Neil Young and Sonic Youth once played. She wants to re-open it as an artistic space – a place for theatre, and cinema and music, a place for art of any kind. As she says:

Imagine buying a space and starting your own theatre, or your own art gallery, or your own movie theatre, or your own music hall. Imagine being able to host performances of all sorts- giving your creative friends space to perform or exhibit their work. I’ve got friends who are dancers and painters and lighting designers and actors and directors and writers and photographers and cinematographers… it would be amazing to give them a space to create what they dream of, to be seen, heard, and appreciated.

You can find out more here: http://porphyre.livejournal.com/535610.html

She has three weeks to raise a million dollars. Please, if you can: help. Donate a token amount, if that’s all you can think of to do (like I have). If you’re able to help in some other way, do that. She’s trying to create the kind of space that’s hard to come by, the sort of place that there should be more of. It’s the sort of place I’d love to run myself in London. Please: send the link around. Talk about this attempt. Tell people about it, and tell them to help, too.

(Donate a token amount anyway – you’d do it for charity, and this is Art, and deserves your support every bit as much, and that’s a hell of a target she’s aiming for.)

While I think of it: The Prestige.

Posted on November 13, 2006 by Alasdair

Run, don’t walk.

Best film I’ve seen this year.

Can’t stop thinking about it, even though I’d read the book beforehand.

Well, that was a bit bloody good, then.

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Alasdair

Top weekend. Friends, gigs, drinking, unexpected clubbing, and generally full of fun and frolics. More of that sort of thing, I think.

Tonight: gym and photo processing. Apologies to those waiting for more Rollergirls pics – I’ve got a few more queued up, and a few more I think I can make something good out of, but LJ was down Saturday, so I had no chance to put anything up. (Before anyone says “Sunday” see above remarks regarding other activity, and understand that a certain amount of recovery was required.)

A Bad Workman…

Posted on November 1, 2006 by Alasdair

I’ve just gone through the photos I took at the Evil Genius gig last night. Any y’know, it’s not my tools – my camera is quite good, after all. But suffering zombie jesus, what I would give to be able to take photos at gig venues where the lighting guy has a a clue.

If anyone out there is a lighting person for a small venue, here’s some helpful hints:

There should a spot of some kind on the lead singer – doesn’t have to be constant, if you really like turning lights on and off for some reason, just perhaps on for about 75% of the time. I’m not even fussy about the colour (although, I shoudl also add that red and sodium orange are the ones everyone else is using, and everyone is used to seeing bands lit in red, and I know I’m sodding bored of it), I just have this sense that it might be important to see him or her. More than, perhaps, the bassist.

Secondly: if you cut across the very front of your lighting display with a beam of white light from the side, aiming the dancefloor wall, rather than, say, the band, it will become harder to see through it. Two additional random-motion colour-changing downlights aimed at the crowd are similarly pointless – if you want your lights to do all that pattern and colour throwing shit, and generally change every ten seconds, well, OK, but aim it at the stage, not the crowd. The band are getting money to compensate them for your annoying inability to pick a lighting design and stick to it. All this shit in front of the stage does is get in people’s eyes. There’s a reason the house lights go out, and it’s not just that the crowd are often ugly.

Yes, I am whinging about this because it fucked up my photography. And yes, I should be able to get around it, but even a hood on the lens didn’t do the job, and I don’t like to use the flash at gigs for lots of reasons. But y’know, the reason it fucked up my photography was in part that it was very hard to see anything with my goddamn eyes, and I’ve got good nightvision.

Why yes, I did just go through 150 photos, and find nothing usable. Does it show?

Bollocks.

Today’s links:

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Alasdair

1) Bush Moves Toward Martial Law. The US has previously had admirably strict laws regarding the use of the military on it’s own soil. Is this a move toward a dictatorship? I’d be astonished if it were (although the fact that the question is one that even occurs is a little disturbing). Is it alarming anyway? Yes. You all know the quote I’m thinking of about liberty and safety…

2) Via sigma7, strong rumours that Studio 60 is to be cancelled. Not a shock, given that it’s a ratings disaster, but the rumours that it’s to be replaced by reality TV or a game show have a particularly (sickeningly) inevitable ring.