Alasdair Watson

Apparently, our home internet should now be twice the speed it used to be, as our 1Mb upgrade has just gone through. Hurrah! So, naturally, I’m going to be in the house with the time to use it for about three hours between now and Sunday. Still, they’ll be three very fast hours. I’ll have to find some large files to download…

Tonight, I am off to Kings Cross to sell my body on streetcorners.

No, wait, that’s not right. I mean, the money would be nice, but I’ve still got my pride. No, tonight, I’m going to see the band with the possibly the strangest name in the world – The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band – I hadn’t intended to go when the gig was first announced, as I felt a bit let down by the Godspeed gig I saw, but I hated the venue, so I figure I’ll give Silver Mt Zion a go, and see if they’re any better live, in a different venue. I feel like a bit of an eejit, though, as I stupidly assumed that I’d have MP3s of their albums and Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s albums on my work machine to listen to today. I don’t. This is stupid, as they’re perfect music to work to, and yes somehow I’ve forgotten to bring them in with me to MP3, and I can’t seem to find anywhere to grab them from on-line.

I’ve also managed to miss the latest Silver Mt Zion album, so I’ll have to see if I can’t pick it up at the gig tonight.

Leaving work today, I got within sight of my bus-stop just in time to watch my bus pulling away. When I reached the stop, I discovered that there wasn’t likely to be another one for at least fifteen minutes. Bollocks to it, I thought. I shall walk along the route until another bus comes. Note: not run, not jog, just walk.

Approximately half an hour later, I overtook the bus that I had seen pulling away, and indeed, waited for five minutes at the next stop along for it to catch up with me.

The congestion charge zone isn’t big enough, or the price isn’t steep enough. One of the two. It’s complete insanity that it should be faster for me to walk two miles than take a bus. I can understand the need to own a car if you live out in the countryside, or want to go out there, but if you’re within the six zones of London transport, why in christ would you drive *inward* into London? You might as well walk…

But I’m pleased with myself, so I’m writing about it. After some effort, I’ve got the ‘Now Playing’ feature back on Black Ink – or rather, replaced it with a ‘Recently Played’ feature. It’s a bit egocentric, thinking that anyone gives a toss what I’ve been listening to, but so’s the whole damn site, and I mostly did it for the technical challenge.

This sounds pretty trivial – after all, there are tools that’ll do it for you if you use WinAmp on the PC, or iTunes on the Mac. But I, of course, am a difficult bastard, and use iTunes on the PC, so instead of being able to get nice little application to do it for me, I’ve had to cobble together a means to take the XML that you can generate with iTunes, parse and sort it, and dump it out. The sorting was the biggest bastard, and still isn’t perfect, as the most recently played is actually at the bottom of the list, but if I want to keep the ‘Recently Played’ function on iTunes useful, and not limited to the last five tracks I’ve played (and I do) I’m going to have to live with it, until I can be arsed to re-write the thing from the ground up.

Which I’d like to, because at the moment, it’s completely custom to the way I want it to display on my site, rather than being generic, but it’ll wait until I have a week or so spare.

Counties I have visited

After a fairly last minute decision, I wound up at B-movie last night, and as per, it was ace, although it means that I am almost certainly not clubbing tonight, unless I drink enough to override my good judgement. Yes, I am a big wuss.

Completely missed spotting winterthing while we were in the club, and so when she wandered past while I was waiting for a night bus, I thought “Nah, couldn’t be”, forgetting, of course, that the world is always smaller than I think. Collapsed into bed and fell asleep watching Spaced at just gone three, which is, I think, the fastest I’ve made it back from Kings Cross…

Leaving for the V-lantines massacre at some point soon, honest. As soon as I feel able to move my neck…

Tried Bison for lunch. Wasn’t really terribly impressed – it was nice, but I prefered the other interesting meats I’ve had at the gastropub, I think. The spinach was the nicest spinach I’ve ever had, faint praise though that is.

In a staggering move, I’ve actually had really good customer service from BT. Our ADSL has been moved to our new provider, and when I phoned BT to confirm that my old account with them had been closed, the man on the other of the line noticed that they’d take a payment for a month’s ADSL yesterday (I knew it’d happen and was OK with it – just an unfortunate coincidence of dates) and he didn’t think this was terrbily fair, given that I’d essentially paid for a month’s BT ADSL, only to use less than 24 hours of it before switching ISP, so it’s going to be refunded to me apparently. Result.

Gosh, my life’s exciting.

Edit: Del, here’s the link to Paul’s review we were talking about last night.

I’ve mislaid my Kodo CDs, which is annoying, because after seeing them on Friday, I really want to listen to them some more. There was a bit more flute/dance Kabuki type-stuff this time out, and I confess, it’s more the drumming that I go for, but still, massively impressive. I see there’s a DVD of this tour coming out later in the year, which will be very cool, because while the drums sound good, it’s the sheer physicality of the performance that’s most impressive – in particular, the second half closer as two mad bastards beat on a taiko drum that’s bigger than they are, using sticks like baseball bats.

Went out round town on Saturday, looking for a new bag. Failed to find one, although I did get a new shirt. The met up with Gordon and fire_sermon for dinner at Garlic and Shots which was a bloody good laugh.

Spent most of yesterday in bed, because I didn’t have anything pressing to do. So I finished Be My Enemy (which, truth be told, I was a little disappointed by, although the bit with the chef made me laugh like a drain, which I suspect means there’s something very, very wrong with me), and watched Plunkett and Macleane, which I’ve always liked a lot more than the film probably deserves, but hadn’t watched in a while. I suspect I’ve mislaid my copy of the soundtrack as well, which is annoying.

So, I’ve joined the Scottish Malt Whisky Society. I’d be planning to wait until my birthday, but since it’ll take three to six weeks for my membership to come through, I figured I’d do it now, and claim the money back off my parents, who have offered to get me the membership for my birthday.

I was out at the society’s tasting rooms with work colleagues last night and very pleasant it was too. Tried (among others) the sweetest whisky I have ever enountered, from Glenrothes distillery. Seriously, the damn thing smelled more like treacle than whisky. Very nice. I’ll have to get a bottle before they sell out.

The rooms themselves are near Farringdon, where I can get a direct train from Tooting BR, which is ace for me. But the reason I’m boring you all rigid with this is that among the things I’m thinking of doing for my birthday is going for dinner either here (the pub beneath the rooms) or here (the separate restaurant that’s part of the pub but has a different (read: posher) menu), and I’m just looking for a show of hands in case anyone’s interested. I can only take a small number of people in, and will undoubtedly be going more than once this year, so I’m really only looking for people willing to do both, on this occaision.

Well, OK, just new. There’s a new Brookmyre book out in a few days, which I’m looking forward to, but more importantly, I’m pleased to discover that not only does Cory Doctrow have a new book out today (OK, yesterday, but I was asleep when it was announced), but that he’s done the same thing as his did with his last one, and made it freely available on-line under the same sort of Creative Commons license that he did his last one. His last one was one of the most interesting and entertaining sci-fi books I read last year, so I’m looking forward to this…