angryhaggis

I've bought a fair amount of music via the iTunes music store recently. The instant gratification is quite addicting. You hear a song on an ad or something, you can have a high-quality copy more or less straight away for a "nominal" money/no effort.

Which is why, when a track isn't in the iTMS, it's really annoying. My current list of songs I'm "denied":

• The Farm - All Together Now - Great song from 1991 (all good songs from 1990-2 have a special resonance for me as that's when I first started listening to the radio.) The particularly annoying thing about this is it IS on the US iTMS, just not the UK one. They are a Liverpudlian band - why doesn't the home store have them?!


• Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satellite - Again, a big song from 1991. Her more modern stuff is on the store, but not this classic. I need!

If a song is "famous" enough to have its own, detailed Wikipedia page, it should be on the iTMS (or on eMusic - none of the other big online stores work with iTunes/iPod.)

Here's a bash shell script I've knocked up to download a midday satellite image of Europe - my computer preferences are set up to check the "latest" folder regularly and use the image there as the background picture. All I need to do now is schedule it - I would have used cron, but that seems to have been replaced by launchd on Mac OS X and I haven't yet figured out how to use the latter.

I'm not too proud of the shell script - but then, I'm not a shell programmer and so this is the first script I've really done. Normally I would use perl...

I've used a slightly long winded method to get the date elements without leading zeros - there is a flag to do this in some forms of date but not the Mac OS X flavour.

If you want to use this script yourself you'll need to get a username and password from here, and insert it in the appropriate place below.

dp=`date +%d`
d=`expr $dp : "0*\(.*\)"`
mp=`date +%m`
m=`expr $mp : "0*\(.*\)"`
y=`date +%Y`
if [ -f archive/$y$mp$dp.jpg ]
then
  echo "$y$mp$dp.jpg already exists - not redownloading."
  exit 1
fi
url=http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/xrit/000.0E/MSG/$y/$m/$d/1200/
filename=$y\_$m\_$d\_1200_MSG1_13_S2.jpeg
echo "Retrieving $url$filename"
curl -u username:password -o pending.jpg $url$filename
fsize=`stat -f %z pending.jpg`
if [ $fsize -le 30000 ]
then
  echo "Filesize too small: $fsize - not continuing."
  exit 1
fi
rm latest/*.jpg
mv pending.jpg latest/$y$mp$dp.jpg
cp latest/$y$mp$dp.jpg archive/$y$mp$dp.jpg

Thanks are due to the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station at Dundee University for making these high-quality images available to all on the web.

We get a weekly brown bag of organic locally-grown vegetables, delivered to the house every Tuesday. You never quite know what's going to be in each bag. The weekly arrival means that we eat more vegetables than we normally would, as it's quite a lot to get through in 7 days.

This week's bag contained:

• A cauliflower.
  
• A lettuce.
  
• A bag of chard
  
• Two yellow courgettes.
  
• Two corn-on-the-cob (always a favourite!)
  
• Three plum tomatoes.
  
• Three onions.
  
• Four carrots.
  
• The inevitable 25 potatoes of varying sizes.
  
• ...and a recipe for Linguini with Chard.
  

Some things that probably don't deserve a separate entry, and some that probably do:

• I seem to be really good at picking weekends, i.e. "my time", to get ill. Currently trying to shake off some flu-like thing that took out my whole weekend and meant I skipped my biggest race of the season so far.


• Children of Men, which I went to see last Friday at the cinema, is brilliant and extremely well shot, a must-see if you don't mind the odd plot hole. The vision of London in 2027 is utterly compelling, and Clive Owen puts in an excellent performance. With Alfonso Cuaron's dramatic hand-held filming and single-take documentary-style action scenes, and some utterly emotional, gripping moments, this has got to be in the running for a cinematography Oscar if not Best Picture. Even if they blow up my office 10 seconds into the film. It's the first film I've seen at the cinema since December last year, and it's one of the best films I've ever seen at the cinema.


• Having my widescreen iMac as the house TV/DVD player seems to be working really well. The "screen zoom" function, and Apple's "10 foot interface" Front Row, is very useful.


• iTunes 7's album art jukebox "flicker" function is very good, as is the removal of Podcasts from the main music library and the interface redesign. I don't like how turning on/off and configuring music visualisations is now more hidden away. The increased prominence of album art has encouraged me to spend a mind-numbingly large amount of time cataloging my music collection, fixing the music tags and adding album covers, even for the really obscure stuff.


• Having won my race last Sunday I've already achieved a major goal of mine for this new season. So, my new goal will be to try and not get sprained/injured/ill so much - it really does disrupt the flow.


• It is possible to get to an Ikea and back by bike from here. But you can't carry a lot of furniture back...


• It was definitely the right decision to move.

Well, I'm glad that's all over - 2 car journeys, 3 bus journeys and 2 bike journeys later, all my stuff is in the new place and unpacked, now it's just a case of getting settled in. By the way there's a spare bedroom here, so if anyone (that knows me, obviously!) ever needs somewhere to flake out in East/Central London, drop me a line...

House move in progress... a friend of mine ferried across nine huge cardboard boxes to my new home this afternoon, after I spent much of the weekend packing and throwing out the mountains of junk I've accumulated in the last two years. Only on arriving at the new place do I now realised that I urgently need to buy: A desk, a chair, a chest of drawers, filing system, a bedside table, a bedside light, wall lights, a bin, and some way to hang pictures without hammering nails into the wall... One Ikea trip coming up real soon.

My email service provider, Fastmail, has had my email account down since Thursday afternoon, due to hard drive corruption apparently, and there's no sign of it coming back up, 50 hours later. Emails to me may also be bouncing. This is, incidently, a service that I pay $20 a year for. One would have hoped that that money would have bought some redundant storage, but obviously not.

Needless to say, I will be changing my email service provider shortly. Anyone have any favourites, paid or free? IMAP access is essential, otherwise I would be using Googlemail. Runbox is not an option as they can't handle the apostrophe in my name.

My current fav downtempo group, Conjure One are playing their first UK gig in November - at Electroworks, a club just a few minutes down the road.

Bought today:

• Nokia N73 Smartphone (It's a Symbian Series 60v3 phone with a 3.2 million-pixel camera.)



• Scytex Navi GPS bluetooth device.

I'll be contributing to OpenStreetMap and GSMLoc.

Just back from the Fringe - Friday, Saturday and Sunday have all been so busy there's been no time to post. I saw 13 shows in all (Nick and Alex saw one more while I was travelling on Thursday) - three up from last year, and saw no duds this year. In general, we saw grittier productions this year, with more of a focus on serious theatre and less on comedy.

My mini-reviews (Alex and Nick are better for the proper reviews). Theatre unless otherwise stated.


Thursday

• Other People **** - A "bloke" sofa comedy. Some great funny lines, funny, relaxed and real.



• The Now Show ***** (Comedy) - I was laughing all the way through this recording, it was sharp, fast-paced and above all very funny.

Friday

• Girl Blog From Iraq *** - Well paced narrative-style account although somewhat lacked the emotional depth I would expect. I liked the use of multiple people to illustrate the different parts of the narrator's personality.



• Radio **** - Brilliant writing from Al Smith, it has his delicate but meaningful style. Acted with great emotion too.



• Lies Have Been Told ** - Very well acted - but not great writing - I found this a little tedious to watch, especially the ending part. And they skipped over the interesting bit!



• Amateur Transplants **** (Comedy) - We knew exactly what we were going to get, and we certainly got it. You either love it or you hate it, and we loved it.

Saturday

• Honk! **** (Musical) - An engaging, light story, just what we needed with all the serious feature. And I lurrrrved the costumes, especially the cat ;-)



• Levelland ***** - I really liked this story, about a place gone crazy with oil shortage - sort of half way to Mad Max. Intense acting and good writing, although some of the dialogue was a little hard to follow.



• Talk Radio *** - I'm not entirely sure why, but I really didn't enjoy this. Essentially it's presented "live" as an American talk radio show, with various crazy people calling up. The lead actor was convincing. But I couldn't get into it at all.



• The Trial **** - A difficult play ably and effectively performed by a university group, with flawless choreography in an intimate setting.



• Normal ***** - This is intensely disturbing and painful to watch. Excellent setting and acting though. Gripping from start to finish. I needed a drink to steady my nerves after this one. Serious dramatic theatre at its absolute best.

Sunday

• Brick Walls ** - This could have been so great, but it could and should have had a cleverer - or deeper - script.
  
  
• Seven Letters For Love **** - Short and very sweet. Impossible not to smile broadly throughout.

It was nice to be up in Edinburgh again, even if the weather didn't play ball this year - heavy rain on Friday, pea-souper on the way home on Saturday - and even if we didn't have much "spare" time to do any non-Fringe attractions. Maybe next year...

Back in Edinburgh with gagravarr and zihuatenejo in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, after seeing 10 shows last year in a whirlwind 48 hours. This year, we have given ourselves an extra day, so we can be a little more relaxed.

Yesterday I headed into Edinburgh to meet up with the aforementioned two, who had got the overnight sleeper train from London and already seen "Breakfast with Shakespeare" by the time I arrived. We went to see "The Other People" **** before lunch, which was short and simple but excellent and amusing, in a small venue on North Bridge. We then grabbed lunch and headed over to The Pleasance to see a BBC recording of "The Now Show" ***** with Steve Punt and guest Rory Bremner, amongst others. The show was fast paced, very topical of course and very funny. After that we headed across to Murrayfield to pick up our hire car, took a whole hour (!) to escape Edinburgh's rush hour and head back to my place in East Lothian - stopping on the way for a quick look at Crichton Castle.

In the evening there was a serious amount of poring over fringe programmes, show review websites and show timings, to try and fit in as much as possible over the next 2.5 days. We settled on five things today and five things tomorrow, with 1-2 on Sunday. Unfortunately, when we came to book many of the shows, they were sold out - as tends to happen when you pick very highly rated shows. So, we'll fill in the gaps as we go along. Some of the shows we are confirmed to see over the next couple of days are: Girl Blog from Iraq, Talk Radio, Leveland, Normal, Radio (from the writer of the acclaimed Enola) and Amateur Transplants (who were brilliant last year, we couldn't help but see them again this year.)

These spoof clips showing how various national media might have reported the Zidane/Materazzi world cup "incident", are going around the net - if you haven't seen them, here they are:


As seen by the Germans:



As seen by the French:



As seen by the Italians:



As seen by the Americans:



(unknown source.)

I feel much older suddenly - my younger brother graduated today.

Now that I've decided that I'm moving in a few months, I'm suddenly noticing more and more just how noisy this place is. New people moved into the flat upstairs while I was away, and keep practicing singing/piano playing, the sound of which goes right through the floorboards. The taxis in the street are as noisy as ever and the speedbumps only cause them to gun their engines more. The police still scream up the street, northwards, nearly every night. (Why couldn't they build their police station closer to the troublespots?) The youth swear and clatter around at 2am on the weekends.

I don't want to sound older than I am - I'm always up for a good time. I like living in the middle of a vibrant, interesting city, but I also like to be able to step away from the noise. Which was why it was so nice getting away last week to a country half the size of England, with 1/20th of the population...

To all those ar*eholes still tooting their horns on my street and setting off fireworks this late this evening, shut up and get a grip. It's only a football match.

Time for an unscientific predictor (level scores imply a penalty-shootout win):


Second round:
Germany 2-0 Sweden [update - 2-0!]
Argentina 3-1 Mexico [update - 2-1]
England 2-1 Ecuador
Portugal 2-2 Holland
Italy 0-1 Australia
Switzerland 1-0 Ukraine
Brazil 3-0 Ghana
Spain 1-0 France


Quarter finals:
Germany 2-2 Argentina
Australia 1-0 Switzerland
England 0-0 Holland
Brazil 4-2 Spain


Semifinals:
Argentina 4-1 Australia
Brazil 1-0 England


Third-place:
Australia 1-3 England


Finals:
Argentina 3-2 Brazil


(The BBC's excellent predictor made making this list much easier.)

My office sweepstakes were on CIV and Mexico, so not looking too good.

It looks like I'll almost definitely be moving on from my studio flat here in Barnsbury, this Autumn. I've really liked it here, it's close to work, the area is very nice, and there's lots of friendly old-fashioned pubs, gastropubs and restaurants. But I've been in my slightly run-down studio flat for two years and it's time for a change of scenery.

Went to Thorpe Park with a couple of friends yesterday, as a very late birthday trip. I've been meaning to go for a while, since the brand new "Stealth" ride opened earlier this year. We arrived before opening time, bought "Fasttrack" queue-skipping tickets, and ran to the first ride, getting on Stealth with no queue!

• Stealth - 0-80mph in 2.3 seconds. Wow! Although it's over before you blink.
  
• Detonator - Very short plunge-tower. Nice views from the top!
  
• Rush - Nice, although essentially just a big swing.
  
• Vortex - This swing/rotator is impressive.
  
• No Way Out - Completely rubbish. Rolls around slowly and shakes you a bit.
  
• Tidal Wave - A classic, you always get wetter than you think you will!
  
• Loggers Leap - You don't really get wet on this one, and it was smaller than I remembered it.
  
• Colossus - Nice and long, but not quite as intense as Stealth or Nemesis Inferno.
  
• Colossus (again)
  
• Nemesis Inferno - My favourite coaster. We went on the front. As you hang down, it's very difficult to see where you are going next!
  
• Nemesis Inferno (again)
  
• Slammer - This was definitely the scariest ride, with its "head rush" feeling, and falling face down from 100ft.
  
• Rumba Rapids - A bit too tame.
  
• Zodiac - Pretty tame.
  
• Quantum - Suprisingly large G-forces on this ride, more exciting than it looks.
  
• Colossus (again!)
  
• Detonator (again)

Almost a perfect day, marred only by Slammer breaking down in front of us (it does this a lot, apparently) and Samurai also being broken for much of the day. Samurai was my favourite flat ride from last time.

It was such an intense day that I had some problems getting to sleep that night - every time I closed my eyes, I "replayed" some of the rides, a really intense feeling that wakes you straight up again!

I much prefer Thorpe Park to Alton Towers - it has almost as many world-class rides, the staff are friendlier, there's less overt advertising in the park, very little litter on the ground, and it's a lot closer to home.

In case you were wondering...

My website is at oobrien.com and I've got a blog there. I currently only use my LJ account to read friended posts. Still, I might start writing here some day.

The avatar is from here.

Excellent,
Ollie