Earth, SUNN O))) and Boris

Last year Aquarius Records had an April Fools joke where they listed a CD by EARTH, SUNN O))) and BORIS (respectively the originators, prime exponents and Japanese version of drone/sludge/metal).

a single track, 11 minutes long, one chord, an E to be exact, with each band handling one of the notes in the chord. Sunn 0))) deftly tackle the G, as if it were a blackened, dying sunn. Earth spews forth the B, with as much vitriol as they can muster. And of course Boris offer up a soul crushing E to complete what is quite possibly the heaviest chord ever recorded. EVER!

Now SUNN O))) & BORIS have a joint new CD called Altar, and one track features Dylan Carlson of Earth. So who is the April Fool now? Grace wanted a dollar in change to buy plastic toys so I popped into Aquarius Records while she was at her piano lesson and bought it.

It takes software to really screw up

I've been reading about the 1 year delay in the Airbus A380 which has been attributed to wiring problems. I just didn't understand how wiring problems could cause such a large schedule slip. Surely software must have been involved in any modern project failure? Now however I have found out that the problem is software related, and I am happy. Airbus Hamburg and Airbus Toulouse were using different versions of CAD software which had incompatible file formats.

A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat." The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect." The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?

Kraftwerk doing Autobahn on Tomorrow's World in 1975

The sound they get here is just amazing.

Next year, Kraftwerk hope to eliminate the keyboards altogether, and build jackets with electronic lapels, which can be played by touch.

The Troy Tate Sessions

Go to rbally to get the Troy Tate sessions, the unreleased early version of the first album by The Smiths. It sounds rougher but more muscular.

Earthsea

It must be tough to be the son of a famous father. Goro Miyazaki is the son of Hayao Miyazaki . So he decides to be an animator, isn't that rather inviting comparisons? In the world of rock there are plenty of examples of famous children who are basically not as good as their parents. So next Goro decides to animate the Earthsea novels. These books are total classics which other people have already tried unsuccessfully to film. Next Goro decides he will change the story. Oh dear.

Very Silly Battle of The Bands

Album covers in animated battle. Music by Andrew Sherman and Judson Crane, but, alas it is not me.

How do we judge when to stop eating?

Brian Wansink has a lab where he tests how people decide how much to eat.

Dr. Wansink is particularly proud of his bottomless soup bowl, which he and some undergraduates devised with insulated tubing, plastic dinnerware and a pot of hot tomato soup rigged to keep the bowl about half full. The idea was to test which would make people stop eating: visual cues, or a feeling of fullness.

People using normal soup bowls ate about nine ounces. The typical bottomless soup bowl diner ate 15 ounces. Some of those ate more than a quart, and didn’t stop until the 20-minute experiment was over. When asked to estimate how many calories they had consumed, both groups thought they had eaten about the same amount, and 113 fewer calories on average than they actually had.

Just now I didn't eat a cookie biscuit in the work kitchen because the packet was in a plastic bag. When I moved to the US I was very confused by those offers where you get a quart of coke for only 20 cents more. According to the article a lot of companies are now trying to use Dr. Wansink's ideas for good, not evil (because it's better for them in the long run).

North Korea

It is not my birthday

Thanks to wikipedia I can examine all those people who share my birthday. The one I am most excited to learn is Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, familiar to all dedicated Kingmaker players as Neeeev-illle. He was in fact the Kingmaker (and therefore a treacherous bastard).

Other cool/cute people (and things) who share my birthday are:

• Terry Gilliam
• Billie Jean King
• The White Album
• Aston "Family Man" Barrett
• Tina Weymouth
• Jamie Lee Curtis
• Karen O
• Scarlett Johansson

Should you get paid more for long service?

The European court of justice ruled that employers cannot lawfully pay some workers much higher salaries than others solely on the ground of long service.

The decision will have a potentially huge impact on public sector employers, including the civil service, where wide differentials based on length of service are more common than in the private sector.

In the US Walmart is trying to avoid having to pay extra to employees with a long service record by converting more of its workers to part-time work.

These moves have been unfolding in the year since Wal-Mart’s top human resources official sent the company’s board a confidential memo stating, with evident concern, that experienced employees were paid considerably more than workers with just one year on the job, while being no more productive.

Scissor Sisters @ Warfield 29 Sep 2006

This was quite a show. They really try hard to entertain. Jake is a real showman. Ana is not a very good singer, though she is pretty funny. They said they liked being in San Francisco and I believed them. The audience liked them, though it may have liked itself even more.

The next day I was thinking about Scissor Sisters when some very average Abba album track came on the iPod. It was a better song than most (but not all) of Scissor Sisters songs. It may seem unfair to compare then with such a classic group, but they are bursting with talent, and do have the potential to rise pretty high.

Katamari in San Francisco

I still haven't played Katamari but here is an advert featuring it in San Francisco. They do jump around the city a bit, but who cares when the result is this good?