New signing for Manchester United

Nelson Mandela will wear the squad number 88.

Muse, San Francisco Design Center Concourse, 18-July-2006

During the boom years in the Bay Area the big software companies competed to see who could have the biggest Christmas Holiday party. Each year the parties got bigger and bigger. The high point was when Sybase hired Chris Isaak to play at their party at the San Francisco Design Center. I was there and it was a lot of fun. So when I noticed that Muse were playing at the San Francisco Design Center I assumed it was going to be a similarly intimate show. Actually the gig was in the Concourse at San Francisco Design Center which is a different area, it is 125,000 square feet of converted railway station. Furthermore it is shaped like a railway station, long and thin.

San Francisco has some fantastic small (Bottom of the Hill, capacity 300) and medium sized venues (Fillmore, capacity 1,200), but it lacks a larger venue. It looks to me as if the Concourse must hold 5,000 or so, standing (it looks as big as Brixton Academy). The sound isn’t great. The long thin shape is not ideal and it makes it harder to get near the front. As a result I was further away from the stage than I like to be. This did however enable me to enjoy the light show.

Yes, Muse are a big band that has a light show. Why is that bad exactly? Well at the very least it usually means that the band is too far away. Unfortunately Muse also seem to use it to tell you when the really exciting guitar solos are so that you know when to jump up and down. At these points blinding lights are turned on the crowd, who oblige by jumping up and down. Some of the audience made devil horns in an apparently unironic way. The audience is young, mostly White or Asian, and they all have nice teeth.

Muse are a strange band. They are a three piece, though they are now joined on stage by a fourth assistant, although he is at the back and wearing black so you can’t see him. However there is something funny about their live sound. It seemed to me that a lot of the synthesizer parts were pre-recorded (or triggered automatically). And the bass parts were either not being played by the bassist (they sounded synthesized) or are just doubled by the bassist.

The star of the show is Matthew Bellamy who plays guitar and keyboards and sings. I think he fancies he is Freddie Mercury (at one point he plays a conspicuous white piano) but his love of Rachmaninoff makes him seem more like Rick Wakeman to me. The band’s CD covers are by Storm Thorgerson but that doesn’t make them Pink Floyd either.

So did I have a miserable time? Really, Muse are not that unpleasant. They do make a great noise. Some of their songs are memorable. And Matthew Bellamy is entertaining to watch.

My general irritation was compounded by my BART trip home which somehow took 55 minutes to go four stops.

Bad news for Windows programmers

Microsoft bought Sysinternals. I have used Sysinternals tools over and over again to solve problems. I am sure both Microsoft and the Sysinternals people want to preserve the tools. However it is much harder to do this sort of thing from inside a big tent. Will some tool be delayed or removed becasue it is not I18N ready or accessible? Sorry Sysinternals guys, but this is bad news.

Need to Know

Why do flight attendents need to say stuff like "I need you to go ahead and put your seat backs in the upright position for me."?

Need to does more than merely soften the blow of an order. Its genius, and the true source of its popularity, lies in the way it psychologizes directives.

So now when someone asks "why do you need to blog every day?" you'll know what's going on.

Thunderbirds are go

The greatest title sequence ever?

I am not a hoopy frood

You're not a hoopy frood

You thought you were really with it and in with your younger colleagues but they just laugh at you because you can't hear beyond this! The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 14.1kHz

Take the mosquito ringtones hearing test

Invasion of the Goths

The new Jameel gallery of Islamic art at the V&A

I was in London too late to visit the new Jameel gallery of Islamic art at the V&A. The star attraction is the Ardabil carpet that has hung on the wall since it was bought (at the urging of William Morris) in 1893. And how do you conserve a 16th century Perisan carpet? One thing you do is send it

to Birmingham where it was washed outside on a specially constructed ramp using local water which comes directly from the Welsh mountains and is low in mineral and chlorine content.

You can also read about the Geometry of the Ardabil Carpet.

The Suez Crisis

The Suez crisis was 50 years ago. The Guardian has an interesting series of articles. The first article outlines what happened and illustrates how nation states act like squabbling children. The second article is about how some UK newspapers (including the Guardian) were critical of the war. There is an amusing story of how a reporter got proof that the French were colluding with the Isrealis. The next article is about how France, Israel and Britain colluded and tried to keep it a secret. In the fourth article we see how nations behaved like hurt children after the crisis, with the UK turning towards the US and France turning away. Finally the unresolved mess that remains.