I’m not in the slightest bit interested in the iPad. It vaguely sparks my interest in the potential for eBooks and being able to read on something bigger than an iPhone screen, but apart from that, really, what-ever. Anyway, so far I’ve yet to see one in the wild, if I discount one brought over here by an American acquaintance who clearly has no issue with looking like a nerd.  Really, would anybody here down South use one on a train ? I doubt it. Even iPhones are, well, a bit uncool.

There isn’t even anything else to not be interested in. 

We had liquor ... and noise.

Wazzamba is a virtual world with a twist: it includes built in games which allow you to build up a score to compete for real world travel prizes. Every week, we award 4 prizes. So far we’ve given away quality, all expenses paid trips to China, New York, Las Vegas and San Diego. Forthcoming destinations include Spain, Rome and Australia. And actually winners can select an alternative if they don’t like the headline.

The virtual world itself so far has 6 “cities”, each sub-divided into areas, for example Sunset Strip in LA (you can see me there on the left with my friend Marilyn). And we’re growing.

You can also find various adventures, or quests, set for you by NPCs (non-playing characters) usually gifted with dreadfully punning names, courtesy of my unhinged colleagues Tim & Sven.

So how do we make any money out of this ? Well the idea is you pay a subscription to take part, at “silver” or “gold” level. The higher the level, the higher the number and value of prizes you qualify for. But you can play - and win - for absolutely nothing. Zero, free, peanuts. Although we’d be terribly grateful if you didn’t.

My part in all this in theory involves building up a mobile channel, from a mobile-enabled web site up to an iPhone application. But I’ve also ended quite heavily involved in building our Facebook applications and presence, as well as a blog built on Wordpress.

It’s early days yet and Wazzamba is not fully mature. But it’s certainly worth a few minutes of your time. My avatar there is called Ostakokur and has great dress sense. Don’t forget to say “hi” if we meet!

So I’m going to do it to. Probably for the first time ever: here is the music I’ve been most taken by this (last) year (well I started writing it in December. Honest).

Overall Winner: Thin Air by Peter Hammill

This is really a big surprise for me. I’ve been a Peter Hammill fan for somewhere near 20 years, but recently my interest has tailed off and I’ve found his newer releases unengaging. But this year’s Thin Air is really something else.  Right up there with Bob Dylan’s “Time Out Of Mind”, this is a hard hitting collection of songs full of dread, fear, unease and awareness that life is running out.  With a strong sub-theme of time running out for all of us, referring to 9/11 and the collapse of dreams, this is not exactly easy listening. The counterpoints of grace and beauty which Hammill has always brought to his best work make it is absolutely addictive. There isn’t a weak song on the CD. I doubt it will get much better than this.

Runner up #1: “Untitled #23” by The Church

I picked up Untitled #23 in San Francisco back in June. This is totally irrelevant. The Church have been going for ages, and honestly, like with Peter Hammill, I didn’t really expect them to surprise again. Well they did. Untitled #23 (it isn’t their 23rd album, but that’s The Church for you) is the culmination of a slow return to peak form which started a good few years back. It features some superb songs, like Pangaea and Deadman’s Hand, an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous finale, “Operetta”, and a good dose of typical weirdness (“On Angel Street”). I played Untitled #23 pretty much all some, and got hooked on Steve Kilbey’s freeform stream-of-whatever blog. It wore off a bit, but ... hey, time to listen again.

Runner up #2: “Here Come the Vikings” by Astrid Williamson

I don’t have a lot to add to what I wrote back in October, but a glance at my latest Last.fm statistics will show that it hasn’t worn off yet. For a taste of Astrid (unplugged) check out this video.

Runner up #3: “Me and Armini” by Emiliana Torrini

Actually “Me and Armini” was released in September 2008, but it didn’t really take off until later this year, helped along by “Jungle Drum” being a huge hit single in Germany. Emiliana Torrini is of mixed Icelandic and Italian descent, and you can’t do much better than that! (well ok, you could mix in a bit of Romanian). I was introduced to her music by an Icelandic friend a few years back, and it will always remind me of coffee overdoses and strange journeys. Torrini has not had the smoothest of rides through life, and this shows through in her music, which although often quirky and humorous, has a dark edge lying just beneath the surface.

Discovery of the year: My Brightest Diamond

Ok, so this isn’t music from anywhere 2009, but I discovered it this year, and listened to it obsessively, so as far as I’m concerned it belongs in this list.

My Brightest Diamond is essentially Shara Worden, a musician and singer with an eclectic range of influences and a unique warm, expressive voice and style. My Brightest Diamond is impossible to classify but inhabits a space where people like Jane Siberry and Kate Bush might hang out. Songs like “Golden Star” and “Gone Away” from “Bring me the workhorse” or “Ice and the storm” and “Bass Player” from “A Thousand Shark’s Teeth” can stay on auto-repeat all afternoon as far as I’m concerned.

And that’s quite enough lists for now.

I recommend reading the article.

But don’t read the comments. Please don’t read the comments. Not unless you want to feel like you immersed in a nauseating slime that will never wash off. The Independent which normally appeals to a readership which doesn’t drag its knuckles along the ground, but you’d never know it here. The (sadly typical) display of ignorance and denial fueled by petty greed and bigotry is more than enough to make me feel that wiping out the human species, by and large, will be a very positive step for the Universe.

What we have hear is pure, unadulterated democracy in action. Democracy actual implies that the will of the majority (with, possibly, some degree of weighting) carries the day. This isn’t at all what the common perception is. When people say something is “undemocratic”, they usually mean “it’s NOT FAIR!” or it is “contrary to the policies of the US of America”. Now they have a clear illustration that democracy doesn’t necessarily produce the result they believe should have happened, or they want. Another example is the fair, democratic election of Hamas in the Palestinian State.

So, yes, it probably isn’t fair to deny Muslims in Switzerland the outward expression of their faith. But it is democratic. Very democratic.

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” - Winston Churchill.

I thought her 2006 CD, “Day of the Lone Wolf” had to be her masterpiece. Songs like “True Romance” and “Heaven Only Knows” could hardly be surpassed, and if it lacked the commercial edges of her first two releases, well as far as I’m concerned, so much the better.

But earlier this year, she released “Here come the Vikings”, the title maybe alluding to her Orkney background. And, well, I think it might actually be better than “Lone Wolf”, albeit quite different. This latest collection of songs has a much more upbeat feel, and a more commercial sound, but what it gains over her earlier works is a really strong coherence and consistency. It manages to combine the more pop-oriented (well, relatively speaking) approach of “Boy For You” and “Astrid” with the deeply personal feel of “Lone Wolf”, and the results are outstanding. Astrid’s song writing just keeps getting better - I understand she participates in song writing workshops, which should be quite an experience. It kicks off with the very strong, upbeat “Store” (a complete reversal from Lone Wolf’s “Siamese”) and just keeps going.  Highlights, for me, include “Crashing Minis” and “Eve”, and the closing track, “The Stars Are Beautiful”, which vaguely reminds me of the Goya Dress song “The Maritime Waltz”

Sadly, there’s no way that “Here come the Vikings” is going to be heard by anywhere near as many people as it should be, but if you’re one of those that do, prepare to be captivated.

iTunes link

No, I don’t usually accept friends requests. And I’ve actually turned off almost all visibilty settings now.

I’m on Facebook because I need to be purely from a professional point of view, as my job includes specifying how our application interfaces with sites and services like Facebook. However this doesn’t mean that I like Facebook. In fact I find it a trivial, trite and ultimately very depressing way of wasting time.

To be brutally frank (and with some exceptions), if I didn’t stay in touch with somebody, it is because I (or they) had no further interest in doing so. If I didn’t have much to do with you 27 million years ago at University, or if we we just casually connected, why would I want to catch up with you now ? I don’t, and probably you don’t, really, either. So let’s just get on with our real world lives and let the past be the past.

Facebook is in any case just a noise generating mess. I mean really, do I look like I care if you’ve just eaten a virtual cake or ploughed an imaginary field (from somebody else’s imagination, at that). Well i’m sorry, but I don’t.

If anybody wants to get in touch with me, then Google will find me here easily enough. If I’m not worth the effort a few lines of email, then don’t bother. But if I am, then I’ll be happy to answer.

The only social networks I actively participate in are Linked In, for what it’s worth, and Flickr. Oh, and the real world. Which includes email.

One of several acts which really knocked me sideways was Dodó. Dodó is a trio, composed of Ewa Wikström from Sweden, and Ivo Saint and Maru Di Pace from Argentina, and based in Barcelona.  It’s easy to say, but their music honestly sounds like practically nothing else I’ve ever heard. Billed as “immaginary folk music suspended between the warm nostalgia of South America and the introversion of Swedish winters” , their songs are bursts intricately arranged of melody, sudden lush orchestration, and as many unexpected twists and turns as old Barcelona. Tying all this together is Eva Wikström’s gorgeous voice, singing sometimes in English, sometimes Swedish, sometimes (I think) Catalan.  The only other artist I can think of who Dodó sort of remind me of is Emma Townshend, who released one, solitary, weird and wonderful CD back in the 90s. But that’s just me.

They’ve recently released their first, self-titled CD. And it’s on iTunes. The amazing thing is that live (with two guest musicians) they manage to recreate the same magic as in the recordings.

Dodó deserve to be huge. Or at the very least a cult hit.

I should also add that the fact that such a festival can work, and work very well, in a tourist seaside town in summer, speaks volumes of the open mindedness towards music so often shown by the Italian people. The atmosphere was just magical.

I would be very grateful for any feedback on bugs or any other issue - my next task is to try to nail down the remaining glitches in the comment system, but that is always tricky.

And on the photography side, the gallery design is actually pretty much finished. The problem now is selecting the content!

Checking out some shortcuts, I came across this:

Now, it may or may not be any good. And it least it hasn’t got Tim O’Reilly written on the front. But really: 312 pages to talk about a service which lets you send 140 character messages ?  As Sven remarked, it must use a really big font.

(Note: I see the author has anticipated this sort of smartass comment. Well ok, I’ll read it. And if I like it I’ll write a nice review)

There’s

nothing

like it

on the planet.

Makes me look forward to being 54

The comment was perhaps partially deserved, as Brook’s music did come across as a little synthetic and antiseptic in live performance.  But the same thing could not be said of the first solo, non soundtrack releases he has released in over 10 years, RockPaperScissors (2006) and its reworked version with producer / remixer James Hood, Bellcurve (2007).  Both are full of beautiful, captivating and incredibly esoteric atmospheres, bringing together Brook with collaborators such as Lisa Germano (on the gorgeous “Want”), Paul Buchanan (of The Blue Nile), and a Bugarian choir and orchestra, not to mention integrating a fantastic reading of Dylan Thomas by Richard Burton.

I’m really not sure which version I prefer, but both are currently on auto-rotation and very highly recommended.

A full collaboration between Michael Brook, James Hood and Lisa Germano would be heaven…

I’m not hiding from anybody. My email address is easy enough to find, and this website should give you a good indication of the value of my thoughts…

Unfortunately I need to keep an eye on Facebook for professional reasons, but please don’t try to engage with me there. You’ll be wasting your time.

The first one I tried was the radical new RSS reader, Times.  Times is a complete departure on the RSS reader paradigm. It presents pages, where feeds can be assembled in such a way as to look like a newspaper page. Here, for example, is a page with 3 feeds from Iceland:

Pretty, isn’t it ?

Unfortunately, that’s about all it is.  At a very basic level, Times is a nice idea. However, the user interface, in my opinion, crosses the boundary between inventive and non-standard too far. The process for managing feeds becomes tedious very quickly. The gratuitous “inner pages” on the left margin of the window might be ok if they were somehow functional, but they’re not.  The page idea would be great if the layout could be customised, but apart from some minor scope for resizing areas, it can’t be.

Page content (from feeds that is) is retrieved, where possible, but there is no way to read or respond to comments without exiting to the default web browser.

And, sadly, it is also fairly sluggish and unstable.

So, nice try, but no banana. For a moment it makes NetNewsWire look pretty tired, but the huge imbalance of style over functionality ends up making it look like one of those applications that give Macs a bad name.

(Oh yeah, obviously, it’s Mac only)

I suppose I should actually write something to satisfy my (slowly) growing audience, but what exactly ? Well, at least it gives me something to blog about. Maybe if I twitter about my blog I’ll solve both problems. Then I can blog about it!

It would be nice if you could send a short message when you start following someone, to say “hi”, and say why you’re following them…