Nonstop to Tokyo [.co.uk]

Pizza Cut Five

2008-05-11T22:39:00.000+01:00

No, this isn't a typo, but the name of a clothes brand in Taipei. They've taken a visual cue from Pizzicato Five's styling (as well as a sizeable chunk of their name!), and morphed it into a pizza-delivery style clothes shop, with clothes in chiller cabinets and pizza boxes, and even a scooter delivery service .... See the following:

Main Page:
http://www.pizzacutfive.com/

Pizzicato Five designs:
http://www.pizzacutfive.com/web/index.php?target=series.php&c_sn=1&s_sn=1

Taipei Times newspaper article (in English):
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2008/01/31/2003399704

Domestic goddess

2008-04-27T16:47:00.003+01:00

Well, I'm trying to be a bit better with food these days .... when Y cooks he always makes stuff from scratch, whereas I've historically been quite a consumer of pre-prepared food. Nowadays I'm trying to eat a bit healthier, eg: organic food, no E-numbers, etc etc, so I thought that if I'm going to start getting fussy in my old age I should really try making the stuff myself sometimes.

One of my first attempts is to make muffins at home rather than buying them in the supermarket, as even the more expensive 'quality' muffins have preservatives and stuff in them. So, here is a picture of my first attempt, some choc-chip vanilla muffins I made a couple of weeks ago. They were slightly over-cooked, so they were a bit harder than I would I have liked, but they were still tasty, and I'm about to try another recipe this evening. Fingers crossed!

Another year ....

2008-04-22T23:57:00.003+01:00

Gosh. 31. Doesn't time fly?! I know I'm getting older because I'm getting fatter. I'm hoping that a Wii Fit will miraculously solve that, and return me to my previous slender form .... We shall see!

Suga suga ...

2008-03-28T00:01:00.003Z

The Sugababes are on a bit of a roll at the moment, I think - their last few singles have all been pretty fab, and their videos have all been quite pretty too .... Here's the most recent:

Meigui, megui, wo ai ni

2008-03-24T23:52:00.009Z

I've been obsessed with a song recently. Anyone who's watched the Peter Greenaway film The Pillow Book should remember this song, as it recurs several times throughout the film. It's 'Rose Rose, I Love You' (Or 'Meigui, Meigui, Wo Ai Ni' to give it its correct title), by Yao Lee from 1940.

I first downloaded this song years ago on the original Napster (RIP), but unfortunately I lost the file when my housemate's PC crashed. For years I intended to re-downloaded it but never got round to it - until now!

I don't know why exactly I'm so hooked on it ... I'm a sucker for a simple but catchy melody, and I guess the association with the film probably helps. Interestingly, I was talking to Y about this song, and just from me humming one line of it (with no words, because I didn't know what they were at the time) he guessed it straight away - apparently it's a very famous song if you're Chinese, and I did a bit of research and there were even a few Western versions of it apparently, notably by Frankie Lane and Petula Clark.

Anyway, here is the song, in all its mono glory: Rose, Rose, I Love You [M4A, 2.4MB]. Enjoy!

(PS: If it downloads as a .txt file, just delete the .txt part, which should leave the filename as rose.m4a. I'm not sure why it does this, it's a bit annoying ...)

Addicted!

2008-02-10T23:22:00.000Z

Yes, it's true, I do have an addiction: Special K! It's not because I'm trying to be healthy or anything, I just love it! My parents used to eat it when I was young, and I remember liking it as a boy, but then they stopped eating it and for some reason I never decided to try it again when I was older - until now, at the age of 30! .... My favourite flavour is the Purple Berries I think. It's just yummy!!

Mind you, apparently it has a much higher sugar content than it used to, which is a bit naughty, and although it's low in fat it does have a surprisingly high sugar content. I was eating some Coco Pops Mega Munchers earlier, as you do, and I was quite shocked to find that they have approximately 34g of sugar per 100g of product. No wonder kids are so fat these days! But even my beloved Special K isn't amazingly better; admittedly I'm not eating a very healthy variety at the moment - Special K Bliss (Creamy Berry Crunch), which has approx 23g sugar per 100g product. So despite the fact that it advertises itself as "Less than 3% fat," it still loads you up with sugars which will turn to fat unless you exercise like a maniac. Which I don't.

Another blast from the past I've been into recently is the first Buggles album, "The Age of Plastic." Yes, they really were more than just a one-hit-wonder with Video Killed The Radio Star; they actually had two whole albums as a group, of which I own the first. I bought it in the online-equivalent of a bargain bin, on the strength of that one song, but also because I'd read some very positive reviews about it, and I was really pleasantly surprised with it. It's by no means the best album ever, but it has some great 'tunes' on it, and it's quite creative. I love the deliberate retro-futurism of some of the tracks (a la Fritz Lang's classic film Metropolis), including one of my favourites, which I offer to you here: Johnny On The Monorail [AAC, 6.4MB]. Enjoy :-)

Blogger's block

2008-02-05T00:11:00.000Z

It's weird, throughout the day I think of tonnes of things that I'd like to blog about, but by the time I get home I don't have the mental energy necessary to blog, which sounds really dumb I know, but I just can't bring myself to do it. And then at weekends I'm normally doing stuff, and it's hard enough to keep on top of my emails sometimes yet alone do anything else on the computer. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in email, and it's so tempting to just leave it, but then you end up having to wade through even more emails when you do finally go back to it.

In some ways I'd like to cancel all of my email accounts and create a brand new one, and start again with all the gazillions of subscriptions and memberships and groups etc that one signs up to over the years ..... I kind of used to do this when I changed ISPs, back in the days of dial-up internet connections, but for years now I've have a Yahoo and a Hotmail account which are my joint main email accounts, and they'll never expire ....

I've been trying to have a bit of a purge, and unsubscribe from mailing lists that I don't read, or don't really value that much, but that's only the tip of iceberg ....

Breeders - new album and tour!

2008-01-06T00:30:00.000Z

Well, I had a surprise today - not only did I discover that The Breeders, the band I credit with getting into 'alternative' rock, are playing a gig in London on 16th April this year (it's already sold out though), but they've got a new album out too, their first album for 6 years!! It's going to be called Mountain Battles, and it's out on 7th April in the UK and 8th April in the US. Arghhhh!! I'm so excited!!!! Apparently a track has been uploaded here, although I haven't been able to listen to it yet, I'll definitely do that soon though.

More details:

www.noaloha.com/breeders/
www.4ad.com/breeders/
See Tickets

Yay!!! I just hope I can get tickets to see them in April .... they rock live!!

Happy new year!

2008-01-03T21:43:00.000Z

Y and I took these photos today, it was quite good fun, although surprisingly tiring waving a torch around in the dark! I've got no resolutions for this year, as I'm fed up with breaking them every year :-( Hope everyone has a good year.

By the way, if anyone missed the Dr Who Christmas special, you can watch it on the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b008lyb2.shtml. It was quite enjoyable actually, although I still think Dr Who has been dumbed down a lot since the good old days. Oh, the iPlayer may be restricted to UK residents though .... sorry.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-24T00:37:00.000Z

I know, I haven't posted anything in ages. It's partly because of my recently-arrived Wii .... Although I've only had a working Wii for about a week (my first one was duff, so I had to get a refund and buy a second one), I do love it, although I can see how the novelty will wear off after a while. I've got lots of party games at the moment, so I want to get some games like Zelda and Mario Galaxy so that I've got something to get my teeth stuck into.

Anyway, as my Christmas gift to you all, I present a Christmas song from the lovely Raveonettes: The Christmas Song, it's actually quite a beautiful song, and it's become one of my favourite Christmas tunes on my iPod. It's in AAC/M4A format, so apologies to anyone who doesn't like that. [NB: If for some reason it downloads as a text file, just remove the ".txt" part and it should play fine ... I'm not sure why that's happened.]

Well, Merry Christmas everyone, and a prosperous new year :-) Finally, here's a picture of me in a subway in Elephant & Castle in London to leave you with:

Wii !!

2007-12-10T22:30:00.000Z

I am hopefully soon to be the proud owner of a Nintendo Wii!! It's in the post .... I'm VERY excited :-)

Old skool ....

2007-11-23T11:58:00.000Z

If anyone enjoysa bit of history, you can have a bit of fun with this interactive 3D map of London from approx 1550! It's fascinating if you know modern London as you can recognise a suprising amount of it on this almost 500-year-old map. Even if you don't it's still a very well-illustrated glimpse into historical London:

Map of Early Modern London

The 'experimental' version of the map is the best, as you can drag it around and zoom in etc like on Google Maps (and others).

"Mon bel ami, I'm in love with you"

2007-11-12T19:05:00.000Z

Oh man, I LOVE Stereo Total so much ..... I saw them play on Wednesday, in a small club on Oxford Street, and had a fab time, although I was stood behind some quite large men so couldn't always see everything that was happening!!

Stereo Total are one of those bands that just really excite me, for so many reasons:

I love anything international, especially European, and so they tick several boxes there - French, German, English, with a few other languages and influences thrown in for good measure.

I've said this before, but I love lo-fi DIY stuff, although not anything lo-fi - it has to be a bit good!!

I love stuff that comes across as disposable chewing-gum music, but actually has a hidden depth or multiple layers that only become apparent after repeated listening.

I love a good musical hook, and although some Stereo Total songs do lack this, many have some great hooks which I could happily listen to for hours on end.

Unfortunately, I can't share any tracks with you, because I don't have my own internet connection; however, you can listen to some of their tracks on their MySpace page, or on YouTube.

Also, if like me you're a fan, then you should definitely check out the official Stereo Total website, as it has loads of interesting stuff, including insights into all their albums and pretty much every single track, and full lyrics, including many translations into English. They haven't got Paris/Berlin lyrics yet, but I can wait! Enjoy :-)

Moved!

2007-11-10T10:59:00.001Z

Aiya, we moved a couple of weeks ago and I've had no internet access since then :-( I don't have internet access at work, so I've been relying on the local library, so I don't have much time for blogging unfortunately.

We're now south of the river, in the lovely environs of Elephant and Castle .... hmm. It's quite rough around the edges, but so far we haven't had any problems. The flat is great, I can walk to work in less than half an hour and central London is minutes away. Hooray!

Anyway, I will hopefully be able to blog properly again soon. Hope everyone is well :-)

Beached

2007-10-14T03:04:00.000+01:00

I little while back, Y and I went to a beach near Weston-Super-Mare, on the coast of Somerset, with my Mum and sister. It was quite bizarre, because almost as soon as we stepped foot on the beach, this fog started to roll in, and completely enveloped us; it was pretty eery, it came in so fast. Whenever I see fog on a beach I always think of the Dr Who episode The Curse Of Fenric. But anyway, before that point, we managed to get a few pics in. Here's a small sample:

That last picture is pretty much a rip-off of Matty's patented pose, so I'm guessing there might be some royalty payments due unless he's feeling lenient today!! By the way, in case you're wondering where I got the super-cool shades from, they're these weird sunglasses that my Mum uses when she's driving - they fit over your normal glasses, so you can take them on and off whenever needed without having to change glasses. So they're practical, cheap, and also very attractive! Bargain!!

So, it's been a while ....

2007-10-12T23:48:00.000+01:00

There's been a few things going on in my world recently, so I haven't been in such a blogging space. But, hopefully everything is pretty much settled down now, except that in 3 weeks or so Y and I will be moving, but that's in the future, I haven't got time to worry about that now!

I've always been one to jump on a handy bandwagon, and so I signed up for the environment-themed Blog Action Day, which is on the 15th October. Watch me completely forget to post anything now though .... :-(

So, in order to encourage me to post a bit more, I'm going to try to get into a routine of posting about certain themes, especially music. Today, I shall be talking about Talulah Gosh. If you're anything like me, sometimes, you can listen to a song or an album, and it just hooks you in completely. For me, the Talulah Gosh restrospective complilation 'Backwash' is one of those albums. Talulah Gosh just press all my buttons: beautiful melodies, catchy choruses, female harmonies, girl-punks, intelligent lyrics, a DIY sensibility, a diamond in the rough feel .... I could go on, but I won't.

Anyway, the album doesn't appear to be available on Amazon in the UK at the moment, which is a shame. However, it is available on eMusic, although you'll need to set up a subscription to enjoy the benefits of that (it's well worth it though).

A few little extras:

♫ MP3 of Talulah Gosh - Beatnik Boy
♫ MP3 of Talulah Gosh - In Love For The Very First Time
Interview: 3-part interview with Amelia Fletcher (lead singer)
Misc: Talulah Gosh resource site Utterly Utterly (this is a new find as of yesterday, I was so stoked when I found this - it even has some of their lyrics!).

If I can just convert one person to the joys of Talulah Gosh, then I'll die a slightly happier man. Thanks for listening :-)

Sorry about the lack of website recently :-(

2007-09-02T20:52:00.000+01:00

I've had issues - basically, people have been direct-linking to MP3s that I'd hosted, and towards the end of August it completely wiped out my monthly bandwidth allowance. The only options I had to get it back online was to either pay for more bandwidth, which I was a bit loathe to do obviously, or wait for the next month when my bandwidth allowance would refresh. I opted for the latter, and so I've just got back online now (as I've been away this weekend) and managed to get everything back in order. I've just deleted all the MP3s that I've posted previously, and any MP3s that I offer in future I'll have to take down after a short period to avoid this happening again. Thank you for your patience!!

(PS: I know, the picture doesn't have anything to do with this story. I just wanted to put a picture up!)

Associations

2007-08-19T15:47:00.000+01:00

You know how sometimes your mind associates two completely different things, either because of constant repetition or some major event in your life fuses them together? I was thinking about this the other day, and I came up with the following:

Early Depeche Mode = American Psycho: A friend of mine once made a me a mix cassette (remember those?!) of his favourite Depeche Mode tracks, and I listened to it constantly while I was on holiday one time. I prefered their earlier stuff (and still do actually), and so I played the first side of the cassette over and over; at the same time, I was also reading American Psycho, and the two have now become permanently linked in my brain; everytime I hum along to 'Everything Counts,' for example, as well as thinking about the pursuit of money I also find myself picturing dismembered hookers and tramps. Which is nice.

Blonde Redhead - '23' = A Tale Of Two Cities: Same thing here really - I bought the Blonde Redhead album '23' at the same time as I was getting into Charles Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities', and so most days during my commute I would be reading one and listening to the other. So now, whenever I hear a track from this album, I'm instantly taken back to 18th century France and thoughts of revolution, which is quite a strange place to be when listening to Blonde Redhead.

Houmous = Nana + Unemployment: When I first moved to London, I didn't have much money while I wasn't working, and so I would often buy a big tub of houmous and some cheap pitta bread, as this could last me for several days worth of lunch. Before I got a job I used to watch the Japanese animation Nana a lot, as well as doing a lot of job searching obviously. I didn't think I had this association in my brain until Saturday night when I ate some houmous and I was instantly transported to the mindset of an unemployed Nana addict. Which is a very strange mindset, let me tell you!

Stormtroopers in London!

2007-08-10T21:36:00.000+01:00

I was walking along the South Bank with my friend E yesterday, and we walked past the Star Wars exhibition at the County Hall building. E took this picture on her phone, it's such a cool picture that I thought I'd post it here!

More money than sense?

2007-07-31T09:36:00.000+01:00

I just saw this today: an iphone in a blender! I was quite surprise by the end result .... check it out!

Light reading

2007-07-18T21:58:00.000+01:00

The best thing about commuting by public transport is being able to read, and to listen to one's iPod during the journey. These books have been my reading material for the last couple of months. I haven't actually finished reading Michael Tolliver Lives yet, but I'm lovin' it, as they say, so I wanted to put it up here. Anyway, I would highly recommend any of these books to anyone who's looking for something new to read, or something old (but still very enjoyable), in the case of Dickens.

Adverts

2007-07-10T19:44:00.000+01:00

I don't think I've mentioned these in my blog since I added them ..... I decided a while back to add adverts to this blog. I don't really like having them, as I know that they distract from the main blog, and they take up screen space etc. But after a while I decided that since it costs me real money to host this blog on my own domain, I might as well try to recoup some (or ideally all) of that cost, as I'm not exactly rolling in money - and every little helps, as they say.

So, I'm sorry about the addition of adverts to this site, I know they detract from the purity of the blogging experience, but my aim is to make this blog cost neutral so that I don't feel so bad about only blogging once in a blue moon!!!

Thank you for your understanding ;-)

Dr Who

2007-07-04T23:55:00.000+01:00

So, some Dr Who news - Catherine Tate is going to be a full-time companion in the next season of Dr Who! I enjoyed her in the Christmas special, but she did annoy me a little .... I think she could be good though. My main concern, however, is that we get some more John Barrowman action ;-)

I still need to watch the last episode of the last series, as I missed it last weekend ... I'd better get searching for a torrent, I really need to know how it ended!!

Never talk to an evangelist about The Matrix ....

2007-06-26T22:22:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I reluctantly agreed to help my Mum out with something at her Church. While I was undertaking this sincere act of philanthropy, the (young, hippy) minister started talking to me, and the conversation went a little like this:

Him: "So, do you like The Matrix?"
Me (naively): "Huh? Um .... Yes, it's ok I guess. The first one was best."
Him: "So, which pill? The red pill or the blue pill?"
Me (for a minute thinking he was asking me about drugs): "Um, well .... Oh, it's been so long since I watched it .... I can't really remember what they were."
Him: "The red pill represents truth".
Me: "Oh, ok."

** Long pause **

Him: "It makes you think, doesn't it?"
Me: "Huh?"
Him: "The film raises some really interesting ideas."
Me (thinking about Agent Smith rather than the whole 'who/what is God' scenario): "I guess so, but it's just a science fiction film at the end of the day."
Him: "Yes, but it asks some pretty deep questions and it really makes you think though, doesn't it?"
Me: "Yeah, I guess so ...."

** Awkward silence **

Then luckily someone interrupted us. I was so pissed off with myself afterwards for not realising sooner where he was leading. I'm normally quite good at spotting when someone is driving a conversation in a certain direction, and I really should have anticipated it given the situation I was in, but because I was helping the guy out I genuinely thought that he'd have the decency not to try and save me from eternal damnation, the cheeky bugger.

Blast from the past

2007-06-05T23:20:00.000+01:00

I'd forgotten all about this: my iMood!

I think I must have dropped it from my template when I moved onto my own domain, as I haven't changed my mood since May 2003! I've clearly been excited for so long - no wonder I'm so fucking tired!! Anyway, I'm going to bring it back I think. It's what all the cool kids were putting on their Geocities pages, in the days before MySpace - but it's so retro now! Ah, good times. We were innocent back then.

In other news, it seems that somehow the general internet has become aware that I've been putting on weight - I've been getting a lot of spam recently about 'shedding unwanted pounds', and they're not talking about money either :-(