My sister Kate flew over from Australia to see my other sister Rachel and her new baby boy Alex. This being a rare opportunity for a family assemblage, my brother Mike and my mother separately came down from Scotland so we could then spend a couple of weeks visiting each other in various permutations—Mike and I taking the train to Guildford to visit Rachel, Alex and Andy and then with them visiting Kate (who in a last-minute change of plan was stopping over at the local hospital rather than her b&b), then back to Oxford for a day of recovery before an expedition to London to visit the British Museum and Forbidden Planet, the train again to Kent to visit my Dad and his family, and then a few days back at work before Kate, Rachel, Alex and Mum came to visit me here in Oxford.
The upshot of this is that I have been a bit tired and behind in my chores, and my Flickr photo stream is stuffed with pictures of my baby nephew, who I think is super cute but people not blood-related may feel less excited by.
His mother, my sister Rachel, looked tired and is under strict orders to take a lot of bed rest—but looking much better than she did a few days ago, Andy says. They are still trying to decide what name to give their son—though there is a slight lean in the direction of Alexander, or possibly Sikandar, the Indian equivalent.
Last night I slithered and slid over the snowy streets of Oxford to see Space Heroes of the People and two other very fine bands at the Wheatsheaf.
Picture Book are on tour from somewhere far away and were great fun. Space Heroes of the People have a new song since I last saw them, not to mention new remixes of some of the ones I am familiar with. And now with live vocals replacing the vocal samples, thanks to a new vocoder. The evening was rounded out with the band whose name I have temporarily forgotten (Rabbit Spleen Happenstance or somesuch) who played 1920s jazz while wearing hats.
As always I tried taking a few snaps of the band on stage, and as usual the dim lighting mostly defeated my little pocket camera. The guys in Picture Book in particular moved too rapidly for my camera to even believe they existed. Some people were taking photos with much more impressive-looking equipment, so there are probably better shots out there somewhere, linked to from the Last.fm entry for this gig.
Pleased to see also that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
cleanskies has made it and is now fit enough to be going out again. Afterwards oxfordslacker and I helped carry the instruments, on the strength of which I got a lift home, which was a relief—I had left my bike behind in the underground car park at work after wrenching my knee earlier in the week falling off because of the snow and ice.
Saturday I spent doing the usual catch-up of household chores like taking the compost thingy down to the bottom of the garden, which felt a little more adventurous than usual because the garden was all over refrozen snow and lit with brilliant sunshine. I remembered my big clunky boots this time and made cracks in the snowy crust on the way down. (If you click through to my Flickr photostream there are photos of some other mysterious footprints I found.) The big boots and the crunchy refrozen snow also allowed me to stomp confidently in to town to visit the comics shop.
- Music:Space Heroes of the People, ‘Barbie is Robot’, Motorway to Moscow e.p.
Damian Cugley, Alternative Press Fair, Euston, Sunday 1st February 2009, originally uploaded by boycrazyboy.
I went to the Alternative Press Fair at the St Aloysius Social Centre in
London as a last-minute substitute for cleanskies (who is not yet fit to travel after her accident last week), doing my best to hawk copies of Whores of Mensa (whose title is even harder to explain when the explainer is male), some of Jeremy’s and my comics.
For a wonder I remembered ahead of time to try making some signs with the names and prices on. If I had been really clever I would have though to bring along some masking tape to attach them to things with.
The venue itself is a kind of underground church hall with a pub nestling at one end. It still has its Christmas decorations up (or perhaps they were Chinese New Year decorations). I was sharing a table with sinasham and his Juvenilia (a rollup of all his strips from the early 1990s when he was a teen-ager). They had covered the pool tables with some sort of tabletop, thus providing a large communal table in similar style to the CAPTION table at CAPTION, except with the added attraction of fringed lampshades overhead.
A great diversity of publications on display—from polemics and non-comics through per-zines, minicomics to professional comics like the DFC as documented by jabberworks.
It‘s a different experience for me seeing an event like this from behind the table—watching punters float past, examine every comic in detail and then buy nothing, and noticing some comics are looked at a lot an never bought while others aren’t initially picked up but many people who do look inside buy them. Sticking things to the front of comics does appear to be a universal improver. I was given plenty of time to meditate upon the feebleness of my efforts on the covers of my comics, not to mention seeing anew the defects in the artwork as people flicked through them.
I left before the evening fun began. In retrospect this was very wise—the snowfall was already well underway, and there were news reports of visitors to London being trapped overnight by the blizzard. Now to tot up the takings and see how much I owe Jeremy …
I fell over a couple of times on the way in—it is strangely treacherous snow, different from what I am used to from fresh-fallen snow—before deciding to change my route to follow main roads (gritted and swept) rather than avoiding them as I usually do. During the afternoon my knee has started hurting, so I am being extra careful with it and trying to avoid situations that require dodging.
- Mood:
sore
Australia day, like Burns Night has traditional dress (blue singlets rather than kilts), traditional tipple (lager in units called stubbies rather than whisky in units called drams), and traditional food (singed sausages rather than broiled haggis). We substituted sensible winter clothing, Australian wines, and sausages pan-fried or grilled on the stove (having learned in previous years that actually trying to run a barbecue in an English winter is a mug's game).
As is often the case with barbecues, the generosity of my guests meant I had a near-infinite amount of leftover bread and sausages, not to mention a pie and some prawns I forgot to take out of the fridge. I took a selection of the leftover food up the hill to
cleanskies's new gaff so she can consume them during her convalescence. She's still recovering from the triple whammy of the accident, the surgery, and the painkillers, but is doing better than yesterday.Update (Sunday): She has been released and was therefore able to attend her own party … she is still very, very tired, which I guess is a combination of the energy needed by her healing bones and the after-effects of surgery. She also now contains metal pins that will have to be removed when the cast comes off in a month’s time.
- Mood:
pleased
cleanskies has fallen on the icy pavement and broken her wrist, thus finding herself in hospital with vague plans to have surgery tomorrow and maybe stick around for a few days chilling.This is a public post so I won’t name the hospital—if you want to visit but can’t see the friends-locked version of this post, then please leave a comment.
• Edited to add: It all happened as she was stepping around someone on an icy pavement: her foot shot out from under her and she fell backwards on to her left arm on the kerb, breaking both arm bones hear the wrist and dislocating it. Apparently out of the flurry of people slipping on the ice this morning, Jeremy’s injuries were the most spectacular. The joint has been relocated (if that’s the right term) and she now has a half-cast and plaster bundle and a hefty-looking sling hanging from a hook over her bed. She can walk about the place if she wants by hanging the sling around her neck in the usual way.
timscience and I have visited and she is as comfortable as can be expected under the circs.• Edited again to add: She has her mobile and nowadays you are allowed to use them in hospital, so you can phone or text her.
- Mood:
pensive
My brother has received the piece of paper from the Home Office that says he is allowed to work for a living, and has been since 1984. This will be exciting news for his employers who have been waiting eleven months to pay him for his first month’s work.
Spent an hour today helping a colleague figure out how to create a new program that interoperates with a system I wrote six months ago. Most of the time was spent with me relearning how my system works.
Accidentally made a super-sized stir fry for dinner. I have discovered that M&S sell very tasty noodles, but have carefully sized the packets so you automatically make either too few or too many.
Once a year a dozen or so comics fans disappear in to a cottage on a farm near Wickwar in South Gloucestershire and emerge with a collaboratively written and drawn comic book. At least that’s the theory—last year we got carried away with ‘shortcuts’ like mixing in a photo-story section that ended up with the comic not being complete until the following CAPTION, nine months later. This year discipline_lad had a plan: the story will open with our discovering Doctor Kraken, who then relates spine-tingling tails about each of the curious objects we brought. The idea is to have just enough structure to enable us to be working on our pages in parallel without the problems we’ve had in stitching the independently produced pages in to some sort of narrative. We also had more people willing to draw a page or two, which helps spread the load. As a result we actually seem to have finished the story before the end of the weekend, which is great! Our host badasstronaut has also been refining her game, allowing her to stuff us full of delicious food more efficiently and with less stress, leaving her more time to join in the comix-drawing fun.
Our new techniques left us with enough leisure time to go for a short amble to the village to seek a shop selling earplugs and paper. We sought but did not find. We did have a drink in the local pub, however, where a local shooting party were hanging out in their traditional leggings, garters, tweed jackets, etc. Their concession to modern living is that have free wi-fi there, but since they advertise it only in the toilets I did not discover this until we were on our way out. Maybe next year it will be possible to twitter from the MCR mid-afternoon pub break. Who knows what the future may bring?
- Colorized story segment by jinty and motodraconis
- Jenni’s journal entry for the MCR, more detailed than this one
- Motodraconis’s has her comic in it
- Debra
- Lee
- Other Lee
ESTP - The Doers. The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.
Whereas my blog looks like this:
ISTP - The Mechanics. The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.
(Via Lonely sandwich)
Thanks!
Spent Saturday dealing with bugs in a web site that is going live in September October November. As a result I got to South Park just in time to see the first of the fireworks being launched—as a result totally failing to rendezvous with friends to see the display together. Climbing a hill in the dark with fireworks erupting in front of you is a slightly different way to appreciate the pyrotechnician’s art. To took a few video clips (the best bits of which I have also uploaded to Flickr) from behind a couple of tall people. After the fireworks I was able to get closer to the front and see the gigantic wicker man that graced this year’s bonfire. It was really impressive. They have to light it with a match on a very long pole.
I mentioned earlier that I have switched to using a Tumbler to do picture links to stuff. Thanks to cleanskies you can also subscribe to it in LiveJournal using this: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
pdc_tumblr.
Spent Hallowe’en skulking with
cleanskies, timscience, and special guest star motodraconis with occasional visits from youngsters in costume—one bunch including a stroller draped in black for the toddler dressed as a skeleton—and even a chancer who came dressed as a hoodie. Having sworn off ready meals in Spring, having guests presented a rare excuse for me to hot up pizza for dinner. Eco-note: M&S have reduced the amount of packaging on their pizzas since I last bought one.Spent Saturday watching other people shopping—in this case
motodraconis and I met up with jinty to visit Today I watched a 1960s film Days and Nights in the Forest (Aranyer Din Ratri) by Satyajit Ray. I haven’t watched any of his films before and I thought it was really interesting.
Inspired costuming. I like how the eye holes and mouth match the original Iron Man armour.
Bjarke Ingels Group’s design for Superkilen (a district of Copenhagen) has colour-coded areas for parks, sports, and the bazaar, and will have public sculptures of 57 objects from 57 cultures (name-checking Marcel Duchamp’s Objet Trouvé).
‘Darwin at Home is an open source software project that aims to bring the process of evolution into your computer at home so that you can see it working. From the initial projects to evolve locomotion it is now moving towards a more generic framework for evolution in general.’ See the weird creatures that evolved in the informational womb of the computer in this ten-minute mellow video. (Via Jason Kottke.)
Hilary Talbot's 3D version of Yiying Lu's Lifting up a Dreamer, or the Fail Whale as it is known to all that know Twitter. (Via Widgets Lab)
