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.
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.
I think Jeremy’s camera has the edge when it comes to taking photos of art in the dark. Here are some snaps from here photostream on Flickr—and a few from mine:
I also made a film of the braziers making crackling popping noises in the rain.
Jo and Alex had a barbecue whose theme was inspired by a coat Alex bought: Doctor Who-niverse. Jeremy made Lady Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17 from a peach-coloured top stretched over a picture frame and a small plastic brain in a pint mug; I made cardboard Judoon heads; Angharad and Ruth came as Weeping Angels, a costume idea that is fun until you realize it entails spending most of the party not being allowed to move.
I managed to bring my little pocket camera with me to the wedding. This is one time when women have an advantage over the men—you can fit a larger camera in a handbag than in an evening suit’s trouser pockets!
An exhibition of local-ish comics creators in the Jam Factory café-gallery just off the Frideswide Square (the triangle of roads outside the train station) in Oxford. Main photo by Matt Brooker of David Baillie, Jeremy Dennis, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Deidre Ruane, Andrew Luke, D’Israeli (Matt Brooker). Not present: Sally-Ann Hickman, Ellen Lindner, Jessica Bradley.
I took a few photos of the gallery at the official opening on Thursday evening, and also of the inaugural sketchs in the miniature scribble pads left on the table to give the exhibition that essential CAPTION flavour.
31 July–30 August 2008 • The Jam Factory, Hollybush Row, Oxford OX1 1HU.
This weekend we built a tiny pond in the back garden. Well, actually we started on Sunday evening (after the heat of the afternoon) and finished it off on Monday evening after work. We even had time to have oxfordslacker and tinyjo come around to inspect the pond and the visiting cat and have cocktails on the patio in the fading twilight.
There are several shots of filling of the pond which are probably best appreciated as a slideshow as opposed to individual pictures.
- Mood:
accomplished
- Mood: amused
Yay! The cherry tree picnic worked. We had an afternoon being entertained by shrieking toddlers running around in the garden and playing in Jeremy’s rainbow hammock, picnic food under the tree (or at least next to the tree, which is not very wide). We had lots to eat, about fifty per cent of it being cherry cake or black forest gateau party cake. There was enough rain to give us an excuse to get the umbrellas out ☂, but not so much that anyone felt the need to retreat indoors.
As evening drew in and the children went home, we got out some olives and other non-child-friendly snacks and turned the fairly lights on in the greenhouse for the first time this year. Conversation turned to grown-up topics like lesbianism, motorcycle design, and the philosophical underpinnings of the mortgage market. All in all I think everybody had a fun time—even if a few people complained that the cucumber sandwiches hadn’t had their crusts cut off. I think it just makes them healthier ☺. Maybe next time. (I discovered I prefer Co-Op white bread to Hovis Guaranteed Square bread because Hovis Guaranteed Square bread is not square.)
Click the pictures to see more pictures of people picnicking and contemplating the very pretty cherry tree.
Project Or by Christoph KlemmtA vortex-shaped installation in a courtyard in Milan that reacts to sunlight.
Christiaan Postma Clock • ‘Composed of more than 150 individual clocks mounted to a 140 cm x 140 cm panel, hour and minute dials are clustered in a seemingly haphazard pattern. …’
Saturday night we congregated at Jo and Alex’s for Jo’s birthday cocktail party. Jo’s old obsession is cocktail dresses and her new obsession is the video game Guitar Hero so we ended up with a lot of our heroic guitaristas rocking out while dressed to the nines under a tiny mirror ball. Neatly also solves the problem of what music to play at your cocktail party.
- Mood:
sleepy
Had Christmas lunch hosted by
squigglyruth and truecatachresis with oxfordslacker, mr_snips. Goose was eaten, we deployed the card tabke and sorted out the German postal system after a bout of Zombie Fluxx. Our hosts showed us the Wii version of Guitar Hero, and tonyjo discovered she seems to be a natural at this game (or perhaps the similarity of the instrument to a cello or violin helps). In the end the pudding had to be indefinitely postponed—none of us felt we could do it justice after stuffing ourselves at lunch.
Today I have been mostly assembling the robot kangaroo illustrated here. It comes in a box with little bags containing tiny, tiny screws and various other itty bitty bits and bobs. It comes with a small screwdriver, the world’s smallest Allen key, and a tube of grease, but you have to supply your own modelling knife and tweezers.
This year I shared a chalet with
oxfordslacker, motodraconis, badasstronaut, timscience, and cleanskies. I took some photos, but those attempts at taking pix of performances tend to suffer from the low light and my distance from the stage. Moto’s photos from her much more high-falutin’ camera have much better shots of people on stage. Debra’s photos have more of those intimate chalet scenes, including dreamy close-ups of Jeremy’s latest invention, the Champagne Screen Saver cocktail. Alex supplies capsule reviews of some of the bands via the magic of (Loud)Twitter: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning. These are especially amusing when read aloud by the Mac’s speech synthesiser. As well as the aforementioned cocktail, Jeremy has posted a clip of the Chrome Hoofs, a performance I tragically missed.- Mood: amused
- Music:Lemon Jelly, ‘’76 Aka Stay With You‘ (’64–’95)
- Mood: accomplished
- Music:Daft Punk, ‘Indo Silver Club’ (Homework)
Operation Cover Greenhouse with Horticultural Glass has proceeded to the general flavour of conclusion favoured by us all, and we even had a spare moment to toddle down to Messrs B and Q to wrap our mutton-goosers around a couple of tall slim water-gathering instruments manufactured, we are in formed here, of recycled materials and to plumb the aforementioned rain-conservators in the more backwardly situated corners of our bijou crystal palace.
Rejoice! as Jeremy operates her wireless telephone and thumbs through a nictitation-fixated fashion periodical, fearless of either rain or encroaching darkness.
- Mood: accomplished
- Music:Space Heroes of the People, ‘Barbie is a Robot’
In further news, Act 3 of Starship Exeter ‘The Tressaurian Intersection’ is now published, only 9 months after the previous episode! ARRR!!!!
- Mood: Piratical
Our eventual plans for this construction once it is constructed are a little vague at present: tomatoes, perhaps; somewhere to keep geraniums; select cocktail parties. The kit has actually been languishing on our concrete area for months, having arrived too late to be erected during the spring, it has had to wait for a weekend lacking music festivals.
- Location:Oxford, UK
- Mood: accomplished
cleanskies’s also been taken there and doesn’t think it’s all that. I appreciated their inclusion of cycle parking, which is much finer than MegaTesco’s efforts.Also attended the Cellar to see Baby Gravy, Space Heroes of the People, and Casio Kid and the Ultimate Soundfuse. I found myself in conversation with a guy who was visiting Oxford on the way to a christening and as we were discussing the recent rainy weather he slipped out his iPhone to show the forecast for the week ahead. In the darkness of the club, the phone itself is invisible: all you see is the symbols dancing and swooping about in his hand. Physically it is slightly smaller than I had expected—it is more plausibly pocket-sized than most smart phones. Apart from that, I didn’t learn anything that interested people cannot see videos of on the Apple web site. Actually holding the thing left me a little non-plussed—already I knew it can do all these impressive things, but actually demonstrating them to myself seemed kind of meaningless.
They had a different stage arrangement this evening, with the drums on one side of the stage rather than at the back, the better for us to appreciate their efforts. This also placed Jo and her electric bass front and centre, which I think works well—at least if you’re like me and are interested in seeing how the different playing styles she uses work in different tracks.
- Location:Oxford, UK
- Mood: tired
- Music:Space Hereos of the People, ‘Motorway to Moscow’
Projekte CatCam is a keychain-style diigtal camera, modified to be hung around a cat’s throat to find out where cats disappear to during the day.- Location:Oxford, UK
- Mood:
working - Music:The hum of the aircon
