Monthly Archives: January 2006

General Wants Blair Impeached

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General Sir Michael Rose
Michael Rose

During the build-up to war and since, most of the electorate of this country have consistently opposed the decision to invade. People have seen their political wishes ignored for reasons now proved false. But there has been no attempt in parliament to call Mr Blair personally to account for what has transpired to be a blunder of enormous strategic significance. It should come as no surprise therefore that so many of this country’s voters have turned their backs on a democratic system they feel has so little credibility and is so unresponsive.

No one can undo the decision to go to war. But the impeachment of Mr Blair is now something I believe must happen if we are to rekindle interest in the democratic process.
(Source: The Guardian)

The above is a statement by General Sir Michael Rose. Get that? General Sir. I’m not emphasising those titles because they mean anything to me: I admire neither generals nor knights. But they should be a guide as to how establishment this man his, how thoroughly he comes from the other side of the tracks to loony lefties like me.

And General Sir Michael Rose wants Butcher Blair impeached.

Please have a proper read of Rose’s case, linked above. I appreciate Rose’s case for the importance of rekindling our faith in British democracy, but personally I’d like to see Blair impeached for the 100,000 Iraqis he’s helped to murder.

Will there ever be justice for those innocents?

Bless Playlist 10/1/06

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Junip

Tonight’s best new tune is off a fabby new comp released two days ago, ‘Cowboys In Scandinavia.’ It’s Junip‘s cover of ‘The Ghost Of Tom Joad’ and it’s a brilliant version, haunting and elegaic. Don’t be fooled by the cowboy tag, by the way, the comp just features a lot of singer-songwriters, some countryish, some folky. Well worth checking out if you like strong melodies and the occasional yee-haw. I don’t know owt about Junip as their site is cursed by Flash. Gah! But my ears tell me a certain Mr. José González may be involved… Have a listen yourself by clicking here. Ahh, hold on! Just found this:

Junips första bedrifter som band åstadkoms 1997. Barndomsvännerna José González och Elias Araya, som har ett gediget musikaliskt förflutet tillsammans, mötte på Elias initiativ upp med Tobias Winterkorn.
(Source: Beat Agency)

There! All clear now?

BDP

The best old track was BDP’s ‘My Philosophy.’ I remember seeing the vid for this on Snub TV back in ’88, when great hip hop could still get on mainstream telly. It was mind-blowing and the album it’s off, ‘By All Means Necessary,’ helped define what excellence in hip hop means: truth, humour, anger and humility. No wonder everyone’s sampled the hell out of KRS-1.

Fresh for ’88, you SUCKAS! :

Wolf Parade – Shine A Light
Pendle Coven – R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Danger Doom – Space Hos
Agnostic Front – Hardcore! (The Definition)
Islands – Rough Gem
Dead Kennedys – Stealing People’s Mail
Jeans Team – Oh Bauer
Luna – Tiger Lily
Emanon – Four Square
Sufjan Stevens – All Good Naysayers, Speak Up!
The Red Chord – L Formation
The Human League – Being Boiled
Out Hud – It’s For You
Saskrotch – Super Spy Hunter
The Perceptionists – Memorial Day
Serguei Iwanikov – Let Me
Teenage Fanclub – Cells
Brakes – Heard About Your Band
Percee P – Day At The Races (Feat. Jurassic 5 & Big Daddy Kane)
Actarus – Hundekeks
Suburban Kids With Biblical Names – Parakit
Terminal 11 – Fast Asleep
The Human Value – Kill Pangs
Broken Social Scene – Major Label Debut (Fast)
De Puta Madre – Vandal
Deerhoof – Milkman
Jackson And His Computer Band – Tropical Metal
The Unicorns – The Clap
Boogie Down Productions – My Philosophy
Remembering Never – The Glutton
Belle And Sebastian – Legal Man
Supercar – Harmony
EPMD – Pioneers
The Lancaster Orchestra – Bad Horse
Minor Threat – Filler
The Soft Pink Truth – Out Of Step
Devo – Be Stiff
Bearsuit – Hey Charlie Hey Chuck
Teriyaki Boyz – Celebrity Death Match
John Carpenter – Halloween Theme
Feist – One Evening
Acustic – Flow
A Tribe Called Quest – Jam
Sebadoh – Ocean
Frog Pocket – Celebrimbor Tur-Anion
Junip – The Ghost Of Tom Joad
Weezer – Island In The Sun

Sony Sued AGAIN

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Sony Infected CDs

Sony-BMG is being sued in class actions in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia, just as it begins to settle some of the cases against it in the USA.

The revelation that Sony had deliberately infected its music CDs with invisible spyware and rootkits that installed themselves without your consent and left you vulnerable to cyber-attacks prompted several class-action and state lawuits across the US. Sony has settled some (though individuals can opt out and take Sony to small-claims court), but just as fast as they make one claim go away, another pops up.
(Source: Boing Boing)

Poor old Sony!

All they were trying to do is spy on every single customer they have illegally and BAM!, they get sued for their concern about our listening habits.

So what if their lovely software craps up your PC? That’s your fault for, er, something or other. Sony, as a big business, have every right to infect millions of computers with malware. It’s only a crime when a teenage geek does it. When big business does it, it’s ‘behaving responsibly.’

Geddit?

Bless Playlist 3/1/06

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Sambassadeur
Tonight’s top 2005 tune was Sambassadeur’s ‘Between The Lines.’ Have a listen to this lovely lilting indiepop singalong by clicking here. I’ll let you guess where this wonderful indie band are from. But here’s a clue: it starts with Go and ends in thenburg. Look, it’s not my fault, honestly! I’m trying to find good non-Scandi indiepop but the Swedes have nicked all the tunes…

Err… I just tried googling Wolfgang Kaltenbach, who supplied tonight’s top very old tune, ‘Party Shaker,’ but I can’t find any pictures at all of the bugger. Arse! How can someone who makes such classic easy-listening poppiness not have any pics of them anywhere on the net? Bizarre!

Tonight, you heard:

Sufjan Stevens – Come On! Feel The Illinoise!
Tunng – Out Of The Window With The Window
Royce Da 5’9 & Mc Jean Gab’1 – Internationally Known
Goldspot – Rewind
Sambassadeur – Between The Lines
Perceptionists – Black Dialogue
Ladytron – Sugar
The Boy Least Likely To – Be Gentle With Me
Harold Faltermeyer & Peter Moesser – So High
Sage Francis – Gunz Yo
Black Lipstick – Viva Max
Pier Bucci – The R-8 Moog
Cats On Fire – Higher Grounds
Lone Catalysts – By My Damn Self Pt. I
Shai Hulud – Linoleum
Wolfgang Kaltenbach – Party Shaker
Imitation Electric Piano – Theme For An Imitation Electric Piano
Heavens To Betsy – She’s The One
Isolee – My Hi-Matic
Danger Doom – Space Ho’s
The Samuel Jackson Five – If You Show Off The Milk, Who’s Gonna Buy The Cow?
Agent Simple – Make A Right At Jordsfallmotet
Modeselektor – Dancingbox (Featuring TTC)
Islands – Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby
The Human Value – Kill Pangs
Jeans Team – Oh Bauer
Afu Ra & Ofx – Hip Hop
Suburban Kids With Biblical Names – Parakit
Headphones – Gas & Matches
Orgue Electronique – Pong
Brakes – Sometimes Always
Broken Social Scene – Major Label Debut (Fast)
Teriyaki Boyz – Celebrity Death Match
The Notwist – Day 7
Mel Torme – Comin’ Home Baby
Innaway – The Strings Of North Egg
Saskrotch – In The Next Room Lies Our Destiny
Sibiria – Hat Tillbaks
Reef The Lost Cauze – Give It Up
Li’l Cap’n Travis – Steady As She Goes
Elliott Smith – A Fond Farewell
Kraftwerk – Neon Lights

Your Computer’s Great-Great-Grandma

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Jacquard Loom

1801 saw the patenting of the device above, the Jacquard Loom. Yep, the shiny, bleeping piece of tech you’re reading this website on is a direct descendent of a loom. The Jacquard system was the first ever machine to use cards with holes punched into them:

Each hole in the card corresponds to a “Bolus” hook, which can either be up or down. The hook raises or lowers the harness which carries and guides the warp thread so that the weft will either lay above or below it. The sequence of raised and lowered threads is what creates the pattern. Each hook can be connected via the harness to a number of threads, allowing more than one repeat of a pattern. A loom with a 400 hook head might have 4 threads connected to each hook, giving you a fabric that is 1600 warp ends wide with four repeats of the weave going across.
(Source: Wikipedia)

And here’s some of the cards:

Jacquard Cards

If you’re an old geezer like me, those cards will immediately look familiar. Even if you’re a young pup, maybe you’ve seen old sci-fi films where scientists pore over a computer the size of the house (with maybe 1 kilobyte of memory). There were no monitors back then, the input and output was on punched cards, or, if you were really fancy, punched tape.

See the holes above? In each position, each bit in modern tech talk, there is either a hole or not a hole. Either one or zero. Yep, Monsieur Joseph Marie Jacquard had worked out a way of converting fabric patterns into binary. Two hundred and five years later, binary encoding touches everything around us: our voices and texts fly around us in binary, our emails and porn, our new-fangled TV signals. Every area of our lives is touched in some way by children of Jacquard’s machine

Jacquard invented a way of digitising textile patterns. I wonder what he’d think if he could pop up now and see how we weave our entire world and relationships from a string of holes and no-holes.

Cold-NO-play

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Coldplay DRM

Once you’ve handed over your money for a Coldplay CD, the above is what you’re presented with. After you’ve given them your money, mind.

Here’s what you get:

“This CD can’t be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor can it be converted to an MP3″ and “This CD may not play in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players, all PCs and Macintosh PCs.” Best of all, the insert explains that this is all “in order for you to enjoy a high quality music experience.” Now, that’s quality.
(Source: Boing Boing)

Hey, thanks, Chris Martin! I really appreciate you dictating how I can listen to your grand tunes about alienation and the importance of fighting against trade injustices and global inequality.

But justice begins at home, with your own CDs and their draconian DRM. If you do insist on issuing your music on discs so hobbled that they break all the trade descriptions of what a CD is, stick a big warning on the front. Something like:

WARNING: THIS IS NOT A CD! IT DOES NOT COMPLY TO CD STANDARDS! IT WILL ALSO INSTALL SPYWARE ON YOUR COMPUTER WHICH WILL TRACK WHAT YOU LISTEN TO!

At least give us the choice.

Record labels, eh? Are they deliberately trying to lose sales and make everyone on the planet hate them? How long before they start slipping razor blades into our shoes?

UPDATE!

This news just in from our roving reporter:

From: Matthew Swan
To: Jyoti Mishra
Date: 02-Jan-2006 10:52
Subject: c-old hat-play

i bought that coldplay cd a while ago and when you try to rip it using a pc it BLUESCREENS your computer.

not only does it not conform to cd standards, but it risks you personal data by inappropriately cutting short your windows session. not to mention the damage this could cause to your hard disk! guess it serves us right for trying to copy our legitimately owned, licensed music to out itunes/ipod, so we can actually (shudder the thought) listen to it.

actually, it just serves me right for spending £8 on a load of shite.

if kraftwerk were dead coldplay would be pissing on their graves.

Well point, good made!

Happy New Year!

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New Year Hyrax

Hello peeps!

I guess I should have done this earlier today but better late than never, eh?

Happy New Year!

There, now the hyrax will be able to sleep soundly… :-D