Beer going around

There in the crowded room, the guy I'd never met before pulls out photos that I had taken. Apparently top google for the term "Farnham Beerex", the official dead web-1.0 non-social site not cutting it at number 3. Last night I had a lot of the good natural stuff, a few too many burgers and no cigars. It's a remarkably peaceful night considering it's a vast room – the Maltings – crammed with drunk men (98% of them). Like the building, most of the punters are into middle age and aren't interested in showing off. So this friend of a friend is telling me all about this character Drift Words and this site called Flick or Flack.

More coincidence. Another friend twice removed turns out to be my over the road neighbour, whom I thought looked familiar. Ahh, the social properties of liquid bread!

Why Rye

Rye is a geography lesson that you can live in. We chose not to, though stayed at this cobbly little Sussex town for a couple of days after Christmas. The geography part of it is that the sea keeps moving, and they have to keep moving the harbour. The present one is still a good distance from the high water mark, and a substantial channel has had to be built to keep it going.



more pictures

We stayed at Jeake's House, on Mermaid Street, which like the town, has been converted nicely to its present use. It's a bit twee, but not too much. We also liked eating at the Landgate restaurant, the Apothecary coffee shop and a few other places.

Driving there and back was easy. Sat nav = no arguments!

Why I like Germaine Greer

Plain English? Naah, it's the details, innit.

As the discontinuity concept is fundamental to understanding what the best of today's artists are up to, it's worth explaining again. Art detaches itself from the unsynthesised manifold by a number of strategies. It may take refuge in a dedicated space called a museum or a gallery, where it may not be touched or moved. It may be surrounded by a barrier, put upon a plinth, enclosed in a frame or a moat of white paper - whatever. To understand this is to understand why installation is such an important consideration in the contemporary art project. It was Kant who explained that the art object exists only as the concept of itself, all its other sensory qualities being associated with pleasure or desire and therefore ulterior.

I can still remember the excitement of reading the Critique for the first time 50 years ago, and basking in the glow of Kant's beautiful mind. Chrissie and Ben can take their Golden Bull award and stuff it.

the full monty ...

Summer with Monika

Dir: Ingmar Bergman, 1952

Not a thriller by any means, but a deeply charming film. Scenes of the Stockholm archipelago are marvellous, with the elements and seasons standing in as the Chorus as this quotidian drama/soap opera gracefully unfurls. Oh and a nude bathing scene during the lovers' sojurn by the shore, which we can all aspire to.

6/7

Images, science, art

I think I've written before about science images as art. Sometimes I think that curators of certain of these collections get too involved in the gee-that's-nice reflex, rather than reflecting on whether the image communicates something to do with the research as a result of its visual qualities, or despite them. I've been dissapointed by some such UCL competitions before. Not because of the lack of ingenuity of the image-makers, but because of a lack of overall definition of the goal of a successful research image that also is art. To my mind, there is a sweet spot where the two qualities support each other.

Apropos of nothing really (I saw it here), here's another striking collection, supported by the Wellcome Trust. This particular image is a nettle leaf. It looks dramatic, certainly, but that quality lets you understand how the thing works. Exactly the sort of art/science symbiosis I have in mind.

Perhaps because it's taking a narrower sample of work as a base (medical/biological microscopy), the criteria seem to be tighter, and the whole exhibition more satisfactory as a result.

Sunset Picnic

Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

A chance to see Simply Red, very nearly. Which is to see it was more about the Pimms and picnic than the performance itself.

Enjoyable enough, though we did feel like anthropologists. I thought to myself "these are really not my people somehow". If I ever did run into a field full of my people I might be terrified. I have a feeling that they tend not to gather in large crowds though.

Beautiful

Yes I know the tour is hollowed out crap, but bikes are still beautiful, and they inspire strange beauty like this, concerning a publicity-shy but influential frame-builder:

This may explain the profound obscurity surrounding the life of Alvin Drysdale the man, about whom almost nothing may be found among the vast reaches of the Internet in 2006 — while photos and descriptions of his bikes pop up everywhere an algorithm can invade. The few assertions we can be relatively sure of:

Love that "everywhere an algorithm can invade". For the assertions themselves, you'll have to go to the source. Allez!

Being Silly is Silly. And Not Clever.

A big hello to both my readers. I just want to tell you about that I'm still alive, but I want to tell you about this.

Take care everyone.

Update: Doctor 1.

Slight changes to blogrolls

Repulsive Monkey:
Ni Hao: Running in Suffolk, Virtual Mandarin, Chinese with Ease, Manchurian Candidate
Zai Jian: Peter Bojanic

drift:::words
+ : nothing
– : all running blogs

Dead!

Press power dear. Behind the screen on the right.

Press it again!

Press it for a second or so!!!

Oh for gawds sake let me do it!!!

(Leaps out of bath).

oh you're right, it doesn't seem to be working.



Fortunately, my dead iMac might only be resting, as it may have succumbed to a common enough power supply fault. Having gone through the support wizard, and poked around inside in the approved manner, and come to naught, I've driven it down to a nearby repairer. This could be a long week ...

Update: it lives! And Flickr has gone to "Gamma". And Firefox pops another update!
All at once!

Running stuff on my other blog

This is just a courtesy post in case you are reading this for the running training journal.

If I write any more running-related posts (and I might, since I'm getting back into it now), they shall be over on my other blog "Repulsive Monkey" (Taichi, learning Chinese, and Running). The common theme there is Getting Better at Doing Things, whereas here you have the beachcomber's art of Picking Things Up and Looking at Them.

I have worky-work-work blogs, but they are somewhere else. Go and look at the sidebar for details, or see my Suprglu page.

Pandora

Interesting. Pandora is another music recommendation service (does music streaming for subscribers). They have a parameter-based approach – they call it the musical genome – in that they split apart the attributes of an artist along defined axes (The Cure, for example, is "electro, post-punk, melody-led etc"), unlike Last.fm, which seems to be more about plain old correlation coefficients. Also, less social and more straight-ahead commercial. US-centric, which kills the idea of giving them money for now. Though generally pretty nice.

First seen on Vanillasky.

Noah's Art

Noah's Art
Originally uploaded by askuds.

I think Auntie M might like this one!

Bleep bloop boink

Music, genre-ified, through a Katamari-like Flash mangleiser, with added Roobard and Custard. From Auntie!

(via What not to think)

Here's a thing ...

... you know how having an ipod really bumps up your music-appreciation muscles. I reckon I've got to the end of that cycle now, having loaded pretty much all my CDs on to my now ancient 4G pod, and worked out why I wanted that music in the first place.

Now, not only do I want a bunch of fresh music, but I'm always on the lookout for good recommendations. That's why I was so pleased with myself for getting my head around Last.fm. After I play 300 tracks I will have a Neighbour, and I can see what they like. Here's what I like. It's like Flickr for music!

DILO

DILO
Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

The previous pic was probably my yearning for an irretreivable summer, surrounded by nothing but warm air. Dreadful dead lines of winter still overhead, though a few springing buds can be seen at ground level. Here I'm in the transporter module taking me to Planet Smoke for another push at the rockface.

you may judge a man by the company he keeps, or the contents of his book shelves or in some other way entirely

I don't use browser bookmarks anymore. Here's what I have instead: a cloud of tags.

This is a del.ico.us tagroll, in case you want to get your own.

Some of your favourites

Some of your favourites
Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

A small compendium of some of my photos that have attracted favour on Flickr.

Reverse taper being very slow in starting

I've attempted a couple of longer runs since the marathon. But getting back on track is proving harder than I'd hoped.

Last Sunday was glorious weather (here's a beautiful scene of the Surrey hills – not mine but rather like what I saw) but I couldn't really enjoy it, as after half an hour of gentle running (chest still not properly cleared) my ITB started complaining of tightness.

Tonight I dusted off my gym card and tried things differently. A few revs of the bike, some proper stretching, a gentle 2km row, then 15 mins in and out of the sauna. Aah, that's better!

Oh, if the leisure centre people are reading this, it was me who removed the ridiculous "swimwear must be worn in the sauna" notice.

Peak District catching-up

Just got back from the Peak District, where I met up with some old friends from ... too long ago. The Cliff Road boys are scattered all over the country so it's rare that we all meet up. We Stayed in Longnor near Buxton (in this fine pub), and had far too much to eat. After breakfast, we waited in the slanted, stony High Street for the local brass band to greet each other, assemble in ranks, and march off, with the Brownies in tow.

We then drove to Thorpe, up and down dale. Thorpe is another village within the National Park, where another old uni mate lives. He told us about mud a-plenty in the Dovedale Dash (his missus does fell-running too - must visit them again and bring my trainers!) and snow in the harsh winters. Today, spectacular low sunshine picked out thousands of details during our walk in Dovedale and around. We sat outside the pub (the Izaak Walton hotel, Ilam) in strange November sun.

As we laughed and joked, well-dressed gentlemen and their ladies returned from participating. from one of the thousands of remembrance services that were held in the UK today. Years ago, gangs of lads from all over the country went out together on sunny mornings like this.