Category: Consumption

Thoughts on things I’ve experienced.

Written in the WordStars

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“I actually like it, it does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn’t do anything else. I don’t want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don’t want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key.”

I was pleased to note that George R. R. Martin (whose mammoth tomes I’ve just begun to read) is fervent about something other than wearing that cap. He is one of a dying breed – the DOS user! More particularly, he uses WordStar to crank out his lengthy bestsellers. Not for him the (now Clippy-free) white screens of Microsoft Word or its free replacements. He eschews the fancy writer-friendly face of Scrivener. Instead, he spends hours facing this:

Mmm, chunky.
I said ChKWord, goddamnit.

Nice.   Of course, this isn’t the first time he’s mentioned this method of working. This LJ update provides more information on his working process, most notably this:

Continue reading “Written in the WordStars” →

Kraftwerk: before they were robots

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I’ve often shared this video on Facebook and thought I’d give it a whirl here: Kraftwerk in 1970.

If you only know them as the nattily-dressed man-machines or mocap-outfitted dudes apparently checking email in front of outstanding 3D visuals, you really don’t know them. Continue reading “Kraftwerk: before they were robots” →

Book review: The Undeground Man

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The Undeground ManThe Undeground Man by Mick Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jackson’s Booker-shortlisted book is a real gem. It’s a strange amalgam of fictionalised history, memoir and gothic horror – gothic body horror, come to that.

It takes its genesis in the life of William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland, but rapidly diverges from the accepted record. Using a combination of diary entries and testimonies or statements, the mole-like additions to his home at Welbeck Abbey are described, as is his increasing infirmity. There’s a lovely turn of phrase in the Duke’s private reminiscences, and the reader if left wondering if it’s the result of a poetic soul, or of dementia. Continue reading “Book review: The Undeground Man” →

A sobering thought?

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An old blog.
Coded with me own hands, that.

This website turned 14 yesterday.

Well, not quite. That’s the date I first registered this domain, many moons ago while living in London. There was a whole other weblog here for a long time – called |lukelog| – which was my first introduction to the public eye, I suppose. It didn’t always look as it does on the left, mind.

I set it up after seeing my flatmate Meg’s blog, and it pretty much consumed me. I wrote a lot, much of it terrible, and much of it presenting a pretty ropey portrait of my mental health and self-confidence levels than I ever would have thought at the time. It’s probably a hint as to why the archives for |lukelog| aren’t to be found here: it’s a little like reading diaries from your teens. It all seems a bit facile and innocent now, somehow.

It was fun, don’t get me wrong: being the kind of odd addition to the GBlogs stable, knowing some people who’ve since gone on to work in Important Web Things And Organisations. Hell, I was even nominated for the best European weblog in the inaugural Bloggies! (I didn’t win, though I should add it’s an honour just have been nominated and gee, shucks, I don’t know what to say.)

But at the same time, I was sort of beholden to the thing. I continually picked at it. And I ended up hating the sound of my own (typed) voice, as well as feeling weird about the whole concept. (Though I must admit, it was particularly great when people I’d never really met bought me replacement albums after I’d had my bag ransacked by some fuckhead at the Green Park Hotel on a trip back to Sydney.)

So I stopped. And now I’ve started again, though for slightly different reasons. It took a couple of false starts to arrive where we are, and I’m still unconvinced it’s a wholly worthwhile idea, but as long as I have reviews to add (or to save from the digital dustbin) I suspect I’ll keep going.

Anyway. 14 years. Cripes. Happy birthday, CaptainFez.

Book review: Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked

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Two book reviews for the price of one. Read before a re-watch of David Fincher’s Zodiac because these were instrumental in its creation. My advice? Stick with the film. There’s a little repetition in the reviews because REPETITION IS WHAT YOU GET FROM READING THESE BOOKS, BUCKO.

ZodiacZodiac by Robert Graysmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cartoonist-cum-chronicle Robert Graysmith has a pretty decent retelling of the Zodiac killer story here. As well he should, given he was working at one of the newspapers to receive ciphers and cheery letters from the murderous astrology fan. Continue reading “Book review: Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked” →

NO! I WILL FINISH IT!

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This pretty much describes the attitude I’m going to force myself to take. Even though I may not be producing Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People, I have a couple of projects I Don’t Want To Let Slide.

And so, a reminder. No high-fives from God. Just a bunch of not-pissing-about.

Tomorrow. 

(Hear the rest of this Patton Oswalt show here.)

Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (2002)

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Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (re:)This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

Angel Passage is an odd disc. It’s a studio reworking of a performance Moore and Perkins presented as part of the Tygers of Wrath concert, presented at the end of Tate Britain’s William Blake exhibition. And as such, it sits in no-man’s land; it’s not a run-of-the-mill spoken-word album, nor is it a cast-recording album. It’s a weird hybrid, like reading Moore’s meditation on Blake’s life while ghostly music that’s not quite separate floats through the air. Occasionally, it’s problematic — I just want to hear what he’s saying, dammit — but for the most part, it adds a well-judged air of mystery. Continue reading “Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (2002)” →

Review: Frank Bretschneider – Super.Trigger (and some gear)

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A couple of months ago, I wrote a review of Frank Bretschneider‘s Super.Trigger album for Cyclic Defrost. Here’s a sample:

Eschewing romanticism doesn’t remove character, though some tracks are more favoured in this regard. ‘Pink Thrill’ is all nerdly tetchiness, but ‘Machine.Gun’ is the clear winner. Staccato drum rolls imitate the track’s titular weapons while a frenetic background conjures the image of a gunfight held over the top of a Blaxploitation soundtrack. It crackles, and when the end comes – in an echo-chamber of steely ricochets – it’s triumphant. Worth special note too is the album’s attention to bass sounds. On some tracks – the opener ‘Big.Hopes’, and ‘Day.Dream’ in particular – there’s window-shaking kicks and tones that are so immense that it’s difficult not to fist-pump in celebration. Coupled with the appropriate atmosphere, such as the dubby, dark sound of ‘Over.Load’, it’s overwhelmingly great.

You can read the full review here. But the reason I’m linking it today is that this rather neat article details Bretschneider’s studio setup and workflow. If you’re interested in electronic music (and like the track above) then you’ll find some good info in there.

(As an aside, I like reading this and discovering that I mentioned fist-pumping. I hadn’t even seen Regular Show when I wrote this, but the power of the Fist Pump can’t be denied. See below.)