sideshow_al

Back in California

Tue, 22 May 2007 04:59:34 GMT

I am back in the San Francisco Bay area again for a few weeks, and after only a couple of hours off the plane its almost as if I had never left. Memories came flooding back, like my favorite radio station, the places I got if I need food late in the evening, and which lane I need to be in to make it easy to get the right exit from the 101. As before I am already disturbed by how quickly I feel at home here, much more so than I have managed in Dublin in eight months.
It seems strange because basically this is nothing like anywhere I have lived before, and lots of aspects are really annoying. The climate is too warm for me and I hate not being able to go anywhere without a car. Why do I feel so much more content living here? I try not to think about it too much because the visa situation means I will never work here.

Jet lag coping strategies seem to be going ok so far. I'll know how well when I note the time I wake up tomorrow morning.

What the hell is EBM?

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:32:33 GMT

If you neither know nor care what EBM is, you can probably stop reading now.

Last night, I was out in what passes for a club in Dublin, listening to a fairly random mix of music that passes for goth subculture this millenium. During a lul in the noise, I heard one of the regulars shout "Play some EBM!" across at the DJ. The guy had been sitting in the corner scowling for most of the evening, clearly unimpressed at what was being played. This seemed a little weird, as a good proportion of the music that had been played was stuff I would loosely classify as EBM or derivative of EBM. So I went over and asked him what EBM meant to him. Once he had stopped being stroppy and arrogant, I was told that EBM was electronic music without lyrics. Not wanting to get into an argument, I refrained from expressing my reaction openly, but politely mentioned that this didn't really fit with early EBM, which pretty much universally had lyrics. He seemed slightly surprised, and maybe even confused, but this may be because by now the noise and started again, and the excessive treble was making my ears hurt.

Is there a purpose to this over long and rambling story about very little? Probably not, but it reminded me of a conversation I had with elseware in which he described being told that Front 242 were obviously not EBM, and how could he think they were.

If for some strange reason you don't know what EBM is, but are still reading, it stands for Electronic Body Music, a term which was coined by Front 242 to describe their 1984 album "No Comment". Wikipedia as usual has the facts.

Retarded game developers

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:16:58 GMT

Today I fired up Animal Crossing on my Nintendo DS. I've been playing it for about a week. Its been a lot of fun. Today there was a guy waiting outside my house to talk to me. I think he might have been a seal. Its hard to tell. I talked to him, he asked me a lot of questions, and soon it became apparent that this guy is an insurance salesman, and wants me to buy an expensive policy. When I say no, the conversation gets stuck in a loop where he keeps asking me to sign, and I keep saying I no. I can't break out of this loop. The quantity of cash involved is enough that I am not prepared to just give up the playtime, so finding no other way to escape, I turn the power off without saving. I fire the game back up again, and am immediately am greeted by a mole character who says he works for Nintendo, who has come to lecture me on turning off the power without saving. After a couple of minutes spent acking speech bubbles of his inane gibberish, I give up, turn the power off again, and reboot the game. I go back in, and the mole is back, and this time he is livid. So am I. I turn the power off, remove the cartridge and throw the game in the bin. My experience of this game is tarnished forever.

Guess what Nintendo? I turned the power off without saving because the game was wasting my time! Your response is to have the game waste more of my time while it explains to me how I shouldn't waste my time? Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

Light Speed Lola

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:03:35 GMT

While playing around with openstreetmap, looking at aerial photographs, and watching Lola Rennt on DVD, I was inspired to attempt to discover Lola's route through the streets of Berlin. Finding her apartment was no problem, as we are shown an aerial shot of the area in the first few seconds of the movie. After searching around for a bit, and skipping backwards and forwards through the film, I started to find a few other places. A few minutes after she leaves the apartment, during the first stretch of running, she crosses the river under a railway bridge, just after having run round a corner and bumped into the woman with the pushchair. I was incredibly disappointed to find that this bridge is in fact about 4km from her apartment, and I could find none of the streets she was clearly running along on the way there. So Lola is cool and determined, and probably quite fit, but there is no way I believe she ran 4km in a few short minutes. I am beginning to suspect that everything I see in movies may well be lies.

Schindler's Lift

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 15:29:55 GMT

The lift in my hotel is made by a company called Schindler. The pun was more than I could resist.

Swiss money

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 22:52:36 GMT

Trivia fact: The swiss frank was the only major currency to remain freely convertible during the second world war [wikipedia - look it up yourself]. A more immediate truth is that its the most colourful currency I have ever used. Its like a little rainbow every time I open my wallet. The language they speak here is bizare. Its supposed to be kinda German, but I can't follow a word of it for the life of me, and people look temporarily confused when I speak to them in German, but they always understand me when I repeat myself. I am coming to understand why a native German speaking friend of mine has such a hard time dealing with Schweitzerdeutsch.
The snow here in Davos is crappy, but at least we have some. I am skiing like a total retard compared with a couple of months ago in Italy. On the plus side the apres-ski entertainment is way better than in Italy, and spending my evenings watching germanic girls hammer nails into large blocks of wood over a good weiss-beer is great fun.

Back in Dublin

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:23:42 GMT

Made it back to Dublin after a long overnight journey which I will not be repeating. At least not before a normal working day. There is a special place in hell for ferry companies who deliberately close most of the seating available on their ship, reducing the amount of comfortable seating available so there is far less than required for most passengers to get some sleep.
I spent most of today feeling very upbeat about things, but as the day closes I strongly suspect this euphoria was mostly due to sleep deprivation.

My Car is now Foreign

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 01:06:25 GMT

Today I got picked up my new number plates and fitted them to my car, making it now way more Irish than I will ever be. Irish number plates are incredibly sane. They have the two digit year, a one or two letter abbreviation for the county, followed by a whole bunch of digits. This means they had no problem issuing me with a plate for the year the car was made. Another hurdle that prevented me from using my car to travel back to the UK is down. Only a few more to go.