William Gibson – Pattern Recognition

URL: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/

Blurb: The world is moving in dangerous new directions. And Cayce, wearied by flight fear and mirror-world angst, finds herself alone, with too many unanswered questions.
Who is downloading pornography on her computer? Why is she being followed? Can her partner, the charismatic Boone Chu, be trusted? What is the true value of the footage? And will her discovery of the most brilliant marketing ploy of this very new century lead Cayce any closer to finding her father, former Cold War security expert Win Pollard, a man so thoroughly and quietly missing that it might be impossible to prove him dead?

Why: Because it’s a Gibson novel, no way I was going to pass this one up. Besides that, it’s the first time I’ve read one of his novels real-time, in that he only finished it recently. The others (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona-lisa Overdrive, etc etc) were all read many a year after they were printed. Gibson is one (if not the only one) of my favourite authors. Come on, the guy coined the term Cyberspace! (before it’s inception as we see it today!)

Thoughts: Wow. Excellent novel. Most thrilling aspect is the fact that modern times are now so futuristic that he didn’t have to write about the future, we’re living it now. All events that take place in the novel are so almost believable, and the style he slides into for the emails that zip to-and-fro between the characters just make this book so interesting, and so up my-alley. (In the things i’m interested in sense, not the sexual inuendo way) The way that he discusses and explains this so called “Footage”, and the flash-community that has grown internet-based to disect and puzzle over these fragments of movies make me want to scour the current internet for such items! Naturally it wouldn’t be Gibson without the use of huge super-organisations, so immense in power that money is nothing to these people, and once again he manages to create such super-powers (so much for governments these days right?)..

Great novel!.. 6 stars ;P

just a lil entry for all you people with too much bandwidth (i imagine you guys would’ve seen this already anyway) .. and with an interest in music.. specially of the electronic-style.

These MIT guys have made a sort of.. *thing* that would let you make and modify music in a very very cool way, but i’m not going to try and describe it because chances are i won’t do it justice.. instead download the vids from the site.

OO.. and i’ve also posted a music review (first time in AGES).. u can see it here.. it’ll kind of explain all the funny winamp titles you might’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks!

Less than a week christian.. less than a week and then she returns.

The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium

URL: www.themarsvolta.com

Tracks:
1. Son et Lumiere
2. Inertiatic ESP
3. Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)
4. Tira Me a las Aranas
5. Drunkship of Lanterns
6. Eriatarka
7. Cicatriz ESP
8. This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed
9. Televators
10. Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt

Why: After listening to At the Drive-in’s Relationship of Command for a solid couple of months (still on and off today).. and checking out Sparta at the Big Day Out I went into a sort of “hanging-up” of this music, returned back to other stuff i used to listen to lots, like Dave Matthews Band and Tool.. where upon i was hanging out with Jake and he mentioned that i should check out Glassjaw. Mentioning that they were a sort of hybrid at the drive in .. with more aggressive messed-up time-riffs like tool. Naturally i was interested. So i checked out the Glassjaw album “Worship and Tribute”.. then upon mentioning this to someone else they said i should check out “The Mars Volta”.. i was like “Who?”.. and they go, the members of at the drive in who DIDN’T go to Sparta.. and i was like.. get the fuck out. He then brought to my attention that he believe that the mars volta were the best out of sparta, at the drive-in, glassjaw etc… So i got my grimey hands on the comatorium.

Thoughts: Holy.. Shit!.. The above mentioned “someone else” was so correct, this album, this band, are fucking incredible. This album has been on my playlist for a good couple of weeks now, and it still manages to impress me to no end. I haven’t even gotten the handle of the crazy ass titles, and still manage to just re-fall-in-love with every track on this album. The introduction is just amazing. Those eerie organ chords, the swirl of.. undercurrent. It’s like it’s preparing you for when the drums kick in at 1min 15 secs.. and then they just increase the tension until it kicks into the 2nd track..”Inertiatic ESP”.. at first i didn’t think these were different tracks, but they are, and boy are they a warm-up!! One complain from the at the drive in was that a lot of people found the singing quite whiney, this album he seems to just.. sing. And fuck me sing he can !! (And still letting out his trademarked wail!). I’m not going to get started on the drumming on the track, especially before track3. This is when this guy kicks it into over-drive. (Not that he was lazying around before anyway).. Each of the tracks just seems to shred itself so much, with incredible bridges and just very funky broken-down sections, and when they kick it back into the lead-riffs(bits) it just.. it fits SO well. It works!.. I have this funny feeling these guys aren’t going to make it down to aus very soon.. but my GOD..
Initially track 3 (roulette dares) was my favourite track. Great introduction, the rhythm in this track just boots and it’s brimming with energy and just.. kicking. It comes into it’s own when they break it down momentarily @ about 40secs, and then follow through to the verse. The dynamics are just splendiferous! Then mid-song the drumming frenzy begins. .. ahhh and what a drum-solo, you REALLY have to check out this track@!.. it’s like a mish-mash of all the things i could find wonderful in a song. The kind of music I’d like to play, but know we just don’t have that sort of talent.

Favourite track after digestion? Track 6. Eriatarka. Great guitar riff, smooth rolling verses, great singing. Guitar *twangs* that remind me of radiohead, it’s all here. At a min and a half, when the chorus comes in and the drumming just goes insane (yes.. yet again) this song is just.. so amazingly full of energy.. but it’s not just that i spose, they have the means and the methods to harness this .. energy of sort and kind of let is squeese out gradually (which they do with a break-down guitar-solo at 2mins 15.. ).. building back up for another chorus!.. AAAAH.. *orgasm*

i miss Emily so much. I have less than one week before she comes back, and i’m surprised i’ve last this long without breaking down into some sort of spluttering ball of mess.

Yesturday i stumbled upon the infamous emily strange website, which i ended up browsing up and down for quite a while (a whole lotta shit in there!).. naturally feeling all alone etc i downloaded the wallpapers, nothing spectacular.. but u can have a peek here..

-My Fun With Cars This Week-
Last Week: after driving round with Daev to pick up Doms from work, we all jumped in daev’s green bmw 2-door to evacuate, daev swung the front out of the parking spot, only to discover that they had placed pretty looking trees between each of the spots. Well, he didn’t discover so much as he smacked the front-left of the car into the tree.
Once at our temporal destination, investigation showed that his indicator was dangling out, and he has bent some of the panels a bit. Hehe

Last Few Weeks: My battery has been slowly getting worse and worse. For a while i was fine with having to jump-start the puppy if she didn’t start after a day of non-driving. But a few days back the pos^? decided to stop starting.. so i called the RAC (thank god i’m a member right?) out to get it started.. and now i’ve dropped her at the garage to get a replacement battery and a service while she’s there.

Today: whilst trying to push her into a more conveniant spot for the RAC guy (cos our drive-way sucks) we got it kinda stuck in some dirt and i got all sweary and violent.. where upon i rained a barrage of punches (to the roof) and kicks (to the doors) on the car!..
nb: Barrage = one or two. .. closer to one.

so as i said earlier, Melange are doing quite a few shows.. this week we had 2. The first of which was pretty crummy, there was broken string, swapping of guitars with other bands, a short 6-song set cut down to 4 songs.. luckily for us it was recovered by the hilarious james, who got up and did some stand-up comedy.. then started singing a song! (Daev + I had to just play along in the background.. was pretty damn funny) .. then we went on to play the last couple of songs, the last of which (it was a new song) we kinda fucked up.
The second gig (last night) was excellent. We played (what i felt) a solid 45min set, fuckups were very minimal, so minimal that we’re hoping they’re the kind that only the band can notice, not the audience. It was good. I have to hand out massive big-ups to Ant for lending me his snare drum, it got a nice hammering from both Matt & I.

OoO.. before i forget.. a flyer daev + I made for our show in a few weeks:

Lastly i have to agree with Angela on the use of PNG graphics. I seriously have no idea where it came from or why it’s being used. Perhaps its people using photoshop/psp incorrectly? Who knows.. *shudder*

welcome to version nine of un-excogitate dot org.

there will be teething problems, and I haven’t even started to think of all the lil child-pages (comments/links/pics/etc) so don’t complain when the links pull up blanks :)

Hope you all have great weekends (or whatever!)

the next 3 weeks (this week inclusive) we’re doing 5 shows, which i think is a bit of orite!

Tonight is the first of which should be cool (even though it’s a 30min set). The band after us are great (of the highest pursuasion).. and i am looking forward to seeing them play again. Recalling the last time i saw these guys on the stage my tongue was on the floor the entire time.. jaw hanging down my front. That almost dumb-founded look of awe on my face.

Oh yeh.. i didn’t mention their name, they’re called “The Wire Complex”.. great band.

Wish us luck!

even though the title of this entry is telling you this entry is going to be about whinging, it’s not. I’m actually only typing up an entry because i’m just testing something… when i got my new computer i installed it and stuff was all good and worked perfectly and .. i was happy. But there was ONNNNE niggling lil problem, whenever i did lots of typing winamp would occasionally skip on mp3’s, and yes. I was sad.

So i flashed my BIOS^? and i think the problem is fixed..hence this entry. I’m just trying to type as much as i can without thinking too much about it to see if my winamp skips.. and it’s NOT skipping!! (YUS!)

that is all.

Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism .. this article points out some really really interesting points, and because i’m not really one to blog on such an intellectual level, i’m only posting up this URL to reel off some thoughts of mine, to share with the people who read this site, and to ask you (also the readers) to comment and tell me whether or not you guys (if you had the tech) would moblog.

What is moblogging? blogging from your mobile. The article discusses how modern phones all have internet/camera technology, so why shouldn’t people use these to report on news events (sports events/any events) almost as fast as the supposed real-media does. And if you have enough people all doing this, how will this affect the real-media too?

I myself don’t witness enough ground-breaking news, but i am in that small niche of people who might write up a blog entry remotely (pda) only to come home later and then update my site, naturally if i could blog instantaneously i would, but like my regular posts, i’m not sure how interesting it would really be. It’d probably be more gimmicky, reporting how i just got cut off @ the lights by some lil red sports-car, or how i’m 1hr early for a uni-lecture, and am sitting-on-ass-in-the-sun.

But i think if EVERYONE had the ability, coverage of any events would certainly change. If say one out of every hundred people actually uses their mobile to blog.. and out of every 1000 blogs, you read 1.. (luckily enough, you find that the important news can flow around pretty quickly, anyone remember the dancing baby? or the plethora of stupid ass-quizzes that circulate in a matter of days) i believe you’d eventually start reading more and more about semi-current events from someone u know, or grow to trust, possibly not from a single degree of seperation, but from some n-th degree.

If you guys had the tech? What do you think you’d moblog about?

well well well.. until i get the new layout up, you guys don’t have a lil-list of my regular/dailies.. one of which used to be jina over @ x.reloaded.. who is now to be found over at azaliea-skye.net..

go have a peek.. and have a look at her list of inspired.. it’s the coolest link to my site i’ve ever seen!.. (look @ all dem lil faces!.. haha..)

u rock Jina!!