Nothing to Declare

Juicing pears. Mmm.

Not a remarkable gig from the point of view of performances - as fine as ever, but half the set was new material and I’m not the best person to ‘get’ live music from a cold start… most importantly, the best audience reaction I’ve seen at a PT gig, and only a small proportion of old faces in the crowd. This wasn’t preaching to the converted - which bodes well for the new album next year.

BTW new material verdict: not bad - some strong songs, a couple of growers.

• Roll-up, roll-up, for the roll-up laptop
  This is very interesting - who says innovation is done with? Perhaps the roll-down TV screen will follow…
  (tags: screen tablet)

A term has popped up in the valley that I quite liked - the first reference I can find is here: Web X.0: FrieNDA.

Thanks for that - of course, people have been practicing it for years but its nice to have a word for it.

“What are you thinking?” Liz said to me last night, just as we were settling down for bed.

So I talked to her about how, when I started playing World of Warcraft, how I thought it was a game with a social element, and now that I’d completed the levelling phase, I saw it more as a social network with a gaming element. I mentioned watching the Tottenham-Arsenal match on TV last Saturday and said how it occurred to me that in the old days, it was mainly about the football with a celebrity element, and now it was more about watching the celebrities, and football was one part of that. I commented that maybe there were some parallels, as the content - gaming or football - were being superseded by the contextual network that ran around both, and perhaps it was only a matter of time before sport and online gaming, watching and networking also merged. I started to say something else…

… then I realised Liz was sound asleep.

• YouTube - Machinima: Text 100 in Second Life
  Thanks to Andy Lark - Text becomes the first PR company in Second Life. Now, if only my laptop was powerful enough to run it…
  (tags: vworlds secondlife PR connectedness)
• BIT-101 Blog » Blog Archive » Spam is getting weirdly intelligent.
  I was going to post about this but BIT-101 beat me to it - it even added the appropriate comments Must- try-harder… anyway, how random strings are being pulled from Amazon to flesh out Spam. Hopefully, they’ll start doing it wlith blog posts, choose
  (tags: Spam Blogging blogs amazon)

A few years ago we were travelling through France and doing a bit of wine buying in the Burgundy region (as a Frenchman once said to me, its harder to get a bad Bourgogne than a bad Bordeaux…). We stumbled across Claude Nouveau, proprietaire-recoltant in Marchezeuil who, from his small establishment, helped us to choose some lovely wines to take home. We are still drinking them, and once a year I get a price list from M. Nouveau, informing me of the latest from his vines.

Now others might see this as junk mail but every year it raises a smile, as he personally sends out a letter to me and no doubt many others. I’d love to buy from him again, and if ever I am passing through the region again I will no doubt do so. HIghly recommended, if ever you are in need of a few Santenay/Maranges at reasonable prices, you know where to go.

Update: you can also go here, from the comfort of your own armchair.
Update 2: I’m clearly not the only person to think highly of M. Nouveau’s outputs!

… the rather neat mashup between Pandora and Last.fm, at Real-ity’s PandoraFM. Recommended music I haven’t necessarily heard before, and it logs it all so I don’t have to.

Shmokin’

How very remiss of me. Two weeks ago I attended Eucon, the Rush convention at the Limelight (of course) club in Crewe, UK. It was a convention in the traditional sense - seasoned fans taking the opportunity to share their experiences and share the experience. As well as shifting a few books, it was a distinct pleasure to meet so many friendly people from the UK and elsewhere around the world. It was also a delight to finally meet Donna Halper, after so many phone calls and emails! Thanks very much everyone for making me feel so welcome, to Paul for keeping me company, and of course to Ashley for inviting me!

Today’s Dilbert. Deeply unsettling…