Milk’s Site

Infest HOOOOO!!

P.S. The Most Incredible Knife

Might as well post this as I spent to much time clicking through each image to see what was there. Btw, the munter is ‘hardcore’, the parrot is ‘jabber’ (much more interesting than tiny screenshots of some jabber client or other) and the fish is ‘bass’.

So there have been a couple of mainstream newspaper articles that have been doing the rounds recently about the whole public side of the What Is Goth debate that have attempted to make a connection between ‘goth’ and ‘emo’ as if it were a continual line. Personally dislike the concept of trying to align one’s self with a seemingly objective (although essentially inter-subjective) aesthetical preference (or set of preferences) as it leads to one missing out on so many of the interesting things that are available from other cultures/subcultures, especially when it comes to listening/dancing material that is musicologically close to the styles associated with a scene but maligned by the members of that scene for being outside the scope of that scene or through being aligned with another scene. But that’s another story. Whatever ‘goth’ is, and whatever one’s opinions on it are, it’s not like reams of people haven’t written about the scene that surrounds it in a rational and mature manner (and also that which surrounds punk/hardcore/emo) before, so one has to wonder where abouts these hacks are looking for their sources. Yes, it all comes back to punk, but goth rock came from post-punk and emo came from hardcore punk. Forgetting deathrock, which is more a US thing anyway, the degree of separation between the two scenes makes the whole goth-emo link so laughable. But then again Marilyn Manson was goth in the eyes of the Media. It all comes down to the fact that some people think they have the scope of knowledge to write about the buzzword that is ‘goth’ where as they can only see the popular end of ‘alternative music’. I’m interested to see how far these sort of hacks can push it. What will be the next evolution of goth? Given the precedents, it’s gotta be somewhat introspective/angsty, the flexibility to have a pop front and existing right now. It doesn’t matter about the styles history/cultural baggage, that can be ignored. Terror EBM anyone?

Back in the day, I suggested on the Jabber standards mailing list that it might be an idea to have a open chat log format that would be interoperable between clients. Queue a fairly heated debate (I was 19 and even more hot headed than I am the now ;) with a few devs about the issue with arguments such as because it’s client side that it was something the Jabber Software Foundation should get involved with and that to conform to a standardised open log format would be admitting that their client was less than good (their client already conformed to XMPP; does that logic not mean that their lack of being able to create a world beating IM/presence protocol mean they’ve failed already?). These days it’s part of a JEP (not widely implemented yet, although you could say that of most JEPs) and there have been recent discussions about the issue and the best way to go about it. It would have happened one day anyway, but I still find it infuriating how many dots that need obvious connecting there are out there.

For all you Adam & Jo Show lovers; American Beautoy, Toytanic, Saving Private Lion, Toy Trainspotting, Furiends, Crystal Maze, The Footie Song, and the absolute classic, Piss Up In a Brewery. Scratchy noise.

Oh yeah, Ken Korda’s Guide to Making it in the Movies; Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

While I’m at it, Gamesmaster Series 1 opening and The Racoons opening.

Right, bed.

By way of and . Put your media player of choice on random and fill out the following;

Opening Credits: Plone — Plaything (silly bouncy bleepyness from a Warp compilation)

Waking Up: Ophidian — Secrecy (filler track with lots of dark pads and reverb, kinda works)

Falling in Love: Hot Chip — Over And Over (Naum Gabo Remix) (”Over and over and over and over and over, like a monkey with a miniature cymbal, the joy of repetition really is in you”. Not as good as the orginal mix though.)

Fight Scene: Swarf — Supine (can’t really see the fighting, to chilled/not enough variation in emotion for that. maybe as a longwinded chase/fight scene in the Ghost In The Shell series though..)

Breaking Up: Virtual Embrace — Welcome To My World (angryness with a couple of interesting chord changes)

Making Up: Groove Armada — Little By Little (”Grooving. Sexy. Beats”, to quote Brennan Underwood)

Sex: Mindless Self Indulgence — 1989 (”Some babies wanna get down like this”)

Life’s Okay: mind.in.a.box — Lost Alone 2 (’resolving’ lyrics)

Mental Breakdown: The Beatles — Searchin’ (where has my mind gone? wheeeeere has it gone?)

Driving/Walking: Gewaltakustik — Austreibung (perfect for stomping through the centre of town)

Flashbacks: Franz Ferdinand — Come On Home (hmm, not subtle enough)

Happy Dance: Helium Vola — Gegen Einen Teufel (soooo not exactly a happy track)

Regretting: Nine Inch Nails — Head Like A Hole (Soil) (not really suitable either. man, this isn’t turning out as well as Beths)

Final Battle: Funker Vogt — Obscure Pictures (are there any Funker Vogt tracks not suited for a battle scene or the aftermath of?)

Death Scene: Orbital — Forever (bleep that drifts between chipper and melancholy with profound/absurd sounding speech samples. I could quite happily die to this)

End Credits: Waiwan — Revenge (stompy big beat much like Amon Tobin. could do.)

I’ve been slowly buying more CDs in the last couple of months. My last purchase was in Grouchos where I picked up Roni Size/Reprasent’s ‘New Forms’ and Mr Scruff’s ‘Keep It Real’ on the cheap, and prior to that I collected FabricLive mix CDs by Andy C & DJ Hype (DnB) and Bugz In The Attic (brokenbeat) which were on offer in Virgin and found William Orbit’s Pieces In A Modern Style in a charity shop. I was going to order several items from InfraRot but it turns out they don’t take Mastercard Maestro (previously Switch) so will need to sort out a way ’round that issue for future..

I miss Disfunction, even though I got punched in the face there. Well, maybe I don’t miss it that much. Need to find a club that plays hardstyle in Edinburgh though.. Need to go to bed soon also..

P.S. I will find the time to update properly at some point..

P.P.S. Woo, just checked the Implant site and it notes that P.A.L will be supported by Mr. . Really looking forward to this one now.

I’ve been feeling too apathetic this last month and a bit to update properly about what’s been happening in my life, but I just thought I’d briefly mention that I’ll be through in Edinburgh this weekend for Absynth. I might see some of you there.

Also, Infest in two weeks time. Woohoo. Although I’m now looking for new accommodation. And someone else to take the place of the person who just pulled out of ’s hire-car plan (else it’ll be the ’spensive train or the Megabus). Woohoo. *sigh*

Well that was fun. Read all about it here. The MacRumors IRC transcription channel had over 2500 watching it and the backchannel had somewhere around 800 peeps in. It was ammusing to watch the channel explode when every new announcement was made, either with delight or derision (and down right confusion when the transcriber forgot to note that the 256Mb that was mentioned for the new Mac Pro was actually video ram). Steve Jobs did his usual spin, first by taking the piss out of Microsoft for copying features from OS X in Vista, then later by announcing that Leopard will feature “Spaces” (i.e. virtual desktops) and Mail will be upgraded to include HTML e-mail templates, a notes and a to do feature. The Time Machine automated backup feature looks like it will be interesting with it’s nifty 3D interface, which I’m assuming uses the also updated Core Animation features. Now, to wait for someone to upload a video of the whole thing..

There wasn’t one more thing, much to everyone’s chagrin at the end, but here’s some images;

For anyone who cares, MacRumoursLive.com; “Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference commences on the 7th of August, with Steve Jobs giving the keynote presentation at 10am Pacific. It is not anticipated that there will be a live video broadcast of the keynote and so MacRumors will provide live coverage on this site.” That’s 6pm UK time btw. The AJAX stylee updating of the transcription sounds like it will be interesting. Will we be seeing an iPhone? (I know, I know, I’ve been reading the news over the last few months and I know it’s not likely, but it would be funny..)