no2self.net

If anybody is in the market for a turntable, you could do a lot worse than the Bush MTT1, which is currently on sale at Richer Sounds for £39.95. It got a blazing review and 5 stars from What Hi-Fi magazine.

I bought one this afternoon. I just dropped Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats on to test it and it sounds sweet.

I’m a little pimp
With my hair gassed back
Pair a khaki pants
With my shoe shined black
I got a little lady
And she walks that street
Tellin’ all the boys
That she can’t be beat

Willie the Pimp – Frank Zappa, Hot Rats

Matt: Have you seen the Radio 3 architecture thing?

Me: No, what is it? Sounds good.

Matt: To be honest, I filed it under “tell Rob about that” and forgot it.

Doh! Serves me right for not paying enough attention to Radio 3. Thanks Matt. You should all go and check out his radio recommendations for the week.

How do buildings affect us? Over the next year on Radio 3 we’ll be
exploring the impact of the built environment on our lives, and the
importance of architecture. For this site we want to hear about the
buildings you love, and the spaces that inspire you … and to provide
an expanding archive of interviews with architects, debates and
features on architecture.

Quote from bbc.co.uk/radio3/architecture/

Just me and an empty skate park. Getting up early has some benefits. A frontside noseblunt slide … is a long way off yet. This morning I focused on just staying on the board. Surprisingly, I had some success, well, most of the time – there was one incident that involved my knees meeting the tarmac (quicktime movie).

Yawn. Massengale finds a new way to criticise Late Modernists by pointing out a certain preference for black in their wardrobes. In a round about kind of way it reminded me of the piece written by FAT architects a few years ago – How to be a Famous Architect.

Partly because it’s all about developing the image and the mystique of the architect as tortured poet, but also because I once used it as the parameters of a brief for some students and when I was pointing out the importance of wearing black at all times I realised that one of my fellow tutors had been kind enough to prove me right, by turning up that morning in nothing but the aforementioned colour. Poor chap was a bit embarrassed – belated apologies if you’re reading this, Mark.

Goodnight, I’m off to iron my orange flares.

In an effort to wash away the rage that was building inside me after too many car journeys to work, I paid a visit to the climbing wall at Aston University last week. I really need to start getting on the tram again. Hatred for your fellow motorist hops from car to car like headlice in a school assembly and you quickly become infected. Last week I leant on the horn and hurled abuse at someone only to realise a few minutes later that they had been completely in the right and I, and my horn, had been wrong.

Something had to be done and one of the best ways I know to empty your mind and relax is to potter about on a bouldering wall. Climbing is one of the most laid back sports I’ve ever done, both mentally and socially – getting uptight about a move is the best way to guarantee you’ll fall off and I’ve never met anything but warmth and friendliness from a fellow climber. Once, during a 3 month stay in Santa Cruz in California, I tried to learn how to surf. You know, that easy going, not-a-care-in-the-world, life’s a beach, kinda sport. Rubbish. I met nothing but aggression. On one occasion I got told to f**! off before I’d even got in the water. Aside from that, a ten foot wall of water bearing down on you like a freight train is significantly more frightening than slipping from a rock and sailing gracefully and silently through the air. More dangerous too; I have the dislocated clavicle to prove it, but that’s another story.

I’ve mentioned an indoor wall in Stourbridge in a previous entry; this time I had only my lunch break to fit in a session on the rock resin. If you’re going to climb indoors in Birmingham, there are a couple of choices. You could choose to go and tackle the 70 foot high walls at The Rock Face, but you’ll not have time to tackle many of those feet during your lunch hour and it’s quite expensive unless you put aside a whole day. The alternative is to spend £2.50 and practice your crimping ¹ at the wall in the Gem Sports Hall at Aston University. It’s small but quite well formed – technically challenging in some places, all muscle in others. A few minutes cranking hard ² whilst listening to the haunting soundscapes of the group I mentioned in the linklog a few days ago and I was soon forgetting about both car and horn. I’m not quite in the shape I used to be when I was climbing 10 years ago, but then, who is?

If anybody is looking for a climbing buddy in Birmingham and can deal with the fact that I’ll be in and out again in no more than about 25 minutes, before dashing back to the office, let me know.

Tomorrow I shall be embarking on my first outing with the skateboard I’ve just finished building. It’s been 15 years since I last got on a board, you may expect stories that involve both broken limbs and broken pride. I wonder if they have WiFi at the hospital?

1. come with me one lunch break and I’ll explain what that means.
2. Ibid.

Notes on TimeAndTheHunter/IIIDeath (page 87)

Despair not. Just when you were beginning to feel thoroughly dejected about Calvino’s proposal that there is no longer any real connection between anybody or anything now that we’ve become complex multi-cellular organisms, rather than simple cells adrift in the promordial soup ¹; he extends the olive branch of hope towards us in the chapter entitled III.Death.

As soon as we are out of the primordial matter, we are bound in a connective tissue that fills the hiatus between our dicontinuities, between our deaths and births, a collection of signs, articulated sounds, ideograms, morphemes, numbers, punched cards, magnetic tapes, tattoos, a system of communication that includes social relations, kinship, institutions, merchandise, advertising posters, napalm bombs, namely everything that is language, in the broad sense.

The middle section of this book is very difficult to read. Just when think you’ve made some sense of the ideas, he moves on to something new before you have chance to structure your thoughts. If my memory serves me correctly (this is my second reading), the last section is the most enjoyable. Peter certainly seemed to think so.

There’s no doubt in my mind anymore that he is certainly one of my favourite authors. If you had a bookcase that contained only the work of Italo Calvino, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Douglas Adams, you’d need nothing else. All parts of your brain/soul would be satisfied.

1. see previous entry on Blood, Sea chapter

• BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Brazilians decode coffee genome
  

  ‘…Brazil would use the genetic code to create a super-coffee, richer in taste, more aromatic and resistant to disease and frost…’

• Honey, Where You Been So Long
  

  ‘…an MP3 blog to share pre-war blues, updated every working day…’

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

• The Organ as it Rusts
  

  ‘…Music improvised from assemblages of tape loops, shortwave broadcasts, and field recordings…’

• Storefront for Art and Architecture
  

  List of exhibitions from 1982 to present day – scan down the list and follow the timeline of fashionable architectural theory over the last 20 years (thanks Al!)

• Illuminati
  

  Illuminati’s first release on Newsense Recordings ‘Searching for the new land’ – sample track downloads available (via Late Junction)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

Contrary to my Doctor’s advice, I sat in the direct sunlight to draw this a few weeks ago. I think they call that suffering for your art.

It’s the sculpture by Anthony Gormley in Birmingham’s Victoria Square. I mentioned it a while back. Whilst I was sketching this I started to think about some of his other work and a phrase I used on an entry about ‘mobile clubbing’ came to mind – implied rhythym.

More on that later when I find a source for the specific sculptures I have in mind. For the moment I’m more interested in the realisation that my drawings are a device for capturing implied rhythym. Scrutinise them too closely and you’ll find that the proportions of the individual parts are somewhat less than accurate. Be patient and wait until the last pencil stroke is finished and somehow the sum of the parts seems to equal the essence of the underlying form; a sort of Platonic ideal that keeps the whole thing together.

No. Wait. That can’t be right. I don’t believe in Platonic ideals. There’s no such thing. Aaarrrggghhhhhh!

*snap*

Anyone want a slightly damaged 4B pencil?

Ok, that almost went according to plan. The changes I’ve implemented mean that all the previous comments on the site are now broke. Arse. I’ll fix them all but it’ll take a few days.