Liam's write-only LJ

Thus in a way, the trip really began the following morning. Our cabin is double-glazed and air-conditioned, so the full impact of our exotic location only hit me when I opened the curtains, to find the ship already resting at anchor.

Outside, we were in one of a cluster of small bays of bright blue water, surrounded by towering slopes covered in lush vegetation and dotted with villas. Watercraft small and medium-sized scurried around on the water, tens stories below; yachts bobbed at anchor and speedboats bounced over surf of a colour never seen in European waters. It was of a degree of loveliness that it struck the eye as just being unreal – a sensation I've not felt since my first sight of the Austrian Tyrol.

One leaves Salzburg airport and drives out into flat countryside of impossible, unrealistic greenness, dotted with tiny perfect villages like something off a particularly large, tasteless and over-the-top cuckoo clock. Every house of whatever size is a perfect, two-story Alpine cottage, with shutters and window-boxes full of bright red geraniums. Every garden, rustic and implausibly photogenic. Every cow mascara-ed and equipped with a cowbell on an embroidered collar.

It's like an exceptionally expensively-fitted theme park. My immediate conclusion was that the road out of the airport had been artificially landscaped, tailored, Astroturfed and managed to within 2.52cm of its life. Even the mountains framing it in the distance were posed to perfection, like a chocolate wrapper: towering, grey, prettily snow-capped, like a cartoon of ideal mountains.

But over a seventy-kilometer drive, it never stopped. It is all like that. Every town, large and small. How people don't snap and run amok I don't know. Perhaps they're clubbed into insensibility by Austrian retail prices.

My first impression of St Lucia was like that. It is so pretty, so picturesque, so perfect, it doesn't look real. It's like when you see your first living chinchilla: as the little girl in Despicable Me screams, "it is so fluffy I am gonna die!" It doesn't look remotely realistic; it's an expensive stuffed toy. Then it blinks and whiffles its nose at you.
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Had been planning to go to the Ton. But this afternoon, vanessaw texts me and tells me that she has a spare ticket to Razorlight at the O2, because the mate she was going with has had to drop out.

I've already been to the O2 once this year, to see Metallica with sparktastic, and it was one of the top 5 best gigs I've ever been to. It was my first time there and Sparky got great seats, very low down and near the front. Excellent view, although I always feel out of place sitting down at a rock gig. I am not sure if I wrote about the Metallica gig at the time, but it was great - and a forgotten pleasure. I've never seen them before. Back in October when she asked me, on the basis that none of her other gig-going mates knew of her secret vice of RAWK and would want to (so nice to be a last resort!), I could readily afford £40 for a gig. Even if it was the most I'd ever paid.

By April, when it came round, there was no way I could have. It was like a present from a former self. We also caught Machine Head, the second support act, who were pretty good, but Metallica owned the island stage like few bands I've ever seen before. The light show was very impressive, with huge floating coffin things descending from the mists of the distant ceiling, there were flames and pyrotechnics, there were thousand of black balloons of all sizes, there were no big screens or props like that... Excellent stuff.

It was an un-anticipated pleasure to be returning there so soon for another band, ones who, like Metallica, I'm signicantly fond but no albums of whose I own. I was listening to Razorlight on Spotify all day, by way of last-minute "revision".

The beer in there is awful, and it's also £4.30 a pint, so we snagged a half-decent one in one of the bars on the outer ring first. Duvel for me; at least you know where you are with a bottle of Duvel.

Then we went in for the first support act, Airborne Toxic Event. We didn't pay them nearly the attention they deserved, but they were rather good. I shall be seeking out some more.

Then came the Howling Bells, of whom I'd not heard before. It was hard to tell from our seats up in the gods, but the tiny distant figure of Juliana Stein looked rather cute and she sounded good. Vague echoes of the Cranes or the Sundays or some other ethereal girly-fronted band I can't quite put my finger on.

Then a long gap before the main event. This time, it was a more conventional layout with a stage opposite the main groundling's bar, and there were big flanking screens too - of which I was quite glad. I've never seen Razorlight before, but I fondly remember wading though a slick of tiny little spotty emo kids in Tottenham Court Road station on night a few years back. When I idly wondered aloud to my companion where and why Every Single Teenybopper In London had come from and why they were ALL in TCR station, one of them bravely volunteered that Razorlight had played the Astoria that night. And that it had been really good, actually.

I (slightly sheepishly, for I'd not really meant to be overheard, but being silent and inconspicuous is not a strength of mine) allowed that I quite liked them myself, despite my great age and everything.

So I was doubly chuffed to get to go and see them for myself.

As Spotify had reminded me, I actually know and like a lot of their stuff, but I've always been vaguely of the opinion that they were a good band but not nearly as good as they thought they were, if you see what I mean.

Well, I think I have to revise that, now.

Compared to their support acts, their confidence as they took to the stage spoke volumes. They didn't quite sell out the dome - the far end of the top tier of seats (the same tier as where we were) was empty, but there were a lot of people in there. At a wild guess, 10,000+. And the band did not look daunted.

The sound quality was excellent, for the size of venue; only in the quietest numbers was there any problem with echoes. The performance was good, slightly wild and edge in places, but with some good skilful guitar work in their anthemic instrumentals - more faithful than I've heard some old-time big stadium acts manage, without being slavish to their singles or album mixes. There was not only some good back-filling synth work, there was a proper upright piano on stage, used well, and a percussionist with kettle drums and marimba. The kettle drums provided some wonderful deep rhythm in a couple of numbers, but alas, the marimba was inaudible, at least to my aging ears.

It was a good, crowd-pleasing set - only about an hour, but packed with all the favourites, of which there's a surprising number, and only a modicum of new numbers and album tracks for the hardcore fans. All the stuff I'd been hoping for was in there and more, and its reception was very good. Hard to measure the mood of such a big crowd from up in the gods - certainly they were loving it in places, and the one singalong session was an epic - more of a colossal murmur than actual song, but hey, they all knew the words and they were belting it out, down there a mile or so below us.

The encore was a little bit of a pro forma - the crowd were expecting it and didn't make much of noise asking for it. And it was all new stuff, to me, and to many, judging from its reception.

But then, after a good third of the crowd had gone, Johnny Borrell came back on stage and did a rather good and moving solo piano song, the house where my father died. The remaining audience were agog. And after that, the rest of the band returned and did another three numbers - none I knew, but clearly many there did.

A really good solid gig, excellent fun, and a thousand thanks to 'Ness for taking me there. I feel sorry for her mate who missed out on it.

And that is about the closest thing to a rock journo gig review you're ever likely to see out of me.

Reminder for those that way inclined: tomorrow night is the next Skeptics in the Pub.

Title:
Confessions of an Ex-Creationist
When:
16.03.2009 19.00 h
Where:
The Penderel's Oak - London

Matt Parker will be candidly discussing what Creationists believe, why some normal people are convinced by them and how he feels about all of this - specifically in the context of being a Maths and Science teacher.

Matt grew up in a conservative Christian family and attended a church where the Bible was taken as the literal word of God, even in the matters regarding the creation of the Universe. A series of events at school and university have since turned him into the jaded sceptic he is today but it has left him with a unique insight into Creationism culture.

Matt Parker is best described as a Stand-up Mathematician who does everything in his power to make more people excited about Mathematics.
When he’s not doing his Maths routine around the country, Matt finds time to be a ‘normal’ teacher in a London secondary school, educating young people in the way of Maths and Physics. His favourite number is currently 496.

Murder One is to close.

Done to death by the lying b*st*rd landlords who told them that the building was being demolished and kicked them out. Of course, it's not, it's still going strong, with some new businesses in there. It's one of the newer buildings in the area; I always found the "news" unlikely.

To be honest, I'd not been in the new place. I was a regular in the old one, because of its huge, excellent SF section - but that had to be dropped in the new place, for lack of room.

I can't help but wonder if these two facts are connected.

No SF => less business => closure...?

Damned sad news, anyway. The Book Inn went years ago, after their fire; uninsured, I believe. Now Murder One. Where else is there apart from Fantasy Centre and Forbidden Planet?

Ironically, I heard the news from FP's very own danacea.

feorag and ½r reminded me last night that the Pig's Ear Beer Festival is on at the moment, at the Ocean in Hackney. (First place I saw Garbage and Apoptygma Berserk. This should be a bit of a change from that... Especially as it's a music-free festival.)

(On the festival page, you'll have to scroll down a bit for the details. Or try here.)

Anyone fancy joining me this evening? The rest of the weekend is already all booked up.


(As you can see, there's a piratical theme to this year's festival; thus the post title, y'see. Er, mateys.)

I went mad a little while ago and bought myself a cheap used Playstation 2.

It was to replace the one that Scroteboy - AKA Tony John Beasley of Tooting - stole from me a couple of years back. I'd not noticed until that point, but he stole all my games, too, the hateful junkie bastard. All I had left was my PS1 copy of Quake and my memory card. And a retro 80s-style joystick I bought myself at the Retro Gamer show some years back.

But I didn't have anything to play on it until recently, until I bought myself a guitar controller and a copy of "Guitar Hero Rocks the '80s" on eBay. Total outlay, not a lot - about £75 for all of it, including the console, which was £40 from X Electrical.

And now, I am finding that a lot of my evenings are disappearing. I've not been out once this week since suaveswede went home, which probably means that the PS2 has already paid for itself.

I am terribly impressed with Guitar Hero. No, it's nothing like playing a real guitar. Yes, it's an entirely useless skill. But it is terrific fun.

Now, though, I hanker after Rock Band and its drumkit... But I don't have a Gen3 32-bit console. At least a Gen2 one - a replacement PS2 - was cheap. (AFAICS, there was no Guitar Hero for the Xbox, as thanks to ajshepherd, I do have one of those. Was rather enjoying GTA Vice City on it occasionally. Splinter Cell was way too hard.)

The trouble is, I may have found an excuse.

Some months ago, I was chatting with lostcarpark during one of his visits. He felt that the balance board from Wii Fit would be ideal for a snowboarding game.

Oh dear.

I foresee additional expenditure...

Long time no update. Life has been rather hectic. Mostly, in good ways.

I went to Zombiecon. It was fun. Heavily zombie-oriented, as you might imagine. I did a few panels - helped Elvis electrocute people, then did talks about necrophilia and the science of zombies - y'know, the usual sort of stuff. They seemed to go OK, thanks to co-panellists such as the good Doctors adelheid, emmajking & happyuncledave. Good times. Same place as Novacon but it was rather different with loads of zombies and rather fewer truffs. They ran out of beer. Emma & I made a raid on Tescos and ensured we were well supplied. dougs and johncoxon made sure I didn't have to carry too much home with me again.

The next day, I went to Kraków with an old mate from Uni, Tudor. It was terrific. More on this later, if or when time permits.

Then a week of editing, punctuated by Skeptics in the Pub, with Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre. Utterly thronged. Saw people I've not seen in years, such as vanessaw. This is good.

I joined the London Freewheel event with an old mate from an old mate's Uni, Charlie, who is also a former colleague from TfL. (We managed to meet about, oh, 3 times in 9mth.) Freewheel was a laugh, as it was last year. Met him on the Mall, rode to the Tower of London - the end of the official route - and stopped for icecream. There is a Ben&Jerry's there. This is a good thing. Then off to Victoria Park, because we felt like it. Then back to the Mall, virtually on our own, which was a very odd feeling - shades of 28 Days Later - eerily empty London - then out to Hammersmith, then back to our respective homes. Given that I did a lap of Richmond Park in the sun on Saturday, that's about 55-60 miles that weekend. Not too bad. Need to do this a lot more often, though.

Doesn't leave a lot of time for LJ, alas...

Infest was, as ever, an absolute hoot.

I was (also as ever) terribly late on Friday, far more so than normal. I also arrived to find that they'd given my pre-booked room in halls to someone else. After 20min of prevarication from the friendly, helpful but rather stressed security guard, I left my bags with him and trotted up to the venue to grab a couple of pints of Saltaire Blonde, bump into an already-somewhat-pissed epistaxsis and bounce around to the last band of the night, Grendel, with miss_wonderly.

In terms of militarily-precise organisation, it all went downhill from there, really. I'm not going to attempt to chronicle events or list all the LJers I met, there were faahsands of 'em. I took my laptop - it is only a wee subnotebook - but never turned it on once.

Suffice to say that the ale was good (until it ran out on Sunday night), the food was good, especially leisurely brunches in the Love Apple., the music was good... oh, hell, it was all good. There were corridor parties until dawn every day, and some guys in D Block of Arkwright Hall had a complete pro sound system set up in one of the kitchens - mixing desk, mahousive speaker set with booming bass drivers, lighting rig, the lot. Got to spend more than a token 2min talking to _whitenoise for once, a significant bonus.

Highlights...
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In recent weeks, I've been experimenting with a nifty little "product". It's TinyXP: a sort of Windows distribution, a hand-rolled version of Windows XP that you can download via Bittorrent, burn onto CD and bung on your PC.

It's XP with almost every optional component removed, all the latest patches and bugfixes pre-loaded, including SP3, and optionally, even Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Windows Media Player stripped out too. There's an optional pack of drivers and so on that you can choose, and a "bare" version with nothing that's not absolutely necessary.

It's pretty good. Illegal as all hell, of course, yes, but not the sort of crime you're ever going to get done for. It passes "Windows Genuine Authentication" and so on, so you can install things like Windows Defender on it, or IE7. It's smaller than normal XP, faster to install, faster to boot and takes significantly less memory - in fact, its default footprint is even smaller than Windows 2000.

I've always meant to build something like this myself, but though I have a custom XP build with a lot of the crap removed, I've never even looked at things like breaking Windows Activation.

TinyXP is pretty handy, though - I've put it on a couple of PCs I've given away on Freecycle recently. With a small fast version of XP, there's not a lot of reason to put Windows 2000 on low-spec PCs any more.

But I've also been looking for a copy of Vista to play with. I had a suspicion that in the same way that I can cut a few hundred meg of the install-disk size of XP, 50MB or so off its memory footprint and 10-15min off the install time, that I might be able to cut the crap from Vista and get it down to a civilized size.

Well, a couple of days ago, it occurred to me to look, and sure enough, the same "eXPer1ence" hacker that produced TinyXP has also produced TinyVista. It's Vista, complete with Aero, but with no background search, no sidebar, no superfetch, almost no bundled apps, but plenty of drivers (excluding printers - they've all gone.)

So I've downloaded it and in a quiet moment this evening put it on my Thinkpad, alongside the kosher IBM copy of XP.

And it's not half bad. It recognised most of the hardware in my X31, and between my folder of IBM drivers and Windows Update, everything is working. It idles at 345MB of RAM, a bit more than XP, but not too bad on a PC with 1GB. It's taking up a bit over 2GB of disk.

I can't see a lot of reason to recommend it over XP, but if all you have is a Vista licence and you hate the bloat, this is an option worth exploring. If, of course, you don't mind stealing from Microsoft. But then, Bill Gates is still the 2nd richest man in the world, and he achieved that position through theft himself, so personally, I can live with that.

I can't point directly to download links. Go to IsoHunt or some other Torrent index (e.g. The Pirate Bay or MiniNova), type in "tinyxp" or "tinyvista", and look for a recent release with lots of trackers and seeds. Download the minute Torrent file, open it in a Bittorrent client (I use Transmission myself, but Windows types might try μTorrent)... And wait a couple of days. Then burn it to a blank CD - use the "burn image" option in CD Burner XP or some other CD-burning app.

Boot the recipient PC, tell it what partition to use and enjoy. There are no keys to enter, no usernames or any of that, and it all happens rather quickly.

On the first day, I made copious notes… then on Saturday, my phone died, and I reverted to my old one, so the notes stopped. So you’re only getting much info on the Friday, which will probably come as a relief…

Was it raining? Yes.
Was I damp? Yes.
Was there mud everywhere? Yes.

Was it really a necessary part of the experience? Well, I don’t know about necessary, but it’s part of it all right, definitely.
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