I often dream of trains

... Or at least, they're just papering over the cracks, rather than actually fixing something.

However, if Serotonin theory doesn't hold up, does that mean the scare stories about MDMA leaching the stuff away are as reliable as the folklore about LSD and chromosome damage?

[This]

The scene: Small Brother's out-laws. We are post-christening for Isobel. As is traditional, JH-R (elder) is handed small child by JH-R (younger) so pictures can be taken and you lot can make 'om nom nom' jokes on FriendFace later.

Small child becomes slightly fractious. The parents are hiding for spite. JH-R (elder, apparently) sings the only thing that comes into his head.

Yu-Gung.

Small child gurgles along.

I'm so old-school industrial I crap scaff-clamps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlilCxnmek0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mm6ycEz2A8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjyQkt04Urc

(33 1/3rd of the links stolen wholesale from the usual suspects. Of course, if I was any good, I'd have found the Blackout Crew's Manchester Procession piece too.)

Via andrewducker:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/7/750786/-Incredibly-Shrinking-Liquidity-as-Goldman-Flushed-Quant-Trading

... So let's give a profit-motivated mob root and see what happens...

You know, the Ikea catalogue is a useful source of alien-ish names.

Were I actually inspired to write something, which of course is a ludicrous idea.

Or in this case on Last.fm. Let's see how long that edit lasts...

Anyone else going to Hacking At Random?

Is reading Daily Fail articles going to make you a better person?

See title of post and phrase 'Oxygen of publicity'.

Thank you.

If you've not already done so, I commend one and all to view the fascinating 'Crude Britannia' series on BBC4.

Remarkable engineering and an atmospheric soundtrack.

I guess it's making me stop and think because we have this attitude (or at least that's what it seems like to me) that we don't do engineering in this country, it's all too hard, make do and mend, second-rate public private partnership, challenging career in pension sales, fast track to success by wearing a suit and braying into a phone like a cock with a shite haircut.

And yet.

People built these bloody great things the size of starships in a field in Scotland, towed them out into the middle of the North Sea and then left them there in a howling gale.

Can't do that, cost over-run, budget increase in real terms, inject liquidity into the banking system, buy-to-let, property ladder.


Wankers.


Anyway.

In the old days, when I crawled out of bed close to lunchtime with a thick head, it was because I'd been out having it average the night before. These days it's because I've spent circa twelve hours in work of a weekend. Phew, rock&roll, eh?

Well, bollocks.


Obviously, this isn't all about me, but it's getting a bit bloody previous. Peelie, HST, Tony Wilson and now Swells. Yet Spandau effing Ballet are gigging again. I'd like the good cultural reference-points to last longer than the shit ones, please.

I can't see straight enough to transcribe 'Godzilla vs. The Tetley Bittermen' so you'll have to thieve it.

Let's hope the NME see enough sense and/or money to reprint the 'Ride the puffin' (and other names) articles w/Quantick.

(I'd advise not reading his last few articles from the Philly Weekly if you're of a nervous or hypochondriac disposition. Fine writing, but by Bob it's grim stuff.)

Edit: If you've known me long enough, it should (have) be(en) painfully obvious that my writing style began as variable parts me, HST & Wells, with the odd lump of Ballard thrown in for a laugh.

(Half of m'friendslist is going to be dressed beyond the nines and drinking their own weight this arvo. Excellent work, there. Carry on.)

Adam Curtis has seen the Parallax View. Fine stuff, mind.

Kraftwerk.

The other thing that happened this weekend is that I pitched up at mater & pater's with a bag of produce from my own garden.

I'm not sure who was more surprised by this event.

A30 (i): What appeared to be a Polo astride the central reservation on the far side of a gap in same. Polis blocking the southbound carriageway, but of course everyone had to slow down for a good look while travelling north. Further up the road, two polis cars were trundling along at the head of an appropriately-sized queue.

A30 (ii): Caravan in layby with bodywork at 45-degree angle. First time I've seen one of those mobile boghouses with a ram and tipping assembly, but I suppose it makes unpacking less of a struggle. Oh, wait. There's a battered-looking car still attached to the towing hitch. There's not a straight panel on the thing and it looks very much like the caravan shook it around like a football rattle.

A30 (iii): Coned-off Pug 30X (probably) with a concertina bonnet.

M5 (i): Some frizz-haired bollix in a Polo decides it would be a jolly good wheeze to steam up on the inside of some middle laner caravan-pilot. Not such a good idea when caravan-pilot starts to pull in while Polo-girl is in his blind-spot. Oh how I laughed as the effing caravan fishtailed down the road in front of me.

M5 (ii): Angry baldy-man in an Accord does not indicate or look, but starts to pull out into the space occupied by a reasonably-sized lump of Swedish steel (and rubber, plastic, etc).

At about this point, I think 'Soddez cela pour un jeu de soldats' and hasten (because I am no longer going to hang around so stupid people can try and drive at me) to the nearest motorway exit.

Even then, I cannot escape. The traffic lights on the ring-road are down and the polis aren't letting anyone into Frenchay.

I would make a joke here about having watched restoration comedy and thought to myself 'Where are the bloody tapes and it's their own fault if they've not tested the DR plan.' but it was French and so not restoration.

Hey ho.

Cornwall's nice, though.

Mind you, we went into this Treen pub and was there a wee green bloke floating about on a commode? Was there buggery. Poor show.

The Barbara Hepworth exhibit in the big modernist building on the beach was all a bit Vermilion Sands.

Gug. I think I'm going to go and expire now.

I suspect it's just my currently stuffed brain chemistry, but when I see the word 'bubbly' applied to either a carbonated wine product or someone's personality, I tend to cringe and move in the general direction of Away.

I'm sure there are others.

So. Simply Saab, splendid spares suppliers, seem sorted. Sell self second-hand spark-box.

(That's quite enough of that. Although bonus points for commentary in similar vein.)

But... Sapristi nuckos! A migraine starts on just as I'm wheeling the bike out the door for the trek (haw! It's not. It's a Giant.) to Brislington.

Run to chemist, neck Imigran, wait in darkened room for nastiness to pass.

It doesn't. Although I can remember John Cusack now, so the worst must be past.

[FX: Swearing]

Some taxi-work, five minutes with a Torx bit and the 9k is running a lot better (ie - at all).

For entertainment value, I pull the ignition box to bits. The insides are somewhat scorched. (You can't quite see where the potting compound's gone carbonised and bubbly.)

Meanwhile, I now suspect that the smell of carbonised components works on electronic kit the same way that the smell of vom works on humans; when I go to wash the smell of circuit-death off my hands, the kettle starts to arc and emit smoke.

I should change my name to Neil.

There's a beer festival at Bitton Railway this weekend. Let's hope for good weather.

Happy thing: salad from one's own garden. It really does taste better than stuff from the shop.

Sad thing: the ignition pack in the Saab expired on the way home. A familiar smell of french-fried electronics. Luckily there was a handy pub car-park with handy pub attached. Bugger of a job with no power steering pump, mind.

(Livejournal remix)

In a record week for Google failure, it appears that there's not a webshite out there dedicated to logging all the messages scribed into the runout grooves of records by that master of mastering, George Peckham. (The link is purely for those too young to have ever bought records from a shop)

This is a bit poor, since it's exactly the sort of nearly useless information that the internet is famous for. I'm sensing a great need, but hoping that some other Peelite has already done all the heavy lifting.

On Sunday, Jason (WISOLJ) handed me a lump of IR filter.

Today I cut off the sticky-out bit and gaffered it to the back of my Nokia.

( The results are about what you'd expect: )

The rest are here.

I vaguely recall some children's telly that I assume is of seventies vintage. A young person is plagued by dreams of an ancestor who builds some early steam engine, but for reasons I've forgotten walls is up in a railway arch. Young person is guided by dreams to find said bricked-up bit and thus rediscover the engine.

Probably.

The last time something like this happened, it turned out to be a RAH short that I had become convinced was a lost Hitchcock film.

The internet, usually a demographically-unsurprising oracle regarding 70s/80s youth-telly, is oddly silent.