Ewan McVicar - Abrasive Route

My first full time PAYE job was a laboratory technician producing specialist polymers for a contact lense manufacturing plant. Radio 1 was piped into most corners, and at 18 or 19 it was ok but when I look back, the DJs were self serving and indulging themselves.

 

They liked music but it always felt like they were more important than the product. Not any more though. I listen to a lot of Audio; music, podcasts, more female academics than males but the easiest smorgasbord to pick from, depending on my mood which is driven by the time of day or night, is mostly Radio 1, 1D, 1R and 1X but Radio 3 and 4 are faves too, usually R3 is for when I drive. Before BBC Sounds I was smoking it on Samurai FM, Audio Scrobbler, Last.FM and now Youtube is great for hunting down tracks heard in R!D and of course the dance edits are mind blowing.

 

The thing I love most about the Radio 1 spectrum on Sounds, is I'm sorta into pop music for the first time in decades but what makes it a canyon leap from the old days are the DJs who are of course young (except one who really needs to lay off the adrenochrome with 'make some noise', you're my age mush, make some noise about Julian Assange). Anyway, sorry about that because the focus I want to share is how unbelievably passionate about the music the presenters/producers/djs are now. 

They absolutely love love love music and that's infectious so I pick up on this or that track and we're on the same wavelength. It's great and it's also a lot more different than you think I'm trying to convey so I'll leave y'all with the quotes and if I'm lucky I'll come back in five years and point out what I was trying to say without sending people insane.

 

It's not for everyone but the future is mind blowingly different and so it should be. 

 

Mission Aborted

I was five, and he was six

We rode on horses made of sticks

He wore black and I wore white

He would always win the fight

Bang bang, he shot me down

Bang bang, I hit the ground

Bang bang, that awful sound

Bang bang, my baby shot me down

Bang Bang by Isabelle Vaughan Spruce

 

Five Year Delta

Parse the information on the Speaker of the House's election of Kevin McCarthy on the 15th ballot/vote 5 years to the day of post 497.

Future proves past (rhymes with Looking Glass).

Prescient

It's not for everyone.

Spit Balling (Just Another Hypothesis)

Years ago, at work, we'd just won a new global client. 

I don't recall why, but I was being vocal and a bit too candid. The client, a female, overheard me and without any aggression said 'opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one'.

Maybe that's why they made me get up front to get the energy going in the conference room. Dancing is one of my favourite things so not the hardest corporate task I've been burdened with.

So yeah, this is just an opinion.

When Mar-A-Lago was raided by the FBI and you know, accusations of evidence being planted, and evidence being carted out, yadda yadda yadda.... well, It struck me as resonant of a line from the past.

            How do you introduce evidence legally?

It's just a theory. 

Surely the Feds aren't that stupid?

"Surrogates" - Official Trailer [HQ]

Not my usual choice of movie but the idea of living through cloned borgs makes a lot of sense when we see how many live vicariously in the worlds of Corporate Mass Media, HollyWeird, Celebrities, Video Games and so forth. Also the vanity aspect of it is intellectually robust as nobody lives the vicarious life of a homeless person or a battery chicken. Which is ironic because that's what low consciousness living is in many respects. Battery Chicken living.

Nokia N95

I'm road testing the Nokia N95 which means I get to take a load of pictures and videos so here's a sample of the what I've been up to. (Update: Few format probs to sort out here)

First I went to Oulu in Finland 200 Kilometres south of the Artic Circle.


But it wasn't snowing so it looked like this really

and this

The we paid a visit to the Nokia Future Labs where they get to play with lots of cool shit like M does in the Bond films.

And I was so loving this dog that I forgot what the connection with mobile phones was, but it must have been good right?

And a phone that can sort the shopping out for the fridge can't be all that bad a replacement for shopping lists can it?

But with so many toys around the joint there's a serious charging job to do.



And of course you need some kick ass remotes as well.


Not to mention some heavy duty mobile command telescopic spying devices


The engineers enjoy a certain genre of postcard. I couldn't figure out the name though.



And of course testing those phones means they have as many chargers as we get lumbered with


But it's OK for them because after all that 'where's my charger' action the Finns take their saunas quite seriously (it's a religion I overheard), and they are all over the work place, like here on the third floor


and here on the fourth floor in case you need to relax on the way up the stairs ;)

But they are into the coolest stuff


Which is ace by me because those software scientists and Nokia guys are developing the killer app to end all killer apps for people like me who are learning to speak Chinese but will probably never be able to read it well. A phone that can translate Chinese text on the go. Awesome!

There was loads of other stuff too that I can't talk about, because if I did I'd have to kill you or send over one of my Ninja guys to take care of things if you spilled the beans. You know how it is. More on that review later because I've got a whole lot more to say on the N95 and it aint gonna win me brownie points.