diary

In the early seventies people were nice, even sarcastic Brits behaved like earnest Northern Californians, and Mike Oldfield, looking like a biblical Christ, produced his Masterpiece, Ommadawn I just found my copy, aaah.

So nice to see that the right people are getting funded. Six Apart: Six Apart Ltd. Announces New Weblogging Service, Investment, Executives and Board

Ken Layne offers sound advice for haircuts: "Anyway, when in doubt, go to the barber shop closest to your local military base ... unless that base houses Marines, in which case you may just want to leave your hair as is." I like old fashioned barbershops - currently I go to one that hasn't changed since the 40's (including the barbers) and is located opposite the Bank of America on Pine St. in San Francisco. It offers the following key barbershop features: 1. 15 minute turnaround, no appointment. 2. Cab-driver style conversation. 3. Overall ambience of the urinal area in an expensive old hotel. 4. Proper barber chairs - expensive poncy salons have chairs that are not designed for cutting hair. 5. Non-PC reading material. 6. Hair cut facing away from mirror. 7. No referring to hair gel, pomade or grease as 'product'. 8. Ability to pretend to be Al...

Edwin Starr, creator of the anti-war song 'War' has died. RollingStone.com: News: "War" Singer Edwin Starr Dead

Hmm, despite the magic of WiFi at conferences these days, very few of the Bloggerati present at SXSW seem to have updated their weblogs. Perhaps speaking to people in person is back in fashion.

I have three types of possession: useful; sentimental/decorative (perhaps was useful) and might be useful or needed in the future. Items in the last category really, really bug me. A large proportion of the might be useful stuff could easily be online. Take for example product manuals or bank statements (my bank will only allow access going back a limited time). Today I threw out a shed load of product manuals for the various bits of near obsolete technology that I am continually acquiring - cos if I want to find out how to troubleshoot the thing gathering dust in the corner I can look it up on the web. Google is increasingly my virtual repository of 'might be useful'. Amen

OK, so most of the brain drain claims about Silicon Valley are bullshit. Everything is cyclical and the valley is in a down cycle for sure. But the Bay Area as a whole is unique - it is the global capital of science and its non Metropolis, campus style, environment is a testimony to its modernity and university style intellectual prowess not its parochialism. For all that, Dave Winer's departure from the Bay Area - appropriately enough to an esteemed campus will leave a vacuum. Kevin Werbach said that "Web services, Weblogs and WiFi are the new WWW". Dave Winer pioneered two of these and 'two out of three aint bad'. Dave Goes to Harvard

Aaaanyway, so I was sitting in a ludicrously trendy bar somewhere in the 'Schmillage', feeling mildly inadequate, when it was pointed out that because there were two people with Mohicans, this was clearly the start of a global trend. My first instinct - bollocks, but now I am seeing them everywhere. Conclusion - I have either lost my mind or everyone else has. This time the Mohican is different - it is not the six inch, superglued, punk rebel thing, but a sort of ironic, wear it with designer clothes, look - a post modern Mohican or Pomohawk. The genealogy of this haircut is different too - clearly there has been a progression from 1. the mop-top messy haircut that it now mainstream to 2. the 'Hoxton fin' where the mess is brushed into the middle currently claiming victims all over London, leading finally to 3. shaving the sides off...

Off to Gaby's place on the Island of Mull, off the West coast of Scotland, for New Year, so will be in 'blog silence' for the next few days. However, am taking the avalanche of books I recieved for Christmas, so there will be plenty to rant about when I get back.

In New York and had drinks at Nick's lair in a hollowed out volcano - sorry, in his too-roomy-by-half NY appartment. Other members of Spekter were also there, Jason, Meg, Jeff, Cameron and Elizabeth. Jason pointed me to Metacritic which seems better than Yahoo for aggregated scores for critic reviews. My favorite being a review of the all-time low scoring movie, "Divorce: The Musical" "The movie climaxes with an entire audience farting -- a more concise review than this one."

A couple of years ago I found myself in a large room in the National Gallery in London. The room was unusually empty except for a tall middle-aged man who was standing next to me, looking at the same painting. I was suddenly overcome with the smell of putrefying flesh and Sulphur as he broke the golden rule of farting (don't break wind when there are less than three people in the room). I glanced round and it was none other than Charlton Heston, the star of 'A Touch of Evil', he blushed and promptly made a swift exit. 'From my warm moist...' So I finally went to see 'Bowling for Columbine this weekend, and sure enough Heston himself appeared on the silver screen holding a rifle and bellowing 'from my cold dead hands...' - and a curious thing happened, I could have sworn I smelled putrefying flesh and Sulphur....

I once tried to impress a girl by putting Philip Glass on the stereo, she shot me a look of faint disgust - 'oh, architect music'. I was an architect at the time and most of my more anally retentive 0.1mm ink drawings were fuelled by the mechanical trance that onsets after six hours of Glassworks on repeat play. So Philip Glass came to San Francisco this week, and we went to see him play along to a series of short films which were mostly great, but then we had to sit through half an hour of turgid travelog and cutesy, derivative nature shots sponsored by Bulgari - sorry Bvlgari! Philip Glass is the apotheosis of modern, a musician that even dresses like a modernist architect, how weird then to be watching his troupe accompany silent films. How strange also that the only people wearing black polo necks last night...