Symbolic Forest

More photos from last week, because I’m too lazy to write something. Hope none of the people in them mind.

Keyword noise: holiday, London, photography, beer garden.

Number two argument why I need to buy a digital camera: scanning photos really is the most boring job in the world.

I intended to post sooner about last Sunday’s Shimura Curves gig, but ended up writing all sorts of random nonsense which has since been deleted instead. I should really have written about the band too, because they really were rather good. They’re rather hard to categorise, though: laptop electronica, dronerock guitar, but above it all some lovely polished girl-group harmonies. The chap who came on before them, singing along to the best 1980s Casio rhythms, wasn’t so great,^* but we found ways to amuse ourselves during his set by standing in front of the ventilation fans and pretending we were on the Baywatch credits instead.

I tried to take photos of the band, but the lighting was truly awful. A complex mauve backdrop was projected over the whole stage and the band with it, turning natural-light photos into an abstract mass of blurred shapes. Still, here are the best I came out with. The order of the band photos reflects their on-stage positions. I hope none of them mind how bad the photos are; and I like the way K Shimura seems to have a halo.

* a couple of days later I was chatting to Anna Shimura in a pub, and I mentioned that I’d been at the gig. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I remember standing in front of you during the first act, and listening to you slagging him off.”

Keyword noise: gig, harmony, live music, London, music, photography, Shimura Curves.

Another new month, and I’m back home with sunburnt arms from wandering around London. Time to start scanning all the photos in, I suppose; there’s a few more London scenes that I want to write about too yet. I mean, I haven’t even described any of the gigs I went to, first the Shimura Curves, then Montoya; or the art exhibitions, or the random tourists, or the people on the tube.

I met up with Kathryn, an old school friend a young friend from school, whilst I was down there. “When are you moving to London, then,” was one of the first things she said.^* I wondered what made her say it; and it made me wonder why I haven’t already, given that I’ve been idly mumbling that idea to people for the last year at least.

* Well apart from “where the hell have you been? I’ve been to the pub and left again already!”

Keyword noise: holiday, London, Montoya, music, Shimura Curves, sunburn.

I’ve gone back to university.

No, not like that, I’ve not suddenly gone all intellectual again. This week, though, I’m staying in one.

When I was planning this trip down to London, an internet acquaintance contacted me and said: “why don’t you stay at a university? It’ll be cheaper than a hotel.” So, I went and booked a room at Shoreditch University’s Ripper Hall,^* to relive my university days.

Of course, I never actually stayed in a hall at university, so I’m not really reliving anything. There’s something common to all university accomodation, though. The cheap, cheerful decor, designed to be easily replaced or cleaned at the end of the year. The slightly broken fittings. The dubious stains on the carpet. All very familiar from my university days. There’s a couple of slight concessions to tourism: free soap and shampoo in the bathroom,^** and coffee-making equipment: a small tray with a built-in kettle, a single cup, and little sachets of instant coffee and sugar. If you have any visitors, they have to be signed in and out at the front desk – full name and address on the form, please – and definitely have to be out by 11pm at the latest. It’s not bad, as accomodation goes, but it does feel a little blank and soulless compared to most hotels I’ve visited. And given the level of hotel I usually stay in, but that’s saying something.

* No, it’s not really called that.

** “Complimentary toiletries are not replaced during your stay”, the visitor instructions warn.

Keyword noise: accomodation, halls of residence, hostel, hotel, London, holiday, travel, university.

…was the headline on the Evening Standard billboards when I was wandering around Islington this morning looking for a bus. It’s not a headline you hear every day. It turns out that the manic in question was a ‘heavy plant operator’, which at least might explain how he knew how to get hold of a JCB at 7 in the morning, never mind how to drive one.

I’m still in London – well, to be honest, if you read the start of this post, that should be rather obvious. Last night involved an all-you-can-eat Indian vegetarian restaurant, its walls plastered with pro-vegetarian propaganda all over. The food was good, but the propaganda left me wanting to rebel, and sneak off for a quick greasy burger somewhere. And, to be honest, it wasn’t a patch on the greasy-spoon fry-up breakfast I had in Archway on Monday morning. There’s nothing like a greasy-spoon fry-up when you’re feeling slightly hungover and slightly dirty too.

The photos from Sunday’s gig have arrived, but are slightly disappointing: the whole stage was projected with a big purple picture which makes it very hard to see anything at all of the band. The photos of us sitting around in the pub beforehand are, frankly, much better. You’ll have to wait for me to scan them, of course – it really is time I went out and bought a digital camera.

Keyword noise: Archway, food, fry up, greasy spoon, holiday, Indian, JCB, London, photography, travel.

It’s not only Friday again, but it’s my last day in the office until July. Hurrah! Come Sunday, I’m off down to London for a week, to mooch around museums, go to a Shimura Curves gig, do some geek-shopping, and generally get up to nefarious stuff. I’ve already arranged to meet a few intimidating internet people, who, I suspect, are not to be trifled with; but if anyone else would like to stalk meet me, get in touch.

Fertility Newsflash: there are now two regular readers of this place who are expecting babies around Christmastime. Congratulations to Archel and Matt, the latest to announce their pregnancy.^* Clearly, this is a good thing: regular Symbolic Forest readers are bound to be far more intelligent than the average, so if you have children, they will be smarter too. I’ll shut up now before I turn into Robert K Graham.

Big Dave is away too at the moment, having gone off camping in the Lake District. As he’s never been camping before, and I have, he asked me what advice I had.

“The top piece of advice?”

“Yup.”

“It’ll piss down. No, really. You’ll go off, set up camp, and it’ll piss down the whole week. Take plenty of books.”

I hope his tent isn’t leaking.

Oh, the other pregnant reader is still a secret, by the way. But as she never leaves comments on the site anyway, and doesn’t hang around any of the bits of the internet that most of you readers come from, there’s no point me telling you who she is.

I seem to have lost interest in anything political at the moment. I’m back at my default state of “meh, they’re all awful,” which means I really don’t care to blog about any of it. Which is a shame, because there are so many terrible things about the state of politics in this country. Both parties are but a shiny layer of media gloss covering an authoritarian heart of darkness; Tony Blair’s shiny paint has pretty much worn off now, but Cameron’s is still fresh and tacky. There is so much I could be doing, too; so much campaigning you can do from your own home. I need to pull my finger out a bit.

Blogging will start off on paper, next week, sitting in a café with a cup of coffee and a notebook. Very civilised. I’ll try to get online regularly and keep updating, though. A week of sitting in cafés, with coffee, cake, and … well, all the other stuff you get in cafés, will do me the world of good.

* Well, Archel’s pregnancy, at least. It’s not like you can take turns to incubate it for a week.

Keyword noise: Big Dave, campaigning, camping, congratulations, gig, holiday, London, music, rain, Shimura Curves, travel, weather.

I was thinking: really, I should post something newsworthy, or political, because there hasn’t been much of that on here lately. Nothing in the news has caught my eye, though – it’s all been football-related, and I really couldn’t care one way or the other about it. Then, though, I remembered that today is the summer solstice.^*

I’ve been wondering lately: what is the appropriate date for me to do an “end of the year” post. Is it January 1st? Probably not, to be honest. December 21st feels like a much better fit. Samhain would be appropriate, too; and, of course, I’ll have to post something on August 27th, just because that marks a year of blogging here. But today is also a good day to reflect on the changing seasons.

All of the yearly festivals are to some extent dual-faced. Today is a largely time to celebrate summer happiness, but it’s also a time to remember that winter is on its way. I can sit back and look around me, looking at how happy I am right now; but there’s still a long way to go. I’m in a good place at the moment, much happier than I was a year, two years, three years ago, but I’m still wary that something will happen to push me back where I once was.

On the other hand, it’s now High Summer, and I can see that reflected in my life. I am getting a social life once more. I am making friends, and I realise now that I’m a lot better at relating to people, and handling friendship. I’m learning how to avoid driving friends away, too. I’m finding myself. I’ve been learning a lot about my physical body, and learning to appreciate it a little more. I’m even getting better at taking compliments, rather than just stammering: “um … no … really, that’s not true.” Midsummer is a time to appreciate passion and feeling; and I’m even starting to understand that better too.^**

* Actually, I haven’t checked the ephemerides to see if it is today. Occasionally it can fall slightly to the side, and the official astronomical solstice is now a few days further on.^***

** even if it is in theory rather than practice.

*** Update, August 26^th 2020: I have finally looked this up, and the summer solstice in 2006 was indeed on June 21^st, at 12:26 UTC.

Keyword noise: annual, astronomy, End Of The Year, ephemeris, festival, midsummer, seasons, solstice, summer, summer solstice.

We had a computer that was working fine. We switch it off. We move it. We plug it in. And it doesn’t work. At all. So dead, there’s nowhere to start looking for what to fix. God knows how we killed it.

Things I meant to do and didn’t this week:

• buy clarinet reeds
• write more blog posts
• finish designing Symbolic Forest tshirts
• book my upcoming holiday
• do more on my secret DIY project

Things I did do:

• buy a new bag.

So, at least I’ve done something.

Keyword noise: computing, IT, projects, shopping, todo list.

Apparently there’s some sort of international football competition coming around again. I’m going to do my best, after this post, not to mention it. As I might have said in the past, I don’t care about football at all. Neither does Big Dave, even though if you met him you’d probably expect him to be a supporter.^* If there’s one thing both me and Big Dave dislike more than football, though, it’s the assumption that even though we don’t like football we must be interested in the World Cup. We get funny looks just because we don’t give a toss whether England win or lose.

People do seem really surprised if you tell them you don’t care at all about it. Even people who aren’t football supporters, and who would never normally watch football. They say things like: “But it’s the World Cup!”

“Yes, I know! It’s football! I hate football!”

“But England are playing! You’re English! You have to support England! You have to at least watch the England matches.”^**

“Um … no, I don’t. It’s football. I hate football. Just because I don’t want to watch football on the telly doesn’t mean I’m suddenly Not Really English.” And at that point they usually give up, and look at me a bit oddly for the rest of the day. They don’t seem to get that I just don’t care about football, any football.

So, I’m not going to watch it, or write about it. The only thing that will get me to watch England playing in it, is if somebody ties me up in front of the telly so I can’t get away from it. A cruel torture indeed.

* he would fit right into the traditional football-supporting demographic without too much trouble – especially if, like me, you only saw him in a shirt and tie at work, so didn’t realise that he doesn’t wear sportswear at home.

** all, ooh, three of them.

Keyword noise: Big Dave, England, Englishness, football, television, World Cup.

It does come around fast, doesn’t it? Here it is, a beautiful day outside, a clear blue sky, and here I am sat inside updating the blog. Still, it’s almost too hot and sunny to go out. What I could really do with: a laptop, a wireless card, and a deckchair, so I could sit in the shady bit at the bottom of the garden, surfing the web with a nice big G&T. I can’t sit in the sunshine, I burn too easily.

I’m actually going away for the weekend. Well, I haven’t gone away yet, but I’ve booked an exotic hotel for the night, in the hope of getting to bed before dawn. I’m off out for the day tomorrow, you see, and I thought I may as well spend £50 on a headstart.

Geek news: I’ve been having fun setting up MRTG on the home computer network. NB: if you do not know what this means, do not worry – that is probably a Good Thing. The main thing it means to me is: lots of pointless graphs to look at.

All that information is completely useless, and unnecessary to have, but when you’re a geek that’s not the point. It will be useful if I ever bother to get it set up properly at work.

Plans of going away for the weekend reminded me that I don’t have many good luggage bags. I could really do with a nice multi-purpose over-the-shoulder bag that I can stuff with luggage when I’m setting off, and then use as a day bag when I’m off doing touristy things. If I could also use it as a makeshift gadget bag when I’m out with the camera, that would be an extra too. Something like a record bag would be good, but they’re an awkward shape for anything apart from 12″ singles – good for carrying about an A-Z, a couple of books and a notepad, but I couldn’t fit much camera kit in one. A proper photographic gadget bag would be expensive – and they’re mostly either rucksacks, or a bit ugly-looking – and a magical chest with lots of little feet would definitely be overkill. So, any better suggestions gratefully received. And now, I’m off away to pack.

Keyword noise: geek, graphs, holiday, luggage, monitoring, MRTG, SNMP, networking, travel.