I don’t really drink tea, but would if it came on coat-hangers.
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My scrapbook. I'm Greg Jones.
By day I make web applications, here I link to things I find interesting - generally relating to music, news/journalism, writing/reading and aspects of design.
I'm @gjones on Twitter if you have any comments.
Is it bedtime?Sites I like
kottke.org's best links of 2009
There’s plenty of stuff here that’s worth a 2nd look, even if you think you’ve seen it all before. I haven’t made it all the way through yet, but the post on Beep Baseball is particularly interesting. Also, Pete Campbell dancing.
Crime is a way to use the city
Someday I’d like to write a cheap book about the architectural side of burglary—bank heists, home invasions, jewelry thefts, wall-scaling girl gangs of the Global South, trans-metropolitan tunnels dug vault-to-vault through crypts by men with names like Terry Leather, smoke & mirrors, props and decoys, CCTV control rooms, lock-pickers’ guides, hourly updated routes of gold trucks leaving Manhattan, deterritorialized histories of the getaway car, impersonations and forgeries, spatial camouflage, criminal blueprints and future dream-technologies of the ultimate break-in—all in the name of looking at buildings, and the city itself, as puzzles, spatial systems you try very hard to get into. The well-guarded entrance and its multiple delays. Kafka meets HSBC.
BLDG BLOG with some links to previous posts there and elsewhere on the analysis and planning of crimes.
Best of 2009
I haven’t been too kind to this little old blog in the 2nd half of this year but it has been music that’s pulled me back, so seems fitting to end the year with a best-of as I’m something of a fan of lists.
Now, for someone who buys a lot of music this might be surprising but this year saw my first iTunes purchases. The dropping of DRM inspired me to grab an album that I’d have otherwise had to import, but since then I’ve been seduced by the convenience and immediacy on more than one occasion. I also moved house, to a place with no furniture and I realised how much space I need to store all those I have already, without adding to the collection. I’m sure this won’t be the end of CD-buying for me, as I do love shiny packaging, but I can see physical purchases becoming reserved only for those albums that do put some effort into their appearance.
I was able to put together a playlist for last year’s list on Spotify, picking one track from each of the artists. It turned out that I couldn’t get most of the albums though, and looking back at the playlist even more have become unavailable. As much as I love Spotify, and can’t imagine finding new things to listen to without it, I don’t see it stopping me from buying albums (whether iTunes or CDs). It has meant though, that this year I have favourite albums that I haven’t got around to buying.
So for a list (album names link to Spotify, tracks to Hype Machine)…
- Humbug by Arctic Monkeys - Cornerstone
- It’s Blitz by Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Dragon Queen
- Travels with myself and another by Future of the Left- Arming Eritrea
- Temporary Pleasure by Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity of Huge
- xx by The xx - Crystalised
- Dance Mother by Telepathe - In Your Line
- For lack of a better name by Deadmau5 - Hi Friend!
- Album by Girls - Laura
- Bitte Orca by Dirty Projectors - No Intention
- East of Eden by Taken by Trees - Day by Day
10 Julian Plenti Is… Skyscraper by Julian Plenti
I wrote a bit about this one in the previous post here…back in August. It’s a shame there’s been nothing since, as it would be a bit weird to wax lyrical about it all over again. It’s like Interpol, but different. And when you here Interpol being used to advertise perfume, “but different” is a good thing.
Listen to: Only if you Run
9 Jewellery by Micachu (& The Shapes)
I think this ones wins the prize for the most-fun album of the year, it’s really bouncy and frantic, not one to listen to while trying to do anything else but the shifts in style and tempo, alongside amusing lyrics make for an enjoyable listen.
Listen to: Calculator
8 A Woman A Man Walked By by PJ Harvey & John Parish
I love listening to PJ Harvey sing so much, and to have an album that’s almost as mesmerising as White Chalk, but with the jerky riffs of the earlier albums makes me a happy listener.
Listen to: Black Hearted Love
7 Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective
This was the first Animal Collective album I’ve listened to and having heard others since I’m not really seeing what I’ve missed…but I do love some of the songs on this album, and I can stare at the album cover for longer than is probably good for me.
Listen to: My Girls
6 Fantasies by Metric
I was made redundant in April of this year and until June was busy looking for a job. Too busy in fact, and more than a little afraid of spending money, that I didn’t go and see Metric when they were playing in Coventry, and I regret that quite a lot. Fantasies is a lovely set of songs, and I hope they come back to England soon.
Listen to: Gimme Sympathy
5 Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion by Fight Like Apes
I was introduced to this lot by my friend Holly (who puts them at #2 on her list…) and they are so much fun. Nearly as fun as Micachu, but not quite. The lyrics are amazingly weird and the songs are more than a bit catchy. The 8 seconds that make up the track Megameanie basically some up this band.
Listen to: Lumpy Dough
4 Two Suns by Bat For Lashes
When Elbow won the Mercury prize last year I was a little bit surprised but they were a band that I’d always liked-just-not-very-much, and so I didn’t question the decision. This year’s joke of a choice baffles me entirely. There’s plenty of precedent for using prizes to encourage future greatness, but it’s not like most of the other nominations were too swamped with exposure to benefit from it. Anyway, this is a long, ranty way of saying that Bat For Lashes should have won. Sothere.
Listen to: Daniel
3 Lovetune for Vacuum by Soap&Skin
I was intrigued initially here by the artist’s name. Then finding out that she was Syrian made me think about whether I’d ever listened to any Syrian music before, and I realised I hadn’t. Then I re-read the wikipedia article, and realised that she’s actually from Styria in Austria, not Syria, and then I thought about whether I’d ever listened to any Austrian music before, and I don’t think I have. So. I found some music from a country that isn’t particularly well known for its music, and it’s lovely.
Listen to: Thanatos
2 Manners by Passion Pit
I read on Pitchfork (I think) about how the singer in this band put together an EP as a valentines present for his girlfriend last year and thought it a bit soppy, but as I tend to do when reading music-sites, stuck the band’s name into Spotify to give them a listen. The EP didn’t immediately jump out at me as being anything brilliant, until Sleepyhead came on. Ordering the albums here took me a while (and should still be considered flexible), but the Guardian had a survey on their site today asking for favourite albums, bands and songs, and for the last box, I didn’t even have to think twice - I love it so much.
Listen to: Sleepyhead
1 JJ No. 2 by JJ
This is another band that I wrote about in the previous post, and I called it ‘uninspiring’. To go from that, to my favouritest album of the whole entire year would seem like quite a change of heart, and I am fickle like that. I think my love stems mostly from Ecstasy, which is just adorable, but I just love the Hawaiian/Balearic-style pop beats.
Listen to: Ecstasy
Music Again
As I’ve done a couple of times before, I thought it was about time for another round-up of some of the cool new music I’ve found. (New to me, anyway.)
(All links to Spotify. Soon everyone will be able to get it!)
First up, there are a couple of albums from artists who are more famous in other guises:
Julian Plenti is… Skyscraper is an album by Interpol singer and guitarist Paul Banks and while it can’t help but sound familiar, given how distinctive his voice is, it manages to be nice and quirky, not really that much like the band. I’d heard that he had something on the way, but didn’t know it was being released under the alias so after I saw the title and queued it up, I was nicely surprised when it came on.
Dragonslayer is the 4th album from Sunset Rubdown who started life as a solo project for Spencer Krug who, to me at least, is better known as the singer in Wolf Parade but it turns out he’s involved with quite a few groups. Also of interest to me was finding out that Camilla Wynne Ingr of the wonderful indie-pop group Pony Up! is now on of his collaborators (it no longer being a solo project). Pony Up!’s “I heard you got action” was included on Rough Trade Shops’ Counter Culture 04 album and I fell a little bit in love with it and subsequently the band.
Next, my musical explorations took a trip to Sweden where I found first The Tough Alliance and then The Embassy after reading that their label, Service, are giving an album each a UK release:
From The Tough Alliance we got The New School, which brings a mix of synths enthusiasm and just enough attitude that makes me smile when I listen to it. From The Embassy we got Tacking, which also borrows heavily from 80s pop but is a little more chilled out - less sugar-rush and more lying back and relaxing.
The Tough Alliance departed from Service and created their own label, Sincerely Yours, and it’s from there that the rather mysterious group JJ are releasing confusingly named material. The ‘single’, JJ no. 1, was put out back in March while the album, JJ no. 2 was released in July. The album includes a couple of pretty uninspiring, but still lovely, acoustic songs alongside beats and samples that carry along the same, haunting female vocals.
Creativity for Left-Brained People
As a systems-thinking, ridiculously rational INTP, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told to, “Stop overthinking!” After all, rational thinking isn’t naturally associated with creativity. I admittedly find it difficult to act on creative whim, preferring designs that are the logical outputs of a rational thought-process. To me, a “beautiful” design is one that is logically coherent and rich with meaning.
Related to the last post, an interesting article on the Adaptive Path blog explaining a couple of techniques to encourage creative thinking.
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As Opposed To?
I’m left wondering what the word ‘creative’ means to people who can overcome difficulty by just being creative. It seems to be like an ingredient that’s available down the shops. If it’s necessary, you’ll get some and use it. Need to produce something? ‘Oh, just think creatively.’ I want to say, how do you think creatively? What is thinking creatively? But I don’t want to let on that I’m ignorant of a process everyone else seems to understand perfectly.Jenny Diski expressing her confusion on the common way in which the word ‘creative’ is so often used as a way of excluding all but a subset of people.
Getting up to Speed
Regarding this article on the planned California high-speed train project, Nina writes:
Good writing is the kind of writing that gets you interested in something you honestly never cared about before, and conveys to you why the topic is so magical, meaningful or important. It also speaks frankly about limitations and problems, insecurities and doubts.
And I agree, it’s wonderfully written.
Talk of the Town
Following on from a serious, but interesting, article on what’s happening in Iran were two pieces in the New Yorker this week that were interesting, a little quirky, and made me smile.
The first is a look at what kinds of music soldiers listen to. Unsurprisingly, Metal seems to feature prominently - the research was spurred-on by claims that a ridiculously high proportion of fan-mail sent to Slayer came from serving soldiers - but while Jazz is yet to get a foothold inside the Hummers, Wagner (in homage to Apocalypse Now) is fairly popular.
The second delves inside a class at Mover University, where removal men (and women) are trained up to Elite standard. It’s not an immediately interesting topic, but at the same time a little look into the precision with which they operate is fascinating.
Pentagram take a look at how cigarette companies might embrace the new rules on tobacco advertising that are coming into effect. I hate smoking, but as a campaign I have to admit it’s a good idea.
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NYBooks in the Guardian
Yesterday’s Review section of the Guardian, that I just got round to reading, had three articles from the New York Review of Books that made for interesting reading:
- Malise Ruthven writes on a Divided Iran, picking out the ways, both now and in the past, in how men and women are considered and treated.
- Michael Dirda writes about Patricia Highsmith, the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley ,and its sequels.
- Micahel Tomasky, who I know as the Guardian’s US editor, takes a look at what’s happening with Obama on different aspects of policy.
Some good reading for this gloomy Sunday, anyway.
Infinite Summer
An effort to get people reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest this summer (starts Sunday, carries on into September, doing around 75 pages per week).
I’m a little bit tempted to join in, but it would mean buying another book when I have quite a large pile (literally, I don’t have a bookcase in my new flat yet) sitting unread. The idea of reading-along like this intrigues me though, so even if I’m not joining in I’ll be checking along with how it all works.
Confessions of a Non–Serial Killer
So, for the record: I am not the Zodiac killer, had absolutely nothing to do with those (or any other) murders. As far as I know, I wasn’t even in California when any of them happened. Similarly, I had nothing to do with the death of Joan Webster, a Boston college student whose murder Penn has also tried to pin on me. A note to Zodiac hobbyists and Penn aficionados: Please don’t bother parsing the foregoing for cleverly worded nondenials and numerological incriminating clues; if you don’t like my choice of words, feel free to make up other language that you would take as a flat, comprehensive, unqualified denial, and assume I said that. What follows will tell you nothing at all about Zodiac or Webster; it’s a personal history of being struck by low-voltage lightning out of a clear blue sky.
Michael O’Hare writes on his experience of being the subject of a conspiracy theory.
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"For a while everyone was using the word. Ponzi, Ponzi, Ponzi, it bounced around sounding like a slightly deflated ball. I couldn’t surf the web, read a newspaper, or have a conversation on the street corner without someone saying Ponzi. And since Madoff’s confession, many more Ponzi schemes have been laid bare by the bad economy. The billionaire Allen Sanford, Madoff’s neighbor Donald Young and a Tennessee financial adviser and are among the many that have been accused of running Ponzi schemes. But when the economy recovers and the accusations dry up, what will become of the word Ponzi? Will it continue to thrive?"
— Claire Cameron, for The Rumpus, asks the question “What will become of the word Ponzi?”.
