someone who's doing some things
These are the old Nicholas Courtney episodes which I thought I’d like to. He had an excellent voice and always carried a show. It is strange to hear him when you know he’s gone, but it’s good to remember what an awesome actor he was and what a great character The Brigadier was too.
So I bought it, I’ve got it, I’ve listened to it. It’s about 15 minutes long, it’s only one track and that’s it.
So what did I think? Well it certainly isn’t the best thing by Mr Sylvian that I’ve heard. Calling it music might even be a stretch. I think it is more appropriate to say it is sound art. Treated as such I’m assuming that it may have been more interesting to watch it live than to hear it as a recording.
Having said that, there were moments where it was interesting. In some ways it isn’t too different from listening to “When Loud Weather Buffeted”, which I have enjoyed. All in all I can say that I’m glad that I got this on the second run from the label rather than trying to get hold of an 1st run copy from eBay, some of which were going for over £100.
Will I be listening to it a lot? No, I don’t think so, or at least I can’t see that happening.
I do hope that he does some more even slightly accessible music at some point soon. That would be most welcome. However, sadly, I think it is unlikely.
I nearly missed it but found their tweet this morning letting me know that the song of theirs that I love so much “Crease in his hat” is on iTunes, and Amazon, and, after a tiny bit of looking, it’s on Spotify too. All of which is brilliant.
The best thing was that they got in touch with me at all. It reminds me of how different things are these days. There was a time when it was really difficult to get in touch with bands or musicians you liked. These days they get in touch with you!
Disability Arts Online have a really nice piece on their site about the SoundLab Play Space event. They did a job of focusing in on what we were trying to achieve, and also raised some good questions which will probably need to be asked and thought through.
Just thought I’d mention that you can follow along by email if you choose to, or if that suits how you like your information delivered. You can find the ‘follow by email’ thingy on the right hand sound bar.
Just thought I’d mention it anyway.
I think I’ve probably posted all of the individual posts I’m going to now about the Play Space. It was an amazing day and I think it well really well overall. Hopefully we’ll do something like this again in the not too distant future.
If you want to see all of the post about it you can click on the tag SoundLab (just click here).
There’s been a couple of kickstarter projects that have been interesting but so far neither have delivered the goods. I’m still hopeful that the smart strap idea will deliver some really interesting possibilities and make the Pebble into more than just a smart watch and more of an IoT device.
I think next year will be a bit of a make or break time for the Pebble.
I didn’t manage to get the Mag Pi magazine with the Zero on the front cover, I wish I’d paid more attention to that. I will pick one up at some point. It is a very impressive achievement to get a unit like this out for just £4. It gives me a bunch of ideas of things that I might (with enough time) be able to do with it.
Probably it’s a project for next year though.
One of the things I wanted to do in 2015 was a lot more automation and getting things to work by themselves. Largely that hasn’t happened. However, there are reasons, the main one being that for the most part I haven’t had the need for it. This opens up a bigger question about technology though. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who was telling me about something cool he could do with his new phone. It was cool, but when I asked him if it was something that he’d actually use, he said no.
That started me thinking. How many times to we (I) think that a thing is cool and would be really useful only to find that actually, whilst it is a cool use of technology, it is in fact a use that we (I) have no real need for. So in actual fact, it isn’t so cool after all. I’m starting to find this a lot these days. Things I thought I’d use or assumed I’d use are actually just cool, or fun, or more often both, but fundamentally, not of any practical use after all.
It’s a shame, but I’m beginning to start questioning myself when I look at a new app, or gadget or whatever, and say, would I really use this? Would it just collect dust? Would it end up taking up time and effort to show me that I’m not going to find it very useful? This is starting to happen more and more. In many ways it is a good thing though. It means I will waste less time and effort, but it’s also a bit sad. Sometimes it’s nice to play with cool stuff just for the sake of it, and now, I find myself just asking, why?
I am Ashley Elsdon 