May 2009
7 posts
nebulae
Well it’s nearly half past ten in the evening and I’ve just been wandering around in my garden after a wonderful three day break. I could smell that kind of ozone, that ionic pressure in the air before a storm and that silence, the birds went deadly silent. There was a strange light, I’m sure most of it caused by Gatwick Airport, an orange strip along the horizon. The clouds were...
lester bangs on funhouse
Like most authentic originals, the Stooges have endured more than their share of abuse, derision, critical condescension and even outright hostility. Their stage act is good copy but easy grist for instant wag putdowns. At first glance their music appears to be so simple that it seems like anyone with rudimentary training should be able to play it (that so few can produce any reasonable facsimile,...
summertime...
The fields of Britain are alive with soft light and the networked chatter of nesting birds.We live in a small cottage nestled in the countryside and it is a great pleasure to watch the birds that nest under our eaves flying back and forth, worm-hunting, nest-building.
I too, and worm-hunting. Looking for juicy media, fat projects, writhing unformed and blind in the dirt. I too, am nest-building,...
it's alive!
…and relax.
A week of late nights and the first phase of boobase is done bar the finer design points. Boobase.com is alive! So - built on the audioboo platform, boobase allows you to filter, search and organise the sonic treasury of audioboo in a way that isn’t possible on the site. Ditto for the iphone - we still need to address some cosmetic issues but those facilities are there...
boogle to boobase
Boo hoo hoo - looks like we can’t have boogle so our audioboo toolkit has been rechristened boobase. Many a fraught hour was spent last night wrestling with ssh, rsa keys, git, rails and heroku but we managed to deploy boobase into the cloud, and as soon as the domain purchas has been finalised boobase will exist as a proud new entity and hopefully help define the sonic web.
In the...
boogle it!
Coding goggles on, we have spent the last week or so building a little toolkit that plugs into everyone’s favourite audiomicro service, audioboo. Boogle is a site that lets you access pre-defined streams and search by tag and then hit links to play the boo inline in a map. It also lets you see what trending terms on twitter are also being tagged on audioboo and access that stream. All...
48 hours in denmark
Well, voting has now closed over at 48hoursindenmark so let’s see what happens. We offer our full and unbridled support to the winner if that doesn’t happen to be us and will consume their media like a jackal on steroids! Denmark is about to be hit by the social media virus!
I have learned a lot of lessons during the process. The most important is really feeling how ego can be a...
April 2009
30 posts
voting is on!
The voting system at 48hoursindenmark.com is now on! Vote for Dave G and Mike P!
48 hours in denmark
The good people at seismonaut have offered an all-expenses trip to Denmark for a couple of digital adventurers with the aim of changing the face of digital tourism by using the whole armoury of social media weapons to document the preparation for an experience of the trip.
The butterbeep camp jumped at the chance to do this - you can see our video here - and on April 27 we find out if we have...
police horse - a brikabrak
marcogasm - a brikabrak
slick and compressed - a brikabrak
punkradio requires more voltage
Those of you who listened to the last punkradio featuring @danpatterson will recall that we played a great tune by William Whitmore - we need more music. All kinds, so long as it is vital, passionate in its execution, challenging and fresh. It goes without saying that it has to be podsafe! Please send all links to radiopunked@gmail.com and we will try and schedule as many as we can.
My podcast alley linkage
My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-fbed711fd714623b7c51b566eaa10ace}
@radiopunked meets @danpatterson
As promised we have just completed an interview with ABC journalist Dan Patterson. We talked media old and new and Dan introduced us to William Elliott Whitmore, a man who lives in a corn silo with a voice of gravel and glue. Thanks for being our first guest Dan - hope to have you on from time to time!
punkradio voltage
I am getting excited about punkradio now - next I will be interviewing @danpatterson, a journalist for ABC news that I met at SXSW, and am going to propel myself through my fears and uncertainty about quality, whether anyone will listen, all that internal static, and just get it done. It has something both positive and angry to say about the modern world and that in itself should be a good enough...
radio - punked
So I took the plunge and started a longer podcast. Hopefully radical. Find it here. Follow @radiopunked!
Watch
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brikabrak
OK so as podcast fever takes me over I create a channel for audio poems, fragments, snippets and observations. It’s here.
my first boo - by phone! →
mortalcoil
As noted in a previous post, I have been suffering from a spectrum of gastric issues for some time but this morning something happened that scared me - I coughed up blood, bright red, almost a handful. I booked an emergency appointment with the doctor who has given me a slip for an urgent chest X-ray tomorrow. She told me not to worry, that the coughing has probably irritated my throat, but a...
Watch
tweetania soundword
Tweetania now has a podcast.
honi soit qui mal y pense
I love the way language finds its was into cracks and nestles in memory like a spell. My wife Rachel asked me to google honi soit qui mal y pense today. Her father used to say it a lot when she was being selfish or spiteful. She never knew what it meant and grew up thinking everyone said it. Her father, Richard, was a member of the Grenadier Guards at one time and the phrase is their motto. It has...
internal flower
I feel awake inside. The events of the last few days - the mediaquake of the G20, childbirth, books, my family, the speed at which things are changing but in many ways remaining the same, a sense of hope, the miracle of language, and of course the quickening of spring (my garden is now blooming with daffodils and fat tulips) have flicked a switch and opened my internal flower.
Anything is...
a new state
A few days ago I created the state of tweetania on twitter and a collection of random and not-so-random people started turning up. It’s an experiment, a ‘happening’ - to see what happens, how we can mould and twist the social web. Within a day the newly appointed court artist had designed the national flag and a party had been planned for June. No knowing where it will end up,...
minimentally
This is a minipost for a miniperson - @minimentally, only days old and already on audioboo. What a precious resource those early sound files will be in the future. Sharing deoxy with such an adventurous and warm-hearted dad will also be an eternal treasure. Love to you and your family little one, and hopefully one day you’ll find these little fragments archived and preserved and know how...
deadsand #2
I ignored the raisins and stepped right up to the level reserved for postcards and paint. All the postcards were pictures of Deadsand. Some had donkeys on. I rembered a sweat-hot summer day when I went there with Mollie. She cried all day and ran into an arcade. I started to chase her but was soon distracted by Ice Trance. I stayed there for twelve hours and beat every high score. When I finished...
mindgasm
Oh, and did I mention what an utter thrill it was to be plugged in to all of it? To be talking to @markrock of audioboo as bloggers and protestors took up the new service with it’s perfect bulletin style beauty and hammered their servers. To know many of the bloggers in the thick of it using it to report back. To get requests for info from US news agencies, people I only met a couple of...
So I lay in my bed and the stars wheel overhead. Somewhere a dear friend is experiencing his child making it’s entrance into this crazy world. The opposing forces that met and conflicted at G20 reflect. Tired policemen in their beds. Unsure of their role or firmly committed as protectors of the people or tools of the state. Protestors - some angry, some genuine seekers of change who feel...
my path has been chosen
The events of today have cemented a great desire in my heart. I am a writer but I want to be engaged. The times present me, a programmer and writer with (I hope) integrity and honour with the opportunity to make my way into a challenging and fulfilling career in the media journalism arena. How? You tell me - any advice on how to make the first steps are welcome. I posted about it just now - time...
the chaos of life
Today I am ill, have just got back from the doctor and been prescribed a second course of domperidone for a strange gastric issue. Life is indeed mysterious. It’s a beautiful day, and as I look after my children and scan my feeds and streams, I am struck by two extremes, which meet in a space of perfect poignancy.
Number one is the G20 and associated protests, and I am mesmerised by the...
March 2009
23 posts
poetree
Last night I was drunk. I was with friends. I was posting audio. I had a great conversation with a new friend. I had an impassioned row with an older friend. I felt something move in the cosmos. When I got home I looked up at the sky, wheeling above, and as I joined the dots between stars I joined the dots between friends, between hearts. We are on this planet for a heartbeat. Every moment counts....
deadsand #1
OK so the last few posts were poems and there’s little more nerve-wracking than putting poetry online. Straight narrative fine, it can be measured and picked apart and you learn from feedback, take it on board, in some cases it even adds to your grasp of language and allows you to move forward.
But poems are a little different. They live in close proximity to the heart and soul, expose a...
world famous collection of one line poems
Insensate
insensate Ravenous
ravenous Beleaugered
beleaugered Pocahontic
Pocahontic
ensure we fuck time
How can we ensure
That we fuck time
With sufficient foreplay
To arouse her creases
Explode her nipples
Make sure
That the sun, the stars
The moon, flowers, planets
Sand, sea, toenails,
Every single memory
Every time we feel a real thing
That our minds surge
That our hearts beat
That our skin tingles
And we fear
A moment later
The feeling will fade
Like a snail’s head
Slding...
inventory
Oh God it’s hit me drugwise. An urge, demiurge to write so hard I can barely squeeze the words down the line. Every character asquirm, so many heatpoints I have to spit them, split them, note down when and where I will write them before they get away.
July 19th the story of Abraham the angry camel
July 20th notes on a spider
July 21st the final minutes of Agnes Spoone
July 22nd the...
word nausea
We knew it was coming. Twitter has hit the mainstream. I use twitter. I think it is a very powerful part of my communications toolkit. I don’t care what it’s called. When tokbox came along and afforded me a more immediate way of communicationg via video I found I stopped using seesmic almost entirely without blinking.
With this mainstream hit, several phenomena are emerging. Working...
notes from a boonuch
As you can probably guess, I have fallen in love with audioboo. It’s mad that something so obvious comes along and plugs a gap. There is definitely something writerly about talking, musing or enthusing into an iPhone, using it like an old-school dictaphone, and hearing the voices of people you know and love popping into your stream.
Unfortunately I don’t own an iPhone, but audioboo is...
…another boo using Mike’s phone while...
…just until I get an iPhone you...
shimmering code poetry
In my last post I mentioned that I have had some epiphanies regarding coding. I am immensely grateful that I have some apitude combined with an outward-looking approach to the culture, as this has led me down the path of ‘social’ media, has allowed me to make some incredible new friends and revitalised my ambitions in a number of areas.
I started programming to make money, not out of...
words are the blocks I use to build the world
Every day, every minute, every time I truly listen to my heart it becomes increasingly obvious that my world is lived through words - I swim in language, am devoted to literature, poetry, inventive use of tongue and mind. And although I make my living as a coder (and have had some epiphanies on that score to follow in another post), everything I do has to serve as a foundation for the time when I...