shimweasel

also also

Posted by Mark Sun, 21 Jan 2007 13:15:06 GMT

the new Menomena album is excellent.

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expat bar in Chiang Mai

Posted by Mark Sun, 21 Jan 2007 13:05:44 GMT

This post comes to you from the Mad Dog bar in Chiang Mai. There are many things to recommend against the Mad Dog: the beer is not outstandingly cheap, the atmosphere’s a little dingy, and instead of the excellent, ubiquitous and dirt-cheap Thai food, and they have expensive Western food cooked by people who have only vaguely heard about it.

The saving grace is this: power points for laptops, and fast wireless. I’m a helpless prisoner to my passion for TCP/IP.

In the past few days, I’ve been to Bangkok, Ayutthaya, and now Chiang Mai. Bangkok is as crazy as I remembered, but this time I stayed in Khao San, rather than Sukhumvit: people may bitch about the backpacker microcosm of Khao San, but this ignores the fact that it’d still be fun even without a skerrick of Thai culture. Ayutthaya was a bit of a change of pace - ruins and thai food seemed the order of the day. After Angkor Wat last trip, it takes an awful lot to get a reaction from me, but there were a few nice constructions - one oddly tesselated pyramid in particular. No pictures yet, unfortunately - my phone has finally given up the ghost.

Chiang Mai is a bit of a relief. It’s winter here, but 29 degrees and humid is still not the most pleasant climate in the world. Here in the mountains, it’s a lot more temperate. Soon I’ll be going trekking and attending Muay Thai matches (maybe even training for a bit) and all the other expected things, but for the moment, a beer and a laptop suit me just fine.

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business class!

Posted by Mark Sun, 14 Jan 2007 02:56:00 GMT

the girl at checkin bumped me to business class because she thought i was cute! This is clear proof to me that the universe approves of my complete lack of planning.

rock over london, rock on, chicago

wesley willis: he was reclining his seat as far as he likes. With a belt.

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Bangkok ahoy

Posted by Mark Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:19:00 GMT

I have a plane ticket in my pocket, an exit visa in my jacket, and a song in my heart - in three and a half hours, I’ll be on a plane to Thailand. I have no idea of what I’m doing for the next few months, and I sort of like it that way…

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Bloody Apple

Posted by Mark Wed, 10 Jan 2007 03:20:41 GMT

turns out the postgresql problem I was losing hair over was just Apple blundering around like a developmentally disabled circus chimp.

Bastards.

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dumb stuff i did today.

Posted by Mark Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:00:55 GMT

please ignore this - this is solely so i remember this the next time i do this stupid dance.

For DC, I need

Ruby
RubyGems
Rails
Postgres

For ruby, i seem to need to build all the external stuff separately. I don’t know why, but this fixes it:

cd ext; for i in */;do cd $i; make clean; ruby extconf.rb; make; sudo make install;cd ..; done

RubyGems just needs the above to work
Rails is the same
Postgres needs the marc liyanage package, and “sudo gem install postgres – –with-pgsql-dir=/usr/local/pgsql”

argh. I need a personal wiki or something. Until I get that, you get my backwash. Sorry.

1 comment

shoulda stuck to turkish coffee

Posted by Mark Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:25:06 GMT

I’ve always wondered why coffee from the clubhouse was a little subpar. Turns out:

1. They froth the milk while it’s in the cup with the coffee.
2. The brown stuff on top isn’t chocolate or cinnamon. It’s Nescafe Instant.

Ah well. Happy New Year to everyone - I’ve been a bit quiet recently, for the simple reason that there hasn’t been much going on.
For a while it looked like I might get the job at Georgetown, but I heard recently on the grapevine that even though they couldn’t get an internal hire to come out (there being a very strong preference for main campus employees), they’ve declined to offer the job to any of the local applicants, instead choosing to fly a succession of temps out. While this is entirely their decision to make, a pettier man than me might have called them up and bitched a little about their lack of elementary courtesy in informing potential hires of what’s actually going on. Me, I’m just going to bitch here, to my audience of three. (You know who you are, you special, special people.)

In the meantime, my time has been consumed with XBox games (until some trivial flaw like lack of inverted controls drives me insane enough to throw the controller at something), programming (until something shiny crosses my field of vision and my ADD kicks in), and lengthy gym sessions. I went to a kickboxing training session with Hamad yesterday, and, to my surprise, enjoyed it quite a bit: it’s quite a different physical discipline to judo, and needing to learn how to walk again is a humbling experience. My right hook is hard but extraordinarily slow, and my kicks resemble the flailings of enraged chickens, but it’s remotely plausible that if I dedicated ten years to this particular brand of bad-assery, I might attain mediocrity. (We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars)

In any case, I’m out of here in a few days: I have a ticket booked for Bangkok on the 13th, and very soon will be celebrating freedom from the jackboot of Muslim oppression. (Hamad, if you’re reading this, you know I’m joking. Right?) Qatar’s a nice place in a lot of ways, and the locals are far more friendly than I’d previously thought, but it’s very hard for an alcoholic music snob like myself to live in a place where Jane’s Addiction and Cooper’s are equally haram. Ma-salaama Qatar, sawa-di-krup Bangkok….

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Socialism, Doha style

Posted by Mark Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:04:43 GMT

No caption necessary, I feel.

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seriously image-heavy post

Posted by Mark Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:18:11 GMT

mad max, eat your heart out

The sambuk on super-happy-fun-disco mode. alas, these never flew in the ceremony, even in their boring white “on” configuration

The flying machine, lit up pretty-like

I loved the Qaf boat, not least because I had a controller in there to meter the speed and force of the rocking.
(Now I driiiive the bus!)

He bestrides the world like a colossus

City of the future in training

Fritz: his usual cheery self

This is what happens when your electricians are bored and you ask for one volunteer.

Behind the scenes - this is the lower chamber, where all the different stages are wheeled on and off. This is the sun stage: the horse for the final run was loaded in here.

The view of Asia from the winches in one of the rehearsals. It wasn’t always this smooth…

Oops.

Electronics repair, Fritz-style. Yes, that is a saw.

Workers from the future, deep in conversation.

The boys in full regalia

Lighting of the cauldron

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i am not a camera, a man is not an effigy

Posted by Mark Sun, 03 Dec 2006 13:44:13 GMT

Where do these odd post titles come from? I’m glad you asked! They come from one of the best albums I’ve heard all year: Gala Mill, by the Drones. The Drones are from Melbourne, Australia, and are kicking my arse hard. I saw them a while back at the Jerome’s Laneway Festival and was moderately impressed, but didn’t get into their last album much despite its ridiculously cool title, “Wait long by the river and the bodies of your enemies will float by”. The new album is a little more relaxed, with country elements seeping in at the corners, and (thank fuck) they’re totally unapologetic about it. If you get the chance, check it out: “Jezebel” in particular is absolutely amazing.

Strontium 90 removed from milk as curious an entity as bullshit writ on silk

It walks through religion, the middle east, nuclear war and radioactive milk in one ramshackle, sprawling, 8 minute mess of a song, and I’ve not been able to stop playing it.

“Work for Me” is likewise addictive, if a little subtler. Most of the songs have Gareth Liddiard’s gravelly voice and his hyper-literate lyrics front and centre, but “Work for Me” features Fiona Kitschin’s lazy, knowing vocals in a seductive jam that is far and away the sexiest song that I’ve heard all year.

i am not an apple i am not a plum you can’t know the worth of my seed … he don’t make me shake he don’t make me vain need a man had to work for his name

It doesn’t hurt that she’s a stone cold babe, either.

The single off the album is “I don’t ever want to change” and it’s more four-square rock. Gareth still manages to cram some pithy lyrics in, though:

I know my limits well, seems they’re never too far away … alone getting drunk on a beach ain’t a bad way to be

Just go get the album, ok? It’s wonderful.

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