Thirty Six Degrees

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:06:31 -0700

The 1964 Dylan song, which recounts the true story of a black hotel employee killed by a wealthy Maryland Tobacco plantation owner. It’s a beautiful and timeless piece of music, I hope I didn’t butcher it too much, and do listen to the original, it’s amazing.

In mello mello.

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:12:00 -0800

In mello mello.

Safari 4 Beta Observations

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:03:26 -0800

Just some quick notes:

1. It took me two installation attempts to get it to launch, the first time round I got a non-launching application and system beachballed for a couple of minutes.

2. With the software updates required to install the Beta, and my two attempts to install the app, I had to do four restarts of the system. A bit like being transported back in time to Windows XP.

3. The tabs on top are an odd choice, there is no visual seperation between the first tab and the window operations (close, maximise, minimise.) You can only rearrange the active tab, and must do so using the extreme right of the tab, whereas before you could rearrange any tab, from any point of origin therein. The rearrangement of tabs seems like much harder work than before. Visually, I’m also unsure as to whether I like them or not - I’m guessing this is something we’ll see more of in Snow Leopard, and which will potentially be available for application developers of multi-tab interfaces, at which point it’ll probably make more sense. For now, it just feels a bit wrong.

4. Still no option to have a multi-line bookmark bar, which is unfortunate.

5. The lack of a refresh/stop button is perhaps going to take the most getting used to. Safari 4 has inherited at iPhone style progress indicator and refresh button which sit within the location field. The lack of a more obvious indication of loading progress is a notable loss.

6. It feels a little quicker, but not greatly so over Safari 3. Javascript performance is definitely improved, but is certainly not as smooth as the copy on apple.com would suggest.

7. Coverflow history, and the top sites mosaic are all very nice, how often I’ll actually use them, I’m unsure.

8. The Google Search with live results are nice, but I prefer the inquisitor style interface which I used in Safari 3.

9. The toolbar is so lacking in whitespace, that it took me 20 seconds of trying to get the context menu in order to customise the button layout before frustratedly retreating to the ‘View’ menu.

An Asian Takeaway (Report)

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:17:41 -0800

An Asian Takeaway (Report): My report on the comparative experiences of top flight football fans in England and Japan, written as a final year dissertation for my Japanese & International Business degree at John Moores University in Liverpool. Via Terracist.

Letters From Momochi

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:22:10 -0700

A work in progress, I’m uploading rough recordings of a few new tracks to my opentape.

Sex on Fire

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:51:15 -0700

Fugitive Motel

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:54:03 -0700

England

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:08:08 -0700

“this country, once great(?), is a pit of inequality, of crime and of desperation. And you can blame whoever you like, and try to fix it in anyway you see fit, but I tell you this with utter conviction - Once I have swelled my universities coffers for one final year, I will be taking my educated, intelligent, success hungry self to a country which deserves, and values me. I used to be proud of my country, and extoll its virtues to people who dared speak ill of it, but they were right, in spirit if not in the degree of their condemnation.

I would be happy to pack a case this day, and leave to never set foot on this infected soil again.”

a fortnight with the 3G iPhone

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:40:18 -0700

Given the painfully awful process of actually getting an iPhone to call my own, it reaaly needed to be good in order for that process to have seemed worthwhile. Luckily, it doesn’t dissapoint.

Having been in an iPhone-less Japan for the best part of a year, the original iPhone passed me by completley. And so many of my observations would have been pertinent to the iPhone as a product range, not just this latest iteration of the hardware and software within.

The most startling diference the iPhone has made is to my MacBook Pro. I used to have it switched on all the time, ready to check emails, feed read and browse. I now do all of those things on my phone. And the only limitation I’ve really been concerned by, is battery life. I’m using it far more as a PDA than as a phone, and I’m needed to charge it daily to ensure it doesn’t die on me. I’m thinking I’ll need to buy a small, rechargable charging dealie soon.

Overall, the 3G iPhone is undoubtably the best mobile phone I’ve ever used, but it’s also the best MP3 player I’ve ever used, the best portable video player I’ve ever used and the best PDA I’ve ever used. Not bad then.

Warm Beer & STDs

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:24:02 -0700

Warm Beer & STDs - MP3

A song I wrote a few days before leaving Japan to come back to England. The idea was to make it sound quite upbeat and positive, whilst having a message conveying the utter hopelessness of England. I hope you like it.

上を向いて歩こうー坂本九

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:09:40 -0700

Filter iTunes songs using asterisks

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:36:00 -0700

I just found out that you can filter your iTunes music by rating, just by typing asterisks in the search field. Awesome.

What a Wonderful World

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:55:00 -0700

View at Youtube

Video of me playing ‘What a Wonderful World’ by Sam Cooke. Recorded using iMovie, and Garageband, with added superfluous vocal sillyness

Wallpaper

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:48:00 -0700

View/Download at Flickr

Messing around in Photoshop recreating the apple remote, and it turned out pretty well. Hence I turned it into a wallpaper. Head on over to flickr to view it in it’s original size, and download it should you so please.

Also, did anyone else notice that the bits of photoshop CS3 which used to disappear all of the time, don’t disappear all of the time since the 10.5.3 update?

Redemption Song

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:06:00 -0700

Redemption Song - MP3

When the majority of your friends leave the country, you tend to find you have a bit more time to yourself. That being the case, I spent a little of that time-wealth today recording a cover of ‘Redemption Song’ by the peerless Bob Marley. The usual disclaimers about technical and performance quality should be assumed.

Introducing Terracist

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:27:00 -0700

I’d like to briefly mention terracist a new site from yours truly, which is a football business blog. The idea only came to me a week ago, and after a few nights of no sleep, and the pleasure of working with chyrp it’s sort of ready for some love. It’s not finished, and won’t work unless you’re using a real web browser (probably).

The site launches with a short essay about the Japanese match-day experience, which will be the first of a hopefully long and enjoyable procession of posts based around the world of the football industry.

Leave a comment on the site if you have anything to say, or join up for the mailing list if you would like to contribute to discussions in this field

Visit Terracist

Englishman in Meinohama

Sat, 24 May 2008 23:26:51 -0700

Here is a snippet from my gig at the Allman bar in Meinohama, Fukuoka in March of this year.

Four Four Two Australia

Sat, 24 May 2008 22:27:37 -0700

Readers of the afore mentioned football magazine down under might be interested to know that a small piece written by yours truly appears on page 42 of the June edition. It’s a brief introduction to the three Australian players who moved to Avispa Fukuoka during the close-season.

Incidentally, the magazine itself is very good. Having only seen the British version before, this one clearly stacks up to the high standard it’s European namesake keeps, and there are some really good articles and great photography through-out the magazine, kudos to the 442 team in Sydney.

The Final Solution

Thu, 22 May 2008 07:34:06 -0700

Whilst you were sitting in your plush lounge, feet extended, beer in hand watching the biggest club football game in the world, enjoying a beer in the comfort of an English evening, some of us weren’t so at ease in our pursuit of the Champions League Final between Manchester United and Chelsea last night.

The rhetoric is hard to ignore, it’s the biggest game in the world, commanding an audience of however many millions it supposedly commands. But for the fast growing, and football hungry fans in this part of the world, the champions league final kicked off at 3:45am on a Thursday morning, and that - if the European game is to continue it’s assault on the Asian economies - is simply unacceptable.

The game itself was a tense, typically English affair. Both sides created enough changes to have won in ordinary time, but instead, at 6am this morning, I was still perched on the edge of a bar stool in downtown Fukuoka waiting, hoping for Chelsea to slip up. But how many more people across football mad Japan were staying up into the morning to watch the game? Not many, I’d guess.

The solution probably isn’t that complicated. Make it a day-time kick-off, on a weekend. Had yesterday’s showpiece game kicked off at 3pm in mother Russia, it would have been noon in England, and 8pm in Japan. Great, suitable for everyone within the band of football nations from The UK to the most eastern ports of Asia.

Better? Yes, of course it is. Now lets fix it before next years final, because if kids are going to grow up in rural Shizuoka trying to imitate their favourite European footballing luminaries, they need to be able to see the best of the games that Europe has to offer.

Another summer of upheaval

Sat, 17 May 2008 05:26:00 -0700

I wonder what it must have been like to have a been a fan of a Coventry City side which was on the up. The meteoric rise through the ranks of English football culminated in the Sky Blues joining the First Division for the 1967-68 season, where we stayed for over thirty years. Those heady days are long gone, and now, as Coventry fans, were used to season after season of under-performance, and summer after summer of upheaval in terms of management and playing staff. Still, it could be worse, be could be Leicester City.