This has been an eventful trip to Sydney. I'm flying back to London tomorrow morning, but this afternoon while walking in Bronte, I slipped off the footpath, twisted my ankle and broke my foot. ARGH!
With a bit of luck I'll get an upgrade, but it's really not good.
While I've been here in Sydney I've bought a huge amount of Aussie music. Stuff you just can't get in London.
Combat Wombat - Unsound $ystem seems to be a grouping within the Elefant Traks keiretsu. From my listens so far, I would say it's the best release on the label yet. Really quite serious, intense lyrically with tightly polished beats. Really impressive.
Decoder Ring - Decoder Ring is fantastic, immense soundscapes. I've been hearing their stuff for ages on Triple J's Sound Lab programme. Glad I've finally managed to get hold of the album. Love it.
Prop - Small Craft Rough Sea is another brilliant soundscape type piece. Kind of like Tortoise and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, only I think better. Track 9 is an incredible xylophone number. The album is probably my fave from the buying spree. If you like some of the soundtracks by Philip Glass, I'd recommend checking these guys out. I'm going to try and hunt down their latest album now.
Hilltop Hoods - The Calling we saw these guys play at Cargo in London about a month ago, when it was snowing in London. Absolutely incredible live set, and the place was jammed to the rafters with happy Aussie hip-hop fans. Looks like there's good demand for Aussie hip-hop over there. Incredibly, the guys weren't financing their tour beer fund with merchandise sales, so I couldn't buy their album. Finally found it now, though their distributor needs to pull his finger out because I had to trawl through four shops to find it.
Results from my Dad's tests have shown his heart is fine. That's excellent news and means his chest pains were probably the result of stress over the last few weeks, and nowhere near as worrying.
So I'm still currently booked to be in Sydney until Monday. I'm trying to get on a flight back to London for the weekend, because it's Holly's birthday and we have big plans for it, though it's unlikely I'll get onto an earlier flight. Still trying though.
If I'm around on the weekend, I'd love to catch up with people. Saturday night is looking good, and this time I'll choose a pub that's not so crap. Maybe the Courthouse?
Haven't had a chance to post to the old blog for a bit. My grandmother died last weekend and so I flew into Sydney for the weekend. Now my Dad's sick, so I'm not sure how long I'll be here.
I've already made and broken plans to meet a large group of people. Thanks for your support guys and sorry for standing you up. Was unavoidable. Maybe we can make another set of plans.
In other news, Catalyst now has a Planet site to aggregate a bunch of Cat peoples' blogs. Bound to be interesting reading.
The fantastic cheese stall at North End Road market had a fantastic thing on offer this weekend. Giant 250g tubs of dried porcini mushrooms for £5. Incredible.
So last night I cooked a mushroom casserole. Rehydrated the mushrooms, chopped up an onion, zucchini, couple of carrots and bunged it all into a casserole dish with a veggie stock cube, a healthy glug of Worcestershire Sauce and some dried thyme, topped up with boiling water.
In the oven at 180 degrees C for an hour and a half, stirring every half hour. I served it up with sweet potato mash (with some roasted aubergine mashed in). Yum!
With the weather warming up, Holly has been getting her herb seedlings going. Last year we had a fantastic crop of chives, basil and oregano. Considering the small space available (one window sill) we had an incredible crop. The basil variety, in particular, was fantastic with massive leaves from a relatively small plant.
This year we want to grow Vietnamese Mint (also known as Vietnamese Coriander. You can find the fresh herb in most greengrocers in Sydney, but I have yet to see it anywhere here in the UK. It's absolutely vital for Vietnamese cold rolls (goi cuon) and works well in stir fries. It's mildly minty and quite spicy.
So I figure we can grow this through the Summer here in London if only I could find some seeds. No luck with a solid hunt around the net. Any ideas? Even importing them would be okay.
I normally buy Cafe Direct's fair trade coffee but there was a special offer last week on Union Coffee Roasters' coffee. This morning I opened the first packet and it's absolutely sensational. Really delicate, complex flavour. Filled the flat with a delicious smell. I think I've found my new brand.
It was snowing only a couple of weeks ago and this morning I rode to work in shorts and t-shirt. Beautiful weather and looks set to stay this way all weekend. 19 degrees yesterday!
If this keeps up I'll have to get a BBQ on...
I've had one of these Logitech Trackman Marble FX trackballs for about eight years. Best pointing device I've ever owned ergonomically. The beauty of the design is that you don't twist your wrist. It's also one of the early opticals, so the only time you need to clean the rollers is when they physicially stop the ball from moving. The ball is nice and big, which gives you good control.
Sadly this one is now dying. The ball sensors are fine, but the right-click button is having trouble recording clicks and that's getting annoying.
So any suggestions for a trackball as good as this? As often happens with capitalism, this is a great product so it's been discontinued.
A couple of years ago I bought an Ipaq 3100 with a dud battery for £15 on eBay. My plan was to get it to do wireless music streaming so I could play music in another room without running cables from my computer.
Last night I finally got it working. I'm using esd and can play things from the computer, but I can't get esd with a remote server to work with mpd, my music player of choice. Will keep hacking on that.
Eventually I'd like to get it to work with a remote control, since it has serial on it. To test that out, I'll need a 9-pin null modem adapter. Anyone got one I can borrow?
When I get right into it, I might even end up with a user interface so I can see what track is playing. That would be cool.