Alexis Petridis' perfect New Year's Eve playlist

Chime Orbital

Useful because a) it's great b) has vaguely Big Ben-ish bells on it, but also because playing it marks the inexorable passing of time: watch ex-ravers of a certain age "have it large" before sheepishly heading home at 1am to relieve the babysitter.

via guardian.co.uk

Sounds scarily familiar...

Peats Ridge Festival 2010

Holly and I took Louis to his first outdoor music festival, and his first time camping over New Year. Peats Ridge Festival is held to the North of Sydney in a valley near the Hawkesbury River and bills itself as something of a sustainable music festival. It's got mostly Australian artists, though this year they had the Shout Out Louds who I'd previously seen at Roskilde in 2006 (yes, follow that link - the photo is awesome).

We didn't know quite how it'd turn out, whether Louis would cope with dust, camping, noise and heat.  Turns out we did fine.

Bands I really enjoyed, but expected to enjoy, were Shout Out Louds, Decoder Ring and PVT. Always awesome bands.

New discoveries:
  • The Seabellies: very talented multi-instrumentalist band. Curious to hear their recorded output, if I can find somewhere to buy it that isn't iTunes.
  • Fishing: very difficult to categorize, probably closest example is some of Hudson Mohawke's output (Polyfolk Blues in particular). Amazing live mashing up of their tracks.
  • Jinja Safari: Holly saw these guys so I don't really know anything about them.
  • Trentemøller: not terribly impressed with his recordings, but his set leading up to New Year's midnight was great.


But music was only part of the fun. We spent a lot of time trying to stay cool, with temperatures heading towards 30 and over in the day. We spent a fair amount of time cooling down in the little creek running through the site.  We lazed around.  Ate some yummy food.  Drank some beers.


The really fun part was last night with a dress up night.  Louis and I have these absolutely amazing costumes made by my awesome friend Linn Linn.  Loads of fun.

All in all, a nice little festival.  Good relaxed atmosphere, very kid-friendly. The "eco" label can be a little grating, especially when they stiff you an extra $1 "container deposit" on drinks and then make it difficult to actually get your dollar back.  But I think I'd definitely go again.  We had lots of fun.

Loads more photos are on my SmugMug.

In case you haven't had cute overload yet, here's a video of Louis dancing to Lolo Lovina:

Peats Ridge update before New Year

Festival is great, if insanely hot. Tomorrow is forecast to hit 37 so we're likely to be packed and on our way pretty early.

Disaster struck this morning: broken thong. Being a bloody hippy festival, there's magical rocks for sale, but you think I can buy a pair if regular, petrochemical, industrial thongs? Fortunately Holly's feet are near my size and she's wearing her trustifarian sandals.

Last night I saw Decoder Ring and PVT. Good as usual. Awesome band discoveries were The Seabellies (very slick) and Fishing (kinda Hudson Mohawke wonkiness done mostly live).

Tonight Louis and I ate dressing up with amazing costumes Linn Linn made. Should be very cute.

Posted

Peats Ridge Festival

We've had a lovely day so far. This is watching Washington in the late afternoon.

Posted

I Hate Math! (Not After This, You Won't) : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR

Vi Hart calls herself "a recreational mathemusician currently living on Long Island." She talks faster than a machine gun, loves math, and draws like a dream. Her newest video: "Doodling in Math Class: Snakes + Graphs" is eye-popping.

Vi Hart

Source: YouTube

via npr.org

Wow this woman is amazing. Her videos are just incredible, if you can keep up. The surrounding article is also worth a read.

Posted

Wikileaks: major news reports miss the major point

Is it just me or are the major news services missing the whole point of the Wikileaks US embassy cables?  Sure it's a bit embarrassing for the Yanks that their data all got into the public domain, but I'm sure all the players know these kinds of unflattering accounts are a regular part of diplomacy.

The really important thing here is that if a disgruntled employee with access to this data was able to very easily gather the whole database and leak it to Wikileaks, how many other sources are there leaking it less publicly?  There's upwards of three million people who have the appropriate security clearance. Do you think some of them might be financially distressed (given the recent GFC) and be open to a little cash incentive to leak it somewhere else?  Or have some other easy method to apply leverage (especially given "Don't ask. Don't tell.") So the question is probably less which intelligence agencies have been regularly receiving this data and more which ones haven't! Of course, their versions wouldn't have had the redactions of personal identifiers and the like that we see in the Wikileaks data.