Month: September 2023

Checked into https://davidroywilliams.com/tours/damian-cowell/

Twinkle Digitz

I told my daughter I was going to see Twinkle Digitz. She asked me who the heck that was. After seeing Twinkle Digitz now for a third time (first, second), I kind of ask myself the same question every time. I played her Boogyin’ with my Baby-o and she said that I like it because of the synthesisers. That is clearly a part of it. However, I think that it is more than that. Even though the music and performance is carefree, slightly daggy and sometimes very silly, I think there are anchovies to be had. Also, there is something chaotic about the music that draws me in. Even though so much is based on triggers, it still feels like it could break at any minute, especially amidst an impromptu jig mid song.

I have lost count of how many times I have watched / listened to his An Apocolyptic Evening stream. Yes I was there to see Damian Cowell, I did not even know that Twinkle Digitz was the support until a few days before hand, but when I found out I was not going to miss it for the world. He played all the usual tracks, such as Pandora’s Box, Shit Eatin’ Grin, Boogyin’ with my Baby-o, Dancing ln My Dreams, God Machine and Blackmail Boogie. However, he also played a couple of newer tracks.

The first addition was In the City. This is a song of contrasts, with its blissful guitar driven verse which then explodes into the chorus. In some ways it reminds me of Radiohead’s Palo Alto. This he played when I saw him at Thornbury Local, but I could not hear it at the back. The other addition was the ‘almost finished’ It’s Autonomous Thomas, a song he supposedly co-wrote with ChatGPT. This had a different feel, although it was built on a rich bed of arpeggios, it was a bit more of a slow build.

I am hoping that the mention of ‘almost finished’ might mean that one day there might be a Twinkle Digitz album or EP. There is definitely something missed when it comes to high-fidelity depending on the streamed video recordings. But then again, maybe there is something about not necessarily knowing what you are going to get each time Twinkle Digitz performs that is a part of the appeal.

Damian Cowell

I saw Damian Cowell’s Disco Machine a few years ago after the release of Only the Shit You Love. I wondered if I was biased by it being the first concert I went to post-lockdown. However, I was not disappointed second time around.

Some artists are just different live. Sometimes it is the energy of the performance, sometimes it is the sound, sometimes it is the reimagination of the songs. For Cowell I feel it is all three.

I love the wall of sound produced live and the energy that comes with this. In addition to the singers up front, with one less musician on stage this time and a reduced percussion section, there was more space for Andy Hazel and Gordon Blake to bounce around at the back of the stage. (I especially loved Hazel’s shuffle associated with Sanctuary.) While the contrast between Cowell and his back-up singers brings out something different to the music. Although many of these parts are often present in the recorded music, in a song like Fuck I’m Dead, they provide something different to Cowell’s original recording.

After both gigs, I was intrigued with how Cowell never seems to rest on his laurels. I imagine he could just turn up and roll out the hits, but instead he always seems to be trying new things, playing different, even if it is his old music. For example, he played Garbage from Machiavelli and the Four Seasons. The choice felt like it was as much about Cowell’s modern sound as it was about some token rolling out the past. The only disappointment was that Cubase / visuals crashed halfway through the show, although nothing as bad as the video from The Zoo. Even with all the efforts mid-song to get the computer up and running again, some things are just not meant to be.

Setlist

I Shit Me

Fuck I’m Dead

(Sort of) Emo

The Arseless Chaps

The Boy In The Box

Cool For Catamites

Market Forces

Damian Cowell’s Disco Machine

Get Yer Dag On!

This Is Bullshit

S Club

Where the Fuck’s the Vengabus?

Garbage

KylieTISM

Replied to Dave Cormier (@davecormier@mastodon.social) (Mastodon)

Does anyone have something they like to use to explain affordances. I’ve been working on it for weeks, but i’d love to send my keener students another perspective if i could

Dave, you might was to have a look at Ian Guest’s post on affordances  related to his PhD.
Watched 2023 computer-animated film, directed by Jeff Rowe by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
I saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutant Mayhem today. We had a voucher that was running out and there was not really anything else on.

I grew up with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and saw the 2007 remake. I was not sure what to expect from this revamp.

One of the points of difference was the comic-book style used.

Like with his previous outing, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Rowe wanted Mutant Mayhem to look different from what was expected from an animated film. The director’s aim was to make it heavily resemble the concept art.[33] He was inspired by sketches he made in school notebooks as a teenager and how they tend to have a lot of exaggerated features, spikes, and random effects lines, and wanted the film’s animation to reflect a similar feeling.[34] Rowe described the film’s sketch look as its “North Star”, as the comic book-inspired look was for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).[12]

Source: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem – Wikipedia

In addition to this, the sound track was done by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which adds a real edge and feel.

Overall, I felt that it was well done. I remember reading on Common Sense Media that it was a film for the family. Although I was not sure about the sadistic torturing, I did feel that it provided aspects for both children and parents alike.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 238 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website’s consensus reads: “With its unique visual style and a story that captures the essence of the franchise’s appeal, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is an animated treat for the whole family.”[78] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating “generally favorable” reviews.[79] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A” on an A+ to F scale, while those polled at PostTrak gave it an 88% overall positive score, with 70% saying they would definitely recommend the film.[75]

Source: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem – Wikipedia

Read series of books by Enid Blyton by Contributors to Wikimedia projects

The Faraway Tree is a series of popular novels for children by British author Enid Blyton. The titles in the series are The Enchanted Wood (1939), The Magic Faraway Tree (1943), The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946) and Up the Faraway Tree (1951).

We recently went on a driving holiday and I borrowed out an audiobook reading of Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood, read by Kate Winslet. Although we did not get around to listening to it in the car as I thought, I listened to it personally. I was left wondering if there was anything as comparable in today’s books, maybe the Rainbow Magic series?
Bookmarked https://chatwithpdf.ai/ (chatwithpdf.ai)
I must admit that I have not really been keeping up with AI tools. I like the idea of this tool, asking questions of a PDF document. My only concern is what happens to the data and PDF documents afterwards.

ᔥ “Control Alt Achieve” in Control Alt Achieve – FigJam, Bard, Docs & more! ()

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Bach

The Children’s Bach (1984) is a novella by Australian writer Helen Garner. It was her third published book and her second novel. It was well received critically both in Australia and abroad.

I recently read Murray Bail’s Eucalypt and discovered he was married to Helen Garner. I had never actually read any of Garner’s work, so found The Children’s Bach on the local library’s audiobook app.

Like Raymond Carver, Frank Moorhouse, David Williamson, it feels like Helen Garner’s writing captures a zeitgeist through everyday ordinariness of small moments or ‘eventlets’ that are often caught in glimpses. This might be an overheard conversation, a passing comment or a chance observation. Take for example the comment about concerts:

‘Dexter!’ she said. ‘Nobody dances with anybody any more!’

Interestingly, I think that Garner’s writing style is best summarised by Philip, one of the characters in the book, who provides some feedback to a fellow artist, just replace ‘song’ with book:

Listen. I like your song. Look, I’ll give you a tip. Go home and write it again. Take out the clichés. Everybody knows ‘‘It always happens this way’’ or ‘‘I went in with my eyes wide open’’. Cut that stuff out. Just leave in the images. Know what I mean? You have to steer a line between what you understand and what you don’t. Between cliché and the other thing. Make gaps. Don’t chew on it. Don’t explain everything. Leave holes. The music will do the rest.’

Ben Lerner describes this as a mixture of ‘intimacy and distance’.

What a summary of the plot can’t capture is how the point of view moves rapidly but somehow seamlessly among various characters, focussing on and through them, before it alights on someone else. But this ability to depict multiple perspectives is cut with a sense of how little access we really have to other minds and motivations; Garner’s prose is a singular mixture of intimacy and distance.

Source: Unheard Melodies: On Helen Garner’s “The Children’s Bach” by Ben Lerner

The world is presented in a non-judgemental way, with Garner both celebrating and critiquing the world of responsibility and commitment.

Peter Hayes has highlighted how this can sometimes be confusing or inconsistent.

There’s a hollowness to The Children’s Bach that is ultimately what makes it so tiresome to read: it isn’t really about anything, nor does it tell the entertaining story that would redeem it to that extent.

Source: The Children’s Bach Reconsidered by Peter Hayes

I wonder though if this is maybe how life is? Is the reality produced through the reading, rather than the book itself?

I vaguely remember my grandmother talking about Garner’s non-fiction writing, but really cannot imagine her reading this. Maybe I just did not really know my grandmother that well.

Watched

I dive deep into the new firmware updates for the Roland MC-101 and MC-707 grooveboxes, which offer some much requested improvements and features, including complete sound design from scratch on the MC-101 (the partial tone editor), new effects including phonograph, exciter, and JD Multi, scatter step sequencing, MC-707 sample assign, and more.

I finally got around to updating my MC-101 today after watching Gabe Miller’s walk through. I was circumspect about how fiddly the partial tone editor would be. I found it fine and love the ability to build from scratch. A great addition.

Listened That Said, by Tony Martin from Tony Martin

Nine pieces from Tony Martin’s popular ‘Scarcely Relevant’ column at the much-missed ‘The Scrivener’s Fancy’, now in spoken-word form and exclusive to Bandcamp.

Awkward encounters with journalists, shop assistants, delivery men and members of the public who have mistaken him for someone else are mined for comic gold; two contrasting movies, ‘The Shining’ and ‘Alvin Rides Again’, are commemorated nerd-style; a feeding frenzy by tabloid commenters is dissected in ludicrous detail; and a five-year attempt to domesticate an ungrateful cat is recalled with more affection than was ever shown by the subject. All this plus Anna Wintour guest-edits Australia’s notoriously filthy ‘Picture’ magazine.

I listened to That Said, Tony Martin’s reading of a collection of pieces originally published in ‘The Scrivener’s Fancy’. In part I came upon these via an unplugged episode of Sizzletown where Martin read Irresponsible Journalism. I really enjoyed Lolly Scramble. Although some of the stories are better than others, there is something about Martin’s ability to capture the seemingly ordinary world around and bring it to life.