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Ahh Back yard, sunshine, tumbler full of JD with cheap-ass Red Bull knockoff and, of course, the Pixies playing loud enough to annoy the neighbours.

I’ve just recently discovered the cartoonist Tom Gauld

He is Gauld… like Stargate?

Well he’s brilliant anyway:

http://www.cabanonpress.com/ThreeComics/5.Terror1.htm

http://www.cabanonpress.com/ThreeComics/3.tesco.htm

explanation for one of the moon landing conspiracies:
http://www.cabanonpress.com/first/photo.htm

awkward:
http://www.cabanonpress.com/first/shuttle.htm

http://www.cabanonpress.com/Postcards/1.RMEtcEPIC.htm

http://www.cabanonpress.com/Postcards/4.RMEtcNOISY.htm

B

Moving to a new flat. Hopefully not a huge mistake. It has a nice kitchen (currently operation culinary undertakings in a prison-cell with NO FREEZER) and a nice patio area out back where I can finally put up my dart board without damaging walls. Hopefully none go over the fence and perforate the skull of the neighbours children in the next yard. Should have a better alarm system too, the one here is shit.

I’m dreading the move itself, having done it twice already this year. It’s a painful task but I’ve got it streamlined. I’m damn good at it now – like some sort of moving-house-ninja. I could move all my shit into your place in an hour and you’d never know about it till I was finished.

The hardest part about moving is you feel obliged to make hard calls on throwing things out. I’m a habitual hoarder. I still have shit from primary school for fuxake. The most recent kill was an old basketball. From the day I got it I could never get it to pump properly, so it never quite bounced like a basketball should. Also… I DON’T PLAY ANY FUCKING BASKETBALL. Still, somehow, it was a very hard decision to make. That said… I haven’t actually gotten around to throwing it out yet – deciding to is as far as I got.

Bruce Sterling said the only stuff worth keeping is beautiful, emotionally important, or things you use all the time. Sell everything else.

Anyone want to buy a useless basketball?

Unfortunately I tend to create emotional attachments to the most ridiculous, redundant and useless things.

That’s something I have to work on.

On a good note – I’m writing every day. I have a Future Shock being looked over, all but ready to submit to 2000AD, a few more of them brewing in the background, one of my longer script projects is finally coming together for me structurally so I’ll be hacking away at that and I’m sticking with short form sci-fi prose for submission to online mags.

Fuck you resistance

B

I’ve recently discovered http://www.jamendo.com for free music and I’m finding it fairly useful.

You won’t have heard of any of the bands on there but I’ve found some great stuff on it. It’s mostly unsigned bands, distributing their music using a creative commons license.

“Jamendo is a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses.”

You can filter the music by genre, location or “sounds like” (music that claim to sound like established bands you know of).

All tracks are both streamable off the website and downloadable.

It can also generate streaming playlists you can open in your audio program of choice if you mess about with the API a bit (or use the links below).

This links to a playlist of their weekly Top 100:

http://api.jamendo.com/get2/name/track/m3u/?n=100&order=ratingweek_desc

And you can filter that by tags (genre) by adding “&tag_idstr=[genre]” to the end of that link. You can specify multiple tags by pasting the same string on the end again with the next genre.

For example, this link will return the top 100 tracks that have both the rock and instrumental tags:

http://api.jamendo.com/get2/name/track/m3u/?n=100&order=ratingweek_desc&tag_idstr=rock&tag_idstr=instrumental

I’m still trying to figure out how to further filter that by location.

B

I just finished my first screenplay. It’s for a short film that I’ll hopefully make someday.

I have my interview for the Film & TV coarse tomorrow, so who knows… maybe it’ll be my shitty student movie

B

Procrastination abounding as usual, I’ve been researching productivity systems again - GTD, being the most famous I suppose, and plenty of other tips and habits in the cabal of related sites.

For the most part it’s all either bollox or common sense. There were elements of some of these systems I had adopted before I was aware of them and the fervour with which they seem to be adhered to. The inbox is an obvious one. A single location for bills, notes and all the other crap that needs to be dealt with to build up and be cycled through regularly. Makes it a hell of alot easier to maintain a filing system.

Capture Tools were an interesting subject. Of course, almost everyone has a notebook or at least takes notes of some description. But identifying all your capture tools, such as notes in your phone, PC or email, so that you know to go through them regularly and process their contents is an important step, for me anyway. Backlog is ever a bane.

Another thing that interested me was distinguishing my physical system (notes, files on paper and storage locations for them), the overall system’s metaphysical aspects (such as the ever-changing to-do list that exists as an amalgamation of smaller to-do lists on your notes, on your computer perhaps and in your mind) and my digital system (computer(s) coupled with any online presence).

I find that the digital system can’t function properly if it tries to mimic your physical system. It needs it’s own structure. When incorporating it into your overall system it has to be done in more abstract fashion. This is probably due to the fact that I use my PC and the internet for a number of things that are absolutely nothing to do with any running projects or personal productivity.

There are alot of procrastination-beating theories on habit-forming. Productivity systems are by nature cyclical and require regular upkeep. Creating worthwhile new habits that can be encompassed into your system or breaking old bad habits can be a great help.

Breaking it all down here are some of my own opinions and other tips I’ve scavenged from around the web:

• Try to stay organized. Have a place for everything.
• Combat backlog in small, regular attacks.
• Note distractions somewhere (a dedicated notepad, a text file with links and notes, a folder with saved files, whatever) and come back to them later. Keep at what your working on for the time you’ve allotted for it.
• The urge to research is a distraction too. On computer, mark areas in your work that require research with "TK" as these two letters rarely occur together and searching for them will show you the points you need to research when your done. (from Cory Doctorow)
• Keep separate long and short term to-do lists (and keep the short term one short!)
• Ensure items in to-do lists are manageable. Break down large tasks into smaller ones.
• Identify your top three tasks every day.
• Don’t confuse urgent tasks with important ones. (e.g. finishing work/paying due bills vs. spending time with family/completing personal creative work)
• Don’t follow other peoples systems to the letter. Try them out and take what you want from them.
• Take Breaks! Don’t spend too long at the computer screen or in your own head. When caught up, go to nature; cities or cabin fever put undue pressure on the brain.
• Don’t stress over to-do lists. They grow and evolve like a living thing. You will never finish it and that doesn’t matter.
• Most importantly - stop thinking about it and just fucking do it.

Now, enough of that. Too much bollicky talk of systems can make you forget that you’re a human being

B - I am not a number, I am a FREE MAN!

B

I mean REAL snow… not the mucky shit that half lodges on the ground over on the west coast of Ireland. I’m livin’ it east coast now bi’atch! We’re talking inches in Gorey.

It’s falling in clumps like how it’s drawn on cartoons as big circles.

Out the balcony at the front it’s easing down. Pure Christmas-y (Christmassy/Christmasie?)

Out the back window there’s harsh winds and the snow is bombing it. No horizon; all whiteout

And I got to watch the school kids have a snowball fight from my bedroom window. No photos, sorry. Was voyeuristic enough without taking pictures of minors

If only we had a real fireplace in here. Fake will suffice for the day though.

B - el blanco

I finished watching the final season of The Wire about a month back. I think this must be what post-natal depression feels like. It really is… I don’t know… gargantuan. No… I just don’t have a word. If you watch the entire series you won’t look at any television series - old or new - in the same way again. Truly brilliant.

And now I’m left with a hunger that The Wire used to fill. David Simon’s book “Homocide: A Year On The Killing Streets” is on my to buy list. Alot of his experiences described in this book were a huge influence on his input to The Wire.

But I did cast my net out for new televisionings to keep me going. I cringed through Sanctuary, yawned at Chuck, tried to give Burn Notice a chance, gave no such courtesy to In Plain Sight and found 30 Rock lacking something that made it feel just not worth my while.

Gabriel Byrne is holding my interest in In Treatment in which he plays a psychotherapist (lots of ins there!). Five eps a week, each a different therapy session, the last of each week with Byrne as the patient.

Life is a gem altogether. I should have found this sooner. Manages a great quantity and sustaining quality of humour in what is essentially a murder of the week cop show. The overarching plot is developing interestingly if in a brick-by-brick sort of way.

The United States of Tara premier, from Juno scribe whatsherface, was great. I’ll come back again.

Ron Perlman and Peggy Bundee are good fun in the gun running biker show Sons of Anarchy.

The Mentalist isn’t as fun as it sounds but I like picking up on some of the NLP techniques used. I guess the word doesn’t have the same connotations in the States as over here. Though they do give the dictionary definition in the opening titles…

The first series (or season for confused yanks) of the original UK version of Life on Mars was very entertaining. By the fourth episode I thought it might be building up to something but it remained very episodical. I was glad to learn that they decidedly finished it with the second series so I’m looking forward to that. I wouldn’t even consider trying out the US version save that I found out Harvey Keitel is in it. Maybe.

I continue to check out Fringe even though it’s so horribly “mainstream”.

The third season of Dexter bored me.

There’s two series I can’t wait for the return of. Weeds - the fourth season was awe inspiring. The Blah speech was beautiful. And Breaking Bad - who knew Hal from Malcolm in the Middle would give such good psycho?

Other than that but not needing any special mention - The IT Crowd, True Bood, No Heroics, South Park, Family Guy and American Dad were all very watchable.

I have season one of Mad Men on doovde* to watch which I’m told I’ll love and I want to catch the documentary on the new Deadwood complete series doovde box set. Also The Wire’s McNulty, Dominic West, is supposed to have been a good Oliver Cromwell in a 4 ep ITV miniseries The Devils Whore.

I might rant on some filmage soon.

* doovde - see fonejacker