July 16, 2008

Thought for the Day

It's very hard to understand The Big Picture if you have to spend all your time looking at individual pixels.

Posted by Tom Dolan at 11:25 PM | Comments (0) |

Hello Again

Many lovely things going on at the moment. Which is nice. Just thought I'd say, that's all.

I've also mentioned in various other quarters that I've got that rarest of things next week - a week off, totally to myself. Pure leisure, in a pre-parenting style.

So many things I could do - spending the week in the pub, the studio in the cellar, sitting in the Rothko room at the Tate, watching films in the middle of the day because I can, taking a train up to Edinburgh purely for the purposes of looking out of the window.

Any thoughts to the comments box or the usual email address...

Posted by Tom Dolan at 12:26 AM | Comments (0) |

July 06, 2008

Nigel Slater - for 4 year olds


Nigel Slater - for 4 year olds
Originally uploaded by tomskerous
Been puzzling for a while on ways to motivate a very smart but quite lazy child to be bothered to read words and numbers. So this is Nigel Slater's Tomato Bean and Bacon stew from Real Cooking.

She has to read the ingredients, check the numbers on the oven timer etc - and because she feels more involved she says she's going to eat it all up!

Posted by Tom Dolan at 12:35 PM | Comments (0) |

June 27, 2008

New Music

So I've been busy on the CD front in the last...oooh....year or so, but a roundup of the hits of the recent times.

Guillemots - Red

Blimey that was a good song. And Clarion's not bad. Vicky might have a point that they're sometimes a bit self-consciously 'clever' and verge on novelty, but that's just part of trying to do new stuff to me. I'll take the rough with the smooth. I think the first album may be slightly better - there's a great Billy Joel 'homage' on it. Have a listen.

Captain

Oh good golly these guys are good. I spent ages chasing after the album this is on, only to find out it's not out yet. Their first, Trevor Horn-produced, album "Welcome to Hazelville" is a blinder, and this is looking better.
Pendulum

Pendulum were a real shock to me. Their myspace stuff is just great - I'm so glad that drum'n'bass didn't just die out. (although I think the video's a little suspect)

And then, of course, there's Frost*...


Posted by Tom Dolan at 09:53 PM | Comments (0) |

Everything changes

There seems to be a mood change at the moment. I think many of the twitterers and facebookers have gorged themselves stupid on minutiae - not that it wasn't great while it lasted - and are looking for something more substantial.

But the question that seems to be on many people's lips (well, tweets or status updates or plingrhax or whatever the latest thing is) is "um, how do I get started again".

We've all got so used to this tiny microcosm of microscopic messages - reading nuances into the tiniest text - that to start something as substantial as a blog post feels like jumping straight from Janet and John to Ulysses.

My solution is just to start typing crap and hope that a new pattern emerges. Much as Richard Herring got writers block and started 'warming up' as a way of clearing it, I think I just have to accept my blogging block and confront it head on. Many people who didn't stop are blogging away just as furiously as before. Hymn, MildlyDiverting, Skip, you're all still going great guns.

Of course the game has been rather upped by the likes of the video bloggers:

Planetfrost is pure genius, mixing geekery, prog and really excessive comedy in one perfect package. For comedy and vintage gear try this:

I don't know if I have the time or self-promotional (in the nicest way) incentive to be working at this level of production, but who knows. Perhaps when I get the new mac and I have enough disk space to really get into iMovie...

But in the meantime, please pardon me while I just wazzock on for a bit. You're all lovely.

Posted by Tom Dolan at 09:25 PM | Comments (0) |