Hey, the pictures from the murder-party are uploaded. Check it out.
And now I’ve a huge need for sleep.
So, I left the Sofaris last friday. I’m gonna work for a new company now.
As a departure gift, my colleagues offered me an Aiwa MM-VX100 portable MP3 Player. This is a truly wonderful gift, which fulfills the geek in me. This very small and light box works with only one battery and contains up to 64 MB of mp3 files. Speaking of that, I’m looking for a software that can reliably and quickly convert an mp3 file to a lower bitrate. All my files are at least at the regular 128 Kbps rate, and I need to decrease their size to upload an interesting number of them on the player. From the hundred MP3 encoders I’ve downloaded so far, only MusicMatch can do that, but it’s dreadfully slow… If anyone of you know a reliable and powerful tool, your help will be highly appreciated.
The role-playing game was a real success (the entire set of picture, at a larger size, is coming later). It was a murder-party, actually. Everybody has done the best for the game to be entertaining, and I have to thank them all for being such great friends. Special hugs to Ninie for the chocolate cake (miam!), Franck for having played the most difficult character (the murderer !), Pierre for the numeric camera (way cool !) and Nita for the food and the preparation. And to all the players for having spread so much false rumors, and then having came and asked me about the « Beast » or the « Two Stairs, one up, one down » stuff that never existed in the first place. That’s the great part of being the organizator.
Amplified to Rock: Nanette’s weblog, which I’ve being reading for the last couple of months, is in its heyday. I hope it will last. I have a hard time trying to write her an e-mail to express my admiration (those things are always difficult to me, especially with people I don’t even know), so the least I can do is to encourage you to make a visit there, and read this post that I consider like one of the best pieces I’ve read lately. In my own way, I deeply connect with what she says.
Like a lot of people, I’ve bought and loved Radiohead’s Kid A. This is an exquisitely delicate work, from a band now in adulthood (the bends was harsh like teen-age, ok computer sophisticate and varying like you are in college years). Every site even remotely interested in music has pages and pages of words about it, so I won’t add my stone to this burden of information.
What I want to talk about is those people that almost made me have doubts about this album. First and obviously, Tanya shoot brillianty the LP down in flames (go and read the whole of her blog I hate Music *now*. I completely disagree with 85% of the posts, but it is so well-written, accurate and FUNNY that I just love it). But that was really foreseeable. Other disappointed folks include Jerwin, Catherine, and much more disturbingly the good-tasted Adam Kempa who all despise Kid A. I had to think a bit about that. Am I just blinded by hype and EMI marketing strategy ? Then Jerwin asked the definitive question : would Radiohead have never existed and this be the new Madonna, or even Britney Spears, album, would everybody still like it so much ?? My own personnal answer is yes. I would deeply love tracks like Everything in its right place or The national anthem, and lyrics like « the best you can is never enough » (Optimistic) anyway. I’m pretty sure about that. So my three days period of uncertainty is over now (24 is an age where you can start having your own opinions quietly and to know why you keep them).
PS: To the credit of Adam, he said he didn’t like the new album because of his personal tastes, and not that it’s bad.
TheSpark.com’s Personality Test :
I just did it this week-end. It said I’m an Activist (Concrete, Feeler, and… Extrovert !), which I tend to utterly deny… but Nita said that it’s really what I am. I’d say that she may be right (she’s smart, you know !), since I’m in a process of maturation that leaves me in the dark about what I am truly. I would have said I’m a « Dreamer », or something like that, but that probably was me two years ago.
The best part of it is that you can type your friends’ e-mails (if they did the test, of course), and see your percentage of compatibity. Nita and I are (only) 57% compatible… But I tried with other blogging girls’ e-mails, and we were even less compatible. Perhaps am I remotely compatible with girls in general ?..
If you intend to try the test, let me know, and I will check our score.
[link thanks to nanette.]
Sign #4531 that I’m getting older.
I bought this ticket for the Elliott Smith show. It seemed to me, the day I purchased it, that it was a great idea to go and see the guy play. And today, I had to go to the gig. I’m just back.
But, to tell you the truth, when I’ve left the office at 6, I couldn’t see a good reason why I bought this ticket instead of any other. I have to explain : I’m not a fan, I’ve not been following his career for years, I just know the last album (out of around four, I guess), and moreover I cannot clearly tell you most of the tracks’ titles… So, my point is : I wasn’t really feeling like going to this concert.
Can you realize this ? I didn’t really want to go and see a rock gig… THIS is a sign I’m getting older.
Anyway, the good part is that I truly enjoyed it. What isn’t noticeable on Figure 8 is that Elliott Smith does indie music. Half of the show was like fig.8 on overdrive, that was cool ! And the other half, stuff from the XO era I guess, was even better, even more… indie is the word that comes to me. Tomorrow, I’ll get those tracks (I’ve been really moved by this song probably called ‘The morning after’). I’m really happy ’cause I’ve re-discovered a great songwriter. If you’re interested, he did John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’ as a third and last encore, a beautiful moment.
I probably won’t be posting often next week, since I have a lot of work at the office, and a role-playing game to prepare at home.
When I told ya I’m a survivor !.. I was on a similar greek ferry just one goddam week ago, sailing towards the port of the island of Paros too. Ok, I wasn’t in this same ferry nor doing the exact same trip, but it’s pretty disturbing.
God’s wrath missed me once more, but what about the next time ? Or maybe I’m just paranoid….
An interesting lecture on stars and universe. [thanks to evhead]
Hi ! In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve made small changes (mainly tricks from my newly acquired CSS knowledge) on this page. W3C are very intelligent people.
By the way, thanks to the few folks who’ve been coming back to this weblog for the last week. You anonymous support matters more than you think.
Seen High Fidelity (the movie) during the week-end. It was a nice time-filler, that I would advise people who haven’t read the book to see… But as a huge fan of Nick Hornby’s novel, which I’ve read three or four times and offered to friends, I’m slightly disappointed. Not that the story has really mutated (a few things more and a few scenes less, but nothing really important), but the main characters are played as comical stereotypes : how can you feel empathy for a guy that is introduced as a retarded thirtysomething obsessed by sex-appealing girls ? In my opinion, Rob definitely is a nice guy, trying the best he can to grow up, but still in fight with the last part of his teenager’s fantasies, and not an elitist and depressed moron that sleeps one night with Marie LaSalle only for the comical interest it gives to the script, and leaves her in the morning unaffected… In the book, Rob first is a guy you would like to be, because he’s smart, for chrissake, and then he begins to act stupidely, and we can make fun of him in an affectionnate way, ’cause that’s our drawbacks he stands for. The movie forgets all this to play only on comedy and brainless instinct-driven characters.
What I’m trying to express, is that the book has a pretty noble conclusion, that Laura teaches Rob when she left her father’s funeral and put their couple back in the right path, but one step further. That conclusion is that you can’t stay in the same state of mind during your whole life, that you need to go further once in a while, to always have doubts, that you must move on from the contemplation of death to what you’re going to create while you’re alive and healthy. Create love, create music, create texts, create software, create bonds between people, create joy, create life. You can’t just stay an observer as in your teenage fantasies. I’m positive you can’t.
I go on with my blogger-ing mood.
I’m feeling I’m a survivor those days. Really. People around me keep getting troubles, and always the not-funny kind of troubles. I feel like that guy on the Normandy Beaches, June 1944, that sees all his pals falling under nazis bullets, and keeps running, and shit in his pants ‘I-will-be-the-next’ way. Sentimental problems, family problems, dying persons, wounded persons… I mean, I’ve had my lot of shit during the years (which i’ve never managed to deal with correctly), but I’ve been so happy, so fulfilled, so normal the last couple of years that I somewhat lost the accurate feeling about how unfair is life. Anyone has a bullet-proof jacket to sell ?
Above all that, I’m a bastard. Nita has this kind of problems, and what do you think I spent my sunday on ? Making quite an inappropriate « you think i’m a moron »-scene (my first one), with the regular amount of bitterness and unkindness. Hopefully she’s smarter than me, and it ended fine, but how do you call a guy that put his own lamentable feelings above those of somebody who would need support and comfort most of all ? Bastard, that’s the word you’re looking for.
I quit now, just a last few words. The best news of this week-end is Björk’s Selmasongs, the ‘dancer in the dark’ soundtrack as you all know. I’ve been following the little fairy from the snow for a long time now, and she again offers the world one of the best pieces of music ever done. This is so beautiful you feel the need to turn the lights off. A great, great record. I’m obviously longing for the movie to come out, and for björk to release her next real album, tour and sing these songs just for me in a 5000-people venue, as she always does.
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Cette année, pour la vingt-quatrième année consécutive, je n’ai acheté aucune action. Croyez-le ou pas, mais j’ai encore fait une nouvelle économie.
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This was bound to happen : Vatican ‘softening’ over condoms.
This rh parody made me laugh out loud in the office… Great. The concert is taking place tonight. It will be my first Radiohead gig. I’m really impatient.