Circadian Shift

My week, particularly Thursday and Friday, may be summarized thusly:

Life is like that.

(Pix courtesy of stock.xchng.)

I know, I know...

Screamingly late, but here's last week, represented by two mood boards.

Media consumption:

• Got the CD In Between Dreams by Jack Johnson after redeeming some AirMiles. I know, it's the sort of comfortably soothing tunage listened to by Volvo-driving suburbanites pushing 40, but I like it (even if it does mean that my age is showing -- Swedish sedan and dwelling in a subdivision notwithstanding).
• Read the book Songbook by Nick Hornby. It's a collection of essays about songs that have some significance to the author. Therefore: Essays (arguably my favourite literary format) + Music (one of my favourite things) + Hornby (one of my favourite authors) = Pretty Easy to Like, IMHO.

In other happenings, N and I went to Ottawa for the long weekend. The second board is double-sized, so click on the one you see below to launch the full-sized version in a pop-up window.

It was cold and rainy, which meant that it was no worse than if we had stayed in Toronto. Took in the National Gallery and the Museum of Civilization, and did a lot of walking around and basically taking it easy.

(Most of the pics on the board were taken by N; I took the one of the back of the Parliament Buildings, plus the two of the National Gallery, using N's camera.)

Another week of more of the same....

Of the few notable things I did, I read the book Early Bird by Rodney Rothman. A former head writer for the Late Show with David Letterman, Rothman lost his job writing for the sitcom Undeclared, and decided -- at the age of 28 -- to go and retire in Florida. Here's more from the back cover of the book:

"Rodney throws himself into the spirit of retirement, fashioning a busy schedule of suntanning, shuffleboard, and gambling cruises. As the months pass, his neighbors seem to forget that he is fifty years younger than they are. He finds himself the potential romantic interest of an aging femme fatale. He joins a senior softball club and is disturbed to learn that he is the worst player on the team."

Overall, it's an entertaining read. Many of the details, such as the early hours at which seniors get up to start their days, and the similarly advanced schedule for eating "dinner" at quarter-to-five in the afternoon, will be familiar to anyone who has seen the episodes of Seinfeld where Jerry goes to visit his retired parents in Florida.

The ending was a bit weak, as it seemed like Rothman started glossing over the details in order to wrap things up quickly. There wasn't much insight (other than one segment when one of the seniors dies) into the thought processes that finally spurred Rothman to leave and resume the "normal" life of someone his age. But, again, I still enjoyed the book as a whole.

So, the image on the left-hand side of the board (I quite like it) is taken from the book's cover, while the images on the right are from a collection of free avatars by Blifaloo.com. The little snippets of text are from the lyrics of the song "Just Let Go" by Fischerspooner, which I had playing a couple times at work on Friday.

Yet another double-size board (click the one below to launch the full-size version in a popup).

I've been enjoying the sunshine that we've had over the last while. Sunshine is good, as it helps one to maintain a cheery, optimistic disposition in the face of boredom and mundanity.

Let's hope that more sunny days are coming soon.

(All pix this week are courtesy of morgueFile.)

I think we can safely file this moodboard under the "phoning it in" category:

Running a little low in the inspiration department, so once again I will run through some recent music acquisitions of mine. Most of it falls in the ambient/atmospheric vein, since I've been craving music that's a little more soothing to listen to, especially in the evenings.

Downloads from eMusic:

• Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place -- guitar-and-percussion-driven melancholy; you can download the song "Memorial" for free from Download.com
• E*Vax - Parking Lot Music -- soft, glitchy IDM; download "The Process of Leaving", once again free, courtesy of Download.com
• Moby - Ambient -- one of Moby's earlier works; like the title says, it's ambient
• Banco De Gaia - 10 Years -- a double-CD length compilation of global-fusion-electronica from the first decade of Banco de Gaia's career; you can download "Sinahala" and "Last Train to Lhasa" plus one other track for free from the Banco de Gaia website; also check out some tracks from 10 Years Remixed, which was released a year later
• NEU! - NEU! -- a landmark piece of early-70s Krautrock; I didn't know that Neu was founded by two early members of Kraftwerk, but you can hear the influence they had on the latter group's release Autobahn

I also bought one CD:

• Massive Attack - Collected -- downtempo trip-hoppy goodness; I must sheepishly admit that I missed the boat on these guys beforehand, so I'm now trying to catch up; read the review from Pitchfork here

BTW, the background image is courtesy of Mayang's Free Textures.

Grey, cold, wet, damp, yucky... and that's just the weather.

Are those dummy heads depicted in the top photo of the middle column laughing or screaming? Could go either way. Which also sums up my week pretty well.

I don't have much to say that won't cause this post to devolve into a cheese sandwich entry, except to note that I really did have a grilled cheese sandwich and salad for brunch this morning.

Oops -- I'm late with the mood board.

Here's a fun activity to try:

1. Shortly before leaving work at the end of the week, put a bunch of paperwork in your bag and copy some files to your USB key.
2. Bring the bag and USB key home.
3. Leave the papers and USB key sitting in the bag all weekend.
4. Bring the papers and USB key back to work on Monday morning.
5. Repeat the following Friday. And the Friday after that (or, in the case of last week, repeat on Thursday).

D'oh! Yes, I'm freaking busy.

Have also been sleeping somewhat poorly, which occasionally leaves me spending my evenings being all twitchy and useless -- too awake to go to bed, but not awake enough to do anything constructive, like read or do laundry, or excavate The Hovel.

Blah, blah, blah...

Aaaaaand, we're back. Sorry about yesterday's outage.

Another double-size board this week (click the one below to launch the full-size version in a popup).

Sometimes when things go wrong, they happen suddenly and the best you can do is hold tight and deal with it as well as you can. Sometimes you have a little more warning. And sometimes, you see something far off on the horizon that you don't like the looks of. Maybe it will come your way, maybe it won't, but you better start thinking about you're going to do if it happens.

Photos this week are once again from stock.xchng. The text is from the song "NY Excuse" by Soulwax, a track that I mentioned on last week's moodboard.

As far as putting together together a mood board for the week is concerned, this one is pretty much phoned in.

Not a lot to report, so instead I'll focus on some music that I've downloaded in the last six weeks or so using my eMusic subscription. This is all stuff that I've heard on dirtyradio.net.

• The Presets - Girl and the Sea -- occasionally sombre-sounding electro, with some funky bass licks; you can download the Cut Copy remix of "Girl and Sea" (MP3, 5.9MB), which is by far the catchiest track on the release
• Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak of it again -- dance punk goodness, reminiscent of Gang of Four; you can download "It's For You" for free, courtesy of Download.com
  
• Midwest Product - World Series of Love -- electronic, some tracks upbeat, others more laid back; you can download "Bank", a nice Kraftwerk-esque take on dayjob monotony, again courtesy of Download.com
  
• Cut Copy - Bright Like Neon Love -- low-key electro, featuring vocals tinged with irony; you can download "Future" for free from BetterPropaganda
• Colder - Heat -- sort of a Joy Division meets Kraftwerk thing, with some Japan thrown in for good measure
  
• !!! (Chk Chk Chk) - Louden Up Now -- actually, I'm not 100% sure I've heard !!! on dirtyradio, but I can credit Mr. GAK for introducing me to them via a mix CD that he and Graig put together a few years ago; you can download "Hello? Is This Thing On?" from BetterPropaganda
  

I also procured a few tracks à la carte:

• Rex the Dog - "Protoype (Original Mix)" and "We Live In Daddy's Car (12" Original Mix)" -- fun, robotic, old-school electro; you can download a MiniMix that Rex the Dog put together for BBC Radio 1 last year which has more old-school goodies in it (S'Express, anyone?); Rex the Dog MP3s are available for purchase at beatport (I've never used them, but they look OK)
• MU - "Paris Hilton" -- crazy, and oh so catchy; I've already linked to the video (QuickTime) for this tune; you can also download a lo-fi MP3 of the track (96 kbps, 3.87 MB)
• Soulwax - "E Talking" and "NY Excuse" -- more dance-punk; you can watch videos here (the one for "NY Excuse" is particularly recommended)
  

Thanks once again to Bleep.com for providing the sound widgets; not surprisingly, the tunes are available for purchase at Bleep (except for the !!! album, which is marked as "Currently Not Licensed For Sale In Canada".)

It's a double-size mood board this week. ("N", I hope you're happy.) Click on the board below to view it in full 800x600 pixel glory (launches in a pop-up).

I'm not really sure what I did this week. Went to work. Went out to dinner a couple times. Went for a long walk yesterday.

I did buy a new CD, the album Everything Ecstatic by Four Tet. As the title might suggest, the album features light-hearted, sample-happy electronica and makes for fun listening.

Thanks to Bleep for providing the hella-neat widget shown above (the songs will play in 30-second slices; re-click the play button continue the tune). Unfortunately, they're not selling the MP3s to Canadian customers, hence my need to get a hard copy (thank you, CD-Replay on Bloor St., for offering it for cheaper than elsewhere).

I previously included the track "Smile Around the Face" in my 'Abstraction and Reverie' mix (still available for the time being on Rapidshare (scroll, click, wait, type)), or you can download the tune for free from Amazon (192 kbps, free registration required) or Insound (160 kbps, no registration, plus some older Four Tet tunes). You can also hear several of the tunes as part of a live set in Melbourne, currently available for free on Four Tet's website.

(BTW, all images on the board this week are courtesy of stock.xchng.)

Time. Time. Time.

Every once in a while, the sickness kicks in a little more severely than usual.

"In 1985, physician Larry Dossey, in his book Space, Time & Medicine, coined the term "time sickness" to describe the illnesses that nag us because we believe we're in the race of our lives against a ticking clock."
(from the article "Slow down your life", by Martha Coventry)

Seems like there a multitude of things that one can, might, should, must devote one's attention and energy to. Sometimes the choices are easy. Get up. Go to work. Meet a deadline. Sometimes the choices are not so easy, or are all too easy to avoid. Read a book. Clean the apartment. Phone a friend. Go back to bed.

And then the day passes, and you wonder where all the time has gone.

But it's not just time-sickness on an acute scale -- measured in hours, days, and weeks -- but on a chronic one. Months, years -- even a decade -- of choices now bears scrutiny and lament. Mistakes are becoming harder to recover from, because, well, time is running out.

What to do? What to do...

"Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1959)

P.S. It's now been one year since I put my first weekly mood board online. You can view all the boards as a slideshow and see how time has passed.

It's been a very difficult week.

I think I've been managing the situation fairly well, but it's been, uh, "challenging". (Addendum 15 March 2005: The matter has been resolved to my satisfaction. Hallelujah.)

Here are a couple resources on playing nicely with others and dealing with sticky interpersonal situations:

• Crucial Skills -- the "Free Stuff" section includes a weekly newsletter, various self tests, plus other resources
• Belding Skills Development -- the newly renamed "Winning at Work" newsletter (formerly known as "Hints from Hell") has plenty of tips on dealing with that pain-in-the-ass boss/employee/co-worker/customer in your life

In other workplace-related news, the inventor of the cubicle regrets his creation as a terrible mistake.

It's been one of those weeks that has afforded me plenty of opportunity to practice patience, compassion, and restraint.

And how.

I caught the Bodyworlds2 show (Wikipedia entry) tonight, its final night at the Ontario Science Centre. I hauled myself out early yesterday morning (!), hoping to get in before it got too crowded, but it was still too late. The only available ticket slots were for 3.30am last night/this morning, and 7.30pm today.

So, I enjoyed it (flashbacks to 3rd year anatomy class at UofT and all). The exhibit has not been without controversy, whatwith all the posing and manipulations of the corpses, but in a way I think it shows that developer Gunther von Hagens and his team have a deep understanding and appreciation of how the body works in order to portray it so wonderfully and imaginatively. I did find it bothersome that one of the signs referred its accompanying exhibit as a "plastinate" -- no, it's a person, and should be recognized and respected accordingly.

During the inevitable gift shop stop at the end of the exhibit, I did briefly ponder picking up one of the souvenir exhibition catalogues, but then remembered that I have a perfectly good set of anatomy textbooks kicking around somewhere that I haven't read in a gazillion years anyway.

I also wound up seeing Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger (IMDb info), starring Jack Nicholson, yesteday. The premise is certainly enticing enough -- escape your life by exchanging your identity with someone else's. I thought it was OK. The narrative is vague and highly symbolic, which -- if you like that sort of thing -- makes this film worthwhile. But it's not really a thriller. (PopMatters review here. Metacritic roundup here.)

Other than that, it's more of the same. Got an achy-head-and-scratchy-throat thing going on, that I'm hoping will not tip over into a full-blown cold. We'll see...

Ugh.

Just ugh. Ugh.

(Photos from stock.xchng. Cartoon from explodingdog.)

A literary bent on the week's board...

I bought the novel Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland a few weeks back, and I think I've finally finished it. It's hard to say for sure, because -- like with most of his books that I've read -- I did it by paging forward to find the "good" bits and then backtracking to see what I missed, such that the whole experience of the plot wound up being tangential and episodic. I suspect that if I had read the book "properly" from beginning to end, the net effect would have been much the same.

The typical Coupland-esque themes centering around the displacement of time, place, and self abounded. The book's protagonist, Liz Dunn, struck me as being an anti-Bridget Jones, which made her seem all the more real. I was pleasantly surprised to find the closest thing to a "happy ending" that I've seen in any of Coupland's books. Of course, he never goes for the pat conclusion; there's always a lingering element of uncertainty, but at least there's hope and some measure of redemption. So, on the whole, I actually liked the book.

You can read the first ten pages of Eleanor Rigby here (PDF, 83.5 kb).

Anyway, so the featured image on this week's board is taken from the cover of Eleanor Rigby (North American hardcover edition). The text is from the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. And, as the two together would imply, I've been having trouble sleeping again. Quelle surprise.

Back to the gri(n)d.

Another new month meant another 40 MP3s from eMusic, so I got the following:

• John Coltrane - Lush Life and Soultrane
• Miles Davis Quintet - Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet and Relaxin' With The Miles Davis Quintet
• Sonny Rollins - Plus 4 and Way Out West
• Mozart - Piano Concertos (performed by The Academy Of St. Martin-In-The-Fields Under Neville Marriner)
• Philip Glass - Symphonies No.s 2 and 3 (dipped into yet another subscription "Booster Pack" to get this one)

Also, just because I can, I cashed in some Air Miles and got U2's The Best of 1980-1990 and The Best of 1990-2000 on CD.

Not much else to say. Still sleeping badly, trying to dig out The Hovel, blah blah blah. Big shout-out to several of my fellow bloggers who attended Maria's citizenship party last night. Sorry, I'm lazy, so no linking.

Grid.

Non-grid.

The same 12 images, arranged differently. Being unable to pick one board, I figured I'd put up both.

Saw the movie Munich (official site is an annoyingly sluggish Flash thingy -- here's the IMDb info). I thought the film, while not perfect, was a worthwhile film to watch. (FYI, here is Wikipedia backgrounder info on the Munich Massacre and some of the controversy about the film.)

Otherwise, not much to report. The temperature has been really freakish this week -- either very cold, or very warm. Stupid weather.

Incidentally, all the images on the board(s) are avatars, except for the profile shot of Eric Bana that I took from the movie poster for Munich.

Addendum: These are mood boards number 49 and 50, since I started doing/posting these things last year. I also went and deleted and re-uploaded the boards over at Flickr so that they'd appear in the correct chronological order if you browse through my "Mood Board" Flickr set. (And after having done that the hard way, I discovered a tiny set of Flickr controls that might've enabled me to do all that re-arranging the easy way. Arg.)

Same old, same old...

Finally breaking free of the grid for the first time in a few months, I chose to populate this week's board mostly with avatars and buddy icons (little images that users of Instant Messaging applications and bulletin boards or forums use to represent themselves online).

Besides being a convenient source of visual micro-content that I can plunder (no cropping or resizing needed to fit them on the board), I also happen to like avatars because they can say so much in so little space. OK, so there are a lot of avatars out there that are crap -- and why do so many of them have spelling mistakes -- but in theory these little 100x100 pixel (or smaller) squares are personas writ small.

Think about it -- how would you capture yourself in 10,000 pixels? Could you?

(And of course, what does my choice of these images say about me?)

Incidentally, the mood board from two weeks ago and Friday's post also use avatars.

One musical acquisition of note: The album OK Cowboy by Vitalic was added to eMusic's catalog this week, and I snapped it up as soon as I saw it there (I've teetered on the brink of purchasing it from Bleep.com several times over the last six months or so). You can view the video for "My Friend Dario" (Flash, 14.7 MB), a song that's a fantastically catchy slice of electro dance-punk. The video's lots of fun too.

Just because I can, I set up a flickr account and uploaded my weekly mood board images to it (sans commentary). I should probably dig up my old keychain-cam pix and do the same.

I couldn't help but be amused at the resulting view of my 'Mood Boards' set -- namely a grid of grids...

Blah.

Not much to report.

Of the few highlights of the week, I went out on Friday night to meet up with Eva and some of the other local bloggers and say hello to visiting blogger Shelley, who managed to survive a 29 hour flight from New Zealand relatively unscathed. Much fun, geekery, and the usual blogger hijinks ensued (Eva's pics of the evening are here). (BTW, there were two Jens at the event; as I was the second to arrive, I became "Other Jen" for the rest of the evening.)

In other news, triggered by a conversation with Junkman, I wound up dipping into my eMusic booster pack to download the compilation album A Passage In Time by Dead Can Dance. The work is at times gloomy and other times contemplative, which makes it good to listen to on cold winter nights.

I also bought a few tracks from Bleep.com:

• Helios - "Nine Black Alps" -- minimal beats over warm synths; a calming atmospheric tune
• TTC - "Meet the New Boss" -- French electro that's buzzy, blippy, and stark
• Cursor Miner - "The Sports of Kings" -- exuberant and propulsive; a great pick-me-up

All were finds via dirtyradio, which has introduced to so much cool music over the last year. It's a pity that I can't listen to it at work.

BTW, Bleep is currently giving away a free music sampler (as with all Bleep offerings, it's in MP3 format, with no DRM) titled Bleeps-oh-six; you do have to set up an account with them to download the sampler, but it's free to do so.

I figured I'd follow up on the mood board retrospective that I did back in October, and re-post my mood board highlights from the last three months of 2005.

30 October 2005

Not a particularly clever composition, but I sure like those colours. Plus the images that are third from the left in both the top and bottom rows summed things up pretty well.

20 November 2005

As far as depicting a mood was concerned, this was another one of those boards where I think I really nailed it. Cold, wet, and sleep deprived. Yep, got it.

04 December 2005

As I wrote at the time, I found it really difficult to put together something that I was happy with, but I look at this board now and I quite like how the composition turned out.

Which, I guess is partly the point with these mood boards of mine. Sure, I struggle with them sometimes, and I feel like I've just been phoning in the last few that I've done, but when they work out well it seems to make the whole exercise worthwhile (at least for me).

As always, you can view all my mood boards here.

An unremarkable week.

Went to work and did stuff. Listened to MP3s. Web-surfed. Read a little bit. Was lacking in sleep.

Now that the holidays are over, things are going to be rather routine for some time. Which isn't bad. It's just.... meh.

A belated Happy New Year to everyone.

I spent the last week of 2005 fighting off a headache, doing stuff at work, dealing with my course assignment, and halfheartedly glancing at a couple of Boxing Week sales.

I did buy one thing, namely the single CD version of The Prodigy - Their Law: The Singles 1990-2005. It's funny, because I really didn't listen to The Prodigy much when they were really popular, but I do get nostalgic once in a while for that old-school booming techno sound.

There were more musical acquisitions, thanks to my eMusic subscription:

• Bloc Party - Silent Alarm -- an album that was much beloved by the hipster kiddies this year, and I like it too; wears its retro/post-punk influences well, without being so bloody obvious about it (cf. The Bravery); you can download the lead single, "Banquet", for free from betterPropoganda
• The Clientele - Strange Geometry -- another 2005 release that's been getting lots of good reviews; features lots of jangly reverberating guitars, melancholy lyrics and vocals, and many riffs and harmonies that are positively Beatle-esque; you can download the tune "E.M.P.T.Y." for free, once again courtesy of betterPropoganda
• Richard Bartz - Midnight Man -- another dirtyradio discovery; Bartz is a veteran of the German techno scene, and if you like that sort of sound, you won't be disappointed
• Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto - Insen -- featuring Sakamoto's piano compositions all cut up and glitched out by Noto's electronic manipulations, this album really works best as background music; I noticed that bleep lists the album as "Not For Sale In Canada", so I figured I'd grab it from eMusic while I still could (which meant dipping into my "Booster Pack" to get it)
• John Adams - Shaker Loops / Wound Dresser / Short Ride in a Fast Machine -- some Minimalist Clasical music for a change of pace; I already have a different recording of "Shaker Loops", so I only picked up the other compositions on this release

New Year's Eve was pretty quiet. Went out for a nice dinner, then stayed in and watched Monty Python's And Now for Something Completely Different on DVD. CITY-TV then ran Fight Club after midnight, so I wound up going to bed fairly late.

A belated holiday moodboard.

Christmas was fine. I ate a ton of food. Got some nice presents. All in all, I've no complaints.

Will do a minimal amount of Boxing "Day" shopping this week. And I have that *#@#!!*#@!!!!! course assignment due by the end of Friday.

Hope y'all had a good one. Sorry that blog posting's been light lately. Will try to remedy that in the new year.

Frigging holiday season.

Am scrambling to get stuff done before year end at work, do my wretched major assignment for the course I've been taking (also due at year end), and cope with the usual Xmas insanity.

Arrgh. Arrrrrrrgh.

Snow on the ground and a looming holiday rush in the air.

I've been a bit scattered this week -- bashing away at getting a bunch of stuff done at work before year-end, trying (unsuccessfully) to work on the major assignment for my course, and thinking (intermittently) about what the hell to get people for Christmas.

Three songs figuring prominently on my musical radar in the last few days:

• Sara Valenzuela - "Para Continuar" -- this incredibly pretty tune was included on a Nacional Records Sampler that I downloaded for free from eMusic a while back and promptly forgot about until I played it at work this week; Valenzuela's work is a gentle pop-jazz hybrid that will likely appeal to fans of Bebel Gilberto or Nora Jones -- you can download "Para Continuar" plus another song for free from her website (after you enter the site -- Flash required -- select 'Galería' from the menu, then go to 'Extras: Downloads')
• Isao Tomita - "Arabesque No. 1" -- taken from his 1974 album Snowflakes Are Dancing, this is an electronic re-working of an old Debussey chestnut; soothing, without degenerating into New Age-y musical wallpaper
• Matthew Barber - "Soft One" -- heard on the mainstream radio station that I listen to on weekday mornings, this is a solid pop gem, reminiscent of the old Cars song "Just What I Needed"; purchased from iTunes this week (along with the Tomita track)

I really found myself struggling with the mood board this week.

Using a grid is easy to do, and yields pretty good results most of the time, but it does make it hard to keep the look fresh. I tried going back to the more free-form style, like what I was doing in the spring and summer, but it just looked like crap.

Anyway, it's December now, which means that my monthly 40 MP3 allotment from eMusic was there for the taking. I got three albums.

• Thievery Corporation - The Cosmic Game -- I already have five other CDs bearing the Thievery Corporation name; I just can't get enough of that lounge-y downtempo electro goodness
• Frankie Bones - Act Like You Know -- house-y dance tunage to get up and go to
• Steve Reich / Alarm Will Sound - Tehilim & Desert Music -- Steve Reich, of course, looms large on the scene of Minimalist Classical composers, whilst Alarm Will Sound is an instrumental ensemble with an eclectic repertoire (most recently, they covered music by Aphex Twin); the resulting combination yields a work that rewards repeated listens

For those of you doing the math, those three selections actually topped out at 42 MP3s, so I had to dip into my "Booster Pack" for the extra tracks.

The "Booster Pack" also got depleted a bit more, as I downloaded a bunch more of those ambient music/noise recordings that are supposed to do good things for your brain -- Brain Power, Deep Learning, High Focus, and Increase Creativity all got some significant play while at the office this week. They actually seemed to help, as I was able to buckle down and plow through some sticky points in what I've been working on.

In terms of other media consumption for the week, I saw the documentary film March of the Pengiuns (IMDb info) on DVD. It was a good movie -- who, after all, does not enjoy watching cute flightless seabirds (and fluffy baby birds!) waddling around -- but you may, perhaps, argue with the attempt to ascribe too many human characteristics to them. Still, is was great fun to watch, and the Antarctic vistas in the background were truly spectacular.

Another week. Another grid.

It was yet another week of dark and cold, and trying to get a good night's sleep.

Even though we've yet to reach the end of November, I went and downloaded some MP3s from eMusic, thanks to having purchased a "booster pack" for an extra 50 tracks, which I can download at any time. I've only made use of 7 downloads thus far, having bought some nice calming tunage to play at bedtime:

• Gas - Koenigsforst -- featuring an array of string samples taken from vinyl LPs, backed with a drum machine; this isn't entirely suitable as bedtime music, but it is good for quieter evening listening thank to its droning atmospheric sound
• Kelly Howell - Sound Sleep -- consisting of a single hour-long track titled "Music with Delta Waves", this is meant to be listened to through headphones so that the delta waves can induce your brain into a sleeping state; unfortunately, sleeping with headphones on is not particularly comfortable, but I still found it to be somewhat useful to be played softly through speakers in the background

I also bought a couple songs from iTunes:

• Laika - "Alphabet Soup" -- yet another dirtyradio discovery, this tune is all spacy and electronic, with vocals that remind me of Kate Bush
• Alice Cooper - "Clones (We're All)" -- one does not ordinarily associate Alice Cooper with New Wave, but he did produce some work in the early 80s that fits reasonably well in the genre; "Clones" combines a Gary Numan aesthetic with Brave New World imagery for just under three minutes of enjoyable listening

Other highlights of the week include all-day Friday and Saturday sessions for this taxonomy and metadata course that I'm taking (nothing says "rip-roaring good times" like parking your ass in a classroom on Saturday morning to learn about faceted classfication and controlled vocabularies), and getting my flu shot for this year. Yes, it's sad that those count as "highlights".

Oh, look, it's another grid filled with stuff.

This whole sleeping poorly thing is really starting to wear on me. Lately, my nights have consisted of either one, or in some cases both, of the following occuring:

• I'm groggy and lethargic all evening, but as soon as I go to bed, my mind starts racing and I can't fall asleep
• I wake up at a ridiculously early hour, such as 4.30 or 5 am, and then can't get back to sleep until about 6.30 or so -- then, the alarm goes off at 7 (this is the more common scenario of the two)

This occasionally makes it hard to concentrate and do stuff during the day, like write (current working gig requires me to do a lot of writing), or sit in the library quietly and read articles for class, like I tried to do today. I also would up bailing early out of Blamb's party last night, because I was tired. (Thanks for the invite, Brett -- sorry we didn't chat much before I left.)

Anyway, not much else to report, except that this is the first week that it's really been cold, and then it snowed on Friday. Winter is well on its way.

(BTW, all images on this week's board are from stock.xchng.)

Yet another seven days of what has become a very routine existence. I found myself lacking ideas/subject matter for this week's board.

I wound up going to Image*After, typing the word "blue" into the search box, ripping the thumbnails from the results page (I also saved some full-sized pics for later use), and throwing a few into the grid that I set up in Corel PhotoPaint.

Meh. It worked out OK, but I seem to be locked into a grid pattern.

This Monday, I'll be starting a new class, so you'll get to hear me whine about things like readings and assignments for the next four weeks or so.

Meanwhile, this "sun down by five" thing is not fun.

Of course, I am late with the mood board.

The start of the month meant more MP3s from eMusic. I got three albums:

• Delerium -- The Best Of -- dancy electronica with lush synth arrangements, a few exotic "World music" touches, and ethereal vocals from an array of female guest singers; fave tracks: "Silence" with Sarah McLachlan, and "Euphoria (Firefly)" with Jacqui Hunt (channeling 90s-era Madonna)
• Elliott Smith -- Either/Or -- gentle acoustic arrangements and double-tracked vocals make for quiet, soothing listening; fave track: "Rose Parade"
• Brian Eno -- Nerve Net -- more progressive and up-front than Eno's well-known "Ambient" series, but still very atmospheric; fave track: "What Actually Happened?"

Also bought some tunage from bleep.com:

• The Go! Team -- "We Just Won't Be Defeated" and "Hold Yr Terror Close" -- these two tracks appear on the re-mixed North American edition of Thunder Lightning Strike!; having bought the UK edition of the album a few months back, I of course didn't get these tracks; they're OK, but nothing special, really
• The Fiery Furnaces -- "Tropical-Iceland" -- a discovery from back in the spring via Dirtyradio (which now appears to have returned after a long absence); whimsical, with a catchy chorus

Other happenings from the week included my attendance at a Saturday matinee performance of Les Miserables (which just finished up its run at the Canon Theatre), many weeknights of sleeping badly, and of course Saturday's ill-begotten NaDruWriNi exercise.

BTW, walking home just past 5 with the streetlights already on really sucks.

Colour. I need colour.

Getting out of bed has proved to be an even more arduous task than usual this week. Hellish, in fact.

My little universe has been feeling even smaller of late. As the current place-of-employ is located within walking distance from The Hovel, I'm like a little rat scurrying back and forth between St. George and Bathurst, in my little maze (otherwise known as The Annex). Back and forth, back and forth.

A Saturday jaunt in Cabbagetown provided a much-needed change of scenery; walking further south meant that the day ended in the St. Lawrence Market area. Really should get out of my own 'hood more often.

Damn this receding daylight. So easy to feel down. Gotta remember to be positive.

One acquisition of note: I picked up Metric's 2003 CD release Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (was on sale). It's OK. You can download one track from it, "Combat Baby" (one of the highlights, IMHO), plus another song from their new CD, for free over at Better Propoganda.

Another week of not-much-to-report, so I decided to go with a comics theme for this week's mood board. Actually, I wound up doing two boards.

Some comics that I enjoy reading online include:

• Dilbert -- brilliant deadpan delivery on the pithy truth of office life
• toothpastefordinner -- slackers, office drones, and lots of coffee
• Calvin and Hobbes -- an oldie but a goodie; grownups are either mundane or sinister -- Calvin does his best to escape
• Non-Sequitur -- sharp jabs at mass media and the hypocrisy of a certain Republican government
• Cat and Girl -- class warfare and jabs at liberal hypocrisy
• explodingdog -- drawings based on phrases that people send in; often whimsical, sometimes sad
• Get Fuzzy -- cats are evil and dogs are trusting and adorable
• The Joy of Tech -- mostly for Mac-o-philes, but will appeal to geeks of all stripes

I also read these comics (which don't appear on the boards) regularly:

• Bloom County -- an 80s relic 'fer sher, but some of the humour is timeless
• Gaping Void -- Hugh Macleod's (in)famous "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"
• Spamusement -- clever twists on spam subject lines

And I keep track of most of the comics in the above lists using Comic Alert. Set up an account and have updated links to many of your favourite comics sent to you via RSS or email. (They've also started offering a web-based version.) Loads of fun.

Comics that I would read a lot more often if I would remember (or could subscribe via RSS):

• Bob the Angry Flower
• m@b

I was originally going to wait until the end of the year to do a mood board retrospective, but since the website for the Multimedia and Website Design class at the University of Bolton in the UK has seen fit to include my weekly mood boards in their list of Help & Useful Links, I decided to put together a post covering what are (in my opinion) some of my mood board highlights.

So here are my picks for the top mood board for each month, from March to September...

28 March 2005

This was only the second mood board I ever did, and I was still playing with things and getting a feel for what I could do. I like how the stretched-out photos complement the blurriness of the background image. The text(ures) worked out pretty well too.

03 April 2005

Incoporating imagery taken from a CD I bought and a movie I saw wound up being a lot more symbolic than what I had originally -- or at least consciously -- intended. The hand is clearly grasping at the UML diagram (which represented a job that I had applied for) and I was sort of feeling adrift.

08 May 2005

A Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy riff, but the real message was me trying not to panic over having been unemployed for several months. In a happy accident, the "DON'T PANIC" text wound up being the same shade of green as Marvin the robot's eyes.

26 June 2005

By this time, I had found a job, and although I was enjoying it, the pace was leaving me rather overwhelmed. I rather like how the colours of the different images worked together on this one.

24 July 2005

Not a particularly remarkable mood board, but I thought the colours and background image worked out well.

14 August 2005

This was an incredibly busy and tiring week and this board was put together very quickly, using only five different images, but boy did I nail it. Like the egg says, I was just fried.

11 September 2005

After the very fast-paced summer contract, I found myself in a new job. Life had slowed down considerably and everything became much more structured. And I was looking back and thinking "Where did the summer go?"

Feel free to poke around and look at the other mood boards. Some of them that didn't make this list didn't turn out too badly either. (Conversely, there are a few that just make me cringe when I look at them now, but they can't all be winners, can they?) I'll try to put together some good ones in the future too.

Meh.

A few brief flashes of things that are interesting, but otherwise...

• Sample thought: "If I have to look at this one more time this week, I am going to lobotomize myself with my pen."
• Sample lunch: leftover turkey with mashed potatoes and veggies
• Sample dinner: half a wedge of Camembert
• Sample tune: "Pretend That We're Dead" by L7, heard on WOXY Vintage, purchased the following day from iTunes

Several pix via stock.xchng; a couple from elsewhere.

Yep. This is it.

All images from stock.xchng, except for the background, which came from Mayang's Free Textures.

October. It's freaking October already.

The start of the month meant another 40 MP3 frenzy from eMusic. My picks this month were:

• The Pleasure Principle by Gary Numan -- scary to think that this album was released over 25 years ago, especially as I remember when the song "Cars" was a hit; after hearing so many current-day electro throwbacks, it was time to return to the real deal, and this still sounds great
• Long Distance by Ivy -- I first heard the track "The Edge of the Ocean" courtesy of a free download from Amazon.com; the rest of the album offers more of the same dreamy pop with breathy girl-vocals (including bonus French accent); there's also a rather charming cover of "Digging Your Scene" by The Blow Monkeys
• Tenor Madness by Sonny Rollins -- classic bebop; back when I went through my "building my jazz CD collection" phase, there were a number of discs that I'd pick up in the music store, look at, and then put back down (too many choices!), and this was one of them (I did eventually buy two other Rollins discs -- the terrific Saxophone Colussus, and Sonny Side Up, recorded with Sonny Stitt and Dizzy Gillespie)
• Steve Reich - Drumming by So Percussion -- a new recording of Reich's 1971 work for "nine percussionists, two vocalists and piccolo"; probably the best way to fully appreciate the intricacies of it is to listen with headphones while lying down in a darkened room
• and, since those four albums brought me up to thirty-nine tracks, I chose for my last one the song "Streets of Your Town" by The Go-Betweens, for a dose of rainy-day late-80s nostalgia

I also wound up buying a couple songs from iTunes -- two oldies from Boz Scaggs, "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle" (both from his album Silk Degrees). Both were 70's era MOR tunes that hovered around the periphery of my consciousness back in the day; then, a couple weeks ago, "Lowdown" was playing somewhere when I was shopping and it just smacked me in the head. It was just a matter of time before I gave in and bought it.

In other happenings from the last seven days, excavation work continues at The Hovel, whilst the bane of my existence this week has been the pile-of-crap-masquerading-as-software known as Microsoft PowerPoint. At one juncture, I was about ready to fly down to Redmond, find the idiot responsible for PowerPoint's completely useless and unreliable formatting functionality, and beat them about the head severely with a wrench. Argh.

Very freaking little to report.

The major highlight of the week was doing some very severely needed excavation work on The Hovel. It's a work in progress. sigh

Other than that, I went to work and did stuff, drank a lot of coffee, and listened to a bunch of MP3s. Meh.

Boring week. Boring mood board.

I finally got around to seeing Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (IMDB info). It was OK -- didn't love it, didn't hate it. Really, I just went because I saw all the other episodes and even though I knew how this one ended, I still had to see it for myself.

Also bought a couple old/new CDs:

• Although I've accumulated a bunch of Bjork MP3s over the years, I've never bought any of her albums. (Although I did buy "Army of Me" as a CD single back when it was first released.) So I went and got her Greatest Hits compilation from a couple years ago.
• I downloaded a copy of Tourist by St. Germain from somewhere a few years ago, and had been meaning to get a "legitimate" copy for some time. I have now finally done so.

While it still may be warm enough outside to work up a sweat while just walking around, make no mistake about it -- summer is fading fast.

The passing of Labour Day and the start of a new school year have left me feeling rather wistful. An entire season has passed in what seems like the blink of an eye.

A couple end-of-summer mixes, brought to my attention via totally fuzzy:

• From the long-dormant mix of the week comes their latest offering, called "Gods of Eden". It's a blend of funk, fusion, electro, and other stuff, with several older tracks from the likes of Giorgio Moroder, Jean Michel Jarre, The Art of Noise, and Level 42.
• BendingCorners is new to me; it features monthly mixes of jazz and groove. August's mix, called "Desert Moments", wanders into ambient territory, with tracks by Steve Roach, Autechre, Boards of Canada, and Peter Gabriel (from the Passion soundtrack).

One of the CDs I was listening to at work over the past week was Underworld's 2002 release A Hundred Days Off. This song in particular was on heavy repeat on Friday afternoon:

• "Sola Sistim" by Underworld (EXPIRED) (5.92 MB) (it's a RapidShare link; some scrolling, clicking, and waiting will be required)

Downtempo, and so very chilled -- quite a departure from a group that's perhaps best known for "shoutin' lager! lager! lager!". Beautiful.

Better late than never, here is the mood board for last week...

The week brought the start of a new job, a new month, and a new raft of downloads from eMusic. For my forty-track allotment this month, I decided to forgo getting full albums, and instead cherry-picked a bunch of tunes from different sources.

• Picks number 1 through 27 were a selection of mid-80s goth and industrial tracks from Bauhaus, Gene Loves Jezebel, Love and Rockets, Ministry, Peter Murphy, The Revolting Cocks, Skinny Puppy, The Bolshoi, The Cult, and Tones on Tail.
• Keeping with the retro theme on picks 28 through 39 was an assortment of miscellaneous 80s tracks from Camper Van Beethoven, Eddy Grant, The Dead Milkmen, Scandal and Patty Smyth, Berlin, Toni Basil, Expose, The Go-Go's, Bananarama, and The Alarm.
• And, for my last track for the month, I picked "Raag Shree" performed by Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar; dubbed by the eMusic pundits as "one of the oldest, most difficult, and most exciting of all the ragas", it makes for a decent (I would beg to differ with the "exciting" label) twenty minutes and forty-one seconds (or so) of quieter listening.

Not shown on the board is another bit of media consumption from the week, namely the movie Pollock (IMDB info), which I saw on DVD. I found it to be an enjoyable overview of the life of Jackson Pollock; obviously, they can't cover everything in a movie, but this was good to whet the appetite for more information about his art, and other things.

I had a couple days downtime between contracts this week (I start a new gig on Monday), which gave me the chance to catch up on a few things, like sleep. And music. Lots and lots of music.

I went and bought Coldplay's latest album, X&Y (thank you, iTunes). As mentioned previously, I'm fairly new in catching on to Coldplay. The new album is OK, but I don't like it as much as I liked A Rush of Blood to the Head.

Also, I joined eMusic, finally succumbing to the "try us for two weeks and get 50 MP3s for free" pitch. So, for my free trial, I got the following albums:

• Funeral by The Arcade Fire -- this has gotten some good reviews from various music bloggers, and even my regular weekday morning mainstream radio station recently started playing the track "Rebellion (Lies)"; I like it, although some of the tunes sound kind of similar to me
• Light & Magic by Ladytron -- "Ladytron?" you're saying, "How 2002!" and you'd be right; although I'd heard a few of their tracks back in the day, and even saw them perform live, I'd never heard one of their albums in its entirety; I nearly bought Light & Magic once in HMV, but balked at the price ($21.99, IIRC) -- I'm glad I didn't buy it then, because listening to it now, I don't think it's really held up all that well
• Ciao! 1989-1996 by Lush -- another attempt to backfill the gaps in my music collection; I had an ancient cassette of Lush tunes that a friend made for me, and a handful of MP3s that I found online, but never actually "bought" anything from them before now
• Ultimate Sleep System by Ambient Music Therapy -- the above three albums brought my total up to 47 tracks, so this release -- 3 tracks of ambient electronic noise, clocking in at 25 mintues each -- filled out my 50 track quota

The one silly thing that eMusic does, IMHO, is that they don't encourage you to browse the catalogue before signing up -- a real mistake, because I think most people would want to know if the music that they offer is any good before forking over all their information (plus credit card number). Fortunately, you can circumvent the "start your free trial now" splash screen by clicking one of the footer links (such as the one for 'Privacy Policy'). From there you can access the navigation to browse through the various musical genres that they offer. There's some really good stuff there, particularly for indie/alternative fans; the electronica section is also strong, and my jaw dropped when I saw their jazz offerings -- classic releases from Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Thelonius Monk, Bill Evans, and more.

I've elected to go for monthly "40 MP3s for $9.95 (US)" package (sign up before August 31st and get 20% off an annual subscription), which, if you do the math (between 2 and 4 albums per month, on average) is a damn good deal. I've already queued up enough stuff in my 'Save for Later' list to take care of the first nine or ten months.

In terms of other media consumption, I went to see the movie The Island (Flash site) (IMDB info here). I enjoyed it, although the film's taken a real beating from the critics, mostly due to Michael Bay's noisy and chaotic directing -- I won't disagree, as the sound and visuals can be rather overwhelming at times. But the story's interesting, if you're willing to forgive a few plot holes.

As you might have guessed, the mood board is late because I have been very busy.

Last week in four bullet points:

• spent a lot of time at the computer
• saw the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin and enjoyed it
• played a lot of different MP3s; someone overhead me playing a track from MC5 and concluded that I'm a "headbanger"
• also played some 90s/early-00s era Madonna tunes on Sunday afternoon, which provided a nice pick-me-up while working at said computer

Extremely busy week at work. Deadlines will do that to you.

Also set a new personal record for staying late at the office: 4 am. I know, there are probaly a few of you out there saying "why, that's nothing -- one time I was at the office for (insert ridiculously high number here) hours straight." Congratulations -- you win (or lose).

Anyway, the MP3-CD Walkman was pumping out a stready stream of tunes, most of which I don't really remember. I do know that several mixes from SonicSunset.com figured prominently on one day -- might have beeen Wednesday or Thursday. DJs Matt and Dave are always a good source of old-school electro, mixed in with new stuff, so go check them out if you like that sort of thing.

BTW, pix on the board this week are all courtesy of stock.xchng.

It's sad, but a busy week can make for a boring mood board.

I went to work and... well... worked. It was busy, but productive (and, of course, it was a short work week). However, the coffee maker was broken during the latter part of the week, so you can imagine what that was like. If it hadn't been for an ample supply of strong tea, I probably would have died.

When not working, I did a lot of walking around. And, it was hot outside.

Media consumption of note:

• I finally got around to seeing the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle on DVD. It's a fun, ambling sort of buddy flick, nominally about a quest for the ultimate burger, but of course all sorts of wacky stuff happens on the way there. Not exactly The Odyssey, but better than what first impressions might lead you to believe.
• Been liking the song "Mushaboom" by Feist. It's a charming, idyllic sort of track, perfect to listen to on hot, lazy summer afternoons.

(Thanks to toothpastefordinner for the oh-so-appropriate cartoon. Other pix came from stock.xchng and FreeFoto.com.)

The week got off to a fairly idyllic start, then took a shift about halfway through.

Monday and Tuesday were typical 'lifestyles-of-the-unemployed' days, with lots of puttering around and napping.

On Wednesday morning the phone rang. The company whom I was recently contracting with needed me to come back and do some more work, so I was back in there -- and hence back into employment-time-and-space -- before noon. The next two weeks promise to be more of the same.

As for the weekend, Saturday was spent in the city, and it was hot humid. Then, yesterday "N" and I made a day trip up to Wasaga Beach, where it was... rainy and cold. It figures.

On the media consumption side, I went to go see Wedding Crashers. It's a reasonably enjoyable light comedy -- if you like Vince Vaughan or Owen Wilson in other comedies, you won't be disappointed here. Fun, but hardly a cinema classic.

I've also been trying to catch up on the huge backlog of work-related books I have, so this week's reading selection has been The Elements of User Experience. It's a short book (that's a good thing), and serves as a useful refresher, especially if you need to articulate to other people what the heck it is that you do.

After six weeks of frenetic activity, the pace over the last week slowed significantly.

My contract ended two Fridays ago (yep, it was quick), so the last week was spent updating the resume, talking to recruiters, and hitting the usual sites in search of a new gig.

Mind you, whatwith the now extremely flexible schedule and the very hot temperatures, a lot of napping also took place. Gotta work on that.

On the media side, I picked up the Special Edition DVD of the Oscar-winning animated short film Ryan (which made an appearance on a previous mood board). To recap:

"Ryan, directed by Chris Landreth, is an animated tribute to Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. Thirty years ago, at the National Film Board of Canada, Ryan produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Today, Ryan lives on welfare and panhandles for spare change in downtown Montreal. How could such an artistic genius follow this path?"

The DVD includes three animated short films by Larkin himself, as well as two older shorts from Landreth. Also included is the 52-minute documentary Alter Egos (directed by Laurence Green), which further compares and contrasts the careers of Larkin and Landreth.

I haven't watched Alter Egos yet, but it's been interesting to see and compare the animated shorts. Larkin's work has a cheery, whimsical quality to it, although the pacing seems draggy by current standards. The two earlier pieces from Landreth are technically slick, but seem a bit too clever by half. Ryan itself remains compelling, even after repeated viewings -- in all likelihood, there will be a few more.