Whatever happens, I want you to know that I didn’t just hop outside the library and take this picture this afternoon so I’d have something to post. Honestly^[1].

The crane moves along the dockside, so it’s not always so perfectly central as that; I liked the contrast between the dark and light sides, too. The Dockyard’s an interesting place to work, y’know. It would be even more so if I didn’t spend almost all my time stuck in one building. Selah.

Writing about music

I’ve been experimenting with reigning back the output on The Dreaded Press this week, and I like the way it has freed up more of my time for other things, so it may well become an ongoing change – at least until I find some more reviewers. And in that respect, I have a nefarious plan… mwah-ha-hah!

Album of the week

Hard to choose, really, as I’ve only reviewed two this week, and neither of them was astonishingly up my alley, so to speak.

But purely on the basis of full-bore weirdness I’m going to give it to the bizarrely- (yet appropriately-) named Turtle Nipple And The Toxic Shock by Heavy Heavy Low Low. Put it this way, they don’t call it “spazzcore” for nothing.

Writing about books

Cranked out the long-awaited Nightmare in Silicon review over the weekend, as you may have noticed. Got a couple of half-done pieces on the boil as well, at least one of which should be polished off this weekend, time allowing.

Oooh – on the subject of book reviews, remember the long agonising completion of the Brasyl review^[2]? Well, it’s finally out in the wild: see the books and mags section further down.

Freelance

I’ve been doing lots of behind-the-scenes stuff this week, including such exciting pastimes as triple-checking and printing off last year’s accounts, setting up SSH accounts on my websites and miscellaneous other administrivia.

It’s a case of paying things forward, though – for example, the SSH accounts should reduce my current Sunday backups routine from two hours to two clicks of a mouse. Well, once I’ve sussed out how to script all the processes automatically, that is… but even so, rsync is a lot more efficient than buggering about with FTP. Command line bash for the win!

I finally finished wading through the first monster manuscript – now all I have to do is think of a bunch of honest but encouraging things to say about it. And I thought the reading part was difficult going… still, there’s worse ways to earn money, and it’s teaching me a lot about how not to write. Silver linings ahoy!

Futurismic

Everything still ticking over nicely at Futurismic. Need to start planning for my absence at the end of the month, though.

Books and magazines seen

My first ever issue of Foundation (#102) arrived this morning, complete with my sprawling review of Ian McDonald’s Brasyl^[3]. w00t!

Orbit sent through a bunch more vampire-shagger paperbacks (seriously – how does anyone keep up with that genre’s output? Talk about making hay while the sun moon shines… ).

Under separate cover travelled the new K J Parker novel, The Company – complete with jacket blurb that plays on the “yes, it’s a pseudonym but no, we’re not telling you who it is” line. Way to dangle the carrot, guys… I may have to ask some of my insider contacts (hi, Darren!) for some clues^[4].

And naturally, having attended a rather superb book launch last week, I came back with autographed copies of Gareth L Powell’s short story collection The Last Reef and Chris Beckett’s The Turing Test^[5]. Great artwork for both, I think:

And bargains at £6 each. Go buy one – support talented authors and receive good fiction in return. How can you argue with that?

Coda

Another busy weekend beckons, so we’ll keep it brief here in the Coda. I’m off to see recently-reformed nineties alt-rock trio Kerbdog in Camden tomorrow night, and then on Sunday I’m spinning some tunes^[6] at the fifth anniversary bash for the pompeymusic.co.uk forum^[7], so masses of stuff to get done in a smaller space than usual. I may even forego a trip to the pub this evening, depending on how things pan out…

But I’ll not be forgoing The Hallowed Friday Curry Of Truth And Justice, however – because some things just can’t be skipped, no matter how busy you are. Have a great weekend, ladies and gents – hasta luego!

[ 1 - This is a blatant lie. But then you already knew that. ]

[ 2 - How could you forget? After all, I whined on about it for months. Which is, y'know, so out-of-character for me. ]

[ 3 - It's nowhere as bad as I remember it being, either. I can still see a number of glaring errata and bad paragraphs, though, which is a bit shoddy for one's début in a proper academic journal. Selah. ]

[ 4 - Anyone read any of the K J Parker novels, by the way? I seem to remember Farah speaking well of them, and they get a few mentions in her Rhetorics Of Fantasy , which - to my shame - I've still yet to finish... ]

[ 5 - The Turing Test blurb quotes a certain website with which you are doubtless somewhat familiar. Consider this a muffled grace note from my dusty trumpet. ]

[ 6 - Heh - time to deploy the Monster Magnet back catalogue, methinks! ]

[ 7 - Old time-sucks die hard. It's a den of foul humour and other iniquities, but I've made some great friends through it over the years, including my band-mates. ]

I got a new phone this week – a Nokia N73, thanks for asking – and in addition to a pretty decent camera (considering it’s a phone), it supports direct uploading to Flickr. Which should be pretty handy for those must-have photoblogging moments (which are, erm, frequent?), but is also of great utility on a typical not-taken-any-photos-for-FPB Friday afternoon.

So, without further ado, here’s the view from outside my workplace where I stand to have a smoke:

There’s good odds that I shouldn’t have taken that shot at all, because it’s technically inside the restricted part of the Portsmouth Naval base (so if it disappears at some point, you’ll know why), but I doubt it’s that big a deal.

I’ve just been really impressed by the recent rash of lovely blue skies we’ve had … not to mention slightly resentful that we didn’t have any of them back in the summer, when they would arguably have been of more use.

Still, a day on which I don’t get rained on during my journey home is a cause for celebration, regardless of the season. Atypical weather patterns, I salute you.

Writing about music

Another big batch of my reviews got published this week, though a lot of them were of distinctly average (or worse) albums. I have yet to discover the bitter acidity of the more experienced music hack when presented with something he or she just simply cannot get to grips with … though I am assured it will come with time.

But then, I’m not like other music journalists – and I have that on the authority of no lesser man than David Yow, former singer of The Jesus Lizard and current singer of Qui (pronounced ‘Kwee’, and don’t you forget it).

I had the great privilege of interviewing Mr Yow last night, and he was a lot of fun – the fact he was drunk may have contributed, but it’s safe to say he’s nothing like his stage persona. Well, maybe a little bit … but there’s a lot less fury and violence involved in just talking to the guy on the phone. Unless you mention English food. Or Morrissey …

I’ll link to that interview when it goes live. In the meantime, you can always read my chat with Larry from Hundred Reasons, whose ideas for dealing with religious fundamentalism suggest to me that he’d make the sort of politician I could support wholeheartedly.

Shortly after chatting to my good buddy David, I trundled off to The Wedgewood Rooms for a show. A lot of people whose opinions on music I respect greatly had been talking up a storm about a band called Cardiacs, who I’d neither heard of or heard anything by, so I thought “why not?”, put on my independent web-hack hat, and headed down to review the gig.

In hindsight, I realise this will be immensely challenging. Cardiacs defy easy description, as I’m sure anyone who knows their work will agree. The closest I can get in a sentence would be “a three-way car-crash between new wave punk, sixties psychedelia and surrealist British prog-rock”. In other words, absolutely mental, and unlike anything I’ve ever heard before (or am likely to again). I’ll be linking to the review when it goes up at The Dreaded Press.

And while we’re on the subject of music, I will take a brief moment to gloat, as I have an album that I expect a number of VCTB readers will be interested in hearing (in marked contrast to the raucous crap I usually deal with): the new Sigur Rós double-disc set, Hvarf / Heim. And yes, it’s lovely. But then what did you expect?

And an extra bonus musical gloat that deserves its own header:

I’m seeing My Bloody Valentine next summer!!

Get in.

Writing about books

I finally managed to nail the Brasyl review, or at least the first draft. How do I know it’s a first draft? Because it clocks in at about 3000 words … so I’ve asked for suggestions on where it should be trimmed, because I had run up against the wall of overfamiliarity.

I find that if I’ve been working too long on a review or essay, I become unable to approach it with the slightest bit of objectivity, which makes constructive editing an impossibility. The last time this was a serious problem was with my review of Extended Play for Strange Horizons – and that was fixed by helpful editorial comments, so hopefully the same will apply here.

So, next task is the combined review/interview of Iain M Banks’ Matter, which I finished last night and is now festooned in miniature post-its in what has rapidly become traditional fashion. I have the answers to my first batch of questions from the good Mr Banks in hand, and need to boil up batch the second, which will be the more detailed stuff, along with clarifications and expansions.

It’s harder than you might think – interviewing anyone you’re a huge fan of is always tricky, and IMB is pretty much my literary hero (inasmuch as I have such things). I’m even able to forgive him for being a devoted Mac user!*

Oh, and by the way – any VCTB readers going to the BSFA interview with IMB on Wednesday 28th November (next week)? It would be cool to meet up with people, so feel free to come and say hello – I’m easy to pick out of a crowd!

Writing about other stuff

Minimal writing work outside of reviews this week, because I’ve decided that I should bite the bullet and learn XHTML and CSS properly, as opposed to just faffing around with other people’s code.

It’s heavy going, but it seems that those years of programming lessons at school and college sunk in – logical thinking is like riding a bike.** Still, end result should be the ability to build CMS themes pretty much from scratch, and have them work properly.

How far away that end result is remains to be seen. There is a reason for all this, as well.

Books and magazines seen

After last week’s bonanza, it should come as no surprise that this week has been devoid of reading material arriving in the post box.

However, if I was to list this week’s influx of CDs, you’d still be scrolling down on this post on Sunday morning …

Coda

Seven days always seemed so long when I was a kid … sometimes it feels like I start one FPB the moment after I publish the previous one. Still, it’s good to be busy – I can’t remember the last time I thought to myself “I’m bored”, and I spent years thinking that. I must be doing something right!

In the spirit of public thanks, a big cheery wave to Penny and Chris Hill for sending me a postcard from their trip to New York! If you’d like to donate to my slowly growing collection of postcards (and receive the dubious honour of a public thanks here on VCTB, feel free to email me and ask for my snail-mail address. I’m not fusy about locations – in fact, I think it might be fun to collect postcards from decidedly non-touristy locations.***

Right, that’s your lot. I’m off for The Friday Curry before a few fortifying beverages with the usual suspects, which should prep me up for what promises to be another busy weekend in front of the keyboard.

So, a belated happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers, and to everyone else, enjoy whatever you’ve got planned for the weekend. Hasta luego.

[** In that you think you're doing fine, right up until you either fall off or collide with a wall.]

[*** This from the man who, ever since a Flickr contact suggested it, has been considering photographing his entire collection of logo'd T-shirts and putting them online. Geek is as geek does.]

[tags]photo, blue, sky, dockyard, harbour, writing, music, bookstores, blather[/tags]