… but we have them anyway. Because since when did “need” enter into the rock’n'roll equation, eh? Behold!

Our drumber[sic] made up the logo, which we’re all rather chuffed with. Aircraft buffs will note that the plane depicted is a Vulcan bomber. Ever heard one of those take off nearby, say, at an airshow or something?

Well, know you know what Aeroplane Attack sound like. We’re playing our first gig tomorrow night. I am, to coin a phrase, kinda bricking it. But it’s going to a lot of fun – please come by if you’re in Velcro City for Saturday evening.

Writing about music

Shockingly behind this week for various reasons, but TDP is still ticking over pretty much daily.

Album of the week

This will surprise (and quite possibly appall) a few readers, but I’m going to plump for Shallow Life by Italian goth-metal-popsters Lacuna Coil. Oh yes, it’s cheesy as hell and totally overproduced, not to mention lacking any vibe of authenticity. But by hell it’s catchy, and sometimes that’s enough. Especially when you’ve only listened to two new albums in the last week or so…

… though if you’ll accept a reissue, the Brendan O’Brien remixed and remastered version of Pearl Jam‘s Ten (only available on the deluxe and hideously expensive version, folks!) is a well-executed polish job on an album whose primary flaw was always its budget production. Take a trip back to 1992 as it should have sounded.

Writing about books

Sheesh, what do you know – I’ve not written any reviews this week. Though, to be fair, I’ve been compiling notes for This is Not a Game, and that should pretty much write itself once I sit down and attack it for a few hours. I’ve also been mired in reporting on an unusually competent (but very long) novel typescript, so it’s not like my brain’s been having a holiday from books. Frankly, managing to squeeze in an hour of reading before bed is about all that’s keeping me sane right now…

Freelance

Much as it should do (what with it being my job and all) the ol’ freelance work has been really chewing up my time this week. And to little obvious progress; last week I finally bit the bullet and ordered my first dedicated server, and the last seven days have been largely focussed on learning how to set up and run the thing. Thanks to some helpful hints and hands-on tweaking from friends with relevent skill-sets (cheers, Phil!), the machine is now serving pages to the web. Those pages are only the demo pages of a sample MODx install, though, so lots of work still to do (on the server and in general). Aye caramba!

Futurismic

The Big F rolls on relentlessly; a new piece of original fiction goes up in seven days time, one columnist is about to change direction and another is about to join the fold. Plus the usual bloggery from the fuzzy line between today and tomorrow… won’t you come join us?

Books and magazines seen

Nothing at all this week, I’m afraid, with the exception of the latest issue of SOUTH Poetry. This is not a problem; I have plenty to read already.

Public appearances

April is shaping up to be the month in which I appear in the public domain as more than a mere pedestrian.

• Back on Wednesday night, the Aeroplane Attack gang were interviewed on a local radio station (which, as we pointed out at the time, is a weird thing to happen to a band yet to play their frst show).
• This afternoon saw me talking over Skype with Tony from StarShipSofa, long-time internet amigo Jeremy Tolbert and Tor.com‘s unfeasibly-multitasking Pablo Defendini for the second instalment of the Sofanauts podcast, which should be available at the weekend
• Tomorrow night is Aeroplane Attack’s debut gig
• Next Wednesday sees me attending the Arthur C Clarke Awards ceremony as an employee of the publisher of one of the shortlisted books

Cripes. And we’ve got another gig lined up for Monday 11th May, too. It’s like a runaway train, y’know? Exhilarating, but a bit scary too. But as Hunter used to say: “buy the ticket, take the ride”.

Coda

It’s a common refrain, for sure, but it should be evident I’m pretty busy. And I expect you are, too – whether it be with worky-type stuff or getting the most out of your weekend downtime – so I’m going to sign off before dosing myself up with pills in an attempt to shift the last of this headcold before tomorrow’s show. Whatever’s on your to-do list, have as much fun doing it as you can, OK?

Oh, and did I mention I’m playing a gig tomorrow? Yes? OK, then.

I’ll bet SFWA Vice-president Howard Hendrix is feeling more than a little silly right now. Or perhaps he’s sat at home railing at what he sees as the blind stupidity of his fellow professional writers. Either way, he should have worded that ‘pixel-stained technopeasant’ rant a little more diplomatically – his essential argument had some validity, but the signal got lost in the noise, and the opprobrium generated hasn’t done him any favours whatsoever.

Inadvertantly, though, he’s done a great favour to the genre fiction readership. After Jo Walton declared April 23rd to be International Pixel-stained Technopeasant Day, the science fiction weberati have come out in force and inundated the intertubes with free fiction for us to read – Andy ‘SFBC’ Wheeler has what appears to be the best roundup for those of us not connected to the web-within-the-web that is Livejournal, though there’s probably a few others floating around: leave links in the comments if you’ve spotted anything that’s worth a mention.

I’ll be bookmarking them all for a rainy day, myself – I have waaaay too many dead-tree books waiting to be read at the moment – but the prospect of being able to read Stross’s Missile Gap after missing out on the Subterranean paper edition is most satisfying.

Your added bonus material comes in the form of a podcasted panel from Penguicon (the open-source software / science fiction convention – why don’t we have one of those here in the UK?) – it features the aforementioned Mr. Stross, John Scalzi and Tobias Buckell talking about the pros and cons of giving away fiction for free as a marketing strategy. Enjoy!

Regular readers will be aware that I venerate Captain* Bruce Sterling as not only a damn fine author but also one of the greatest minds on the face of the planet. OK, so he’s never invented a new type of engine, or solved Fermat’s last theorem or anything like that, but he’s a synthesist; he can pull together all the disparate threads of the world and weave you a big scary rug from them – a rug with a pattern that makes sense.

If you want the proof, go and listen to a recording of Sterling speaking at the SXSW Interactive festival earlier this week. He talks about blogs, crowdsourcing, computers as unreliable platforms, climate change, terrorism and a whole raft of other stuff, and it’s all part of one continuous flowing thing. He’s a big-picture guy, and pretty damn funny at times to. Give up an hour, sit down and listen. I challenge you to not be challenged by the things he says.

[*As far as I know, the only person in the world who refers to Bruce Sterling as 'Captain' is me. I expect if I met him, and called him 'Captain', he'd have some very short sharp words to say. I wouldn't care. I am not old enough to be completely beyond certain forms of hero-worship and placing-upon-pedestals.]

It’s taken me a little while, but I’m finally getting into the podcast thing. Not making them, you understand (not yet, anyway), but listening to them. Once the routine is nailed, it’s a great format – subscribe in your feed-reader, download new episodes, dump them to your phone and listen on the way to and from work. Beats the hell out of radio, and removes that whole ‘which album’ dilemma that music brings with it. So, here’s a little round-up of the podcasts I’ve started to follow, most (but not all) of which have a science fictional flavour to them. Please let me know if there are any missing that you think I might be interested in! Continue reading “Podcast round-up”

I’ve got a few new additions in the blogroll who I thought I’d give a mention today …

Continue reading “Some introductions”

As promised, here’s a little surprise for the weekend warriors who don’t just trawl the RSS while at work. The title above probably clues you in to what’s about to happen here… Continue reading “Poetry Podcasting: The Alphabet Against Terror”