As you may recall me mentioning elsewhere and elsewhen, Aeroplane Attack – the band in which I do horrible things to guitar tones using small metal boxes full of electronic components – had our second gig this Monday just past. Here’s the pretty poster with our name on it:

And thanks to the good grace of one Matthew Emson (who seems to have appointed himself as Official Videographer of our meteoric^[1] career) we have live footage of the set, too. The sound’s somewhat better in quality than the last video, though there’s not a lot of definition thanks to the hideous volume at which we play; nonetheless, it’s a plucky job for a little cameraphone, and another taste of melodic bombing-run fuzz from the mean streets of Velcro City:

And it seems we may well be playing again in a fortnight’s time – we must be doing something right. Either that, or word hasn’t gotten around to all the local promoters yet…

[ ¹ - Yeah, meteoric - a bright flash and a fast fall to earth, AMIRITE? ]

Those of you who know me beyond the intarwebs will be aware that, as far as music is concerned, I’m all nineties. Nineties to the core.

And nothing says (early) nineties to me like the glorious era of shoegazer and grunge. Which was why I was totally stoked when I stumbled across a MetaFilter post that collects links to YouTube footage to some of the shoegaze genre’s greatest moments.

If you have no idea what I’m on about, watch the following – the totally sublime “Only Shallow” by My Bloody Valentine:

If you liked that, click through on the link above and learn yourself some proper music. If that tripped your nostalgia switch like it did mine, then take a trip down memory lane.

And if you thought that was rubbish, then name your location and choice of weapons, for I shall be forced to duel you unto the death for your foul lies and worse taste in music.

If you love the crash, rumble and thunder of drums, do yourself a favour and take ten short minutes of your life to watch this video:

The band whose idea it was are well worth checking out as well – go seek out the awesome Japanese post-rock-prog of Boredoms.

If that doesn’t bring a ray of sunshine to a grey Sunday, nothing ever will.

Those of you who play the “VCTB Bruce Sterling drinking game” had best steel yourselves to down your beer in one.

This time round we have the inimitable Sterling on video at the Google campus, pitching a collaboration to a dissappointingly empty and unresponsive room. He’s talking about two concepts he mentions a lot these days: ‘spimes‘ and ‘the Internet of Things‘.

And this isn’t just some blind fanboy linkage, oh no. This is worth watching for sf writers, readers and critics - because not only is the concept of the Internet of Things definitely sf-nal, but also because Sterling talks about how difficult it is for an sf writer to imagine interfaces for the ideas they create. It ties together design, technology and fiction in one pitch. The other guy doing the presentation is a rather dull speaker, so you may wish to skip through him to Sterling’s ‘Q&A’* at the end, but if you have the time I’d recommend you watch it all.

[* Actually less of a Q&A than a pitch extension, as only two people have questions - not that Sterling's going to let that stop him putting out the message.]

There’s no need to feel jealous of Google employees for getting to see lectures and presentations by the great and the good on work time – because the Big G has decided to share the wealth and let us lowly web-heads watch the events in video form. I knew they had to be buying YouTube for a reason …

Of most interest to genre fiction fans will be videos of Jonathan Lethem, Kelly Link and Karen Joy Fowler, Neil Gaiman, and the incredibly recent visit by John “If rocks stars can tour, so can I” Scalzi.

There’s lots of others interesting people in the selection too; I’ve not watched them yet, but I’m guessing that Lawrence Lessig and Chris “Long Tail” Anderson will be well worth watching, too – whether you’re already interested in copyright issues and internet marketing or not.

Here’s another first at VCTB – the first time I’ve bothered reposting something I saw on YouTube.

Being an incorrigible science fiction reader, and leaning toward the harder end of the spectrum, I’ve heard plenty about nanofactories (or ‘replicators’, or ‘fabbers’ as they are sometimes called). But to actually see a visualisation of how one would work was pretty inspirational. Continue reading “A tour of a nanofactory”