Hear me, O gurus of photography

I did a bad thing this week. I spent a lot of money I don't have on a camera: an Olympus E-500 dSLR.



Hear me, all you who are wise in the ways of photography, and please reassure me I did a wise (or at least, not crashingly stupid) thing.

Moom in concert - la figure humaine

Start:	Jun 9, '07 7:30p
End:	Jun 9, '07 8:45p

This year we've sung some pretty challenging stuff, and this gig is no exception. Poulenc's music is, imho, fiercely intellectual and by no means easy listening, and the Tormis stuff is... well, it's in Estonian, okay?

The programme is chosen by our conductor - he always chooses really interesting lineups. I haven't asked him, but the theme I see running thorugh all this stuff is a meditation on humanity, or perhaps humanism (although I'm a bit vague on the precise definition of humanism). Anyway, the Poulenc piece seems very humanist to me, as are the French Chansons (I'm sure that should be Chansons Francais, but what the hell), whereas the madrigals are full of lusty singing about sex (as all madrigals are). Even the Jaanilualud (which means St John's Songs in Estonian) seem to be a mix of religious and profane themes. And of course the Ken Johnstone piece, as the name suggests, is about death, and our relationship with the dead. It's kind of an interesting mix, in an intellectual kind of way.

Some samples here.

Infomatics Hysteria + Royksopp = just amazingly cool

via core77, via Bruce Sterling.

kosmos

http://www.fleischfilm.com/html/kosmos_1024.htm
Okay, this is deeply weird. It's also long (5 mins), and at 50-odd MB takes a while to download - but it has a certain aggressive, hypnotic attraction to it.

Basically, this... person... grew crystals directly onto film, and projected the result. It's odd. People with epilepsy, or a tendency to hear voices in random noise, should probably not try it. For the rest, just make sure the volume on your PC is at fairly low.

The Stake - Burning Issues at Your Disposal

http://stake.quasimondo.com/
I didn't have time to burn Kevin J Anderson's entire portfolio, but it was still very, very satisfying. Just a shame the stats don't feed through to Amazon - 'people who burned this book also burned...'

I found this on worldchanging, via the following, particularly fascinating article - I commend it to you heartily.

Colitis update

There's recently been a lot going on in my medical life, and I realized I should really put in an update, for all those people who really really want to know what it's like to have a long term immune system problem. You weirdos.

First off: a recap. I am currently on mercaptopurine (6MP), an immunosuppressant drug which used to be (but is no longer) used for chemotherapy. I've been on it for, I dunno, maybe six months? In that time, my inflammation has reduced to the point where my blood tests look normal, and my poo has become solid (you have no idea how good that feels). However, I've also completely lost my appetite, and left to my own devices I've become very lazy about feeding myself. I've also had very low energy levels (which not eating probably doesn't help). In general, I've experienced symptoms which look and feel like anaemia - tiredness, dizzyness, etc.

Oh, and 6MP and alcohol don't mix.

So that's the baseline situation, if you like - I've cut back on all my strenuous activities, and by avoiding anything overly active (GF is well trained now, and has pretty much given up on sex after 7pm) I can pretend I'm leading a more-or-less normal life.

However, the last couple of months I've been feeling particularly bad. I suspect this might be due to taking on the task of redecorating the bedroom; the textured wallpaper did come off, but it was a tough and wily opponent, and left me in a weakened state. A couple of stressful weeks didn't allow me to recover, and since then I've been struggling. Case in point: I went away this weekend with some friends to a hostel outside Edinburgh. We were rehearsing some choral music, so nothing particularly strenuous was planned; even so, I had to go to bed at ten o'clock, feeling rough, when they all stayed up and partied 'til 3. That sort of thing really brings home to you how things really are; most of the time, with nobody living with me to compare to, I can bumble along without worrying about it; but when you're living cheek-by-jowl with your peer group for a couple of days like that, it becomes painfully obviously how far off normal you've become. It's upsetting, and slightly embarrassing.

I was all ready to break out the prednisolone and start popping steroids, but having discussed it with Generic GP today, we came to the conclusion that actually, my run-downness has probably been a result of something post-viral rather than a flare-up of my UC, which according to my blood tests seems to be pretty normal. That's heartening; at least I'm suffering from something normal people get, and it doesn't have to be walloped with something potent and chemical.

On top of this, I've just had the results of a bone density scan. Irritable bowel illnesses (Crohns, UC, etc.) reduce the uptake of nutrients, and over a long period of time this can lead to reduced bone density. In my case, it appears that while my hips an joints are normal, my spine has a considerably lower density than normal (two - well, actually nearly three standard deviations). So now I have osteoporosis in my back. Great. Anyway, I've been given some alendronic acid to take. As far as I can work it out, the bone is undergoing a constant process of breaking down and being renewed; this stuff slows down the breaking-down part of the cycle, which kind of gives the building-up part a chance to catch up. Apparently. It's a once-a-week thing, and doesn't sound particularly scary at all, compared to some of the stuff I've been on - but I guess I'll be wary of lifting anything heavy for a while. Great; so now when I avoid helping anyone with heavy equipment, people will think I'm rude and lazy, as well as a malingerer. Hey ho.

In any case, I have another appointment with Kindly Consultant in a couple of weeks (he's a nice man), when we'll really know if the last few days (which have been much better than anything previous) have been an aberration, or whether I'm genuinely coming out from underneath something that normal people get.

It's been a bad day for architecture.

First of all, I discover via inhabitat that Kisho Kurakawa's Capsule Tower is to be demolished. This will make all fans of Transport Tycoon very sad (incidentally, I never realized that Chris Sawyer took so many of the buildings in the game from local landmarks in Glasgow). It makes me a bit sad, too - all of Japan's major architecture institutions have pleaded for a refit rather than demolition, and it seems sad to me that a design which has modularity as its central concept is not being allowed the chance to really put that modularity to the test - after all, so far, none of the capsules has ever been removed. Residents have complained (And with good reason, imho) that the pods are small, and have become increasingly unpleasant to live in; but why not replace a bundle of two or four capsules with a single, larger, more modern living space? All sorts of exciting possibilities suggest themselves.



Money, that's what it boils down to. A new-build can fit more people onto the land, which means more money. Shame.

And then on top of that, BBC's PM programme has just informed me that the current architect in charge of completing Gaudi's famous Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona has warned that it could collapse even before it is finished, thanks to an underground railway which is planned to run under the site. I can't find any confirmation on that, though, not anywhere on the web - so I might be spreading scurrilous lies. I truly hope so.

Cirrus Aviaticus

http://www.astro.ku.dk/%7Eholger/IDA/S/page0092.html

Part of a quite interesting slideshow about plane contrails. I always assumed that the world was too big to really be affected by one li'l plane, but these photos would suggest a different story.

Air

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Geoff Ryman

Geoff Ryman is an interesting author; his books are often both deeply sentimental and full of hard-science innovation at the same time. The first book of his I read was The Child Garden, and it pulled at my heartstrings so powerfully that I was both exhiliarated and slightly scared when I saw Air on the shelves. It certainly comes highly recommended though - it won the James Tiptree Jr (no, I don't know either), Arthur C Clarke and Sunburst awards, and was shortlisted for the Nebula. That's not bad.

I'm older now, and I'm rather better at seeing the emotional manipulation coming, but Ryman is still a very powerful author. The story of Air is set in a tiny village in the nation of Karzistan, an utterly poverty-stricken backwater that has basically missed out on the entire internet revolution, and now must prepare itself for the next big informational transformation, when information will free itself from wires and computers and become ubiquitous. Most of Chung Mae's fellow villagers assume this will be like a TV in their heads, where they can watch football and soap operas while they go about their daily lives. When they test the system, however, Chung Mae gets a terrifying view into what might actually be in store for all of them, and struggles to educate her fellow villagers, even as her own personal life starts to unravel...

If that sounds unprepossessing as a story line, then don't worry, there's plenty going on - but this isn't one of those future history books documenting the Great Events of the Future. This is about one woman, one village, living on the brink of change and trying to come to terms with it. It's a great and simple story, with charming characters who became deeply important to me as the tale progressed. Ryman seems to belong to a similar school of thought to authors like Adam Roberts and Charles Stross, who see technology as not necessarily good or evil, but a profoundly powerful agent of change in our attempts to live, to understand the world, and to work out how to be human.

I think I ate a bug.

I had the weirdest
dream last night.

I dreamt we had a
fishtank at work, and that there were some little fish in it which - despite
looking very much like miniature koi carp - were supposedly whitebait (for the uninitiated, whitebait are great to eat whole, deepfried in batter). At
lunchtime me and my boss decided to have sushi, so we each took three of these
little orange 'whitebait' and dared each other to eat it. He chickened out
completely; I let two of mine go, and went to swallow the third... but I
snatched it away from my mouth at the last minute. All I bit down on was a
little fragment of spine at the tail end, which tasted crunchy and
bitter.

I think I may have
swallowed a bug in my sleep.