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Working all this week in an effort to keep the agency happy and to prolong this sensation of having money for a bit. Job is quite dull in an inoffensive way but the hours do seem to spin on by at a decent pace. Did get horrifically lost in Aston though. That area from Digbeth round to the Aston Expressway is a quite deceptive maze. On the map it all looks fairly straightforward but when you’re in it no sense can be found. It’s not like I’m a novice at navigating around this city or anything but even having taken two different routes to and from this job I’m still at a complete loss as to where I actually went and whether it was remotely a good way to get there.

In related news I encountered a cyclist with a bigger ego than me on the way home today. I have a tendency to try to overtake everyone else and always be in front, at least when I’m cycling. Not so much in the rest of my life, which is somewhat odd, but there you go. Coming out of the usual bunched-up group of bikes between Gooch and Longmore I was behind this chap who didn’t seem to be going that fast, so I nipped in front of him along the cycle path. For the next five minutes I could hear a strange mechanical noise similar but distinctly different to my bike. I looked over my shoulder and there he was, right on my ass, and I’d been giving it some welly along Clevedon. I was wondering whether I should let him pass or not, since it obviously meant a lot to him, when my phone rang saving me some face. Then later on I sat right behind a very slow man in shorts along the riverside path. I could have taken him, no bother, but he had stronger lights than me. Tore up his ass when we hit the side streets though.

Sorry, the novelty of not being the only cyclist in the entire area still hasn’t worn off. It’s like a Beijing rush-hour compared to Kingstanding.

Well, despite what I said I had another look at the slides from the Nikon F2 and they weren’t so bad. The later ones were actually quite passable in places so I’ve stuck ten on them in this photoset.

For the record they were taken using Astia 100F colour slide film and scanned using a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000. I did a minimal amount of tweaking in Photoshop, resized to 1028 wide, sharpened once and saved. The black border was produced by the scanner and I quite liked it so it stayed, hence no cropping. This is pretty much how they came out.

I’m going to leave the Nikon be for a month or so while I play with the Fuji’s manual settings but it’ll certainly come out again.

The band Plinth, which as you’ll know by now 50% of whom share the same landlord as me, have their fourth gig at the Jug of Ale in Moseley this coming Friday. It will be good. Do come along.

In related news I’ve decided that I’ll be doing my stupid idea Going Deaf For A Fortnight, mentioned here starting with that Plinth gig. From the 4th to the 17th of November I shall go to a gig every night and write about all fourteen here. All gigs will be at the Jug (since it’s the closest venue to me and I can cycle there) except when there isn’t a gig at the Jug in which case it’ll be Bar Academy, the Flapper of the Barfly. You can check my Upcoming page to see where I’ll be at if you want to join me.

Oh, and part of this madness will include Jeffrey Lewis on the 11th which I heartily recommend. You don’t want to miss this one.

(Monday 7th is somewhat expectedly proving tricky to fill so any ideas would be appreciated…)

Andy Luke has been a chum of mine for a number of years now. His comics were once described by Ralph Kidson as “like something a deranged serial killer would draw in his death row cell” which was aesthetically accurate even though Andy isn’t a deranged serial killer. Well, he’s not a serial killer anyway.

Anyway, he’s recently posted a few single panels on his Flickr account and I was most taken by the one above. This one’s also pretty keen.

This kind of art, most famously practiced by one David Shrigley, is very hard to describe because by most criteria it’s not “good art”, just little doodles done by someone who can’t draw “properly” which if you’re after clean, anatomically correct art that looks pretty is fine. But I find myself drawn to this sort of thing again and again and I can’t really describe why. In fact if I could describe why it’d probably ruin it - the mystery is what makes it work, or something.

So I think Andy Luke’s single panels should be printed in a big fat art book and sold for chunks of cash. And they should be blown up to poster size and displayed in galleries. That would be a good thing.

After three days getting up a 6am to catch a bus to Erdington to lug boxes around for eight hours before traveling all the way back to Bournville, I was, well, shattered would be a word for it. The job itself wasn’t that bad - I quite like lugging boxes as a form of exercise, though the guy I was working with was a miserable bastard with a black heart so that was kinda exhausting. He wasn’t a bad man, in fact he was pretty generous and his back heart was in the right place, but he was bitter and twisted and he liked me so I was stuck with him and his moanings, which made me all moany and complainy which is never good, especially when my defenses were weakened by the number 11 bus. So we shall speak of it no more.

On Wednesday night, having decided enough was enough and that I wouldn’t be going back, I returned home to a big Amazon box. It was finally here. Once my tax rebate cheque cleared I’d ordered a Fuji Finepix S7000 from Amazon which had caused my bank to go into spasms as it was the largest sum I’d spent on my card since neolithic times which then led to my first experience of phone banking (”I’m phoning India and this isn’t a problem… I’m phoning India and this isn’t a problem… Christ alive, I’m phoning India!”) to unfreeze everything, and here it was, all lovely and new and with a respectably large instruction manual which was digested with glee all evening, the bad vibes of the week to date suddenly banished.

This morning I’d arranged to meet Andy and Alex at a local cafe for breakfast at ten but the knackerdness of the past few days had caught up with me and I was woken at ten by Alex’s text telling me they’d be a little late so I rushed down to the Last Chance Cafe in Stirchley on what was an uncommonly warm October morning. The greasy spoon was suitably greasy and full of men in hi-viz jackets. I’m at work, my sleepy brain said, and I ordered the Full English and waited. No sign of Andy and Alex. I ate my breakfast (not bad but nothing to write home about) in the slightly bizarre cafe (rockabilly theme with random kitsch on the walls in such magnitude it transcended mere kitsch and came out the other side) with still no sign. Breakfast finished I phoned Alex. They were in a different cafe on Bournville lane that I’d never noticed was there despite the massive “Cafe” painted on the wall. So I trundled over there for another cup of tea and to show off my camera. “Have you given her a name?” asked Alex. “I don’t think it’s a girl” said Andy as the somewhat phallic lens extended. For future reference their breakfast was judged better than mine.

We then wandered up to the deli on Linden Road and I continued up to Cotteridge to loop around back down through Stirchley to try out the camera. I’d noticed a load of interestingly crap shops from the top deck of the bus and they were indeed interesting even at ground level. By the time I got back to base I’d taken over 100 photos, 26 of which you can see here.

All of them were taken on automatic with no fiddling about. I did play with the zoom a fair bit because, hell, I’ve never had a zoom before. Zoom rocks the fucking bollocks! I was a bit concerned about camera shake but they all came out crystal clear, most astonishingly this leaf which was taken from about three metres away. I’m not sure I can give an honest review of the S7000 because my experience has been like moving from an 100cc moped to a Ducatti but I’m incredibly impressed with the handling and control it gives, not to mention the quality of the shots. It’s also worth noting that while most of my photos with the old digicam have been carefully tweaked in Photoshop these hardly needed anything.

But what of the Nikon, you might be asking. Well, I got my first batch of slides developed and scanned about half of them in using a dedicated slide scanner and I’m not overly impressed. Yes, I know it takes time to get the manual exposure right, yes, I know I shouldn’t be overly critical of my first attempts, and yes, I know it’s a wonderful piece of kit with great potential, but it seems like a backward step with far too much hassle involved. Once I get some time I’ll have a hack at the photos in Photoshop to see if any are worth making public and once I’ve had a play with the manual controls on the S7000 (yes, it does fully manual exposure and focus) I may return to film just to see. But right now digital rules. Enormous potentials have opened up and I’m keen to explore them.

(In case you’re wondering, the camera is a joint family combi birthday/Xmas present so thankyou mia famiglia!)

Much relief in the head of this addict as the smoking ban looks set to be less draconian than expected. This whole pubs which serve food distinction can easily be made simpler though. Any pubs which serve food shall be known as “restaurants” while the remaining pubs shall be known as “pubs” and all will be well.

The Birmingham Outer Circle is a thing of myth and legend, with the number 11 bus doing a full loop around our fair city in a little over two hours. Songs have been written about it (well, a song, and you can’t make out the lyrics that well) and folk often do the entire round trip for a wheeze.

However, if should be noted that using the number 11 bus to go to and from work, when you live on one side of the city and work on the other, is a fucking pain in the arse, a brain melting slug of a journey that will rob you of any spirit you may have had when you got up at some ungodly hour to catch it.

That said, if you’re able to keep your wits about you there are some intriguing kitch-worthy sights in the Yardly area. Once I’ve got over my 11 aversion I’ll have to return with a camera.

Jez and I have long had a dispute over the relative merits of Zoe Williams, columnist for The Guardian, but it’s recently come to a head. As ever Jez is being a stubborn arse on the matter and I know he’ll never concede that her writing is at least no worse than some of the other Polly Filler writers in the broadsheet press let alone see reason and get over it. But I need some backup here because I really like her stuff. So for all you Guardian readers: Zoe Williams, a force for good or evil incarnate? Cast your votes in the comments…

Now I have a small but significant amount of disposable income, and now the lid of my aging cdmp3player has decided to detach itself, I’m thinking iPod. Since I spend most of my listening time at the computer a Shuffle should do the trick, say a 1Gig model for £90, give or take. Except I might as well get a Nano since it has a bit more capacity and would be really small, but they’re not significantly cheaper than the standard iPod and I am somewhat intrigued by the video playback, especially being able to plug it into a telly, but I might as well go for 60gig since I have lot of music and would like to use it to record stuff and we’re up to £300 which I can’t really afford so sod it I’ll get a Shuffle, except I might as well…

By the time I get this figured out I’ll have spent my small but significant sum on food, rent and beer, which is probably for the best…

The amusing thing about that Tumble/Rambleblog entry was the reaction on a couple of blogs, namely Jamie and Marv, expressing confusion that this apparently new thing was, well, it was just blogging, the sort of blogging they and to be honest most people do. Which is quite understandable but you have to bear one important thing in mind.

The sort of people, and I include myself in this category, who get excited about this sort of thing are, generally speaking, tossers. In fact the Americans have a term for it: “circle jerking”, which I believe is the practice of a bunch of blokes sitting in a circle getting so excited about something that they all have to masturbate furiously. It’s not a nice image, I grant you, especially as we’re talking about blogging here. So you should always remember that when people who have been blogging for a long time, usually about blogging, talk about blogging, they can frequently be ignored, or at least patted on the head in a condescending manner.

What the whole Tumbleblog thing is really about is actually quite simple. These people, when they started out on their wildly successful blogging careers, just posted a load of shit on their blogs like everyone else. But then this great illusion of weblogs being the next big thing, storming the barricades of respectable society with their revolutionary new ways (boy, that does sound familiar [cough]comicscirca1989…) they began to write “properly” treating their blogs as publications, taking great care over what they wrote and giving everything proper titles with their complicated content management systems and so on. And now they look back on those freewheeling days of freedom to just write rubbish with nostalgic dewey eyes. If only they could just write whatever they wanted without worrying what their readership (read: ego) thinks.

But as long as they clearly delineate between their grown up sensible blog and this random rambling then they can! And because they’ve spent the last five or so years living in the neologism garden they shall give it a new name and all will be well.

The rest of you, just carry on as before. Nothing to see here.

Anyway, I haven’t had a chance to start up my Fartleblog or whatever but I have been practicing. Check out the tumble-quality of these three:

Another thought on the sw**ring thing that always bugs me (if you’re going to swear then fucking swear already!). Sometimes putting asterisks in your curse can be acceptable when you want to give the impression of muttering it under your breath in exasperation.

Fireworks are here again but they’re not bothering me this year. Last year they were going off in my neighbours gardens and exploding outside my window shocking the shit out me. This year they’re in the distance and no bother at all. Ah, suburbia, how I don’t miss you…

I was once asked what the indications were of being “grown up” and a new one came to me today - when your parents reach sixty years of age. Paternally this happens to me next month (7th Nov if anyone wants to send a card) with Maternally following next September. They will have free bus passes. This is odd. (This indicator only works if your parents had you in their 20s, I feel.)

It’s funny how when someone tells me they’re going to send me a free thing and I tell them my address and it arrives a few days later I still look at the padded envelope and wonder what the hell it is. Today it was Russell’s new book.

It’s based on his “award winning weblog” eggbaconchipsandbeans which along with the associated a good place for a cup of tea and a think has been a firm favourite of mine since I stumbled upon it 18 months ago (god, time is flying…) and I’m delighted to say that the book is thoroughly enjoyable too.

This sort of thing is fraught with dangers, however. It’s essentially a “Christmas Book” which those in the trade know to be a fickle thing. It’ll either be brilliant and sell loads or it’ll be shit and bomb horribly or, more often than not, it’ll be shit and sell loads. Russell’s book is certainly not shit. I hope it sells loads.

What makes it good is how unremittingly positive it is and not in a naive or glib way. This is refreshing as so much of modern “culture” is archly negative, taking the piss to attain superiority over genuine enthusiasm and disguise a deep moral vacuum. Russell likes fried breakfasts and he likes the cafes that serve them. He likes the details which he picks up on and notes with unerring accuracy. He’s not a tourist but he has a traveler’s eye. And above all he manages to communicate that most elusive of things - the spirit of a place that is in essence a functional thing.

He also give me a credit, which was very nice of him. It’s not often I get credited in books, especially when they’re not about comics.

Go buy it. You won’t be disappointed.

At a loose end and flicking through the paper I saw that Starship Troopers was on telly so I sat my arse down and watched it. When I saw it in the cinema back in 1997 it scared the shit out of me (parody? Not parody?). Watching it in 2005 it felt like reportage. Maybe 9/11 really did change the world…