Falling Sky

Wall-E...

...came out today in the UK.

...knocked my socks right off (not literally, that would be silly).

...paints an astonishingly powerful picture of a future that's the inevitable result of unsustainably high levels of consumption. There's images in the first half hour that are literally breathtaking in the sense of desolation.

...is also incredibly romantic and achingly sweet, yet never clichéd, forced or obvious.

...makes holding hands seem like the most wonderful thing.

...never, ever, ever gets dull.

...makes you appreciate the colour green and the freshness of nature when you've taken it for granted all your life.

...is the best film Pixar have ever made.

...needs to be seen by myself a second time (at least) to write a remotely coherent review.

...pushes computer animation film-making to a point which frankly blows my mind, and leaves other CG animation feature efforts stumbling feebly like cheap straight-to-video guff (Fly Me To The Moon and Space Chimps, I'm looking at you... and frowning).

...is the closest a mainstream movie has come to silent cinema in decades.

...made my eyes well up on three different occasions, which is some sort of record.

...is a masterpiece, a true work of art that transcends animation and cinema.

...should make sales of Hello Dolly leap (well I'll be, it was Michael Crawford).

...must be seen at the cinema. Must must must. The level of detail in the visuals, the use of sound, the sheer spectacle and scale of it - not an inch of cinema screen is wasted.

...ends happily, but there'll be points when you can't imagine how it will.

...is at least the equal of the Iron Giant, which is insanely high praise.

...made me so glad I was watching it with my girl and holding her hand.

...could well be the best film I've ever seen. But I've got to go again. And again. And again.

...should be seen by every man, woman and child on this little planet. Including you.

Cool!

Cern lab goes 'colder than space'

A vast physics experiment built in a tunnel below the French-Swiss border is fast becoming one of the coolest places in the Universe.

The Large Hadron Collider is entering the final stages of being lowered to a temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) - colder than deep space.

The LHC has thousands of magnets which will be maintained in this frigid condition using liquid helium.

[...] Roberto Saban, the LHC's head of hardware commissioning, said that in order to obtain high magnetic fields without consuming too much power, the magnets were required to be "superconducting".

This is the property, exhibited by some materials at very low temperatures, to channel electrical current with zero resistance and very little power loss.

Helium exhibits spectacular properties at 2.2 Kelvin - becoming "superfluid". This allows it to conduct heat very rapidly, making it an extremely efficient refrigerant.

[...] When the LHC is switched on it will operate at an energy of five trillion electron-volts. It will then be shut down for the winter, so that the magnets can be "trained" to handle a beam run at seven trillion electron-volts.

Sings, Fall Apart

Radiohead's camera-free video for House of Cards went live this week, and by golly it's a treat, like the Matrix seen through a pinpression board:

There's a full page up at Google Code about this, including a genuinely interesting Making Of and details on how the data generated in the scanning-as-filming can be download for your own creative thrills. Now if I could just put that data into Manic Miner...

Nick, the Happy Sheep

Sometimes the daily news can just crush you down. Thank Jove then for stories like this that yank you back up with a smile, especially if you remember Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep:

Suburban comfort for massive ram

A huge ram has made himself at home in his rescuer's house after resisting all attempts to return him to farm life.

The 22st (139kg) sheep, named Nick Boing, was rescued by David Palmer as a new-born lamb three years ago.

But despite efforts to reintroduce Nick to his natural habitat, he prefers the home comforts of a Cardiff suburb.

[...] "He's part of the family. He comes in every evening, head-butts the cushions off the settee and watches TV.

"If the biscuit barrel is out he'll butt it on the floor because he knows the lid will come off. Come 11pm he'll have a swede or an apple and then he's out for the night."

[...] "He loves being shampooed and will lie on his back with his legs in the air for me to wash him."

[...] "Who would have thought it? Going up and down the street with a lamb is one thing, I didn't think I could do it with a sheep but there you are.

"He's such good company and he knows what's what, he's not stupid at all."

Nick Boing! NICK BOING! I'd never have come up with such a glorious name in a hundred years. Good lord, this makes me stupidly happy, as does this photo-gallery of sheepy domestic bliss.

It's Loaf, Real Loaf

1. Sea of Yeast, 2. Before..., 3. Rise Up!, 4. Golden Brown

I've been burbling on about baking for the last few weeks, so it's about time I put my camera where my mouth is and show some proof of my floury escapades. Up on the top left is the freaky result of a yeast/flour/water mixture being left overnight to think things over, while the bottom right shows the finished result of today's baking, and very tasty it was too. It was made using the same bread recipe that I've been following the last few weeks without fail, epic or otherwise. Handily enough, the recipe in question is available online, so you can follow in my doughy steps - after all, if I can follow it, you certainly can.

The recipe was taken from the Guardian baking guide, published in November last year, and was written by Dan Lepard, bread-supremo. Being a total n00b when it comes to anything baked (pizza-dough aside), the only recipe I felt even remotely safe attempting was his aptly titled "easiest loaf in the world" - and, by Jove, it is! It's not the fastest by any means - the dough takes hours to rise, and my best experiences with the initial yeast 'sponge' has been to leave it overnight rather than a few hours during the day - but once you've got used to the routine of it, the various steps don't take long at all. And, oh, when you get that loaf into the oven and that warm, comforting smell of baking wafts through the flat, it's like a starter in its own right. No wonder supermarkets have used the scent of on-site baking to crank up shoppers' appetites (even if those 'fresh' bake-off products have actually been around in frozen form for days before they reach the shelves).

Talking of which, once you've home-baked like this a few times, using nowt but flour, yeast, water, butter and a smidgen of salt, you'll have no desire to ever buy a supermarket loaf again. The taste... I never used to really think of bread as even having a taste, it was merely a conduit for delivering the taste of cheese, pate, honey, whatever. But with these simple loaves, made by my own hapless hands, I can happily cut a slice off and eat it as is, while a slice with some oak smoked cheddar or blossom honey on top is an absolute treat. And to top it all off, the bread doesn't go off half as quickly as you might expect - after all, unlike bread sitting on a supermarket shelf, the time between baking and eating is bound to be short. Even four days later, the bread has still felt and tasted fine, though usually it's all been eaten by then anyway. Honestly, it's so satisfying to do something like this, especially with your own hands, and with that recipe you really can't fail. Really. And if you need any further pointers, just consult the finest cook in the land...

Mid-Year Report

Here we are, toppling obliviously into the second half of 2008 - dear god, Christmas is just around the corner! - but it's barely noticed in the week-to-week routine of work and not-work. Ah well, just a few decades 'til retirement. Anyway, when I'm not grafting away thanklessly for the good of the Scottish nation, what have I been up to lately? Summery summary time!

If you've not swanned by my online shop lately, do have a gander - there's now 31 pieces up, the above being the two most recent. I've decided to go back to life drawing sessions at the weekend again having given up last year - while I may still have to deal with mercenary voices in my head the moment I start a sketch like the above, at least I'll be producing fresh new artwork again on a weekly basis. As things currently stand, without the discipline of being out of the house and in a studio with dedicated time devoted solely to artwork, I just can't seem to focus on regularly working on drawings or paintings in the evenings or weekend. So, come September, it's back to Leith and expect to see a lot more artwork cropping on my Flickr stream again, rather than monthly occurrences of seascapes and garlic.

Also, over at the wedding site, I've written a great big post wibbling on about what I might wear at the wedding, being the groom an' all. Worth a read if you a) have built up an immunity to the paragraphs of prattle that plague these pages and b) have the slightest interest in what I might be wearing come the 23rd of May (hint: not a kilt).

Not entirely unconnected to the above, may I sing the praises of Doctor Who? Of course I bally well may! The latest series has just come to an end and personally I think it's the strongest one yet, pretty much the best piece of fictional British television being broadcast, practically bursting with enthusiasm, imagination and an ambition that all too often would be sneered down. The last few months have seen some absolutely remarkable stories and sights, an oasis of creativity in the ever-growing desert of tedium that makes up primetime television. The stories have been varied and compulsive - I didn't think the one-two punch of last series' Human Nature/Family of Blood and Blink could ever be matched, never mind topped, but with Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and Midnight it bloody well happened! The acting has been even stronger than before, with David Tennant so completely suited to the role now that the possibility of him leaving at the end of the penultimate episode was genuinely startling, while Catherine Tate trumped all us nay-sayers who only knew her from that overplayed "am I bovvered?" Her character was initially annoying in Runaway Bride (in hindsight, deliberately so) but over the course of this series she'd blossomed into a fascinating, rich and thankfully-not-lovelorn companion thanks to some superb acting. Julian Bleach's Davros rocked my world over the last two episode with his Hitleresque monologues of rage. And big up the Bernard Cribbins - his scene with the Doctor at the end of the final episode was sombre and genuinely moving. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. I'm looking forward to the Christmas special immensely (the fact that it'll star Dervla Kirwan certainly doesn't hurt...) but next year's BBC1 schedule is going to seem awfully barren. Wildlife aside, will there be anything to watch?

What else? The baking continued apace at the weekend with apple scones (now sussed out the best way to add the cinnamon, very nice too), another loaf (after this, there's really no chance of ever going back to supermarket shelf bread) and trying something new with handmade puff-pastry. The latter took hours to prepare, most of that time spent in the fridge or being 'turned' - tasted good, a sweeter, fresher taste than the shop-bought stuff, but the sheer time it required means I won't make a habit of that. Still, good to keep trying new recipes as I edge closer and closer to the fabled Nagl bagel...

Meanwhile, there's a big old post brewing regarding kids books, both the ones that the missus-to-be got me for our anniversary and certain... plans that may yet come to something, but that's definitely for another time. It's requiring a fair bit of research into something I know next to zero about, so that'll be my excuse for light posting over the next few weeks, but you never know. We're a couple of months into using the Wii Fit and having a grand time with it, so that'll get a write-up of it's own eventually, but in the meantime I've been rather smitten with the WiiWare game LostWinds - there's a suitably comprehensive review from Ryan, but here's a lovely video trailer for it, complete with the gorgeous music and lush visuals that make it a pleasure to play and to watch. Certainly looks a lot more summery than Edinburgh in July.

Well, It Could Have Been The Death Star

Police say UFO was just the Moon [BBC News]

[...] The Control Room conversation, which took place in May, was recorded - and below is a transcript:

Control Room: "South Wales Police, what's your emergency?"

Caller: "It's not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there's a bright stationary object."

Control room: "Right."

Caller: "If you've got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It's been there at least half an hour and it's still there."

Control: "It's been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?"

Caller: "It's in the air."

Control: "I will send someone up there now to check it out."

Caller: "OK."

The mystery was soon solved, as the exchange between control and an officer at the scene, makes clear.

Control: "Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?"

Officer: "Yes, it's the moon. Over."

1,096 Days Later...

Ah, it's almost like it was yesterday... yet at the same time seems like an age away, in the best possible way. Yep, the missus-to-be and me have been a Couple for three years now, ever since Tom Cruise and martian death rays brought us together. Plenty in our lives has changed since then, yet she remains as ruddy marvellous, sweet and smart as she was back in 2005, if not more so, and every day spent with her is brill. (Conversely, on the rare occasions when we're apart for a day or more, I'm pathologically useless and can barely function beyond pacing around the flat looking lost.) Honestly, it's so fucking good being engaged to her, the rest of Planet Earth really ballsed up in letting me get to her first. Ha ha! Too late, you fools!

[Title edited by one digit after the good lady pointed out this was a leap year and February had therefore been a day longer. Best sub-editor ever!]

St. Nick's Night

Friday is Nick Cave day! Hooray! Sadly it's not an official national day (yet), but BBC4 are showing just under three hours of the great man with and without his Bad Seeds. Working backwards, at 11:20pm there's Nick Cave on Later with Jools Holland, a compilation of his eight different appearances on said show between 1992 and 2008. Before that, a programme I've wanted to see again ever since it was originally shown a decade or so ago - Songwriter's Circle with Cave, Cale and Hynde (that's Nick, John and Chrissie). This blew me away when I saw it in the late 90's, yet it's simplicity itself - Nick Cave, John Cale and Chrissie Hynde playing some of their best songs in a small, intimate setting, the music at times burning with power. Check out John Cale's performance of Fear, or when Nick Cave does West Country Girl from The Boatman's Call, the languid melody replaced with piano-pounding venom.

And before that, at 9:30pm, a brand new hour-long session set of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds with the set-list given in advance - those last three tracks should be nigh-on devastating. There's three songs not included in the broadcast that the Beeb have plonked up online - Tupelo, Moonland and, below, Into My Arms, the most perfectest wedding song if we weren't both godless heathens. Still, it's one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded and it's always a treat to hear it performed live - the percussion surprised me at first, but it works fine. This one's for you, missus.

Rain Down, Rain Down

radiohead-11, originally uploaded by stillmotionimage.

Radiohead rolled into Glasgow yesterday, setting up shop on the Green and proceeding to blow the sonic socks off meself and around 25,000 other people. Ludicrously, I almost didn't go, as I'd been feeling tired all day, didn't much fancy the thought of traveling to and from Glasgow on a Friday night, and rather prefer the company of the Lass to thousands of strangers, many of which would no doubt enflame my misanthropic tendencies. Even at 4:30pm I was sat at home with the good lady, umming and ahhing whether to go, this despite the fact I'd already paid forty-odd quid for a ticket months back! Such is the danger of a comfortable home, my friends - you can plan for something months in advance, but when the time comes there's nothing else you want more than a quiet evening with your gal, a good book and some memory-foam slippers.

Thankfully, I ignored such lazy temptations, primarily because the thought of basically wasting £40 was too much to stomach, so I headed off westwards (after a brief moment of reconsideration when I opened the front door to a curtain of rain). After all, Radiohead have been and continue to be one of my favourite bands, arguably the best and most consistent out there in the world right now. I first saw them live supporting R.E.M. at Milton Keynes back in, oh lordy, 1995, a few months after The Bends was released. I'd not paid them much attention around Pablo Honey time - Creep felt so over-played and I was far more interested in bands like Sugar and Ministry at the time. It took their performance at Milton Keynes (billed below the Cranberries, who were painful) to slap me around the chops and realise that, good lord, these were amazing songs and where the hell had I been? I've been smitten ever since.

After that, I saw them headlining Wembley in 1997 on the OK Computer tour - huge arena, but it still moved me in ways I can recall over a decade later, and giving me one hell of a lift during a period of emotional uselessness (oh, you poor unrequited-love-lorn torch-carrying muppet you). A few years later, post-Kid A, I saw them in their big spiky blue tent pitched up in Victoria Park, London - a bit too far away from the stage, I felt more distant and too aware of berks around me knocking back lagers, but the music was mint. Since I moved up to Scotland they've toured around here twice - Glasgow's SECC in 2003 and Edinburgh's Meadowbank Stadium in 2006 - but I didn't bother with either because I was just turned off by the size and acoustics of the venues. I had similar reservations when I heard they'd be playing Glasgow this year, but finally decided to go with it simply because In Rainbows is such a superb album and I had a hunger to hear particular tracks played live in front of me. Besides, how many future chances would I have to see them if not now?

SO! Despite pointless prevaricating and a thick drizzle across the Central Belt, by 7pm I was at Glasgow Green. It's a lovely park with a stunning building, yet the last time I was actually there was for the Anti-War march in Febuary 2003 (fat lot of use...). Unlike 2000's show, there was no tent here, leaving the audience open to the elements. Midsummer it might be, but it's still Scotland, and a drizzle seemed to fade in and out with increasing intensity as the evening went on. I arrived just as the support act, Bat For Lashes, was starting up. For an act I was pig-ignorant of, I was surprised at how many of her songs I recognised, most likely from 6 Music, and for relatively sparse, vocal-driven music in such a large, open setting it worked remarkably well. I'll be getting her album as a result, presuming it carries the same echoes of Bjork and electronica-laced Radiohead that the performance did.

Rain, not rain, rain, not rain, rain, RADIOHEAD! By 8:30pm I'd got myself at a position decently close to the stage (well, relative to the rest of the place) in the hope of being surrounded by similarly besotted fans rather than mobile-chirping eejits only there for the singles and lager. On the whole I did okay - most lager guzzlers at that point moved away beforehand in the direction of toilets - and at least there was no-one a few rows ahead of me putting up an umbrella, as I saw happen elsewhere. In such cases, the people behind would yell and throw stuff at said umbrella until it was taken down, and if that didn't work then the umbrella would be grabbed, ripped to pieces and the skeletal remains of the frame held aloft to cheers (this happened a few times and I couldn't help but chuckle). I was therefore set up with a decent view of the stage for the whole shebang, which really added to the enjoyment. The band were clearly having a great time right from the beginning and the good vibes seemed to increase all the more over the next couple of hours, the band thriving off the audience that had gone positively nuts the moment they came on stage. Opening with '15 Step', one of my favourites from In Rainbows, was predictable but powerful all the same, and a perfect demonstration of what an excellent sound system had been prepared for the gig. Vocals were clear and crisp, guitars tight and taut without overpowering bass or keyboards - honestly, you really couldn't have hoped for better in an indoor venue.

The full set-list is here and it's as close to perfect as anyone could hope for (though with such a back catalogue there'll always be at least one of your favourites that's be missed - personally, I'd have been overjoyed to hear Pyramid Song). While they're not yet the tightest band I've seen - I doubt if any group out there functions with such spooky precision as the Bad Seeds - their experience is apparent, they work great as a team and the number of instrument changes was impressive. Very hard to pick out highlights from the two-hour-plus set, but let's give it a go:
- A hilariously good-natured wall of booing (trust me, if it'd been serious the atmosphere would've sunk like a cannonball) after one of the finest examples of faux crowd-baiting banter I've ever seen at a gig - from Thom Yorke, of all people, as the rain toppled down: "Nice day for it. You should move south." Maybe others elsewhere took it seriously, but everyone I could see was grinning like a cat, including the band.
- Arpeggi/Wierd Fishes, my favourite track from In Rainbows, being as bewitching live as I'd always imagined, far more atmospheric than any song performed outside should be.
- Any lyric mentioning rain become a lot more noticeable as the intermittent downpours went on, the highlight without a doubt being Paranoid Android's "rain down/rain down/come on, rain down on me" which the whole Green sang along to, arms aloft.
- Being reminded that Jonny Greenwood is the greatest guitarist in Britain (and possibly the world, but that'll only be decided by a guitar-off with Agata from Melt Banana), making the most deliriously beautiful and jagged sounds, particularly with a devastating performance of 'Just' and the closing stretch of 'Paranoid Android'.
- Watching great weather-fronts of steam billowing up from the audience as the combined body heat burned off all those raindrops.
- The way every song felt like a greatest hit, even spooky, album-only oddballs like The Gloaming and Myxomatosis.
- The way my body moved like an electrified gerbil to the latter.
- Using thin bars of LED lights for the lightshow was a masterstroke and is bound to 'inspire' other touring groups out there in the future. Even though the late summer light meant there was never full darkness, the lighting was still incredibly effective, particularly during 'Everything In Its Right Place' when it wrote out the words as they were sung - quite startling when first noticed and suitably eerie.
- Fake Plastic Trees bringing grown men to tears, feeling your heart clench tight with emotion just as it did all those years ago.
- Sample of a Gaelic broadcast opening The National Anthem - nice.
- Seemingly the whole Green singing along to No Surprises. To be fair, lots of people sang along to pretty much all the songs, but with a few tracks it felt like everyone was joining in, far more in tune than most audiences, and still never drowning out the song itself. I also realised for the first time how I've ended up living the lyrics - well, not the bruises that won't heal, but I'd very happily take the quiet life with no alarms and no surprises, especially if it does indeed come with such a pretty house and such a pretty garden.
- Videotape sounding even more poignant live than recorded, particularly the line about spinning away out of control, bringing with it thoughts of mortality and legacy - which sounds pretty bloody miserable, but it wasn't.
- There's a very strange, very real pleasure in singing "this is what you get/this is what you get/this is what you get/when you messssss with us" with tens of thousands of other people, grouped together. Like you're briefly part of some bizarre army or tribe that's about to storm city hall.
- Opening the second encore with a sparse, piano-driven version of Like Spinning Plates, much like the one off I Might Be Wrong. The clarity of the piano sound in such an environment stunned me and gave me goosebumps as the melody looped around and strange green lights rolled around the stage.

The gig ended on the twenty-fifth song, the stupendously rhythmic and almost ravey Idioteque, thousands of people grooving jerkily while the percussion rattled furiously and Thom lurched wildly across the stage. They finished, huge smiles clear on their faces even from a distance, applauding the audience with clear, genuine pleasure, and goodness knows the audience responded in kind. By now it was 10:45pm and I had to start making my way back to Queen St Station as quickly as possible, soggy yet hot and immensely pleased. Even the 35 minute delay for the last overcrowded train back to Edinburgh didn't bring things down at all.

It was a stunning concert, definitely one of the best I've seen, and I don't regret going in the slightest - indeed, I'm slightly boggled that I came so close to not bother going. All the same, I can't imagine going to a similar show again. The scale of it does my head in a bit - the audience, that is, with so many mobiles aloft and idiots barging their way through people mid-way through songs, laden down with booze. It makes me long for King Tuts, ABC2, intimate venues like that where people pay attention. And, quite frankly, standing around for a few hours loses its appeal the older I get, especially after a typically tiring working-week. One of the many things I'm looking forward to about the Tindersticks at Glasgow City Hall in October is - hooray! - seats. Gigs of shattering volume are quickly losing their appeal - although I'd initially wanted to see My Bloody Valentine, I now count myself grateful that I never got a ticket, because this really doesn't sound like much fun. A wonderful concert from a superb band, it's been a great excuse to plonk all their albums on again and feel the same thrill I felt back in 1997. God bless those boys, their amplifiers have got a hardline straight to my heart.