Sho Fukamachi Online

Could this be it? The IM service that finally brings us a proper, unified IM platform we can all agree on?

For the longest time, IM has been a total mess. Incompatible networks with poorly written clients, corporations greedily denying cross-platform integration, Microsoft playing its usual tricks and sabotaging non-windows operability.

Open source networks were available, but I never really trusted them. Accordingly, I now have over 3 incompatible IM identities - one on AIM, for iChat, one on MSN, one on ICQ (and several old ones) - and we should include the one on Skype as well. I look forward to the day when I need only ONE IM identity, but I think it will be a long time before we see that.

MSN - this is the major force these days, with great momentum especially amongst less technical computer users. With very good integration between Hotmail and Microsoft’s “spaces” blog system, it will be extremely difficult to dislodge. However, many of its users are annoyed by the constant service blackouts, lack of compatibility, lack of ability to integrate with non-hotmail email, seeming inability to transfer a file quickly, and useless Mac client with no options to use a competing client. I think the best we can hope for is for Google Talk to reach a kind of critical mass such that MS feels obliged to at least provide bridged support to the Google network.

ICQ - this was the first and best IM service, before AOL bought it and wrecked it with ugly, bloated, gimmicky, ad-laden clients, lack of attention to severe spamming problems and general lack of effort to promote the system to new users.

AIM - hate it, never use it.

iChat - a very nice client for the mac, but suffering severe interoperability problems. Hopefully, however, it will be totally compatible with the new google system, instantly making iChat the client of choice for IM on the macintosh.

I look forward to seeing what kind effect of this new development will have on the general IM platform war.

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I started High School in 1988.

My favourite band at that time was Van Halen. I rapidly moved on, to Queen in 1989, and from 1990 onwards suddenly moved to more alternative genres like They Might Be Giants and Pop Will Eat Itself.

Still, every now and again I’m in the mood to listen to some of that old Van Halen. It’s classic 80s rock, with the brilliant Eddie Van Halen as axman; simple, clean songs driven by tune and pure guitar performance.

Some of my favourites from back then are:

Jump (1984)
Dreams (1986) < < my favourite
Hot Summer Nights (1986)
When It’s Love (1988)

I provided these as a link to the past .. but I still believe they’re good songs. DO NOT download unless you like 1980’s rock .. and please do not think about how old I am, knowing these songs and starting High School in 1988 ….

My friend says she is an ordinary girl. Well, what kind of music is suitable for an ordinary girl? I searched iTunes for that word, and found:

Duran Duran - Ordinary World Their best song. A less kind person might say, their only good song.
Lena Park - Ordinary A beautiful song, sung in english, by korean Lena Park ( 박 정 현).
Ash - A Life Less Ordinary A lo-fi track from my old favourite band.
Avril Lavigne - Anything But Ordinary I would also rather be anything but ordinary.

Is this music ordinary enough?

Due to popular demand, or anyway whatever counts for “popular” around here, I decided to place this entire album online here. It is very difficult to get anywhere else.

By Yoko Kanno, it is the soundtrack to an NHK special on the people’s revolution in China.

It is one of the best soundtracks ever made, in my opinion. Please download and enjoy it .

Especially in the “anthem” themes, there is some similarity to Macross Plus. But in general, the instruments and themes reflect the atmosphere and feeling of the TV series.

A gift from your Dear Leader Sho Fukamachi and, involuntarily, Yoko Kanno.

I don’t know why, but these days I have terrible insomnia. Even though my mind is tired, my body just won’t sleep. Last night was a typical example. Admittedly I left it a bit late, going to bed around 4:30am after staying up all night listening to music and talking. But then, when I tried to get 3 hours sleep before work, I couldn’t sleep at all. I only know I had an hour because 1 hour passed by very quickly between looks at the clock, suddenly jumping from about 6:20 to 7:20, meaning I must have slept. I certainly don’t feel like I slept and now the world is spinning a bit.

Is it the hours I keep? Stress? I have a bit of that. The only time I ever have 8 hours sleep is on the weekend, and only by sleeping half the day. The only time I can go to sleep before 3am is when I had no sleep at all the night before. I don’t think it’s very healthy, but the upside is that I have more time…

UPDATE: Max Breaker swears off the life of insomnia and sleep deprivation forever …

11:40pm

Drove past the site. There were THREE bunnies there tonight. I even got what I think is a good photo of one, and was going to get more .. but then my damn camera ran out of battery. I can’t even upload it!

UPDATE: This is the best Bunny Report ever !!!

Sitting on the grass

Underneath a tree

Finally, some good pictures. Next time they will be even better!!!!

From Max Breaker, this song has somehow managed to challenge “Call me, Call me” for the position of “song on permanent repeat” in my iTunes.

The song is “Miserere” by The Cat Empire.

Amazing! I can’t believe they are Australian. Lyrics in comments.

The Lake of Heaven, Korea (Mt. Baekdu, 2744m)

Regular readers of this blog - no, excuse me, the regular reader of this blog, ie ME - may have noticed recently many references to the animated TV series “Cowboy Bebop”.

This is one of those series I’d heard rave reviews about for the longest time. Almost every good person I know was a fan of this series, and when they heard I hadn’t seen it yet, they’d urge me to do so in the strongest terms. But still I didn’t watch it - I can’t explain why.

Anyway, recently I corrected that oversight and watched the whole series, 26 episodes. Let me tell you, it is fantastic. The premise itself is simple enough - three bounty hunters travelling around together on an old spaceship, from whose name the series gets its title. But the atmosphere of the show is very dark - almost nihilistic, but funny, and with very few happy ending in sight. In some ways it’s the most adult animation I’ve yet seen - of course other shows are also targeted for adults, but I always got the feeling the “adultness” of them was just tacked on, and with a few edits you could show it to anyone. Cowboy Bebop has a different kind of adult feeling - not quite cynicism, but an atmosphere of world-weary detachment, disillusionment, emotional vaccuum and smothered feeling.

As one might imagine, in my recent state of mind this appeals greatly, but I couldn’t say it’s been a heartening experience. In fact, the best thing I could say is that I’m happy I’m nowhere near as far-gone as these people. It’s one of those shows where, far from envying the hero, you start thinking about what steps you might be able to take to protect yourself from the kind of damage that may lead to ever turning out like him.

That said, the vision of space travel and interplanetary colonization is very attractive. What can we do to speed up the evolution of space travel?

One more thing. The music for this series is just fantastic. Alternating between innovative jazz and rock, it’s almost worth watching just to hear it. Performed by the “Seatbelts” - another of Kanno’s fictional bands, a la “Sharon Apple” from Macross Plus. They are supposedly a famous band in 2050 or thereabouts. The name reflects the supposition that the band rocks so hard, they need to wear seatbelts.

Since the real song of the week is the entire globe2 pop/rock album, I can’t upload that. Furthermore, the only people likely to even be reading this already have it anyway.

So, an alternative song of the week: Suna No Kajitsu by Nakatani Miki.

I don’t know which aspect I like best about this song: is it the haunting, compelling chorus, the effortless, loping pace, or the great-sounding, chorussed main vocal? Whichever it is, it’s a good song, which you may find yourself putting on repeat, just to hear that chorus again.

All the songs I upload are ones that I have found myself putting on repeat, sometimes for hours on end. There are some songs where you’ll put them on, then put them on repeat, and then just kind of forget about them. An hour later, you’ll realise you just listened to the song 15 times in a row, and you don’t want to turn it off, because your mood and the atmosphere is now so tied to that sound continuing. Or maybe I’m just crazy. But that’s how it is for me!

UPDATE:

With a second dose, and it’s another brilliant rock song from one of the greatest living popular musicians on earth, Yoko Kanno. I just can’t understand how this woman is not more popular around the world. Teamed up here with lyricist Tim Jensen, she is just a genius. Maybe even better than TK. Did I just say that?

Interesting, isn’t it, how the top three living, producing musicians on earth, according to me, all come from Japan. Maybe even the top five. I can’t think of a single currently producing western musician who even comes close to the dizzy heights attained by the top japanese composers - Kanno, Komuro, Sakamoto. Yoshiki should be there but I’m not sure if I’d call him “currently producing” - anything good, that is.

Anyway, the song is “Call me, Call me” and seems to only be available on the Cowboy Bebop Box Set CD collection. Here it is in .m4a format. Get it, I am serious, it’s great.

Turn it up loud and enjoy. This song builds up an incredible momentum, but it’s subtle; If you’re not paying attention, you don’t notice the slow acceleration of the freight train, until after it ends and you play it again you may find yourself asking “how did we get there from here?”.

Check out the ending. In classic innovative Kanno style, the orchestral solo seems to slide out of time with the beat kept by the listener, creating this amazing tension as you sit on the edge of your seat waiting for the song to get back into time. You can’t help but desperately hope the song synchronises itself before the ending .. but does it? You’ll have to listen to find out!

On another note, my neighbours must really hate me this weekend. I’ve been making an unbelievable amount of noise.

TM Revolution - 月虹 (GEKKOU)

Download

“Rewarding Snare”

One reason this classic song is so satisfying is that it makes you wait - and wait - for the snare. You don’t hear it properly at all until the end of the 2nd bridge section, when it is used as an exclamation mark after the lyrics. During the chorus it drops into conventional 4/4 rock style but if you’re anything like me, you spend the whole song hoping to hear that miraculous bridge section again.

2:12 into the song, you can hear it here (in bold, or X):

kokoro igai nani mo motazu ni deatta kara surechigatta kara
yume o miteta yo suna no fune de X kimi to ikitsuku tooi basho X X X

(go to chorus)

There’s a fantastic style at work here, keeps me listening for that payoff every time. This is great musicianship.

Lyrics leave something to be desired, though. Unless I am very much mistaken that last line means “I had a dream we would travel to far away places together in a boat made from sand”. Great boat, man.

PS: looking at the name of this file, I downloaded it from riechan’s mp3 site. That must have been 1998 or thereabouts. Time flies, eh? Anyone else remember that place? Only older j-mp3 site I can remember was Station Keal.

Best drop to halfspeed drumming, followed by synth solo

Download

One thing I love to hear in songs is, after a lengthy period of fast drumming, for the beat to suddenly drop to half speed. A good example of this is in V2’s 背徳の瞳 (Eyes of Venus), in the end chorus, where Yoshiki’s crazed drumming suddenly slows down for just 16 bars, lending the finale of this epic song a real power and leading us into TK’s fantastic synth solo, which sounds like it’s played on a Clavia Nord Lead 2.

In later performances I have seen him with the Nord Lead 3, but it sounds like a 2 in this song … also, it’s hard to believe that TK, if he had the polyphonic 3 to play with when he composed the solo, would have had the willpower to restrict himself to just one voice!

Best looped vocal sample

Download

Reminded of this recently, listening to “Back 2 Be” on globe’s new album, where Tk plays a sample loop of keiko singing “back back back back …”. Another good example of this kind of sample being used well is on Air’s “Run”, from their excellent album “Talkie Walkie”, probably my favourite album of 2004.

In this sample, the word “run” is looped over and over again, for one of the longest times I have heard in any song. It sounds perfect and defines the song. I can’t recommend this whole album enough, actually. Being french though, they can’t pronounce “run” properly so it kind of sounds like “ren”. You’d think if there was one word those damn frenchies would know how to pronounce, it would be “run”. They certainly did enough of it in every war they’ve ever been in.

11:45pm

Two bunnies nearly met a sticky end by running right in front of my car.

The strategy worked, however - in this way, the notoriously camera-shy bunnies escaped being photographed yet again.

In other news, petrol is now $1.25/litre, the highest in memory.

According to this bombshell of an article, the USA is actually the legal possesor of the island of Taiwan! Assuming the facts of the article are correct, and I have no reason to think they are not, this could really set the sparks flying between the most powerful country on earth and the populous-but-poor communist dictatorship.

I’ve always been a supporter of an independent Taiwan, and strongly support the use of western force to, if necessary, defend the island against a possible, some might say inevitable, chinese attempt at re-occupation. Now this information has come to light, will America make use of its rediscovered status and base its troops across the strait?

This could go two ways. Either congress in America will renounce the title - I hope not - or they could start moving troops from a wholly undeserving South Korea (and Japan, where they are unneeded) and putting them on Taiwan. Now, wouldn’t that make things interesting? And you know how much I love “interesting”.

UPDATE: Let’s wait for confirmation of all of this before getting too excited. For once, the “experts” will have a useful contribution, as this does seem to come down to a straight question of “international law”, whatever that is worth.

UPDATE 2: “The US should just make it a state [of America], and call it “East Crawford”.” Indeed they should, indeed they should.

Bought an awesome laptop for one of the partners at the law firm I work at. I have to say, it’s the best laptop I’ve ever seen - eclipsing even the Apple range, which I feel has now been comprehensively outclassed by Sony. No wonder rumour has it Apple is trying to poach their engineers - can’t wait to see OSX on a similar machine.

This $3700 machine is also the first laptop I’ve actually wanted for a long time. Perhaps the pictures don’t do it justice, but this thing is absolutely tiny, and yet it’s fast and generously equipped with features like firewire, a DVD burner and bluetooth, along with anything else you could name. It’s small enough to carry without noticing or caring at all, and the battery life exceeds 5 hours.

That’s it sitting on top of the kind of laptop I hate - a gigantic HP “desktop replacement” style monster, weighing more than 3kg, barely fitting in a backpack. No way I’d lug that thing down to Starbucks on a whim, or take home every night on the train. The Vaio, however, is so small and light one can throw it in one’s bag without having to weigh the consequences - geddit? Weigh.

Note my tidy working environment.

That’s the view out my office window at night, with the Vaio in the foreground. Lookin’ good. $3700, eh. That doesn’t sound so bad for a gem like this.

The view from my bedroom, of a bird perched on the top of a tower. Not really night driving, sorry.

A view of North Sydney from a favourite spot in Waverton.

A view across the harbour to Sydney Proper.

Lane Cove Road, deserted at 2am in the morning and a favourite place for me to drive in excess of 120kph.

Looking at that photo, I noticed there’s a red light camera there I hadn’t seen before. Shit.

Quickly:

Free Coke: Tonight I bought a 24-pack of diet coke from Coles. I didn’t take it out of the trolley when I went through the checkout. Even though I clearly indicated to the lady that it was there, I realised when I got home I hadn’t been charged. Thanks, Coles!

New record: There are now 5 monitors in this room, 4 of them LCD. I could open a sun tan clinic.

Hokkaido Buns: I bought some, curious to see what kind of buns people in Hokkaido eat. Answer: the kind that tastes like shit. Goodbye, $2.80.

Hair Care: Bought a whole bunch of cheap and mid priced hair care products, under the theory that the price isn’t so important and you’re just paying for the name. Conclusion: that theory is totally wrong. There is no hair care product under $30 that is even suitable for shampooing a dog you hate.

Copyright in 3rd World Shitholes: I listened to a lot of Melanesian Island chants. Some of the tunes are really quite good, and I’ve never heard them in western songs. Question: can I rip them off with total impunity? The answer seems to be, “Yes!”. Way to not join the Berne Convention, darkies.

Petrol Prices: Up to $1.18 in Sydney and will apparently hit $1.23 soon. Still, have to buy a lot to accelerate the sinking of the aforementioned Melanesian Islands.

Headache Tablets: I don’t get sick much, but I do get headaches - frequently, almost every day. I ran out of Nurofen Plus after the chemists closed, and so bought a selection of regular tablets from the supermarket. After popping ibuprofen, paracetomol and aspirin like candy, my conclusion is thus: No supermarket headache pills do a god damn thing, and are not even worth one ringgit, whatever the hell that is. I eventually drove to my office and picked up some Nurofen Plus from my supply there, to get the codeine. I’ll buy another four 48-packs tomorrow. I get through two a month.

Global Warming: Can we accelerate this somehow? If I leave the car running overnight, will it be warmer tomorrow? If so, I’ll go get the keys right now! On a related note, nuclear bombs generate a lot of heat, right? We want it to heat up a bit, right? Maybe we could do something about this. I’m thinking africa but would be open to suggestions about other parts of africa, or maybe the middle east - which also has a lot of liquid heat-generation resources, just sitting there waiting for us! We should be setting those on fire ASAP.

“Balmy nights and beautiful sunsets. Thanks, Africa!”

Kyoto Protocol: The warmer it is, the less clothes girls wear. What the fuck are you thinking, you idiots?!!

4 pictures. I took many more but they are too blurry. I will buy a tripod tomorrow I think.

Tonight’s destination was the Blackwattle Bay / Annandale / Glebe area.

The dark underside of Anzac Bridge, near the (restricted) Blackwattle Bay shipping docks.

This is another view of Anzac Bridge, this time from Glebe Point, on the west end of Centennary Park.

Thousands of import cars awaiting delivery. These apartments have a great view of the Blackwattle Bay docks, which may be good or bad depending on your attitude to watching ships load and unload. This is at the south-west end of Pyrmont.

Looking in the other direction we can see the SHB. This is a really nice area. The apartments behind me cost $650 a week for 2 bedrooms, wish I could afford it.

UPDATE: purchase of a tripod delayed due to bitter, abject poverty. That’s the bad news. The good news is that, over the next few weeks, fans of blurry, underexposed night photography are in for the treat of their lives right here at fukamachi.org!

One of the things I love to do most is drive. I’ve loved driving, especially at night, ever since I first got my license, and since I bought my first car I’ve driven hundreds or thousands of kilometres a week, just for fun, cruising, exploring, enjoying the night and listening to music.

Although I’ve always said Adelaide is better than Sydney for driving, the truth is both have their good and bad points. Adelaide has more high-speed, empty roads with sweeping curves and interesting slopes, whereas Sydney’s roads are much worse but there’s a lot more to explore and beautiful views to discover. As I tend to like high-speed “course driving” more than exploring, as it puts me into this wonderful kind of trance and I can think more clearly than practically any other time, exploring also has its merits. I am certain that I know the back streets of the Sydney CBD and inner North Shore better than any taxi driver, and have given overseas visitors unique tours of all my favourite spots - maybe I enjoyed it more than them, though, since not too many others share my interest in finding disused rail tunnels, The Matrix-style post-apocalyptic bridges, and atmospheric industrial facilities.

Another thing I like to look at is water, and Sydney is very well equipped with perhaps the most beautiful harbour in the world, with plenty of road access. So I think over the next few months I’ll start taking photos of all my favourite spots in and around my driving circuits, for your edification and bandwidth consumption.

I won’t put them on the front page here since I can’t be bothered making thumbnails and therefore the whole pictures will load, making the page several megabytes in size and causing any losers using dialup to suffer brain embolisms waiting for the whole thing to load. Therefore, please look at the category Photo Essay to the right.

Here is tonight’s masterpiece.

Soundtrack for tonight: Globe - globe2 pop/rock; Yoko Kanno - Cowboy Bebop OST

UPDATE: since I discovered a really easy way to make thumbnails, actually I will put them on the front page after all.