small ritual

superb archive of space age childhood

modern fred's photostream is a time capsule of my 60s space age childhood. i am trying to pull together some remnants, but he has the lot - a magnificent gerry and sylvia anderson archive - especially the covers of TV21 comic - and also irwin allen shows such as lost in space, voyage to the bottom of the sea etc. i wasted many hours today working through this lot.

for example, he has this cover, and here is all that i have left :_(

google street view is so last year

given the fuss about google street view uk, i took a look at my own address. the state of my plants tell me it was taken last august. at least i've got pretty flowers.

images from the other 2001

came across these stunning images of spacecraft from the alternative world of 2001:a space odyssey, of which the pearl is this shot of a lufthansa orion 3 spaceliner.

i am reminded of the end of eternity where one of the catalysts for the hero's rebellion is the beauty of the spaceships in an alternative future he is obliged to delete...

teenage sketches find audience

this set of 1976 design sketches was never blogged or added to any flickr groups etc, and had very few views while it was near the top of my flickr stream. and then it started to rack up hundreds of views. turns out that things magazine had picked it up [7th paragraph down]. not sure how except that i linked to things magazine pelican project a long time ago on my delicious.

video loop

somebody at hospitality on friday was playing this song that went 'you're in my system baby'. so i looked it up. first i got robert palmer from 1983 which is clearly wrong but still cool with those early-80s computer graphics [but what's with the red bandana robert?]:

of course i got diverted by 'i didn't mean to turn you on' and 'addicted to love' - but the thing i was after is 'system' by nu:tone:

but then i saw that matrix and futurebound had done a remix of the old grace favourite from 'american beauty':

and then i saw this live version which is hospitality in prague - when the camera turns round i am somewhere in the audience!

hospitality at matter

the office junglist posse had been looking for another hospitality session in london ever since prague, and friday night was it:

cyantific at hospitality from steve collins on Vimeo.

cyantific really tore the place up. as ever, put the bass up on your machine - i've boosted it as far as i can. cameras seem to be optimised for the human voice - they pick up anything in speech frequencies amid all that thunderous racket but filter out most of the bottom end.

london elektricity was a little down on prague, but he had his moments:

london elektricity at hospitality from steve collins on Vimeo.

matter is a new venue in the O2 - nasty space, at least compared to the theatre in prague, but very high quality sound system.

room 2 was dubstep, which i like but it's a nightmare to dance to because it's too slow. imagine half-speed drum'n'bass - 70bpm or so. do you dance at the apparent speed of the music - a heavy stomp - or twice as fast [ie too fast]? i remember when dnb emerged everyone was similarly taxed as to how to move. my french work colleague had never been to a dnb night before, and she was as foxed as we had once been.