World Tapir Day, 2009

Raffles at the Zoo

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

Sadly, we couldn’t get along to the zoo today, but we did visit it yesterday, which is close enough!
This is the 2nd Annual World Tapir Day and hopefully our official WTD coasters will be waiting for us when we get home this evening…
Transreal’s sponsorship of the Edinburgh tapirs was also renewed, with effect from today!

May have to have a pint of Guinness tonight to celebrate; it’s black & white, just like Raffles and other Malayan tapirs!

Next year it’s on a Tuesday.

The Zombies at the ABC, Glasgow

The Zombies, with new guitarist

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

The Zombies were great!
I had never heard Oracle & Odessey in it’s entirety, so this was the ideal way to do so!
The first set wasn’t officially the Zombies, rather it was Rod Argent & Colin Blunstone’s touring band and they played the big hits, etc. that weren’t on the lp, and highlights from their solo careers. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted and Hold Your Head Up, Woman, for instance!
Good stuff!

The 2nd set consisted of the (more or less) original lineup of The Zombies playing the complete Oracle & Odessey lp in order, with a couple of other songs as encores at the end.

Brilliant stuff, with any number from 2* to 13** people playing or singing on stage, depending on the song. And Blunstone, especially, looked like he was having a great time! And his voice was still great.

*Blunstone & guitarist, and also Argent & bass player

**Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent, original bass player, original drummer, replacement guitarist (but officially a Zombie, I think), synth player (from the Brian Wilson band!), touring band drummer now on percussion, touring band bassist (played with the Kinks for 20 years) now on backing vocals, female backing vocalist, and 4 piece brass section! =13

And because it started fairly early, it finished just in time for me to get the 22.30 train home for a relatively early night!

edit: There are another couple of pictures, with brief comments, on my Flickr page, btw.

Some Books by & about J. G. Ballard

Some Books by & about J. G. Ballard

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

So J. G. Ballard has died.
Not unexpected, but still very sad.
The first novel I remember reading of his was The Drought, or maybe The Wind From Nowhere (which should be in the picture, but must have been misplaced on my bookshelves). Strange post-disaster chronicles, concentrating as much on people’s obsessions and how they felt, than about responding to their changed circumstances in appropriate (for mainstream sf) ways…
I was also reading other ‘new wave’ authors who were following in his footsteps, looking into crystaline pools in metal salt marches like M. John Harrison or brooding on the futility of trying re-ignite humanities dreams like Mark S. Geston. Michael Moorcock and his doomed heroes… the strange introspective novels of Barry Malzberg…
Ballard was there before them all, creating strange new landscapes – dare I mention empty swimming pools! – and broken characters who acted out their hopes an dreams.
Some great novels and short stories, also some lesser work in his later years which seemed unable to break new territory, although it remained very readable, as he set stories against the harsh light of the French Riviera or the repetitive landscapes of modern suburbia.
From the early 80s on, he wrote quite widely about his early wartime life (his article in Foundation 24 was, I think, the first major autobiographical piece, later expanded into Empire of the Sun) and his life in the 50s & 60s in The Kindness of Women (with the accompanying press stories of inaccuracies and divergences from the facts).
Despite this, he revisited many of the same events again in his autobiography Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, his most recent and, I believe, final book, written after his terminal illness had been diagnosed…

He’ll be missed.

[ this replaces a very similar post made yesterday, because I wanted to change the picture and it wouldn't work otherwise... ]

Sunny Weekend…

Saturday evening was Madeleine’s aunt Sylvia’s Seventieth Birthday, so the occasion was celebrated in a private dining room at the Sheraton.

Drink, buffet, cake, etc.  -who could complain!?
Flickr photo

Sunday was nice and sunny, so we went down to Madeleine’s studio and rearranged it, with some new shelving, etc. Still some different tables etc. needed to replace the existing hodge-podge, but that’s for another day! After that, we actually got some sun, having a very late brunch at a nearby Turkish cafe called Cafe Truva. Meze for 2, very nice, and filling!
Then up to the National Galleries to squeeze in a second look at a couple of small exhibitions, only to discover that they both finished last week! Grr! Took a quick look at the new art replacing them – some of it was very good, but I resisted (fairly easily) giving much thought to a little piece I liked a lot which was only (!) £300…  Up to the Meadows and Peter’s Yard, where we sat and had icecream – vanilla & blueberry for me, hazlenut & raspberry (or maybe strawberry) for Madeleine.
Then home for a quiet evening…

Science Festival, 2009

So the Science Festival has finished for another year…

Madeleine’s mini-film fest of math-y films was a success and I also enjoyed the other events I got along to…

The first one was Asimo the humanoid robot at the McEwan Hall – plenty of pictures from other people on Flickr  – who is very small and needs a lot of preparatory programming to do very much! But he can keep his balance and make allowances for various things as he achieves his objective, which is pretty impressive.

Other events included a talk about the Royal Observatory’s key collection of astronomy books, the mathematics of juggling (with demonstration), some of the math behind Pixar productions (especially the creation of realistically crumpling clothes, etc. for the characters in Ratatouille) and a panel discussing the future of the human body, with Stelarc (who has a serious ‘mad scientist’ laugh!) and Martin Ware.

Yes, Martin Ware of Heaven 17; he’s heavily into sonics and sound of all sorts and had a seemingly endless supply of useful anecdotes, usually featuring somebody he was working with on some sort of project…

Excellent discussion, even if the only sf mentioned was in a question from the floor by somebody who mentioned Brave New World and The Cyberiad.

We also got out to the Museum of Flight at East Fortune and saw some of their new exhibits (opening to coincide with the EISF), but time was short (we had spent far too long in the morning enjoying the Easter weather) and we may have to go back soon.
Main disappointment was the almost complete lack of airship souvenirs and memorabilia – they have excellent airship exhibits, etc. but only a postcard of the R34 if you want a memento. If you’re into Concorde, however, any amount of stuff is filling the racks…

I should send them a list of ideas for books and toys, etc. I know about…