these are a few of my favorite things
This was originally written 16.02.2002
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Turing Machine
So if you’re going to start a math rock band, what would you call it? Well, I can’t think of any better name than Turing Machine. Too bad these guys beat you to it. Well, it’s as math rocking as the name would suggest and they released their debut on Jade Tree, the best darn record company in the world.
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Creation is Cruxifiction
Definitely nerdcore. Some of the band went to CMU, and in their spare time they lecture and publish about technology, activism, and culture as the Carbon Defense League, not to mention reverse engineer the Nintendo Game Boy. To top it off, they even have a song titled, Von Neumann’s Dead (for those of you unfamiliar with computer architecture, Von Neumann was the computer scientist who developed the machine organization that is still used in computers to this day).. Oh yeah, their grind flavored hardcore is a delight as well. I also found some cool electro-acoustic-ish tracks on their website that are pretty neat as well.
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Further Seems Forever
So what if this band is getting big and so what if their original vocalist, Chris Carraba has left to go solo with Dashboard Confessional. When I saw them in late 2001, sans-Carraba, they still sounded great, and I’ve been listening to one of their older releases, The Moon is Down, and realizing that it’s good stuff. For me, the real standout is a track titled Snowbirds and Townies, which is about seasonal love affairs between resort town boys and vacationing girls. Another post-emo band singing about girls, one might groan, but the difference with this Further album (and also, I would argue, with Dashboard) is that these love songs use love as a background, a timeline, for other aspects of life. In this case it’s being young and isolated in a small Florida town. The song really paints a vivid picture of that situation with an honesty and sincerity that is truly refreshing. If only Fred Durst could write about his Florida youth this eloquently. -
Backweb
Homegrown wireless (and wired?) metropolitan area network for Edinburgh, UK.
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UK politics
So I don’t really know that much about the British political system, but from what I’ve seen on TV, I think these are my kind of people. First, I was watching this comedy show called Brimner, Bird, and Fortune, and it’s a million times smarter than anything I’ve seen stateside. Ragging on Tony Blair for touring Africa and neglecting domestic concerns and addressing the inherent problems of privitization of public services was never executed so well. I was watching another show which was this town-meeting, ask the politicians type show, and I was really impressed with the fact that so many of the guests were really critical of NYC-style zero-tolerance policing and even went as far as to question the accolades that Gulliani received for his post-9/11 leadership.