Chris leaves the land of Guiness

On the ride back from the customer's office building in the middle of nowhere, the cab driver pointed out some strip clubs that are aparently located in the basements of some nondescript office buildings just around the corner from the hotel. Shame on me for not knowing. But then again, I have nodded off once or twice at such clubs, so patronising vagina vestibules isn't much of a topical choice for me.

After spending the last week at Amsterdam, I hung out in London for the weekend. There were a few famous (aparently) DJs working the decks Friday evening - Pump DJs I was one of the names I remember. Still, nothing tops the 2 many DJs and Soulwax evening from the VIP level a month or two ago. Saw II was on at the movies and I rekon was equally as good as the first. Lots of gore and queezy moments and a few couples (obviously their partnership is full of compromises) left early - always a good sign of someone's gutteral fortitude.

Hane is staying in Utrecht in the Netherlands, so it would be rude not to pop over for a hui and pia or two as well as catch up with Xavier. Concord Dawn is playing there on Friday so it'll be a good couple of days. I only hope there's a laundromatt around the place there to get some much-needed washing done.

Saturday I'll head off to Boston for a few days, then head back to Amsterdam for an equal amount of time. Shapeshifter is playing at fabric on the 2nd in London, so I'll give them some moral support from the dancefloor.

Anyway, I can't give away all my movements in one go, so that's enough for now. The Frequent flyer miles are slowly creeping up....

Lights, camera, traction

It's a laudable effort to see online stores finally lurch in to gear a few weeks ago, making TV shows available for download to paying punters. Lots is the first of such shows. Not long after iTunes had issued a press release had ABC's partners who syndicate the show grumbled about an affront to their revenue stream since people would zap the show from the iTunes Music Store rather than sitting through 23 minutes of programming and 7 minutes of ads. Obviously they didn't get the TiVo memo. Of course everyone has a patch to protect, but such an exciting opportunity in the market place should hopefully prove that there's more to selling TV shows than placing them at a stand at a traditional bricks and mortar store.

Obviously AOL / Time Warner studios think so. Beginning January next year, they will be offering downloads of reruns of TV shows, that the executives think still have some viewer mileage left. Hopefully this won't be restricted to the States, like the Apple version is, otherwise we'll be lost ourselves looking for alternatives.

My vested interest in this whole business is really the convenience (ironic to some). I think I'm certainly in the minority of wanting to watch TV on my PC or iPod, and Apple agrees with me (they've recently downplayed the video capabilities of the new iPod). There are still some market jitters to ease before the market finally catches up to where things are really heading.

je suis revenu

After a long absence, I'd better get back to twinkling the ivories.

Work over the last couple of months was very busy with large swathes of my spare time being taken up with extra curricular work-related activities (think: documentation and testing). Hopefully these sorts of projects only come along once in a blue moon.

The latest project has taken me to Dublin for three weeks. Similar stuff to what I was doing last time, but with more of a guiness flavour rather than a full english flavour. (note to self: don't try coming up with smart metaphores after overinduling in fries and a croquette). Most of the malarky for this project is off site, so I've got a bit of opportunity to tour the Juniper offices working remotely.

I had a chance to catch up with Paul Smith (Mr. Barrel of Monkeys to some) last weekend in Cobh (pronounced Cove). It's the last city that the Titanic ever saw and often sees many super yachts docking for a few days. It's a very pretty area and when the cloak of night falls, the night life isn't too bad. Lots of pretty honies and in true Irish fashion, fully intoxicated.

This weekend I'm chillin' in Belgium. I heard they brewed Hoegaarden and wife beater (stella artois) there so I had to pop in for a quick quiet or two. It turned in to a few louds by the end of the night. Nice place and aparently there's a famous town house there....dunno...the beer was nice.

The main attraction of the weekend was I love Techno in Ghent last night. It was a 8 hour (or thereabouts) techno party featuring acts such as Vitalic, T.Raumschmiere and Underworld. Emile and I joined up in Antwerp on Saturday and after evening in Ghent, charged back to Antwerp and saw the movie, A History of Violence. Pretty good stuff...the whole movie was a slow plot twist that you could see coming after the first few minutes of the film.

I'm in Antwerp till Tuesday then off to Amsterdam to get the lab ready for a customer demo. I'm looking forward to the Radisson Burger...almost as good as the Dutch Frites.