Author: James Burt

On Saturday I watched a very curious movie, 2000’s Beat. The film tells the story of Joan Vollmer (played by Courtney Love) and William Burroughs (played by Kiefer Sutherland). The film collides two obsessions of mine, Burrough and Cobain (the two actually met once – Burroughs apparently said of Cobain “There’s something wrong with that boy; he frowns for no good reason“) and it’s strange to watch Love playing Vollmer.

The back of the box doesn’t raise your hopes, promising “As the story unfolds we see that behind every great man or woman there (sic) lives are far from simple“. The film suffers from a poor budget, the New York scenes filmed on very simple sets, all far cleaner than I imagine Vollmer’s real life appartment would have been. The film also features the worst flashback ever (violins! a knife! slow motion!). On the other hand, Sutherland does a fantastic Burroughs impression and the final sequences are heart-wrenching. I’m not sure how much the film relies on knowing the details of the story, though.

All-in-all, it’s one of the better films I’ve bought for a pound, and far superior to Urban Menace.

I’ve spent a quiet weekend in Coventry, sorting out the flat and doing a little writing.  While making soup on Friday I listened to a recording of Matt Webb‘s talk at dConstruct 2007 (MP3, slides and transcript).  Despite Matt Webb’s misgivings about how well the talk worked, I found it fascinating.  The presentation was alphabetical, a different point for each letter, the idea being that the ‘point’ of the talk would emerge for the listener – one of the points referenced was Grice’s conversational maxims and the idea of conversational implicature.  The structure was impressive and a significant departure from the rule of ‘Say what you’re going to say, say it, then say what you’ve said‘.  One of the things I’ve been thinking about this weekend is how the issues and structure of this presentation might apply to a work of fiction.

I found myself thinking of the talk yesterday afternoon on a trip round Ikea Coventry.  The store is in a massive six-storey building in the city center.  You start your shopping on the sixth floor and work your way down to the ground, which reminded me of a description of a modern slaughterhouse I read recently, where the animals enter at the top and are processed floor by floor.

Matt Webb’s talk referred to different types of game, including photoshop and soap operas.  So much of Ikea seemed like a game: the arrows on the floor, the maps of each level (with ‘short cuts’ for experienced players), the elevators between levels, the signs showing you when you’d entered a new sub-level.  We took almost 3 hours to play, although we did spend a long time on the cafe minigame at the end of the first level.

The overall experience was strange.  Everything felt so neat and disposable, some goods so cheap you felt compelled to buy.  Some of the shoppers we saw seemed lost and disorientated and the whole time I felt like a character in a Ballard novel, as if I was doing the most modern thing I could possibly do.

Still, the day had a happy ending as I bought my new desk.  Now all I need in space in the study to erect it.

After a little more noodling I’ve finally got the Vodafone Mobile Internet working properly on Ubuntu.  It’s actually easily than I realised at the weekend – all I needed to do was install and run the software, then set the apn field on the configuration as ‘internet’.  You also need to enter something in the username and password field, although this isn’t actually used to connect.

The only other thing you need to do is ask Vodafone to remove the adult content blocker.  Then you can access raunchy sites like The Onion or Flickr. 

All of which means I’m finally back online.  Excellent.

I’m now settling into my new flat in Coventry.  It’s wonderful to be living somewhere clean, modern and big.  I’ve got almost all my things here and it doesn’t feel cramped.  The flat has two bedrooms (one of which will be a study/library) and two bathrooms.  Still not figured out how one person makes use of two bathrooms.  Maybe one for morning and one for evening?  Or one for weekends?

I did the move yesterday with the help of Liz, Dave and Hannah.  It took a couple of hours to carry the boxes up the three flights of stairs and I was covered with bruises afterwards.  I’m going to have another cull of my books to make moving out a much simpler affair.

My plan for tomorrow: buy a tin opener.

After some fussing I’ve finally got Vodafone’s USB Mobile Connect working on Ubuntu!  The first stage was easy, installing Vodafone’s experimental Linux drivers, but after that I ran into problems.  Checking the debug logs showed me the modem was working OK (and the SIM was working as it could receive and send SMS through the GUI) but wvdial was failing.  I’ve now managed to get wvdial configured correctly, so it’s now a case of working out where Vodafone’s GUI is getting its config from.  I’ll try to remember to post a full summary of the solution when I have the GUI up and running.

I’ve now got the keys for my new flat, where I’ll be staying the rest of my time in Coventry.  I’m not sure how I will respond to having two bathrooms, a luxury I never thought I’d be troubled by.  Coventry has an IKEA (well, it’s more of a principality judging by its size) so I’ll be visiting next week.  I can finally buy the IKEA desk I’ve been craving for months – but that wonderful desk deserves its own post.

Coventry has a poetry night which I finally tracked down this week.  ‘Night’s Blue Fruits’ had some very good open mike poetry as well as a reading by Mario Petrucci, a poet I’d heard about on the MA.  It was an entertaining evening and I’m looking forward to the next one on May 1st.

I now have a mobile Internet gadget so, providing I can hook it up to Ubuntu, I’ll be online more often in the near future.  If all else fails, I’ll have to sully one of my other computers with Windows for a bit.   

Last weekend I visited one my favourite places in the world.   Back when I worked at FP I’d come here on
the way to work and stop for a coffee.  The railing at the end is the perfect height for sitting on and thinking. 

When I visited Naomi at the start of the month she gave me a copy of a short film, Minding Rocco, the story of a man handcuffed to a clown. It’s only eleven minutes long and well worth watching.

Also, I recently read Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. It was the second time I’d tried to read it, having given up the first time because I couldn’t give it the concentration it needed. It’s an incredible piece of writing, and one of the strangest books I’ve read. I followed this with Will Self’s ‘cover version’, The Book Of Dave, which didn’t work so well. The scenes set in the future felt like a bad fantasy novel and were far less engaging than the modern-day plot.