What can we learn from Hitler and Hume?

In his talk on Algorithmic Art, Tom discussed the sales on his Hitler and Hume project. Tom used Mein Kampf as an input to music generation software and has put it for sale on Amazon and iTunes. Tom openly admits that ambient marimba and woodblock music is not a great musical innovation. However, he surprised me when he announced, "I'm selling nearly £25 a month of this rubbish at the moment. Vast majority EU, then the US. Grossed about £250… I have friends with actual musical talent who've sold less."

The interesting question here is: what are people buying when they buy a record from HItler and Hume?

Tom's discussion of his project made me think of some interesting posts I've read lately:

Which is not to compare Hitler and Hume to scammy ebook publications. But, what's interesting is that 

  1. Amazon is such a low-friction way of selling content
  2. People who want to buy the Hitler and Hume EP are finding it (even if there are only a small number of potential fans out there)

I think this is, potentially, incredibly exciting.

Holy Shit, I Ran a marathon

Brighton_marathon
It's been a couple of days since the Brighton marathon and I can barely believe it happened. For many years, the idea of me running a marathon was laughable. I've worked towards this for three and a half years. Injuries have beaten me a couple of times, but last weekend I finally made it to the start line and beyond.

Tom Roper recently wrote a post about running and memory, in which he mentioned how quickly memories of a run can fade. Late on Sunday afternoon I passed parts of the route and couldn't remember seeing them earlier in the day. Now, the day seems something like a dream.

Most of the course is spent travelling back and forth between Shoreham and Rottingdean, with various detours to make up the distance. While it was good to see people running in the opposite direction, some of the errands, particularly the hill after Ovingdean, seemed gratuitous. 

Here are my feelings during the marathon, as best I can remember.

It took about 10 minutes to reach the start line, but we got to see the race leaders come by. Mile 1 was a lap of Preston Park, with an early uphill section. I started out running as slowly as I could. My legs didn't feel strong and with 26.2 miles ahead I had to be patient. Miles 2-4 went around the center of town then we headed out towards Ovingdean. Most of my training was along the seafront so this was familiar ground. At mile 8 I realised the remaining distance was longer than I had ever run before, and could feel the distance already done. Mile 9 I took a pit stop at the toilets at the Orpington fete, Mr. Punch squawking in the distance. Saw the saddest gorilla in the world. I walked most of the hills, stingily reserving my energy for later miles. At 13 miles I felt OK – I'd comfortably managed 10.5 minute miles – but I was definitely tiring. Through the center of town towards Aldrington, which felt a slightly pointless detour, running towards a stage then back again. Grateful for the spectator who sprayed me with a hose. Talked briefly with a friend was suffering from a busted knee. At about 17 miles I felt good for a couple of miles. Smiled, kept going. 18 miles – only 8 miles to go, I thought, I've run 8 miles before. 19 miles, the pain intensified, and I knew I would be walking much of the remaining distance. As I hit 20 miles the distance really hit and I was in a great deal of pain. It was hard to keep going when all I had to do was sit down and the pain would stop. Shoreham harbour was a weird section, few spectators or landmarks. I didn't mind it, as I've enjoyed running it in training. Passed a transport ship where silent spectators lined the rail. At 21 miles I almost burst into tears when I realised how close I was to completing a marathon, how unbelievable this would have seemed as a teenager. 23.5 miles, I passed an old flat so I was on familiar ground. I knew whatever happened, I would finish the marathon. The only question was whether or not I could do it within the 5 hours I'd set for myself. 24 miles, I stopped to hug a friend. Kept forcing myself to run sections, sometimes managing as few as 100 steps. On to Kings Road, the last mile, then the 800-meters-to-go marker. Determined to run the last section, buoyed by another friend's greeting. Then over the line and it was done. I'd run a marathon.

I'm signed up for the 2012 marathon and am also hoping to do one in the Autumn. I'm delighted that I've run a marathon but now I want to reduce my time. The discomfort is fading and I'm hoping to manage a very short run tomorrow. 1 year and three days until the 3rd Brighton marathon.

Some other recent marathon blog posts:

Dead drops in Brighton

I'm rubbish at getting around to things. Back in January, adactio linked to a video about making dead-drops saying "I should get out there and make a few drops in Brighton". A few days later he posted a flickr set, dead drops in Brighton, showing him with wordridden and briansuda setting up some USB dead-drops. There was also a map to the locations. (For more information, there is some background/discussion of USB dead-drops on metafilter, as well as a catalogue website).

This weekend, about 2 months later, I finally got round to checking the dead drops with Vicky Matthews (who took the photo below). It was a sad story.

Orbific_dead_drops
The drop in Kensington Street was unreadable. We couldn't find the one in Ship Street Gardens, only a couple of places where it might have been. The town hall drop was destroyed:

Town_hall_drop
We only found the location of one of the two seafront drops. As Pier-to-pier complained frequently, salt air is no good for hardware, and the drive was too corroded to read:

Seafront_drop
I wonder what was on the drives. It's a shame our expedition didn't achieve its goal, but we did enjoy a beautiful misty day on Brighton seafront.

Misty_brighton

Brighton Marathon

I'm only a few days away from the Brighton marathon. My training has not gone particularly well with holidays, injury, illness and work all conspiring against me. I've managed to do little more than the long runs, and those have not gone well. Last week's 17 mile run was excellent for the first 13 miles but I then faded quickly. Which does not bode well for running 26 miles.

I'm still hoping to manage to complete the course in 5 hours, but I'm aware that anything beyond 3 hours is unknown territory. I suspect that it will come down to not getting carried away and running too quickly at the beginning. I don't expect the last hour or two to be particularly pleasant, but I hope I enjoy the day despite any physical discomfort.

Anyway, if you're spectating, give me a wave. I will certainly appreciate the encouragement.

The weekend in pictures

Today was my first day back at work after my holiday. I arrived home last Wednesday and then had one of those Brighton weekends, that starts on Thursday and continues until Sunday evening. It was Kate's fault: her birthday was on a Friday, which meant it had to be celebrated all weekend. I was jetlagged and came down with a cold, which made the whole thing harder than it should have been.

Drunken_poets
Drunken poets

Kate_shields_and_quiet_riot

Kate and Quiet Choir busking at the pavilion

Warplan_brighton
Hungover on Friday afternoon, I read about the effects of nuclear war on Brighton

Newhaven

Ellen_and_friend
Ellen introduced me to a close friend of hers

Gentlemen_and_assassins
On Saturday night, Kate played a song with Gentlemen and Assassins

Cheesecake_shot
Cheesecake!

All weekends should be like that.

Reading at Ace Stories on Sunday March 6th

The weblog has been quiet in 2011 so far – my freelance work has kept me fairly busy. There won't be probably won't be any posts until March, when things calm down.

I have a reading coming up in March, one I am very excited about. I will be reading at Ace Stories with Sara Lenzen and Rachel Cusk. From the announcement:

Ace Stories– the live literature season that brought you such writers as Cathi Unsworth, James Miller, Scott Bradfield, and Amanda Smyth in 2010, is back at the Hotel Pelirocco on Sunday 6 March at 6pm. There'll be support readings from local writer James Burt and London-based writer Sara Lenzen, a live interview with Rachel Cusk including questions from the audience, and a reading by Rachel from her latest novel, The Bradshaw Variations (Faber and Faber). In the third and final part of the evening there'll be live set of music from 21 Crows. Tickets: £3 on door. Come and get a cocktail and enjoy the friendly, intimate vibe of the Pelirocco bar and some inspiring readings!

I think I'm going to be reading something from my novel, but I've not decided for sure yet. The event starts at 6pm, and it should be a good one. Let me know if you're coming along, as we will probably go for food before or after.

2010: pretty good year

There’s a danger of end-of-year blog posts turning into a litany of achievements, like a CV or a nightmare round-robin letter, so I’ll try to be brief. 2010 was an amazing year and one which saw a lot of changes.

The biggest event was my holiday in India. I saw some stunning places but even more valuable was having space to think outside of my normal environment. The other night I was re-reading my travel journals and I could see myself changing throughout the course of the trip. For many reasons, my time in India was one of the highlights of my life and I am planning another trip early next year.

After India I spent about 4 months living in Derbyshire, working on my novel. Swansong was hard work but I am very pleased with the results. The themes of the book touched on some difficult aspects of my childhood and it was good to reconsider those.

Other than the novel I worked on lots of short stories. Two highlights were having a 25 word story Rapunzel published in Hint Fiction and In the Night Supermarket… published in Black Static as part of the Campaign for Real Fear.

In July I came back to Brighton. I love this city and the magical things that happen here: zombie walks, tea parties in the pavilion gardens, White Night, crazy drunk clownsBoxing Day swims and so on. I’m feeling very settled here, more than I have in a long time.

One thing that hasn’t gone so well is the running. I ran 600 miles in 2009, but last year I managed about 400. Injuries dogged me, stopping me from entering the Brighton marathon. Thanks to a great physio I am now back in training and have my sights set on the 2011 Brighton Marathon. I also entered the Santa Dash for the 4th time.

2010 has been an amazing year and one that has seen many positive changes. Part of that has been due to twitter which has led to me meeting some wonderful people in real life. I am now very excited about what 2011 will bring.

My favourite books of 2010

I read about 150 books during 2010. A good chunk of these were read on my holiday at the start of the year (including re-reading Lord of the Rings). Picking out the best ones was difficult, as I read some very good books. Setting an arbitrary limit of ten, here are the ones I loved most, in alphabetical order:

  • The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker – I think Nicholson Baker is one of the most inventive and fascinating writers working today. This book interleaves fiction with theories on poetry and some good jokes. At one point Baker makes a fascinating observation, that the collection may not be the best format for poetry.
  • The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber – this book is not yet published, but I read a draft. It's a historical novel in verse which tells a story of adventure and subterfuge. Its format as poetry actually adds to the pacing. It deserves to find a wide audience. 
  • Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis – previously blogged about here.
  • The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby – blogged about here. I need to revisit this soon.
  • Advice for Strays by Justine Kilkerr – see here.
  • How I escaped my certain fate / Stewart lee – see here.
  • i play the drums in a band called okay by Toby Litt – see here.
  • Something Beginning With by Sarah Salway was republished this year. Her book uses an interesting structure to tell a serious story. Despite the dark ending, you get a feeling that Sarah really enjoyed writing this.
  • Are you experienced by William Sutcliffe – I read a lot of books about India in preparation for my trip. I learned very little from most of them, particularly the serious tomes written by English and American journalists. This book questions the idea of travelling and makes some very good points. I was surprised by how thought-provoking I found it.
  • The New Journalism by Thomas Wolfe  - I read this around the same time as I read Reality Hunger. The introduction to Wolfe's book the most interesting writing on fiction I've read in some time. He seems to have been ahead of Shields on many points. However, Wolfe did turn to fiction after working on this book, and I hope to find some time to look into why. 

I would normally do a list of the films I enjoyed too, but I only saw 7 movies in the cinema this year. Most of them were entertaining without being particularly memorable. At the end of the year I find myself unable to pick one out as a favourite.

Thinking about Time Travel

I've been thinking a lot about time travel lately, and messages from the future.

Some weeks back, there was a game on twitter: #tweetyoursixteenyearoldself. The idea was to send messages back in time that would have been useful to you then. My advice to myself was simple:

Don't bother with uni. And take English Lit & History, not Maths and physics for A-Level.

The game started me thinking about what would happen if I received a message from my future self:

Of course, it would be more useful if my 50 year old self could tweet me and give me a heads-up

I've been thinking a lot about time travel lately. Because I am travelling into the future day-by-day, and I'm not sure what lies ahead of me. Before you know it, you’ve leapt fifteen years on, and you’re not the person you expected to be. Those little day-by-day steps in the past seemed to be in the wrong direction. 

I’d probably have thought less about this, except for an article I read in the paper, where a woman had drawn up a bucket list, a list of things she wanted to do before she died.

Bucket lists are a disturbing idea in general, the idea that life can be reduced to a series of goals that you achieve or don't, and a life fails if some are left unticked. (And what are you supposed to do if you do finish the list? Start another list of things you really have to do?) There were nine items in this woman's list, some of them things she'd been planning to do for years and not got around to. One item was to see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical, The Phantom of the Opera.

If this person could send a message back in time, it might be to see Phantom at some point in the next 20 years. But maybe there were other priorities. In each of the 7,000 nights she could have watched that show, something else was happening. As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans." 

And I've been wondering about the me in the future, and the things I might want to scream into the past, the days here and there that were squandered thinking there would always be more to come. Something interesting happens when you consider your future self and your current self as two separate people. Decisions I make now have an effect on me in the future.

And I make decisions now that I will live with in the future. Douglas Coupland expressed it well in Girlfriend in a Coma:

"Imagine you're a forty-year-old, Richard," Hamilton said to me around this time, while working as a salesman at a Radio Shack in Lynn Valley, "and suddenly somebody comes up to you saying, 'Hi, I'd like you to meet Kevin. Kevin is eighteen and will be making all of your career decisions for you.' I'd be flipped out. Wouldn't you? But that's what life is all about – some eighteen-year-old kid making your big decisions for you that stick for a lifetime." He shuddered."

I imagine the tweets that would be sent by by 54 year old self. Or the one in six months time. So many of the things that were important to me at 24 seem irrelevant now. I might have been able to justify how I spent that time a month later, but now I can't.

The clash between past and future selves is one of the main sources of procrastination – we imagine our future self will be more willing to do the work we don't want to do now. Behavioral economists and psychologists refer to it as dynamic inconsistency ("when somehow the preferences of some of the selves are not aligned with each other") or present-bias (as a brilliant youarenotsosmart.com article described it, "This is why when you are a kid you wonder why adults don’t own more toys."). It's hard to guess what the future you will want. 

I expect my future self will be similar to me, in that he would be frustrated with the short term goals that his younger self sought, the time spent doing fake work. He would be annoyed that focussed on the things that really mattered.

While I hate the idea of a bucket list, it's worth asking, what am I doing right now that might still seem worthwhile in twentry years? What would I want to have done before I die? Only a few things. I guess I had better get on with them.

I've been thinking about time travel lately.

Boxing Day Swim 2010

Boxing-day-pier

Yesterday was my friend Sarah's birthday. She wanted to celebrate with a dip in the sea. So I decided to join her.

James-swim-boxing-day
The sea was very still but it was cold. We only stayed in for about a minute, long enough to do a few strokes. I went swimming with Mr. Spratt on New Years' Day a few years ago but this felt far colder. As I came out my skin was tingling, but I felt invigorated and refreshed. We dried off, changed and headed to the Sidewinder for a drink. I'm glad I did it.

Sarah-swimming-boxing-day