Quarter Life Crisis

Media¶

550 words

• The BBC consider offering their archives to the public. We'll see how this works out in the end but the idea is great. As are public broadcasting institutions.
• The audio cassette turns 40 these days – having been introduced at the Internationale Funkausstellung in 1963 as compact cassette and apparently having been an instant winner.
• I still have quite a few cassettes. But my only players remain my walkman and my office stereo. Some nice compilations and memories in there.
• Jörg always made the nicest covers for the compilation cassettes for me and Jean made the effort to label the cassette with a proper typewriter when copying OK Computer for me. Very retro.
• High Fidelity was on telly the other day. It's got all those nice bits about compilation tapes. And of course it's right to say that making a compilation is a tricky business. A fact that is still true when making compilation CDs these days. I don't see too much of a difference between the tape and CD. You can still decorate CDs if you feel like it. Making a cassette may take slightly more skill as you have to avoid a lengthy gap at the end of side A.
• I like getting compilation CDs. Not only are some of them pretty good – I also consider them slightly educational as people tend to put some stuff they discovered on there.
• Dan, sent me a nice CD last autumn with many bands on there that weren't event released in Germany at the time, including The Libertines, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Polyphonic Spree.
• The latter seem to be a bunch of nutters, in white cloaks nevertheless. I'm not sure I really like them. Apparently Apple's ad agency does, though.
• Knowing people in the UK is nice. And people who like music even better. They tend to know the new stuff before it makes it over the channel. That way I can be the cool kid over here. – Or so I dream.
• Just the other day, Dan [these are actually two different Dans I'm talking about – go figure] recommended The Darkness to me. While it sounds very traditional to me, funnily this was once more just before their name started to trickle into Germany.
• Saw the Chicks on Speed video for We don't play guitars featuring Peaches yesterday. Not too impressed by the music, or the video. There seemed to be an iPod right at the beginning.
• Calvin and Hobbes about the essence of blogging.
• Toast 6 is released soon, bringing eve more joy to toasting media. Cool feature: sharing of CD-writers on a network, Rendezvous enabled.
• Hydra everyones's new favourite Editor that had to undergo a name change due to some legal moronicities is now called SubEthaEdit. Sad. That may be a clever reference, but I usually consider names that you don't have to be embarassed about saying an advantage. Also, application names should be at least one of short and descriptive. Now who's going to provide the patch that changes the name back to Hydra again?
• Going to watch telly now. The new video for their I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself single is suposed to be on. Nicely filmed, perhaps. But not a good music video.

The BBC consider offering their archives to the public. We'll see how this works out in the end but the idea is great. As are public broadcasting institutions. The... August 27, 2003, 0:04