Author: Andy Ferguson

Albums of the year – 2012

I think 30 choices is appropriate again this year. They are in vague order (certainly near the top), but I think some of them really depend so much on what sort of mood I’m in on a particular day.

  1. Shearwater – Animal Joy
  2. The Twilight Sad – No One Can Ever Know
  3. How to Dress Well – Total Loss
  4. Lana Del Rey – Born to Die
  5. Bill Fay – Life is People
  6. Scott Walker – Bish Bosch
  7. Chromatics – Kill For Love
  8. Craig Finn – Clear Heart Full Eyes
  9. Metric – Synthetica
  10. Moonface – With Siinai: Heartbreaking Bravery
  11. The North Sea Scrolls – The North Sea Scrolls
  12. Paul Heaton – Paul Heaton Presents The 8th
  13. A.C. Newman – Shut Down The Streets
  14. Stars – The North
  15. The Indelicates – Diseases Of England
  16. David Byrne & St. Vincent – Love This Giant
  17. Simon Joyner – Ghosts
  18. Swans – The Seer
  19. Paul Buchanan – Mid Air
  20. Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz – Abraxas: The Book of Angels Volume 19
  21. Pog – Between the Station and the Sea
  22. Tennis – Young & Old
  23. Lambchop – Mr. M
  24. Errors – Have Some Faith in Magic
  25. Tame Impala – Lonerism
  26. John Zorn – The Gnostic Preludes
  27. Japandroids – Celebration Rock
  28. Allo Darlin’ – Europe
  29. Yeasayer – Fragrant World
  30. Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Psychedelic Pill

One Movie a Day – part 1

Over Christmas I set out to watch (on average) a movie a day. This is what I chose (and why) over the first few days.

19th December – Let Him Have It (the story that inspired the Elvis Costello song ‘Let Him Dangle’ which has always been one of my favourite songs)

20th December – Pollock (the artist Patti Smith named her son after. I listened to her new record this morning and it blew my mind. The music at the end of the movie is ‘World Keeps Turning’ by Tom Waits who I also adore)

21st December – Prozac Nation (I read the book ages ago, but somehow managed to miss the movie. Mental illness is a subject close to my heart right now, and Lou Reed playing Lou Reed is always worth watching in any movie)

22nd December – A Dangerous Method (I love David Cronenberg as a director, and thought I would round off my series of movies based on true stories with this. Despite only being made last year it does a very good job of looking significantly older, and it makes me really look forward to Cronenberg’s next movie which is an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis and which will feature music composed by Metric)

23rd December – Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe (I’ve just read Patti Smith’s ‘Just Kids’. This movie-length documentary covers roughly the same period of time, and adds new perspective to an already familiar story)

24th December (a.m.) – New York Stories (This is probably one of my favourite movies, and one I keep coming back to when I want something familiar and not too mentally challenging. It also reminds me a little of Paul Auster’s ‘New York Trilogy’ which is one of my favourite books)

24th December (p.m.) – The Last Waltz (I stumbled on a CD of ‘Music From the Big Pink’ in a bargain bin this year, and I keep coming back to these amazing songs that I couldn’t get enough of at University. I think this is a fitting way to see in Christmas)

There will be more over the next few days. Largely a lot of things I’m getting for Christmas with one or two old favourites thrown in. I may also start documenting some of my listening habits regarding records made before I was born, which I’ve not really touched on elsewhere.

Christmas projects

I have all sorts of things planned this Christmas, some of which may happen and some of which may take a little longer to reach fruition.

  • Albums of the year (which I always do), and which will be ready on or around 31st December.
  • One movie a day, where I will watch one decent movie a day, and list them all with a few notes on why I chose them and how they all fit together.
  • A writing project, which I’ve started, and which might end up being a “one poem a day” type exercise.

It is good to have some time to work on this sort of thing, and I’m hopeful it will redress the balance a little after a year of too much work, too much responsibility and not enough creativity.

Music that is currently rocking my world

I often get asked to recommend music, which I’m often very bad at because I know from experience that a lot of what I listen to might not be to everyone’s taste. But if I was recommending some music from this year (or from recently but that I largely discovered this year) then my list would look something like:

Shearwater – Animal Joy
The Twilight Sad – No One Can Ever Know
Craig Finn – Clear Heart Full Eyes
Metric – Synthetica
Veronica Falls – Veronica Falls
Pog – Between the Station and the Sea
Moonface – With Siinai: Heartbreaking Bravery
Crystal Stilts – In Love With Oblivion
AAAHHHRCHESTRA – Denmaaahhrk
Lana Del Rey – Born to Die
Thieves Like Us – Bleed Bleed Bleed
Tindersticks – The Something Rain
Paul Heaton – Paul Heaton Presents… The 8th
The Wedding Present – Valentina
Maxïmo Park – The National Health
Bear in Heaven – I Love You, It’s Cool
The Flaming Lips – The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwends
Errors – Have Some Faith In Magic
Tennis – Young & Old
Julian Cope – Psychedelic Revolution
Guillemots – Hello Land!
Stevie Jackson – (I Can’t Get No) Stevie Jackson
The Kabeedies – Soap
John Zorn – Templars: In Sacred Blood
Holograms – Holograms
Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz – Abraxas: The Book of Angels Volume 19
Allo Darlin’ – Europe
John Zorn – The Gnostic Preludes
Yeasayer – Fragrant World
David Krakauer – Pruflas : The Book Of Angels Volume 18
Swans – The Seer
The Indelicates – Diseases Of England
Craft Spells – Gallery
The Fall – Your Future Our Clutter
Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra – Theatre Is Evil

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

I’m quite impressed with the new version of Ubuntu, and because it’s a LTS release it means one less VM I need to maintain during the next release cycle. I generally keep a VM of the latest LTS and release version, as well as tracking the development version from Beta 1. This results in 3 VMs (or two if the current release version is also a LTS).

I also maintain a VM of Debian testing, as well as a really minimal version of stable and unstable (I run stable physically as well).

And then I have several minimal webservers, which are running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or Debian stable.

But I digress.

I think this version of Ubuntu is important because it will be around for 5 years and will form the basis of the Linux strategy for a number of organisations. I would certainly recommend it highly, and think it does a good job of providing a decent desktop experience for users of all levels (and particularly non-technical users).

All roads lead to Rhodes

I’m currently on holiday in Rhodes. I’ve just finished the 7th book I’ve read since I got here, and I’m really appreciating having the Kindle with me as it has quickly become an important part of the technology I carry with me when I travel. It’s interesting to see what the other guests are using actually – there are a few laptops, lots of phones, but not much in the way of kindles or other ebook readers. A fair few people are accessing the internet from the hotel lobby, and it is certainly more socially acceptable to do so then it was a few years ago, although some older people still blatantly disapprove. There are also many many internet cafes in the general vicinity, and I get the feeling that although this is a sleepy tourist area it is also fairly well connected. The signal here is strong, and the speed is comparable to UK broadband.

I carry technology with me wherever I travel. I don’t always take the full range of devices, but I generally have something to read, something to listen to music on, and some sort of communication device at the very least. I actually find that being able to access my books and my music relaxes me, and I do enjoy having internet access when I’m away as it allows me to research what the weather will be like, and what local customs I need to be aware of. On this trip I’ve limited my net access to one session a day (usually around an hour), but in that time I’ve researched what I need to research, as well as reading (if not replying to) all personal email and skimming through articles of interest from my growing list of RSS feeds. It interests me that this activity takes less than an hour a day, because when I’m at home it often takes significantly longer.

Installing Debian on a Dell Mini 10

A few notes largely for my own benefit.

We already have a couple of Debian machines in our house (one physical and one virtual), but I wanted to get to grips with installing it on a machine that has some fairly unusual hardware.

All in all it was a smooth install. I created a USB installer with UNetbootin, and installed the base system without issue. It didn’t find my broadcom wireless card, but after enabling all repositories and installing the driver (search for B43 in synaptic) I had a good wireless connection and was able to unplug the ethernet cable.

I then upgraded to a 3.2 kernel, and enabled Mozilla’s Debian repository to get an up to date version of Iceweasel. Both of these went smoothly as well.

The only outstanding issue is the trackpad. The 3.2 kernel has helped a lot, but it is still a little jumpy at times. But it was also a little jumpy under Ubuntu on occasion as well, so I’m not too worried.

Debian runs well on this machine. It seems noticeably faster than Ubuntu, and boot time is significantly faster. If I could sort out the trackpad properly then I would certainly rely on this machine for short trips and coffee-shop web browsing, and it’s nice to see a low-powered and quite old computer running smoothly again.

What I’m using to get the job done in 2012

A couple of years ago I documented the hardware and software I use as a homage to http://usesthis.com. I thought it was probably time to update it.

I’ve been working with Macs and with OS X for most of the past 18 months. As a result of this, most of my hardware has shifted from generic Dell and Sony machines running Linux, to Macs running OS X. I still maintain a couple of physical Ubuntu/Debian machines, but mostly virtualise now, especially as by using powerful Apple hardware I can create VMs that are significantly more powerful than their physical counterparts.

I do most of my work on either a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air, both of which were the absolute bottom-of-the-range at the time they were purchased. I generally have one of these machines with me wherever I am. I also have access to a more powerful Mac desktop, as well as several VMs covering OS X, Windows, Debian and Ubuntu.

At home I have a 2011 Mac Mini, a generic monitor, and the same keyboard and mouse I was using 5 years ago. I back everything up to a large external hard drive and a NAS device that also streams media to an ancient Mac connected to the TV in the living room. I also have several laptops set up for specific purposes, but am in the process of moving everything important onto a series of VMs hosted on the Mac Mini.

I also have a Kindle 4 (the £89 no frills model), and am really enjoying being able to read books on the train without breaking my back or zapping the battery on my phone.

Since I went truly cross-platform, I’ve simplified things a fair bit. I use Chrome (home) and Firefox (work) for browsing, and use Google’s web-based apps for pretty much everything. At work I use Microsoft Office 2011 for those things that require it, but am getting to the point where I can be fully productive with a web browser and a terminal session. This makes moving between Mac OS X and Ubuntu easy, as does having everything I’m working on in Dropbox so that as long as I’m on one of my machines I can sync my changes back home instantly.

I think if I was starting again with setting up what I needed to make me truly productive, I’d go for a maxed out Macbook Air coupled with a 27″ Thunderbolt display in every place I worked. I’d also want a Debian or Ubuntu server to deal with backups, storage, and working on Linux specific tasks. None of this is out of the question, but is hard to justify until the machines I currently use cease to be of use.

Looking back and looking further forward

By this time tomorrow I will have successfully implemented the support of Mac OS X in my workplace. It’s been a long 14 month slog, but I’ve learned a lot about Macs, project management, and a fair few things beside. I’ve also lived pretty much wholly in Mac OS X since April 2011, which scared me at first but now feels oddly familiar.

Next up will be iOS and Linux. iOS is a new thing for me, but Linux certainly isn’t, and it was quite soothing today to open up my Linux laptop and do my first bit of Ubuntu work for nearly a year.  I’ve also (finally) given up Gnome 2, and after a brief dalliance with Gnome 3 have decided that Unity is the interface that I’ll use on all my Linux machines from now on.

Not that I’m giving up my Macs though. Unity and OS X are actually quite similar in a lot of ways, and I see both of them featuring heavily in both my personal and professional future.