gigs coming up:
may: the national, broken social scene
june: mgmt, håkan hellström
july: björk
august: sigur rós (somewhere in europe)

listening to “unravel” by björk lots at the moment. i bought the album years ago (i think its currently at home in ireland in a press), i recently rediscovered the album and found myself obsessed by the music of unravel. its just astounding and hypnotic.

currently planning summer.

update:
may: ulrich schnauss
june: bonnie prince billy

i really could watch this video on vimeo about vimeo all day long. astounding.

i spent the last while upgrading most of the code behind the static pages on sigur-ros.co.uk - nice when things dont break and i also get to learn some stuff.

(dont ask me to define “while”)

have to admit to be slightly surprised to find out that jaiku is now being run as a “20%” project by the jaiku staff who joined google when they were bought out. (jaiku link: “googlea ei kiinnosta jaiku palveluna, tiimi tekee sitä 20% ajallaan” translates as “google arent interested in the jaiku service, the team does it on their 20% free time”

of course in the long term bits of jaiku and the ideas behind jaiku will find their way into parts of google / android etc., but for the time being its sort of strange to think something i have on my phone 24/7 is a side project. hopefully the “coming soon” port to google apps engine will mean that the backend of the site will be sorted out and more features can be put into the site. fingers crossed.

previous: google buys jaiku

i remember seeing “la haine” in the screen cinema in dublin back in ‘95 or ‘96, i staggered out of it a bit shellshocked. the scene in which the dj played to a inneryard as the camera panned and flew around was just fantastic.

birds on the lookout in hietaniemi graveyard

recently on bbc four there was a two part documentary called “magnetic north” in which jonathan meades travelled from northern france to finland.

whilst in finland he talks a bit about the local architecture:

contrasting that of alvar aalto (above) to the national romantic style of saarinen, sonck etc. (below)

aaltos buildings have always left me feeling cold - for me there is very little to enjoy about them (except when taking pictures at night time (1) (2)). they were, of course, a product of their time - reacting against what came before them. the national romantic style of a century ago came from a reaction too - part reactive, part proactive to their times.

the show is on youtube at the moment in multiple parts.

walking around sydhavnen last week in copenhagen i saw a little bit of dutch architectural/urban planning influence on the shape of the city. the dutch architect sjoerd soeters helped on the masterplan for the area. (here is the link on the website of arkitema architects who co-authored the masterplan)

this week oma were announced as the winners of the bryghusprojektet (the brewery site project) in the centre of copenhagen. lots of pictures available here

pictures of last weeks trip to copenhagen. uploading to flickr is ongoing!

i left ireland around the time enda kenny become leader of fine geal (the second largest political party) so i never really saw much of him on television. most of my irish news gathering comes from listening to the radio. i just saw this video of him on youtube talking about a policy that his party had (basically “if we get into power and we dont do all these things - i will resign”). something very odd about him. it has the feel of a comedy sketch.