Living a life less ordinary

Back from Berlin, a city I'm finding that I'm getting a fondness for. There were plusses (and minuses) about the visit. I will attempt an adequate write-up later. Apologies for any birthdays/clubs/birthday clubs/club birthdays that I have not acknowledged. Some hard truths/opinions have been recognised.

I'm not feeling quite back on the planet but I have that work thing that is supposed to be a good idea to do.

I am going to try and make it to glenndm's birthday drinks later today although I currently cannot guarantee anything until I have recovered my personal timeline/energy.

Love to all, death to traitors.

"I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist! invite all Photographers to a mass photo gathering in defence of street photography.

Following a series of high profile detentions under s44 of the terrorism act including 7 armed police detaining an award winning architectural photographer in the City of London, the arrest of a press photographer covering campaigning santas at City Airport and the stop and search of a BBC photographer at St Pauls Cathedral and many others. PHNAT feels now is the time for a mass turnout of Photographers, professional and amateur to defend our rights and stop the abuse of the terror laws.

12 Noon
Saturday 23rd January 2010
Trafalgar Square"

http://photographernotaterrorist.org/2009/12/mass-photo-gathering/

After a week of Eddie Izzard, I've started back on one of my (old) comedic "heroes" (if that is the proper term): one Mister Robin Williams, particularly his live set at the New York Met. It is in no way politically correct (phtuuuie!), it rips the piss out of everyone and everything and is well funny (IMNSHO!).

After (most of) that I headed down to the Elixir Bar for Aga and Kassandra's birthday shennanigans. Nice to say Howdy with the few faces I recognised. LS turned up after a while, we had a drink or two. After that made sure LS was on a tube home (still waiting for a text to say she got back safe).

Now.. more Robin Williams! :P Oh, and maybe finish this bottle of red I started earlier.

Love, peace and crunchy, sharpish bits to you all! :P

Finding out about a shoe shops called R.Soles

" - Wow! Those are nice shoes!
- Yes, they were made by R.Soles!"

Made me laugh (a bit).

I got lined up by saucy_goth for a night out down at Punk in Soho for a night called Anthem. The night started over at Lorna's with LS and Lavinia and a rapidly dreadlocking cat. The conversations were not particularly stretching so I took the chance to sit back, have a drink and make notes for my forthcoming book "Girls: they really do talk about that sort of crap!" (to be available from Amazon, Boots and most good recycling bins everywhere!)

The group left about...errm.. some time to get to Punk in time to sample the "happy hour". Get in (it was a free in, always a good option). The venue is one of those I like and loathe in equal proportions. If it wasn't so obvoiusly a converted underground storage area it'd be a great club. If it didn't have the great colouring and decor it'd be a soulless hole. The "happy hour" consisted of 2-for-1 drinks, by which they mean buy two small bottles of Kronie for the price of a large bottle. Hmmm...

Ed, Lavinia's beloved, showed up and they got all couplesy. The music seemed to be of the kiddie-new-punk/metal ilk, the sort of stuff I find OK in filler slots but not really as a whole night. Somewhere along the line LS gifted me a glass of white wine, which Lavinia traded for a glass of rosé. The venue filled up quite a bit, particularly for a Monday night but then again that's what the free-in is all about I guess.

I know there are still a few late night club venues still in Soho and it was nice to finally sample this one. However, it leaves me with the sad maudlin feeling that the hedonistic booze-and safety-pin fueled glory days have probably long left Soho. Before you say it, Shoreditch deosn't "do it" for me. It's comes across as too 'trendy trying to be edgy' rather than full-on 'alternative'. Of course there's the odd thing here and there that breaks that mould, but not enough to make it work properly.

Still I got a chance to confirm or refute a couple of theories I've been formulating about the mechanics of the current clubbing "scene". I think I may use them in my next book, "Clubs: the short gap between Wow! and Crap!" which will be available from most good charity shops and toilet roll dispensers everywhere.

I need to remember to get my timesheets in otherwise 2009 never actually ends! Ooops.. "I've been busy" is my excuse. Still, no worries... just yet anyway.

I should write up what amounted to my weekend I guess. Friday was a day of just keeping the boat steady at work. The office was down to about 3/8^ths occupied what with the inclement (in Clement who? Clement Fraud?) weather playing havoc with peple's travel arrangements.

End the day and travel off to Spitalfields and to The Pride of Spitalfield, a small pub that was rammed to the roof with the drinking masses. A nice locals/regulars sort of pub, lots of chatty friendly people there. A nice pub to have a drink in. Met up with a few and then we all headed off to Preem and Prithi on Brick Lane. About 14 people sat to celebrate danny_e11's birthday by way of consuming flavoursome foods. I had the balti chicken jalf and this time it was well spicey. Thank the lord that they had raita! :) After that we headed off to another pub. the name of which I missed which was yet again very busy. About half the crew had headed off home which left danny_e11, caveynik, nougat and a few others for drinking. We had a few there and then called it a night when we'd wittled the group down to about 5. A taxi was called for as they were heading out towards the 'Stow. I fell on my sword, left them to it and headed back to base.

Saturday and Sunday have been mainly fail to get out the house days. I only really made it out today as I needed to stock up on food. Besides that, I flatlined. Meh!

Mainly here as a note to myself on how I've done it, but I thought I'd share.

---

The trick I figured out for having a call to a domain URL being answered by the main/major/domain webserver (with EasySpace) is, as follow:

= [IP addr] is the IP address of the webserver you want to direct calls to

• Start with a clean slate so delete/clear all host A records.
  
• Make a new A record for the domain (marked as '@' on easySpace) that points to [IP addr]
  
• Next, add an A record for the webserver itself (say 'www') that points to [IP addr]
  
• Finally, and this is a "just in case", add a catch all A record to point to [IP addr]
  

So the finished records look like this:

@    A   [IP addr]
www  A   [IP addr]
*    A   [IP addr]

I'm pretty sure that this is a nasty/dirty/wrong solution and I think I should've maybe set the A record to 'www' and then CNAME'd the others[1] but when I tried that it didn't look like that option was available. Plus, the EasySpace DNS webpage bitched about '* CNAME [IP addr]' being incorrect.

However, it works with IE and FireFox and Safari so....

So there you go. You can set up your website so that the call will go to the webserver if people type the URL as 'somehost.com' instead of 'www.somehost.com'

[1] Having only one A record with all other name-address couples being CNAMEs makes sense as it is impossible to make a typo error with having to enter the IP address multiple times (although copy'n'paste usually gets around that anyway).

The other 'benefit' is that if you want to point the whole setup to a different IP address you'd only have to change the IP address in one record rather than all three.

OK, I'm head scratching right now. You know how you can force your DNS to provide answers so that when someone types somehost.com into the URL bar the browser goes to www.somehost.com automagically...

well, I thought it had to do with a wildcard A record.. but that doesn't seem to do the trick.

So Hyawatha.. speak to me. How do you do this? Is there a "domain" record I have to set?

If it helps, I'm currently using Easyspace for the DNS side.

Sat 23 Jan 2010
What: London steampunk spectacular
Where: Cross Kings, Kings Cross
When: Doors 7pm
How much: £5
What's on: Ghostfire + The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing (featuring comic Andrew O'Neill) + Saville Row + Robert Rankin

Inferno vs. Sin City?

Following on from my previous post about making creative sparks, I noticed a couple of films that may be of interest. So, I thought.. why not see if there are other people who might be interested in these as well?

The first is Daybreakers, the story of how a virus strikes which turns people into blood thirsty vampires which causes problems when they start to run out of blood. This is an advanced screening as it goes on general release the following day. I was thinking of going to the Thrusday (7th) viewing as Thursdays usually work out easier for people to juggle with work than the Wednesday viewing. The 19:10 viewing means it wouldn't end too late and would leave wiggle room for an after-showing drink if that so suited. However, it may be a tight squeeze time-wise for people to get to.

The second film is Immodesty Blaize presents Burlesque Undressed which is showing in Covent Garden on Thursday 21 Jan. The blurb to this film goes:

"'Burlesque Undressed' is a lavish and dazzling journey right into the heart of the art-form, featuring a compelling mix of live performance, interviews from burlesque stars past and present, captivating music and all-round show-stopping entertainment.

British burlesque superstar Immodesty Blaize peels back the curtain to reveal her world of high-octane glamour, and gives an exclusive peep behind-the-scenes to expose the work involved in the art of the tease to produce a signature act of perfection.
"

From what I can see this looks like a one-off showing.

So, if you're interested then waggle a paw or leave a comment and I'll try and sort something out.

I was originally going to do a round up of the last decade, recounting, recanting and recalling the major events of the last ten years. However, I was reminded that this year is not actually the first year of a new decade more than the last year. Think about it, there was no 'Year Zero' (unless you're a NIN fan!)

So, I then thought of doing a runthrough of the last year except in retrospect last year was really just a sleeper year with a few notable exceptions, such as the trip to Frankfurt.

( Summarising the year seems to be the best way to deal with it. )

I hope everything works out just fine for you all.

Right I must start slapping this new year into the shape I want it to be in. Take care y'all! :)

And Also The Trees at The Luminaire, 30 Jan 2010

With support by Katharine Blake & Nick Marsh

Doors: 7.30pm
Price: £10

ISTR 'And also the tress' caused a bit of a stir last time I posted about ine of their gigs so....

Here's a list of just SOME of the fun/odd/alternative ways to celebrate the passing of the old year......

Decadence
Intrepid Fox, Soho 9pm-3am
£3 before 7pm, £7 after, £5 Decadence members
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207794616389&index=1

White mischief
Proud Cabaret, Liverpool Street, 7:30pm-3:30am
Price??? (apparently sold out)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=324969110251&index=1

Beauty
Canal 125, Kings Cross 8pm-2am
£10 (advance)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=164396243426&index=1

Don't you want me baby?
The Roxy, Covent Garden 8pm-3:30am
£15 (adv), £20 (n the door)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=196136969144&index=1

Elixir NYE
The Elixir bar, Mornington Crescent 8pm-6am
£6 (adv), £8 (door)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163208919913&index=1

Clash of the ages
The Green Room, Shepherds Bush 9pm-2am
£20 (only a few left..)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=246594447773&index=1

Vagabonds
Barrowboy and banker, London bridge 9pm-3am
£15? (advanced only)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118000385919&index=1

Ashes to ashes
London Stone, Cannon Street 9pm-5am
£10(adv), £12 (door)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=162158683683&index=1

Slimelight
Electrowerks, Angel 10pm-7:30am
£10 (membs), £20 (guests)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=205099971216&index=1

The Last Days of the Decade
The Last Days of Decadence, Shoreditch
£20 (looks sold out)
http://www.thelastdaysofdecadence.com/

IAMX, 20 Mar 2010, @ ULU, 7pm doors, £20 ticket.

( [Synopsis] A brief round-up of the week )

I may also venture down to the City Road canal basin Christmas fair if I can find the motivation.

As it's Christmas (almost), I thought I'd leave you with Siouxsie singing a French christmas carol!

Have fun.