I’m off to Pontins this weekend, to a festival of music that’s been curated by Stewart Lee. I am very excited. Because, although “Stewart Lee” is probably my favourite comedian, the thing that first drew me to him was his taste in music.
Continue reading Stewart Lee
All posts by Dan Sumption
Small Things
Last week, the area around the Students Union at Sheffield University became littered once more with banners and posters, indicating that student elections were about to take place. It reminded me of something from my past. Something very small, but which changed my life. Something I had long forgotten, but am eternally grateful for.
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Empty Space playlist episode 0001
This is the return of the Empty Space art radio show after a hiatus of seven-and-a-half years. To commemorate this dawning of a new era, this show is numbered 0001.
The DJ is a robot.
The show is available to play and download, for a short time, on Soundcloud, and for a long time, on Mixcloud.
The playlist is below.
- Eccentronic Research Council – Mind Yore Language, from the album Magpie Billy & The Egg that Yolked(A Study of the Northern Ape in Love)
- Alan Watts – Pure Sound (soundclip from Alan Watts website)
- Spike Jones and his City Slickers – Pimples and Braces, from the album Go Crazy with Spike Jones
- Baba Naga – Osku Til Osku, from the EP Baba Naga
- Air – The Ragtime Dance, from the album Air Lore
- Zali Krishna – episode 1 of our weekly serial, Near Andromeda
- Hans Albers – Das Herz von St. Pauli, from the album Das Herz von St. Pauli
- Klaus Johann Grobe – Koordinaten, from the album Klaus Johann Grobe
- Spratleys Japs Vine, from the album Pony
- Jerry Goodman & Jan Hammer – Full Moon Boogie, from the album Like Children
- Matthew Clegg, stood by the canal at Mexborough, reads his poem The Sinkhole, from his collection The Navigators
- Champion Kickboxer – Thinking, from their album Perforations
- Screaming Maldini – Last Day Of The Miner’s Strike (Pulp cover), from the compilation album Which Side Are You On, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike
- Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere – When Thin Clouds Scud Across A Bright Moon, from the album Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere
- William D Drake – Liferaft, from the album Revere Reach
- Toucans – I don’t believe in that, from the album Toucans
- Raymond Scott and Dorothy Collins – Tiger Rag, from the album At Home with Dorothy and Raymond
I don’t do Voicemail
I have never liked voicemail.
I’m not keen on phones in general (there is a great Medium post, Why I don’t answer most phone calls, which explains why the telephone is my least-preferred means of communication).
But voicemail, ick. Unlike phone calls, voicemail has no redeeming features.
Here are the reasons why voicemail is evil and needs to be burned with fire:
Continue reading I don’t do Voicemail
Sheffugees
This weekend I attended a “Sheffield refugee hackathon” organised by the folks at Yoomee. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, having never been to a hackathon before, and being unsure how well the fairly specific set of application-development skills I’ve been using over the last few years would generalise to building something that could be of benefit to refugees and asylum-seekers, but it was a great experience and I’m really looking forward to the next one (which should be happening in around 6 weeks time).
Continue reading Sheffugees
Knitting Code
Last night, I watched Greg Wilson‘s excellent talk “What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It’s True” – which I now think is perhaps the most important video about software development that I’ve ever watched:
Your Detox-debunking article is Bullshit
It’s that time of year when a lot of folks’ thoughts turn to detoxing. It’s also the time when a lot of other folks’ thoughts turn to rubbishing the idea that detoxing could ever be anything beneficial. As a some-time scientist, logical positivist, gleeful-debunker and proud skeptic, you might hazard a guess at where I stand on this. No. I’m firmly on the side of the detoxers.
My anti-anti-detox-bullshit detectors went into overload yesterday when I saw a friend share a Cosmopolitan (I know, I know, fish: barrel) article entitled Why Your Detox Is Bullsh*t. I’ll happily admit I didn’t read the article – life’s too fucking short. My immediate response to the headline was:
Continue reading Your Detox-debunking article is Bullshit
Berlin
Clearing out my hard-disk, I found a file containing the following text. It was the beginning of what was to be a complete journal of my first trip to Berlin, in November 2014. As it was, I only got around to writing up the first day. Here it is…
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Start Drawing Cocks
I’ve just spent the weekend with poets. At 4am Friday night/Saturday morning, I was challenged to recite a poem I had written. But I could only remember scrappy two-line nonsense verses that I’d dreamed up back in the 20th century.
Saturday night, again, everyone recited poems. And I remembered that I do have a poem, a poem that I’m proud of.
One year ago, Leki died. One year ago, I wrote this poem, and performed it at his wake. And so here – with apologies to WH Auden (but not many of them) – it is.
Learning Software Development with Microsoft Office
I was recently listening to a JavaScript Jabber podcast featuring Dan Abramov, where he stated that he got into software development because at school he was taught PowerPoint: he loved making animations, and one day discovered the macros that powered those animations. These macros were actually scripts: by changing values within them, Dan could programatically alter the animations.
This reminded me of my own route into the software industry: though WordBASIC (most of you under 40 probably won’t remember WordBASIC: it’s what Word macros were written in before we had Visual Basic for Applications).
Continue reading Learning Software Development with Microsoft Office