Damian Gajda broke my Gmail.

Label hiding is my favorite new feature, since it saves me from having to look through labels I rarely use. If I ever need to reach any of my old labels, I just click the “more” link.

I hate it. I create labels for things I regularly want to look at. If a label is rarely used, it’s pointless and I don’t create it. The search is a much better way of finding those sorts of things.

All of these changes also mean the end of Right-side Labels [...] Now that labels aren’t in their own little box and take up much less space, moving them around the screen didn’t seem as important. We realize quite a few of you used and liked Right-side Labels, so if you feel strapped for left nav screen real estate without it, try turning on Right-side Chat in Labs instead.

I don’t use Google Chat, because nobody I know uses Google Chat. It’s completely useless to me. If you want to save me some space, let me switch off Google Chat altogether.

I like labels taking up space. I like labels taking up space because being able to see my labels is useful to me. Hiding them or having them trail off the screen is not useful.

I also liked being able to see my calendar. Which you don’t let me put on the right, and which I now can’t see unless I scroll right down the page past the standard folders, past my labels, past a stupid little pop-up menu I don’t have any use for because all my labels have been set to show.

That screenshot at the top? A big fat block of empty white space. My browser was only set to 1280×1024 for that screenshot. The message list does fill the space, but there’s really no need: none of the subject headers currently displayed in All Mail occupy more than half of it even in this small browser window.

Let me lay the page out how I want, not how you want.

We hope these new changes make labeling even easier and help you stay organized.

I hope you die in a chemical fire.

C P BERRY GROUNDWORKS LTD do a lot of work for the local councils throughout the East Midlands, we are local authority accredited.
We also do work for private clients such as house builders and home owners.
We are specialists in Tarmac Laying, Kerbs, Block Paving, Yorkstone, Driveways.

C P Berry Groundworks Limited are digging up the road directly under my bedroom window at 8 o’clock on a Sunday morning

C P Berry Groundworks Limited are cunts. Completely, utterly, and irredeemably.

Fuck you, C P Berry Groundworks Limited!

So, while the photograph of one of them has been in my sidebar, I’ve been getting a lot of hits from people searching for Ben Dawson’s street art thing The Moment A Thought Explains Itself. The thing is: little museum/art gallery style credit plaques on random walls around the country. They’ve been found in London, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford and in several other cities.

I don’t know who Ben Dawson is either, nor any more about it than the above. But I can point you at a flickr group collecting some examples. Which may be more useful to you than a blog that’s rarely updated save for an occasional post about impenetrable in–jokes at music festivals.

It’s nice here, I think.

And an awesome new song from Projekt A-Ko for free download!

Sweet.

So, lapin found an iPod and had a brilliant idea. She put a song on it and sent it to Matt. Matt put two songs on it and sent it to me. Sweet!

I was really busy and didn’t do much about it for ages. Sorry! But now I’ve put a song on it and sent it to America. I expect lapin will tell you about the song this week, unless she’s as busy as me.

This is an awesome idea and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

I think goz kind of has a point re: obsessive photographic documentation. But still. If I hadn’t had my camera, I would remember pretty much nothing of All Tomorrow’s Parties Weekend Two by now. And my photographs are definitely preferable to tattooing things like “Subtitle’s handshake” and “The Gossettes” and “if you can count, you can be in Shellac” all over my body, like Guy Pearce in that film. And that’s basically the only alternative.

As it is, my memories still aren’t coherent enough to write anything useful now. Instead I will point you to what David, Ste and Simon wrote. And a forum thread where I referenced some jokes that no longer mean anything even to me. James and Rin took some sweet photographs too.

Specifically, on Saturday night when I was watching Yann, I missed lapin.

Can you believe I almost forgot to mention that? Sheesh!

Only the last of these broke my heart.

Even once I’d arrived, and we were settled in to our chalet, things didn’t immediately improve. This is because we decided to watch The Only Ones and outside the “hit”, The Only Ones are a bland, average rock band with an incredibly annoying frontman. Who, incidentally, was the only artist all weekend expressing a hope that we were all on drugs, which was a welcome improvement on TNBC last year.

Saving the day came the Dirty Three. Opinion seems to be divided as to whether Warren Ellis was funny or “impressively dislikeable” but I liked his song intros, and the music. The music made me genuinely consider learning to play the violin, even though I’ve never played an instrument in my life. It fixed everything.

Then there was food, and then there were Devastations, who seemed terribly keen for us to know that they were Devastations. Unfortunately, I consequently can only remember who they were (Devastations!), not what they were like. They were pretty polite about it though, if earnest, so I’ll endeavour to check them out when I have a minute.

Josh Pearson rounded off Friday night. Mumbling to us at the start of the set, people shouted for the vocals to be turned up. He laughed. Ten minutes into his set, his voice filled the room. Tremendous. Towards the end, when he’d already overrun his slot, I thought it was the stage manager whispering in his ear to finish up, but apparently it was just some guy. The devil’s on the run, let’s have some fun.

And then I went to bed, because that car park had really taken it out of me.

Saturday started on the beach.

Mark and Chris talked about architects while I watched a boy and a girl be rubbish at cricket, and four nerds be equally rubbish at football. It was sunny and not too windy and generally altogether lovelier than, say, Minehead beach in December.

For some reason, they wouldn’t let us in to see Félix Lajkó. There was no queue, the doors were just closed. This was and is pretty fucking annoying, because a) Félix Lajkó was literally the only thing at ATP that I hadn’t seen before and really wanted to see and b) we had to watch Magnolia Electric Co. instead. I don’t want to be too hard on Magnolia Electric Co., because I absolutely might just have been in completely the wrong mood to appreciate them, but they definitely, totally didn’t come anywhere close to making up for missing Félix Lajkó.

After Magnolia Electric Co. we had a choice of any band we liked, so long as it was a female singer–songwriter. Which is really no choice at all. Shannon Wright won by dint of watching her not requiring us to move. And that we didn’t have to move is the nicest thing I have to say about her music.

Low’s set was, depending on where you were standing, either awesome or not. From the front, it seemed like the entire crowd fell silent for songs like (That’s How You Sing) Amazing Grace and Laser Beam, and it was beautiful. Apparently, at the back, it just seemed loud and everyone was talking. I was at the front and frankly couldn’t give a shit about the back of the room. It was awesome from where I was standing. Murderer sent a chill down my spine on a sunny day.

After Low and in the interests of not spending all weekend in the Pavilion watching the biggest bands, I watched Mick Harvey. I hadn’t heard any of his solo stuff before. He had some sweet songs and is possibly the most self–deprecating artist I’ve seen at an ATP yet.

Yann Tiersen demonstrated that sound checks sound better in French, that he has not turned into U2, and that he and his band are pretty fucking incredible. I particularly liked the bits with the power drill and the accordion.

Neither The Drones nor Nina Nastasia could demonstrate anything other than that I don’t really like The Drones or Nina Nastasia.

After Nina was done, I met up with Ste and James and James and Gill, who seems sweet once you get past the skanking. We listened to Einstürzende Neubauten for a bit which was, y’know, okay, and then spent the night drinking and wandering until I was called away with a server emergency. It is loads and loads of fun trying to read account numbers and passwords at 4am when you’re drunk and have only a mobile phone web browser.

Sunday started, sensibly, with a lie–in. Followed by A Silver Mt. Zion tuning up, of which more later. And then Papa M, which was beautiful and another fine example of what a largely respectful and lovely crowd had come to ATP this time. People were quiet for quiet bands. I think I used a lot of words like “nice” and “pleasant” after David Pajo’s performance, which maybe sounded like faint praise. But it’s not and those words are appropriate.

Rather than anything more adventurous, I watched the Dirty Three’s second performance. They were good but I’m not sure anyone is good enough to astonish twice in one weekend. A Silver Mt. Zion’s set was scheduled for a two hour slot, so after getting a few photos in the first ten minutes I headed for the back to sit down. In December, there was basically nowhere to sit in any of the venues, except the raised areas at the back of Centre Stage, unless you wanted to sit on a carpet soaked with sticky, congealed beer. This was something Camber Sands did much better. The new arrangement in the Pavilion has plenty of beer–free carpet to sit on though. And brilliantly, if you sit at the back you can awkwardly divert a queue full of Joanna Newsom fans in interesting directions, because they’re all too polite to suggest you move. That the only queue all weekend was made of Joanna Newsom fans is the funniest thing.

I didn’t watch Joanna Newsom, obv. I mean, jesus. Even if there had been no queue.

Anyway, I went to get something to eat after another an hour or so, intending to head back to catch the end of A Silver Mt. Zion’s set, only to find they’d finished after an hour and a half. Somehow I preferred their performance when they were tuning up anyway. There was something a little magical about it, with only a couple of dozen people milling around and wondering if they’d stumbled on a surprise Lightning Bolt–style gig. While waiting for Cat Power, I met Merideth. And by “met” I mean “was kicked by”.

Merideth was the best thing.

Cat Power was louder and happier and more together than I’ve seen her in the past. Nick Cave and Grinderman weren’t quite a finale but had they been, they would have been fitting. A sweet Scandinavian girl dealt with people pushing in while Cave sang Red Right Hand and Tupelo and apparently rather too many of his softer ballads and also too many songs that he’d already played in his first set. But that was okay because I hadn’t seen that and, look, I quite like The Ship Song. Grinderman were immense, Go Tell The Women narrowly edging out No Pussy Blues as my favourite song, and we fought the small but disruptive mosh pit.

And that was almost it. We drank and wandered a bit more with Ste and Lisa and James and James and Gill, and talked about pork gelatin and artificial sweeteners and gin and sugar and a plan for arousing your neighbours, and listened to JC Chasez and Avril and Guns n’ Roses.

We caught a bit of Tren Brothers. They were dull. We caught a bit of Secretary. She was good when she was making typewriter music. We left when she started with the saxophone.

Thanks to Chris’s foresight in booking places on the bus, the journey home was faster and easier than the journey there. I kept falling asleep and nearly missed Birmingham, but not quite. If you were there too, I was (and am) the spiky–haired nerd with the unwieldy camera. I took some photographs with it: photographs of ATP Weekend One on flickr.

And that really was Weekend One. We’ll be back for Weekend Two. See you!

1. The road outside my bedroom window being dug up first thing in the morning.
2. My neighbour playing some sort of racing game so that the walls reverberate to the sound of an engine accelerating and decelerating all day. wheeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE UUUUUuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh. wheeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE UUUUUuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh. wheeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE UUUUUuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh.
3. My neighbour watching what almost sounds like but probably isn’t Dad’s Army loud enough that I keep having to turn up the telly to drown it out, even though there’s at least one room and two walls between me and whatever it is he’s watching it on.

Tomorrow: neighbours I have bludgeoned to death with items of their own Audio/Visual equipment.

Not minor problems. Major problems. Major.

The first three EPs by My darling YOU! on one CD. Sixteen sweet, lo–fi, indie–pop songs from two guys in Göteborg. Sort of twee, but a bit spiky, and summery even during the songs from The Winter Will Take Us All.

Listening to all three EPs one after the other like this, it’s kind of obvious how very far they’ve come. Which is to say, a lot of the older tracks sound a bit crap compared with, say, Please Don’t Talk To Me I Fall In Love So Easily. But it’s also obvious how much potential they have so, y’know, support them. By buying this.

Fun facts about Nottingham: there’s literally nowhere in the city centre you can get a clear line of sight to the sun rising without standing somewhere you’re not supposed to be. Every relatively open space in an elevated position has either a big fence around it and a padlocked gate, prominent “trespassers will be prosecuted” signs, or both.

I stood next to a newish BMW with smashed windows to take these photos. I love living here.

Game of the Year

Winner: LocoRoco

Sony’s PSP is a pretty awful piece of hardware, from its dodgy controls to its meagre battery life to the fact that it’s literally about twice the size of my mobile phone, iPod and camera put together. PSBP, more like. And its software catalogue is grimmer yet, ports of ugly “urban” franchises, hardly a blue sky in sight.

Even so, LocoRoco transcends its rubbish format. The shoulder buttons are pretty much the only ones not designed by an idiot, and it’s such a breath of fresh air that I really don’t mind lugging the PSP onto the train, even though I know it’ll be cumbersome and annoying all day and the battery will probably be flat before I get wherever I’m going.

“The first time you played Sonic the Hedgehog’s Green Hill Zone” seems to be a common point of reference, and with good reason. Even now, exhaustively completed, it still makes me smile every time I play.

Runner–up: LEGO® Star Wars™ II: The Original Trilogy

All the brilliance of the first game, plus all the magic of the original films, and some extra high score–style challenges to aim for. If, like me, you thought any goodwill you had left for Star Wars had long since fled, pick up either of the LEGO® Star Wars™ games to be reminded how special it used to feel.

Slips into second because, despite how much sense infinite lives makes in context and how persuasively Jonathan Smith explains the reasoning behind it, I’m fundamentally a “one credit, three lives, game over” sort of gamer.

Book of the Year

Winner: In Search of a Distant Voice by Taichi Yamada

Okay, this isn’t quite as good as Strangers but if they had been translated in the order they were written (i.e. this one first), nobody would make that comparison anyway. A sweet, melancholy unrequited love/ghost story.

Runner–up: The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson

Er, bit of a guilty pleasure, this one. Blame the fact that although I read loads of books, only about three of them were published this year. But even so, in the field of absurdly vast, convoluted, complicated fantasy epics, nobody’s better than Erikson.

Film of the Year

Winner: El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)

Dark, pretty and horrifically sad. The effects are occasionally a little bit ropey, but the storytelling and imagery carries it through. Dullard Jackson and his wretched ilk couldn’t make a fantasy this fantastic in a million years.

Runner–up: Romanzo Criminale (Crime Novel)

I’m not generally a fan of gangster movies. As well–made as films like Goodfellas undoubtedly are, my enjoyment of them is invariably tainted by the type of cunts who cite them as their favourite films. Unfair maybe, but true.

Beautifully shot and only sparingly violent, Romanzo Criminale is a rare exception. And it features no exaggerated Brooklyn accents and the worst plan to break out of prison ever in the history of all things.

Music of the Year

Winner: Silent Shout, The Knife

Deep and dark and sharp and cold as a glacier. Perhaps in another season it might not be so firmly the best album of the year, but I reckon it would still be in with a shout. Their strongest and most coherent album yet.

Runner–up: Breaking Up, The Research

I didn’t think this year had been all that great for music until I checked my iTunes library. But there have been loads of brilliant albums this year, from artists like Love is All, Jóhann Jóhannson, MONO, Lo–Fi–Fnk, Herman Düne, Isobel Campbell, The Pipettes, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Cansei de Ser Sexy, etc etc.

The Research take second place by virtue of me playing them more than any of those, according to iTunes’ playcounts. You can’t argue with science.

Move the mouse over the pictures to read the accompanying story.

More photographs on my flickr page.

Banana Milkshake

On Friday night, a drunken Scotsman in an otherwise (unusually) deserted toilet asked me if I knew where he could get a banana milkshake.

Naturally (naturally! — everyone knows you should never even look at a stranger in a gents toilet, let alone speak to him) I assumed this must be some sort of disgusting gay slang, made a vague suggestion about buying bananas from Tesco, and left before he could, I don’t know, cottage me or something.

I maintain that this was a rational and reasonable response.

“Oh, ow, get off!”

On Saturday night, there was a couple having sex in the toilets by the main stage, accompanied by some energetic moaning and an occasional red Converse boot or absurd winklepicker thrust from beneath the cubicle wall. I guess this is what happens when you make people queue for ages to get into venues with pretty much no chance of ever getting back in if they leave.

Unlike Friday, every man in there stoically maintained traditional urinal etiquette, despite the sort of crowding and queuing that meant that extra cubicle would have been extremely useful.

Even when a series of panicky gasps and protestations indicated something had apparently gone badly wrong in said cubicle.

Take note, Scotland.

We still don’t know what a TV dinner feels like

On Sunday night, it was discovered that there was an open ventilation shaft in the toilets of Reds bar, from which could clearly be heard the sound of Iggy and the Stooges playing the main stage.

I don’t think anyone really wanted to watch a man who resembles nothing so much as an antique suitcase leaping around and singing songs we don’t like, but obviously any opportunity to circumvent their draconian system of queues and wristbands had to be taken.

Alas, real life once again proved itself inferior to video games and Die Hard, and despite Simon’s best efforts, the ventilation system wouldn’t support the weight of a man. A disappointing anti–climax, then.

Much like that cubicle on Saturday night.

Ste, Rob and Ann from One Life Left have a play. It’s tight, sharp and witty, packs an awful lot into 45 minutes, and features some pretty awesome performances. Just Gabriel’s smile at the end is absolutely spot–on perfect, for example. It’s about good and evil, and people, and things that matter, and if that doesn’t appeal for some reason there are hott girls kissing too.

I give it 3 out of 4 angels, obv.

If you’re in Edinburgh this week, you still have two (count ‘em!) chances to see Speakers’ Corner. Don’t waste them! It’s completely brilliant.

It’s amazing. Via a sequence of startling cameos, a series of unlikely people are revealed to be incredible. A shaven–headed youth in a T–shirt. Spraying graffiti and beating up old people I thought, but no! He rescues kittens. A smug guy in a suit — drug dealer? Heartless businessman? No, he teaches people to read. A black woman training to be a doctor? Why that’s crazy talk.

Gosh, Brian McFadden and Leann Rimes! You’ve really made me reconsider the inconsiderate and ignorant way I look at the people I encounter every day! You’ve completely shattered my biased expectations!

Except that no. No, you haven’t. What you’ve done is to patronize anyone unfortunate to hear your insipid music and view your mawkishly–shot video with a set of imagined prejudices so feeble you could only have topped it by flashing an “OMG! NOT A SUICIDE BOMBER!” caption under footage of some random Asian shopkeeper. Only somebody who has lived the most sheltered of lives could find their naff examples even remotely remarkable. And it looks like an advert for fucking Microsoft or something.

Everybody’s Somebody (on YouTube) is a terrible music video for an awful song. Here are some awesome music videos so you can see how it ought to be done.

Performing Things We Lost In The Fire as part of ATP’s Don’t Look Back 2006 season. And being totally sweet. I’ve never really made lists of my favourite things before but I now have a list of favourite gigs. So far it has this on it, at the top, and that’s it. They were that good.

Koko is a fantastic venue and I was right at the front. And on the way home a drunk got his head trapped in the doors of the Northern line. Which could have been awful, but everyone pitched in to prise them apart and he seemed all right, so I guess laughing wasn’t that bad.

Photos here.

Japanese post–rock. Sounds a bit like Venetian Snares meets 90s demo scene music meets, er, whoever did the music for Taito’s platform games in the 80s. Or like a giant made out of synthesizers beating a video arcade to death as a string quartet plays for it a requiem. Or like a lullaby.

It’s pretty amazing.

Noble got this all the way from Tokyo in a week without even one of the little CD–holding tabs breaking off, joining the ranks of excellent foreigners showing up British record shops who often can’t manage the same from just down the road in less than a month without breaking all of them.