The very term "Space Age" seems antique
http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-frozen-frontier.html

Go back and read the science fiction of the 1940s and '50s, and you'll be struck by the vaulting confidence that this expansion would continue upward and outward, and that a new age of exploration was just waiting to be born.Today that confidence has vanished. Our Mars rovers are impressive and our billionaires keep pouring money into private spaceflight, but neither project captures the public's imagination, and the very term "Space Age" seems antique.

It's been a good year for future club music so far. A small selection of quality in no particular order:-

Cottam - Dawn Walk
Dauwd - Heat Division
Kahn - Kahn
DJRum - 7 lies
Outboxx - Outboxx
Cosmin TRG - Gordian
Sandwell District - Fabric 69
Nail - Ode Rammel
Lapalux - Nostalchic
Samuel Kerridge - Waiting For Love 1-4
Shlohmo - Laid out
Romare - Love Songs (Part One)
Youandewan - Disarray
Delta Delta - Skyway (? ? - Skyway)
A Made Up Sound - Ahead / Endgame
Natan H & Amy Jean - For Her
Synkro - Acceptance
Leon Vynehall - Rosalind
Benjamin Damage - Heliosphere
Anthony Naples - El Portal
Fort Romeau - SW9
Recondite - EC10
Various - Future Foundations
Various - Think & Change

If you like all these, you'll probably like http://whitenoisereview.blogspot.co.uk/

It's not about Tempo, Rhythmic Tendency, Bass Weight and Genre, it's about Mood.

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Really liking Cottam's style of deep house. Espesh this recent EP. Think you might like it. SeeAlso Ubuntu.
https://soundcloud.com/cottam/sets/cottam-dawn-walk-ep

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Tasting notes on Sacred English Vermouth
http://sacredspiritscompany.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=52
and Monin Pomegranate Syrop
http://www.moninstore.com/prod_Detail.html?prodID=43

OK. So, back to back with a bland middle of the road Martini Rossi. Sacred is more complex (duh!), more orange citrus and crucially more bitter. Nowhere near Punt e mes or such like but still more bitter than your average Italian V. Hence Sacred's recommended Negroni is 35ml Gin, 25ml Sacred vermouth, 15ml Aperol, 15ml Campari. So light on the Campari style bitters, light on the vermouth and heavy on the gin. Generally, It's strong tasting so you can use less of it than you would normally. And (hic!) 50ml Jim Beam, 25ml Sacred, 6 drops Angostura, 6 drops Bitter Truth Orange stirred for 40secs is most excellent! Compared with say, Caparno, it's fairly obviously Microdistilliary and in your face, where Caparno is classically elegant. My problem is that I can't get though 1L of Carpano before it goes off and it doesn't keep. So I asked Gerry's for a half bottle but they don't carry them and suggested this instead.

Meanwhile, Monin Pomegranate Sirop is extraordinary. If you stopped using Grenadine as an ingredient because it's too damn sweet, try this. Darker colour, more citrus acid, less sugary stickiness. Same kind of deal in that I ask Gerry's for an alternative to Grenadine, preferably less sweet and they suggest this. The background is a wonderful cocktail that Zetter's do called "Master at Arms". Myers dark rum, port evaporation, grenadine. When they do it, it's dry and delicious. When I try and re-create it, it's sweet and like cough medicine! Maybe that's why at Zetter's it's £8.50 with a door policy, unlike my kitchen. So what makes Pomegranate syrup into Grenadine?

via Gerry's in Soho, London http://www.gerrys.uk.com/ Where I also picked up a bottle of Portobello Gin http://portobellostarbar.co.uk/portobelloroadgin/

Sorry, what is "(post)cyberpunk" ?

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Any ideas of how to get a USB power socket on a 36v electric bicycle? How about gutting an iPod/iPhone charger and just connecting the 36v across the mains live and neutral pins? Over-driving a 12v car cigarette lighter adapter? Tapping into the throttle 5v +ve feed?
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Retrophilia is a dangerous disease that is highly contagious so please take all necessary precautions before reading these. Untreated and unchecked it can lead to Retromania and severe neck problems as the sufferer attempts to walk backwards into the future.

If you see a child or young adult suffering from nostalgia for a future that didn't happen, predicted in a past that didn't exist, from before they were born, then please report them to the relevant authorities immediately.

In recent weeks, London has seen an outbreak of Retromania after significant numbers of parents failed to inoculate their children against Right Wing Capitalism. The population had lost it's herd immunity to the dangers of unchecked greed and the longing for a golden past of certainties.

We can't be too careful or society may drown in an ocean of vintage whimsy and any possibility of creativity be lost forever.

1970s http://andwhatwillbeleftofthem.blogspot.com/
1980s http://facesonposters.blogspot.com/
1990s, 2000s http://upclosemaspersonal.blogspot.co.uk/

Not to mention,
http://moundsandcircles.blogspot.com/
http://found0bjects.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.scoop.it/t/hauntology

This post inspired by http://scarfolk.blogspot.co.uk/ via http://boingboing.net/2013/04/23/wyndhamesque-missives-from-sca.html

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I don't normally do this, but I'm going to call it. Marquez for the win.
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An interesting summary of the RSS/Atom feed reader market
http://www.rumproarious.com/2013/04/18/how-large-will-the-payed-feed-reader-market-be/

Especially note this comment:-

I wanted to determine the number of people who use RSS on a monthly basis. Also, how they use feeds is important. I only want to estimate the people who are using something that works like Google Reader. There are a lot of people who use RSS when they use something like Flipboard, but don’t know they are using RSS.
Because of course there are numerous use cases for feeds that don't necessarily look like direct consumption by an end user as relatively raw untouched content. Flipboard, Pulse, Currents are all examples of this. So too are backend services like dlvr.it

The bottom line figures.
- ~ 65m regular users
- ~ 2.6m potential paid subscribers based on typical conversion rates for current freemium services.

Of course, subscriptions are not the only possible source of income for a feed reader service. There's also adverts, selling the user interest data, selling the reader software, selling the aggregated data and probably several others.

Meanwhile, Larry Page in his earnings call talked about Google continuing to work on speculative products. But of course he didn't really talk about closing speculative products such as Google Reader.

"all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel."

JFC!

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Thatch: She was a one-woman Luftwaffe, really.
http://phil-zone.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-one-woman-luftwaffe.html

Genius!

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A most excellent guide to understanding post-everything music reviews from the late lamented Stool Pigeon.

Found sounds -- Go out early onto the streets of Dalston one morning, and you'll find wandering herds of hipsters out recording 'found sounds' on their iPhones, which they will then use as the basis for an experimental EP in the mistaken belief that they are John Cage.

Bonus link. The achingly beautiful https://twitter.com/solovelyithurts is so lovely it hurts for surely "Pain is so close to pleasure".

And by the way. There are no Singles, Albums, EPs, LPs any more. There are just "Releases". So there's no need to put "EP" on the end of your release title. It's not "Breach - Jack EP", It's "Breach - Jack". m'kay? Calling yourself "Various Artists" or "Unknown" isn't funny, it's just irritatingly bad SEO. Same goes for over-use of triangle characters. Looking at you ∆dmin and ∆∆ That's almost as bad as calling yourself AAA Taxis (or should that be "∆∆∆ Taxis") to get to the front of Yellow Pages.

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Bikes that really ought to have an electric assist kit added to them.

http://fuckyeahweirdbikes.tumblr.com/post/47876848296/trecool-blog-donky-bike-bicicleta-de-carga
also here http://donkybike.com/

UK Postie from Pashley. http://www.pashley.co.uk/products/mailstar.html
also http://www.pashley.co.uk/products/courier.html

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Whatever happens to musicians happens to everybody. Including you.

Every year around Jan 7 I get quite disparaging about Bruce Sterling. But then some time during the year he blows me away again with a post or lecture or an SXSW closing speech. This is one of those times where he does it again with too many ideas per sentence.

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I think we need more electric Velomobiles on the roads. It's just a shame that they really don't fit existing US and EU regulations. Perhaps they could be licensed as Quads, but I suspect there's still a whole load of awkwardness around insurance, let alone TUV and MOT testing. I think something that can do 50mph should require safety checking, be licensed and insured, but I also want this to be easy for one-off or low production quantities.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric-velomobiles.html

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Recipe suggestions requested for cocktails that can be pre-made and drunk at room temperature.

Couple of years ago at Glastonbury I bumped into someone walking the crowds and selling shot glass cocktails and cigars out of a backpack and bum bag. The trick is that even doing this in the evening you probably can't keep the drinks cold. And you want everything pre-mixed so you can just pour out measures. A lot of festivals have a ban on glassware, so I guess you could carry 6 to 8 Litre water bottles filled with your mixes.

So what would you make up? Warm Manhattans?
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I think we all need one of these in the garage.
http://www.skyteammotorcycles.com/motorcycle-range/e-max/

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It's an awesome bit of customisation but is the inspiration what I think it is? http://ridethemachine.tumblr.com/post/47519755453

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/apr/07/james-blake-interview-overgrown?
http://www.residentadvisor.net/forum-read.aspx?id=221290

The comments are almost as good as the article.
- James Flake
- please don't use that acronym "EDM". Each time I come across that, my stomach churns a little...James Blake has had NOTHING to do with EDM.
- I'll give the boy a listen but in my experience most current songwriters with the Christian name James have tended to be shit

And form the article:
- The ship" - he means the music business - "isn't just going down. There are people trapped inside, bashing on the windows trying to get out."

So which genre section does this go in? I had to use "other" because it doesn't feel to me like it fits into any of them.

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