Lifedump

What am I doing?  What’s on my mind?

Listening to The Airborne Toxic Event‘s self-titled studio album – a physical CD in brown paper and clear plastic.  None of that newfangled digital paid-for download nonsense.  Incidentally, my first proper music purchase since … November?  Enjoying it in a non-threatening, sounds-a-bit-like-everything-else-I-own way.

Tracking comments about the freshly (re)launched Wired UK on twitter and the blogosphere, with the heightened susceptability to criticism (and taught innards) that comes from spending January with the editorial team as an intern.  London launch party on Tuesday was something else, with familiar faces and – in retrospect – a truly disconcerting number of strange conversations.

Digesting notes and fragments from a weekend in Manchester, at the 4th Oekonux Conference.  Bit of a mixed bag, with quite a lot lost in translation (both from various Germanic and Scandinavian languages to English, and from jargon-heavy engineering/programmerspeak to plain English).  Still, I took a lot from the brain-shatteringly awesome presentations of Smári McCarthy and Vinay Gupta – the latter a key player in Superstruct. Key observations: scarcity is an illusion, transparency and openness are good, Manchester feels a bit like Moscow.

Incredibly stressed about Masters applications.  The Amsterdam application (deadline yesterday) seems to have been swallowed by the Royal Mail (hmm), while Goldsmiths have left me trapped between the demands of a stupidly designed application form and a final-year faculty who seem willing to fake their own deaths if it’ll help in avoiding me…

I’ve booked flights to San Francisco for the Tuesday after Easter.  Nine days in California, on my own, including two days for IFTF’s Ten Year Forecast (Superstruct ‘findings’, scenario workshops, etc.) – about which I’m pretty much close to vibrating in anticipation.  Still need to sort out accomodation, insurance, and the purchase of seasonally-appropriate clothes, but relishing the opportunity to get out of the country and set my own travel agenda. 

(image courtesy of moleitau)