Disgusting

Watched the football last night, of course. It was a lot of fun. Until the end, of course.

If it had been a friendly, that would have been an incrediblly bad result.

If it had been a tournament match against any other team, it would have been even more incredible.

But against the FRENCH?! Oh, come on. Words can't describe...

Jedi Mind Tricks + The Big Red Nebula Band

I took delivery of a couple of great albums this morning. Violent By Design (Deluxe Edition) by Jedi Mind Tricks is on my headphones as I type. Fingathing & The Big Red Nebula Band (Fingathing's 3rd album) is waiting on the playlist. I suspect today will bounce along very nicely now.

Retail. Pleasure you CAN measure. I disgust myself.

Structural Ridiculousness: Beijing Olympic Stadium

Went along to a talk on the Beijing Olympic Stadium by Herzog + de Meuron last night. That's it in the image above (and in the links at the bottom of this post) Just look at the thing! Incredible stuff.

The talk was by ArupSport who're doing all the engineering and specialist sport architecture (i.e. the techie bits). Their focus was on how digital techniques and parametric modelling were allowing them to actually design this thing. There's honestly no way they could do it without the software they've got.

The whole thing as very impressive but I couldn't help feeling that this is a classic misuse of digital techniques. Don't get me wrong, the design is visually stunning and I'm sure the programme of the building will work well, but the financial and physical requirements of building this thing are phenominal. When you look at another digitally designed building, Fosters' Swiss Re Tower for instance, you can see that the use of digital design and construction methods has simplified both the design and construction processes. It has improved the project AND reduced cost. On the Beijing Stadium both design and construction have been made MORE complicated by the use of digital processes. Without parametric modelling, the architects would have to have rationalised their design and made intelligent choices of where to compromise in the battle between their vision and the realities of construction. If they did that (and I hope they still might, H + dM are GREAT architects) I reckon they could get a very similar design for less money and most likely with less construction headaches and time over-runs.

Anyway. It was a very interesting talk. That's just my rambling late night opinion, and what do I really know? I know the renders are VERY pretty. Check them out below.

/ Render #1 / Render #2 / Render #3 /
/ Render #4 / Render #5 / Render #6 /

The BBC haven't copied Channel 4 at all. Nooooo. Not at all....

Check out Mini Motty on the BBC. He's a blatant rip-off of Channel 4's Desktop Richie, but it's still a great idea. He's stomping around my desktop right now, all ready to go when Euro 2004 starts. Great stuff.

The image above is of Beijing Olympic Stadium. More on that later.

Great T-shirts

GENIUS!

Check out Goats for more brilliance. I'm a particularly fond of the "Kittens = Pop Tarts" idea. I'm not sure The Lawyer would like that.

Hot Chip

Went to see Hot Chip last night with a coven of lawbags. Is coven the right word? Some were male so I'll have to think of something equally evil but suitably unisex. All suggestions welcome.

Anyhoo. Hot Chip. They were playing the Brixton Windmill. They were really rather good. Possibly not my kind of stuff on disc, but they certainly rocked the place live. The line-up was just 4 nerdy-looking guys behind synths, a sort of Kraftwerk thing with no suits and more smiles. Goes to show, you can be yourself and still get props. Kudos to them.

As for the Windmill. What a place! Really surreal. Horrible, but also pretty great. Needs to be seen to be believed.

RJD2 undersold

We all headed along to Hackney Ocean on Friday for the Sonar London Event. When you see a line-up that STARTS with DJ Food at 2100 then brings on RJD2 from 2200 til midnight, you expect people to be ramming the doors early. Don't you? I did.

But no. Not in Hackney, obviously. The place was dead at 2130 and the main room was still half empty when RJD2 finished his set. Incredible. What the hell were people waiting for? The headline act was Richard X, for G's sake! We all left the moment RJ left the stage. It was all going a bit too HOUSE. The only redeeming feature was the carioca funk room upstairs where DJ Marlboro was kicking up a storm. It's a smaller room, though, so he actually had some atmosphere to work with.

I guess the main problem was the venue. How did they manage to build such a massive club in such an inaccessible spot? It's huge. There's no way it can be filled by anyone but established artists. Shame.

RJD2 was great though. Seeing him spin live made me appreciate the new album a lot more.

And so we begin....

I've been getting into a couple of blogs recently [v-2, the man himself and SF-J for starters] so thought I'd have a go.

Until the Industries starting going properly and we get the site all made up nice for ya, I'll just post up anything we're doing as we do it.

Now if only I had something to say....