Why do train companies insist of blasting you with announcements of what magazines you can buy and what paninis are on offer, at such volume, in the “quiet” carriage of the train? How is this less intrusive than someone chatting on the phone?

Having returned from 2 weeks Ethiopia at the weekend, I’ve got round to uploading some of my photos. Digital only at the moment, but it was the first trip with my new D90 and I was pleased with the results. There’ll be more photos soon, once I get the medium format pics from the Diana and the 35mm from the Holga back from the processors.

Monastery within a cave, Lalibella, Ethiopia

More photos available here.

It had been a long time since I’d been let loose on the wheels of steel, so I was rather excited to be asked to DJ at Oxford University’s IMSOC night, Misshapes earlier in the week. Needless to say, much fun was had by myself and there were a few puzzled looks following the mix of big band and indiepop…

A Set For The Bar Staff

Jack Payne & His BBC Dance Orchestra – Happy Days Are Here Again
Ambrose & His Orchestra – Soft Lights and Sweet Music
Azure Ray – The Drinks We Drank Last Night
Cat Power – The Greatest
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Stood On Gold

A Set To Eat Pancakes To

Kit Atom feat. Lisa Bear – I Heart Dogs
The Carrots – Jimmy Don’t Cry
The Pancakes – GZM
Helen Love – Helen Love On 45
The Jesus & Mary Chain – Just Like Honey

A Set To Book A Snowboarding Holiday Over The Phone To

Talking Heads – Road To Nowwhere
Seafood – This Is Not An Exit
Spearmint – It Won’t Be Long Now
Pony Up! – The Truth About Cats & Dogs Is That They Die
The Hidden Cameras – I Believe In The Good Of Life
Japan – Nightporter

Photos from the night here.

You’ll probably have noticed I’ve failed to post anything for quite a while. The last blog post(s) were commentary on Swindon’s culinary, er, delights. You’ll be pleased to know my stomach and I won through, I have not died, nor have I been host to any unpleasant food borne critter. Instead, I have just been rather lazy about blogging. And a bit busy, if you’d be so naive as to believe that…

This isn’t the place to discuss work, though I will mention I am actually rather enjoying what I do, which wasn’t expected when I moved down. However, the past few weeks it has felt like I’ve lost everything else that was important to me – friends, getting to gigs, having a “social” life, however insular that may have been in the past. Which is curious, as for the past 18 months when looking at jobs, planning what to do, who to work for and where, my priorities were (and still are) essentially the other way round. Life first, then work. An enjoyable rewarding job somewhere that I enjoy living was the plan. I have the former, I’m currently doubting whether I have the latter.

Somewhere along the line things didn’t quite plan out as desired. At least I know more or less where it went wrong, and why, though the past twelve months haven’t necessarily made that any easier to deal with. Still, at a time when jobs aren’t the easiest to come by, being able to turn up in the office every morning and work with people I like and think about things that interest me isn’t bad at all. And in three months time its all change.

Which brought me to think – what’s the important thing here, what is it I really want from the next 6 months? If its solely work related (and it isn’t), there’s a wealth of options available, in a variety of departments (which is as specific as I’ll get). But they’re all in different geographical locations. I could stay here in Swindon, move down to London or over to S.W. Germany. Swindon has perhaps the work areas closest to my heart; London would provide a plentiful supply of extra curricular activities and easy access to a large number of my closest friends, while Germany may be the place to satisfy the itch to travel and to explore than Wiltshire just can’t provide for.

And yet it gets far more complicated than just that. Does the social life London would provide be enough to compensate for gaining experience in an area I’m not sure I’d want to pursue; going further, in an subject matter I’d quite happily see be made redundant for the resultant environmental gains. The German experience could be fantastic, yet could well be far too Lost In Translation for me, speaking little-to-no German and being even further from those whom mean the most. But is that reason to not go? Isn’t half the fun in immersing yourself in challenging scenarios, testing yourself and coming out stronger on the other side?

I don’t know.

But  I may well keep my self indulgent rambling public for your bemusement. All of which begs the question, why does this blog exist? No longer did I get to explore  Vancouver and the United States (Swindon really isn’t the same!), I’ve no bizarre/tiresome visa/vaccination/Mongolia prep tales to tell, I’ve no longer radio and DJ setlists to publish  and I’m feeling a bit out of the loop to blog about experimental/behavioural economics.

I have however just bought a new camera, so for the mean time, this may simply be a forum for charting my progress as I learn to use the beast. We’ll see…

A long day at work and a long evening of househunting meant all I really wanted this evening was a good bit of cheap pub grub: warming, wholesome and filling. The Steam Railway pub was an odd venue: one half a normal pub with 4 or 5 hand pumps on, the other side felt a bit more like a Wetherspoons/Walkabout.  Which should have been the warning… Blah de blah de blah. There wasn’t a lot in terms of wholesome pub food on offer, so a burger it was. Full of gristle and more bone than I’d have liked. Like lots of crunchy, sharp bone *shudders*

That is all I wish to say. Memories can be traumatic.

They had Doom Bar on though, which helped settle my stomach.

Tomorrow: somewhere new. Or familiar. Likely to be Pizza Express or the packaged sandwich selection in Tesco. Envious aren’t you?

Having spent most of the evening looking at houses, it was even later when I got to eat this evening and Old Town was just as dead as last night. I settled on a curry from Picklejohn’s. Which seemed to be some kind of pub/bar/curryhouse. They had IPA on pump, so it was immediately better than last night.

The food however was a touch disappointing. The lamb saag hasn’t seen fresh spinach in its life, and the last mouthful of what I assumed to be lamb on the fork turned out to be a large burnt lump of cardomen pods and coriander seeds. Bit of a shame the rest of the curry didn’t taste of anything. Strange colour too, an off green sludgey goo that reminded me of the gunk the kitchen sink got bunged up with last summer. The keema naan wasn’t as bad – though gone was all the light, doughy pleasure you normally get, replaced with a grilled and overly crunchy and extremely flat piece of bread, with something or other tucked inside. It wans’t meat, it didn’t taste of anything, but at least was the right colour.

The barstaff were friendly enough though. I now know not to live anywhere in Swindon beginning with a P. I’ll get stabbed, raped, mugged or whored apparently. Fun.

Its a wet Sunday night in Swindon and I’m hungry. However, I spent longer in Oxford than planned and can’t get into the B&B, so finding food becomes my first priority before it’s too late. About the only place that is still serving food and isn’t completely empty is MaKenzie’s Bistro, which looks a little bit like an upmarket Yates’s.

They’ve no real ale at all. Oh dear.

They’d hardly any food in the freezer so the microwave was undoubtedly feeling neglected. Burgers, pies, fish and chips, sausages and tuna are all off. To be fair, the girl on the bar let me order my fajitas without asking for the extra £4 over what I’d already paid. It came out quickly, on a sizzly hotplate, which seemed promising. Shame then that the french dressing had totally missed the salad and instead sat in a mushy puddle in the middle of the now very soggy tortillas, while the plastic cheese had sweated some unslightly mess into the middle of the plate.

In all honesty, it wasn’t too bad. The beef was fine, if a bit chewy, but the peppers and onions were both crispy and nicely charred. And there was lots of it. Still, £12? Hm. I have since been informed they apparently do a good salad, so I may yet venture back to investigate that.

So, last week my MSc dissertation finally got given in after a long hard slog of data analysis, baffling econometrics and data procurement frustration. In the end, I think I’m fairly pleased with it. I’d stick it up here for your criticism were it not for the pesky NDA preventing me from doing exactly that. Briefly, I found more or less what I was looking for: people are dynamically inconsistent in the domain of online television, as they’ve been found to be elsewhere, and the externally validity of economics experiments is somewhat valid. There you go, 5 months work and 15,000 words reduced to an off the cuff and brief sentance.

All of this meant it was time for me to (sadly) leave Nottingham and move elsewhere to start in the world of work, to pay some taxes and be in the office drinking tea instead of the library. Leaving Nottingham was really rather sad, saying bye (if only for a while) to so many good friends who’ve made my time in Nottingham over the past 4 or 5 years the most enjoyable I’ve had. Driving back to the parental home was when it really started to sink in; leaving behind everything safe, comfortable and enjoyable about Nottingham to up sticks and set up shop somewhere completely new, somewhere where I knew no-one to start a job I’m still not sure I’m competent enough to do satisfactorily. Even harder was doing so alone – I’d always assumed that if I moved away, it would be in the company of someone else.

Yet I’ve found the move to some extent rather libertating. I stopped off in Oxford on Sunday on the drive down to have a walk around the Cowley Road area, where I’m looking to move. It was a thriving hive of activity, even on a drizzly Sunday evening. It reminded me of aspects of both 4th Avenue and Commercial Drive in Vancouver, a long street packed full of interesting cafes, ethnic restaurants/food wholesalers and friendly pubs and bars. With barely a chain on it (though I do imagine it was far better before C*sta Coffee made an appearance and before The Zodiac became the C*rling Academy), it just seems such an interesting and exciting place to be. Had a couple of nice chats with randoms in coffee shops; something I wouldn’t feel able to do in a city like Nottingham but seems so natural in Oxford.

However, Oxford is still a bit of a way from Swindon, where I’ll be 9-5ish 5 days a week. What is a touch scary, is that I’m not sure I’ll really be able to afford to live in Oxford. Rent and petrol could easily be over half my salary, which is ridiculous. Still, I’m holding out for finding somewhere cheaper – I know the commute would be a pain but I know it’d be worth it, to be able to walk into town and have a few pints in a lovely environment.

Swindon is everything Oxford isn’t. That’s to say, it has a tiny smattering of independent shops or restaurants, possibly a few non chain shops and no architecture of note that I’ve noticed. The town seems to be dead every evening I’ve walked around and I’ve yet to be impressed by any of the restaurants. In fact, as I’m staying in a B&B while I sort somewhere more permanent to live, eating out has become a real drag. It used to be something I loved, especially when over in Canada/USA, where the food was cheap, delicious and the restaurants almost without exception exciting and vibrant. Here, I find myself sat with a pint reading a book, doing my best to strike up conversation with anyone that looks reasonably [in]sane and more often than not failing, then eating quickly so I can retire to the relative comfort of the outside world or the B&B. It has become a chore rather than a treat.

Which leads me to the next couple of posts. As I’m forced to eat out expensively for the foreseeable future, I may as well put some short reviews of the places I’m eating in on this here blog. I don’t expect anyone to take any notice of what I say, but I do hope you’re mildly entertained by my quest for culinary ok-ness in Swindon.

For those of you that have asked if there’s a way to listen back to Monday’s radio show, well, there is. Toby has hosted the show on his website so you can stream until your heart is content. I’ve not listened back, but a quick disclaimer from what I can remember of the show. It wasn’t technically wonderful as Toby, Alex and I kept jumping between microphones. Hence the levels are all over the place (meaning I’m deadly quiet for most of it). Other than that, it was great fun.

So, who’s going to give me a radio show in Oxford then?

Listen again to Transmission.

Last night was my last radio show on URN before I leave Nottingham and move south this weekend. Having been doing the show in one form or another for 4 years or so now, I have to say it was really rather sad leaving the studio for the final time knowing I’ll never be back. The show itself was really good fun, Alex (bless him) sacrificed his Jazz Corner to allow me 15 minutes at the end of the show to play a few songs back to back. My quickly compiled mix probably reflects fairly well what I’ve played on the show over the years – a bit of country here, a bit of gabba there, some noisy indiepop, a bit of J-pop and the utterly beautiful track by Azure Ray I closed the show with. It was really lovely to get texts in from people listening at home too, thank you all!

Keep listening to the show every Monday, Alex and Toby will continue to do a fantastic job, and they may well be joined by various Nottingham based guests as the weeks go by. In the meantime, I need to find myself a community based radio station somewhere round Oxford/Wiltshire to fulfil my radio desires… I could be tempted to do an entirely country based show, though no doubt there’d be bits of P!OP! and noise in there somewhere too…

Playlist was:

27th October with Alex, Toby & Tom
Tom A Is Leaving But Dry Your Eyes, Here Are His Selections Special Edition
featured album: Squarepusher – Just A Souvenir
Kid Atom feat. Lisa Bear – I ♥ Dogs
Times New Viking – Western Civ
Sonic Youth – Tom Violence
Pinch – One Blood, One Source (Instrumental)
DJ Scotch Egg – Tetris Wonderland
The Fall – Green Eyed Loco Man
The Mai 68s – Totality For Kids
Joker – Stuck In The System
Shit and Shine – Recommencons
The Pipettes – I Like A Boy In Uniform (School Uniform)
Clipse – Dirty Money
Nifty – Traful
My Little Airport – Leo, Are You Still Jumping Out of Windows in Expensive Clothes?
Orchid – New Jersey vs Valhalla
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – So Everyone
The Carrots – Kissing & Telling
Josef K – Heart of Song
Saturday Looks Good To Me – Meet Me By The Water
Squarepusher – The Coathangar
Crystal Stilts – Spiral Transit
Jaco Pastorius – Punk Jazz

Tom A’s Credit Crunch Country Corner
Ballboy featuring Laura Cantrell – I Lost You But I Found Country Music
Marcel – I Love This Song
Lance Miller – Old Back in the New School

PORTAL – Glumurphonel (courtesy of Dominic Fox at Poetix)
Squarepusher – A Real Woman
Squarepusher – The Glass Road

Tom A Is Leaving And He Is Emphatically In The Mix
Josh Turner featuring Ralph Stanley – Me and God
Hyper Kinako – 2 Tadgers
Papas Fritas – Questions
Shitmat – Loveheart Trilogy
The Magnetic Fields – Zombie Boy
Azure Ray – Displaced