DerrenWilson.net

Ah, British TV. For all those outside of Airstrip One, once you’ve had your fill of The Office, the next edited-reality show off the production line is Wife Swap.

Wife Swap? Hang on, it’s not like that. There’s no adultery going on. Instead, the program’s take-the-phone-off-the-hook-and-watch-this-ness comes from the conflict between the way two families (usually wife, husband and children) run their households. When the two wives change families, they have to live according to the other’s house rules about housework & food for five days and then – when the TV crew has to be alert – the new wife can impose her way of living on the household.

It is more than just proles shouting at each other: the families seem to genuinely learn from the experience. Not that I would try it myself, or recommend it to anyone else…

PS: back on Monday.

So fine is the You Am I live at the wireless, available free (for a limited time only) at You Am I.net, that I have been listening to it all week on repeat.

The CD I burned looked a bit dull, so I have made a cover for it. Inside the .sit file you will find two .pdfs that should, when printed and cropped, fit in a normal two-part jewel case. The cover looks a little bit like this:

If you like the cover, please feel free to go buy some of their proper records.

It must be getting boring for you, but I have to report that the paper of record (indeed the only paper) in my old home town of Adelaide, the Advertiser has picked up on the Sandwich Project. Truly my heart jumps for joy.

And look at the full colour Sunday Mail. Just like it’s namesake here in the UK, it’s a terrible rag (but a guilty pleasure). Speaking of terrible rags, Rupert Murdoch got his start in newspapers with the now-defunct Adelaide News.

I suppose, as the clocks go back here, Adelaide’s just starting to move into spring weather… Always my favourite season, but some people might disagree.

J’avais développé cet emplacement pour les cinq derniers mois au travail et finalement il est devenu disponible cette semaine. Ayez plaisir svp à aller voir autour – il pourrait y avoir quelques bords approximatifs, mais sa majeure partie semble fonctionner à l’heure actuelle…

I can’t speak a (sensibly pronounced) word of French, by the way.

So who was it you spotted, then? None other than Vini Reilly, Mr Durutti Column. He was crossing Oxford Road: I saw the grey, bobbed hair first.

I can’t remember exactly which issue of Melody Maker it was that I first heard of the DC (that tells you how long ago it was…). Oddly enough for such an obscure (might be the wrong word: maybe intelligent might be better) band there was a tape of their best-of, the one in the orange and black cover, which now seems to be out of print, in the local library’s collection.

I played it all through the (not very) cold Australian winter, in the dark before I fell asleep. Listening to those fingerpicked guitar chords and echoing sounds was like dreaming while awake.

Who wouldn’t want to buy…

Who are Busted?

Back from a stroll down Oxford Road. There’s a few things I need to pull out of the pocket of the big waterproof coat that the weather currently requires. Spilling out over the desk are my lunch (apple, chicken wrap), a lovely bright orange hat (knitted with great élan by Laura), wallet (Comme des Garçons, if you please – I didn’t choose it, if you think I know anything about fashion), a 9-pin serial male to male gender changer, and a PS/2 feminine to 9-pin female converter. Both these last two are still in their Maplin’s bags..

Wallet back in bag. Lunch to the side for one moment because there’s something I need to do first:

Experiment 1: Cheap Jordana Keyboard

You will need a Jornada 525, the serial cable that is supplied with it, a small-ish PS/2 keyboard (stolen from Laura’s Dad, meant for some sort of fibre-optic cable checking doohickey) and the aforementioned cable things. You should have also downloaded the driver for the proper Jornada keyboard and installed it on the PDA.

And now… a pause while I plug everything in…

OK. I now have all the cables plugged together so I have a connection from the keyboard to the end of the black plastic plug that goes in the bottom of the Jornada.

Here comes the good/bad bit.

Plug in cable… Turn on machine… Machine does’t explode. Good.

Type on keys… Nothing happens.

Result of Experiment: You can’t rig up a PS/2 keyboard to work with a Jornada 525 PDA. Yet. Pity, that.

While stuck in the middle of some big .php spaghetti, I enjoy coding to the sound of You Am I Live at the Wireless with Friends.

Rock!

The Sands is proud to present a wonderful new show…

‘How did all these people get in my room?’

Oh, bugger it. This year I’m going to enter (my British passport’s as valid as anyone else’s).