Monday, 14th of July, 2003

One of the reasonably nice things about Internet Exploder (there have to be some, hidden away somewhere!) is that it can be embedded in other Windoze programs. If Mozilla has anything over IE (and Mozilla frankly sucks in a lot of ways too), it’s the tabbing. It’s just great to reduce the proliferation of windows when you want to browse to a whole lot of URLs at the same time, or if, say, you want to open a whole lof of subpages of a website at once (eg a whole lot of books on Amazon.com). So tabbed browsing rules.
I’ve been using NetCaptor for quite a while, and probably will continue to do so, but one nice IE add-in I discovered recently is the Google Toolbar. Nice functionality for searching the current page, and typing in search terms direct into the toolbar… In NetCaptor you can customise ways of searching different engines, so:

g searchterm

searches Google… Still, the toolbar’s nice, and in standalone IE it’s good for blocking popups, which it does in a far nicer fashion that NetCaptor or Mozilla (in both of which, if you want to briefly turn off popup blocking you have to delve into menus and submenus).
I’ve just discovered another not-so-new tabbed browser that wraps around IE, called Avant Browser. Among its attractions are its own native Google toolbar (which certainly does the things I’d want out of a Google toolbar) and much more sensible popup blocking (you can turn it off with a single click when you want to… Google’s better in that you can tell it to never block popups from certain sites.)
I’ll give it a go anyway. It’s freeware, versus NetCaptor’s trail-then-pay, which helps.

Of course, in Linux I’d probably be using Konqueror, which is introducing tabbed browsing support right now. Good on ‘em! And Mac OSX’s Safari is rather gorgeous… Ah well, *sigh*

Here’s an interesting interview with Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet, in my opinion the most exciting producer around. Along with his excellent new album releases (the latest and greatest being Rounds), he produces countless remixes (I have 2 entire CDRs full of them). He’s just handed in a Radiohead remix, which I await with baited breath.

I’ve just started recording bunches of cello improvisations into the computer, and I’ve been writing some contemplative piano pieces and rhythms. Given that, I was very inspired by what he has to say about the computer being his instrument, and the methods he used to write the tracks on Rounds. I feel like I’m on just that wavelength at the moment. Before going skiing next week I hope to get a whole lot more stuff recorded onto the hard drive, and then work up some heavily processed and chopped up pieces in AudioMulch and Acid.
Great to read that Hebden’s a big fan of Mulch too!

PS post-July 2003, this article is no longer publically available. Email me if you’re keen to find out about it…

Thursday, 10th of July, 2003

Via Electrolite:
Ever doubt that George Bush is a fuckwit? Read this. In which George Bush shows how tough he is by inciting Iraqi militants to attack US troops.
One wonders whether he’s gone too far (the army are none too impressed) but then, one wonders that quite often…

Tuesday, 1st of July, 2003

Margo Kingston’s webdiary on the extraordinary power wielded by Johnny Howard… in which she makes some extraordinarily depressing observations.

Howard wants to go out on a high alright, but he wants the high to be higher than the one he’s already on. He wants to transform Australia so completely that the old Australia can never be revived. His vision is so radical that only a man in complete charge of the political agenda could even dream of it. And the cross media legislation - the one I’ve been writing about in such despair for a week now - is central to his plans.

She paints a pretty dismal picture. Whether it’s needlessly so, I don’t know.
She ends with “There are risks in all this, which I’ll write about tomorrow.” Thanks for leaving us hanging like that, Margo!
I’ll certainly be back to try and have some hope restored tomorrow then…