Wednesday Jan 24th- day 19

I have been trying to sort out iTunes on my laptop and get my ipod hooked up. Apple have cleverly tried to stop people from shifting their musc from one computer to another, but a few searhces on google offers op the solution, and I manage to copy over my music. I have 20 GB of music- that's about 4,305 songs and it would take me about, oooh, 12.7 days to listen to it all non-stop. All in something not much bigger than my wallet. The future is smaller and faster memory, simple as that. Anyhow, I have been listening to the "Arctic Monkeys" album (the fastest selling debut of all time, fact fans!) And whilst it's not quite up to the hype (what is?), I am enjoying the tales of getting thrown out of the Leadmill queue. There are some great lines-
"He talks of San Francisco,
he's from Hunter's Bar
I don't quite know the distance
But I'm sure that's far
I'm sure that's pretty far"

I used to live in Hunters' Bar. Yeah, rock 'n' roll!
And this line-

"Dint ya see she were gorgeous,
she was beyond belief
But this lad at the side drinking a Smirnoff ice
came and paid for her tropical Reef
And I'm sitting going backwards,
and I didn't want to leave
Its high green mate, via hillsborough please".

I used to play footy against a couple of teams from Burn Cross. It were rayt rough, as they say. This one goes out to Dick-Dock and Rudi of Burn Cross FC fame. Yeah, rock 'n' roll.

And this line-
"Look here comes a Ford Mondeo
Isn't he Mister Inconspicuous?
And he don't have to say 'owt
She’s in the stance ready to get picked up."

I don't know owt about kerb-crawling, but I like the way he rhymes "Mondeo" with "'owt"! Yeah, rock 'n' roll!

I suppose time will tell if there is more to them than the initial buzz. I guess they'll stop writing about lads and lager after a year or two, and it'll be interesting to se if they sink or swim.

At Uni today I called by to see if this guy was in- I had approached him to be my supervisor initially before barbara, but he wasn't sure he was going to be around. David offered me a stick of gum as we sat down. I liked that- a quintessentially American way of saying hello. He was an interesting guy to talk to- he is into ideas of "emergence"- for example, creating websites and seeing what people do with them. He's done some stuff on September 11th- getting people to simply use their local libraries on September 11th. He's also into wiki's, which is something we are thinking about for our course based in Sheffield. A wiki, as you may know, is a website that anyone can contribute to. You may have seen me linking to wikipedia, which is an online encyclopedia written by people who feel strongly enough to contribute. There are isues about honesty, freedom of speech and censorship with wikis, but wikipedia is surprisingly good. If I was famous, there might be an entry under my name (feel free to start one somebody!) If some bounder maliciously wrote, "Chris Blackmore thinks he can cook, but his chocolate brownies are inedible," I would expect those lucky enough to have tasted aforementioned delicacy to leap to my aid, correct the entry and defend my honour.

After that, I met with Barbara and we moved things on a bit. Contrary to appearances, I am fairly busy reading and thinking about my research. It is takinga bit longer than I anticipated to come together, and that is not helped by the temptation to fall into tourist mode at every opportunity. But I am in much more of a routine now, and trying to keep my head down. So going to art galleries and gigs is definitely not on the agenda.