In Search of Lost Time

Caterina and I have just finished carving our very first Halloween pumpkin. We had intended to use a template but since I forgot to print it out we ended up just drawing onto the pumpkin with a pencil and then cutting it out. The final result was pretty good if I may say so myself.

We aren't expecting any guisers tomorrow night but we have bought in some sweets just in case and I intend to introduce Caterina to dooking for apples. :)

Caterina and I sampled the delicious food at the sweet little Swedish restaurant Fika on Friday. We had Köttbullar (Swedish meatballs and pressed potato) for main and then I had the gorgeous chocolate cake and ice cream: Kladdkaka Deluxe. Caterina had Våfflor, Swedish waffles and ice cream, which I tasted and was also lovely. The meal was then finished off with Swedish spirits before we stumbled off up Brick Lane to Liverpool Street Station.

The restaurant was small and charmingly decorated and I have found out that I apparently look Sweedish :-). Thoroughly recommended.

My contract with Orange ends this month which happily coincides with the launch of the iPhone 3G on Friday. I decided to pop down to the local O2 (the exclusive iPhone carrier in the UK) store and pick one up. Somewhat naively I expected it to be “busy” but in actual fact I ended up queueing for well over and hour and after finally getting my phone it was not activated for a further day and a half! While the queueing is perhaps normal for such things I am rather disappointed in O2 in that my first experience with them is this somewhat botched launch.

The phone however is my favourite new toy and a welcome replacement for my buggy as hell Nokia N73. I’m greatly impressed with the email and calendaring which make use of the Microsoft Exchange server in my office, notifying me of mail and meeting invites as they arrive, and the web browser is easy to use and actually makes it worthwhile to use the web on the go. The bundled applications are good but the selection of extra ones on the “App Store” seems a little limited at the moment. Hopefully that will improve with time.

For someone who has always been frustrated with the quality of mobile devices the iPhone just seems incredibly polished down to the little details. For instance today I noticed that the screen blanks when I have the phone to my ear during a call but then immediately comes back on when I move the handset away from my ear. The rendering of SMS messages as a conversation and the way the calculator becomes a scientific one when I change the orientation of the screen all add up to a pleasant user experience. I also appreciate the “visual voicemail”, as I believe it’s called, which lets me browse the messages that have been left and rewind while listening to one; finally I have escaped those horrible “press one for new messages” interfaces.

Today is my birthday and with the day off work I have had time to relax and enjoy my presents. Caterina left me a nice lunch and the beautiful looking book "Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum" from Sound 323. The book collects essays from a variety of respected musicians, sound artists, noise makers, whatever as well as a DVD of performances compiled by David Reid which it states is "neither illustrative nor subordinate to the written material" but is instead a chapter in its own right.

The contributors include David Toop whose books I have thoroughly enjoyed in the past as well as various artists whose insights into both the history of 20th century music making and their current explorations I am keen to read.

As well as receiving this lovely book my brother kindly sent six CDs of The Fall in the shape of "The Complete Peel Sessions: 1978-2004". So far I have managed to work my way through the first four jaw dropping disks and am looking forward to an opportunity to take in the last two.

Finally I received money from my parents which I have put towards some nice new clothes that I was desperately in need of. Thankfully this means I will have something to wear when Caterina and I celebrate my birthday together this weekend.

Now I'm off to enjoy the rest of this gorgeous sunny day, hopefully Summer is finally here.

If you wish to contact me via email my address is nlativy at gmail dot com. This also functions as a Google Talk/Jabber account so you can contact me that way as well.