Diverse things, mostly happy

1. Soulwax, aka 2 Many DJs, have an album out called "Most of the remixes...". (The ellipsis represents the rest of a very long title.) The first CD is the Soulwax remixes; and the second CD is those same remixes in a continuous 2 Many DJs mix. If you don't have the only commercially-released 2 Many DJs CD, As Heard on Radio Soulwax Vol. 2, you should try it as it is great, as long as you like your electropop loud and a bit angry. I went to the Hague a few years ago for the first actual holiday I had had since I graduated, and wandered the beach at Scheveningen at dawn listening to it so loudly it probably damaged my ears forever. It does have quite a lot of swearing in it though, so you have to be in an aggressive mood. Anyhoo this new 2 Many DJs CD has a fantastic rock-guitary mix of Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head, and is generally great. Vol. 2 is the only Radio Soulwax CD they released -- I read somewhere that getting all the permissions was a huge headache, so they decided not to do it again, but you often see bootlegs of the other volumes on ebay.

2. Two friends of mine have had baby girls in the last week. One of the mothers is one of my oldest friends from school. Congratulations, and hello Eleanor and Liselotte!

3. Isn't the internet great? Here is an excellent letter a kid wrote from camp, and here is a blog devoted to moustaches, by someone who is clearly gearing up to release a small Christmas stocking-type book... But I particularly like a gadget I found for igoogle which gives the phase of the moon. At the moment it is waning gibbous, at 64% apparently.

4. Britney's new album is very good, apparently. I have it on order. Go Britney!

5. My little rat, Yaffle, looks all set to make it into November, which I would not have predicted a week ago. She likes to sit under my chin and make happy teeth-chattering noises.

6. Technology is great, but lo-fi is good too. When I dug out that image of Scheveningen, from my first camera phone, I thought that actually its basic nature has a charm lost by better quality equipment. It's the same with early photographs; I saw a program on BBC4 when I couldn't sleep about the early years of photography, and the way the Brownie camera turned images into patches of black and greys was actually very effective and made me want to get a Brownie of my own.