Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it… but leave it up to the duck-billed platypus to make it complicated:

In most mammals, including humans, sex is decided by the X and Y chromosomes: two Xs create a female, while XY creates a male. In birds, the system is similar: ZW makes for a female, while ZZ makes for a male. But in platypuses, XXXXXXXXXX creates a female, while XYXYXYXYXY creates a male.

No, not a comment on the chill that’s in the air, it’s a provisional title for a new tune I’m tinkering with. Check it out here. The beats in the background aren’t quite what I wanted; think I’ve got an extra snare hit in there, must have miss-clicked. The idea is to go somewhere with that finger picked thing… really my favourite bit in it is the Cm - Ebm about 47 seconds in.

Oh, and have (seven years late) been getting into Death in Vegas: fantastically moody stuff.

I can tell I’m hungover by the following symptoms:
1. My eyes have more bags under them than a luggage factory
2. I laugh uproarously at things that probably aren’t that funny, e.g. this. Difficult to explain to the rest of the office.
Damn Live and Let Live and its tasty beer.

Half Life 2, Half Life 2, Half Life 2. OK, I was a bit excited by Doom3, which turned out to be not quite as exciting as I’d hoped for (not that I bought it, it requires a nuclear powered graphics card to make it look good), but I’ve got very high hopes for HL2. And it’s out in November. Yay. That is all.

How about a remote control with only one button, and it’s “off”? I’d get one to use on the screens at Tesco’s, but I don’t think they have an IR receiver in them. Shame, they annoy the shit out of me. Apart from the time they played the Captain Pugwash theme at me, that brought a smile to my face.

There are now photos of my appearance at The Living Room up on their site. I’d like to point out that although I’m looking at my fingers in all the photos, I did look up several times during the gig. Honest. And I resisted the urge to gurn every time I made a mistake, usually successfully. (Wow, double adverb, is that allowed?)

I’m getting back in touch with my rock by (re)learning Joe Satriani’s The Mighty Turtle Head. (I have no idea if Mr Satriani knew what a turtle head was when he named the tune.) The tune is pure rock: cowbell in the intro, quarter note hi-hat sections, crap synth strings in the outro. Fantastic. I first learnt it back in ‘96 when I had no chance of being able to play the solo, so I’m giving it another whirl…

It was good to get out and gig again last night; I wasn’t particularly nervous as the atmosphere was quite relaxed, though I was worried by the shear amount of talent on display by the artists preceding us. First up was Emma York, who had a Portisheadish vibe going on, and could do that breathy tip-hop diva voice perfectly. Think I’ll buy her CD. Next up was Tony from The Modal Monks, who played a couple of (what he called) love songs, then was joined on guitar by Joel from Sunday Driver. Tony’s voice is perfect for modern rock in a Supergrass/Charlatans mode, and Joel is a fine player; I’d guess he’s classically trained as his finger picking skills were most impressive. Joel then went on to play a tune on the sitar, which stirred my desire to buy a Baby Sitar. Next up was Jamie from Kill Freeman (I’ve got to like any band that namechecks one of my favourite computer games), who had a Radiohead-esque vibe going on. The highlight of his set was the final song for which he was joined by Joel and a friend on sitar and djembe.
Then came our turn. Other than myself and Alex there was Russ on second guitar and Tom from Logan on drums (so we weren’t exactly an acoustic band, but what the heck). We’d had one major practice on tuesday night (three hours of playing bass! I thought my left hand was going to snap off at the wrist), which certainly paid off in tightness of the band. Only had a couple of wobbles where I mixed up the chords (ironically in a really easy song), but other than that I had a great time. I’m not a very inventive bassist, root notes are still my usual note choice, but I’m certainly a better bassist than I was this time last week. Roll on more gig opportunities!
Someone was taking photos, so hopefully there’ll be something to show soon as stupidly I left my camera at home. You can listen to one of the songs we played on tuesday night as I recorded the rehearsal; check it out, it’s called Hanging By A Thread.

Holy low notes batman, I’ve got a random gig! This Thursday I’ll be playing bass with Alex Harris at The Living Room, an “acoustic music” night held in CB2 in Cambridge. Cool!

Was looking into the 5HT (serotonin) receptor at work, and consequently came across information about LSD, which binds to the serotonin receptor. A particularly interesting site is that of Albert Hofmann, the scientist who first made LSD back in 1938. Initially the compound had been disregarded as it apparently had no interesting pharmacological effects. However, after resynthesising it in 1943, he made the following report:

Last Friday, April 16,1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.

He, and others in his department, went on to perform a series of “self-experiments” on LSD and its close chemical relations. Fascinating stuff! He also alludes to the effects LSD has on spiders, which can be seen here (OK, it’s a pdf; if you want jpegs just google for “lsd spiders”). Also on the Hoffman site, he quotes Werner A. Stoll’s paper “Lysergsaure-diathylamid, ein Phantastikum aus der Mutterkorngruppe” [Lysergic acid diethylamide, a phantasticum from the ergot group], describing the visions he experienced under the influence of LSD:

An evening sky of an unimaginable pale blue over the dark roofs of a Spanish city. I had a peculiar feeling of anticipation, was full of joy and decidedly ready for adventure. All at once the stars flared up, amassed, and turned to a dense rain of stars and sparks that streamed toward me. City and sky had disappeared.

Now I can see why the 70s were so tripped out!

Made a facetious toy: the biotech startup generator.

Jesus cocking Christ, we’ve had no real internet connection at work since last Tuesday. How the hell did people find out information in the old days? It’s funny how used to the internet I’ve become and how much I rely on it for information gathering (though apparently it’s the hallmark of the lazy journo to simply do a google search then write up the results in an article. Not that I’m a journalist, but similar rules apply, I’m sure.) We half expected it to turn out to be some newfangled reality TV show: “Day 8 of the no-internet experiment, and tempers are beginning to fray. On the plus side every phone call that had been put off for the past month has now been made.”

Still getting my CSS float: statements sorted out over on the main site, think it should all look rightish now.