The estimate is that my computer will have finished data recovery sometime Sunday afternoon. This means Monday at the earliest and probably Wednesday. Today I was looking at external hard drives. The price has dropped somewhat since the last time I looked. Was peering at the Western Digital 1TB box, I have to institute a new backup procedure since the last one died anyway. Maybe this time I’ll go for something major. Been thinking about reconfiguring my computer use a little bit in any case.

I think I’d use IM a lot more if I could set it to audiovideo only. I can’t type in IMs while I’m working. I’ve tried, but it just doesn’t work. Eliza Gauger always tells me that she can’t work without IMs, and figures it’s a generational thing. Hers is the first generation to grow up on the internet, and that’s just how they learned to do things. Half of the appeal of the games sites my daughter uses seems to be in the built-in IM systems.

But, of an early evening, when Lili wandered into the office, I’d bring up IM and find Laurenn, and switch to a/v, and Laurenn would wave from the Bay Area at Lili, and they’d talk to each other about how weird it was to be able to see and speak to each other through a computer screen (and then Laurenn’s evil cat would wander past and sit on the laptop or something)… And that just seems more natural to me.

Although it’s possibly just a wish of a child of the 70s for the videophones that tv and the comics taught us to expect. The ones on THUNDERBIRDS even had an audio-only function for when you looked like shit.

I loved THUNDERBIRDS. Save the world, go back to your island base, get rat-arsed, smoke a thousand cigarettes and hit on the Quality and the Asian girl. These are the lessons tv taught us back then.

I will go now, because Ariana says these notes are taking on the tone of a guy on a desert island talking to his pet coconut.

We´re all fairly sure my computer has been abducted by perverts, at this point. If I´m very lucky, I might be online again by Monday afternoon. All of which is just a rolling reminder that I has none computer or webbery and I´m posting by email.

You know, we all bitched about Einar back in the day, but it has to be said that the best Sugarcubes songs are absolutely about the collision between Einar´s leering surrealism and Bjork´s soaring otherworldliness. ¨Regina¨ has that majestic chorus, but it doesn´t thrill without Einar yelling his mad bullshit about lobsters in the two seconds before Bjork takes her breath and launches into it.

In fact, you wonder if a large part of her career arc since then hasn´t been a slow transformation into Einar.

I have found a little three-inch mini CD thing on the back of a shelf called ¨Der Bekannte Post-Industrielle Trompeter.¨ I am a little worried that it may not actually be real. I am even more worried that I may somehow have caused it to be real. Is there a Ray Mears Extreme Survival episode where he gets cut off the internet for a week? There bloody should be. I love Ray Mears. I have his books, and covet his parang. Which is a knife.

Robert Mugabe has commenced his election campaign by denouncing his opponents as witches, whores and two-headed creatures. I sense missed opportunities for the Yanqui political season, and look forward to John McCain denouncing Barack Obama as a sorceror.

So the repair shop says “call back in 48 hours while we work our last-ditch effort.” So I call back today, 48 hours later. The repair shops says “um…the boss is out. Call back tomorrow?”
Annoying. But I don’t care, because I have just uncovered my long-lost copy of ODIN by Julian Cope. ODIN is “a simultaneously-synthesized parallel-harmonic Breathing Meditation of 73 minutes and 45 seconds’ duration.” Released on Head Heritage in 2000, it’s one of the most inspirational pieces of music in my collection. (And one day I’ll bore everyone to tears with my specific reason for keeping a CD collection.) Head Heritage (co.uk – google it) may still have copies, but check Amazon, your local one and co.uk, for it if they don’t. It’s one massive circular-breathing vocal mantra with Mellotron and other electronically-imported atmospherics, labeled as a “meditation on Silbury and Waden Hill” — a consideration and evocation of the dramas and mysteries of the ancient English landscape. It’s one of those things I can get absolutely lost in, and emerge from with my thinking retuned.
Sent by email from Nokia 810, of course.

Haven´t even heard from the computer shop today. I suspect my computer lays in a shallow grave in their back garden, like a dead rabbit. This serves only as a reminder to all that I remain offline and desktopless, and am posting this via email from a phone.

I am also rather concerned about the sudden urge, half an hour ago, to alphabetise my cd collection. If I don’t get my computer back soon, I will clearly be found constructing rows of tiny houses out of toenail clippings, earwax and scrote-hair in the very near future.

I just thought of names for the houses. I must go now.

Well, the Nokia/Maemo boys and girls will be delighted to hear that I managed to write an entire premise document on the 810 and got it sent off via a bluetooth tether to a N95. My eyeballs are completely shot. Also managed to get some FREAKANGELS pages written — luckily, I´m holding a lot of that in my head right now. I would kill for an open wifi spot around here someplace, though.
Dusted off an old CD player, and am listening to the first CocoRosie album while finding myself doing odd things like paging through a book of Bauhaus design, rediscovering the art of Blue Note sleeves (I love old sleeve design, and Blue Note has always been a favourite. Sleeve notes kind of died out before my time — can you miss something that was gone before you knew about it?) And re-reading Tarkovsky´s SCULPTING IN TIME, which is useful not only for some insight into his method, but also his insight into others, like the way Bergman uses sound. Which I´m sort of picking around at the same time as I pick around my responses to The Baroque Cycle (and baroque art in general) and THE BLACK DOSSIER, which I´m coming to see as baroque in many ways. Baroque can be characterised, after all, as the grandiose and insanely detailed display and exercise of complete control over one´s art. It is to say See, here, I have power over base matter. Can you think of a better description of BLACK DOSSIER? Matter doesn´t get much more base than the mire of British culture he dredges out, and yet, in vast and intricate detail, he gets an alternate history out of it. The book interests me in lots of ways, not least because it doesn´t quite work for me. Like Eddie Campbell´s FATE OF THE ARTIST, even books you find to be artistic failures are instructive when performed by savants of the medium.
Sent by email, naturally. Good night.

Well, I didn´t get hit by the earthquake. The computer shop has decided to try one more last-ditch recovery effort. Note: if your OS fails to launch, and tech support has you try to boot from the resources CD — don´t. That´s what´s foiled a complete data recovery.
I almost told them to just wipe the machine and bring it back, but the bit´s between their teeth now and they´re refusing to give up, bless ´em. The downside is that I won’t get the machine back until Friday at best.
So I´m writing here via email for the foreseeable. Which I find I am actually quite liking. Twitter is currently working via the handheld, although, with Brian Reed apparently hellbent on giving us a minute-to-minute report on the weather in whatever shithole he lives in, I expect to hit the 250 texts/week limit any moment now.

So it turns out that one of the things tech support had me try may have completely bollocksed the computer, and any kind of data recovery is unlikely at this point (as noted earlier, my backups had failed too). I find myself less upset about this than I expected. I´ve lost a music collection, of course, and some current work (all the notes for the graphic novella I´m to start writing next week, which is a bugger)… But I appear to be able to muster little more than mild annoyance or minor disappointment, and that only at a few things. My research material is largely preserved, here and at delicious, as are my photos.
Although life would have been hugely more convenient without this happening, I´m wondering if I haven´t been done a bit of a favour. A wiped computer, for me, is not unlike being presented with a clean slate for thinking. All previous ideas erased. Not necessarily a bad thing, on the occasion of your fortieth birthday. Not bad at all.
(Oh, and on top of everything else, I got knocked flat Monday by what was either a massive allergy attack or a 24-hr lungfoam infection. Which meant I finally got to finish reading the last of Neal Stephenson´s Baroque Cycle. I´d never normally recommend you read a 3000-page work, but the Cycle is just a towering piece of work, and I think you should read it before you die. A hundred pages from the end, I got that terrible longing sadness, the one that comes when you realise youŕe near the end of something and you´ĺl never have the joy of reading this in the same way again.)
Also, with the right keyboard, this Nokia 810 is a fucking joy to write on.
Sent from email, obv.

If anyone’s wondering, by the way, I’m posting these via an email-to-blog system.
So the computer has been collected for data recovery and restoration. Apparently I can expect a call tomorrow morning with the results. The guy’s not taking any chances, and is going to clone the drive before slaving it and poking around. We live in hope.
In the meantime, Shi informed me through Twitter that Stage6 is closing on Feb 28, so if you want any videos off there, grab them now. I am even more incensed about being offline than I was before, as I’d barely dented the Sherlock Holmes shows on Stage6 (got most of them on videotape, but…)

I am writing this on the Nokia 810 tablet — bless you, Quim Gil, and who knew this would become mission-critical kit so quickly? — As bluetoothed into the phone. It turns out that data recovery is in my future. A professional data recovery service just turned down the job — ¨ItÅ› only a 250GB hard drive, sir, you´d be better off taking it to a local shop rather than have us charge you 900 quid for such a little job¨ — and so I have to call around the local places tomorrow to find someone who can expedite the job of slaving the drive, yanking the data off it and reinstalling XP over it.
Short version: I doubt Iĺl be online before Wednesday, somehow.
So, if youÅ•e someone looking for pages from me, or waiting to hear from me on some social network or forum…youÅ•e shit out of luck, Im afraid…

Well, I did wonder how this week could get worse. I walked away from the computer for five minutes this evening, and when I came back it was dead. Windows XP won’t boot, and tech support thinks the hard drive file structure has corrupted or just plain broken. I didn’t mention that my backups failed earlier in the week, did I? That was Sunday’s job. So I’m offline, and unable to work effectively if at all, until Monday at best. Unless I do a complete restore that erases the hard drive, ha ha.
I am now waiting for the house to burn down.

I’m writing this on the Nokia N95 8GB, using a bluetooth keyboard. My trusty Treo 600 finally coughed its last yesterday evening. It no longer syncs to the computer. So I’ve slaved AOL email to the phone, for now, and will have to sort out word processing on the Nokia 810 I was kindly given a couple of weeks ago. Bluetooth keyboards are a bit mushy compared to the plug-in keyboards I’m used to. And now reading the news incurs a data charge, damnit.
Poor old Treo. It’s been all around the world with me. I’ve written comics, screenplays and most of a novel on it..

Well, that was an awesomely shitty few days. Let’s see if this week’s any better. Bad Signal’s still down, and this time I’m obviously going to have to move the service. Stay subscribed for now, in case I can get one last send through the system, but watch this page for news. Thanks.

The Bad Signal list is down again. Hopefully this will just be another short outage.

My mailing list, Bad Signal, has been down for 24 hours. No idea when it’ll come back — the guy who runs it does it for free, and is usually terminally busy, so it could be a while. Not a big deal, but if anyone was wondering why I wasn’t inseminating their inbox…

bad signal
ME

I have an confession to make.

I have ordered a man-bag.

According to a Lifehacker thing
someone sent me this morning,
they are also referred to as the
"go-bag" or, wonderfully, the
"machismo tote."  Zoetica insists
on calling them "man-sacks," but
she's a sick little monkey.

I've just gotten sick, finally, of
stuffing everything in my pockets,
especially in summer when I can't
wear my long leather jacket.  And
I'm always missing something.  The
Bluetooth keyboard for my phone,
or the hands-free set, or plasters,
or a book, or...it goes on.  I really
needed a knife the other day,
and of course it was in the drawer
at home (a big Swiss Army blade,
which actually should have been
in the trug, but still).

I was already in the process of
refining my kit -- I bought Niki a
Sandisk 1GB mp3 player, and then
nicked it off her for the San Diego
trip, as my own Archos 20GB is
very heavy and bulky and I needed
to buy back some bag space.  And
I like it well enough, with noise-
cancelling earbuds, that I've ordered
one for myself.  But when I started
thinking about what else I really 
need to carry... Bah.  Man-bag.

So I've ordered a Storm bag.  Not
a huge one, but I like the design, a
distressed PVC and textile mesh.
Well, as much as you can like a man-
bag.  And now I'm planning the kit.
Chief among which is a hand scanner.
I test-drove an optical pen-shaped
text scanner a few years back, but
never really got on with it -- and in
any case, I need to be able to scan
images on the road, and a camera
shot won't always cut it.  So I've
bought a Docupen with a 1GB card
-- the size of a long pen, it'll scan
to A4, and store a hundred images.
Three different kinds of Moleskine,
with pens and pencils -- getting out
of the habit of carrying paper and
pen was probably a bad idea, I don't
sketch anymore.

(I suddenly wonder if the Docupen
will USB into my phone?)

Treo, keyboard, spare keyboard
(a Belkin infrared), phone, phone
keyboard (bluetooth).  Victorinox
survival kitbag with a Swiss Army
Champ in there.  I need to find a
decent monocular, I think.  Sling
the Cybershot in there (the 7.2MP).
And the Sandisk 1GB.

Man-bag.  God, I am so sad.


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bad signal
WE

Up late again.  Very bad.  Need to
get a Second Life Sketch written in
the next few hours.  Which will be
a bastard, because the grid's been
grinding so fucking slowly over the
last week.  Have barely been able
to manage being inworld for five
mins at a time over the last week.
There's a real End Of Days feeling
about SL for me right now: Voice
is going to finish them off unless
they get smart fast.

It sometimes occurs to me that The
Smiths had the perfect pop career.
A single every three months, one
album a year.  Take out the touring,
and that would be a wonderful work
rate, wouldn't it?

Of course, that was back in the days
when mystique still lived.  Don't see
it so much anymore.  Now we can
pretty much see into the colon of
even non-entities like the mouthy,
horse-faced Sade tribute act Amy
Winehouse on YouTube on an hourly
basis.  And a search for actual news
instead delivers pages of Britney
Spears crying painfully after a 
private custody hearing.  Even
though she was clearly one of those
mad fame-craving children that
LA pod-houses squat out year on
year like a humanoid factory, I
find myself feeling sorry for her.
She should have been able to exist
as a perfectly made-up and 
perfectly lit pop confection, a
virtual creature, and then allowed
to fade away into a real life when
her time was done.  Instead, we
get presented with her daily, almost
retching with pain and fear, her
weak chin pulled back into her neck
as her mouth twists with the agony
of trying to hold back hot tears in
the face of a bunch of people with
cameras.  Puffy eyes behind huge
ugly sunglasses.  It's no wonder they
all go mad.

Coming out of a restaurant once
with Patrick Stewart and Wendy
Neuss, I walked into paparazzi
waiting for him.  As they cranked off
their shots, Patrick said, "well, you
can't tell Niki you just went down
the pub now, can you?"  And then
he turned to them, smiled, and
said, "Thank you."  It takes a 
certain perspective to know that
those glass eyes can turn nasty.  I
imagine that, like tipping a cabbie,
you never know when a painless
"thank you" will do you a favour
down the road.  And that snakes
should be respected, if only for
the harm they can do.

Wow.  That was a tangent, eh?


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bad signal

Just reconfirming the URL for  Panel & Pixel  as

http://www.panelandpixel.com/forum/index.php

Go and say hello  to Rantz.

-- W  




   

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bad signal
WARREN

*  This sitting-outside-in-the-
smoking-compound shit is getting
old.  It's cold and rainy every day,
and the wind keeps dumping the
ashtray out.

*  My US comics convention
appearance for 2008 seems to be
locked already.  It's not San Diego,
no.

*  Note about San Diego: I wasn't
trying to be a dickhead when I
wouldn't shake your hand.  At Heroes
Con last year, I shook hands with
everyone, as everyone stuck
their hand out, and by Saturday I
was in fucking agony and having to
ice my hand down in the hotel.  I
must've shaken hands with five or
six hundred people by that point,
as well as signing thousands of books
with that hand, and it was pulp.
Given that my signing schedule at
San Diego was something like four
times as bad, we made the decision
to disallow handshakes in order to
save my hand.  So now I'm reading
that I'm a "douche" for not shaking
hands.  

*  And I still caught the San Diego
SARS.  So consider that revenge!

*  An alternative forum to The
Engine has been raised by Rantz
Hoseley:

http://www.panelandpixel.com/forum

-- W
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bad signal
WARREN

Severe weather warnings in place
again.  The wind just yanked the
umbrella out from my table here
in the pub's Smoking Compound and
deposited it in the back of the 
Chinese take-away next door.

Lost most of yesterday to just
sitting and thinking.  Poor bloody
Mike.  Molly at Marvel said everyone
up there was shaken to bits
yesterday.  At some point I'm going
to have to deal with the structural
stuff, having our book binned and
all that.  But not yet.

380 people on the Club of Mars this
morning.  Go on, let me look at you.
Watching people join and wander
around was one of the very few
things that amused me yesterday.

Today, I'll try and start those
threads on the Engine I talked about
yesterday. 

Great, here comes the rain.

Supposed to record a podcast with
BoingBoing later.  Voice is still a bit
fucked, so this should be interesting.

Just noticed the date.  My Emusic
subscription refreshes on the 16th,
and I still have 76 downloads to use
up.  I love Emusic, but they're slow
to rip the new stuff I want (which
is why I also use Bleep, Rough Trade
and Tunetribe).  Usually, it's not a
big problem.  But 76 downloads left
out of a monthly 90?

The wind's just dumped out the
ashtray.  Time to go batten down
the hatches.


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BAD SIGNAL
Warren  Ellis

http://www.newsarama.com/Chicago_07/Ringo.html

According to  this, my friend Mike Wieringo died on Sunday 
of a heart attack.

We  were set to do a book together this year, something we've 
been intending to  do for a few years.  Things had finally come t
ogether,  and...

The first thing I said upon seeing this was "No."

I'm going  to miss you, Mike.  And so will everyone else.

-- Warren Ellis  




   

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bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

*  130 people joined the Club of
Mars overnight: or, 1% of the Bad
Signal readership.  Which, for a 
Sunday night, ain't bad at all.
Amused to note that Suicide Girl
Loe was in within about five mins of
sending the Signal.  One guy even
tunneled into the system through
the Dubai firewalls around Ning.  (I
activated the blog function, but
not the forum function, so people
could talk without the system turning
into a monster that'd require
moderation.)  Nice to see people
adding photos to the viewer, too.  I
like to see who's on the Signal, and it
might be interesting for you too to
see who else is on the Signal.

http://clubofmars.ning.com

*  The Engine lurches into its last
couple of weeks.  I might start some
weird threads on there later, to
try and make the final days a little
less dull.

*  And for those following all that,
on Aug 30 or thereabouts I should
be able to announce where I'll be
setting up shop next.  It's built, and
I'm going to spend the next couple
of weeks roadtesting it.

*  In between, of course, writing all
these fucking comics, and writing
LISTENER, Novel #2.  Which I'm
currently pulling apart in my head.
William Morrow were angling for a
longer novel, but I'd originally
intended to continue working in the
stripped-back style of CROOKED
LITTLE VEIN.  With some perspective,
finally, on CLV, I'm going back and
opening up the first 14000 words
of LISTENER, writing longer and 
letting the thing take some time.



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bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

Was checking  my traps before bed and tripped over this,
which I set up months ago but  forgot to do anything with.

http://clubofmars.ning.com/

It's  basically just a social network.  Less function on it
than the  Engine.ning page.  I remember thinking it might
be interesting to have a  very basic social network system
behind Bad Signal, let people see who else  is on the
Signal etc etc.

So, you know, use it, don't use it,  whatever.  It's your own
person Fuckster/MySpack/Fecesbook.  The  Club of Mars.

(The title came to me while thinking about The Club  of
Rome, I think.  Or maybe the Club Of Budapest. 
Whichever one had  Peter Ustinov as a member.  Maybe
both.)

(I'm going to bed now.)  




   

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bad signal
ME

* Going to dig out my keys to the
DOKTOR SLEEPLESS wiki today and
see if I can work out what's going
on there.

* Have also created and hidden a
DOK community-style website. Not
a new message board per se, not
the new online community I was
talking about earlier.

* Will also lean on Avatar next
week in re: SCIENCE BITCH t-shirts
to go with the SCIENCE BASTARD Ts.

* Spacebar doesn't work properly
on new keyboard. Bah.

*  The comics business goes to
Wizard World Chicago this weekend.
I am not.  In fact, I have no more con
appearances scheduled, anywhere.
This is an immensely pleasant
prospect, post-San Diego.  Very
tempting to just take a couple of
years off shows entirely, though
I doubt it'll happen.  

* Have set the Apparat Novella
for December.  Have decided to
try and get one done for March as
well, aiming for 3 to 4 a year.  The
second one's historical too.  The 3rd
would have to be different...

*  Am doing a PA in Second Life
today -- details on website.


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bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

* People keep asking me this, for
some reason: the Sunday Hangover
at Suicide Girls is FREE.  You don't
have to be a member to read it.
You'd think people would just look...

*  Rantz Hoseley is talking about
launching a post-ENGINE message
board for comics creators.  Keep
an eye on the ENGINE over the next
couple of weeks if you're interested.

*  Laurenn asked me yesterday if
I was going to activate one of the
private community systems I have
in test-bed status.  And, you know,
I'm not sure I am.  Convenient as it
would be for me to have my friends
and acquaintances using one place
so I can keep track of them...it
doesn't really work that way 
anymore.  Twitter keeps me advised
on Kelly Sue, Laurenn, Tom, Zo, Wil
and a few others.  Veen keeps in
touch via a PSP.  A bunch of people
are so MySpace addicted that they
only message me through there.
Years ago, I managed to put a lot
of my friends on to a private board,
and it was a lot of fun, but I'm not
sure it's feasible now.

*  The next public board, which I
hinted at in the ENGINE closure
announcement, will be a lot different
to the ENGINE.  Also, it'll use a 
different message board system.
I realise a lot of people found the
ENGINE system difficult, if not
ugly -- because all you kids have
been brought up on flavours of
phpBB, which is hideous and shot
through with security flaws -- but
it had an incredibly rich, powerful
back-end for moderation and 
controls, which were vital for a thing
like the Engine.  The new thing,
which I'll announce in a month or so
for those interested, is built on
Lussumo Vanilla, a much lighter and
faster system.  (The one we used
for diepunyhumans.com 2.0.)


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