Easily among one of the best...

On Thursday night I went to see the Neil Cowley Trio at the Cornmarket in Newbury. It was a truly fantastic gig...

The're a Jazz Trio (Piano, Bass and Drums) which I first came across them on Late Night with Jooles Holland, and immediately bought both of their albums. 

Neil Cowley (frontman) is an artist with an impressive career history, at the age of 10 he performed a Shostakovich piano concerto at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, then went onto play with The Brand New Heavies and Zero 7, among others. 

I find it hard to describe how good they were... the craftsmanship, timing, energy, enthusiasm, were just awe inspiring.... I have a favorite track, His Nibs, which they didn't play... and it didn't matter. They played in a venue which was only a quarter full... it didn't matter (but it was a travesty). Just Brilliant...  I'm starting to gush now... and I don't care.

I know this next suggestion may be a little controversial,  but if you have to sell body parts of your own grandmother to buy tickets , then do it... and do it NOW without regret or reticence.

Tragedy is that Newbury was their last listed Gig, but they are playing around at the London Jazz Festival, and event that finishes tomorrow.

(Someone.... no names mentioned... has pointed out that I may have been a little influenced by alcohol or tiredness when I wrote this post..!!?? You decide?!)

Where is Jim...?

Just added a very cool gadget to my iphone called instamapper. It sends my GPS location to a site and updates a map at the bottom of my blog. So if you ever need to know 'Where's Jim'... you'll be able to find out. 

Here is where I am right now...

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

Visual representation of quantitative information

One of my favorite ever books is book by a chap called Edward Tufte, and called 'The Visual Display of Quantitate Information'. Two things about the book.

1. It's basically about how numbers can be displayed to help people understand what numbers are saying. There are some beautiful examples of both helpful and unhelpful diagrammes and pictoral representations. 

2. It's a really well made book, basically Tufte struggled to find a publisher who would a. publish the book, b. deliver the production values he was aiming for. So he published the book himself and it's just really, really nice. The printing quality is fantastic. 

But... if a book is not going to be sold on it cover... this is the book. 

This post was sparked by a post I saw which had looked at visual representation of voting in the US election, the post can be found here. Hat tip Andrew Sullivan... again.

The picture, above right, is a really great piece of work. It looks at the voting on a county by county basis, and distorts the map of the US because gives greater space to areas of higher population. What then presents itself if a purple country with swathes of red and blue running through the more rural or urban areas.

Classic...

From The Onion...



Carrying a majority of the popular vote, Obama did especially well among women and young voters, who polls showed were particularly sensitive to the current climate of everything being fucked. Another factor contributing to Obama's victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American.



Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday's election.




Major hat tip to Andrew Sullivan

04:43- Off to bed

It's now 04:43, and I'm off to bed. As Gore Vidal just said "I didn't really expect it to be this easy".

I stayed up for John McCain's concession speech, now that was the man we wanted to see through the campaign. But, I suspect the Rovian clones who ran his campaign just wouldn't allow that to come out. 

I'll save Obama's speech for tomorrow, along with the final numbers for Montana, Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina.