August 2006 Archives

Deb and I had a cracking long weekend at the Fringe while the girls were on a Guides survival camp.

Here's what we saw:

Friday 25th August

Have A Nice Life ****
Musical Comedy Drama
C, Arts Educational Tring Park
A counselling group performed as Sondheim

Saturday 26th August

Budapest Kiseret ****
Drama
Roman Lodge, Firefly Productions
Two men, a mute gypsy woman and a train carriage

I Can't Beleive It's Not Godard ***1/2
Comedy Drama
Bare Bawds, Pleasance
Students produce a film without film

Floating ****
Comedy Drama
Pleasance, Hoipolloi
Hugh Hughes and Sioned Rowlands tell how Anglesey floated away from the UK in 1982.

Ian Stone ***
Stand-Up
Underbelly
OK, if a bit formulaic

Lucy Porter **
Stand-Up
Pleasance
Disappointing given the reviews

Sunday 27th August

Iliad *****
Physical Drama
C, Asterionshus
Stunning three person minimalist but very physical telling of the Rage of Achilles.
The spitting and the fight scenes were incredible.

Midnight Cowboy ****
Drama
Assembly Rooms, Assembly Theatre directed by John Clancy
Excellent production of the book, almost out Hoffman'd Hoffman.

Past Half Remembered *****1/2
Drama
Pleasance, New International Encounter
Superb performances reminscent of Peoplelykus and Oddsocks. The biscuit scene was just unbeleiveable.

Goodies ****
Comedy
Assembly Rooms, The Goodies (with Bill Oddie on video)
Wonderful clips and reminscences

Stars ***
Drama
Traverse, Nutshell
Anja Hillings play about the death of a friend. Well acted, but poor staging and a just a bit too ordinary.

ASAP ****
Comedy Drama
Roman Lodge,
Simple, fun but very effective telling of the story of two girls, two boys and two deaths (even if one of the men did look like Boris Johnson)

Monday 28th August

Shakespeare for Breakfast ****
Comedy Drama
C, C Theatre
All female Taming of the Shrew as panto. Fun but not quite Oddsocks.

The Syringa Tree ****1/2
Drama
Pleasance, Menagerie Theatre/Gin Hammond
One woman performance of a girl's growing up in South Africa

Perki & Mann are Spooked ****
Comedy Drama
Pleasance, Future Legend Theatre
Fun and inventive scooby-doo type adventure

Spymonkey - Cooped *****
Comedy/Physical Drama
Assembly Rooms, Spymonkey
Outrageous comedy and male genitalia

Reginald D Hunter ****
Stand-Up
UdderBelly ( a big purple upside down cow)
Very funny, very smart, very assured black American (just don't sit on the front row)

The Gaydar Diaires ****
Comedy Sketch Show
Pleasance, City Lights Theatre Company
Sketches based around the gaydar.co.uk gay dating website. An education.

Bars

Restaurants

Hotels

Park View Hotel, Leith - ***
Terrace Hotel, Calton Hill - ****

Vernor Vinge on the Singularity

The definitive Singularity paper?

Second Life Library 2.0

Great Idea, a virtual library in SL linked to real-world reference sources. One of the other contenders for the Talis library mash-up.

My Digital Double: An Audience with Suzanne Vega

How did I miss this? Suzanne Vega becoming the first artist to perform as an Avatar in Second Life, and doing The Queen and the Soldier - probably her best song.

IFTF's Future Now

Referenced by Rudy Rucker, talking about Charles Stross.

Working off the same basic ideas as The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil ( the signularity, uploads, computational matter) its a great exploration of the ideas until the final 100 or so pages. It's like Arthur C Clarke writing 100 extra pages about what happened to Dave when he came home (yes 2010 was dreadful), or Jodi Foster going on for another hour after Contact. See my Seismic Shift essay for my personal fall-out from these books.

Accelerando web site.

My reading of the last few months has been so novel as to make me change a few of my fundamental views on things.

The books were The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, Accelerando by Charles Stross (who'd obviously either read Kurzweil or the same sources, and Consciousness by Susan Blackmore. The first two very much majored on GNR (Genes-Nanotech-Robotics) and the singularity, the last on the consciousness aspects of humans, animals and AI. In fact I prefer to think of GNR as GNA – Genes-Nano-Artificiality, encompassing both AI and VR.

The changes of viewpoint are largely around a) SF and the future of space exploration, and b) AIs .

GogglesBeta09.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Great fun!

The Time When

The BBC's personal and world memoire site.

TransVision06 in SL - Uvvy

The TransVision 2006 annual conference of the World Transhumanist Association, Helsinki 17-19 August 2006, organized by the WTA and the Finnish Transhumanist Association, will be open to remote visitors in the virtual reality world of Second Life.

- Looks worth going to.