Stuff I Like

Books - Fiction

• Douglas Coupland - "Generation X", "Life After God" - Coupland's books have an air of the sacred about them. These two are my favourites.
• Robert M. Pirsig - "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", "Lila"- I found "Zen..." very hard going the first time I read it. For some reason I tried again and was rewarded - it's a masterpiece.
• Luke Rhinehart - "The Dice Man" - irresponsible but great.
• Arthur C. Clarke - "The City and the Stars" - A city at the end of time, a stagnant utopia that one of its inhabitants wishes to leave. Classic science fiction. It even has a big central computer.

Books - Non-fiction

• Stephen Batchelor - "Buddhism Without Beliefs" - Buddhism stripped down and built up again. If you've an interest in Buddhism but have doubts about aspects of it, you might want to read this. One idea he explores is that of agnosticism, that there's so much we almost have to be agnostic about and that we need to accept that. Excellent.
• Daniel Goleman - "Emotional Intelligence" - whenever anyone says of a book "everyone should read this" I'm always wary, but I come close to saying that with "Emotional Intelligence". It's an exploration of the emotions from a biological/psychological perspective and seems to be a robust challenge to most of our "common sense" beliefs on morality and education. A very, very important book.
• Victor Frankel - "Man's Search for Meaning" - it's difficult to believe that someone could draw so many positive lessons from their experience of the Holocaust but Frankel did. He is very much at odds with our society that seeks rights over responsibility and tries to blame others for our emotional reactions to the experiences thrown at us.

Music

• Depeche Mode - "Violator", "Songs of Faith and Devotion" - After yearsof producing great singles and mixed albums, Depeche Mode finally learnt to produce the perfect album. "Violator" is their last really electronic album, "Songs..." their first really rocky one. There's a live version of "Songs..." which is also pretty good.
• Tori Amos - "Little Earthquakes" - Her first "proper" album. She had the Midas Touch at this point in her career - even the B-sides to the singles (such as "Flying Dutchman", "Sugar" and her version of Nirvana's "SmellsLike Teen Spirit") were works of genius. She has a brilliant voice with tremendous control, and is an excellent piano player. The albums that followed this were not so good .
• Space - "Space" - Not the latest bunch of fly-by-night cowboys to hold that name but Jimmy Cauty of the KLF in ambient mood. Switch off the lights and press play.
• Steve Reich - "Electric Counterpoint".
• Michael Nyman - "Drowning by Numbers" - a few years ago I visited my friend Julian Baggini in Bilbao where he was teaching English. When I arrived he said "I hope you don't mind, I've bought tickets for a Michael Nyman concert tonight." I knew of Michael Nyman from his soundtrack to Peter Greenaway's "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover". I'd hated the film when I saw it and from what I could remember the soundtrack wasn't much better so I wasn't looking forward to the evening that much at all. Needless to say the evening was incredible. The concert was in a sports centre and was packed full of enthusiastic locals. The band consisted of small string and brass sections, an electric bass player and Michael Nyman on piano - about ten people altogether. I'd never heard anything quite like it, especially the strings and there were moments were I wished I could have payed more attention, where I could have been more in the moment, the music seemed so beautiful. One track, "The Queen of the Night" from "The Draughtman's Contract" stayed with me all week and I resolved to buy some of Nyman's albums when I returned to the UK. I've since found that I probably like less than half the stuff he's done - some of it's unspeakably beautiful - for me "Drowning by Numbers" is the best example of this - and the rest does nothing for me, but who cares when you've stuff you can listen to again and again.
• Philip Glass - "Powaqqatsi", "Company" - I love the scope of "Powaqqatsi", the variety of mood and style. It's written for a large ensemble including world musicians and a childrens choir. "Company" on the other hand is very restrained, very intimate being written for string quartet. Most Philip Glass does nothing for me, but these works are precious.
• Orbital - "In Sides" - I've been playing regularly since I bought it. The last two minutes still send a shiver down my spine.
• Primal Scream - "Screamadelica" - Another varied scope album. I didn't like it at first but over time I've come to see it as being brilliant. Gospel, house, jazz - you wouldn't believe they were a "guitar" band.

TV

• "The Simpsons" - What can I say? There has been no greater TV series. Funny, witty and clever. If you don't find it funny then it's probably laughing at you.
• "Northern Exposure" - Why isn't more of this available on video? Gentle, quirky comedy. Often a bit melancholy. I loved it.
• "Star Trek Voyager" - I've a soft spot for Star Trek (all except the original series which I think is awful) but this is the only one I watch apart from the films. I've been told trekkies think this is the worst of the bunch, but I like the fact there's an over-arching plot, a journey home. It's nice to get away from the idea that space ships can get anywhere in a few days in hyperspace. I'd never claim this was brilliant TV, but it works for me.
• "The X-Files" - having said that I didn't think Voyager was brilliant TV, I'd say the same about the X-Files. It doesn't really have much plot, nothing much ever gets explained, and the basic premises (conspiricies, supernatural monsters, aliens) are, in my opinion, complete nonsense, but I do enjoy watching it. It's got a very good feel to it and it doesn't take itself too seriously. No one ever turns a light on when they enter a house containing some murderous monster, Mulder and Scully never tell each other what they're doing even if they're about to something risky, people being chased through dark forests always trip but their pursuers never do. Nonsense, but enjoyablenonsense.

Film

• "2001" - there's never been a film like it. Another thing I didn't like at first. I'd read the book, which I liked, but found the film very slow. When I watched it again I realized that was the point. With its long, slow scenes and sparse dialog it's almost like a meditation - impatience is one of the diseases of our age. Mind you, "2010"is also an excellent film, although it's more conventional "hard" science fiction than "2001" and suffers by being the sequel to a film that's above comparison.
• "Bagdad Cafe" - a beautiful film, spoiled a bit by a "musical" sequence near the end. Still excellent though. This film also gave us the beautiful, haunting song "Calling You" sung by Jevetta Steel - I bought the soundtrack just to get that one track. Don't be fooled by the awful TV version of the film that was made starring Whoopi Goldberg. It stunk. The film director, Percy Adlon, made another film, "Salmonberries", which was very good.
• "The Confessional" - brilliant French-Canadian film about two brothers investigating the circumstances of their births. Set in 1989 and the early fifties, the early time frame using the making of the Hitchcock film "I Confess" as a backdrop.

Web Sites

I had to have some of these!

• Internet Movie Database - if you want to know anything about films, this is the place to go.
• BBC News - up to date news from a UK perspective, with a lot of streamed video and audio for good measure.
• news.com - Technology/internet news. I read it every day.
• Hotbot - now Altavista is selling search results to the highest bidder I've made a change. Hotbot is a pretty good search engine and even allows you to look for pages that contain MP3s.
• MailStart - read your POP3 email from anywhere. Very useful.
• Dilbert - ridiculing all in the world of work that is worth ridiculing.

Technologies

Now I'm getting nerdy.

• The World Wide Web - what can I say, life changing.
• E-mail - the killer internet application
• Java - good language, excellent standard library, large amount of documentation.
• XML - The standard to take the web forward. XML is like a mental laxative, it's freed people to start thinking in a whole new load of directions. The abundence of free tools will also allow people to use XML with the minimum of effort.
• MP3 - Not the best format for digital audio, but MP3 is pointing the way to the future of music: good quality audio distributed over the network. The stupid thing is that the big record companies just don't get it.
• Unix/Linux/GNU - one day all operating systems will be made this way.
• Apple Macintosh - still the desktop machine closest to the ideal: plug the thing in and use it. Even though the PC has more software I still feel the Macintosh is a more effective machine for getting things done.