Amy and I were at the doctors the other day, and we noticed that the Foster Mill was being torn down. That place has been an object of fascination to me for more than twenty years. built in the 1800s and shut down in the latter part of last century I didn't even realise it was a flour mill at first - it felt like some sort of postapocalyptic industrial church to me when I'd see it from the station. I'm not sure what they plan on putting up there (the details of the CB1 development have been under debate forever and a day) but i'll miss the old thing regardless.

The last week has been a bit odd. It started well last Saturday with FlowJam; a live event with Bellydancers, Drummers, circus skills people, poi dancers, contact jugglers and all the rest - it's being fun by Guy who I know from Firetroupe, ATS and Cambridge Community Circus and I'm wondering if it's a precursor event to (or connected somehow with) the Elements of Flow weekend event this summer. The whole thing was fantastic though. We started off Bellydancing to some Solace until the drummers got warmed up, then I spent the rest of the time alternating between Bellydancing, poi spinning, dancing with the most Beautiful dance fans I have ever seen and occasionally sitting round in an exhausted little heap - it was wonderful. We hut the Cambridge Blue afterwards for a few drinks as well where I was able to get the hell over my shyness a bit and have a great time talking with some friends from dance and fire troupe. Guy is going to run these monthly and I can't wait for the next one.

Thursday was rather nice as well, Dance class in the evening went well, I felt more back into the rhythm of things this week, and was partnered up with Madeline (I hope I've spelt that right) for the evening, so we got to talk a bit and to do some lead passing and stealing in clock formation which was rather good fun. I paid Nicola for the Domba weekend (Which I am absolutely ridiculously hyped for - a whole weekend of ATS workshops? yes please ) and acquired another interesting homework assignment - this one is slightly less confessional and slightly more crafty and it's caught my imagination a bit (I just need to have a bit more patience with it .. varnish takes awhile to dry ¬.¬

Yesterday we went over to my folkses ... and I took the bass and my gubbins with me so my brother and I could have a bit of a Jam. We played through a whole bunch of songs (some of ours and some others), did a bit of writing and recorded a couple of backing tracks for Ezekiel to sing to (Toad the Wet sprocket - Pray your Gods and One Eskimo - UFO). We also got one of our songs down in protools to have a fiddle with later on and seem to have our routine back for doing more complicated things. We're going to try and make it a more regular thing again - I'm very excited about this. We've been making music together for over fifteen years now and something about it just feels 'right'.

On the less fuzzy side, this week has involved some knotty little stress points at work, a great wailing and gnashing of joints and an unprecedented cluster of migraines I was decidedly less than impressed with. I've got some new medication for the latter from my doctor and am having a round of blood tests on Monday morning to look into both and see if there is anything new to see. Between this stuff and the back and forth with the hospital I'm at least feeling like this stuff is being paid attention to - which is nicer than having it ignored. The work stuff, while being a bit on-edge, seems to be leading to some good opportunities and some rather amusing (if slightly intimidating) trips around the country to see people that will, fingers crossed, lead to me jumping off a train one evening tomorrow and arriving at class, dance gear and office gear in tow fifteen minutes later. At least I'll have my bike .

In other, other news, Mass Effect 2 is incredibly good, about the best thing I've played in an age and a half. I'm not that far in however, as I keep getting distracted by an absolutely wonderful novel draft written by the housemate of a dear friend. I expect I'll get further along between reading this draft and the next one .. I promise not to spoil anything .

This delicious little ditty has made my lunchtime.

(Pic: Box of Matzos and Danone Activa Yoghurt resting on a kitchen counter)

After careful experimentation, I do declare that Matzos and Activa 'cereals and fibre' yoghurt are the two greatest anti-nausea foods I have come across in all my years on this Earth. They combine soft and smooshy with crispy yet light and have brought me through all sorts of silliness recently. Henceforth my cupboards shall runneth over.

And then there was fire! The night before the Camb 800 show, we all headed down by the river for a full runthrough with music, fire and frantic dipping backstage under the watchful eyes of our benevolent stage manager. I took the video above in full on grainy phoneovision during the last finale as it was the only time I didn't have my hands full of toys, dip jugs or a lighter.

This is the first chance I had to see the synchronised routines with fire; and they were absolutely stunning.

It was also the fire troupe debut of Aran's scary-ass S Staffs, which look absolutely beautiful but burn with the fire of a thousand suns.

And the amusing spectacle of dippers stood around holding burning toys ready to hand to performers while trying not to start spinning .

We were witness for the first time to the alarming spectacle of flaming ribbon fans (those things are a tad scary!)

Was also lucky to see some awe inspiring things done with burning hoops by the troup's pair of fire hoop acrobats, who just leave me wide eyed every time I see them perform.

This rehersal was the start of an incredibly fun weekend and the most dramatic performance of any kind I've ever been a part of. I'm looking forward to many more chances to do this, both dipping and spinning.

If I were a month, I'd be... October
If I were a day of the week, I'd be... Thursday
If I were a time of day, I'd be... Sunset
If I were a planet, I'd be... Saturn (gazing back at the dot)
If I were a sea animal, I'd be... A manatee (huge)
If I were a direction, I'd be... East
If I were a piece of furniture, I'd be... A piano bench!
If I were a language, I'd be... British Sign Language
If I were a number, I'd be... 23
If I were a liquid, I'd be... wyborowa vodka
If I were a gemstone, I'd be... Garnet
If I were a tree, I'd be... A beech tree, twisty branches and all.
If I were a tool, I'd be... a Krone tool (Connecting people :> )
If I were a flower, I'd be... A foxglove
If I were a kind of weather... A rainstorm
If I were a musical instrument, I'd be... A Cello
If I were a colour, I'd be... forest green.
If I were an emotion, I'd be... sleepy affection
If I were a fruit, I'd be... A Kiwi
If I were a sound, I'd be... Leaves in the Wind
If I were an element, I'd be... Carbon
If I were a car, I'd be... Something with a lot of boot space, one window that doesn't wind down and that smells faintly of dog.
If I were a food, I'd be... Tumeric Rice
If I were a place, I'd be... Right here, right now.
If I were a material, I'd... A Silk Brocade
If I were a taste, I'd be... Peanut Butter Chicken
If I were a scent, I'd be... Lush 'Karma'
If I were an animal, I'd be... A puppydog
If I were an object, I'd be... A camera
If I were a body part, I'd be... a hip
If I were a facial expression... an unrestrained grin
If I were a song, I'd be... 'The Wrong Band'
If I were a pair of shoes.... cute little pixie boots
If I were a website, I'd be... Librarything
If I were a TV show, I'd be... The Joy of Painting
If I were an author, I'd be... Kathy Acker
If I were a painting, I'd be... Katie Elder's Medea trypdich, as exhibited in the Oxford Brookes Alumni show 'Plus One'. I wish I was monied enough to buy art like it weren't no thang.

Meme swiped from the ever lovely cmcmck at livejournal.

The week before the 800 show, we all descended on a snowy back garden in Burwell to practice routines, and to acquire frostbite.

There wasn't as much for those of us who were going to be dipping to do, but there was some lifting, shifting and setup to do - also I helped cook a rather ridic. quantity of vegge Chilli.

Once we were done, it was time for Bonfire!

Where many marshmellows were roasted ...

... Many, many marshmellows ...

Some poor souls were roasted in effigy ...

And some folk actually got around to playing with fire as well.

Whole thing was ridiculous fun, especially the parts including bizzarre tag variations, precocious small people, cooking and glorrrrrious underfloor heating. Next up, pictures and video from the night before ...

Dubstep makes everything better.

Too nauseous to lay down. I've been taking little chair naps but am getting pretty loopy. Bit stressed about hospital tomorrow - though hopefully it'll be no biggie. Also excited about picking up my glasses, being able to see straight will feel p. awesome.

But music and goons are entertaining me, so it is all okay, rite?

Cambridge University Fire Troupe from Dan Logan on Vimeo.

Last weekend the fire troupe put on the biggest show we've ever done (or so I'm told, I've not been around /that/ long) as part of the Cambridge University 800th anniversary celebrations ... and it was fucking awesome. I was a part of the dipping crew, swimming in parrafin for a living (don't ask me about how long it took to get the smell out of my clothes) and looking after a ridic. mess of firetoys while people danced their arses off out front.

Above you can see (almost) all of the props from the show layed out in our corner backstage, along with a ridic amount of parrafin and the dipping towel of doom (which I am still amazed I managed to get clean after what we did to it). Helping out with this was the most fun, and am looking forward to when we do something like this again. even got a bit of a burn in myself when we were warming up the wicks - though that feels mega selfconcious with the crowd we had watching.

I took a fair number of other piccies from various practices and similar and will post them over the next couple of days. Right now am more concerned with stressing over hospital appointments tomorrow and feeling like death-warmed-up.

Several months ago I wrote a rather nice fluff piece about a music discovery site called TheSixtyOne.com that I had fallen head over heels for. I am writing today to completely withdraw that reccomendation. Some incredibly bad design decisions have taken the site from a rough and ready but perfectly functional hunt and fetch tool for new music to a revolting new media abortion of poor usability and broken features.

The previous site (until they take it down) can be viewed here.

The new site can be seen here.

While the original site had its problems, it was largely simple, usable and a good way to find new music, connect with artists and listeners and to listen to the tracks I had marked as interesting to me while I worked. It was visually discrete and worksafe, and something I looked forward to watching develop as it grew and changed. It has now become a horrible, flash based abomination completely inaccessible to screen readers and other accessibility tools - and not that much better for ordinary users too.

I've included some links below covering the userbase reaction:

I used to like the sixtyone - a central round-up site for the fan response.

The t61 official facebook group is here. and the comments are not exactly positive.

This unofficial group is serving as a gathering point for dissapointed fans of the site.

This article from thenextweb is one of many positive spin articles (all very similar) which appeared within hours of the redesign, leading many people to suspect there's some SEO and astroturfing going on - the comments tell a different story.

These two open letters, one from an artist and one from a user, are some of the best written objections to the changes I've seen so far.

And last but not least, this feature from Reddit webdesign features the professionals telling t61 very clearly what they've done wrong.

The best thing showed up in the post yesterday; a copy of all of them with teeth: monster hymns and sermons by Little Light. Ever since someone first showed me the seam of skin and scales and it just reached in and grabbed me with an almighty 'hell yeah!' I've been utterly loving on her writing. So having some of it in chapbook/zine printed format is made of win and awesome.

In other news, this week I actually hit the point of being short-sighted enough to want to do something about it when I realised that my facebook status was uncomfortably blurry. Upon getting my fuzzy little ass to Boots, I discovered that eye tests are faster, more fun and more sophisticated than they used to be when I was younger. I also discovered that the staff at my nearest Boots Opticians are friendly, professional and (in the case of the guy who helped me try on umpteen thousand frames while we picked out the right ones together) have great customer manners and the patience of saints.

I should have a couple of pairs of deeply funky glasses in a week and a bit, and will be sure to get in the way of a camera once they arrive so I can show you all. I'm mostly just looking forward to looking at stuff with them on - it was quite the revelation how far and how clearly I could see.

The other exciting bit of human enhancement I have coming up now is the acquisition of a cyborg tooth! The gap that my poor wee babby tooth gave up the ghost in six months ago (it almost made it into my thirties. A pretty good innings I think?) is going to be fitted with a rather impressive/amusing titanium spike and capped, filling in the gap in my molars with a pretty little piece of ceramic biting gear. I am rather looking forward to this .

Off to sneak in a shower before work now, I need to see if I can buy enough time to succeed in my quest for a pair of un-laddered tights before 9am .