The Advantages Of Twitter

Courtesy of @brettshane I was presented with this rather lovely photo of rugby players Gareth Thomas and Nick Youngquest today. Gareth Thomas is quite the celebrity at the moment, and has quite unconsciously taken on the role as unoffical spokesperson for LGBT sport. Nick Youngquest is an Australian who is straight, but knows his fan base very well. In any case, I would never have heard of the latter were it not for the wonders of twitter. It turns out that he caused a bit of a furore for the following photo which appeared as the June page of the Naked Rugby League Calendar 2007-2008. The version here is SFW, click on it for a slightly more NSFW version!

Compulsory World Cup 2010 Post

My interest in the football is, at best, marginal, but once every four years the World Cup swings round and everyone goes into this weird state of soccer fixation. It is almost impossible to not be caught up in the action, particularly when there is so much to ogle at. Annie Leibovitz does a great photoshoot over at Vanity Fair. There's even a 'making of' video over there, but here are a few choice shots. Think I'll be keeping my eye on Brazil and the rather talented Ricardo Izecson Dos Santos Leite (a.k.a. Kaká)...

Naturally, if you are sick to death of football (and if you are, I pity the next month for you...) then may I also suggest a welcome distraction on the Saturday 19th of June? Come to the Pink Singers' concert! Get your tickets here.

Just Two Weeks To Go!

Do you have your ticket to A Little Light Music yet? If not you'd better get one now - tickets are going, going, gone! The URL is http://www.pinksingers.co.uk/tickets so head on over there now!

Since you are reading this on-line, you probably won't need this, but the Pink Insider has been looking at making real world items "clickable" too. There are basically two different types of patterns you can use for this: Microsoft Tag (above) and QR Codes (below). You may have noticed in the column to your right that these colourful or black and white squares have appeared. Basically, these are bar codes which can be printed out onto real world objects. If you see these patterns around you can actually visit the URL they link to super easily.

All you need is a phone with a camera and a web browser (most phones nowadays), then download the software to read the code (via http://gettag.mobi on your phone for Microsoft Tag, or http://reader.kayway.com on your desktop for QR Codes, or check your device's app store), snap a picture, and you're off!

Europeans Have No Taste

Yes, I realise that That Sounds Good To Me was an extremely derivative piece of work, but it had a decent melody and was so anodyne as to be widely accepted, and Josh perfomed it commendably, so I really don't understand how, at the end of a rather long evening, the song ended up last, behind corkers like the ones from Belarus and Russia as it really wasn't that bad, and at least made no references to "god of mercy" or other deities, so should have done better, and if it had, would not have made me as upset about the total lack of taste in the European continent (although I will add that I thought Lena was an okay winner, conrgats!).

Eurovision 2010: My Predictions

Well, the first semifinals are over and here are my predictions so far...

Number 1
The Paulo Nutini/ Jason Mraz soundalike Tom Dice from Belgium. Sweet introspective song with a great chorus.

Number 2
Iceland's Hera Björk who has a song which is entirely different from the Belgian entry, but still amazing.

Number 3
Not strictly speaking in the semifinals as Norway won it last year and is automatically in the finals. This year they are represented by the stupendously talented Didrik Solli-Tangen from Norway. Quite a traditional (i.e. dull) song, but with a big ending, and he really is very easy on the eyes which helps!

On Drowning

I watched two films in quick succession last night: A Single Man and Twilight: New Moon. Before you ask, yes I realize that these films cater to very different audiences, but I do these comparisons so you don't have to! They actually share much in common: thematically, both look at the subject of lost love, and interestingly, both prominently feature the motif of drowning.

Tom Ford's directorial debut, based on Christopher Isherwood's book and aimed as it is, to a more adult audience, is a beauty in restraint. The eponymous main character played by Colin Firth only voices over at the start and at the end, and even then more to provide a structural symmetry to the film than to elaborate, so you are left to experience the ravages of his loss, the struggles with containment of his emotion under a sedate demeanour, and his subsequent recovery and salvation, all obliquely through observation. The drowning imagery appears interspersed throughout the film and draws upon his helpless stuggles, despair and sense of morbidity. It was so moving the Pink Insider teared up at least twice.

In contrast, New Moon, based on Stephanie Meyer's vampire book and therefore aimed at peri-pubescents, follows Bella's own experience of a lost love, only instead of dying, her partner talks about it for about half an hour before just moving somewhere else. This of course, causes the heroine a considerable amount of pain and angst which she reminds you of incessantly by screaming at night and, lest you missed that she was upset, goes on and on about it in her non-stop voice overs. So when she decides to jump off the side of a cliff into the cold seas below, you almost wish she would drown, if only to stop all her inane chatter.

I know which film I prefer.

Doctor... Who?

Sorry, couldn't help feeling a little distracted after last night's Doctor Who. Yes, Matt Smith, as the 11th Doctor, and Karen Gillan, as the new sidekick Amelia "Amy" Pond, are actually really good, and the story was exciting, and the CGI could still be improved, and the smugness of the Doctor was annoying as always, and it looks like the new series will be full of mysteries to be leisurely unravelled (witness the prominent logo for MΨTH on the laptop)...

...but who could concentrate when the gorgeous Tom Hopper was on screen? Here's hoping the character Jeff has a "meatier" role in future episodes...

Edit: Added more gratuitous nudity... but for a good cause!

And the outcome of this photoshoot is here. I've not displayed it as it is marginally NSFW.

Never Say Never Again

Uh. Okay. This is a bit embarassing. You know how yesterday I stated that:

...this is one blog which is not likely to go all twitter any time soon!

Well, not more than 24 hours later and I have entered into Sean Connery territory and discovered that twitter is actually a pretty good way of syndicating content. And you really don't have to know how to use RSS either. I guess it's just another way of distributing information.

So, yes, it is with a rather red face that I hereby announce that the Pink Insider now has a twitter feed, even if it is simply a reflection of the blog posts here in In The Pink(ies). Who knows? I may even set up a Facebook group at some stage!

Blogging: What's The Point?

So, it was with a little sadness that I read the final post of little.yellow.different where he says his is putting his blog on indefinite hiatus. I have always loved Ernie's blog as a frank, open and often wrily amusing take on life as a gay Chinese American web programmer with divorced repressed parents and a schizophrenic sister. Some people's lives really are like soap operas, but not eveyone can capture their experiences so lucidly, or so wittily, in the written form.

Anyway, whatever Ernie's motivations, he offers up his twitter and tumblr feeds as an alternative. This Pink Insider has not yet tried out twitter or tumblr, but cannot see the virtue in blogging when one has only 140 words to use, much less 140 characters. The immediacy which comes with twitter, and the brevity of the medium, means that long, well-thought out cogitations no life the universe and everything are really not likely to be found there.

I read that blogs are dying an early death, and the number of active private blogs has dwindled into insignificance. The major succesful ones have all been commercialized. At the end of the day perhaps it appears that it is money which keeps people writing. But I'd like to imagine that is is perhaps something less materialistic.

This blog started out as a wrapper for "my pink bits", just so they would be google searchable if people needed to find them. At the same time it served as a way of increasing the Pink Singers' web presence. But that was at the start. Over time this Pink Insider has grown rather attached to the sporadic updates on the In The Pink(ies) blog, and hopes that you, readers, find it interesting too.

So don't worry, this is one blog which is not likely to go all twitter any time soon!

Spam, Spam & More Spam

Bloody hell. I have been rather busy of late, and despite the flurry of activity happening in the Pink Singers at the moment, or more precisely, because of it, haven't really been updating the blog as much as I ought to. As you may be aware if you want to comment on my posts you may certainly do so, but I have to vet any posts first to make sure they are generally laudatory of the choir (hey, editorial priveleges okay?)

Anyway, I logged in thinking I might write a quick post in my coffee break, only to be welcomed by 11 messages. Great I think, more interested readers. Then I realise that every last one of them is trying to sell me chemical enhancements to my sex life. Wow. Is that how I come across?

Yes, I know the real problem is that there are robots out there trawling them web so it is actually very easy to write a program which will fill in these rather straightforward comment boxes. Since CAPTCHA was cracked, even those funny squiggly words are no longer a great hinderance. At least, I am hoping my spam originates from robots. I mean I shudder to think there are armies of poor Chinese people browsing my website entering these comments by hand. And before you say I am racist, half the comments were in Mandarin.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming. And please, comment only if it doesn't involve something called v1Agr@!

Project Gaydar

This has been on the newswire for the last couple of days, but it is still making waves so I thought I'd comment on it. Basically, some MIT kids did a study which demonstrated that, even if you are not out on Facebook, they can guess whether you are gay or not by seeing who your friends are.

No duh.

What amazes me is that people are surprised and worried that this means that their privacy is compromised. The linked article has this pithy comment:

Discussions of privacy often focus on how to best keep things secret, whether it is making sure online financial transactions are secure from intruders, or telling people to think twice before opening their lives too widely on blogs or online profiles. But this work shows that people may reveal information about themselves in another way, and without knowing they are making it public.

Is anyone surprised in the least by this? That a stranger can tell your interests/ inclinations by the friends you hang out with?

I think we are in fact missing the bigger picture, which is that people (a) are compelled to micromanage their relationships and (b) feel a need to even be in the closet still, in this day and age. I can vaguely understand the first - sometimes you want to keep work and play separate. But as for the second, surely we've moved beyond that, especially in a forward-thinking computer-literate society?

Over The Rainbow

Here's a bit of morning happiness courtesy of the ever brilliant Mandy Patinkin. I love this version because the song itself is wonderful as it is, needing no embellishment, and Mandy's crystal voice is a perfect fit.

When all the world is a hopeless jumble,
And the raindrops tumble all around,
Heaven opens a magic lane.

When all the clouds darken up the skyway,
There's a rainbow highway to be found,
Leading from your windowpane,
To a place behind the sun,
Just a step beyond the rain.

Somewhere, over the rainbow,
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.

Somewhere, over the rainbow,
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream,
Really do come true.

Some day I'll wish upon a star,
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops that's where you'll find me!

Somewhere, over the rainbow blue birds fly,
Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why then, oh why, can't I?

Someday I wish upon a star,
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops that's where you'll find me!

Somewhere over the rainbow blue birds fly,
Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why then, oh why, can't I?

If happy little blue birds fly,
Beyond the rainbow,
Why, oh why, can't I?

Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians

Yes, I know that this is a cruddy link, but hey, I find it amusing that there is even a blog devoted to collecting pictures of men who look like old lesbians. Actually the title of the blog is slightly misleading as there are some younger lesbian-looking men in there as well.

Galileo Was Right

Choirs In The News

We all love singing, and we love being in the Pinkies, but it isn't always easy to express why. Yes, there is the thrill I get from producing a beautiful sound, but there is the great social element to it as well.

Courtesy of Tim here are a few articles on choral singing and why it is so great!
The Observer Pull-Out Guide To Singing
Sing Your Way To Happiness

Sadly, not all choirs are doing so well, and the BBC brings us the sad news today of a choir which has hit 100 years, but is struggling to survive. It seems that traditional male voice choirs are on the wane. Or are they?

A Few Random Things

The Pink Insider has discovered the power of Twitter and sadly is starting to microblog there. I won't release the address yet, because I fear that I might eventually give up over here on the regular blog. There is a certain elegance to being able to write in complete sentences. Here are a few things I've posted over there already.

1. MuseScore
I am a fan of cross platform and especially open source software, even more so when it is free. When it comes to musical notation the software I use is the ridiculously expensive Sibelius. That's why I am very glad to see the marvellous MuseScore available for download. Check it out now!

2. Inuit Throat Singing
If you went on one of the Pink Singers winter weekends away a number of years ago, you may remember Fran trying to teach us how to "throat sing". Of course, having never heard it before, none of her acolytes could actually do it, so it is interesting all these years later to see a couple of pros (okay, high school girls) performing it so well.
The first thing to say is that it sounds an awful lot like burping (I have a cousin who given a can of warm Coke and a firm shake can burp through his ABCs) but in a rather controlled way, so it can create a tempo like a percussion instrument. The second thing to say is that the resonance chamber in the neck seems to fill and empty like a bullfrog. Very cool and strangely hypnotic.

Thursday Objectification

I really cannot think of a better way to spend a boring Thursday afternoon than ogling all the juicy men who have graced the pages of the glossy mags these past few years. Yes, this is reducing men to nothing more than slabs of meat, but what yummy slabs they can be. It is dreadful that they are exploiting men in this way - enjoy!

Why Terminators Transport Naked

One of life's great mysteries answered. My favourite bit?

What about the Austrian accents?
It's hot!

Eyes In The Back Of Your Head

If you needed any more convincing that the world we live in is a bloody amazing place, take a gander at the Macropinna microstoma (big ear small mouth?) fish. It has cunningly adapted to the murky depths where it lives by developing a transparent head with eyeballs which can rotate within it, so that it can, literally, look out the top of its head. Now all I need is a genetic modification which replaces my shiny pate with a transparent one...

The New Tottenham Court Road Underground Station

Now that G-A-Y has finally seen its last dance, I'll bet you are wondering what is going to take its place. Well, as you may be aware, the Astoria is going to be torn down, and Tottenham Court Road tube station is going to be redone and made into a glorious, spacious and light-filled jewel at the east end of Oxford Street. That is the plan anyway. In this artist's drawing I like the fact that they've gotten rid of the really ugly and pedestrian unfriendly fountain at the base of Centrepoint, and replaced it with the glass entrances to the tube station and a large pavement. Hooray for public transport!