Mr Tornado

On the 28th of March 2007, our US correspondent Duncan Geere went on another stormchase in search of a tornado and "damaging hail" (later reported as being "bigger than baseballs") in Texas. Though the last video was very fun to watch, it wasn't admittedly very exciting. The above photo demonstrates quite nicely that this event was a very different kettle of fish. Duncan is reported as having "just sort of hung around" but we know in our hearts he was as key a part of it as anyone else, if only for us.

It even comes with a bonus electrical storm and eerie green clouds. Scroll down for the video. Read on for some blurb.

As Mr Geere is obviously my best source of weather related information, especially regarding spinning, blowy things, I asked him how exactly tornadoes are rated nowadays. His answer was "damage". The scale he pointed me to is called the Enhanced Fujita Scale and here, from the Storm Prediction Centre is a guide to what can be damaged:

1 Small barns, farm outbuildings
2 One- or two-family residences
3 Single-wide mobile home
4 Double-wide mobile home
5 Apt, condo, townhouse (3 stories or less)
6 Motel
7 Masonry apt. or motel
8 Small retail bldg. (fast food)
9 Small professional (doctor office, branch bank)
10 Strip mall
11 Large shopping mall
12 Large, isolated ("big box") retail bldg.
13 Automobile showroom
14 Automotive service building
15 School - 1-story elementary (interior or exterior halls)
16 School - jr. or sr. high school
17 Low-rise (1-4 story) bldg.
18 Mid-rise (5-20 story) bldg.
19 High-rise (over 20 stories)
20 Institutional bldg. (hospital, govt. or university)
21 Metal building system
22 Service station canopy
23 Warehouse (tilt-up walls or heavy timber)
24 Transmission line tower
25 Free-standing tower
26 Free standing pole (light, flag, luminary)
27 Tree - hardwood
28 Tree - softwood

Perhaps showing up a slight flaw in the scale, however enhanced it may be, Mr Geere said the following when asked about the rating of the tornado he and his group witnessed:

"don't think they rated it - it didn't hit anything"

He later estimated it as being no larger than 3 on the scale. Watch out mobile homes.

Asked to describe the experience and the effect it had on him in no more than ten words, Mr Geere listed:

"Impressive. Spinny. Scary. Amazing. Breathtaking. Climatic. Rural. At-a-safe-distance (cheating - Ed) . Funnel. Rare."

Asked about a third stormchase, Mr Geere reported that there was a reasonable chance of tornadoes in "the very near future".

Enjoy the video and stay tuned for the next exciting instalment.

And for those suffering from Dorothy Syndrome, it should possibly be noted that Mr Geere concluded by saying:

"i had a lovely time :)"

I think that's a rare example of an emoticon I'll allow.

On to the video:

Good Spring, Good Records

Yesterday, for the first time in over half a year, I stepped into my car to find it uncomfortably warm. Spring has arrived, and though (as my above photo of the Tate shows) today's weather wasn't perfect, the world's definitely a lot better looking than a week or two ago.

The Easter holiday break has arrived with the changing season and everyone appears to have gone away. Nathania to Japan, Christopher to Poland, Louise to China, Rebecca to Peru and Lindsay to... Winchester. I'm stuck in Croxley and will attempt to blag further days spent at The Watford Observer to pass the time. And record an EP.

Readers of my old blog will know that I did a list of my top 50 favourite records and set a similar challenge for other people a few months ago. Yesterday I decided it would be fun to listen to the records on my list in a row with nothing in between.


Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea started it off yesterday and today we have number two, New York Tendaberry by Laura Nyro. Only listening to around one record a day is quite challenging but they're all amazing records so it matters not. Along with the listening I'll be typing up a little bit of text about each record and putting all 50 on here. I'll try and make it more than a list of positive adjectives.

As noted, Louise is off to China on Saturday to walk the Great Wall for charity. I hope she has an amazing time. Today we met briefly for

+

We had a lovely chat to go with it. A chat that has once again inspired me to do something. Louise always seems to manage this.

I'm trying to pick up more links to blogs and such on my right-hand links column so if you have a blog or other such website, please let me know.

I'm back at the Watford Observer tomorrow. I'll inform you of the things reported on and perhaps scan in some articles of mine from this week's paper which comes out tomorrow. Hopefully they've put something in. Benches was what I reported on last time.

I hope you're all well. Those wanting to subscribe to this blog somehow can use RSS. It's easy and useful. Look it up. It would be nice if all my MySpace readers could transfer over here. Please?

Duncan is just telling me about the tornado he saw. I'll link to a video or such when it becomes available. I'm excited.

Take care everyone.

Look, no hyperlinks.

The Spitz to close in 6 months

Time Out London reported today that The Spitz music venue in Spitalfields, London is to close in 6 months. The venue, located directly next to Spitalfields Market, is without doubt one of my favourite places in the city for listening to live music. It has brilliant acoustics, a great intimate stage, looks amazing and is clearly one of the most comfortable places imaginable to watch a band in.

I've seen many great shows there, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, The Czars, Damo Suzuki, Piney Gir (who co-runs, or used to co-run, the excellent Wired Women nights there) and Stars of Aviation being a few of the most memorable ones. The atmosphere is fantastic, whoever picks the bands really knows what they're doing and they do a fantastic, and very popular, yearly Blues Festival (this year's, in April, concentrates on blues-punk).

The venue is being turned into a gastropub according to the Time Out report.

Ballymore Properties, who own the building, are responsible and cite financial problems as the reason for the decision. The people behind the venue say they may work on alternatives to closing completely, but the tone this is written in doesn't sound too optimistic.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone personally criticised the decision in the piece, which is nice of him, but I think unless petitions get rolling and people really get to work we could be quickly losing another great venue.

The Astoria and Hammersmith Palais are both closing soon, and most large venues in the city seem to be getting scooped up by companies musicians and fans are, probably rightly, not too keen on.

I don't really know why this is happening as live music seems to be far more popular now than ever before (just look at how quickly concerts and festivals sell out nowadays).

Even with the Spitz, Astoria and Hammersmith Palais gone there'll be a huge number of venues in the city but with the number decreasing pretty sharply (and most of the remaining ones being in or moving to Camden Town) I think it's clearly rather sad news for fans of live music.

I usually stay clear of planning complaints and such and let people get on with what they've decided to do but this is pretty obviously a huge mistake. It's one of my favourite venues, is selling out performances regularly and there's no need whatsoever to get rid of it. Besides, there's a great restaurant on the ground floor and at least two other floors in between that and the venue so there's plenty of room for a gastropub in the building without destroying such an important part of London's musical scene.

The venue also has an art gallery and runs other events so I'm wondering whether those too are at risk.

If someone starts or finds a petition about this, more information, or an address to write to with complaints, please let me know. It's pretty much breaking news it seems so I'm sure more will be written within the next few weeks.

(Plain English vs Simple English) = Good English?

An apology: The following picking out of Lindsay's example was not meant to make her look bad/stupid. I actually intended to point out the gap in my own knowledge when it comes to such vocabulary as well but didn't get round to it. I think I'll steer clear of names from now on in such blogs. Sorry.

I showed slight annoyance at Lindsay's use of the word "futon" to describe the sofa-bed in my brother's room on the phone yesterday. It's a bad example of the type of annoyance I usually feel for such things and I was mostly arguing for the sake of it, but I felt it was time to write down something about it so I could sort through ideas and perhaps work out a stance. I also thought it would be nice to get some comments from other people on the subject of overly fancy language (not overly fancy furniture).

Definitions from Dictionary.com. Just for fun. I'm not sure I like them but that's probably beside the point at hand:

futon – noun
a thin mattress, usually filled with layers of cotton batting and encased in cotton fabric, placed on a floor for sleeping, esp. in traditional Japanese interiors, and folded and stored during the day.

sofa bed – noun
a sofa that can be converted into a bed, either by folding out the seat or by lowering the back to be flush with the seat.

I argued that using the word "futon" was unnecessary and that "sofa-bed" is a more than adequate substitute. Perhaps even if it meant adding a few more lines to justify what type of sofa bed it was.

Taking aside the fact that, given the definition above and the nature of the piece of furniture, she was probably using the word incorrectly, it made me wonder further about "big words" and whether simple language is good language.

Thanks in part to The Independent doing a feature about it recently, I found myself looking at the Plain English Campaign website for guidance and inspiration.

In their own words, they are:

"campaigning against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information"

which seems mostly targeted at vague, wordy, legal and government documents. Nonetheless, it seems there's a pretty obvious link to that and a campaign for generally simplified English and the cutting of unnecessary vocabulary.

Some of you will have seen the Simple English Wikipedia. It is claimed to be written in a way that:

"...uses fewer words and simpler grammar than the original English Wikipedia."

It is intended for non-native speakers but if it had more people writing for it, I now think it could end up being a better basic reference source than the standard Wikipedia.

Nevertheless, I absolutely hated it when it first started, putting a rather silly user icon someone had designed on my main Wikipedia user page which reads:

"This user articulates the complex intricacies of the English mother tongue and eschews the superficialities of Simple English."

Now, after being told time and time again that simple is good (main influences H.W Fowler, NCTJ course, The News of the World's features editor), I've started to feel that perhaps using "Simple English" in the real Wikipedia and not having two separate projects is the way forward.

I love dictionaries, fancy language and Scrabble (despite recently refusing to play for reasons I don't really understand) but am starting to find myself getting really annoyed at people using big words just because they can. It's obviously infuriating when people use a word completely incorrectly, especially if it's an attempt to show off, but I'm mostly writing about the cases when a word is used instead of a far simpler substitute.

Futon is a poor example and something there's no need to argue about (unless the definition above is right in pointing out a complete misuse) but sometimes the annoyance seems reasonable. Especially in print.

Foreign words being dropped in unnecessarily, scientific, legal and philosophical jargon and stupidly long sentences are just some examples of types of language use that are begging to be simplified. I'm sure a week doesn't go by without most people coming across something they wish was clearer and less fancy.

Humming Bankrupt on Selling by Modest Mouse to myself today probably sparked most of this blog with the always-amusing lines:

"Well I'll go to college and I'll learn some big words, and I'll talk real loud, goddamn right I'll be heard. And you'll remember that guy who said all those big words he musta learned in college."

I wonder if such big words still impress the majority of people or whether people and publications only think they are impressing the world by using them. I'm hardly going to go around burning every thesaurus I see, but think it may be a wise move to stop criticising people for their simple language (perhaps even forgiving emoticons which I personally cannot stand).

The point expressed should pretty much always be more important than the style of the expression in my opinion. I'm not sure how far I should be taking this (poetry, stories and lyrics?) but it seems like it's generally a rather good stance to take.

What do you think? Bonus points for the person writing the most fancy, unintelligible answer.

Start

The coming of Spring, the time change, continuing frustration over a lack of anonymous commenting features and a conversation with a Lindsay about social networking sites in general made me at last switch away from MySpace to blogger, and my own domain address.

I could take this opportunity to turn this into a blog that will actually be of use to people but as there are plenty of those around I will just use it as a personal blog. There will probably be a separate blog for Blue Jumpers but that will come later.

Links to the poems, music and such will all be made available soon letting this be a home page of sorts for everything Filip related.

So, as it is just a personal site, it makes sense to just pretend nothing has changed from my old blog and continue to tell you about my recent goings on. This is, today, in part because Shannon (who has had to set her MySpace profile to private, sadly) commissioned me to do so.

On Saturday we had a food party. I have been told I use the word "we" wrongly but insist that this time it is being used correctly. There were 12 of us, 4 groups, and we each made (at least) a three course meal. Ours consisted of a curry, a soup and a crumble. All were lovely. Everyone else also did a wonderful job and there were no disasters.

Later on, still all being children at heart, we played spoons. Louise, as she has sense, decided not to play because she didn't want to get hurt. The bruising on my arm is too horrible to show on here. Jennifer is to blame.

On Sunday I made Martin (who isn't linkable at present) download Abuse and ate leftovers. This morning I sat in a local government class about finance and then did shorthand for three hours until 3.15pm.

This is my new home. I will colour it up a bit soon.

Thank you for visiting. Sorry for being a pain but this way I've made it available for everyone to read/comment and I can write from school as MySpace is banned there. I know this makes me sound 13.