Meiyilu’s Neighborhood

Our daughter became engaged to her Scottish partner today. He is a fine young man, and we are very happy for them both. It is three years today since they met in Inverness, Scotland. They came to Toowoomba last April, and plan to make their future home here. We had planned a BBQ for tomorrow night. I wonder if her partner and I will be dancing together like we were at the wedding we attended in Manchester last year. Better not, I suppose. I don't want to make our daughter jealous...

You know for retail in Hong Kong, Xmas is huge and we spent a lot of time and energy planning for its arrival and departure.  In the past month, I watched almost daily this Treemap visually identifying category composition, which products move and how they perform.  In this particular interpretation which I hided confidential information, you can imagine the grids are product categories, the size of the rectangles are sales, height of them are quantity sold, while colors are margin.  Don't you think it is highly effective to spot out anomalies or patterns?  The best thing about Treemapping is that I can see individual product performance in relation to the whole picture of the department.

Stationery Treemap Xmas 2009

I've been using Treemapping for years and eventually settled on a German made Treemap software by Macrofocus.  They have constant updates to enhance features and import excel files almost instantly.  It has been a great tool for me for the past few years and I feel thankful for such great software development.

If you don't know what Treemap is, check out my previous post "A Visual Person's Links", Treemapping wikipedia or find out some of the treemap images from Google to get a glimpse or to start with.

We used to sell larger versions of these beautiful paper storage boxes from PLUS, the series is called Living Post which is very good for organizing your home and work desktop.  This year they released a smaller version which is also cheaper at about HK$98 per piece.  Instantly they became our top sellers in Xmas.

PLUS Living Post Storage Boxes

Most people have their stationery stuffed in a drawer without classification and eventually a lot of them are not used on regular basis, they are just lying there to be thrown away one day.  The problem is, like most of your other stuffs, that without organization, things are not being used to their potential and this is such a waste.

So instead of putting stuffs in drawers, Living Post offers to have your gears accessible on your desktop.  Yes you have to create a space for such storage boxes but the payback is guaranteed.  You make things beautiful so that they become useful.

PLUS Living Post Storage Boxes

I now use a square orange box to store clips, craft related stuffs such as MT masking tapes, leather tools.  The large drawer is just the right size for postcard or 4x6 photos, a calculator, Field Notes and Moleskine pocket size notebook fit perfectly well inside.  My other narrow black box is used for photo related stuffs such as shutter release, 35mm film canisters, tapes, etc.  It also serve as a place to put miscellaneous or temporary stuffs.

PLUS Living Post Storage Boxes

The Living Post drawers are tiny but enough.  If you are not a stationery freak, chances are you will find it useful in your own ways.  Say for storing daily cosmetic stuffs, for a dedicated place to store all your keys and cables, etc.

PLUS Living Post Storage Boxes

I wish they have a version with wood pattern which fits perfectly with my desktop theme at home.

Christmas with the Jews Elizabeth & the Catapult 1 comment Read More Elizabeth & The Catapult http://weheartmus... Paste and Rolling Stone loves Brooklyn-based Elizabeth & The Catapult

ELIZABETH & THE CATAPULT
elizabethandthecatapult.com ♥ myspace.com

The last time we mentioned Elizabeth and the Catapult, the song "Race You", went straight to the top ten on The Hype Machine. And it's easy to see why, the song is such a fun and cute pop song.

This Christmas song, "Christmas with the Jews", is also fun and cute (and not to mention quite short). But what you're thinking when you're listening to this song, is "er, aren't you forgetting Hanukkah?"

Maybe you can ask them if you see them live:

01/28/10 The Barn Clinton, New York
02/05/10 World Cafe Live Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
02/06/10 8x10 Baltimore, Maryland

THE JOY FORMIDABLE
myspace.com ♥ twitter.com

The Joy Formidable - My Beerdrunk Soul is Sadder than a Hundred Dead Christmas Trees

The Joy Formidable

When I first heard of The Joy Formidable last year, I was impressed. I said I saw "lot of potential" in this band. Based on the free Christmas song, "My Beerdrunk Soul is Sadder than a Hundred Dead Christmas Trees" (available at musicglue.com), I'm still loving the vocals by Ritzy.

Maybe there was a problem with my download, but the MP3 track is 4:56, where the last 30 seconds of the song is complete and utterly garbage... it sounds like it was encoded in error and not part of the song. I've edited out the crap part for you.

The tour information they sent me is as follows:

January 2010.
Fri 8 USA New York Terminal 5 w/Passion Pit.
Sat 9 USA New York Terminal 5 w/Passion Pit.
Mon 11 USA New York Union Hall.
Tue 12 USA New York Pianos.

February 2010.
Sun 21 Norway Oslo John Dee w/The Temper Trap.
Mon 22 Denmark Copenhagen Vega w/The Temper Trap.
Tue 23 Denmark Copenhagen Vega w/The Temper Trap.
Wed 24 Sweden Stockholm Debaser Slussen w/The Temper Trap.
Fri 26 Germany Hamburg Molotow w/The Temper Trap.
Sat 27 Germany Berlin Postbahnhof w/The Temper Trap.
Sun 28 Germany Cologne Gloria w/The Temper Trap.

March 2010.
Tue 2 Germany Munich Atomic Café w/The Temper Trap.
Wed 3 Germany Frankfurt Nachtelben w/ The Temper Trap.

THE MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA
themanchesterorchestra.com ♥ myspace.com

The Manchester Orchestra - 12 Days of Christmas

We're on Day 10 of the 12 Days of Christmas, so hurry on over if you're a fan of the Manchester Orchestra. Each of these songs are acoustic live versions of their song. My only complaint is that you have to listen to these songs on the computer - so if you've got 30 minutes to spare, sit and listen away.

My favorite track is "One Hundred Dollar", you can simply hear the anger as singer Andy Hull asks to borrow $100. While the song is short and doesn't offer much explanation, you, as the audience makes up your own background to the song. Anyway, the song is from their latest album, Mean Everything to Nothing, they'll probably be playing loads of their new songs on tour:

01/29/10 Salt Palace Convention Center^{^} Salt Lake City, Utah
01/30/10 The Fillmore^{^} Denver, Colorado
01/31/10 The Black Sheep* Colorado Springs, Colorado
02/02/10 The Marquee* Tulsa, Oklahoma
02/03/10 Juanita’s Cantina Ballroom* Little Rock, Arkansas
02/04/10 New Daisy Theatre* Memphis, Tennessee

^ with Brand New
* with Harrison Hudson

SIA
siamusic.net ♥ myspace.com

Finally, we have Sia. This actually has nothing to do with Christmas, unless you count getting a new music video as a holiday gift. But just talking about the video for "You've Changed" isn't enough to warrant its own article, so I thought I might as well stuck her here.

Sia has always seem to me to be this child trapped in a grown-up's body. The latest video is wonderful, it features this weird stop-motion, "dress up" video-gamey feel to it. I don't know who's idea it was, I'll bet it's a combination of Sia's child-mind and director Dennis Liu of @radical.media, but it came together pretty great.

Be sure to watch the high-resolution video of it (you'll need it to read the song lyrics scrolling at the bottom).

Sia - You've Changed

 12/23/2009 04:58:16 ♥ vu () ♥weheartmusic.com♥twitter.com/weheartmusic♥news.weheartmusic.com

Fanfarlo - Fire Escape Fanfarlo 1 comment Tour Dates 01/23/10 Ampere München 01/24/10 Studio 672 Köln 01/26/10 Magnet Berlin 01/28/10 Rocking Chair Vevey 01/29/10 Ziegel Oh Lac Zurich 02/01/10 Prinzenbar Hamburg 02/09/10 Thekla Bristol 02/10/10 Hare & Hounds Birmingham 02/11/10 Brudenell Centre Leeds 02/12/10 ULU London 02/13/10 Audio Brighton Discography [Oct 2006] Talking Backwards (single) [Feb 2007] You Are One Of The Few Outsiders... (single) [Jun 2007] Fire Escape (single) [Mar 2008] Harold T. Wilkins (single) [May 2009] Drowning Men (single) [Sep 2009] Reservoir (album) Read More Fanfarlo http://weheartmus... This band shot straight up my priority list because you only have FOUR more days to get Fanfarlo'...

Straitjacket Escape ♥ photo by Dave

Indie pop isn’t usually described as epic. Adorable, precious, and cloyingly cute? Yes. But epic? Not so much. Fanfarlo seems to be the exception, and they proved this point on Friday night, when they had a man suspended upside down from the rafters and escape from a straitjacket. This happened within the first five minutes of the show, during the orchestral behemoth that is “The Walls are Coming Down.” It was like a Bruce Willis movie, but with less explosions and more glockenspiel.

The straitjacket incident was obviously the most epic moment of the night, but the theatrics didn’t end there. There was interpretive dancing, rogue boomerangs, and a pretty intimidating box accordion. Throw in a picturesque stage setting and a watering can attached to the drum kit, and it wasn’t an average Webster Hall show. The band managed to take a spacious, relatively normal venue and shift the atmosphere to match that of the album: warm, enthusiastic, and frenzied.

Fanfarlo ♥ photo by Dave

Frontman, Simon Balthazar, led the charge in a bowtie and further proved my belief that Swedes are musical messiahs when it comes to penning a good pop song. Though he was the lead singer, the audience seemed to focus on the band as a whole as they constantly exchanged instruments and shared singing duties. The arsenal of instruments that night included a banjo, mandolin, violin, clarinet, and a brightly colored melodica – the required instrument for every chamber pop band out there. True, they occasionally succumbed to a few clichés (see: the rampart Arcade Fire comparisons), but their sincerity shone through. When you take away the fanfare, there’s still a pulse to their music that drives it past most conventions. Hence the epic-ness.

With only one album, they had a limited supply of songs to play. My personal favorite, “I’m a Pilot,” drew from the band’s most appealing quality: their infectious camaraderie. This was most apparent during the encore, when they had run out of songs to sing, so they resorted to the obligatory cover, Low’s “Just Like Christmas,” featuring opening band, Freelance Whales. Anything holiday-related is instantly a cheese-fest, but throw in a cavalcade of instruments and a dozen earnest musicians and it becomes easy to suspend any cynicism.

(I really wanted to end this review by writing, “...and by the end of the night, you could say that the entire audience had shed an emotional straitjacket – and put on a fringed vest of love.” But I won’t. Swearsies.)

Photos by Dave: 

Fanfarlo ♥ photo by Dave

Fanfarlo

Fanfarlo

Fanfarlo & Freelance Whales

 12/22/2009 00:12:42 ♥ kateg () ♥ fanfarlo.com ♥ myspace.com/fanfarlo

If you are a subscriber to Xplane's mailing list, you've probably already received a "Happy Holidays" greeting email from them.  For years I've received so many Xmas cards digital or analog I can't distinguish one from another, they all just ended up in trash.

XPLANE-BizCliches_Holidays_2009

But look Xplane did it again, an eCard you would keep and forward to other people, that's one big achievement you know.  Follow this link to download the "Visual Cliché Find-it…" poster and have fun!

So how did Xplane get me to keep their 2008 eCard and anticipating one this year?  Here's what they sent last year.  Thank you for making a difference Xplane!