Synopsis:
AVATAR takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on an epic adventure, ultimately fighting to save the alien world he has learned to call home. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” first conceived the film 15 years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not exist yet. Now, after four years of production, AVATAR, a live action film with a new generation of special effects, delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Viktor's Secret
Viktor's Secret
Victor & Rolf's spring 2010 show has left jaws dropping and imaginations soaring. Viktor's secret--how in the world is that hole in the tulle made?? The whimsy yet endless beauty of this collection has me awed. By far the best this season. And those shoes! ( and yes-that is tulle.)
x's & o's,
[teen] fashionista
Sunday, November 22, 2009
iPod
IPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple and launched on October 23, 2001. The product line-up includes the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the video-capable iPod Nano, and the compact iPod Shuffle. The iPhone can function as an iPod but is generally treated as a separate product. Former iPod models include the iPod Mini and the spin-off iPod Photo (since reintegrated into the main iPod Classic line). iPod Classic models store media on an internal hard drive, while all other models use flash memory to enable their smaller size (the discontinued Mini used a Microdrive miniature hard drive). As with many other digital music players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices. Storage capacity varies by model.
Apple's iTunes software can be used to transfer music to the devices from computers using certain versions of Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems.[1] For users who choose not to use Apple's software or whose computers cannot run iTunes software, several open source alternatives to iTunes are also available.[2] iTunes and its alternatives may also transfer photos, videos, games, contact information, e-mail settings, Web bookmarks, and calendars to iPod models supporting those features. The Apple iPod is the only device compatible with iTunes, although select devices from Archos are compatible. As of September 9, 2009, more than 220,000,000 iPods had been sold worldwide, making it the best-selling digital audio player series in history.[3]
Apple's iTunes software can be used to transfer music to the devices from computers using certain versions of Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems.[1] For users who choose not to use Apple's software or whose computers cannot run iTunes software, several open source alternatives to iTunes are also available.[2] iTunes and its alternatives may also transfer photos, videos, games, contact information, e-mail settings, Web bookmarks, and calendars to iPod models supporting those features. The Apple iPod is the only device compatible with iTunes, although select devices from Archos are compatible. As of September 9, 2009, more than 220,000,000 iPods had been sold worldwide, making it the best-selling digital audio player series in history.[3]
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Music lovers who are blind or vision-impaired can now enjoy iTunes and iPod nano in an entirely new way thanks to the latest version of iTunes and the new iPod nano (5th generation).
iTunes 9 is screen-reader friendly. On a Mac using Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard, iTunes is compatible with VoiceOver. On a PC using Windows XP or Windows Vista, Apple recommends Window-Eyes 7.0 by GW Micro. And because iPod nano (4th generation or later) has optional spoken menus, you can easily find and play the music you want to hear.
To take advantage of spoken menus, you need:
When you connect iPod nano (4th generation or later) to your Mac or PC with iTunes 8 or later, you’ll find an option in iTunes to “Enable spoken menus for accessibility.” When you sync, iTunes creates spoken descriptions for the contents of your iPod nano using the text-to-speech engine on your computer (in Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista) and then syncs them to your iPod nano along with your music.
Adjusting the speed of the computer’s voice changes the way spoken menus sound on iPod nano. In Mac OS X, you can adjust the speaking rate for Alex and other Mac voices in the Speech pane of System Preferences. In Windows XP and Windows Vista, you can adjust the speaking rate for voices using the Text to Speech Control Panel.
For more information about setting up spoken menus on iPod nano, see “Enabling Spoken Menus on iPod nano (4th generation or later).”
iPod touch features a large, high-resolution 3.5-inch LCD display with adjustable brightness. An Auto-Brightness feature continually adjusts the brightness automatically — using an integrated ambient light sensor — for optimal viewing even in very high and very low lighting conditions.
On a Mac, iTunes 9 works in conjunction with VoiceOver to provide full keyboard control and spoken audio descriptions. iTunes also works with the other built-in Universal Access features of Mac OS X, including Zoom, Sticky Keys, and Mouse Keys. The Universal Access features work in conjunction with VoiceOver to suit your specific needs.
Thanks to its support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA), iTunes 9 for Windows can be used with screen readers for Windows, but to take advantage of this support, screen reader manufacturers may have to update their applications. Apple recommends using GW-Micro Window-Eyes 7.0, which is sold separately, on Windows XP (Service Pack 3).
To make browsing with a screen reader easier, the iTunes Store uses headers, links, and form controls, terms and landmarks you’ve already become accustomed to while browsing web pages.
If you can’t immediately find a song, album, or artist you’re interested in, you can use the search feature on the iTunes Store to find and display a matching list of songs, movies, TV shows, and other content based on the criteria you enter. For more complex searches, use Power Search, which lets you enter multiple search criteria at once.
When you find content you like, iTunes 9 makes purchasing that content easy. Use a simple keystroke to purchase and download all media types, including individual songs, complete albums, movies, TV episodes, Season Passes, audiobooks, and podcasts.
Spoken Menus on iPod nano (4th generation or later)
iPod nano (4th generation or later) — the world’s most popular music player — includes spoken menus that let visually impaired users browse and select songs without viewing the screen. Instead, you’ll hear a synthesized voice speaking the names of menus, songs, and artists.To take advantage of spoken menus, you need:
- iPod nano (4th generation or later)
- iTunes 8 or later
- Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later
- Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 3 or later)
Enabling spoken menus
When you connect iPod nano (4th generation or later) to your Mac or PC with iTunes 8 or later, you’ll find an option in iTunes to “Enable spoken menus for accessibility.” When you sync, iTunes creates spoken descriptions for the contents of your iPod nano using the text-to-speech engine on your computer (in Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista) and then syncs them to your iPod nano along with your music.iPod nano speaks volumes
In Mac OS X, you can choose from a variety of natural-sounding and novelty voices, including Alex, the amazing English-speaking voice available in Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard. Using patented Apple speech technology, Alex closely matches the nuances of human speech and can deliver natural intonation even at extraordinarily fast speaking rates. You can purchase additional English and non-English voices separately. Contact third-party voice providers for details.
In Windows, iTunes 8 or later uses Microsoft’s Speech API (SAPI) compatible voices to generate spoken menu descriptions. Be sure to enable Text to Speech and choose a voice in the Control Panel in Windows XP or Windows Vista before you enable spoken menus in iTunes, since speech may not be enabled by default.Adjusting the speed of the computer’s voice changes the way spoken menus sound on iPod nano. In Mac OS X, you can adjust the speaking rate for Alex and other Mac voices in the Speech pane of System Preferences. In Windows XP and Windows Vista, you can adjust the speaking rate for voices using the Text to Speech Control Panel.
For more information about setting up spoken menus on iPod nano, see “Enabling Spoken Menus on iPod nano (4th generation or later).”
Large Font on iPod nano (4th generation or later)
iPod nano (4th generation or later) includes a font size setting that lets you choose a standard or large font size. You can enable the large font in the Settings menu.High-Contrast Screen and Backlight
iPod classic and iPod nano feature high-resolution LCD displays with adjustable brightness settings that make them easy to read even in low-light conditions. And the new iPod nano (5th generation) has a larger screen so you can view type even more easily than before.iPod touch features a large, high-resolution 3.5-inch LCD display with adjustable brightness. An Auto-Brightness feature continually adjusts the brightness automatically — using an integrated ambient light sensor — for optimal viewing even in very high and very low lighting conditions.
Accessibility in iTunes 9
iTunes 9 is screen-reader friendly. On a Mac using Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard, it’s compatible with VoiceOver; on a PC using Windows XP or Windows Vista, it’s compatible with GW-Micro Window-Eyes 7.0.Screen-reader technology
For those who are blind or have a vision impairment, screen readers provide spoken descriptions and full keyboard control as an alternative to using a mouse. Screen readers use a speech engine to synthesize spoken descriptions that explain what’s taking place on the computer screen. While customers using Windows PCs typically purchase screen readers separately, Mac computers with Mac OS X v10.4 or later include a full-featured, built-in screen reader called VoiceOver. On a Mac, iTunes 9 works in conjunction with VoiceOver to provide full keyboard control and spoken audio descriptions. iTunes also works with the other built-in Universal Access features of Mac OS X, including Zoom, Sticky Keys, and Mouse Keys. The Universal Access features work in conjunction with VoiceOver to suit your specific needs.Thanks to its support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA), iTunes 9 for Windows can be used with screen readers for Windows, but to take advantage of this support, screen reader manufacturers may have to update their applications. Apple recommends using GW-Micro Window-Eyes 7.0, which is sold separately, on Windows XP (Service Pack 3).
iTunes Store
With iTunes 9, you can use a screen reader to browse the iTunes Store and shop for music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, free podcasts, and other content. A number of areas in the iTunes Store have been enhanced for accessibility, including the iTunes Store home page, iTunes U, Podcasts, Music, Audiobooks, Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, and iTunes Latino, among others. On the home page, you’ll find links to the Top Movie Rentals, Top Movie Sales, Top Songs, Top Albums, Top Audiobooks, and similar content. And since even the sign-up process is now accessible, you can create an iTunes account without sighted assistance.To make browsing with a screen reader easier, the iTunes Store uses headers, links, and form controls, terms and landmarks you’ve already become accustomed to while browsing web pages.
If you can’t immediately find a song, album, or artist you’re interested in, you can use the search feature on the iTunes Store to find and display a matching list of songs, movies, TV shows, and other content based on the criteria you enter. For more complex searches, use Power Search, which lets you enter multiple search criteria at once.When you find content you like, iTunes 9 makes purchasing that content easy. Use a simple keystroke to purchase and download all media types, including individual songs, complete albums, movies, TV episodes, Season Passes, audiobooks, and podcasts.
iTunes U
iTunes U also features enhanced accessbility for those using screen readers. As a result, everyone with access to the Internet, including those who are blind or vision-impaired, can enjoy great educational content. iTunes hosts content provided by participating colleges, universities, K-12 schools, museums, public radio stations, and other educational organizations. That means the content is always available, easy to find, and even easier to download and play. On iTunes U, you search, download, and play course content just as you do with music, movies, and TV shows.Apple works closely with participating schools and organizations, encouraging them to provide descriptions for images and other information they upload to their web pages to make sure the pages are accessible to those using screen readers.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Complete List of Blogger Tutorials
Here is a complete list of all the tutorials posted on Blogger Buster, organized by category. So please, dive in and read the tutorials which are most useful to you!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Courtney Love, actually
Who is this smart, put-together woman? Why, it's Courtney Love, formerly the shambolic drug-addled widow of a tragic rock legend, now a sleek Givenchy muse, devout Buddhist and doting mother. But has the chaotic hell-raiser been replaced by a boring model citizen? Not quite, as Nigel Farndale discovers when he meets her
For the record, I didn't make Courtney Love cry. She made herself cry, every time she mentioned Frances, her 15-year-old daughter from her marriage to Kurt Cobain, the front man of the grunge band Nirvana. As she raised the subject four times over the course of two hours, this meant she cried four times: real, eye-dabbing, make-up-running, sniffy-nosed tears. But this is to come. For now, if anything, it is she who is bringing me close to tears with her Buddhist chanting. I have to endure 15 minutes of it before the interview can get under way. We are in her hotel suite, one of London's most exclusive. She is in the adjoining bedroom, chanting loudly. I am sitting waiting for her on a sofa surrounded by unruly piles of magazines, a guitar in a case, two full ashtrays, burning joss sticks, property details for a £4 million house in Notting Hill, and racks of her clothes - Givenchy, mostly, as Love is the new muse for that label.
A gong sounds, the chanting stops and she appears smiling in a skimpy black nightie and no make-up. There is a long-haired man with her. 'This is my friend David,' she says. 'We're chanting. Obviously. But he is so much better at explaining it than me.' She disappears to get changed, leaving me with her guru. As he is explaining what the chanting means I reflect on the living (despite the odds) legend that is Courtney Love. This is a woman who seems to have teetered on the edge of mayhem all her life - the heroin addiction, the air-rage incidents, the custody battles, the jail sentences, the star-f-ing, the millions made, the millions lost, the rehab - but she has never been boring. Or predictable. And although she was described as the Yoko Ono to Cobain's John Lennon, she was always a rock star in her own right. Indeed, immediately after her husband killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head in 1994, she set off on a tour with her band Hole, which, according to John Peel, verged on the heroic. 'Swaying wildly and with lipstick smeared on her face, hands and, I think, her back, the singer would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam,' he wrote.
Back in the hotel room ten minutes have passed and the guru is coming to the end of his explanation. 'I tend to chant with Courtney for two or three hours a day,' he says. 'A lot of celebrity Buddhists don't like to put in the time. But she loves to chant.'
No kidding. It may make for inner harmony for her, but for me the chanting adds to the chaos in the hotel suite. But then there is always a sense of chaos when Love is in town, which is why she has been banned from two of London's finest hotels (on both occasions it was to do with fire alarms being set off). When she reappears she is doing pretend karate chops, I think because she is wearing a Vivienne Westwood outfit that looks as if it came from the props department of Kill Bill. It is a black corset affair with leggings, shoulder pads and buckles. As she talks she keeps adjusting her bra to try and get comfortable. She also tries to work out what to do with a rogue cord that dangles between her legs, gives up and instead gathers her long, bottle-blonde hair over one shoulder - and teases two strands of her fringe down so that they hang dangerously over her eyes.
Courtney Love is 43 and in fine shape. Thanks to Madonna's macrobiotic nutritionist, she is back to a size eight. But her weight yo-yos - 'You have to be thin all the time to make it as an actress,' she says. 'But my rock weight is 20 or 30lb more than my film weight.' She juggles the two careers. 'Performing on stage is like great sex,' she tells me. 'Of course you want to be known for giving the best blowjob in town, but you also want to get yours, too.' She has a new album out in the spring and film projects in the pipeline, trying to regain some of the form she lost since her Golden Globe-nominated role in The People vs Larry Flynt (1996) and her equally good performance in Man on the Moon (1999) opposite Jim Carrey. Actually, it's three careers if you include the fashion thing: 'Givenchy is like me,' she says. 'A legendary brand that has had its ups and downs.'
She lights up a cigarette and holds it between two straight, long fingers with nails varnished vampy black. Although her eyes are large, green and - because slightly divergent - mesmerising, it is her pouty mouth that arrests the attention. She begins applying lipstick with a paintbrush as she is talking. And, boy, can she talk. She has a big mouth in every sense. A 'big dirty rock mouth', as it was once memorably described. I have to say, I like her instantly. I like her goofy grin. I like the crack in her husky voice. I like the fact that she is funny, chatty, animated, boastful, open, vulnerable, name-dropping and unselfconscious. She is also flirty, jiggling her eyebrows up and down when she wants me to look at something on her laptop - some art she is buying. Our opening exchange goes something like this. 'Did you like David?' He seemed very nice. 'I share him with Orlando Bloom.' And how does she feel after a chanting session? 'Sometimes really aggressive. Sometimes really energised and ready for a fight.' I see. Does her chanting fill a vacuum left by heroin? 'I didn't have an addiction when I was 24, which was when I started chanting. I try to focus on gratitude when I chant, because it kills anxiety and depression dead. I play tapes of gratitude in my head. Occasionally, though, a negative thought sneaks through. Lately I've been getting weird visions of Vince Vaughn running around naked in an executioner's mask.'
While one must not make light of mental health issues - especially in relation to someone who has been in and out of therapy all her life - the journalistic devil on my shoulder does whisper into my ear at this point, 'Thank goodness she's still bonkers.' Does she ever fear for her sanity, I ask? 'I am naturally pretty paranoid,' she says. 'And I have a right to be.'
Because? 'Mostly it is about money. What has caused problems for me is not understanding money. I had it and I had it stolen. I've had to rebuild it. It is a powerful thing. It has killed people in my life, the force of greed and covetousness. It has hurt me. I was embezzled.' Love claims that an estimated $20 million of her money was siphoned off in a case that is still being investigated by the FBI. Does she mean the royalties from Nirvana? 'Not just the royalties from Nirvana; it is all the money I have made, too. I'm not a slice of baloney myself. I've sold nine million records.' It's true, it's true. She was known for her grungy guitar playing, as well as for the way she would stage-dive into the crowd wearing charity-shop dresses and no knickers. Her biggest hit, Celebrity Skin, still stands up, in my opinion. 'I had everything stolen,' she continues, 'and so did my daughter, and that is upsetting.'
And so the sobbing starts. When she has recovered her composure I note that she is clearly very protective about her daughter. 'Frances is 15 now. That's a difficult age. She slept with me for the first time in a long time last night.' She starts to well up again. 'Sorry, I hate getting emotional. We get on well most of the time but teenagers are hard. Being a single mother is hard.'
Love's own childhood had no stability whatsoever. A social-services report details the eight different institutions where she was held in care between 1978 and 1980. Her case folder bore the phrase: 'Parents' whereabouts unknown'. Aged 16, she became a stripper.
Does she consciously avoid repeating the mistakes her own parents made? 'Oh my God, so much. We went to Trudie and Sting's the other night, because Trudie has a daughter who is Franny's age, but it was hard. For one thing, they were going to see the film Control and I wanted to show Frances that she could go out in London without a nanny or a bodyguard, so they went by themselves. I wanted to get her a cake because it is the first time she has gone anywhere on her own. She came back so disturbed because - daaa! - I forgot what the movie was about [the suicide of the lead singer of Joy Division]. Anyway, Sting was there and he was reading his book, and there were all their other kids there who had a mom and a dad, and Franny felt the odd one out.' She wipes her tears. 'I'm sorry. I just want things to be good for her, but she's a lot like me and a lot like her dad. I think she got the best of both of us, so there's that.'
Good cheekbones, I imagine. 'Yeah, she is a very good-looking girl. I don't want to put her in a burka. But I want to protect her from your tabloid press. I can take it but she…' Love trails off for a moment. 'It happens to me when I get papped in the UK, in the car. It's like Diana! Diana! Diana! You can't see anything because of the flashbulbs. At least I know how it works now. According to the tabs I'm dating Pete Doherty and we went to a Wetherspoons. Yeah, I get the joke. F- off. I hardly know Pete Doherty. I've talked to him once on the phone about rehab, because I'm a good rehab guide. Rehab worked for me because the judge ordered me to do 90 days, not 28. It was in a house doing one-to-one cognitive therapy, all 12 steps. It's a really good invention, the 12 steps. They gave me this sheet with all these negative attributes - paranoid, self-centred and so on - and told me to circle the ones that applied to me. Man, there were a lot of circles on mine. It was like an inventory. Then I had to write these damn letters to people I had f-ed over. Trouble was, my memory was so f-ed from the heroin I couldn't remember who I had f-ed over.'
No one at all? 'Well some things came back to me. I had to apologise to some guy I'd called a c-. And when I was telling this to my friend [the comedian] Chris Rock he said, "You should apologise to me, too." I said, "Why?" He said, "I remember getting 56 texts from you one morning." I was like, "What?" He said, "I read some of them out on stage and, believe me, you kept a lot of brothers and sisters sober."'
She says she's been clean and sober now since leaving rehab in February 2006. Does she still have memory lapses? 'The other night I was at the V&A and got talking to Vivienne Westwood, Dame Vivienne, and I said, "Great to meet you. I'm a huge fan," and she said, "We've met before. And we talked on the phone for three hours one time." I had zero recollection of it. I said, "Was I horrible? Was I boring?" She said, "No, I would have hung up on you if you had been. You were terribly amusing." Can you smell that?' I test the air. 'Smells like weed.' Not mine. 'Not mine either. Must be coming from the air ducts. Someone is having a smoke. What were we talking about?' Her memory. 'Yeah, I'm afraid I burnt some of my memory cells out. A lot of Courtney stories end in a fire. Usually on a set. But, hey, I'm not a bad person. There were massive gaps in my education: like you are not supposed to sleep with people who are married. I didn't know what to be scared of. I've stepped over the line here and there in my romantic behaviour but I have always been pretty moral.'
And pretty consistent. She likes to stick to front men: the front men of the Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails, to name but two. She has also been consistently, um, high-spirited in her behaviour. Does she feel when she is in a public place that she has to live up to a public version of herself as a hell-raiser? 'No, no, no. There is a disconnect between who I am, and how I live, and how I am perceived. I used to play up to it a bit when I was on drugs because who cares: sex, drugs, rock?'n'roll, waaaah! I always seem to come number two to Keith Richards in lists of greatest hell-raisers of all time. But if I was a guy, I wouldn't even be on the list! I didn't know it was such a guy's job. It's like playing football in high heels and lipstick; no wonder it smears.'
Her appearance in 2004 on The Late Show with David Letterman, the most famous American chat show, is the stuff of YouTube legend. She talked hyperactively, wouldn't leave and kept flashing her breasts. 'That's not art, that's just me not being the greatest celebrity of all time. I'm not 19 any more, so me standing on Letterman's desk is not as acceptable.'
An embarrassment threshold - does she have one? 'God, yes, I get embarrassed all the time. Are you crazy? I don't like things that embarrass my kid… You've got me crying again.'
In 1992 Love admitted to Vanity Fair that she had used heroin while (unknowingly) pregnant. Afterwards she claimed that she had been misquoted. The LA County Child Support Services Department nevertheless took the Cobains to court, claiming that the couple's drug usage made them unfit parents. After months of legal wrangling, they were granted custody of their daughter. There have been other custody battles since. 'I am a good mother, and the proof is in the pudding,' she says. 'I would never, ever put Franny on television. I would never let her do press. She has been offered the lead in four films, and was offered a campaign for [the fashion label] Tommy Hilfiger, and I tell her about these offers, but she wants to be a political journalist anyway, so… I don't think any kid has been more wanted by both her parents and I don't think any parents have ever wanted to f- up less than we did.'
Some of the gaps in her memory must be good for her self-preservation, I suggest. 'I don't have a gap about Kurt,' she says. Does she go through guilt about his death, wondering if there was anything more she could have done to prevent him killing himself? 'It's a horrible thing, but it is harder on a woman because widowers don't get the blame for suicide and widows do. Imagine having to grieve in public. It almost prevents you having your own grief. I went kooky-bananas ten years later because I didn't have a real association to my own grief. I didn't do a bereavement group. I didn't see a psychiatrist. I went on tour. Those shows were cathartic, but I was very defensive about what I would let out. I was swaggering around, all f-ed up on pills, but I wasn't telling the truth.' She lights another cigarette. 'Where were we? Yeah, my album. You're going to love it.'
And that's her. She is shameless. She is droll. She is a survivor, just, lurching from chronic insecurity to raging ego, self-belief and ambition. 'I want to get to the grown-up table once more and leave it with some grace,' she says. The smoke alarm goes off. She crosses the room to open the window. 'It is going to do this for a moment then it will stop,' she says, shouting above the noise. 'I hate this hotel.' On her way back she gets tangled up in the Vivienne Westwood cord dangling between her legs. 'I wonder what this string is for? I'm not sure what it signifies. The Dame sent me a few nice pieces, but this one is just crazy.'
She looks in her packet for another cigarette. 'Shit. Do you smoke?' When I shake my head she picks up the phone. 'Could you get two packs of Marlboro Lights as fast as possible, please.' And so the encounter ends as chaotically as it began.
For the record, I didn't make Courtney Love cry. She made herself cry, every time she mentioned Frances, her 15-year-old daughter from her marriage to Kurt Cobain, the front man of the grunge band Nirvana. As she raised the subject four times over the course of two hours, this meant she cried four times: real, eye-dabbing, make-up-running, sniffy-nosed tears. But this is to come. For now, if anything, it is she who is bringing me close to tears with her Buddhist chanting. I have to endure 15 minutes of it before the interview can get under way. We are in her hotel suite, one of London's most exclusive. She is in the adjoining bedroom, chanting loudly. I am sitting waiting for her on a sofa surrounded by unruly piles of magazines, a guitar in a case, two full ashtrays, burning joss sticks, property details for a £4 million house in Notting Hill, and racks of her clothes - Givenchy, mostly, as Love is the new muse for that label.
A gong sounds, the chanting stops and she appears smiling in a skimpy black nightie and no make-up. There is a long-haired man with her. 'This is my friend David,' she says. 'We're chanting. Obviously. But he is so much better at explaining it than me.' She disappears to get changed, leaving me with her guru. As he is explaining what the chanting means I reflect on the living (despite the odds) legend that is Courtney Love. This is a woman who seems to have teetered on the edge of mayhem all her life - the heroin addiction, the air-rage incidents, the custody battles, the jail sentences, the star-f-ing, the millions made, the millions lost, the rehab - but she has never been boring. Or predictable. And although she was described as the Yoko Ono to Cobain's John Lennon, she was always a rock star in her own right. Indeed, immediately after her husband killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head in 1994, she set off on a tour with her band Hole, which, according to John Peel, verged on the heroic. 'Swaying wildly and with lipstick smeared on her face, hands and, I think, her back, the singer would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam,' he wrote.
Back in the hotel room ten minutes have passed and the guru is coming to the end of his explanation. 'I tend to chant with Courtney for two or three hours a day,' he says. 'A lot of celebrity Buddhists don't like to put in the time. But she loves to chant.'
No kidding. It may make for inner harmony for her, but for me the chanting adds to the chaos in the hotel suite. But then there is always a sense of chaos when Love is in town, which is why she has been banned from two of London's finest hotels (on both occasions it was to do with fire alarms being set off). When she reappears she is doing pretend karate chops, I think because she is wearing a Vivienne Westwood outfit that looks as if it came from the props department of Kill Bill. It is a black corset affair with leggings, shoulder pads and buckles. As she talks she keeps adjusting her bra to try and get comfortable. She also tries to work out what to do with a rogue cord that dangles between her legs, gives up and instead gathers her long, bottle-blonde hair over one shoulder - and teases two strands of her fringe down so that they hang dangerously over her eyes.
Courtney Love is 43 and in fine shape. Thanks to Madonna's macrobiotic nutritionist, she is back to a size eight. But her weight yo-yos - 'You have to be thin all the time to make it as an actress,' she says. 'But my rock weight is 20 or 30lb more than my film weight.' She juggles the two careers. 'Performing on stage is like great sex,' she tells me. 'Of course you want to be known for giving the best blowjob in town, but you also want to get yours, too.' She has a new album out in the spring and film projects in the pipeline, trying to regain some of the form she lost since her Golden Globe-nominated role in The People vs Larry Flynt (1996) and her equally good performance in Man on the Moon (1999) opposite Jim Carrey. Actually, it's three careers if you include the fashion thing: 'Givenchy is like me,' she says. 'A legendary brand that has had its ups and downs.'
She lights up a cigarette and holds it between two straight, long fingers with nails varnished vampy black. Although her eyes are large, green and - because slightly divergent - mesmerising, it is her pouty mouth that arrests the attention. She begins applying lipstick with a paintbrush as she is talking. And, boy, can she talk. She has a big mouth in every sense. A 'big dirty rock mouth', as it was once memorably described. I have to say, I like her instantly. I like her goofy grin. I like the crack in her husky voice. I like the fact that she is funny, chatty, animated, boastful, open, vulnerable, name-dropping and unselfconscious. She is also flirty, jiggling her eyebrows up and down when she wants me to look at something on her laptop - some art she is buying. Our opening exchange goes something like this. 'Did you like David?' He seemed very nice. 'I share him with Orlando Bloom.' And how does she feel after a chanting session? 'Sometimes really aggressive. Sometimes really energised and ready for a fight.' I see. Does her chanting fill a vacuum left by heroin? 'I didn't have an addiction when I was 24, which was when I started chanting. I try to focus on gratitude when I chant, because it kills anxiety and depression dead. I play tapes of gratitude in my head. Occasionally, though, a negative thought sneaks through. Lately I've been getting weird visions of Vince Vaughn running around naked in an executioner's mask.'
While one must not make light of mental health issues - especially in relation to someone who has been in and out of therapy all her life - the journalistic devil on my shoulder does whisper into my ear at this point, 'Thank goodness she's still bonkers.' Does she ever fear for her sanity, I ask? 'I am naturally pretty paranoid,' she says. 'And I have a right to be.'
Because? 'Mostly it is about money. What has caused problems for me is not understanding money. I had it and I had it stolen. I've had to rebuild it. It is a powerful thing. It has killed people in my life, the force of greed and covetousness. It has hurt me. I was embezzled.' Love claims that an estimated $20 million of her money was siphoned off in a case that is still being investigated by the FBI. Does she mean the royalties from Nirvana? 'Not just the royalties from Nirvana; it is all the money I have made, too. I'm not a slice of baloney myself. I've sold nine million records.' It's true, it's true. She was known for her grungy guitar playing, as well as for the way she would stage-dive into the crowd wearing charity-shop dresses and no knickers. Her biggest hit, Celebrity Skin, still stands up, in my opinion. 'I had everything stolen,' she continues, 'and so did my daughter, and that is upsetting.'
And so the sobbing starts. When she has recovered her composure I note that she is clearly very protective about her daughter. 'Frances is 15 now. That's a difficult age. She slept with me for the first time in a long time last night.' She starts to well up again. 'Sorry, I hate getting emotional. We get on well most of the time but teenagers are hard. Being a single mother is hard.'
Love's own childhood had no stability whatsoever. A social-services report details the eight different institutions where she was held in care between 1978 and 1980. Her case folder bore the phrase: 'Parents' whereabouts unknown'. Aged 16, she became a stripper.
Does she consciously avoid repeating the mistakes her own parents made? 'Oh my God, so much. We went to Trudie and Sting's the other night, because Trudie has a daughter who is Franny's age, but it was hard. For one thing, they were going to see the film Control and I wanted to show Frances that she could go out in London without a nanny or a bodyguard, so they went by themselves. I wanted to get her a cake because it is the first time she has gone anywhere on her own. She came back so disturbed because - daaa! - I forgot what the movie was about [the suicide of the lead singer of Joy Division]. Anyway, Sting was there and he was reading his book, and there were all their other kids there who had a mom and a dad, and Franny felt the odd one out.' She wipes her tears. 'I'm sorry. I just want things to be good for her, but she's a lot like me and a lot like her dad. I think she got the best of both of us, so there's that.'
Good cheekbones, I imagine. 'Yeah, she is a very good-looking girl. I don't want to put her in a burka. But I want to protect her from your tabloid press. I can take it but she…' Love trails off for a moment. 'It happens to me when I get papped in the UK, in the car. It's like Diana! Diana! Diana! You can't see anything because of the flashbulbs. At least I know how it works now. According to the tabs I'm dating Pete Doherty and we went to a Wetherspoons. Yeah, I get the joke. F- off. I hardly know Pete Doherty. I've talked to him once on the phone about rehab, because I'm a good rehab guide. Rehab worked for me because the judge ordered me to do 90 days, not 28. It was in a house doing one-to-one cognitive therapy, all 12 steps. It's a really good invention, the 12 steps. They gave me this sheet with all these negative attributes - paranoid, self-centred and so on - and told me to circle the ones that applied to me. Man, there were a lot of circles on mine. It was like an inventory. Then I had to write these damn letters to people I had f-ed over. Trouble was, my memory was so f-ed from the heroin I couldn't remember who I had f-ed over.'
No one at all? 'Well some things came back to me. I had to apologise to some guy I'd called a c-. And when I was telling this to my friend [the comedian] Chris Rock he said, "You should apologise to me, too." I said, "Why?" He said, "I remember getting 56 texts from you one morning." I was like, "What?" He said, "I read some of them out on stage and, believe me, you kept a lot of brothers and sisters sober."'
She says she's been clean and sober now since leaving rehab in February 2006. Does she still have memory lapses? 'The other night I was at the V&A and got talking to Vivienne Westwood, Dame Vivienne, and I said, "Great to meet you. I'm a huge fan," and she said, "We've met before. And we talked on the phone for three hours one time." I had zero recollection of it. I said, "Was I horrible? Was I boring?" She said, "No, I would have hung up on you if you had been. You were terribly amusing." Can you smell that?' I test the air. 'Smells like weed.' Not mine. 'Not mine either. Must be coming from the air ducts. Someone is having a smoke. What were we talking about?' Her memory. 'Yeah, I'm afraid I burnt some of my memory cells out. A lot of Courtney stories end in a fire. Usually on a set. But, hey, I'm not a bad person. There were massive gaps in my education: like you are not supposed to sleep with people who are married. I didn't know what to be scared of. I've stepped over the line here and there in my romantic behaviour but I have always been pretty moral.'
And pretty consistent. She likes to stick to front men: the front men of the Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails, to name but two. She has also been consistently, um, high-spirited in her behaviour. Does she feel when she is in a public place that she has to live up to a public version of herself as a hell-raiser? 'No, no, no. There is a disconnect between who I am, and how I live, and how I am perceived. I used to play up to it a bit when I was on drugs because who cares: sex, drugs, rock?'n'roll, waaaah! I always seem to come number two to Keith Richards in lists of greatest hell-raisers of all time. But if I was a guy, I wouldn't even be on the list! I didn't know it was such a guy's job. It's like playing football in high heels and lipstick; no wonder it smears.'
Her appearance in 2004 on The Late Show with David Letterman, the most famous American chat show, is the stuff of YouTube legend. She talked hyperactively, wouldn't leave and kept flashing her breasts. 'That's not art, that's just me not being the greatest celebrity of all time. I'm not 19 any more, so me standing on Letterman's desk is not as acceptable.'
An embarrassment threshold - does she have one? 'God, yes, I get embarrassed all the time. Are you crazy? I don't like things that embarrass my kid… You've got me crying again.'
In 1992 Love admitted to Vanity Fair that she had used heroin while (unknowingly) pregnant. Afterwards she claimed that she had been misquoted. The LA County Child Support Services Department nevertheless took the Cobains to court, claiming that the couple's drug usage made them unfit parents. After months of legal wrangling, they were granted custody of their daughter. There have been other custody battles since. 'I am a good mother, and the proof is in the pudding,' she says. 'I would never, ever put Franny on television. I would never let her do press. She has been offered the lead in four films, and was offered a campaign for [the fashion label] Tommy Hilfiger, and I tell her about these offers, but she wants to be a political journalist anyway, so… I don't think any kid has been more wanted by both her parents and I don't think any parents have ever wanted to f- up less than we did.'
Some of the gaps in her memory must be good for her self-preservation, I suggest. 'I don't have a gap about Kurt,' she says. Does she go through guilt about his death, wondering if there was anything more she could have done to prevent him killing himself? 'It's a horrible thing, but it is harder on a woman because widowers don't get the blame for suicide and widows do. Imagine having to grieve in public. It almost prevents you having your own grief. I went kooky-bananas ten years later because I didn't have a real association to my own grief. I didn't do a bereavement group. I didn't see a psychiatrist. I went on tour. Those shows were cathartic, but I was very defensive about what I would let out. I was swaggering around, all f-ed up on pills, but I wasn't telling the truth.' She lights another cigarette. 'Where were we? Yeah, my album. You're going to love it.'
And that's her. She is shameless. She is droll. She is a survivor, just, lurching from chronic insecurity to raging ego, self-belief and ambition. 'I want to get to the grown-up table once more and leave it with some grace,' she says. The smoke alarm goes off. She crosses the room to open the window. 'It is going to do this for a moment then it will stop,' she says, shouting above the noise. 'I hate this hotel.' On her way back she gets tangled up in the Vivienne Westwood cord dangling between her legs. 'I wonder what this string is for? I'm not sure what it signifies. The Dame sent me a few nice pieces, but this one is just crazy.'
She looks in her packet for another cigarette. 'Shit. Do you smoke?' When I shake my head she picks up the phone. 'Could you get two packs of Marlboro Lights as fast as possible, please.' And so the encounter ends as chaotically as it began.
Canonical and Dell deliver Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition
Canonical, Dell and Intel Team up to deliver Moblin Ubuntu Remix Developer Edition on Inspiron Mini 10v
Sep 23 Intel Developer Forum, San Francisco: Canonical and Dell have collaborated to bring the latest developer edition of the Moblin™ v2 user experience to the developer market. Called 'Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition' and optimized for the Intel® Atom™ processor-based Dell Inspiron Mini 10v netbook, this release gives developer communities a great platform to develop and test Moblin and associated applications.
The Moblin project is pushing the boundaries of Linux user-experiences with fast boot times, new applications and innovative user-interface. Canonical has worked closely with Dell and Intel to create the Ubuntu Moblin Remix which extends and productizes core Moblin OS features as well as the user interface. The image will also be made available by Dell for download.
The delivery of Ubuntu Moblin Remix on a shipping netbook means that features like power management, wireless networking and suspend/resume are pre-tested. This enables developers to focus on writing value-added software.
“Moblin keeps on getting more exciting as a project with new applications and improved user experiences. It's great to be delivering this release with Dell to developers wanting to participate in Moblin,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO, Canonical. “Intel and the Moblin community are bringing tremendous resource and investment into the Linux ecosystem and this product acts as a bridge to Moblin for developers."
“Dell continues to take the lead in offering innovative choices in how individuals interact with their PC,” said John Thode, vice president, small screen devices, Dell Consumer. “By collaborating with Intel and Canonical we can offer early adopters, developers, and Linux enthusiasts, a truly pioneering Moblin development platform, the Inspiron Mini 10v, optimized for overall better performance, quicker boot time, smaller footprint, and longer battery life.”
“Moblin™ v2 takes advantage of the best features of Intel® Atom™ processors and provides outstanding user experience for small form factor devices,” said Doug Fisher, vice president of Intel’s Software and Services Group and general manager of the System Software Division. “It has been scarcely three months since the Moblin v2 beta was released and with the release of Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition on the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v we see a great example of how quickly the market segment is taking advantage of key technologies from Intel, Canonical and Dell.”
Sep 23 Intel Developer Forum, San Francisco: Canonical and Dell have collaborated to bring the latest developer edition of the Moblin™ v2 user experience to the developer market. Called 'Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition' and optimized for the Intel® Atom™ processor-based Dell Inspiron Mini 10v netbook, this release gives developer communities a great platform to develop and test Moblin and associated applications.
The Moblin project is pushing the boundaries of Linux user-experiences with fast boot times, new applications and innovative user-interface. Canonical has worked closely with Dell and Intel to create the Ubuntu Moblin Remix which extends and productizes core Moblin OS features as well as the user interface. The image will also be made available by Dell for download.
The delivery of Ubuntu Moblin Remix on a shipping netbook means that features like power management, wireless networking and suspend/resume are pre-tested. This enables developers to focus on writing value-added software.
“Moblin keeps on getting more exciting as a project with new applications and improved user experiences. It's great to be delivering this release with Dell to developers wanting to participate in Moblin,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO, Canonical. “Intel and the Moblin community are bringing tremendous resource and investment into the Linux ecosystem and this product acts as a bridge to Moblin for developers."
“Dell continues to take the lead in offering innovative choices in how individuals interact with their PC,” said John Thode, vice president, small screen devices, Dell Consumer. “By collaborating with Intel and Canonical we can offer early adopters, developers, and Linux enthusiasts, a truly pioneering Moblin development platform, the Inspiron Mini 10v, optimized for overall better performance, quicker boot time, smaller footprint, and longer battery life.”
“Moblin™ v2 takes advantage of the best features of Intel® Atom™ processors and provides outstanding user experience for small form factor devices,” said Doug Fisher, vice president of Intel’s Software and Services Group and general manager of the System Software Division. “It has been scarcely three months since the Moblin v2 beta was released and with the release of Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition on the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v we see a great example of how quickly the market segment is taking advantage of key technologies from Intel, Canonical and Dell.”
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