Volume 78
16 Mar 2007
15 Mar 2007
14 Mar 2007
RIP Gareth Hunt
This last week I have tried using three interesting, new applications, and none of them work behind a web-proxy, and do not provide any interface that might let you configure them so they did. The people who write these things need to get out more and find out what the real world is like - it isn't as if it is even hard to do! (configuring a proxy I mean, not finding out about the real world)
I happened, entirely by accident, to see the National Lottery show on the BBC on Saturday night. What is that all about? Jason Donovan reading from an auto-cue and looking slightly scared and perplexed. Women with clipboards wearing white gloves? Picking machines and sets of balls, ridiculous statistics. I think it is some sort of hidden ritual of the Illuminati or something. It made no sense to me at all, not even slightly. Why is this nonsense not on a commercial station where it belongs?
I really must try and remember to make a new volume tomorrow
Do you think there would be much call for a podcast where I went "Hmmm. Aahh. Good Grief!" a lot?
13 Mar 2007
Everyone is talking about twitter at the moment, so I joined, but of course I don't know anyone on it so it seems slightly self defeating.
enterfactumentainmentism - I also totally believe in the existence of the MTV program "Look, I have hookers in my bedroom"
My Tone-Gard arrived yesterday - definitely a good thing. Changes the playing position slightly which turns out to be no bad thing either.
12 Mar 2007
11 Mar 2007
Chattanooga Choo Choo - The Nicholas brothers in great form, Dorothy Dandridge and the great riffing trombones of the Glenn Miller orchestra. Almost perfect.
10 Mar 2007
www.paricutin.com kills Firexoz and IE7 dead on my machine. I wonder what it is trying to do?
New William Gibson on the horizon. I want to read it now! Maybe an early copy will arrive with my review 8 core Macbook Pro.
Aren't everyone's fingers digital?
Ion make an EWI! But no price that I can find so far.
9 Mar 2007
Have a read of chapter one and see if your life changes - mice certainly did : I know not to ever go near this rubbish should I see it in a shop (they are claimed to be the most stolen books in some bookshops - probably the shopkeeper hiding them in embarassment)
I bought the latest copy of Nexus today, I always swear i will never buy it again, but I always seem to. This weeks gem of ignorance : "Unlike conventional silicon chips, it does not rely on conventional binary code, instead it uses the much more powerful alpha-numeric code" I'm slightly surprised it didn't use the even more powerful Bible Code!
I just got spammed by people called Brigadoon Software - imagine calling your company after somehwere that was here today and gone tomorrow.
I'm sitting watching the Thin Man. What a lot they drink.
My dad's beens ending me lots of scanned family pictures some of which I will put online as they are really good. Here's another one of him and me, looking slightly more repectable than the one on the beach on Jura! I'm in school uniform again - which looks quite plain in all the photos, but in fact was rather bright scarlet in colour....
8 Mar 2007
Does such a thing exist as a microphone (or microphone system) that has an optical plug on it?
Phoenix Jazz Mandolin - doesn't instantly appeal on looks, and at that price I think it would need to. Might be a joy to play of course.
RIP John Inman
7 Mar 2007
Anyone know how to make iTunes store the album art somewhere other than in My Documents on a PC? You can store the music elsewhere but not the art it seems and I run out of space as the My Documents is on a shared space with limit size.
6 Mar 2007
5 Mar 2007
4 Mar 2007
3 Mar 2007
Lunar eclipse was splendid tonight. Lots of weird sparkles too.
2 Mar 2007
sucks-rocks - why does it say Hello Japan? (via Red Ferret) Update : Boogie gives a perfect 10 for some reason.
1 Mar 2007
Quite bizarre - but there again I've never understood this thing about anthems, or indeed flags.
28 Feb 2007
Ignore the idiotic commentators, just watch the dancing, the spins are just ridiculous (but the comments detect a lack of sabor....)
350 spam comments this morning but the only URL they contained was for google! What a waste of my time and their's. I'll need to beef up the captcha a bit I think since someone is either typing in by hand or else checking pages before spamming.
27 Feb 2007
If christ and the anti-christ are in the same room do they just cancel each other out and vanish boojum-style?
26 Feb 2007
25 Feb 2007
24 Feb 2007
23 Feb 2007
22 Feb 2007
21 Feb 2007
Otaared
Finally, recognition :-) (and they use the bifurcatedrivets.co.uk URL as well - I had forgotten about that one!) Well, not quite - since it isn't actually a nomination just one of their picks.
Jim & Jesse - fantastic cross picking and some crazy split string work if I am not mistaken. One of the mandolin greats
<0One of these must be J-Walk0>
20 Feb 2007
19 Feb 2007
18 Feb 2007
Lokum (P has some rose/geranium scented oil in the burner and we are all sitting wanting turkish delight)
17 Feb 2007
Excellent - the book
16 Feb 2007
15 Feb 2007
14 Feb 2007
Oh good, grief : Fleck, Scruggs , Douglas, Clements, Bush - couldn't get much better than that. (And I note that Sam Bush's hair is a different colour here so it might be him)_
DGQ with a young, thin DG. So good. I wish I could play a quarter, even an eight, as well as that. I'm not sure who the other mandolin player is - Andy Statman, Sam Bush? I wish I could find a bunch of people who wanted to play that kind of stuff. Update: It's Mike Marshall,(see comments) which I should probably have guessed from the virtuosity. He is stupendous.
13 Feb 2007
12 Feb 2007
11 Feb 2007
I wrote one of these nearly 30 years ago now. Not quite as neat as this one of course since the technology was not there.
Here's the guy who takes the Jazz class I go to's myspace page - has some clips of him playing on it. (He's very good)
9 Feb 2007
God's Pottery - sounds like a medieval oath. They probably do sound like a medieval oath....
8 Feb 2007
Č
Acapella version of Dr Dre song (NFSW and potentially offensive as you might expect from a Dre song)
7 Feb 2007
RIP Frankie Laine (he was 93)
6 Feb 2007
5 Feb 2007
Lovely comment on Digg : "If you think your IQ is 140 and you don't know how a bell curve works, I think you're confusing your IQ with your weight."
4 Feb 2007
3 Feb 2007
2 Feb 2007
SGB - OP, RB and NHOP (note the bit where OP wipes his forehead and it still sounds like there are three people playing the piano)
Pitch 'n' Putt with Joyce 'n' Beckett - brilliant (NSFW sound). I *love* "all fecund in its nuttiness"
1 Feb 2007
RIP Molly Ivins
31 Jan 2007
I got some of the Robert Crumb Blues Musician cards that Gary recommended - they are great, but I also got the Pioneers of Country Music ones as well and they are possibly even better. Turns out that there is also an Early Jazz Greats series.......
30 Jan 2007
To St Andrews today and of course the line between Newcastle and Edinburgh was closed. *sigh* Bus from berwick to Wdinburgh going and coming back via Carlisle and the Wifi wasn't working on the train.
A young, skinny me standing next to one of the best road signs ever (in Glen Tannar, Aberdeenshire)
29 Jan 2007
27 Jan 2007
I just got round to watching the Aristocrats. It was much funnier than I expected. The mime was particularly good and the guy doing the card tricks. Don Rickles looks like Jabba the Hut.
26 Jan 2007
25 Jan 2007
24 Jan 2007
23 Jan 2007
Second Life is full of French and germans tonight
Oh lord, this is so bogus - I particularly like the idea of "Artificial Electromagnetic Waves". I assume all the Natural ones are all OK and are allowed through.
22 Jan 2007
Oops, that last one got tagged Ole when it should hav been a thanks to Ole. I need to label my interface boxes....
21 Jan 2007
20 Jan 2007
How come I have managed not to hear about (or see) Comet McNaught. Probably missed it now.
19 Jan 2007
A little bumpy - note the way the people carefully don't make any attempt to get out of the way
There really is a site for everyone on the good old interwebs (probably NSFW - I haven't actually explored it)
18 Jan 2007
17 Jan 2007
I'm sure I've linked to this page before, but it almost certainly bears repeating (via Non-working Monkey)
Just been for a Turkish bath with my friend Malcolm. Which was nice, and now eating Xmas cake (with Lancashire cheese) and drinking Tokai Azu. Which is also nice.
16 Jan 2007
15 Jan 2007
14 Jan 2007
Bugle Call Rag with Eric Weissberg on banjo (one of my favourite banjo players). Somebody in the band is horrible out of tune though, the mandolin player I think, though the fiddle was pretty off and some of the down the neck banjo sounds awry too.
Tennessee Ernie Ford - check out Speedy Wests's steel! Streamline! Te Jimmy Bryant guitar solo is a corker too.
I just finished scanning most of CDs into Delicious Library. I seem to only have 390! (OK, quite a few are doubles or boxed sets) Not nearly enough.
RIP Alice Coltrane
RIP Michael Brecker (who I must confess to not knowing, but he sounds as though I should have)
13 Jan 2007
Ole was at my house for dinner tonight. Which was nice. Weather still horrible and I still feel crap though.
12 Jan 2007
It is horribly windy here tonight. I hate windy days, I find them most disturbing and unsettling.
Interesting - I recall reading and even linking to this event, but I don't know if it was this video.
Excellent (I was watching some of the Gemberling things on Channel 102 yesterday - they're OK too)
11 Jan 2007
RIP RAW
I found Krazy Kat records - loads of western swing from these guys, amongst other great stuff
T for Texas - amazing accent that the woman in the window has. Sounds like Margaret Dumont! The "old lady" in the rocking chair is, I think, not old at all.
I was listening to the session that was recorded with Bob Wills the day before he fell into his final coma. You can hear how ill and tired he is, but also that he is loving it too. Very sad.
Way too expensive and DRMed of course but there is some good material available. I'm not sure how this "burn 3 times thing works". I mean if I backup my entire machine, disconnect it from the network, burn the disc and then restore my machine surely I can do it all over again as many times as I want? Also why would you burn 3 times? Why not burn once and then copy n-times? Seems entirely bizarre to me.
10 Jan 2007
Monica Zetterlund & Bill Evans Trio I couldn't work out the langauge - Northern European but quite which I am not sure.
Oooh, theremin schematics - get out the soldering iron (that's pronounced soul-der-ing BTW)
9 Jan 2007
I love all the stock market graphs of Apple v Palm v RIMM that people are showing. Just confirms my opinion of the stock market....
Lucky this is for the US, I've always wanted to live in a watermill. Attached to a walled garden of course.
So good!!! I particularly like Palmerston Place Lane as the address (I went to school a stone's throw from Palmerston Place in Edinburgh)
RIP Sneaky Pete Kleinow and Magnus Magnusson
8 Jan 2007
Dangerous Roads - the later slides are in Bolivia and have been around the net a lot, but the first few are ones I had not seen before and are in China (even though it says Bolivia...)
Lots of hard piano playing links (tne comments degenerate into an argument about John Cage sadly)
7 Jan 2007
We are all still ill in our house - P and I are sitting here coughing and gasping away.
Hmnmmm - read some of the later stuff. People never cease to amaze me. It would be fine if it kept them off the streets, but it doesn't
The mud elephant, wading through the sea, leaves no tracks....
Bit Torrent? Bit drool more likely : 35b/s........
All these sound excellent - I cant find any trace of Krazy Kat records other than in listings though. Maybe they have vanished or have no website.
Whippoorwills (Doug Dalton plays the hot solo on mandolin - you have to wait for it though)
Fit4Jesus (beware pop-ups) - what is with the weird Christian flag thing? I think this is weird and creepy, but it also makes sense to me.
6 Jan 2007
5 Jan 2007
C4 started running Ugly Betty tonight - seemed to be pretty good (so far....)
4 Jan 2007
3 Jan 2007
2 Jan 2007
Cold Comfort Farm was very good on BBC 4 tonight, as was the programme about Up Helly Aa that followed - some cracking tunes to be heard in the background and a nice clip of Brian Gear and Violet Tulloch.
1 Jan 2007
Happy 2007 (a little later than usual...)
31 Dec 2006
30 Dec 2006
Anyone tried a Bogey acoustic combo amplifier???
I wonder if my free laptop from Microsoft has been delivered to work? (see item on BB, Digg etc. last week)
Gateway - good but so far not as hard as people are claiming. Update: far too easy and it finishes far too soon.
I'm not a well boy at the moment - usual Xmas flu. *sigh*
29 Dec 2006
28 Dec 2006
This article about Noka chocolates that was mentioned on Boing Boing is well worth reading.
My soprano Sax arrived this morning! Yay!
Skuut - but of course you can achieve the identical effect by taking the pedals off the kid's ordinary bike....
27 Dec 2006
Ugh. Ill.
26 Dec 2006
The bloke in the picture in this Boing Boing piece looks like a weird combination of Bill Gates and Prince Charles.
95% of my mail has been spam these last few days - the spam filters need tweaking again methinks.
I got a Garmin GPS for Xmas. Which was nice.
25 Dec 2006
RIP James Brown
Merry Xmas!!!!
24 Dec 2006
My son just says to one of his friends on the phone "what are you doing tomorrow, apart from Xmas?"
Awwww, Tommy - play a little longer!!! More fine, fine music - great singing, lovely steel.
Making meringues, icing the Xmas cake, and making a pine kernel loaf for dinner tomorrow. Got a bottle of Two Hands Brilliant Disguise from last year which should be good, and a nice Rioja and some interesting dessert wine too.
23 Dec 2006
22 Dec 2006
Still DNS problems here.
The Interwebs seem to be fairly non-functional this morning - getting lots of DNS non-resolution and things.
21 Dec 2006
ahhh, my new Macbook Pro has arrived. Shiny! Shiny! New computer smell!
Les Paul and Mary Ford (part 1 of several) - great stuff. I was one when this was filmed. The guitar playing is so advanced for the time. The bad breath advert is brilliant too.
Yardbirds - the really odd thing about this is that the audience looks as though it could have been filmed yesterday the way that fashion is just now
20 Dec 2006
Sittin on top of the world - note the left-handed guitarist and fiddler, and Bobby Koefer on Steel who I had not come across before but appears to be legendary for his entirely unorthodox technique.
San Antonio Rose - Awwwww, Tommy. They all look really uncomfortable for some reason. I wonder if that's what their gigs were actually like? Somehow I doubt it.
19 Dec 2006
One of our local radio stations is running an advert from the National Lottery suggesting that buying someone a scratchcard would make an ideal present. What sort of person buys someone a lottery scratchcard as a Xmas present?
18 Dec 2006
17 Dec 2006
Well, I got to the end of the Gridlock puzzle I linked to the other day. Age has sharpened my mind or else given me more patience.
On Friday I saw this student on campus who probably thought he was the coolest of the cool : skinny jeans skimpy jacket, little black hat in the back of his head. Very Pete Doherty, except that he had on a black and white stripe shirt and looked like a mime....Very Marcel Marceau.
ValleySchwag seems to have come back to life
16 Dec 2006
Happy birthday to me!!!
15 Dec 2006
This very picture (no 3) hangs in my bathroom. There are some lovely images on this site - well worth a browse, and if you ever get the chance go in to the gallery : they are simply splendid people
RIP Ahmet Ertegun
14 Dec 2006
I really must get better about creating new volumes