loius the fourteenth - update for down beats

I completely failed to turn the channel over so am now watching Louis The XIV play and the song they are doing contains elements copied from David Bowie, John Cale, The Cure (in look not sound) and probably some other people whose name escapes me.

Dag 579 - the weekly woss weport

Last week I went to bed and watched Jonathan Ross and wrote up a report on the performance of Simple Minds. This proved to be so popular that I have bowed to public demand and decided to review the show each and every week from the comfort of my own bed.
It is on right now and so far Lee Evans has already been on and Louis Therioux is currently being interviewed. I missed most of Lee Evans because I was tidying up downstairs and letting the dog out etc. Lous has been talking about his shows which have included being on the set of pr0n movies, going to swinging parties and meeting pimps. Later there will be some group or other called Louis XVI or something - I have never heard of them, but I have a feeling that they aint going to be as good as simple minds were.
Now they are talking about Jimmy Saville - when I was young I had a friend whose familly knew Jimmy Saville.
Now they are talking about Chris Eubank - I have a friend who lives in the same town as Chris Eubank and he has seen him around and about before (including his big lorry). He may have even met him, but I can't remember.
Now Louis is talking about his cat that was called scratch - I have never met a cat called scratch before, my cats are called dogger and mac. Louis Theroux has just described how he was rubbing his unnuetered cat called scratch on the tummy and how his cat became aroused and how Louis carried on until the frustrated cat had finished. This is quite disgusting and I am glad that the hapless therouix has left the stage and Rossy is telling some between guest jokes.
The final guest is someone from eastenders so I think it is time to turn over and watch something else, which means I won't get to find out whether I like the band or not.
So until next week, its goodbye from me and goodbye from the whole cast of Tintin and the asparagas napkin bandits.

Dag 572 - simple minds for complex people

As I type this I am watching simple minds playing on the jonathan ross show. I don't know what song they are playing, but it sounds typically simple mindish and I think it is pretty good. I have seen simple minds twice in concert, the first time they were supporting magazine and the second time they were the main act (I can't remember who was supporting them, but it may have been china crisis). Both concerts were at Leeds university.
I don't know if it is the same people playing now as it was when I saw them in Leeds, but it looks like it probably is. There are 2 feelings going through my mind as I watch them. The first is that they look like a bunch of geriatrics and the second is that I wish I could be doing what they were doing.

Dag 571 - Skid stop or nutter?

This weekend is the first ever inaugural formula A1 GP grand prix race of the year show award at Brands hatch.
The intrepid DJ will be flying down there tonight and will be driving some car or other in one of the races or something and we, the hard working staff of Critical Mass would like to offer him our full support and let it be known that we are fully behind him on this one.

So, good luck DJ.

Sometimes my pee smells like chicken soup

The cool night drifted into a cold morning. He woke up hungry, not sure where he was and needing to pee. The others snored on, oblivious of his consciousness, dreaming their own dreams. He decided to wait, at least for a while, to see if anyone else would move first.
A single sparrow broke the silence with a high pitched whistle. Summer was almost gone, but autumn still struggled to impose itself on its seasonal rival and could wait until its death throes were over. His bladder started screaming for attention, a spoilt child starting its supermarket tantrum and he knew it would only get worse. He slid a single leg from under the duvet. The air in the room was stale, the same air he'd been breathing all night, but something was wrong. As it caressed his leg he knew that something had happened in the room during the night. The knowledge was absolute and bore no argument. He slid his tired body from the bed and scampered to the bathroom, no longer caring who he disturbed.
The bathroom was dark and he fumbled for the twisted piece of string that would throw it piercing light over the bright white furnishing within. His hand swirled and twisted, trying to find the elusive cord, to no avail. He decided to take his chances in the dark and stepped forward. His foot thumped against a solid object on the floor. He stepped over, cursing whoever had left a wet pile of towels in the middle of the floor. A white ring shone before him, catching what little light was available to advertise its presence. He pulled at the gap in his shorts and fumbled inside. At last he was ready and started to release. The blessed release washed over him and the pain subsided. The tantrum had been averted this time, and he relaxed. He caught a faint whiff of something familiar. At last he placed it, "Chicken Soup" he muttered and collapsed in a pile on the floor.

Millions of games

Millions of games all under one roof, it's called, umm, millions of games.

Dag 563 - I once wrote a poem of stillness and sadness

.......but I'm not writing poems anymore.

However, last night while watching an old episode of Inspector Lindley a couple of song lines came into my head, so I got hold of my lyric book (last added to in the 1980s) and wrote them down. Throughout the reminder of the program further lyrics came into my head so I added those and ended up with nearly a songs worth. They'll need tidying up a bit, but I will then try and write some music to go with them. This will be a first for me, as I usually write the tunes and then try and think of some words to go with them. I will possibly blog them when complete, but not here - I'll do that in my other blog.

Last Saturday night when I went to bed I decided that instead of subjecting innocent bystanders to me rambling on about my music I would create a new blog specially to allow me to do that (at 02:30 I thought it was about time to finish my first post and go to sleep). This means people can read that one if they want to, and the regular punters can stick with this one. So this is the last post here about my own music - you'll still get postings about other peoples music from time to time though. I won't be putting a link to my new blog here, so if you want to read it you'll have to find it for yourself. I'm sure it won't be hard to do. In fact there are 10 clues to its location on this blog, 3 of which can be found before the first line.

The other thing I will be carrying on here are my indepth film analysis, reviews and commentary.
So, a few weeks ago I finally got around to watching Mulholland Drive. It was very watchable and I did enjoy it, however, I did not understand one bit about what was going on with it. I even got confused about who was who, and when I saw those small versions of those old folks doing a jig or something I became even more confused. After it finished I looked at the extras to see if that might help me understand what I had just seen. These included 10 clues to understanding the film. Clue number 1 stated that there are 3 big clues before the opening titles. Ok, I thought, so I started watching the film again, but it began with the opening titles - so how could there be 3 clues before them??? I wondered if there was meant to be a bit before the titles, but it had been cut from my version of the DVD. I could well believe that, because someone had certainly been fiddling with other bits of the film on my copy. For example, just before the lesbian scene (that Adrian has previously alluded to) one of the actresses removes here bath robe. On my copy of the film someone has done a bit of pixelating (like they do to hide peoples faces on crimewatch) only they had missed the face completely with their pixelating. Also the lesbian scene was suspiciously short, so I think someone had got a bit happy with the scissors there too. This was most surprising on a film that I bought in Sweden! Anyway, then I decided that there was no explanation for the film, it was just made up and wasn't supposed to mean anything and the so called '10 clues' were just to get people even more confused. I was so convinced of this theory that I looked it up on the internet and discovered a site that could explain the story, and after reading this explanation it all began to make sense. I'll be waiting a bit for me to forget some of it, and then I shall watch it again.

Day 536: Film 2005

It's a question of sport
but not real sport - only in thought (sung to the theme tune for film 87)

So I haven't seen a huge number of films recently, but here are the in depth reviews of those I remember:

Secret window: I've been meaning to watch this for ages and finally saw this on tuesday night. It was pretty good to watch, but I wasn't too impressed with the ending.
Hide and Seek: I saw this before watching Secret Window. They have similar twists to them, but I got the twist in this one much earlier than I got the twist in Secret Window. Both films were pretty enjoyable though.
The Life Aquatic: I rented this last weekend and from the cover and the cast it looked like it would be really funny, however the humour is pretty subtle and seemed mainly to be take offs of the old Jacques Cousteau films. If you hadn't seen any of those you would be struggling to find the humour (and even if you had, you still have to work at finding the funny bits). I admit that I got bored around half way through and switched off. Maybe I would have enjoyed it better if I was in a different frame of mind.
Dodgeball: Waited ages to see this as I wasn't expecting it to be that good, but it was better than I expected. The story line was pretty obvious, but I think it was meant to be.
Gothika: I really enjoyed this - it is a tip top top of the range film.
Mannen som log: This is the third in the series of these films based on the Henning Mankel books. It was the first one I had seen without reading the book first - I haven't even noticed this book as being available. It was shorter and less dark and forboding than the previous two (or at least shorter than the second). It seemed, therefore, to be more commercial and user friendly that the others. I still enjoyed it though. I did cheat a bit by putting the english subtitles on, which wasn't an option with the previous 2 films in the series.
Meet the Fockers: I enjoyed this film alot, but I still prefer Meet the Parents (Släkten är värst) which is one of my all time favourate films of all time.

I have Mulholland Drive and Spirited Away waiting in the wings to be watched (both bought on my last trip to Stockholm), but the time hasn't seemed right for either of those just yet. Spirited Away is a Japanese film which is dubbed into english (if you bought it in the UK), but my copy is dubbed into swedish so I have to wait until my brain is in need of a good work out before watching it.

Dag 535 - music was my first love

and coming up with crap blog headings was my second.
OK, normally my titles are pretty reasonable, but as I thought I would ramble on about some of the key albums I have bought over the years, and I couldn't think of anything better, I thought I might go for something really cheesy instead. In fact you could almost say this is the story of my life through music.

So I began my life musically deprived as my parents didn't have a record player. This was eventually rectified when they sent off for one from an advert in a newspaper. I can't remember how much it cost, but I know it was cheap and I remember thinking it looked really cheap and nasty when it arrived. It was stereo, but it had very thin speakers and the record deck itself was very plasticy. Also all the wires were firmly attached, there were no connectors here.

The first lp records I remember having were a tuffty club lp and the soundtrack of chitty chitty bang bang. I also had some Thomas the tank engine singles with stories read by Johnny Morris (at least I think that was his name - he used to do the voices on animal magic). I used to listen to chitty chitty bang bang a lot (of course in those days there were no videos or dvds, so you only got to see films when they were shown on TV or at the cinema). Nowadays I hate musicals in all forms so would rather eat my own feet than listen to anything like that again.

So, up to now I had had limited exposure to any music, and what music I did have was pretty dire - so what happened to get me on the right path?

I remember one day my Dad came home from work saying he had been at Leeds University sorting out some scaffolding requirements for the stage there for a concert by David Bowie. It seems he had met with Mr Bowie to discuss what was needed and had been asked if he wanted any free tickets for the show. He asked me if I wanted him to take me to it and my reply was along the lines of "why would I want to go and see him, isn't he the pop star that wears make up?". So I didn't go and see it - I guess you can imagine how many times I have kicked my self since.
Anyway once the concert had passed David Bowie kept popping up, not in person, but I kept hearing him on the radio and remember seeing lost of posters of him in shops and started noticing his records in record shops.
I also began to start liking other pop records I heard on the radio and I started saving up my pocket money to buy singles. I can't remember the first one I bought, but I know I had Tiger Feet by Mud, Ballroom Blitz by Sweet and various singles by Wizard, David Bowie, Status Quo and others.
I then noticed the album Hunky Dory in my local record shop so I decided to save up for that. I finally bought it for the sum of 3 pounds and 60 pence which was a huge sum in those days. I thought it was fantastic and started listening to more and more of that type of music (my chitty chitty bang bang record was put to the back of the pile, never to be played again).
I used to play Hunky Dory a lot and I remember our neighbour telling my parents that their daughter you to listen to it when I played it by holding a glass up to the wall between our houses.
I remember buying seeing and album for not much more than the price of a single which contained loads of songs that I liked including Jean Jeannie by David Bowie so I bought it with my hard saved pocket money only to feel completely ripped off when I played it because the songs didn't sound right - they were played by different people! I could not believe that it was possible for some group to make an album of other peoples songs - I felt I had been ripped off and never played it again.
I came across this phenomenon on a number of other occasions because various relatives knew I liked pop music and bought me Top of the Pops albums for my birthday and Christmas presents. They never got played, and if I had them now they would probably be worth a bit.
So I couldn't really afford many albums so I spent most of my pocket money on singles and when I was alone I would get my trusty tennis racket and tie a bit of cotton to it and then tie the other end to an electric plug and hay presto I had an electric guitar which I could use to strum along to all my records.
When I bought the single of Dance with the Devil by cozy Powell my electric tennis racket just wouldn't do, so I got a pair of my Mums thickest knitting needles and used these on the sofa. In the end I could play the sofa just as well as cozy Powell could play the drums.

I started having piano lessons at school at some point and I liked Life on Mars so much that I was determined to learn how to play it on the piano. I even went as far as inviting someone who was really good at the piano from school around to my house so he could work out how to play it and teach it to me. He came round but once he knew what I wanted from him he became completely uninterested. He had never listened to any David Bowie before and had no interntion of starting at my request.

I'm unsure of the exact dates and even order of events, but this was all based around the early 1970s.
The only reference I can find to a gig at Leeds University was June 2nd 1973, so that would have made me 9 years old, so I must have been 9 or 10 when I bought Hunky Dory (for some reason I'd always thought I was 7 when I bought it). I suppose it is always possible that my memory is so hazy that I had already bought it before my Dad asked if I wanted to go to that gig. Also according to David Bowies website the Leeds University gig was cancelled, so I guess I wouldn't have got to see it even if I had wanted to.

My next stage in my musical apreciation was around 1976. I had spent a fair bit of time with my uncle who was into music in a big way and I remember him having albums by King Crimson, Genesis and John call, amused others. I heard a song by Genesis called A Trick of the Tale and this sounded, in some way, much more advanced than what I had been listening to so I remember shortly after getting a portable tape recorder for my birthday I bought the cassette of A Trick of the Tale. This was played constantly and I remember my Dad telling me to turn the music off many times. Because it was portable I would take it round with me from room to room.
I remember visiting a friends house whose Dad was playing an ABBA album. I thought that was great so I thought I would tape it on my new tape recorder. When he had left the room I put the record on, pressed record on the tape recorder and sat in silence while it taped. I remember he came back in the room after a few songs and I put my finger to my mouth in the hope he wouldn't say anything, but he asked why he needed to be quiet. I told him I was taping the record and he then showed me that with the use of a certain type of cable you could tape an lp over the cable and therefore you could talk while you taped it. It also had the added advantage that the recording would be much higher quality.
I never did learn how to play Life on Mars on the piano, but the Dad who taught me about recording also taught me how to play Sailing by Rod Stewart on the piano. I never really liked that song, but I feel like I am better at the piano that I really am when I play it, so it still gets blasted out from time to time.
By now I had also started buying NME and Melody maker every week and had also bought myself a cheap second hand electric guitar complete with buzzing frets and was spending my time listening to David Bowie, Abba and Genesis. I should stress that at no time had I bought the song that shares the title with this blog entry.

This is enough for now, so part 2 will follow in the near future.

Dag 533 - and that's traitorous

"Wallop!" said the yellow sad eyed wombat to the mother of plenty. Oh yes that's fine for at least 20 different strokes when the rain flows in freely from several apertures but suddenly I heard a flux bird digging the mushrooms from underneath our perforated veruccae with silver pots covering them and died.
The greenfinch that flew past my window yesterday burped as it flew away backwards down the upwards facing slope because never had it once eaten any blue opal fruits. "Well!" said Grobblegott "That's tasty" as bird-shit, which was not yellow anyway, slid through his carpet slippers while he was not wearing them on his tree house garden chair with flowers on the left chair arm.
Anyway, two or black fishes with spotty fins swept out their kitchens without heed of the rotten consequences to life in hospital teaching wards.
The often upset shrew who knew Grobblegott went sick 3 or 7 times but never coughed because he was hermaphroditic - "At least that's a true story" said Fluxbird.
Suddenly, without flybutton, police-tree Shrubbery burst forth or fifth branches in his attempt to fly backwards inconsequentially. Mother of plenty appeared massaging the greenfinch in its entirety. "Gosh! I would think that that's a thrilling non-entity" yelled Wombat through all mouseholes having purple doors which rattled. "Taht!" squealed police-tree Shrubbery. "Are Dungheep's armpits found available locally?". That is unusual to speak of in Gromboland because armpits are never found very near the mountainous lake steamer.
Flicknife Fryingpan called across the gangway to his brother's fiancee, whilst three hot happy buns stole butter from the tapeworm's auntie. "Oy fatso where's Fluxbird's armpit cleaner? I've dropped mine off the edge of Grobblegott's big bulbous midwife".
Finding no jam jars, I decided that it would explode the others wives if something or someone risked breaking them all.
"Wallop!" said the yellow sad nosed wombat. "Is that preferential to repeat such trivia? - Not really cricket what ho? is it?"
Flik flopped over garden zones at midnight screaming 'Blue curtains'. Why this phenomenon occurred wasn't exactly explicable, but he felt normal when he did it.
Amyway, back to the story which was happening simultaneously with this story as might well be expected.
While sniffing uncertainly, Dungheep washed Greenfinch twice in seven bath tubs at Waterloo Bridge Tunnel, Neptune. The clock ticked and the Mother of Plenty watched and waited for something to happen.
Suddenly in a blinding flash a creature strolled invisibly on. "Quack" wasn't said ever so it clipped itself away.
As foretold by the storytellers the jelly mold didn't work on butter because Bekorz wasn't helping the mind make sandwiches.
"Fazoom!" cautioned the, now, spirangulated Police-Tree Shrubbery, as copies of Crass News crassly crassed open baked bean plants stems. The news quickly traveled away from the scene of a crime, not anything to speak silently of, but neither Crass News nor itself were able to withstand the unhappy plight they found Police-Tree Shrubbery not in - slowly, quickly and inbetween.
Wellington boot hill is quite steep and slippery and awfully muddy in several bushes armpits but not herbitualy speaking. Incidentally, cosmic badges.
"Skies biscuits!" whispered Greenfinch. "I have already sold myself 15 hours worth of chewing tape under false eyelashes." psychedelic possums ran round Grobblegott backwards extremely stoned (quartz) concourse (digital) kaleidoscope (watched). Follow you and follow others.
This only philosophy shows Dungheep's intense oneness in life.
hepatitis epidemics had already got 16 of the cousin's sweets before they had been introduced to Grobblegott, who was against any participation, political or otherwise indirectly by noon.
"My God!" spoke Said, "I've just realised that I'm not really supposed to be in this story at all, so I'd better get myself lost."
The thigh high sky fell flying to the clouds (pink and fluffy, but not at all light). Police-Tree Shrubbery gasped at the sight as the pink high clouds rushed to bed with their buxom birds feather and sickle.
They left Corny Marks house in a cataclysmic cosmic pickup of a mess tin, It was soon, I think mostly yesterday, maybe sheltered sooner by squeezey tops of no liquid of no fixed aberration, but plenty later it backwards rained.
Oh, I will sniff for stories untold because I shan't care what happens to our story unless you know what the answer is.
Blue stew, barley and gruel upset, dribbled and dropped.
And of fairies, there was pixies of mice drowned under water through grey hollow slabs, come more slabs. Pavements.
I wouldn't - oh well that'll find some nicely rounded kneecaps of shrew often jellied. Right wing flapping shirtflaps open, Greenfinch crashed into Flicknife Fryingpan as soon as possible.
"Wallop!" said the sad mouthed wombat.
"Titter titter titter" tittered Dungheep, "that was humorous, titter titter titter".
Greenfinch didn't kill Flicknife Fryingpan, but he walloped Dungheep on his interior flybuttons twice.
Sadness filled Dungheep quickly, "boo hoo hoo" swallowed he.
After much consideration and merriment, heart searching and floorcleaning, Dungheep slept all morning, except between break waters and piers. Analysing his situation, he followed, basically, the principles already layed aside by others, especially Tart Taht who hated beauty so much she became beautiful every full moon.
The grey hollow slabs were not moving because they weren't alive or kicking, but they were often non-existent.
(c) PL, MG and DB.

Dag 516: worlds longest gmail conversation (abridged)

A couple of weeks ago my good friends and I had a gmail conversation (at least thats what us people with gmail accounts call them - if you just use email, you'd probably just say you sent some emails or something) which ended up reaching 94. As this makes it the worlds longest gmail discussion I thought I would summerise it here:

Pao: Lets go out on thursday night - dom can choose where
Al: Perfect
Air: I'm quorate
Me: Hope you feel better soon
Pao: Blue Blazer has Sailor Jerry
Al: So is it a date then?
Me: Who is that question aimed at?
Al: you - you fud
Me: yes its on then
Al: Is DJ coming or is he attending his basket weaving class?
Me: He is going to his Jenson Button adoration society meeting.
DDS: If you get fired you'll be playing guitar on the London Underground.
Me: No, It'll be the Stockholm underground.
Air: My quorates are now back down to size. And we could call DOminiC Doc because he knows a bit about Swedisk pr0n or something.
Al: WHAT!!!! I'm the only one with a doctorate in that subject!
Pao: Doc don't like shellfish unless they are queens.
Al: What are you rambling on about and why are you up so insanely early?
Pao: Who told you that? I thought that was between me and the webcam in the booth.
Al: http://paosbooth.com/ credit card required
Al: I want an electric guitar - anyone got any tips?
Me: Get a shergold.
DDS: Time to go electric man.
Al: Damn, I wish I had got to slate him first.
Me: It is an electric guitar actually.
Al: I've just been to Asda and bought ham and bread.
DDS: I just went to Tesco and bought a jerk chicken wrap.
Al: I had too much ham so am a pig. But you had jerk chicken.
Pao: I went to the livi inn.
Al: some joke about a frog and Mick Jagger. The punchline was "It's a knick-knack Patty Wack, now give the frog a loan. His old man's a rolling stone" - you had to be there.
DDS: I am an avian jerk.
Me: I had chile for lunch.
DDS: I want to be a moon - ommmmm.
Al: Incestuous Scatophilia - I win.
Me: Heavy wet and messy space feltching - no you don't.
Al: I feel queasy.
Me: So to sum it up: We meet at 19:30 in the blue blazer and then go on to the hard rock cafe.
Al: blank email (he still hasn't got the hang of these things - sigh)
Me: I just told Andrew to go and read his gmail to find out about tonight and he came back 5 minutes later asking what his gmail address was.
Al: That's hilarious, and believable.
Al: Anyone up for a beer in glasgow next week?
Air: Oh yes we can go to Waxy Baxy Chunky Clarty O'Connor O'Hartigan's
Al: Are we fuck.
Air: They have decent home-made pizza too. Duck pizza? You will.
DJ: Would you like me to go out with you and comment on your driving from an advanced drivers institute type perspective?
DDS: Fools.
Al: Fuds.
Air: Exemplary.
Guy: How are you keeping?
Pao: Plaid.
AB: Most adjacent.
Jonty: C*nts.
Andrew: gmail?
Me: Deck mockets rock.

If these words were people, I would embrace their genocide.

He means you.

Link Fest

Right, just a little experiment - links and only links for humour and knowledge.
Comments welcome, of course....

Dag 502: I want my Shergold back

In around 1978 I spotted a guitar in the window of my local music shop which looked like half of Mike Rutherfords famous dual neck guitar. It was a Shergold Meteor, and I would spend hours standing outside the window starring at it. My Dad must have felt sorry for me because some time later he took me into the shop and bought it for me. I couldn't believe taht I owned a guitar that was the same make as one used by Genesis (who were my fave rave at the time).

I used that guitar in my first band, a punk band called Cloud 9. We played a number of gigs at local youth clubs, church halls and even at the 'Folk and Blues' night at our school. I really liked the idea of throwing my guitar down on the floor at the end of our gigs, but didn't want to damage it, so I used to put a thick blanket down before each gig. Unfortunatley, it did end up getting quite a few dints in it, but it stil played fine.

Cloud 9 eventually went their separate ways and I had, meanwhile, bought a Korg MS 10 mono synth, and my Shergold ended up just beijng used for messing around as I concentrated on my synth playing. With my trusty MS 10 I played synth for Nova Grace, Neural Circus and then went solo. I ended up doing a solo 'Human League style' gig at another of my school's 'Folk and Blues' nights using my own MS 10 and one ownded by my, then, girlfriend (HJ - who stood at the edge of the stage playing tamberine). The backing track was on tape and I played and sang along to it. The show began with a drum beat and bass line while I waited off stage. At the double snare beat I walked on and began to sing. As soon as I started to play the synth I realised it wasn't tuned the same as when I had made the backing tape (in fact as each song went on I found that it had been tuned differently from the previous one). The whole concert was taped from the mixing desk and also from a pair of mics hanging from the roof. I still have a copy of the tape (now transformed into mp3 format) and you can hear me frantically trying to retune my synth during a few of the songs. In the end I ended up programming in a hand clap type sound and just playing along to the tape using that. For those recording enthusiasts amongst us, the recording from the mikes came out much better than the one from the mixing desk as it had more audience noise and atmosphere about it.

The shergold never got used on stage again and I ended up signing up to do A level computer science at Harrogate College and a pre requesit was to own a computer. I didn't have one so I put my beloved bettered Shergold up for sale in the local paper. The first person that came to look at it (who, I remeber had long hair) said he was interested, but couldn't afford it until he had sold his sinclair spectrum. The outcome was obvious - we did a straight swap. I went and did my course, carried on playing synth, and that was that.

Until yesterday. Al sent me an email saying he wanted to buy an electric guitar and did I have any suggestions. I replied saying he should buy a Shergold and promptly did a search on google to see if I could find out if they still made them.
I found this site and discovered that they are no longer made.
I suddenly began to miss my guitar and I want it back.....

So, if you have long hair and you swapped a sinclair spectrum for a shergold sometime in the 1980s in Harrogate please can I buy it back from you? I'll swap it for a spectrum if you like.

Altenatively, if you have a Shergold Meteor in natural finish, can I buy yours?

Freddie

We went out last night. It was really good catching up with the guys, and it's wierd typing this since they all read/write here. So, I'll skip the report, since we were all there. I'm sure Dom can do it more justice anyway.
Only conspicuous absence was Danny boy. (DJ, etc. aren't expected). So Dan has some explaining to do.
Here's to Fredrik Butler, may all his days be long and happy *chink*.

Footnote - I hope Dom doesn't feel cheap and used. Waking in the morning and remembering the things you've done is always hard, but you just put it down to too much drink and the party atmosphere.

Wish you were here

It's tedious, sitting around, trying to figure out which sites to visit which will kill time without being entirely unprofessional. Given the plethora of web tracking tools, keeping your head below the parapet is another constant consideration. I figure that finding a nice long page of information is the way to go, maybe a big wiki entry or something.
I don't have work to do. I'm either really good at this, or there really is nothing to do. It's difficult to deny the urge to pull out the laptop and play a round on my new golf game.
Anyway, I have a few pastimes that you may be able to help with, or at least kill some of your own time with, if you're in a similar position (i.e. work in I.T.)
1 - Electric Guitar - I need something to start out with, but will be decent enough to use for a while if I enjoy it
2 - Acoustic Strings - Too many out there to count, and want to try a few
3 - Missed TV - I've downloaded the first series of 24, the whole of CSI and series 1 of desperate houswives (for the girl). Anything else I should be focussing on?
4 - Holidays - Something unusual, or something worth doing at the weekend in Scotland
5 - Streaming movies over wireless. New laptop does it...almost but why does it still stall? I'd have thought 2MB/s would be the requirement, so wireless (56MB/s?) shouldn't have a problem

Traffic News

I've been playing around on GMaps since it was released a while back. It's nice, it's got some features I really like.
It was updated a couple of weeks ago to include satellite images, although the level of detail is a bit strange.
The latest thing though, is the publishing of APIs that allow geeks to use the maps to overlay all sorts of information.
Clicking on the title of this post will take you to what I think is the best example of a UK based one that I've found. It shows speed cameras, weather reports, local news and a bundle of other things I don't really understand.
I like it when technology and innovation amaze me, it breaks through my cynical tendencies and makes me smile.

Dag 498: Det kallt är av

It has been a little quiet round here as I have been back in my normal home for the last 2 weeks and I don't get much chance to get on the computer there.

I still haven't done a posting about my trip to see Kent in Stockholm, which is now many weekends ago, but I still intend to do it. One of my excuses is that I have been trying to load all my photos from that trip onto my newly purchased .mac web space which I will then link to within the posting. Getting the photos on there was easy, it was when I decided I wanted to rename them that the problems started. With .mac you get a thing called an iDisk. This appears as a volume on your desktop and when you copy files onto it they will be automatically synced up to the iDisk you have on the web. This means you can do things to your local iDisk when you are not hooked up and next time you hook up it will get resynced. So the first problem was that I renamed all of the photos on my local iDisk whcih then got copied onto the web iDisk, ok so far, but then the original photos on the web iDisk got synced back to my powerbook so I now had to copies of the photos on both the web and my laptop. After various bits of messing around I deced to delet my iDisk and start again.

So now I had my iDisk complete with 1 set pf photos with proper names, rather than the numbers my camera had automatically given them. My next step was to create my .mac photo album to which I would be able to link from my soon coming kent concert weekend blog entry. This was easy enough to do, apert from the fact that the photos were sorted alphabetically so they were no longer in cronological order (which they had been on my first trial as the generated number were sequential). This is fixable though as the .mac website allows you to drag the photos around into the order you want. The problem is it is very slow and after dragging a random number of photos into the correct order you suddenly find that the descriptions that go with the photos have suddenly moved out by one place.

So if i can't swap the order of the photos without this happening I need to get the photos in the correct order to start with. So it was back to my local iDisk to rename the files to have a number at the beginning. So once I had done this (and deleted the iDisk again because I had ended up with 2 copies of the photos again and then recreated one with numbers at the start of the filenames) I recreated the online photo album. Unfortunately the sorting of photos was not exactly as I had thought so it went 1 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 20 21 etc...

Now it was nearly right, there were 9 photos in the wrong place. I tried moving these really slowly but, again, ended up with the descriptions getting out of sync. So I renamed the ones with a single digit to have a zero in front of them, which would solve the sorting issue, but of course I ended up with duplicates again.

At this point I ended up taking 2 weeks of work and have just returned today. I currently have an empty iDisk and I will try doing the whole procedure again in the near future. I will then do my blog entry for my weekend in Stockholm (if I still remember what happened by then).

After reading Al's eloquant and moving post I had a look at the stats to see if it had caused our ratings to soar through the roof and found that the share of languages on the computers that connect to this site are as follows:
English: 86.75%
Swedish: 10.84%
Russian: 1.2%
German: 1.2%

This is pretty pleasing to me as it means that as well as gaining a good international reputation for delivery both interesting and hard hitting blog enries, we are also finding that 10.84% of end users have there language set to Swedish. I wonder how many of those percentage points are attributable to that fact that my powerbook has it's language set to Swedish?

To our Swedish fans I would like to say "Tack", to our German fans I would like to say "Danke" and to our Russian fans I would like to say "My tap doesn't work". (ok that bit doesn't work that well on paper, but it is funny because one of the few things I can say in Russian is "my tap doesn't work" - the problem is that I don't know how to write it down. It sounds a bit like "my er cram nerra bootiette". I can also say "where is the map" in Russian. In fact I don't know how to say thankyou in Russian, but thanks anyway for making up 1.2% of our viewing figures.

Until next time, as always, dos vidanya.

The Heat Is On

Well well, it's quiet in here.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
Best.Opening.Line.Ever.
I was reading the latest one of this series of books (exercise for the reader) at the weekend. I was thinking about how the story has emerged and was trying to decide whether the plot had just disappeared up the writer's arse, or whether it was literary genius that I was just too intellectually immature to 'get'. As always, my mind decided it'd had enough of that pretentious nonsense and went off at a tangent. I tried to catch it, honest I did, but it was just too fast.
As always, the thoughts were linked, slowly but determinedly toward where the subconscious wanted the almost-conscious mind to be. I kind of like it when that happens, it feels like the mental equivalent of gravity, all the planets and stars being the thoughts, ideas and emotions swirling around in the immense darkness of our mental universes until the inevitable black hole appears to pull in the nearest ones.
Well, in this particular case, the black hole was pulling in the star that was 1982, with the planets that were my 11th birthday, the vast, alien world that was the move from the highlands of Scotland to the slumlands of Glasgow and the newly discovered world of adult books. Not those kind of adult books you filthy minded minx, the other ones.
My grandparent's (nana and gaga, would you believe) house was full of books. A strange collection of novels from god knows when, combined with large encyclopaedia-like tomes that contained all the wisdom of Victorian Britain about raising and entertaining children. Not in the self-help way that books are these days, more in a "books about children, for children" kind of a way. Obviously written by people with no idea of what children were. There were pages about origami, kite flying, counting raindrops and other such pure and innocent pursuits. I remember the melancholic way I used to read these, already allowing the little descriptions of innocent, happy pastimes supplant the memories of life up North. My recollections of playing in the street at midnight with my friends taking on a shade of brown and my cheap 70's clothing morphing into a Victorian schoolboy's uniform of shorts and blazer, with a little peaked cap. My idealistic memories were doubtlessly fed by the current environment of endless filth, the streets covered in empty crisp packets and cigarette ends, the kids with their dried in, snottery beaks running around and swearing before the inevitable fight broke out between a couple of the sorrowful latch-keys.
I started school after the summer. My parents must have felt sorry for us, or maybe just wanted us out of the way, because they'd shipped of the youngest (which included me) to nana's for most of the 7 week summer. I'd spent that time in the 5 house village of Kentallen, with loch linnhe across the road from the house and endless bracken-covered hills at the back. After a couple of months in Glasgow, it was a welcome release to come back 'home' and feel the sun, and run up the hills with the dogs and not have to worry about the big kids in the street picking on the new kid because of his weird accent and permanently startled look on his face. Reality, however, had to return.
The first day of school, and I was all dressed up with my brown satchel strapped in securely over both shoulders. The uniforms from my old school - which had been a little village one with two classrooms, one for primary 1-4 and one for primary 5-7 - weren't suitable attire for the new school, so I'd been dressed up in black trousers and white shirt in lieu of finding out the proper dress code. I should have sensed the difference immediately as I was being walked to school by mum. All the other kids were strolling down the road alone, some a lot younger than me, dressed in jeans and trainers, with their Nike and Adidas sports bags casually hanging from one shoulder. I was, however, still in startled rabbit mode, and took in none of this and all of this at the same time.
I was introduced to my classmates after registration, where we'd all stood in the sports hall and recited the Lord's Prayer. I stood at the front of the class as instructed by Miss Brown, or White or Turquoise or something, as she told the slack-jawed, uninterested throng of thirty other weans my name and that I was new here, which I'm sure they'd never have guessed if she hadn't mentioned it. I took my red, burning face to my new desk and sat down, hoping against hope that I was done, that I could just disappear into the quiet corners and be forgotten. The teacher was asking about something to do with something. I must have listened at the time, because when she asked me a question about it, I answered. I only did because that was what you did when teachers asked you questions. You did your best to answer in the hope that they didn't tell your mum you were misbehaving the next time she dropped in for a cup of tea on the way to the bus stop. I got the answer right. "Hey, we've got the Brain of Britain here!" exclaimed the helpful teacher, and moved on to a random selection of hard-nosed pupils. My face burned again, not sure whether I'd done well or badly, but sure that the attention was unwelcome and wanting to be left alone.
The fire alarm went. That meant it was 10.30am. That meant the washless throng moved out to the concrete playground for 15 minutes, when another alarm would go off and we'd troop back to the classroom. Just another little difference then, no more head teacher coming out with her church bell in hand, smiling and telling the kids is was 'time to come back in and learn children'.
I stood in the playground, trying to be invisible, as one of my classmates came over, trailed by 3 or 4 more of them. "So, where the fuck are you fucking from then?" he asked. "North Connell" I said meekly. "Where the fuck is that?" asked my new friend. "Up North." I replied. He turned to his friends - "Brain of fucking Britain is from fucking up North.", and turned back to me. "Do you want a square go?” I tried to translate this and failed. "What's that?" I asked politely. One of his friends interjected, "Just fucking deck him Jimmy!” The others joined in with a rhythmic "Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight" chant. The nearest other kids came over to the crowd and joined in. I stood, surrounded, with tears threatening to fall and a bladder desperate to unleash a torrent of hot piss into my new trousers. The boy swung at me, I saw the fist through blurry eyes and swayed a bit so it just glanced across my temple. The rage came upon me and I unleashed a torrent of blows, obviously using my brown leather satchel as my weapon of choice. He fell to the ground after the first couple of shots, as I continued to rain satchel laden terror upon him until a teacher ran over and dragged me away to the headmistress' office. "I hope you're not going to be trouble" she said "We already have enough of that". I answered that I wasn't and I was sorry and she guided me back to class. I sat back at my desk and continued learning, thankful that I had black trousers on, which didn't show the damp patch very well. And anyway, I'd only leaked a little bit, and my pants would have soaked most of that up.
So I started reading books, becoming the hero for a while as I immersed myself in these new worlds. And I read that opening line "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.", and was hooked. I wanted to be both men. I wanted to run away, but 'flee' just sounded much faster and more honourable. And I wanted to be the gunslinger, standing firm with no emotion in my eyes as I watched the fear in the face of those that had forgotten their father. As always, some middle ground was eventually found. I gave James a few bloody noses and we became friends. I tumbled around with a few other kids and won and lost. I found there were acceptable limits when I picked up the hammer in woodwork to subdue a particularly annoying boy and was sent home for a couple of days on 'suspension'. I never hit him, just scared him a bit. And I peeked over the changing room curtains when Debbie was changing for the end of (primary 7) year school play at which I was receiving the school Dux medal, and saw her rapidly developing breasts. I don't know where the medal is these days, or where Debbie is for that matter, but I know which one is my favourite planet in the Universe of my mind.

Dag 474: Know who you are at every age

Does anybody really know who they are?

I certainly don't feel that I know who I am and I think I have known this since I was a teenager. If you like a certain type of music and (for example Goth or Punk) then you could say there is a lifestyle that goes with that (including a way to dress) and that should mean that you have a pretty good idea of what you are and what you believe in.

If you look at the list of concerts I went to in a previous post you will see that it is not limited to one style of music. I would certainly admit to being a punk in my youth; I had a fairly large punk record collection and my clothes included an orange mohair jumper and some black pvc trousers with studded belt (all purchased from X Clothes in Leeds along with various other similar items). I also had an orange corduroy jacket that I sprayed the names of various punk bands on (clash, x-ray spex, sex pistols etc) and I can even remember going for a haircut and saying I wanted a spiky punk hair cut and being told that pure punk haircuts were not in anymore and I should let them cut it in a way that would allow my hair to look normal most of the time, but I could spike it up when needed. I agreed but knew the hairdresser were only saying that because he was scared that if he gave me what I wanted he would be facing the wrath of my parents (I was about 13 or 14 at the time). The first band I was in (cloud 9) was also a punk band.

However, I also liked Genesis (who I think were one of the arch enemies of most punks) and also quite fancied myself as a bit of a hippy (again not usually considered the best of buddies with punks).

This feeling of not really knowing who I am has persisted ever since and rears its ugly head at regular times. I often find it hard to make decisions and need to seek opinions from other people. If I really knew who I was I wouldn't need to do this as I woudl just know what to choose. There are certain things that I know I like, so when a choice presents itself if one of the options is related to one of the things I like I will usually go with that one, even if there is evidence that another choice might be better. For example, I am pretty fond of Scotland so will always choose Scottish beef over any other kind. If I am shopping for clothes and have seen a few tops, but am not sure which to get I will see if any of them have a connection with something like. If one is made in Sweden, that is the one I choose (even if it does fit quite right or does really suite me). Or, if there is no better link, I may choose one that is yellow or blue.

Another side effect of not knowing who I am is the fact that I have become quite interested in personality tests in the hope that they might give me some additional insight into the mattter. A year or so ago I did a myers-briggs test and it came out as ISFP. I felt pretty good at the end of it because the blurb did seem to be a pretty good match. I then did a search for ISFP on the internet and saw that the ISFP type is often referred to as a Composer, which pleased me as I used to spend most of my free time writing and recording music.

This morning Daniel sent me a link to a personality test and filling it in was, with me, the work of a moment. I then noticed that the site contained a whole raft of other personality tests so I started clicking away and was in personality test heaven.

I still have a feeling that I don't really know who I really am though.

I'm not really mad am I?