Chris Coole at The Local

November 25th, 2008

Chris Coole plays a relaxed set at The Local every Sunday. He had his new custom guitar last Sunday; it looks and sounds great.

He played his version of Michael Hurley’s Slurf Song. He let me upload it, so here it is: Slurf Song [mp3].

when fish go bad

November 25th, 2008

I don’t think even Odd-Fish would stoop this low:

Q: Why were the sardines angry?
A: Because they were brisling with indignation.

a fun word to say

November 22nd, 2008


How often do you get to say goober in a serious context?

glaikit: n., chiefly Scottish

November 22nd, 2008

that’ll teach me to mess around with photo booth and Catherine’s iMac.

I don’t like prunes, but I do like prune

November 16th, 2008


Just spent a pleasant morning munging gps data and photos using Prune. It has allowed me to edit a complex GPS track, add many photos, correctly correlate them to GPS locations, and save it all back out in a variety of useful formats.

I see that the author is talking about producing a native KDE version. Noooo! I like my Java. It runs everywhere.

(Incidentally, I see that with the recent software update, the Blackberry Curve will now geotag images from the camera. It’s now a really good “I was here” device - coming close to the “Utensil” that Robyn Hitchcock spoke about years ago.)

how to confuse a glaswegian

November 14th, 2008

So if he were successful, the person you voted in is oot. And as he didn’t get voted in, he’s still oot. Did his supporters chant “Oot! Oot! Oot! In! In! In!”, or did they make do with “In Oot, In Oot, Shake It All Aboot!”?

a big fan of picasa

November 14th, 2008

I’ve just started using Picasa, and its ease of use is great. It does all you (well, okay, I) really need of a photo editor, with some nice effects. It also does cool things like handle raw images, and uses Google Earth to geotag images. Here’s one I prepared earlier:

lowville

November 13th, 2008

(rhymes with how, not low, apparently)

I’m in Lowville, NY, tonight. I’m looking at wind turbines. In fact, if my room faced the other way, I probably would see them right now.

the voice of the Mr. Owns

November 12th, 2008

I am trying to speak to my computer I’m not sure it understands the two well actually it’s doing not badly I’m speaking in a rather disjointed manner I have to go to New York state tomorrow I’m not quite sure why I have to look at twin turbo inns no I don’t have to look at twin turbo ends I have to look at wind turbine what’s

While it’s remarkably accurate I’m going to be really mean and bald face and sure I don’t know “bold face is that I’m going to be located anyway, to your things have calmed pear shaped nine

This is the voice of the Mr. Owns and I do I think I’m going to live. I suppose this is better than I expected especially since Mike accent is unusual most people in Canada do not understand a and so finally I have a computer that understands the this is a bit worrying isn’t it?

Well that wraps it up for dictation. You have a pleasant evening. Good night!

- what Microsoft speech recognition thinks I said. The random “what” and “nine” is me starting to laugh, and “bald face” is “blog this”.

Sunny War

November 11th, 2008

… is rather a good guitarist:

aagh! brainscrub required!!

November 9th, 2008

So I was idly picking away on the mandolin sort of playing scales when this song from my childhood starts playing itself. It’s the Uist Tramping Song, and has ultra-cheesy lyrics:

Come along, come along, let us foot it out together,
Come along, come along, be it fair or stormy weather,
With the hills of home before us and the purple of the heather,
Let us sing in happy chorus, come along, come along.

No, really. I always thought that footing it out would involve a lot of squelching, this being Scotland. Must’ve learnt it when I was 8 or so; our headmaster was a teuchter, so my head is filled with Gaelic-ish things still. One of the pieces I recently heard Rhiannon Giddens perform with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, so they’re not all bad.

Anyway, to share the brainmelt, here it is in all its awfulness:

Plus the score, if you care to: Uist Tramping Song [pdf].

cosmic coincidence

November 6th, 2008

Three consecutive space songs in today’s helping of the automatic podcast:

  • The Lovely Universe — Circulatory System
  • See The Constellation — They Might Be Giants
  • Kelly, Watch the Stars! — Air

That’s the thing about randomness - we see patterns that are of no import.

mandolin madness

November 5th, 2008

Lack of recent posts have been almost entirely due to this:

It’s a Big Muddy flat top mandolin, hand made in Missouri with a lovely Adirondack spruce top.

I really like the portability of the mandolin. I didn’t think I’d like the tiny scale (hey, its entire fretboard is only as long as 6 of my banjo frets), but it’s pretty comfortable. Way more so than a ukulele.

november crickets

November 4th, 2008

I’m at our windfarm - and the crickets are singing!

evil mutant alien piglet baby

October 30th, 2008

a blob of uhu-tack ended up this way.

David Bellamy - Power From The Wind

October 26th, 2008

Excerpt from the educational video made for the CEGB in 1989:

Local copy: David Bellamy: Power From The Wind (excerpt).

His views have changed a bit since then.

white poppies ‘08

October 26th, 2008

White poppies are now at Toronto Meeting House, and will also be at Yonge St Meeting (Newmarket) from next week.

goodbye, guardian

October 26th, 2008

Summary: tl;dr

The Guardian has changed its news feeds to contain the whole article instead of just the lead paragraph. That’s just too much reading for me.

the invisible hand of the market was flipping you off all along

October 23rd, 2008

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms …”
— Alan Greenspan, quoted in The New York Times.

until next year

October 22nd, 2008

So CanWEA 2008 is done. The high point was the launch of WindVision 2025. See you next year in Toronto.