Archive for July, 2008
emusic: where Canada still means more expensive and second-rate
Thursday, July 31st, 2008I’m not going to get all Swindleeeee!!!!! about it, but I’ve noticed a few things missing in the new emusic Canada site. I lost all my MP3s in the break-in, but I thought I’d downloaded all of the ones I’d bought from emusic a couple of days ago.
Not so. For unexplained reasons, I got humming The Whole House is Singing, and I thought I needed to listen to some Alasdair Roberts. Couldn’t find it in the share, so I went back to emusic to download it again, and rats!, it’s gone. So here’s some music I’ve paid for, but now emusic (champions of no-DRM) can’t make good on their promise to let you re-download everything you’ve bought.
(I’ve also noticed that most of the Deva Premal tracks [hey, they're Catherine's] have gone, but have had no compulsion whatsoever to hum them …)
no, this is really the Sensible Bicycle
Thursday, July 31st, 2008Inspired perhaps by seeing Dianne’s very nice Bachetta recumbent last night, I went looking for the state-of-the-art — and I found it in the form of the Flevobike GreenMachine: fully enclosed chain, mudguards, hub gears, disc brakes …
I remember the GreenMachine as a concept machine in the cycling press a decade ago, but Ben has seen one, so they must be real. Only problem is the price; I’m not going to see one for under $5000 …
track count
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008Up to 7470 songs on the server last night. It’s mostly down to me importing all of my emusic tracks.
temple
Monday, July 28th, 2008
gimp windows crash
Monday, July 28th, 2008If you find that GIMP for Windows crashes frequently, try installing the GTK+ for Windows Runtime Environment. It seems to fix many of the instabilities for me.
rockin’ the plastic: four turntables and an mp3 share
Sunday, July 27th, 2008Now I’ve got the Soundbridge set up to share from my server, I’ve been ripping CDs like crazy. I’ve got two drives on my Ubuntu box, and hooked an external CD drive to my laptop, so I’m rocking four drives at once. After years of using Grip, I converted to Abcde this weekend. What I really like about it is that I can run multiple copies at once, and it very nearly things right (aka “my way”) out of the box.
By the end of tonight, I should have about 6700 tracks on my share, and a bunch of CDs in storage.
hey, Bruce, you lose something?
Saturday, July 26th, 2008It’s a bullshit story. There is no issue.
— Duncan Hawthorne, chief executive officer of Bruce Power, dismissing the seriousness of losing a highly radioactive reactor part when contacted by the Toronto Star.
I’d pronounce it “mingus”, but …
Thursday, July 24th, 2008Menzies Stringed Instruments is now open for business.
oh yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
This is my work PC running Firefly Client, serving my music from home. Who needs to install and manage local music libraries now?
or maybe a gerbil
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
bo the spider
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008We have quite the colony of largish, leggy spiders in our basement. They pretty much keep to themselves, as they have plenty of work thinning the woodlouse herds.
I was improvising a barre-chord hambone beat on the tele, when I noticed one of the spiders walking towards me. I stopped; it stopped. I started again; so did it. I switched to the 12-string acoustic and started bashing out the same rhythm; spider was like “meh” and stayed put.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a spider with the soul the late Mr Diddley in our basement …
default means default, microsoft
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008When I’ve specified the default e-mail signature, I shouldn’t have to click on another drop-down called default to make it appear in my Outlook message:
am I good, or what?
Saturday, July 19th, 2008Presenting the Stewart C. Russell not-patent pick holder:
Yes, it’s just a plastic eraser with knife cuts in it cable-tied to the guitar stand. It works, and both items were in my kitchen drawer. Now I’ll always be able to take my pick …
it is good
Saturday, July 19th, 2008I just installed Firefly Media Server and it is good.
the joy of craigslist
Friday, July 18th, 2008- 2 hours
- 23km driven
- $3 parking
- $8 sandwich dinner
- $3 coffee
… all wasted waiting for a silly wee lassie who’d agreed to meet to sell an autoharp, then sold it out from under me.
Real smooth move, Stefanie.
do I deserve one?
Friday, July 18th, 2008
Recipe: Hurled Eggs
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008From Phil Austen’s The Big Jewel:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HURLED EGGS
Submitted by: Tandom Koolzip of Peeorhea, Indianolapolis
“This is a recipe that was tossed to me by someone claiming to be my grandmother.”
Preparation time: Instantaneous
INGREDIENTS:
Eggs
Someone to throw eggs at
That’s all she wrote. In old-fashioned script.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
the dire effects of Whiskey Before Breakfast
Monday, July 14th, 2008This is allegedly what happens when the battery runs out on your Zoom H2 while recording: whiskey before breakfast. This is Nichol playing his Collings during a lesson.
Four items I really liked that Tim Hortons discontinued
Sunday, July 13th, 2008- Beef stew in a bread bowl
- Tuna sandwiches
- Chicken fajita
- Slow-roast beef sandwich.
