Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts

Saturday 2 May 2020

May Too


My friend Rachel is taking part in the #maywriteabit project and is going to write for half an hour each day (unedited) for the month of May so I am looking forward to catching her post and see what she has to say and think in this lockdown situation. Her first post is here.  and his hosted on Medium and I'll add her to my favourite blog list on the right had side of this blog.

Writing can be therapeutic and blogging is good because you don't get shouted down, you may get ignored, but you do end up with a diary, which as long as the internet and your blog host is still going you will have access to it (I take regular backups of mine and often feel I am the only person who reads it ad after fourteen years I have six followers and fourteen comments, making me Mister popular although I get reactions posted on Facebook and Twitter as well but would prefer to have them on here.

It the past I have posted every day in May and was consideing #APostADayInMay bit the #maywriteabit is obviously going to be more widespread and not as committed to being a post a day. It's been suggested by Rob Bryher according to a Google search but I may be wrong on that , but I will tag all my posts in May with this.

So another song that has been giving me aural pleasure is "Overlord" by Dirty Projectors , a band who' s name I know but that's about it. but this song has been prevalent on 6Music and it's a great record. They remind me a lot of the band First Aid Kit , so I'll have to check them out further.

I'd not intended to blog a lot this month but that's four posts in the last three days so I'll need to keep an eye on my keyboard.

Enjoy your Saturday my friends.

Wednesday 11 March 2020

To Be Positive


Walking into the back room where my computer, keyboard and stringed instruments lived I thought I'd left the light on , I hadn't, it was sunlight reflecting off the houses at the back into the room filling it with light. Sometimes benefits and good things come from unexpected sources.

Although it's still cold the fact that it's not too windy and there's little rain means that walking into work is far easier and I am less and less tempted to take the bus, although this morning have to take a bus to Haymarket to post off another CD that I sold on on Discogs. The other day I found that the minimum Paypal withdrawal is now six pounds, which is a surprise , but is fine by me. My latest sale was only a fiver.😊.

I recently found that pressing the Windows Key and ";" simultaneously  gives you a list of emojis that you past easily , that added to Windows Key and "L" to lock your computer (which my youngest daughter told me about) and a couple of useful things to know.

I am happy with my new reconditioned Google Pixel 2XL which allows me to take reasonable pictures and video as well as being fairly quick , also being a Google device it keeps up with Android system updates and has unlimited cloud photo storage so although it can't take an SD card you are never short on space.

So what should I share this morning, one of my favourite Top of the Pops memories when Can hit the top 30 with "I Want More" , and I want more positivity and good stuff to come to everyone and everywhere.

Thursday 17 October 2019

A Day Not Reading - #Oktoberfest #19 - Starbucks - A


Yesterday I sort of didn't read, I had finished the 400 page "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins which I have passed on to a friend and this morning I have started Philip Pullman's "The Secret Commonwealth" clocking in at close on 700 pages. After "The Illuminatus Trilogy" (800 pages) it seems I have been taking fairly hefty tomes to read.

The odd thing about "The Secret Commonwealth" is that it is the second in "The Book of Dust" Trilogy , the follow up to "His Dark Materials" but "His Dark Materials" is bookended by "La Belle Sauvage" and "The Secret Commonwealth" , this is not a problem , just unexpected.

I'm actually telling a fib because yesterday, as a respite from big books, I dipped into "Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt", poetry by The Bard of Salford John Cooper Clarke which is always entertaining.

#Oktoberfest continues with a brand name that is generally associated with coffee, but sell anything they can these days, that is Starbucks. The song is "Starbucks" by the band "A" from the album "Hi-Fi Serious" who with a name like that are impossible to search for on Google (a bit like "!!!") . The song is more about the company's dodgy employment practices rather than the product but the product association will do for my #Oktoberfest sequence.

Thursday 5 September 2019

Darkness


That's what I woke up to, and it wasn't particularly early , the day shortening seems to have come fairly quickly this year. Last night I needed to go out for milk at nine o'clock and it was dark (and wet). Also there seems to be a hell of a lot of snails on my drive this year and I keep accidentally stepping on them. I've nothing against snails and would rather not squash them but if they wander around my normal walking areas then that's going to happen.

Although it was dark when I woke it now looks like a summer's day although I suppose this is really Autumn now, as we're into September and I managed to forget another friend's birthday but got reminded by Facebook.

I keep forgetting names and obviously that concerns me about dementia when I cant remember things, especially names, but I still am able to recall a hell of a lot stuff and often the stuff I couldn't recall always surfaces eventually. I also am always able to recall how to find things although I make great use of Google and reference books as well as working things out for myself.

I use the illustration of music. When I was born you had Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley , Chuck Berry as well as the really commercial rubbish and a few others. The following decade added The Beach Boys, Stooges , Doors , Beatles , Kinks etc but we still had the  artists from previous decades. And every year more is added to what we already have, and that means that things will get forgotten even sometimes when you want to remember it. There will always be a way of finding out what you need to know.

So on this sunny Thursday we shall go with "Baggy Trousers" by Madness (for the line about squashing snails)  and that is another great band who are in my collection and I enjoy listening to.

Thursday 23 May 2019

Lost In France


French Favourite
As I have mentioned Feedburner has been a huge boost to th esite visits. As far as I can gather it is a result of me sharing my posts via Twitter. I am no expert or avid follower of Social Media but that it my current view on the situation.

Another thing that I have noticed is that of my top ten all time posts on this blog, five now come from this month , or since I started sharing on Twitter.  So sharing on Twitter, which I don't really use that much, is beneficial to audience reach. And I only started doing this because Google ditched Google+ !

One of the real oddities is a huge number of visitors from France. Now I am not French , I don't post in French or feature much French related stuff aparat maybe bands like one of my favourites Gong,  or the darker Magma (who have some great logo / images) and are with listening to if you can take their relentless sound.


As I have said I do not know if this is just a blip , a short spike, or permanent, though obviously I am hoping it is permanent and I am happy to keep sharing on Twitter if this is the result.


I am currntly enjoying the lovely weather as we head towards the Bank Holiday Weekend and think I will share with you Gong's "I Never Glid Before" the finale from "Angel's Egg" the middle of the "Rafio Gnome Invisible" trilogy , one of my favourite ever riffs despite it being quite complex while retaining an excellent self depracating playfulness. Gong are extremely accomplished musicians with a wonderful way out sense of humour.

Wednesday 22 May 2019

Expectations


Last month I expected to get 30-50 hits per day on the blog with maybe 20-30 for each post. At the end of April Feedburner seems to have somehow picked up the blog and now I am expecting more that a thousand hits a day. That's a twenty to thirty fold increase but I am now expecting that. I personally have done nothing knowingly to casue this, and I don't know if it's a temporary or a permanent thing , so I am just appreciating the attention while I am getting it.

I had never heard of Feedburner and in theory if I start getting too many hits I may have to look at self hosting rather than using the blogger.com platform (which I believe is part of the Google Empire.

Recent post visits are in the multi hundreds so hopefully one of them will depose the "Buying Lion Pooh At Dobbies" post from 2009 which has been at the top of  my posts for years although in reality the top one is "Devon - Record Shop Heaven" from 2010 which is far more relevant to my main blogging areas.

So what should I share with you today. Given we're talking about numbers, maybe I should share my most visited Youtube slideshow which features Christopher Lee's take on the Paul Anka song "My Way" probably more familiarly heard by Frank Sinatra and Sid Viocious.


Monday 20 May 2019

Feedburner and Interrupted Dreams


It looks like the huge increase in visits is due to being picked up by something called Feedburner which is some kind to data feed. I'm not sure if this is permanent, although I wont complain if it is. I'm not sure if this is as a result of me sharing the blog posts on Twitter or including a link with my most visited Youtube slideshow. , 26K views and featuring Christopher Lee, so it could have been any one of those. Twitter has resulted in a few retweets and also I tried MeWe after Google dropped their social sharing although I do not think that has resulted in any visits. I use it to post on then stipe the post to post in Twitter on my phone.

This morning I woke at 5:30 and thought I had quarter of an hour to enjoy, but fell back into an unspecified dream and the was rudely awoken by the alarm going off seemingly about thirty seconds later. That's is the problem with falling asleep when you are about to get up. It always amazes me that often at night sleep refuses to come, but when you have to get up, especially for work, sleep is so, so welcoming.

I'm over halfway through Stephen Fry's "Mythos" and thoroughly enjoying it and am now thinking about which book will come next.

So what should I share with you tonight, Huw Stephens featured Caught By The River and from that Jeff Barrett's Labe's first single release was "Under Dubwood" by The Dubwood Allstars featuring the tones of Richard Burton and the music of King Tubby (think it was used for Ali Baba by John Holt)

Tuesday 12 March 2019

Older Than The Internet


Today is the thirtieth anniversary or the World Wide Web as we know it, and it came into my head that my two wonderful daughters are both older than the Internet, which obviously means that I am as well by another twenty five or so years. I was born just as rock and roll really hit with Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry.

A  definition of the Internet comes from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):

"The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge."

Tim Berners-Lee came up with the protocol for accessing the Internet as we do today and can be read about via the W3C link above. This is a development of Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network developed by the US Defence Department), and had been put forward by many artists and science fiction writers.

The Who's "Lifehouse" project (which was scrapped and salvaged as "Who's Next") posited a population connected by "The Grid" so in some ways this was an inevitable development, and now we are are connected by mobile devices and computers and smart devices.

People install "smart devices" in their home such as Amazon's Alexa , but that is a step too far for me even though I have a Kindle that has Alexa on it, although it has never been able to answer a question that I have asked it and cannot play my music, apparently only able to access Spotify playlists, and I don't touch Spotify.

I wasn't going to write anything until I saw the anniversary on Google, so I am going include a Chuck Berry song performed by Buddy Holly which you can listen to and watch thanks to Tim Berners-Lee's development of the US Defence Department's prototype.

Have a great Tuesday.

Wednesday 26 December 2018

Steam Quake Goofle


I was going to write a Christmas Day Free post yesterday but in the end couldn't be bothered. This morning I realised that I had no games on my PC although I had back up disk images of Quake, Hexen and Doom but the inherent laziness of finding putting a disk in the drive kicked in as well as trying to get the daamned things to run on Windows 10.

So a quick Google search and I find that a whole Quake collection is available on Steam for £8.49. It was really a no brainer. I just saw that I mistakenly spelt Google as Goofle. Isn't Goofle just a great word.

I also realised I hadn't played a game on this computer since I got it over a year ago, so booted up Quake in Nightmare mode and got killed almost immediately , I then retried in normal mode and the machine froze when I was half way through Level 1, but I'm not too bothered, I think it will sort itself out. I also got Civilization III for 74p.

I decided to listen to some of my favourite Punk compilation 1-2-3-4, five disks of brilliance and the first compilation that The Clash allowed themselves to be included on. I was playing from my network set up and then got sidetracked and was playing Marcel King's "Reach For Love" from the Factory Records box about six times. It really is one of the best records ever, and is Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single.

I posted on Facebook that at the moment it's my favourite record ever, so obviously it has to be the Boxing Day song although I am up to "Anarchy In The UK" on the 1-2-3-4 album and every song on that box could probably feature in my posts.

Have a fantastic Boxing Day folks.

Thursday 20 December 2018

Xeronius


Another made up word, although it may be real. Sometimes Google is a positive. Turns out there are bands, artists , twitter users with that name but no definition, but a name wouldn't have a definition.

I heard some lyrics to a "Christmas" song on 6Music this morning which were essentially:

"I Hate This Time of Year
 It's Dark and it's Cold
And I Feel I'm Getting Old.."

To me that doesn't exactly give me positive vibes, quite the opposite. I don't think it'll be on my Christmas playlist. The song is "Home Alone, Too" by The Staves and can be listened to here (a radio session).

I decided to watch the final episodes of "Electric Dreams" Channel4's series based on Philip K Dicks' short stories, and"The Father Figure" played like and excellent Stephen King story, "Autofac" featured the wonderful Janelle Monae (her "Dirty Computer" is my album of 2018) in a post apocalyptic Amazon scenario which featured, for me, a brilliant twist. I am currently watching "Safe and Sound", with the chilling exchange:

Q: "Have your ever seen a terrorist attack?"
A: "They're on the news feed all the time"

You can see them on all 4 here.

So I think to accompanty this pre Christmas post we got to have more Janelle Monae, haven't we.



Saturday 11 August 2018

Going Mobile


It's a hell of a long time since my daughter Juliet palmed off her old mobile to me introducing me to having a mobile phone. Since then they have metamophosed from handsets with the hus plus of being able to text people, and if you were lucky actually send a picture to the hand held computers that we have now.

You still see the odd person with the old Nokias (thatill work)  or the Doro's (but even they have a smart version now) but I am still waiting for my phaser / teleporter Star Trek one to turn up.

It used to be that if you were meeting up with someone you would specify a time and place and you would all meet up  and all will be fine. No it's texting ,Google Calendars , messaging and the like. We often don't even use our phones and phones prefering to use some form of messaging, and there is an absolute deluge of them.

It's another glorious morning so I will get off, feeling very good although my left shoulder is still painful, but that should be rectified when I go through the physiotherapy.

This is an excuse to play The Who's "Going Mobile" from one of my favourite of their albums, "Who's Next".

Have a brilliant Saturday everyone.

Wednesday 8 August 2018

Your Password


There is so much idiocy about security. Banks tell us to hide our PIN, enter it under a cover so you can't see what you are typing, treat everyone as a potential thief and then make your cards contactless, no ID required (apart from odd random PIN requests).

I've always believed that much more than four passwords becomes a security risk, because people start writing them down. The only secure place for a password is in your head and it has to be something that you can remember, maybe a phrase with a smattering of numbers and other characters.

When I worked for Littlewoods on their IT systems the backspace was considered a valid character for a password, so if you made a mistake you had to completely start again with your log in.

There are systems that won't allow sequences, repetitions, numbers, special characters and these again generate security risks because people end up writing down passwords.

There are even software packages that remember your passwords for you. Think about that. You are entrusting all your logins to a piece of software, that is the digital equivalent of your notebook that you give to someone else for safekeeping. I was also amazed to see the number of password notebooks for sale on Amazon, it's like people want to give away their information, although if you think of your Tesco and Boots clubcards that track all your purchases, and Facebook where you publicly share so much personal information.

Facebook, Google and Paypal always ask me if I want to stay logged in, now how insecure is that. You enter a system securely and when you are finished you log out. The really annoying thing is that they use cookies to remember your preferences. Cookies are by their nature transient, and I always clear my web cache because I do web work and want a clean browser cache, which means all the particular site starts asking me for all sorts of things. To log into Facebook or this blog I am asked three times if I want to save my password.

Though again this blog is me sharing my thoughts with you.

I have had many arguments about IT security over the years, and it seems to me, often people do things because they can or it gives them control, rather than it's a good idea.

Fingerprints , Face Recognition and Retina scanning are more security options but my friend Nic managed to lock himself out of his iPhone when he accidentally sanded off his fingerprints.

So what else to play but "Security" by The Saints.


Thursday 5 July 2018

Eillo


I don't know why that word came to me but it did. If you do a Google search this is what it brings back. It's among other things an eating  place in Perth, Western Australia. I'm writing this as my Facebook ban is still on which I have detailed here ,I've just noticed as I published this that Eillo is Ollie backwards.

I'm surprised how long this heatwave has been going on, although weather is a complicated thing so I shouldn't be surprised that I've been surprised. It's still warm as I write this although there is a lot of cloud. I'm also suffering from hayfever / cold symptoms which is uncomfortable.

Today I was checking my eamail and read Barclays as Batcave. I don't know if this is just something that happens as you get older or it's something that everyone does. Maybe it's my recent binge watch of Gotham to watch series three and get up to date on series four. I won't say anything on it in case a fan reads and is still not up to date.

I am feeling incredibly drained, I don't if it's the weather, but have my annual Diabetic Review on Monday so maybe they will have something to say. I could do with a couple of days of total rest I think, but is not going to happen any time soon, though at the beginning of August I have another Liver Biopsy so that will mean a few days of total rest.

Anyway one songs sums up the way Facebook censors have treated me and many others and that's 10CC's "How Dare You" the title track of their eponymous 1976 album, which appeared as an instrumental "B" Side of either "Art For Art's Sake" or "I'm Mandy Fly Me" and was great for annoying straights when I put it on the jukebox.

So I hope to share this with you tomorrow whn they let me back on Facebook.

Sunday 28 January 2018

Threks


When I sign in to do this blog I have to press "Sign In" on three different screens. Now OK I habitually delete cookies and such ensure web stuff I do is showing the current expected version but I don't know why Google has this incredibly inefficient log in process. In fact while I accept that cookies can be useful, they should not be used to store sensitive or secure information, although maybe that's just my opinion.

I've finished the latest John Niven novel I was reading "Cold Hands" and was surprised that there were zero laughs, these was a very dark pumped up Irvine Welsh with some disturbing insights into the natures of revenge and madness. While it is excellently written it was not an easy ride, so I'm hoping "No Good Deed" may provide a little light. I am fine with black humour but when you find yourself in a world of total darkness that gets scary.

Today has been a great day, my Dad's 83rd birthday and he's finally using his computer, then we finally caught up with Mark, Helen , Eve and Jess over a Sunday Lunch and high def Harry Potter movies.

Step wise this is the first day I have done less that 5K since a rainy day on holiday in Yorkshire, but I am  still ahead of the game for my January walks. February may be a different matter.

The word Threks is non existent as far as I know and was shome letters I was trying to make a word with in Scrabble .

One of the many things I have to thank my Dad for is introducing me to Johnny Cash , his "Greatest Hits Volume 1" was in our house and often on the stereo Radiogramme that we had, and from that I'll choose "Five Feet High and Rising" before I hit my bed. Tomorrow is Monday ....... the start of another wonderful week of life ....


Thursday 26 October 2017

Pixelgouster


I just got a new phone, a Google Pixel. Getting a new phone is a bit like jumping off a metaphorical cliff, there's no going back but it's easy to do. I got it as my daughter Kirsty has one and loves it and as Android is Google then you don't get the make or networks rubbish that they install and you can't get rid of...and it looks wonderful out of the box.... but then you start hitting annoyances.

First it uses the bigger USB "C" cable so all the cables I have suddenly become redundant for me , though I need them to charge my bluetooth headphones. Next it doesn't take and expansion card, so I'm stuck with the 32 Gb storage, though my first computer had 3K of memory and my first hard disk had 10 Mb capacity so it's still a lot.

Today the Pacer software, that I use to track my steps, stopped dead. I installed Google Fit which is working fine but Pacer is dead. You have to wonder if Google have something that inhibits rival software, Pacer was fine on the Sony.

Photos are stored in the Cloud , so that will use your data allowance if you aren't on Wifi.

This may sound like I dislike my new phone, I reckon by next week I will be completely won over. It charges quickly, does all the stuff you need to do and I installed music playing software called Vinylage Music Player as Play Music seems to only want a subscription service. Vinylage Music Player makes your digital songs sound like they are on vinyl and I though for a first play I would have David Bowie's "Gouster", ironic because it was never released that I know of and certainly not on vinyl.

It appeared as part of a Bowie box set "Who Can I Be Now" but is still not available standalone. The word "Gouster" appears in "John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)" the album's opener and to Bowie it meant attitude, it's source is from the Latin gustō. Compare Spanish gustar and Italian gustare. Tony Visconti said:

"Gouster was a word unfamiliar to me, but David knew it as a type of dress code worn by African-American teens in the Sixties in Chicago," Visconti explains in the excerpt. "But in the context of the album its meaning was attitude, an attitude of pride and hipness."

"Gouster" was an alternate "Young Americans" and is an excellent soul album. Listening to it, I don't know if it's the software or the phone, but the sound is gorgeous and rich (even with the built in vinyl scratch sounds). I leave your with "Somebody Up There Likes Me" from "Young Americans" and "Gouster", now to chose my music for tomorrow's walk into work.

Monday 7 August 2017

Ideas


I love showering but always find drying myself a bind and was thinking what a great idea a full body air drier would be. No wet towels , afterwards, no picking up wet towels to dry yourself with if you are not first in and just the feeling of warm air on your body would almost be like a mediterranean holiday. I love warm water on my body and warm air would be just as good.

The thing is many years ago what would be the next step, Yellow Pages? Your local libriary? If you asked friends they may think you are some kind of deviant... warm air on your naked body.... you pervert sir ... how dare you. But we use hair driers (or is it dryers?) , we use hand driers , and I do like the Dyson Airblade, and we also have fans to keep us cool when the weather is hot , so all the bits are there.

However thanks to Berners-Lee and Arpanet we have the Internet, the worlds biggest reference library and if you search Google for "full body drier" this is what you get. There are a lot out there. You can get this fairly snazzy one by Valiryo on Amazon, though at £900 to replace my shower towels I am still tempted. I don't know of any friends who have one.

So I had a great idea but found that someone had got there first, though if someone were to offer me a free one I would take it straight away.

Anyway , although it's Monday it looks like a gorgeous day so I will probably be walking into work and no doubt looking for things to video and photograph. Also this post is keeping up the #August50 and if I do another one tonight then I should be starting to get towards the 50 that I am aiming for.

So the song has to be Polly Jean Harvey's "Dry" ... one of those songs that is not on the artists album of the same name like Led Zeppelin's "Houses of The Holy" , what else could it be ... have a great Monday everybody...

Friday 21 July 2017

Fire


On Wednesday I ditched the iPad and got a Kindle Fire. Basically the iPad was an excellent device but tried to tie you into Apple and some non Apple apps didn't behave the way I wanted including YouTube and TED. I originally bought it because someone showed me GarageBand, but while that was great to play with, and I managed to record a couple of things, it forced into such things as defining the length of your song before you recorded it, and it took me six months to export my first MP3 after having recording the song. I think it was a space issue and on someone's advice I deleted a load of apps and it finally exported.

I recorded a couple more but, for me it was awkward. So eventually Garageband became something I dabbled with every now and then, and all I was really doing was keeping it charged and updating IOS.

So I got the Kindle Fire and it doesn't like Google apps so can't really use the Google Play Store or Google Docs or NOW TV (which uses some Google Framework). There are ways of circumventing this but I like life easy. I've not yet connected it to Social Media, but have installed TED and managed to print via Bluetooth to my Canon Pixma Printer. It was the first photograph I took with the device , which only has a 2 MP camera, but it was late at night and I wasn't sure what I was doing when taking the picture, but I took it and printed. That's one thing I never did with the iPad (although I never tried).

I've downloaded a Music Studio, which gets good reviews, but will check that out in the coming weeks.

I then played some YouTube stuff using my Bluetooth soundbar for sound and that was good.

Then the biggest plus' which in my opinion has mad the purchase worthwhile already , was the installation of BubbleUPnP which connected to my DNLA Server meaning that my whole digital music collection is available to me. I am now seriously thinking of giving away big chunks of my CD collection.

So far, so happy.

It's Friday, so we need a "fire" related song and the ones that spring to mind are Arthur Brown, Bruce Springsteen and The Pointer Sisters but as usual I'm going a little further afield with Nick Cave's take on "Fire Down Below" from Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinsky's pirate song project "Rogues Gallery".


Sunday 7 May 2017

Sunday Morning


And it hardly looks like summer, the ground is wet and the clouds are grey and it's cold out at the moment. Yesterday the five o' clock EFL League Two program was very exciting , if heartbreaking for Hartlepool fans, and their most famous one Jeff Stelling. Sky have cruelly put it up on their web site here , am I evil for sharing. The thing is they will be winning next season and that will put a smile on his face. The coverage was far more animated that the Premier League coverage early in the day.

Anyway it's Sunday morning and I have some much to do today I can't begin the think about it. I have a more reliable step counter (I think, for my Million Step Challenge, I'd hit 68K steps in the first six days and this was missing, I reckon about 10K steps from Thursday and Friday). I'm using Google Fitness and manually recording my daily steps on Google Sheets.

Anyway I will leave to with John Martyn's "May You Never" for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence. I have a feeling I won't keep this going, but this is a week so far and I have had only one deviation with David Bowie's "All The Madmen" , but I did have to include that.

So have a brilliant Sunday my friends, either relax or do something really fun and positive.

Tuesday 11 April 2017

I Have A Theremin And I am Going To Use It


For some reason I decided I wanted a theremin, then found this theremin app on Amazon. If you want I'd suggest you get the free version and I use the play store as Amazon decided I didn't own a number of apps I'd downloaded from them. Suggestions were made that I could deinstall go and do something online and then reinstall and then they might work. My time is worth a lot more than the the few pounds I've lost, so I use Google Play Store, as my Samsung Note 4 is Android (although BlueTooth doesn't work now and Google & Samsung like Apple won't acknowledge that the problem exists, so I have to use wired headphones).

Anyway I'm still playing with my Tascam home studio and the theremin will be great fun to add to the recordings. My phone also has a great drum machine on that I paid for from the Play Store (Rock Drum Machine) so along with my guitars, keyboard and voice I have everything I need to do what I want apart from the ability to play or sing properly, but it's amazing that now you can have a full studio effectively in your bedroom.

Apparently the theremin was invented accidentally (it was meant to be an alarm) but Leon Theremin (Термéн) patented it in 1928 (see here)and it's been a staple of many science fiction soundtracks and even Midsomer Murders!

I've included "Noises For The Leg" by The Bonzo Dog Band so you can hear a theremin in action, and a live take so you can see a leg theremin in use in Brighton. Have a great Tuesday everybody.

Thursday 24 November 2016

Push Those Negative Vibes Away


It is quite amazing the number of people who focus on the bad things and miserable events. These are usually people who have more than adequate lives. Often the people who have things the hardest are the most positive and find things to enjoy because the have found ways , one way or another to deal with the bad stuff.
Stay Positive

I always try and look for positives, even when things go wrong. Luckily for me I am in an extremely good place, yes I would like to not have to go to work, to do what I want, but I know I will be sleeping in a warm bed and can have holidays and have a wonderful circle of friends, and to be really honest, work is a pleasant and interesting place to go, with some great people and daily interesting problems.

So try and distance yourself from the negative vibes, be like Oddball in "Kellys Heroes" and the song today is the wonderful "Prag Vec at The Melk Weg" by Half Man Half Biscuit. Look up that title on Google, see where it takes you,  do something to put a smile on your face, smile at people, have a great day and push those negative vibes away.



Right I'm off to vote and then go to work.