There are thirty steps from the entrance hall to the top of the house, it's slightly different living in three storeys. This is a total relaxation holiday , with no plans to do anything major, to lie in and enjoy the surroundings.
These days with so much available via smart networks you can come on holiday with a bare minimum of stuff, though I have a DVD of "The Terror" which I still haven't finished. Inherent laziness means that we want to watch and listen to things after a few button presses, so messing with physical media becomes a huge inconvenience when it really isn't.
Today I watched series on Channel 5 on Lost Railways which was very fascinating but required me to do nothing. I have the options of Netflix , various hubs, plus the laptop I am writing this on means that I won't be short of entertainment.
So I think "Sleeping With The TV On" by The Dictators would be an appropriate tune, although I have shared it before, it's a great song.
Although my Tivo is 80% full and there are a few series I am watching on streaming services (Netflix and Amazon Prime) I decided to pick up on Bosch (partly because of Hieronymus Bosch) , and am already for episodes into the first of six series featuring Elliot Gould look alike Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch as the main protagonist in another crime solving series which is rather enjoyable.
Also the new series of Lucifer has started and I am still working through The Boys and The Umbrella Academy, so I am not going short of anything anytime soon.
We do live in an amazing age for visual entertainment, I have watched quite a few series in the last few months so I know that half a dozen series is no bar to me watching something, it's a joureny you don't think about because you are just there to enjoy the ride.
So I am writing this quite late (for me) , so it's quite a short post.
For #AnimalAugust I'm going to go with "Cuckoo" by Lissie from the album "Catching A Tiger" which I played and really enjoyed yesterday. I've always loved her singing and material, and I also enjoyed her album of covers, so if you haven't heard her , take a listen , you may like.
I often wake and want o find what happens in what I'm dreaming , good or bad. I'm surprised that bits of a dream I woke from a couple of days back have stayed with me. They make little sense although I think where they came from from . Robocop characters working with and attacking a group I was with (probably influenced by the second series of "Altered Carbon" that I finished last week on Netflix , a computer terminal flashing up that I needed to take annual leave (we are getting work reminders about this and I have taken nothing but Bank Holidays this Financial Year, so that is nearly four months without a chosen day's leave) , and I wanted to know if we got out of the "situation" , but I woke fully , so the dream was lost. This does happen to me, and probably everyone quite frequently.
Because I am ahead of the curve on my walking I only have to do 4K steps a day to hit may target for July , which therefore makes me a little lazy, though it means I have more than hit my target this month. I did think that lockdown was going to stop me from doing my million steps every three months but as yet it hasn't. I am lucky that I live in an area with plenty of places to walk.
This week I am continuing with working through my CD box sets and today it's The Velvet Undergound "Peel Slowly And See" , the first CD being demos put together by Lou Reed , John Cale and Sterling Morrison , "Waiting For The Man" being almost Country and Western Swing style and "Venus In Furs" a medieval acoustic work out, these are interesting but not easy listening. At the wekend I was listening to their debut album on vinyl and noticed for the first time that the band's name doesn't appear on the front cover, but Andy Warhol's does.
So we'll go with a take on "All Tomorrows Parties" , I think the drum sound is awesome on this, as I write I'll listening to the first album with the extra takes , but is a definitie experience.
I have been using some comfy trainers for my walking and this week I pulled out an old pair that feel as though I'm walking directly on the road, but actually make walking much more productive and easier. The comfy ones I suppose are almost like walking on grass whereas the "uncomfy" ones are actually more suited to the job of walking.
Since I've decided to keep to the 11K steps a day target , whatever the month , it's been a lot easier to meet the targets and I am not halfway through this month but already 30K steps up (mainly due to walking into town to post a couple of Discogs orders to Spain and Sweden) , so maybe this month I will hit my target again.
This week I binge watched (for me ) "Space Force" on Netflix , the episodes are only thirty minutes and there were only ten episodes and I was very impressed by it. I am also up to series five on "Vikings" which just seems to spread further and further round the world with every episode.
The weather is is still dreich and as such is not very inspirational , I've had the guitar out and looking at using keyboard to provide bass rhythms but still no nearer producing anything. Part of this is that I want by backing to to be instant and also get distracted by TV , listening to music and reading , although they should be providing inspiration rather than distraction. I am not good with self practicing.
I wasn't sure what music to share but last week heard this Nina Simone take on Bob Dylans' "Just Like Tom Thumbs' Blues" , the thing is Dylan's voice often put's people off but I think that people will listen to Simone's version. I obviously love the original but this is a song that can transcend the performer, bu t this is and awesome performance.
Listen all the way through , I challenge you to be unimpressed.
Well five days into May and I've run out of similar words to numbers and the blog editor has changed significantly, it looks fairly awful as it doesn't reflect what you are going to post , but there is a preview option. We shall see how this progresses, but it is very similar to the Medium editor which I used for a post on there yesterday. The new editor is very slow to load although seems to use the full screen, which means you seem to write more slowly. At this point in the editor I am just coming to the end on the second line of this post.
While this is in some ways simple in other ways it's disconcerting, part of the reason is that there was no warning that this was happening. Adding labels brings it to a halt , which is not good. It does amaze me that companies introduce things like this without testing, but then again it's free so I can't really complain. I have a hell of a lot of labels and they've changed it so you have search and select via a checkbox. I'm not impressed.
I wanted to tag #maywriteabit which I have done, but I wanted to tag Bright Eyes as I am sharing the excellent "Persona Non Grata" but that maybe too slow, it's like going back twenty five years in the ability to write on the computer, makes you almost want to go back to pen and paper. I'll take that back you still have to check the box but the tags seem to be working Ok now.
So what else has been happening, I've hit series four of "Vikings" 1-3 had ten episodes apiece , 4-6 have twenty episodes apiece and there's a new one scheduled for Netflix. I keep getting "Update Failed" signs but not sure what that means either , maybe it hasn't saved. The preview looks OK though.
I'm just into May but don't think I'm going to hit my step target, though this coming weekend may change my opinion on that.
Yesterday got a phone call from my practice (Thornfield Medical Group) telling one of the drugs I am taking should stop if I get Coronavirus. Shows the excellent service I get from them and why I have been with them for twenty years. I am going to keep on taking it but know if I get hit with the Coronavirus to stop the tablet (Forxiga) .
I didn't think I would hit my monthly walking target and normally I have a few free days at the end of the month , but I need to walk 6K steps today to hit the target , so that's a target hit although May may be a different kettle of fish as it is getting a bit samey and that is something that I don't particularly like when I go on a walk.
The last few days have been decidedly dreich so April is ending with showers.
I'm into the Christopher Brookmyre book "Not The End Of The World" (an appropriate title for our current situation) put was put off because after the large print of "A Shadow on the Wall" by Jonathan Aycliffe this is small and densely printed and I don't like the font so it looked challenging , but there was an interesting prologue and there is a lot happening in it. For some reason his style reminds me of John Niven , well in the same universe as hom.
I've just finished series three of "Lucifer" on Amazon Prime , although the final two episodes (which were after the series finale) were entertaining but a little disjointed, so now it's either Netflix but I have rejoined "Vikings" and have four series of that to work though.
There are two records that have could my ear while working at home, I share the second tomorrow but today the almost wrong doom laden piano motif driven rap of "Ooh La La" by Run The Jewels, an absolutely excellent record.
Today I was going to use a bit of my free time to put together a slideshow of "The Murderous Memorandum" by David King, but I am in contact with him and his partner and my friend tattooist Sophia Gourley and sent a message that he should do that given that he is an excellent artist and musician / composer. I shared my Nick Cane / Dr Faustus video which has proven quite popular and you can enjoy it here.
So that means I need to find something else to put my talents to, I am learning a couple of songs which may find their way to my Youtube channel and I have a couple of deliveries scheduled.
I have the first two series of "Orange Is The New Black" which I am working through and am now on the final series of 30 Rock, but my TIVO disk is still 75% full so my Netflix trial is still on hold and I need to get a week of Now TV to watch series 3 of Westworld and Series 2 of Britannia.
I supposed that influenced the title of the post, and Home Is The New Work. I am wondering if people will have problems going back to an office environment if this ever gets back to normal. The situation has been predicted is so many dystopian future novels, and I am shocked how incompetent the UK and USA governments have been handling this.
As I am writing this I am listening to "Grand Hotel" by Procol Harum, and to be quite honest I don't think I have listened to it before and it is absolutely excellent. Windows Media Player and being at home is allowing me to explore my music collection a lot more than I have in years. iTunes and even MusicMatch were nowhere near as fast , efficient and convenient. People keep telling me a Kindle with Alexa is fine , but it keeps suggesting I get Spotify , and doesn't even reference the stuff I've bought on Amazon , and as for my ripped music , I can forget about that.
So we'll go with the title track from "Grand Hotel" and it is as impressive as it's title. Check it out.
I don't do blog posts when I'm away on short breaks although I haven't posted in nearly a week, which is quite a long blogging break for me, but Edinburgh was great but cold.
Edinburgh whilst being the joint capital of Scotland seems a remarkably unplanned city , which just adds to it's interest, and is small enough to easily explore on foot as well as having some amazing buildings and constructions. It's also full of small alleys, high level walks, stone steps and you can usually see some landmark so you can always find your way back if you ever get lost.
I got back yesterday evening and watched two episodes of 30 Rock, two of Veep and the final Frankie Boyle Scotland travelogue and then thought I don't have time to blog and realised how the quantity of choice on television can actually steal your time. The thing is I don't even have Netflix and despite it having lots of series I want to watch , my ivo disk is 90% full and I have Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and the commercial channels hubs to watch so much television that I really don't have the time.
People often tell me they binge watch series, but more than two episodes of anything is too much for me, and then I have two Clive Barker books on the go and music to listen to too.
So as I close off this first March post to go to work , the sun is shining outside, and tomorrow I am going to visit Kirsty and Mark to see and hear Mark's latest record player upgrade and Edinburgh did provide me with four more pieces of vinyl , two New Order 12" singles , "Fans" by Malcolm McLaren and "Gris,Gris" by Dr John so I'll go with "Confusion" by New Order which has one of the cleverest covers I have ever seen, although I have seen similar examples before, but even the guy selling it in Vinyl Villains wasn't too sure what it was, and the remix I'm sharing (cos it uses the cover) was used in the film "Blade".
Again I switched on 6Music and "Double Dutch" by Malcolm Mclaren on the Radcliffe & Maconie show and it is one of the most uplifting records you will here. "Double Dutch" has (ironically) two meanings:
unintelligible language.
the jumping of two jump ropes rotating in opposite directions simultaneously.
The second being the subject of the Malcolm McLaren song which is obviously included here. It is a Saturday so for people like me there is no work, but I am sure that I will find plenty to do.
Currently "The Illuminatus Trilogy" has veered into HP Lovecraft territory in which a protagonist stumbles into a church with rats running between pews and a rusted marble altar, it's not rust it's blood, so obviously not High Church.
That takes me to "Fleabag" which I finished watch ig last night, superb cast and writing and only six episodes in each series so I will continue with "Parks and Recreation" on the Amazon Prime subscription. I am quite surprised, but it's a good business modell to make money, how many people have Netflix , Now TV and Amazon Prime subscriptions but never watch them.
A lot of this is coming from Matt Haig's book "Notes on a Nervous Planet" and it is so good that I am about to order "How To Stop Time" which I think was inspired from a page in "Reasons To Stay Alive" which is another of his excellent books. I have read others, my introduction to him was "Humans" which I gave away on World Book Night before it degenerated into commercialisation. The thing is I'm not sure if I have read and bought "How To Stop Time" because it is a paperback book and my real books are not stored digitally although Amazon will tell me if I've bought it before, then I just have to find it.
Anyway one section I have come to is a short section on sleep and the fact that generally we don't get enough. We need seven to nine hours per night and lack of sleep does cause problems. The odd night or two is fine especially if you are interacting withe real people of real things. The problem is that people use what should be sleep time to bings watch TV, be on their electronic device, with phones replacing alarm clocks and therefore living on people's bedsides. This si not a good idea.
The CEO of Netflix said that their biggest enemy was sleep and it was a huge area to increase consumption of their product. I have not yet taken out a subscription to Netflix, because by TIVO Box is filling up from my Virgin subscription, I also have access to Amazon Prime, and NowTV which I can stop and start when I want it. I worked out that it will take six hours to illegally download a TV series or film yet for £8 you get a month of Netflix or NowTV, a far better use of my time to pay that rather than steal, though we have been conditioned to think we shouldn't have to pay for digital content.
When we sleep we cannot be consumers so the whole commercial world hates us because we are not buying, but to buy we need money, but we are always having credit pushed at use rather than being paid enough to actually buy without going into debt.
Another point that Matt Haig makes is to turn off notifications on your phone to give yourself control, and that is something I have always done as I can't deal with things popping up all the time.
So it's gotta be "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" by the sadly missed Warren Zevon as the music to accompany today's post.
Just wondering, and I have chosen write. It's the first day back at work, and a wonderful day outside so the natural choice should be walk, but as you can see I am writing this post. Due to the way the month has started I have a hell of a lot of catch up to do when I get to work but that does make the day fly by, I am thinking how the hell will I do this, but at 4:30 I will know how I did it.
So yesterday I finished Westworld on Now TV and as I said previously peer downloading takes a couple of hours for a series and then you aren't sure if it'll work, but Netflix or Now TV Entertainment is about £8 a month , in which time you could watch the whole of several box sets. I have Fortitude , Chernobyl and others to catch up on and it the two months that I have had NowTV this time I have seen Game of Thrones, Tin Star series 2, and Westworld Series 2, think how much they would be to buy. SO basically the TV streaming services( Now TV,Netflix,Amazon Prime plus BBC iPlayer and commercial hubs) generally provide value for money.
So I suppose the only song has to be "TV is King" by The Tubes.
I know a lot of people, mainly Netflix subscribers, who's normal mode d'etre for watching television series in binge watching. It's something that I can't actually do, I feel that I'm overdosing on whatever I'm watching. I completed "Britannia" in a week due to my NOW TV subscription coming to an end, and i have been watching "Black Sails" but have never exceeded three episodes at one sitting.
I also have a number of series to work through, and often I watch films over two or three sessions, maybe I have a short attention span. One of the good things about Amazon Prime and subscription schannel box sets is that you aren't interrupted by adverts, although what you are going to to watch does take the time it says it's going to take.
The blog posts still don't seem to be getting the hits that they were, but I keep getting chunks of hits like 140 yesterday from Hungary so I don't know how that is working. It maybe that Google Reporting is being a bit flakey at the moment but that is difficult to quantify or identify.
So I've banged on about watching television and my blog and it's probably time to share some music with you, and for not reason at all I am going to share Nazareth's "Silver Dollar Forger (Parts I & II)" essentially for Part 2 which I just love, amazing phased guitar out to coda, from "Rampant", which is a brilliant album, Manny Charlton was a wonderful guitarist.
After finishing Michael Moorcock's "History of The Runestaff" I've continued with the follow up trilogy "Chronicles of Castle Brass". The first is set in a post apocalyptic world (so post that the human race is now functioning again) with the British Empire re imagines as a mad, evil, ever expansive war mongers (which really is close to what it really was, and at the start of the next book there is a resurgence of desire for a return to the "Dark Empire" which closely reminds of the brexit mindset of isolationism while expecting everyone to do what they want.
That's it in a nutshell, I don't need to say anymore. You can read more here. and some of his tweets you can see to the right. Brilliant.
I still haven't got Netflix and was thinking of the time it takes if you want to download a series from an illegal site, with the risks involved, maybe two or three hours. For £5.99 you can get a month of Netflix and watch as much as you want. An hour of my time is worth a lot more than £5.99 so really it's no contest, I will be subscribing eventually.
That's enough of that, today I have to go and pick up some Bowie vinyl that the GPO decided to deliver at mid day on Friday and I do intend to have a most relaxing weekend although that seldom happens and there will be things to do.
have just started the last episode of series three of "Black Sails" so I have plenty of ways of spending my time.
I was going to choose a Bowie piece as I'd mentioned him, but thinking on "Black Sails" we'll go for some Alestorm to wake us all up.
Well it is and it isnt. I'm old enough to remember only two channels, being really annoyed when Kennedy got shot because ITV took all their programs off and just had some woman playing piano and I missed my weekly episode of Bonanza. I saw the transition from black and white to colour, the moon landings and England winning the World Cup..
I remember getting BBC2 and that was a 50% increase in available TV , then we got Channel 4 and Brookside and Channel 5 was a relatively recent terrestrial addition , plus there was the proliferation of satellite , Sky's money managing to make and sterilize football in one fell swoop.
When we had limited channels , audiences could be huge , but people complained like hell about repeats. We now have digital channels that are completely repeats. People complain about the TV License but happily shell out five times as much for subscription TV that STILL is full of advertisements.
The switch to digital came and gave most people loads of effectively free content funded by adverts. Plus these days we can have catch up TV and recording boxes that allow you to skip adverts, enabling you to watch what you want when you want.
It's very seldom these days that you need to get home for a TV program unless it's a televised live event, but we now probably watch more TV than ever before. It#s ubiquitous. We have TV on Mobile devices and there's a TV screen visible wherever you sit at work.
And my point is people still say "There's nothing on television" , apart from the off switch you have all the options above. My TIVO box is 90% full and Netflix and Amazon Prime don't even touch my radar. There are times when you channel hopand cant find anything you want but there are so many catch up and record options you should always be able to find something.
And if not, why not read a book or call a friend , that's even better than TV!
Though the Tubes song was appropriate as it gave the post it's title.
I'm sort of worried about my TV viewing habits , well not really , but I am a creature of convenience. Despite having a few hundred DVDs I very seldom actually but one into my player to watch. Also , despite how cheap they are re , I very seldom buy any these days because 1) I've no room to put them and 2) most of the time I might not actually get round to watching the damned thing.
The problem is they have so much competition now from the likes of Youtube , On Demand TV such as iPlayer , 4OD , and my Virgin hard drive and catch up TV box, pay rental sites such as Blinkbox and Netflix. So unless it's a specialist music DVD I very rarely buy the things these days.
I want everything at the touch of my remote control , becoming the not so mythical "homo sedens" , not wishing to move from his chair , while wanting permanent tailored entertainment. You can even pause live TV while you answer the door or go to the toilet.
It still amauses me to hear people say there's nothing on TV when between BBC4 and Film4 I have intelligent viewing on tap , that's before dipping into the other 160 channels I have. Sky viewers have similar options. Watch what you want , when you want , where you want.
