Sunday 6 August 2017

Jumping In The Deep End


Well I've moved everything and now need to think how either WordPress or Joomla will benefit me. Both use a MySQL Database so that means that maybe I should get TOAD to get the hang of that. Seeting up Joomla I can't find the database , and even logging into the databse causes a timeout. I really thought I was past this but it looks as though I'm not, it's piqued my interest.

It's like jumping in at the deep end and I am not sure I am able to swim, but this is a possibly foolhardy way of finding out. I am going to leave it a day just in case overnight updates have to take place as that so often has to happen.

As well as all this I am trying to write , both words and music and get the hang of the technology. I just want to simply record things , not set op input channel and assign inputs to them , but maybe I will get the hang of it and get the sound on sound sorted out.

Anyway as I write this TOAD is downloading and after that I am going to bed, so I'll leave you with Ginger Baker's "Toad" performed by Cream.

Sleep well my friends.



Funny How


While people are not reading my posts as much as I thought , it doesn't help if I don't post on Facebook, even so the average hits per post have dropped from 50 to 25. Something that has been bothering me for about about a year is changing to format and hosting of Song of the Salesman and my friend Bob Armstong's sites.

Bob's is a static site so that was simple , but Song of The Salesman is an Access Database driven .Net site, which has served it's purpos and I don't think people are bothered what song was used for a Guinness Advert in 1999. I am looking to move it over to Joomla as people are more bothered about current information that past.

Today is the first day this month that I wont hit 11K but I am ahead of the target having done 4K so far, and I am going to brave the rain and do a few more steps soon.

Anyway, it seems recently I've not really been writing about the fun stuff, like music and travel and film, though I have been watching and listening , and I have just had an idea to put some of Bob's images together  and soundtrack it for a youtube video, and maybe use something like King Crimson's "The Night Watch" which is about the Rembrandt painting.

That seems a great point to stop and maybe I will post again later for #August50

Saturday 5 August 2017

Fire


I'm quite surprised that people have stopped reading the blog. I will keep posting but it looks like I must have managed to offend everybody. My last post got ten hits, and that was probably just robots.

Anyway, this was just to say that I am pleased that I swapped my iPad for a Kindle Fire. Although I've hardly scratched the surface with it , I am using it to play music and watch TED talks and some YouTube videos, and it certainly is easier and outperforms my iPad Air (which is now, as far as I am concerned an ex iPad).

I thought I was doing well on Google searches but it turns out that if you have posted about what you are searching for , and you are logged in, it will bring back your posts, giving you the false impresssion that your search engine optimisation has been very successful.

Although I was going to go to bed early again , the internet has kept me awake, continually looking for ideas and stimulation.

The EFL kicked off and Preston won their opening match for the first time since 2008 , nine years back, against one of the expected promotion hopefuls. As with most seasons the Sky pundits see Preston as cannon fodder for the big clubs like Sheffield Wednesday. Next week it's Leeds, who turned us over severely last season, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

I was having a problem transferring data from my phone to my PC. My phone is a Sony and it turns out is you don't use the SONY USB cable (that's UNIVERSAL Serial Bus) then the connection may not work. So the question is why can't you use a generic cable to connect the two devices ... unless SONY want to make you pay more.

Anyway it's later than I thought so I'd best go to bed, and what better song than The Cure's "Let's Go To Bed"




Friday 4 August 2017

Random Precision


Yesterday my rando play played three consecutive tracks from the Van Der Graaf album "Present" starting with the opener "Every Bloody Emperor" and finishing with "Nutter Alert", this was followed by a couple of Spirit songs thwn that awful Cream song then two Stone Roses songs. At first I thought it had slipped off random play but as I was walking and I like the album I was OK with it.

A couple of months ago I was talking with Juliet and Kirsty and about how people don't really understand the concept of "random". She had provided a "random" data sample, then the requester came back and said they wanted data from Area "A" , Area "B" , well each area they covered. Kirsty pointed out that that this wouldn't be a random sample if you started applying criteria.

Jordan Ellenberg point to an American Lottery result where the same numbers were selected two draws in a row. In a true random selection 1,2,3,4,5,6 is just as random and likely as any other. Ellenberg points out that the improbable is highly probable. The nature of random is that it may appear ordered, it's not, but our minds always try to order things, and see logical patterns, and we can see logical patterns where the probability is just complete randomness and even chaos (think reading tea leaves and the I-Ching which is basically throwing sticks. You can add divination by cards like Tarot (I do have two Tarot decks but they are just works of art), which again uses randomness to determine fact, which really is not a practical or logical path to go down.

Well we are at Friday , and the real Football season starts today whith Sunderland playing Derby and Nottingham Forest take on Millwall. It looks sunny, but it looked sunny yesterday. I will walk into work today and listen to more random music

Thursday 3 August 2017

Tom Waits,Cream Sours and Stone Roses



One of the great things about walking with music on random play is that you get to rediscover music you have forgotten, discover new music, and the odd time uncover some complete rubbish.

While Cream  were a great and groundbreaking band, with a plethora of great songs there were the odd rubbish ones ("Pressed Rat and Warthog" springs to mind, I 'm not sure if Pete Brown was responsible in part for this monstrosity) but today a horrendous almost scat jazz thing came on. I thought I'll give it time. I wish I hadn't. It's called "Hey Now Princess" and it's at the bottom of this post if you want to risk it.

Luckily that was followed by The Stone Roses' "Waterfall" which is one of my favourites of theirs, although there were a few of their songs , many of which sound like "I Wanna Be Adored" , but one came on called "The Foz" which I thought was actually Tom Waits , and then eventually I got a real Tom Waits song , the excellent "Singapore" and then I found an excellent youtube version soundtracking some "Pirates of The Caribbean footage.

So that's the second post today, and I did manage to hit 15K steps , and enjoy so reasonably healthy food as well,

Have a lovely night



The Baltimore Stockbroker


Well the #August50 hasn't started well, so much for two posts a day, although I have a lot of time to make it up, though because August has a few weekend away , I probably only have about 25 days when I can write, so the two a day is sort of essential when I can write.

My walking has got off to a reasonable start, and last night it poured down but today looks like another bright day, that's perfect really , rain at night the sun during the day.

Though there's no direct posts about The Baltimore Stockbroker, it's something I had heard about but not thought about. It came up in the Jordan Ellenberg book an is basically about targetting people to take advantage of them. Anyone can do it, it's just whether you are enough of a git to actually do it but financial institutions and governments do it all the time. This is the full story from Mike Adams blog

"To repeat from the beginning: Suppose you received a letter from a financial advisor who told you a certain stock was going up over the next several weeks. You watched the stock, and sure enough it went up. A few weeks later that same financial advisor sent another letter to say another stock was going to go down over the following few weeks. Sure enough, as you watched, the stock did go down. Then that same financial advisor sent a third letter to tell you to watch another stock that was going to go up. Sure enough it did. With the next letter the financial advisor told you to watch another stock that was going to go up. And sure enough it did. That same financial advisor sent another six letters each time predicting correctly the direction of every stock he told you to watch – a perfect prediction ten out of ten times.

In the eleventh letter he asked for a big investment. What would you say? He had been right ten out of ten times. What the investor does not see is the total picture—the whole story. That financial advisor began sending letters to 10,240 prospects. In 5,120 he predicted the stock would go up; in the other 5,120 he predicted the stock would go down. The 5,120 to whom he sent the letter saying the stock would go down never heard from our financial advisor. Of the 5,120 to whom he said the stock would go up, 2,560 got a second letter predicting that second stock would go up and the other 2,560 got a second letter saying the second stock would go down. The 2,560 who got the letter predicting the wrong direction of the stock those people never heard from our financial advisor again. Of those who got the correct prediction, 1,280 got the third letter predicting a third stock would go up and 1,280 got a letter saying the third stock would go down. You the reader now the full story. Only 10 prospects would get letters with 10 perfect predictions. The other 10, 230 people never heard from the advisor ever again. "

So a small group of people think that the guy is a genius. The book goes on to state , quite rightly, that the improbable is highly probable because there are so many people. It's high;y improbably that you will win on the lottery or a horse race , but people do and sometimes quite handsomely. The thing is with today's speed of communication we hear about these things a lot more quickly. We have tools to help us if we so choose,  but improbabilty and  chance can always throw a spanner in the work.

Part of life is about minimising risk, and we all do that. You set out a bit earlier to get the bus that will get you to work on time, but sometoimes the bus doesn't turn up and you are still late. I try and minimise risk by building in contiongency and options to everything, but it doesn't alwys work , but actually does 99% of the time. I don't tend to miss trains or flights or be late for work or miss paying bills because I have things in place "just in case".

Sorry this is just a functional post, but I suppose the theme points toward the superb Penetration song "Life's A Gamble" . Will I do another post today? We shall see .....

Have a brilliant Thursday everybody 

Tuesday 1 August 2017

#August50


I had this mad idea of doing 50 posts in August under the tag #August50. That's like two posts a day. The most I've done is 43 which was last October so it's certainly not impossible, jyust it will take time. I really need to be able to to a post in under twenty minutes but more importantly find something to write about.

I finished the Million Step Challenge having done 1,071,635 steps in three months , which took in 92 days, and daily totals ranged between 2.5K and 22K that's an average of 11.6K a day. I was wondering how I could keep this up and decided to set a target of 340K a month and we will see if I can keep to that. The winter months may be problematic and February will require me to average over 12K steps a day.

Today looks a little grey but I haven't hit 11K for a week, but I am going to to hit that today, starting by walking into work, which is a daily target.

It is always good to have something reachable to aim for, and it costs nothing to walk. Although my weight loss is unspectacular to non existent from this exercise and reasonably sensible eating (bread virtually cut out , but the odd Marathon bar when blood sugar drops) today I was 102.6 Kg (16 stone 2lb) which is the lowest I 've recorded myself since getting digital scales a couple of years back,  and I havent been under 16 stone in 35 years so it's a little progress.

Anyway what more appropriate songfor this post than "The Weight" by The Band. It was going to be used in the film "Easy Rider" but the film producer opted for a same version cover by a band called Smith.

Have a great Tuesday and first day of Augus.