Going out in a min...

I'll be heading out on the razz in a minute; if youre stuck indoors tonight, I'll leave you in the capible hands of Mr. C and some of his lovely tech-house!

listen to set


Or try the little video of him at Public Life recently. Heehee he's got a little belly now :) its a far cry from the gaunt look he had with the Shamen. Yep, I learned all my dance moves from watching videos of the Shamen while growing up; that Mr. C has a lot to answer for :)

Sir Malcolm Arnold: 1921 – 2006

I didn't know Malcolm Arnold died last Sunday. My only exposure to Malcolm Arnold, I'm afraid to say, was just with the work he did with Jon Lord, namely conducting the Concerto for Group and Orchestra and the Gemini Suite. I had heard he was living in Dublin a few years back, but other than that I hadnt heard much else about him in recent times.

Garda Wiggum

I was sent this image by a member of the Garda Siochana but I found a larger version here. It's doing the rounds with a title refering to the Garda Reserve. I'm pretty sure the Reservists will be the thin Guards though; they'll be so thin on the ground you'll hardly see them.

The Adventures of Burty A. Hern

With all the problems Bertie Ahern is going through over his "loan" from firends back in '93, I thought it only fair to leave that alone and have a go at him with something else! :) Its about the EU report outlining how Ireland has failed to cut road deaths by half (no chance in hell with the current condition of the roads!)

Here's a little cartoon I drew up earlier. Its of real crap quality so I'll transcribe the text underneat. Trying to get pictures edited on a machine away from home is a nightmare.



Burty:"Ah, j-j-jaysus [not only] have I got to explain the 50 grand I got as a divorce present but now [I've] got to lower road deaths for the feckin EU [too]."



Minister MacGowel: Don't worry boss, I've got a brilliant plan to reduce road deaths without costing [hardly] any money...



Minister MacGowel:We'll just put up more signs [letting drivers know the parts of roads where they are more likely to die]

Burty:"b-b-beautiful!"

----------------------------------------------

It sickens me to know that there are parts of the national roads in Ireland where signs like "dangerous junction ahead" are in existance. These signs are an admitance by the corpo that the roads cost lives. If the junction is so dangerous, then fix the fucking thing! Thats like putting sharp edges on a childs toy and slapping a sticker on it explaining the hazzard. Speed may kill, but bad roads are the cause of accidents.

Billy Cobham - The Firebird

Another video from Pete York's Super Drumming DVD, to go along with the 2 Jon Lord ones earlier. This is a fairly nice rendition of themes from Stravinsky's Ballet "The Firebird". A typical, but relaxed, drum solo from Cobham; he keeps loosing a drum stick though :)

Infatuation

Bury the knife, bury it well. [this has replaced the earlier explanation of the song]

Another piece of music from me. Once again, it has been arranged in Reason (best purchase ever! No matter how crap you are musically, it still feels great!) and makes use of one or two drum loops loaded into Dr: rex modules (my new found friend :). I initially started it during my final exams last month but finished it recently. It’s working title was “Exams are stressful” but 90% of it was completed afterwards. Its no more than a collection of ideas loosely strung together, which may appear again somewhere else. It’s a gentle piece that shouldn’t offend anyone [ironically it did lol]. Its main theme is based around a short awkward, anxious even, phrase which is to be expected given its title. There’s also a “happier” more “melodious” theme near its middle. That’s all I’ll say; you can like it if you want, I really don’t give a fuck! [it turns out, I do actually] :)

Infatuation.mp3

About the image: I found a picture of a random girl on webshots.com, did a bit of magic to it. Added a hammer and sickle logo I found of wikipedia. The early main theme sounded a bit Russian to me.

The internet is shit

Fucking myfilehut.com crap, they deleted all my files, or rather they left the files but sucked out all the information. Isn't there any good free hosting sites!? Ones that wont disappear in a week I mean. Yeah I know I could pay for a decent server, but that involves paying doesnt it. Not only would blogging waste my time but it would also waste my money. Why doesnt Google have a multi file hosting thing now, sure they have loads of space.

Ear Wax Removal with Hoover

As requested by Betty the Sheep in a comment for this post, I have set about further explaining how a household vacume cleaner can be used to remove impacted ear wax, if just to prove that I do take requests. The first slide explains the general features of a human ear.


In this slide, we display the effects waxy build up causing total ear tube blockage. Notice how the wax actually causes the ear tube to produce roundy red things from its surface, simulating pressure.


Now we introduce the hoovers nozzle to the outside of the ear, taking care not to create a total seal. Bad things happen if you create a total seal - possible brain extraction!


Finally we see a successful ear wax extraction take place where the wax plug flies out of the ear, much like a bullet from the barrel of high powered firearm. At this point, the hoovers bag should be checked for other body parts that might have come loose. If any are found, contact a doctor immeadietly stating the make and model of the vacume cleaner.

Happy Meal at Mahon Point

Lets get naked, on da Live Line

Interesting add placement

I'm listening to the Live Line on Radio 1 and people are giving out about some naked picture of Tiger Wood's wife in some Dubliner magazine thing. Aparently they said shes a porn star or something. I'm amazed this is getting air play to be honest but anyway. Someguy mentioned Tiger Wood's "sad" face on the cover of the Irish Independant newspaper so I had a look at it online. Not sure about the face, but the add above it is quite topical! :) It's just about beans btw.

Well, being a person who absolutely hates golf, not so much the game but all the bullshit surrounding it I don't have the foggiest who he was married to, so I went looking:



Well! I don't care what body you paste that head on but thats some savage face! :)

Seriously, how can a crummy little Dublin mag artical cause all this [countless cretins calling the live line, self flagellating and begging the whole of America for forgivness]? I'm delighted this Ryder Cup crap is a washout, lets see how good that Tiger fucker is at hitting a ball in a monsoon!

Sci Fi Channel Quiz *updated*

While house sitting I stayed up all night watching tv. Nothing too weird there you say, well what if I said I stayed up all night watching the Sci-fi channels ring in quiz show thing, hurling abuse at callers who kept getting the answer wrong.

I got an answer for this as soon as I read it and no caller came up with the same answer I got. It wasnt solved while I watched so I have no idea if I'm right or not but I'm fairly confident :) Anyone want to take a stab at the answer?

And if thats too hard for your little brains, how about this question: hot or not?

My answer here.

Jon Lord & Bill Bruford - Pete Yorks Super Drumming

As promised here are the Jon Lord videos from the Pete York DVD. They are pretty harmless arrangements of two movements from Jon Lord's Sarabande suite. I uploaded the videos so it's not like I'm trawling through videos on youtube and google this time.

The first video is of the second movement: Sarabande. Like I said its a kinda cheesey (and too damn short) version of the piece but youve got to love the 80's outfits. Notice the sneaky plug for Deep Purple on Lords t-shirt. Oh by the way, he's the hairy guy in aviator sun glasses. Pete York is on the gold Pearl drums in the background while Bruford is on the electric menagerie on the far right.



The next one is of the forth movement: Gigue. This ones a real slap-dash affair, with the arrangement just about holding together. The part after the drum solos kinda juts out a bit. The said drum solo starts with Pete York, recapping a few of the themes from the drum solo on the album version before leaving way for Bill Bruford. Its unfortunate you can't see Brufords eyes constantly scanning the sheet music in the google version of this video.

The session musicians were: Wolfgang Schmid (bass); Gerd Wilden Jr.(keybrds); Peter Wölpl (guitar)

[Buy Pete York's Super Drumming Vol. 1]

Talk like a Pirate Day

It's that bloody day again. Time for a repost

Sci Fi quiz answer

This post has to do with this later post. The answer I got was 1. You might notice the use of the capital "W". At first I thought it was a typo but soon realised it was the key to the whole question. Zero was also a possible answer as technically there are no "Wizards" in the text, but that answer was given by a caller and it was wrong, so I'm sticking with 1. Every other possible combnation of adding all the different wizards together were given so I'm fairly happy it's 1.

TV Licences (slightly angry)

Irish begrudgery is world renowned. A successful Irish business person could have his back stabbed more times than a dodgey turkey at Christmas, before he’s finally put to the coffin. Outsiders often mistake Irish begrudgery as just dislike or hate, or even as a means to better the image of oneself in the eyes of others, but its not that; its just a vicious snide technique to make everyone feel as bad as they do. I could go on but the thrust of this post has got to do with the current, non-relenting, add campaign for the Irish TV licencing scheme.

Every single day we get bombarded with adds reminding us of the evils of not paying our TV licence. I find it particularly offensive when these adds come on the radio. Why the fuck do I need to get assalted by adds for TV licences on the radio!? RTE constantly remind Joe Soaps on the Live Line that Joe Duffys wages don’t come from monies gathered from the Licence fee’s so why the radio spots? If I wanted to watch TV I wouldn’t be listening to the damn radio! Now even this isn’t exactly what I wanted to post about.

I refer to the punch line of all these (wholeheartily fucking annoying!) addvertisments which goes like: “ho ho, and your name will end up in the paper” after which a woman talking to someone else smirks “well would ya look at who didn’t pay their tv licence fee”. Begrudgery! Fucking, Irish, begrudgery, is being used to make people pay their TV licence fee. Way to go RTE. Mind you what can you expect from the minds that bring you shite like Fair City to the screens. Not only that, but unlike in Britain where the BBC don't make money from advertising, we get adds every five seconds. Imagine that, we here in the sucky Eire Republic have to pay to watch add breaks!!

And anyway, so what if your name is in the paper! I’m actually embarrassed to tell people I pay my TV licence fee, I don’t watch television and even if I wanted to I can’t because I'm unable to recieve enough reception for even sound, but “ho ho” I have a tv so “ho ho” I have to pay the fee! Well “ho ho”, suck my fuckin balls RTE!

Updates

I meant to post yesterday about my trip to the doctors to sort out my ear. Yes indeed, all is well again. As I had hoped (but kept silent on) the white noise eminating inside my ear was caused by the wax pressing against the ear drum... and emm.. not a burst ear drum due to my attempted wax extraction using a vacume cleaner (true story). So now I can hear again in stereo and its wonderful!

All is well in the house I'm sitting. The horses I'm looking after with the house eventually go where I want them to and the amount of violence needed gets less and less every day. The dogs still shit up the kitchen at night but thats dogs for you, I wouldnt let the fuckers inside the house but I'm following orders.

I'm making videos and taking pictures at the moment, which should appear on the blog next week. As mentioned, I've lots of musical activity to account for, one of which involves an Alesis Photon X25 I bought a few weeks back. Yeah I know its not as good as a Novation but its not too bad and I hope to sort the usb sound issues this evening (fingers crossed).

Audi S4 Hill Climb

Jack and Jill went up the hill, as fast as possible! Kinda rhymes if you pronounce 'possible' like a nonce.

via

Stuff

Not having an internet connection in the house I'm staying in is a real pain. I have to head into town and enter "Fort Knox" just to get a bit of connectivity and its a bloody 512k BB connection at that, but enough of my "misery" :)

I'm having a great time house minding! Plenty of musical opertunities out there as I will explain in later posts. Only annoying thing is that my right ear has been blocked up for the last few days. Usually I manage to free blocked ears myself but I've had no luck with this one, even the nitro glycerine didnt shift it this time. The constant white noise is the worrying part though, ah well I'm off to the doctor tomorrow for him to tell me no doubt, to check my pockets and behind the pillows at home becuase my ear drum is no longer in my head. Thats an example of positive thinking.

I had hoped to upload two videos of Jon Lord, Pete York and Bill Bruford performing some tame arrangments of Lord's Sarabande suite. I found them on a DVD I bought my brother years back. Its a rather cheesey DVD of some show called "Pete Yorks: Super Drumming". The drumming aint bad but the music is dire! It was one of those gifts you buy at the 11th hour, I didnt even know Lord was on it! Anyway, I'd have them up only as already mentioned, I'm on a 512k line and uploading 300mb isnt fun!

I've half sorted the problem with the sidebar, thanks for your feedback! I've pinned it down to the post about the magic eye pictures. There are two strange things to note: 1) Why did it suddenly cause a problem? and 2) why is it a problem at all? The sidebar will only get pushed down if a picture is wider than the alloted space and the ones I've used arent wider. Surprisingly, I think it has to do with the text. I'll do somemore experimenting.

Layout Problems

I just noticed with an old version of IE that the sidebar gets pushed down to the end of the page. If anyone else notices this please leave a comment, thanks.

Take me to your leader!

via

(fre)eBay.com

Yes you too can be the owner of one of these fine pieces of junk for free!

I'm "cleaning out the closet" here, so much crap I need to get rid of. I thought I might give some of it away. Bloody VHS! DVD is bad, especially when you have over 400 (awful awful!) films, but even one VHS cassette is like a brick! They feel good though dont they? I mean, you know youre gonna watch a movie when you slap one of those babies in. Try slapping a DVD in and you'll end up with Luke Skywalker doing the lambada across the screen like he's got Chewbacca's hair clippings in his underpants (A starwars analogy, and I dont even like the starwars!). No with DVD's you have to "place" them gently on the tray. Bloody pansy DVD's... Grrr!

Anyway, heres whats in the picture (click it for a larger image), I'll throw in the odd bit of ebay spiel along the way too:

~2 posters, swipped from the back of a UCC lecture hall. Both HMV promo's, one for Starsailors current album and Spielbergs War of the Worlds. Deffinate collectors items! Probably worth thousands... in 2314.

~Various Queen videos, ah the memories. I remember buying these over 15 years ago. I might find space for these somewhere. Convince me to give them to you!

~Laberynth VHS. David Bowie is the evil guy you feel sorry for. This is the ultimate family film for all ages! I got it as a gift years ago but its VHS so it has to go!

~2 Deep Purple videos. Actually, I should give one back to its original owner :) Jon Lord with an Arp Oddesy, need I say more? This is the original video! None of that remastered muck!

~Austin Powers... for the love of god take this please! I dont even think this is mine, but the original owner is dead so he probably wont be wanting it back.

~Shaolin Drunkard (in association with the Wu Tang Clan). This is a classic martial arts film! You MUST have this in your collection! Even Amazon.co.uk thought so cos they sent me this along with my actual order, hey they made the mistake and didnt charge me so "9/10ths of the law" comes into place. If I was a real bastard I'd try and make some money on it.

~Test your might on the super stress machine 4000! Every business man needs this device, it accurately detects the stress levels of an individual and can predict when a heart attack is about to happen... Look, its just gathering dust and it was a gag gift from my ex, nuff said? Save it from the bin!

[I'm begining to wish I had gone overboard on the humor in the descriptions now, ah well theres still a few left]

~A collection of the 3 best films ever made: Interview with a vampire, Ginger Snaps and Queen of the damned. Halloween is coming up fast and you dont want to stuck without the best horror films ever to watch! Interview with a vampire: tom cruise proves that there are somethings scarier than Scientology! Ginger Snaps: Girls on the rag turn into hairy dogs! Queen of the Damned: the gay version of Underworld!

~First Contact. I'd keep this if it was on dvd. The best Star Trek movie of the series and not a bad film in its own right. It still has the receipt from when I bought it in the case. COLLECTORS ITEM!!!

~A selection of 35mm film. 5x rolls of [seriously] Professinal Fuji NPH 400 ISO, a few rolls of fuji sensia, various speeds. 3 Rolls of Fuji Velvia 50 ISO. These spent most of their lives in the freezer. They come in a fetching Marks & Sparks shortbread tin.

~1 armadillo piggy bank. Very cute! What better way to help children save money! Possibly could stop poverty in adulthood!!! Contains 3 cent.

There's a few other bits... actually theres a lot but this is enough for now. Save them from the bin, or possibly worse!!!

Magic Eye

My very first stereoscopic image, ever! Taken just over an hour ago. I probably should have straightened the images but I was too execited by the relative ease at how this worked.


The second stereo image, this time of my new Kenetic Pepsi bezeled Seiko submariners watch, which I bought from ebay (yeah I was worried too but it turned out to be real! :) Theres good dept around the edges of the bracelets.


Another one of my watch.

These arent bad considering I just grabbed my crappy digital camera beside me and start taking pictures. I've seen stereo images before, using the fancy bracket systems but this was just one of those things I did on the spur of the moment without really expecting much to happen. They turned out fairly well, mind you my eyes do kinda hurt a bit now so maybe I should be a bit more scientific with the positionings in future! :)

By now, youre probably woundering "whats that old shit rabbiting on about now, Skankeoscopic whats its? Kenetic Pepsi!?". Put simply, the images above when viewed correctly give a crude representation of a three dimensional image. I say crude, because I've just hacked them together and as such will probably cause perminant eye damage to anyone attempting to view them.

To see the magic, you need to sit fairly close to the screen and let your eyes... heck I dont know which type of stereoscopic image system this is even! Just let your eyes go wonky, its probably a cross eyed system. You either know how or you dont; most people eventually get it though and over time it gets easier.

Joe on da Live Line

I was listening to the Live Line on Radio 1 today; a furious debate was raging over sex shops in Ireland. One outraged woman was procaliming that everyone involved in sex shops, their friends and families would have nothing but bad luck! Almost to the extent that the banshee was going to come down off the mountain and eat their youngest child. What struck me though was the comment that sex shops help some people with certain medical conditions, hey maybe they do; but this scenario popped into my head: A man walks up to the counter with a big bundle of pornographic paraphernalia, as the shop assistant begins checking out the items the man speaks "Sure, I only need these because I have a medical condition". The assistant looking a bit bemused replies "oh right, and whats that then?". The man looking dejected mumbles "I'm clinically ugly!".

BAiT - Liquify

Found this on google video while searching for "synth". I like the way the still image is of the Hammond XK-2; thats the posh version of mine by the way :) The video's blurb:

Filmed during recording sessions for BAiT's 2005 album, The Full English. Music is from the album version of the track.

Coventry-based ... all » BAiT is an original rock band, performing songs featuring strong and melodic harmonies and innovative arrangements.

Their sound comprises driving guitars, vintage (Mellotron and analogue) synth sounds, and a solid and tight rhythm section, while their songs have a contemporary sound, played against a solid, classic rock background.

You can play spot the gear if you don't like the music. If you do like the music however goto www.baitband.com

Cartoon Movie Characters

Freddy Krueger in the Power Puff Girls

I found this site randomly while searching through google images. Its a collection of cartoon versions of movie characters. Some of the films are foreign and my ignorence knows no bounds so they go over my head but some of the others are really good! :)

Funny Sven Fischer Video

I recently bought a crappy little tv pci card for the pc off ebay. It does exactly what I expected it to. So I was going through all my old skiing videos seeing if there was anything of interesting to upload (plenty! and I might be tempted to upload a few videos showing off the beautiful curves of female Alpine Sk... err... the alps! yes the beautiful curves of the female Alps :D).

Heres a video I made of something that always made me laugh. It's of German winter biathlete, Sven Fischer. He's still going strong even though they wrote him off as being 'over the hill' at the time of ths video (circa 1997). Anyway, at the end of biathlons, there is a person in charge of opening the breech of all the rifles (to make them safe). With most rifles, there is just a straight forward sliding bolt to reload the gun but Fischer had a special hand grip reloader which wasn't so common. The above video is of one the officals trying to open the breech on Fischers weapon. God bless him, he tries his damndest; fiddles with the whole action, before giving up and withdrawing. The little shimmy he does with his hand is priceless, just watch :)

James Morrison

Has anyone seen the add for James Morrison!?! I haven’t the foggiest who he is but the song sounds familiar. Anyway, at first I thought it was James Blunt! He’s a weedy ugly fucker strumming a guitar just like Blunt, and the add is practically a carbon copy of the Blunt’s adds last year. Even the lettering is the same. Oh well, I guess this is the Blunt for a new generation; a year old generation!

[edit] since originally writing this, James Morrison appeared on the Late Late Show. Not bad I guess, unlike Blunt, at least this guy can sing.

Back from the Savoy

What a dire night! They left way too many people in! The place was rammed; trying to dance with someone was like trying to wrestling the sea. I saw people attempting to penetrate the dance floor and just ricochet off the mêlée.

And there was no StevieG there this evening either. Come back Stevie, all is forgiven! Christ I was dying for a bit of his Guns ‘n Roses at one point, just to get a break from the constant hip-hop. Hippity fucking hoppity! There was no fear that he wasn’t going to play Shakira though, oh no, that classic was still given a whirl!

I left at 1 am; it was just too torturous to bare! It’s a pity, I was beginning to warm up to the Savoy. I’ll give it another go in a few weeks, for now its back to Vibes with me :-P

My Music

***These are working as of 29.09.06***

This is just a collection of hyperlinks to all the little tunes I've created and posted about here. To be honest, its just a way of continuing promoting my Muse vs. Black Eyed Peas mashup.

Don't expect anything amazing here; just making music for fun :)

I've switched the hosting provider for the files so they should all work this time.

[edit: but of course, filehut now puts an add before streamed media, so to get past this just right click and select save as.]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Supermassive Black Hump
My most successful creation! Everyone loves this one. I can't stick either song but when they are put together, something magic happens :)
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Infatuation
Plinky plinky!
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Going Sick for the Smut Machine
The title makes the song. Based on a true story!
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

A Parting Tune
Working title "Plants", a very quick organic trance thing I made early one morning.
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Final Synapse
This is the first song I uploaded. I think it works quite well, could have done with some cleaning up.
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Studying Notes
Music to study with; could have used some vocoding.
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jellyfish
This split opinions down the middle. Its basically all based around the middle crescendo and the rest is filler to be honest.
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry (Who's sorry now)
Loose demo for a song with a 5 year old motif. Missing a base line for the start of the song. Yeah, its Muse inspired.
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Shaman of the Toilet Bowel
I'll never drink again!
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Freddie Jackson
Freddy Mercury and Michael Jackson singing together at last, kind of.
Link

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Spin
Adventures with Dr. Rex!
Link