Sunday snowfall

It snowed overnight, leaving a white world to wake up to. It's quite late for snow here, although it has snowed in May and maybe even June before, and the only other snow we've had this year was over the Easter weekend. The Easter snow wasn't much to get excited about though, as it was minor sprinklings here and there, with little settling. Today the snow had settled quite well, with a thick layer over all the greenery, even if the roads and pavements were mostly clear, if wet.

Because of this being the first real snowfall of the year, and we aren't guaranteed snow each year, and because I like the feel of snow underfoot, I took a little walk. I picked up my camera, and enticed my kitty outside to see what he would make of it. Kenickie was a little perturbed by the previous snowfall, even if it was light, because the snow wasn't wet when it landed on him, but he got wet anyway, not realising it was because the snow was melting. He tiptoed out of the front door today and was not too keen to find out what all the white stuff was. After a little while he ventured around to find out that snow is a source of drinking liquid, and lapped up a bit of it, but he didn't want to follow me down the road at all.

I left him to his drinking and wandered off. I headed to the local park, where I was optimistic that I could take a gentle stroll around its perimeter and feel the cotton wool-crunch of my footsteps for a while. Sure enough, the park was a white blanket of snow, and I had a leisurely pace around it, stopping to take the occasional snapshot. It's interesting how everything seems to change so dramatically after a snowfall, making the normal scenery more exotic. I imagine that is because we get snow so rarely that we don't get used to its appearance, which allows us to revel in its nature every time.

My walk around the park came and went, and I started back home again. I saw some kids trying to build a snowman, and quite a few having snowball fights. It's good that we all took time to enjoy the snow when we could, because now, after midday, it has all gone again. Almost every snowflake has melted and the world is back to normal.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Sunday snowfall
Tags: kenickie, kitty, snow, walking

What am I listening to?

I will listen to music in different ways. Having my iPod plugged in to my hi-fi system allows me to have my whole collection at my fingertips, and I take advantage of that by putting the iPod on random album shuffle. I also use my multi-CD player so that I can listen more frequently to albums I have bought recently. And if I want to listen to something specific without changing a CD I can fire up iTunes and stream music across my Airport Express. Overall, I am able to appreciate my recent purchases whilst having my entire library available.

The subject line isn't a question from a hypothetical person to myself but a question I actually found myself asking. Having bought several CDs from new artists recently I found that I had forgotten what I put in to my CD player, and ended up wondering just who I was listening to. It took a little while, but I remembered finally, before looking at the CD case, that I was listening to Holton's Opulent Oog. It's a name I didn't think would be easily forgotten. At least, not for long. With the mystery solved I sat back and enjoyed the folky music, which was what perked my attention up in the first place.

Posted in Audio | Comments Off on What am I listening to?
Tags: cd, holton's opulent oog, ipod

Guitar exercise book

Further to my recent thoughts about buying a new guitar, I went looking on-line for a new book to help me get back to practicing playing. As much as playing along to songs is fun and helps in its own way in picking up some skills it isn't the same as learning and practicing the fundamentals. The problem is knowing which book to get, as there are a vast number of learning books for guitar. I was simply after a book that would give me some exercises I could practice to help my overall playing ability, a base from which I could expand in any direction.

I poked around some on-line book shops looking for something that matched some vague searches, and found a few matches that looked encouraging. It was still difficult to determine what they would be like beyond their titles though, and going shopping in meatspace wouldn't guarantee finding the book I was after in any particular shop either. As much as I dislike customer reviews, for their amateur vagueness and inability to describe anything beyond 'good' and 'bad' in overly simple sentence structure, I read one that actually used grammar and reasoning. The reviewer noted that the current book I was looking at was not quite as good as a different series of books, so for want of any better source I decided I may as well see what this other series looked like, particularly as the series had a name familiar to me.

I found the series of books easily enough and, sure enough, the books were familiar to me, for I had bought them years ago and worked my way through the first two a little. That was quite lucky, I thought, as it meant that I didn't need to buy that recommendation, simply find them in my bookshelf and pick them up again. In the meantime, I bought another book that seemed to contain a good bunch of pages of finger exercises, with an accompanying CD, taking something of a chance that the material would be good. But for about a fiver I decided it was worth that slight risk.

Before the new book turned up I thought I'd find the old books I had bought previously to see if I could put them to good use. After the Great Clear-out of 2007, where I was close to moving overseas and sold or threw away most of what I owned, it was straightforward enough to find all my guitar books. I thumbed my way through the spines of all the tab books of albums to find that the instruction books I was looking for had been disposed of in the Great Clear-out. Oh well. I have the new book now, and I'll see if it helps me when I get to work learning the exercises, and if I do I'll consider picking up those other books again. It's a shame I got rid of them, though, although it's taken me almost a year to find that out. And if I start playing more and improve a bit I'll get myself that new guitar.

Posted in Audio, Print | Comments Off on Guitar exercise book
Tags: book, great clear-out of 2007, guitar, learning

Bridge April Fools

I recently learnt the basics of Bridge at a really quite relaxed club at work, and am enjoying playing and learning the game. On 1st April, some of the players conspired to play a prank on one of the members and got everyone else, all five of us, involved. The idea was, and you'll probably need to understand Bridge a little to understand the prank, to wait for this chap to bid a suit and then his partner would, without any further bidding, put him straight in to six of that suit. Then, once the dummy hand was put down, everyone would agree that that was the correct bidding and they would have bid the same, leaving the poor fellow in a difficult contract and wondering what was happening.

As it happened, I was partnering the chap to be fooled. On the first hand played I put in an opening bid, and my partner then bid a second suit. After what I faked as a little thought I returned with a bid of six diamonds, much to his surprise, but no one else's. Unsurprisingly, there was no more bidding on that hand and I put my cards down following the lead card being played. My partner wondered what on earth I was bidding on, having only two diamonds, but everyone backed me up, of course, saying that it was 'by the book'.

It may not have been the best time to pull the prank, though. After all, I opened with one of a suit, and my partner overcalled with a minor suit, showing both points and length. So with a good hand, some help in outside suits from my hand, and a bit of cunning play, he actually made the small slam contract. That's not to say it back-fired. After all, the fellow was startled by the jump bid from the three- to the six-level, and wondered what was going on when my hand was shown. And then everyone was happily amazed when he made the contract, so the whole opening hand has highly entertaining from everyone's perspective, and gave us something to talk about for a while. With such entertainment and a lack of a victim it turned out to be a good April Fools joke to play.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Bridge April Fools
Tags: bridge, cards

Crash helmet tiger ears

I bought some tiger ears for my crash helmet last year. I was initially concerned with how well the ears would stay attached to my lid, being secured by only a sucker cup each, and was always relieved when I got to my destination with both ears still present. Because of the nature of riding a bike putting a lot of air pressure around the helmet, as well as weather effects, notably rain, I took it as inevitable that I would lose at least one of the ears sooner or later, and just decided to let the ears stay on for as long as they wanted. I was impressed, though, as they lasted for months, enduring motorway riding and storms before the cold weather caused one of the ears to drop off one day. Believing that the cold would affect the rubber suckers detrimentally I wasn't surprised and removed the remaining ear from my helmet, and decided to wait for Spring before getting some new ears and replacing them.

It is now Spring, and the weather has warmed up enough to start wearing the tiger ears on my crash helmet again. I bought a new pair and they turned up before Easter. One of the sucker cups was a little wonky, though. It didn't sit well on the helmet, not making me feel confident about its chances of staying attached under high winds or rain. I tried to modify it a little, squeezing it in to a better shape, but that didn't really work. In the end I left the slightly misshapen ear off and used the one that survived for months on my helmet before, coupled with the other new one. I was confident that the old one would stick well, from experience, and the other new one looked good enough. I plopped them on to my helmet this weekend and took my first trip with them attached, commuting to and from work, yesterday.

I got to work and both ears were still attached, which was good. They even lasted on the motorway on the way home. But not much further than that. Indeed, coming off the roundabout at the motorway junction I made a routine rear-view mirror check, to see what traffic I was leaving behind, and I noticed something white and orange bouncing on the road a little distance behind me. Noooooo! It was possible that it was something else white and orange, not my tiger ear, but the chances were slim that this was the case. I also made a little bet with myself that it was the new ear that had fallen off so soon, and when I got home I was unsurprised to see that this was the case. How disappointing! The new ear hadn't even lasted a day.

I still had another ear left from the new package, but this was the ear that I wasn't confident about staying secured. With the 'good' one failing so soon I didn't rate the other's chances at all. I didn't want to be one-eared, so I could order a new pair and hope that I got a good pair, or I could think of a better way of securing the ears to the helmet. The problem is how to achieve that. For a start, the helmet manufacturers are clear that no stickers, paint, or any other item should be stuck to the helmet's exterior, lest the integrity of the helmet and thus its safety value be compromised. Second, as much as superglue is my friend there could be a time when I'd want to take the tiger ears off the helmet, to wash them of the grime of the road for example.

I then realised a good solution: gaffer tape. It's strong, resistant to the elements, and removable. As all I wanted was a secondary method of attaching the ears, complementing the sucker cups, gaffer tape seemed ideal. It would stick to the suckers and the helmet at the same time as preventing air and water ingress to the sucker cups, and if the elements eventually wore down the tape it could be reapplied. As my helmet has a black base the black tape would not appear incongruous. Unlike the tiger ears. I wouldn't even need much tape to tape the ears down, so hopefully not affecting the integrity of the helmet. I suckered the dodgy ear down to the helmet, in place of the now escaped ear, applied some small sections of gaffer tape to it and the stalwart ear, and stood back admiring a job well done. I have two tiger ears again, and am confident in their chances of staying on my helmet for the coming months.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Crash helmet tiger ears
Tags: helmet, motorbike, motorway, tiger, tiger ears

No new guitar for now

I have been toying with the idea of buying a new guitar, a Les Paul replica most likely. I am hoping this would spur me in to playing more regularly again and trying to learn more theory rather than just ape songs, and not just leave the guitar standing in a corner of my home looking questionably cool. I saw a cheap Les Paul replica on sale in a local shop for a reasonable amount and this led me to check on-line dealers to see how much an Epiphone Les Paul would cost, Epiphone being owned by Gibson and thus offering genuine Les Paul guitars but of lower quality than their Gibson versions. It seems that an Epiphone would be affordable, given the right deal, and I would consider the Epiphone version preferable to an unknown brand.

Taking a trip in to London at the weekend I took the opportunity to wander down to Denmark Street, a 50 metre stretch of road that is almost entirely populated by musical instrument shops. I was hoping to get a better idea of the choices available and, if something caught my fancy, to rashly buy a new guitar to reignite my interest. I popped in to one of the guitar shops and was greeted with walls of guitars, and a good many arranged on the floor as well. This first shop was a relatively good choice to have made, as most of the guitars were Gibsons, with some other brands scattered around. However, I soon came to the conclusion that I was a little out of my depth, as it became apparent that all the guitars were main brands, no Epiphones or similar in here. I was also presented with knowledge that I hadn't really absorbed before, that guitars are expensive. I knew that they were more expensive than I would generally want to spend with my limited ability, but after seeing racks of guitars ranging from £3,000 to over £5,000 I was enlightened. I was initially taken aback, wondering who would spend so much on what might be a hobby item, but soon realised that it is quite affordable for a high-quality instrument that one might spend hours a day using intricately. Even so, and however good the guitars were there, I could do little but move on after browsing in that shop.

I tried another shop, but again there were no cheap knock-offs available for sale, just genuine articles. I was a little surprised, somehow thinking I had seen Epiphones for sale at some point in the past down there, but it wasn't really a problem. At least I wasn't presented with a good looking Epiphone Les Paul that I might have been thoroughly tempted in to buying. It's not so much that I didn't have the money to spend, although it couldn't be called an impulse purchase either, but more that I was spared the perceived embarrassment of trying the guitar before buying. Guitar shops are generally friendly places, and are happy to let customers try the instruments before making a purchase. Indeed, they encourage this practice, and for good reason. Different styles have different feels, as do different brands, and it's always good to buy an instrument that feels good for you when played.

I note that the embarrassment is 'perceived' because it likely is mostly in my head, despite how well or poorly I manage to play. We all start somewhere, and you need to buy an instrument in order to improve. But there is a good chance that if you walk in to a music shop there will be some undiscovered talent sitting in a corner in front of an amp, guitar in his lap, noodling away in a manner that makes you wonder if someone has put a 33 LP of Slash on at 78 by accident. It can be a little intimidating, particularly if, like me, you have the talent of Dave Lister but not the ego. Sure, I can bash some chords out and know my scales, but playing cold in public is still unnerving. Still, it's a nice hurdle to get across when buying a new guitar. It's like you deserve something nice for yourself if you can manage to throw out a few decent licks in a guitar shop.

Mind you, if I can't find an Epiphone in a shop without too much effort I may just end up buying mail-order anyway. That is, if I decide to get a new guitar. I remain undecided for now.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on No new guitar for now
Tags: epiphone, guitar, les paul, london, shopping

Peeling a mango

The internet is a marvelous beast. It can inform a person how to peel a mango properly so that the delicious, juicy fruit can be best separated from its peel to be enjoyed in a bowl with some cream.

What the internet cannot do is tell that same person that they should search for instructions on how to peel a mango before coming close to hacking it to shreds and not having much in the way of fruit left to enjoy. This is why we need Web 2.0.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Peeling a mango
Tags: food, fruit, internet, mango

RSS feed activate!

My Google Reader subscription has now picked up the feed for this blog. It didn't before today, and that may have been because I was using a release candidate of Wordpress, whereas now I am using the full release, although I would have thought that the RSS link would be working in an RC. Another reason may be because of DNS propagation issues with the pjh subdomain, not that I fully understand the goings-on with DNS.

I am still getting troubles connecting to the subdomain when using the OpenDNS servers, and still cannot connect to MSN Messenger using Adium when I am not using the OpenDNS servers. It's all a bit frustrating. I have a potential solution to this, but I would rather my subdomain be set-up correctly.

Edit: I may have blogged too soon, as Google Reader isn't picking up this entry or anything newer as of late 30th March. I'll see what I can do about it.

Posted in Technical | Comments Off on RSS feed activate!
Tags: adium, blog, computers, dns, rss, wordpress

Morris and Morris

I've been re-watching all the Seinfeld series. I recorded them years ago when BBC2 first showed them and watched them quite a lot on VHS, but since I discarded my old VHS machine some time back I haven't seen any episodes. With the series becoming quite cheap on DVD I decided to pick them up one box set at a time. I'm currently enjoying the eighth series and listening to the commentaries. One little nugget of information that I picked up was that Phil Morris, who plays the wonderful Johnnie Cochran parody Jackie Chiles, is the son of Greg Morris, who played perhaps my favourite character from the Mission: Impossible series, Barney Collier. I just thought that was a neat connection.

Posted in Video | Comments Off on Morris and Morris
Tags: dvd, mission: impossible, seinfeld, tv

Kenickie brings in the rubbish

When Kenickie first started venturing outside he would go a-hunting in his own way, and this led to him bringing in his 'kills', which were leaves. He was probably attracted to them being blown around by the wind. This was rather cute, if a little messy after they dried up, although that more points to how often I vacuum than anything. Now that it's Spring it seems that the number of leaves scattered around has diminished greatly, or Kenickie has got bored with them. He has found new things to bring in: rubbish.

In recent days he has brought in an old and ripped tennis ball, a plastic ring from a bottle, a plastic four-pack can holder, and some grotty scrunched-up paper. I could try to spin this by claiming that I have an environmental kitty, and his Womble-like intentions are to clean the local area of rubbish by bringing it inside for me to dispose of properly, but that just isn't the case. I know this because when I've been going to sleep 'Tomsk' has been jumping on to my tiger fur duvet-covered bed with his findings, wanting me to play with them with him. They are just new toys to him.

As much as I enjoy having crap on my bed when trying to sleep, I have this crazy reaction of throwing it on to the floor, to dispose of in the morning. But Kenickie is a wonderfully playful kitty and thoroughly enjoys a game of 'fetch', so when I throw the rubbish off the bed he takes this as a sign that it's playtime and gleefully chases the rubbish down and brings it back to me. It's a lot of fun with one of his cat toys, it's a little frustrating when it's some random crap from the street. Still, it's not really a big deal, just a potentially icky. I just need to remind myself that one of these days it will probably be a disemboweled rodent that I am pawing at in the middle of the night, and Kenickie will be only to happy to play 'fetch' with that too.

Posted in Personal | 1 Comment »
Tags: kenickie, kitty, rubbish