On my Kindle today, I finished All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson and gave it 5 stars http://t.co/YikYpmi
Month: July 2012
Listening to Radio 4 on the radio today, unsurprisingly heavy with articles about the Olympics. Now, as the Games start, there appears to be a new phraseology being used – that the site of the Games was a “barren wasteland” or an “empty brownfield site”.
This will come as news to the many people who enjoyed the area before the bulldozers came in. For example, the Eastway Cycle Circuit – a 1 mile public cycle circuit, built in the 1970s, and set in parklands, now replaced by the Velodrome. Does this look like a wasteland to you?
I had to fly out to the Netherlands last week. It was a last minute thing, so I ended up buying Euros at London City Airport, using my personal VISA Debit card (I would claim back expenses later).
Because it was a Debit card, and not a Credit card, it meant I wouldn’t pay any additional charges outside of exchange rates and commission. Right?
I always wondered which of my songs might bring me to the notice of the general public, outside of my little group of friends. I had no idea it would be “Space Is Big”, written for to teach to a class of kids, in 2010.
Then took it, and sang it to a group of people, including Peggy Seeger, who apparently quite liked it.
On my Kindle today, I finished (re-read) Virtual Light by William Gibson and gave it 5 stars http://t.co/ZlLBFQj
A while back (before I bought the cheap ceramic) I said that I really didn’t need another grill.
But I was in the local Van Hage garden centre today, and they had 25% off everything. Including the Weber Smokey Joe Premium, at £40.50. It is a neat little grill, perfect for cooking just a couple of burgers or steaks.
Listening to an interview on Radio 4 with Nick Buckles of G4S.
He has said a large part of why they only identified their inability to provide sufficient numbers in the last “9-10 days” was because the people they were employing were only available for training for a limited period. He said some people were taking time off work, in order to work the games, and others were students who had their studies and exams to work around.
I wrote about this on the filk_uk mail-list, but it amused me sufficiently to write about it here, too, as not everybody here is there, and vice versa.
On Sunday, I went to a house filk hosted by
On getting home, I had something to eat, and decided to quickly check out the footage, by plugging the camera into the back of my TV.
After switching the TV to 3D mode, I was most disappointed, as skipping through the footage it looked like everything I shot was badly blurred. This was not the case with stuff I had filmed at other times, where the picture had appeared quite sharp. I wondered if perhaps I had smeared a lens, or whether I had over-estimated the light levels in the room, although I couldn’t see why that should affect the focus (as I believe this camera is fixed focus)
People reading this blog will think I have two obsessions – BBQ and 3D. Believe me, I have a lot more than that!
One of them, of course, is music; and I’ve been fond of Peter Gabriel for quite some time. So I don’t know why it has taken me so long to get hold of this Blu-Ray disc of his 2011 Hammersmith Odean concerts, shot over two night in 3D HD.
I can’t help but notice that – in the media – Andy Murray has once more become a “British” hero.
One can only hope that by this evening he isn’t relegated to being a “Scot” again.
I find that spending money tends to make me spend even more money, and this story is no exception.
I have been having fun with my Bloggie 3D camera, but it highlighted something – that I lack a computer capable of doing any kind of useful video editing.
In the (distant) past, I used a desktop I had built for gaming and music, but that has long been superceded by modern requirements. It has actually been sitting under a variety of desks and shelf units for the last 3 years, and I know that it isn’t capable of anything by today’s standards.
Because I work from home, I now tend to use my work computer for most day-to-day stuff. This isn’t as naughty as it sounds, as for some years, my personal requirements have been mostly just for a browser and email (both of which I need for work, anyway). Any gaming I did was now on the Wii, and my Pokerstars account runs from either my smart phone or my Asus Eee.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I thought I would look for a high-end laptop, with a decent built in video card. That way, I could use it downstairs, in front of the TV, as well as in my office. I was looking at a mixture of AV-spec machines, and gaming machines, both of which would do what I wanted.
Then I saw the Toshiba Qosmio F750-12P.