Mike's Ramblings...
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Mike Whitaker" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:24 pm
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Yipppe.
(not).
I think I have Anne's cold.
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08:40 am
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Little Johnny England, "Tournament of Shadows"
Having caught clips from this album on the Mike Harding show on Radio 2 (third song in on this week's show, which will expire off iPlayer by Wednesday), and knowing (and performing) Lily of Barbary off it, I finally yielded to temptation and bought it.
Wow.
This is probably one of the best folk-rock albums I own - I so want to BE this band! The line up is electric guitar, bass, drums, fiddle and melodeon: the production is crisp and tight, the arrangements and harmonies are great, and by contrast with several Fairport albums, the words are audible.
Highspots? Pretty much all of it, but the title track, Lily of Barbary and Ginger Billy stand out as brilliant, as does the obligatory tunes set, a cracking rocked-up cover of Show of Hands' Cutthroats, Crooks and Conmen, and the very Imagined Village-esque Garland Gay. It's a very English album - almost all the tracks tell stories of England, one way or another.
Little Johnny England. I commend them to you - I shall definitely be catching them when they pass by hereabouts.
Current Mood:  enthralled
Current Music: "Tournament of Shadows", from 'Tournament of Shadows', by Little Johnny England
Tags: music
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08:39 am
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Gazuki (since ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) the_magician and tarkrai were asking
Heck, I dunno what to call it. My new toy is (as those who were at the SWiGGLe a couple of weeks ago will remember) a guitar-bodied bouzouki, or bouzar, or gazuki.
The latter is what the guy I bought it off calls them - see http://www.gazuki.co.uk/ - apparently they're made to his spec in China and imported. Your choice of unison or octave pairs on the bottom two strings, and your choice of tuning (GDAD or GDAE).
Mine is GDAD unison, and I restrung with Elixir phosphor bronze (13/17/30/52) - and it sounds amazing.
If you mention my name when you buy one, I get a referral discount, which I'll share with you.
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01:16 pm
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It occurs to me...
...that I'm going to have to update this 'ere website real soon now.
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08:59 am
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Muse
Have you ever had a song come on the radio that was so mind-blowing that you had to turn the radio OFF when it finished, just to avoid spoiling the memory....?
Happened to me on the way home last night: Muse's "Uprising". Depeche Mode meets Tubeway Army meets Queen meets the Dr Who theme with added rock.
I'd heard their "Knights of Cydonia" before, but it didn't grab me. Now I have context, it makes much more sense.
Cause to spent £13 on the Muse Basics playlist from iTunes...
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06:19 am
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UK filknet server (dorian) is down...
Woke up at 4.30 this morning, couldn't get back to sleep - grabbed iPhone to look at Phillies/Yankees score...
...and it prompted me for the neighbour's wifi.
Odd. So I eventually dragged myself downstairs, wondering if we'd had a breaker trip or something. Nothing obvious, so power cycled the wifi. Went to Anne's machine - couldn't see internet or machines out in the office, so power-cycled ADSL and network switch. Internet back, but not office machines.
Out to office, power cycled switch in rack. Tapped spacebar on dorian. Zip. Farted around for 10 mins, failed to get any joy, was going to miss train so legged it. Typing this on the train, where andor at least seems to be up.
Hopefully, this should be a quick fix at 6pm when I have more brain. If not, I'll be rebuilding dorian with the bigass RAID Supermicro box sitting in the office.
But for now, FilkNet IRC's on irc.gafilk.org, and if you need me, mail this LJ name @ gmail or DM via this LJ name @ twitter.
Current Mood:  discontent
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09:41 am
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Bouzouki and 12-string for sale
As I'm in the middle of upgrading the acoustic collection, and starting to prefer non-roundbacks to roundbacks, I have a couple of instruments for sale.
Can bring either or both to the SWiGGLe if wanted.
Blue Moon pear shape bouzouki - http://www.hobgoblin.com/local/GR3305-p-Blue-Moon-pear-shape-Bouzouki-page.htm
The one I played in micktim and stevieannie's set at the last filkcon - this one has had a pickup and strap-buttons fitted and been properly set up. As Tim and Annie (both of whom borrowed it for a while) can attest, it's a very nice instrument for the money, especially if you want to be Steve Knightley (in which case, tune it to GDAD and play lots of two finger chords) :D Cost me £200 including the modification in 2008, offers around £150 considered. Comes with original gig-bag.
Ovation Applause roundback deep-bodied 12-string - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380157858916 is very similar.
This is the infamous 'Rhiannon' on which Red Sun Rising and Leviathan's Farewell were recorded. Comes with piezo pickup and heavy duty Hiscox hard shell case. I keep it tuned down a tone, and it's very sweet and rich for fingerpicking - for a bottom of the range Ovation it's remarkably nice. Almost don't want to sell it, but among other reasons, like the 'zouk, it has no preamp, which means the pickup pushes out less level than every other guitar I own, which is annoying when playing live. Offers around £175 (the case is worth a fair chunk of that!) considered. Has sentimental value, so I'd like it to go to a filker, from choice.
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02:44 pm
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Favorite lyrics
While driving back from stevieannie and micktim's with Anne and bardling yesterday, we stuck some Dire Straits on... which led to me thinking about some of my favourite bits of lyric writing:
( Here's my top 3, in no particular order.... )
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10:40 pm
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Looking for Perl and PHP developers....
...and if that’s you, and:
- you can handle modern Perl or PHP development for the back or front end of one of the most popular web applications in the UK,
- you’re prepared to work in London W12,
- and you’re not afraid of a challenge,
....then get me your CV, because the future development plans for BBC iPlayer are pretty darn exciting :D
Current Mood:  excited
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11:47 am
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Testing
Just having a play with the rather neat MacJournal package before I decide whether to register it.
Current Mood:  chipper
Current Music: Fleetwood Mac - Stop Messing Around
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06:29 am
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Well, that was a day...
 On the plus side, I now have a new car - a Skoda Roomster SE 1.9TDi in Rosso Brunello (deep maroon to you!)
Initial impressions - wow, it's LIGHT. The panoramic sunroof really does make for a light, airy, roomy interior - so much so I keep wondering if I left a door or the back open or something. And the 1.9 has a nice comforting grumble as it runs, and plenty of pull.
More than that'll have to wait till I've driven it more than 10 miles.
Finalising the sale was a little more fraught than expected. First off, the dealer's valeting team, to a man/woman, called in sick. Today, of all days: today is the first day for '59 registration cars, so they had TWENTY new cars waiting to be valeted and collected. They wound up sending them out to a third-party, and my 2pm pickup turned into a 6pm.
Second, Anne's dad had generously offered to better the Skoda finance deal: unfortunately he didn't decide/tell us this till it was too late, and the Skoda deal does have about £300 in upfront fees that 'er indoors didn't really want to pay just for what would be a one week loan (or less - the money should arrive today or tomorrow). Cue much faffing and juggling, before I remembered something about the way our mortgage account works, and Anne discovering she'd just got paid. Modern banking rocks - in about 5 mins the necessary funds were in the right account for us to hand them a debit card for the whole amount.
On the minus side:
Something in our solar panels has stopped working and, to add insult to injury, the original suppliers are in administration. Good old Peterborough Boiler Services to the rescue - but the guy who's the expert is on holiday till next week.
One of Anne's PC's at her work picked up a virus - specifically 'Total Security', a particularly nasty specimen that hooks in whenever you launch a .exe and pops up a fake security scan.... Spent till midnight disinfecting it (fortunately, it's dormant in safe mode), and really really must have a TALK with Anne's boss, who still seems to think that a practice with about 20 PCs doesn't need to pay for sysadmin work, or a non-free download-scanning anti-virus package, beyond a nod in my direction every so often. I wish someone'd write a nice practice-management package that either ran on Mac or Linux, or in-browser. I also wish they'd actually run the anti-virus scan every day AND update its definitoins more than once every 6 months.
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04:19 pm
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For... well, reference
In case I ever need to find this little note again...
There is a very nice font called Worstveld Sling. For various complex reasons, however, there are several versions of it.
If you want the full set without bugs, you need Worstveld Sling Extra from dafont.com, the Worstveld Sling Oblique from macfonts.com, and the plain and bold Worstveld Sling from GemFonts (because the macfonts versions is missing a few important characters like ellipsis.
End of note to self.
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11:31 am
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Cars...
So, my somewhat battered 'get me to the station' Vectra bit the dust yesterday evening at Birchanger Services, having as far as the AA man could tell run out of coolant with little or no warning at all...
Got me thinking: in my time I've owned:
Y-reg (I think) 1.6 petrol Vauxhall Cavalier in a sort of tawny orange/brown. For reasons lost in time, it was christened 'the Falcon', as ci5rod can no doubt attest. Was my dad's before mine. Written off when I slide into the back of someone in a traffic queue on the A127 in the wet. Crumple zones - a great way of losing your no claims bonus.
E-reg (if memory serves) 2.0 petrol Vauxhall Cavalier automatic, in metallic blue. Very nice except for the intermittent electrical fault which caused the whole car to just die when least expected, finally nailed after 4 callouts to the AA and two visits to Cambridge's useless Vauxhall dealer by the fifth AA man as one of the main electrical cables having a broken core inside the insulation. Sold to a friend of a colleague of Anne's who was a s/h car dealer.
J-reg (IIRC) 1.6 petrol Vauxhall Cavalier in red. Also used to belong to my dad. Completely unremarkable in every way. Part-exchanged for....
R-reg 1.8 petrol Daewoo Nubira, brand new, in green. Nice car, marred by the fact that Daewoo/Halfords service network bordered on the criminally incompetent. Part-exchanged for...
R-reg 2.0 diesel Fiat Ulysse MPV, aka the big blue bus. Schlepped us and Fleetfoot Mike to all parts until we bought the Green Vanalishi, at which point it was P/Xed for...
R-reg 1.8 petrol Mazda 323F in boring old silver. Lovely, fun car that was a little too low for me on days my back was playing up, until I tapped the back of someone who'd changed their mind about moving off at a roundabout at about 2mph. I really enjoyed driving this. Sadly, however, if you thought crumple zones are a means to write off a car, believe me, fibreglass front wings do a much better job. Replaced by...
S-reg 1.8 petrol Vauxhall Vectra. Also in silver. This car had one redeeming feature. It moved. Reliably, as far as I could tell. Otherwise, I can't say I liked it for any reason at all - it got me from A to B, and it had enough boot space for a few guitars. Pretty much the point at which I decided Vectras and Cavaliers are just... plain... boring (albeit practical). Some ratbag stole the CD player from it sometime earlier in the year, some other ratbag bumped it while parked at the station and damaged a light cluster (and never said sorry). It died yesterday. Which is rather fortunate, really, as on September 1 it was getting scrapped anyway in the Government Scrappage Scheme, when I will be getting...
'59-reg 1.9TDi diesel Skoda Roomster SE in a rather fetching shade of dark burgundy.
Till then? It's the bus.
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11:25 am
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Music in Lincolnshire
As some of you may be aware, stevieannie and micktim help run a singers night at the George in Leadenham just down from them every month.
Next month's is on Thursday 10th Sept. I intend to take a car up from Peterborough, and will have room for between 3 and 4 others (depending on whether Mal the bassist wants to come along). Folks would need to be at the Mill House by 7 or arrange collection.
Any takers? (There is no truth in the rumour that I'm only interested because it's called the '600 Whiskies Unplugged Session', honest. Besides, I'm driving.)
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08:42 am
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A review of "Twilight" the movie that actually has something interesting to say...
http://astraether.livejournal.com/191220.html
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09:58 pm
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A live me album!
It's possible I have enough stuff for a live album from my last couple of US filk cons (with thanks to hms42 and phillip2637), maybe with a few bonus tracks...
I'm interested in alternative approaches to releasing it, since it's very much a 'here's a record of me at a point in time...' So, here's a question:
Poll #1447043 Ways of releasing an album
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36Which of these formats would you buy a (filk) album of mine in? (check ALL that you would be prepared to buy if (say) they were the only one
The reason I'm asking? CD preparation etc is a fair bit of work, as is keeping the physical CDs around, and it's quite a bit of outlay. I'm very interested in trying to gauge if the filk market is ready for download-only... Feel free to comment. Also, bear in mind that downloaded purchases can be burned to physical CDs (hence option 3 above).
As an aside, yes, I am aware that some people have strong views about DRM. This is not a forum in which to express them - ya don't like it, just don't check the box, OK?
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09:52 pm
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Just when you thought it was over...
Tune to follow - I have most of it, but the new MacBook to record it isn't arriving till mid-week.
Desolation
There's a silence 'cross the barren land
No wind to stir the dust
And metal tools left lying
With no rain to make them rust.
A single footprint marks the place
Where once two heroes toiled.
A flag, forgotten, fallen lies
Amid the dusty soil.
And that one giant leap
Grows further now each day.
To the empty desolation
That's forty years away.
But one small step
Can start us off once more
On that longest march in history
To Tranquility's far shore. Elsewhere on that landscape
A picture's left behind:
A simple family photo
For some traveller to find.
The one who left it's long years gone -
Safe now, no more to roam.
A reminder of a journey made
So many miles from home.
And that one giant leap.... Far and wide the débris
Of a dozen's labours lie:
Scattered remnants of a time
When mankind dared to fly.
The whole world watched in wonder,
Prayed that they'd be safe home soon.
Old men now, who still recall
Their steps upon the moon.
And that one giant leap...
And that one giant leap
Grows closer now, we pray.
Apollo's distant triumph
We will dare again some day.
Just one small step
Will start us off once more
On that longest march in history
To Tranquility's far shore.
Tags: apollo11, lyrics, music
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08:50 pm
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Wrapping up Apollo
It's been a while, due to a trip to the US and not having the kind of keyboard that encourages long-winded typing... Also, I was kind of waiting till after I'd been to Kennedy...
The Apollo program is a story of many things: chief among them are personal courage (though I suspect most of the astronauts would deny that - Armstrong certainly avoids the public limelight chiefly because he doesn't want to be seen as a hero), and a measure of what can be done as a team if the will is there. Part of me wonders if (say) Obama laid down such a challenge in 2009, would it be possible to hit a similar target in 7 years starting from scratch? Clearly the technology is much more advanced - the AGC makes my watch look smart, even the Shuttle runs on 8086s... but I wonder if we aren't so enmeshed with caution and politics as to make an achievement like Apollo impossible. Which rather saddens me. Kennedy's speech was a great challenge, and I sometimes think the words that we most need today are the ones that come after "... not because they are easy, but because they are hard".
"...because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..."
I have many friends who have not lived through a Moon landing - you only have to be 36 to be born after Apollo 17 (and only 23 to be born after the disaster that befell its namesake). People will live and die (if they're unlucky) before we go back. Sadly, Gene Cernan wasn't as right as he hoped:
"As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record — that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."
(Amusingly, his last words before lift-off were the much more earthy "Let's get this mother out of here.".)
So...
Learn. Teach your kids (if you have any) about what happened forty years ago (my son now has a 3' high Saturn V bought voluntarily out of his own money, and the sight of him wandering the Apollo/Saturn V Center at Kennedy in complete awe was wonderful). If you haven't, you owe it to yourself to watch one or more of Apollo 13, From The Earth To The Moon and Magnificent Desolation (if you can get to see this in IMAX 3D, as at Kennedy, it's absolutely awesome). Several of the Apollo astronauts have written (or had ghosted) autobiographies: Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Charlie Duke (I now have a signed copy of this), Al Bean, Pete Conrad, Dave Scott, Gene Cernan, Al Worden (a poetry book that's as rare as hens' teeth), Ed Mitchell, Jim Irwin... and also Flight Controller Gene Kranz's excellent 'Failure Is Not An Option'. Missing from that list? the main one is Neil Armstrong, though he has an authorized biography.
We will not, should not, forget the story of the Apollo missions.
Now the rest is up to us, and there's a future to be won.
We will turn our faces outward, we will do what must be done.
For no cradle lasts forever, every bird must learn to fly,
And we're going to the stars - see our fire in the sky.
--- "Fire In The Sky", Jordin Kare
We will go back.
Tags: apollo11
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09:23 am
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On the way home
I wonder perhaps if liftoff from the Moon was the hardest part - knowing that if the ascent stage on Eagle failed, that was... it. No second chance, no way home.
Admittedly, there were many stages on the journey to and from Tranquillity Base where that was true, but that one always struck me as being the most intimidating. President Nixon did, apparently, have a speech prepared for such an event.
One of the often-repeated moon hoax claims is 'look, they filmed the lander ascent stage taking off, they can't have done THAT on the moon'.
Well, guess what? They did. The TV camera for Apollo 15, 16 and 17 was mounted on the Rover and was remote operated (with attendant speed-of-light delay) by Ed Fendell in Mission Control. On 15, they were having trouble getting the camera to tilt, so the image stays focussed on the descent stage. On 16 he tried and got it wrong. The 'classic' footage you see is of 17, his last chance to get it right... so no pressure, then!
Today's music: Julia Ecklar's brilliant 'Phoenix'. We (as in Phoenix the band) performed this at the 15th UK filk con, the week after the Columbia disaster: I have a memory of cadhla visiting while we rehearsed, and coming out of a rehearsal that day to learn of the accident. We arranged it pretty much that day, and performed it as our set opener, with no introduction or comment. (It's on video somewhere, I'll try and put it up sometime.)
Tags: apollo11
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12:33 pm
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Some more on the Apollo AGC
Just for giggles, there's a repository of source code online - see http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/07/apollo-11-missions-40th-anniversary-one.html for links into it. Amusing, too: the coders had a sense of humour.
For example:
# Page 730
# BURN, BABY, BURN -- MASTER IGNITION ROUTINE
[...]
# THE MASTER IGNITION ROUTINE WAS CONCEIVED AND EXECUTED, AND (NOTA BENE) IS MAINTAINED BY ADLER AND EYLES.
#
# HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
#
# ***********************************************
# TABLES FOR THE IGNITION ROUTINE
# ***********************************************
#
# NOI SE TANGERE
Tags: apollo11
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