The regular write up

Oh look. The weekend's gone again. Oh Joy.

Still, on the whole it has been a good weekend if a little expensive. I nipped into the West End yesterday afternoon and ended up poorer by the cost of a couple of ink cartridges amongst other things. I picked up a number of CDs - Everyone is Everybody Else: Barclay James Harvest's 1974 release and the first after leaving the Harvest label. Fiddling Meanly a live CD by Maesosto, a band put together by Woolly Woolstenholme, erstwhile keyboardist with BJH and currently doing the same with the splinter group, John Lees' Barclay James Harvest. Buried Treasure - The Sailor Anthology made it home as it is the only compilation CD of that band's work that includes my personal favourite, Blue Desert from their first, eponymous album.

Finally, for a mere £8 I found a 3CD set of original Sun Recordings, so I have a large sample of 50s rockabilly and southern blues to listen to, recorded just at the time it was evolving into rock'n'roll. Marvellous.

Nice to see evilchalkie who crashed in the spare room over night. He was back from whatever meet-up he attended much earlier than expected, so we had the opportunity for a good natter for the first time in far too long.

Today has been relatively quiet, though we took the opportunity to wander into North Finchley for a couple of items, back for lunch in the pub while Arsenal were showing signs of forgetting what football is about on telly. Later in the afternoon we installed some cosy Christmas lights and then around 9pm after lolling around listening to music, ellefurtle and I sloped out for a bottle of wine and a pizza at ASK.

Now it's time to go to bed. It all starts again from here. Boooo.

The regular write up

Oh look. The weekend's gone again. Oh Joy.

Still, on the whole it has been a good weekend if a little expensive. I nipped into the West End yesterday afternoon and ended up poorer by the cost of a couple of ink cartridges amongst other things. I picked up a number of CDs - Everyone is Everybody Else: Barclay James Harvest's 1974 release and the first after leaving the Harvest label. Fiddling Meanly a live CD by Maesosto, a band put together by Woolly Woolstenholme, erstwhile keyboardist with BJH and currently doing the same with the splinter group, John Lees' Barclay James Harvest. Buried Treasure - The Sailor Anthology made it home as it is the only compilation CD of that band's work that includes my personal favourite, Blue Desert from their first, eponymous album.

Finally, for a mere £8 I found a 3CD set of original Sun Recordings, so I have a large sample of 50s rockabilly and southern blues to listen to, recorded just at the time it was evolving into rock'n'roll. Marvellous.

Nice to see evilchalkie who crashed in the spare room over night. He was back from whatever meet-up he attended much earlier than expected, so we had the opportunity for a good natter for the first time in far too long.

Today has been relatively quiet, though we took the opportunity to wander into North Finchley for a couple of items, back for lunch in the pub while Arsenal were showing signs of forgetting what football is about on telly. Later in the afternoon we installed some cosy Christmas lights and then around 9pm after lolling around listening to music, ellefurtle and I sloped out for a bottle of wine and a pizza at ASK.

Now it's time to go to bed. It all starts again from here. Boooo.

Office machines

Since we have wi-fi in the building, I have been contemplating bringing my own lap top into the office so that I can play such things as scrabulous, or indeed anything requiring an up to date flash application, during lunchtime. We have these shiny new machines in the office with half the facilities disabled including all the USB ports on the front and monitor of the machine (but not on the back…). Since we use flash memory quite a lot for transferring files to laptops –generally PowerPoint presentations – we have managed to have the ports at the front reinstated. I was damned if I was going to crawl under the desk and root around in all the fluff down there to use a memory stick (my OWN memory stick, I might add).

I don’t mind that certain things don’t load and that we don’t have the administration rights to install them ourselves, because it’s generally only a hassle on extra curricular activities. That said, having java disabled can be a pain at times for legitimate reasons, particularly when you are trying to use buttons on an official web site.

Ah, well: mustn’t grumble. A lot of people don’t have as few restrictions as we do on what we can and cannot access over teh intarweb.

Office machines

Since we have wi-fi in the building, I have been contemplating bringing my own lap top into the office so that I can play such things as scrabulous, or indeed anything requiring an up to date flash application, during lunchtime. We have these shiny new machines in the office with half the facilities disabled including all the USB ports on the front and monitor of the machine (but not on the back…). Since we use flash memory quite a lot for transferring files to laptops –generally PowerPoint presentations – we have managed to have the ports at the front reinstated. I was damned if I was going to crawl under the desk and root around in all the fluff down there to use a memory stick (my OWN memory stick, I might add).

I don’t mind that certain things don’t load and that we don’t have the administration rights to install them ourselves, because it’s generally only a hassle on extra curricular activities. That said, having java disabled can be a pain at times for legitimate reasons, particularly when you are trying to use buttons on an official web site.

Ah, well: mustn’t grumble. A lot of people don’t have as few restrictions as we do on what we can and cannot access over teh intarweb.

John Fries’s Rebellion

As you know, I never¹ do memes. Having seen this one on mr_h_r_hughes’ LJ (who in turn ganked it from shaunotd), I decided it looked fun enough that I should condescend to have a go.

Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
Click random article again; that is your album name.
Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

Band Name: John Fries’s Rebellion
Album Name: Issac Luke sic

Track listing:
Judith & Holofernes
Benjamin Stephenson House
List of SoE Agents
The Meaning of Soul
Bruce Campbell
KROI
Red-tailed Laughing Thrush
Douglas Gageby
Valve Cover Racing
Plastic Bending
Vic Mizzy
Windeyer County, New South Wales
Lewis K Rockefeller
Eagle Electric
Fall Apart

This looks to me like some kind of electric-country-folk combo. Probably a 5 piece band with a pool of regular guest artistes, active between 1968 and 1976. I am tempted to make something up, including perhaps am second album and putting them onto MySpace just to see if anyone ever notices that they are fictional…


¹”Never” in the sense of “rarely” or almost never. [ahem]

John Fries’s Rebellion

As you know, I never¹ do memes. Having seen this one on mr_h_r_hughes’ LJ (who in turn ganked it from shaunotd), I decided it looked fun enough that I should condescend to have a go.

Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
Click random article again; that is your album name.
Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

Band Name: John Fries’s Rebellion
Album Name: Issac Luke sic

Track listing:
Judith & Holofernes
Benjamin Stephenson House
List of SoE Agents
The Meaning of Soul
Bruce Campbell
KROI
Red-tailed Laughing Thrush
Douglas Gageby
Valve Cover Racing
Plastic Bending
Vic Mizzy
Windeyer County, New South Wales
Lewis K Rockefeller
Eagle Electric
Fall Apart

This looks to me like some kind of electric-country-folk combo. Probably a 5 piece band with a pool of regular guest artistes, active between 1968 and 1976. I am tempted to make something up, including perhaps am second album and putting them onto MySpace just to see if anyone ever notices that they are fictional…


¹”Never” in the sense of “rarely” or almost never. [ahem]

Pressies!

I get home to find that good old Play.com have delivered my Heroes season 1 DVDs (including the unaired 71 minute pilot), plus two of the four Barclay James Harvest CDs I ordered late last week. I'm not quite sure when I shall have time to listen to all this musical bounty that I have acquired over the past few days, but I shall give it a shot on Friday evening and all day Saturday while ellefurtle is off on her day trip to Venice (oh, why did I let my passport lapse?).

At the moment, ellefurtle is downstairs preparing a rather splendid-smelling chicken casserole for dinner. I judge from the just-rung doorbell that the consignment of wine she ordered has turned up albeit fashionably late (it contains a rather post bottle of Madeira that I am anxious to try). While this is all going on, I am burning the first half of Heroes season 2 onto DVD, so we can watch them on the telly downstairs.

So much entertainment; so little time.

Though I notice the US script writers' strike is beginning to be reflected in the number of repeats cropping up on the torrents and the equivalent dearth of interesting new material. Ah well. Plenty stored up for us!

Pressies!

I get home to find that good old Play.com have delivered my Heroes season 1 DVDs (including the unaired 71 minute pilot), plus two of the four Barclay James Harvest CDs I ordered late last week. I'm not quite sure when I shall have time to listen to all this musical bounty that I have acquired over the past few days, but I shall give it a shot on Friday evening and all day Saturday while ellefurtle is off on her day trip to Venice (oh, why did I let my passport lapse?).

At the moment, ellefurtle is downstairs preparing a rather splendid-smelling chicken casserole for dinner. I judge from the just-rung doorbell that the consignment of wine she ordered has turned up albeit fashionably late (it contains a rather post bottle of Madeira that I am anxious to try). While this is all going on, I am burning the first half of Heroes season 2 onto DVD, so we can watch them on the telly downstairs.

So much entertainment; so little time.

Though I notice the US script writers' strike is beginning to be reflected in the number of repeats cropping up on the torrents and the equivalent dearth of interesting new material. Ah well. Plenty stored up for us!