Dec 30, 2009
It’s Magick!
To celebrate the new year I’d like to welcome you to my very own blog where I’ll be posting my uncensored rants on a wide range of topics. My main interest is the creative mind and how we use it to shape our reality. I’ve always been fascinated by how we can catch glimpses of reality and truth through music, software & learning, and how these can be woven together to help us... read more
Nov 27, 2011
Windows Hosting Review
Over the last few months I’ve been testing a number of shared Windows hosting offers, with the following requirements: ASP .NET 4.0 Great uptime Great technical support Fast backbone connection Enough RAM and CPU to run my website (http://gcaltoolkit.net). GCalToolkit is a little resource hungry – not only because I have a lot of users, but also because the app itself requires a decent amount... read more
Sep 8, 2011
Jazz in Russia…
Here’s some clips of the Andrei Bodnartchouk Group playing in Voronez, Russia last year: Playing in Russia is always an experience… bumpy roads, incomprehensible menus, non-existant flights – but fantastic audiences! read more
Jan 3, 2010
WordPress vs Joomla!!
As a long-time Joomla user who has tried just about every CMS available (Mambo, Zencart, Infinity, OSCommerce, DNN to name but a few) over the last 5 years, I finally decided to break my Joomla habit and use WordPress for my personal blogging on this site. The reasons for this are largely financial, or more accurately the lack of financial motivation behind this blog – although I’ve found... read more
Jan 2, 2010
“People may say I cannot sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.”
I’d like to thank Shamus Dark for introducing me to the work of Florence Foster Jenkins (July 19, 1868 – November 26, 1944) an American soprano who became famous for her complete lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, and overall singing ability. (Wikipedia :-/) Personally I think she was an excellent singer who, one day when she was bluthered, was forced to perform in front of friends and family at a... read more
Jan 2, 2010
Never the twain shall meet
I was recently reading the French and English version of the history of Tibet HERE (French) and the HERE (English) which present completely different emphasis on various aspects of the infamous, and now probably insoluble, Tibetan problem. If you read French and English, it is an interesting mind-excercise to compare the two, and imagine then reading a Chinese version of the same article. I was in China... read more
Jan 2, 2010
Someone is going to win the green race… and it’s not going to be the west.
Regardless of the genuine impact on the environment of man’s activity since our (yes our) Industrial Revolution, the country that wins the race to the green flag is going to be in pole position for the next century. As much as the western media in general would like us to believe that China is a backwards country run by evil little men hell-bent on ruling the world economy and sentencing thousands... read more
Jan 2, 2010
Ketchup is a pseudoplastic.
Today I learned a new fact thanks to the Zemanta Wordpess plugin: Ketchup is a pseudoplastic and there does exist a best method for pouring: Tomato ketchup is a pseudoplastic, or “shear thinning,” substance which can make it difficult to pour from a glass bottle. Often, the neck of the bottle will appear to be blocked. A common method to getting ketchup out of the bottle involves inverting the... read more
Jan 2, 2010
The price of food in France, property in the UK
Image via Wikipedia Back in Nice after a week-long Christmas break in Edinburgh I nipped into our local “Marché Plus” and the full force of it hit me – we pay twice as much in France for basic foodstuffs as in the UK. Alpen, if you could get it here, would be about 4€80… we only get Country Store, not quite as good but a fair substitute, at about the same price. The... read more
Jan 2, 2010
Pentatonic Scales
My friend and consummate improvising guitarist Linus Olsson recently twat (past historic of tweet) he was working on major pentatonic scales with a b6. In the key of C this gives us C, D, E, G, and Ab (or G#), C. I use scale this in various ways and I’m going to discuss a few now for those who got past the Ab… In my next post for musical geeks I’ll discuss to my current personal... read more
Jan 2, 2010
San Francisco’s Sea Lions have Scarpered…
It’s easy to be wise after the event, and even easier to delete predictions that don’t come true… but I say get ready for a california quake! read more
