First Visit To The Garden

A while ago I bought "The Prison" a book and album that should be read an litened to together. I read and listened on the train journey to Edinburgh and was quite surprised that I finsihed the book as the last piece of music finished and we rolled into Edinburgh.

I bought the follow up, "This Garden" but as yet haven't done the read / listen thing. On my walk to work this morning I thought it may be nice to listen to the (largely) instrumental album and it was particularly appropriate on my walk through parts of Nunsmoor (some pictures here), although my headphone power ran out halfway through the penultimate piece "Wisteria".

I may actually try to read the book tonight just to see what the experience is like. While Mike Nesmith is a far better songwriter than book writer, it is a engaging concept , and as I have mentioned previously done particularly well withe Camel's take on Paul Gallico's "Snow Goose". I would encourage you to try all three of these, each one will only take you around forty minutes and will definitely treat you to a new concept of enhancing your reading.

We have a lot of cloud, but some blue sky. Enjoy your Thursday.

Let Forever Be

Finally finished "How To Stop Time" an easy / hard read but with an upbeat ending so happy about that, and now I've started on "The Fouteenth Letter" by Claire Evans. It doesn't look like the sort of thing that I normally read but has started very well and I shall inform you how it progresses. I have started other books and films that have an explosive start and then you spend ages waithing for something to happen and nothing ever does. YOu do need something to keep your attention, and the Matt Haig book certainly does that.

I don't know if it's me or my computer or my ISP but everything seems to be getting much slower, possibly due to the number of adverts, and the number of security bits that then they try to bypass. I don't want to stay logged in to most sites, especially not Paypal or Facebook, and I don't want Firefox or Chrome to remember my passwords either.

I've just listed some more CDs on Discogs as I need to make some more space and I do have digital copies of most of my CDs. I've just list a lot of Paul Weller if he's your thing. On the one hand it's difficult getting rid of stuff but you have to think if you are not going to play them again then someone else may have them.

It's the same with books and DVDs, if you are not going to use then make room, space is good.

The stuff I don't think will sell quickly are dropped in to Charity shops, mainly the Westgate Ark shop round the corner from me.

So another day like many other days, skies are grey ,but yesterday I sorted a couple of major work things, then came home and watched an episode of Gotham and Black Sails before retiring to bed. Bruce Wayne's car is getting more and more Batmobile like every week.

I have some web updates to do for Bob Armstrong and Woodlands Plants and at Art exhibition Ivelina Goverdovskaya: "Work in Progress" at Arch 16 to attend tonight so not a lazy day today.

For some reason (maybe talking about art) the excellent Michel Gondry video for The Chemical Brothers "Let Forever Be" came to mind, so I'll sign off with that.

Phone Blinkers

For lunch I nipped to the Mean Eyed Can for a couple of Empanadas and a diet coke (see here), and found it almost amusing the number of people sat in the sun, or walking but engrossed in the mobile devices almost oblivious to anything else.

While I listen to music (and now radio) on my phone I very seldom do anything that distracts me for walking or whatever. If I want to take a picture or video I stop and make sure that I am not blocking anyone or at risk of running into anything.

While listening to John Niven he told me about a book "Makin' Tracks" by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein that resulted in him getting into Television.

So although phones are very useful they do seem to act as blinkers for so many people, blinding them to all that is going on around them. Having said that I have been guilty the odd time of concentrating too much on my phone and nearly walked into to a person or stationary object.

Listening To John Niven

On Sunday 6Music broadcast a show by one of my favourite authers John Niven. The series is called Paperback Writers and has a writer talking for an hour about music that has shaped him and influenced him.  If you want to catch it (before September 2018) you can listen to it here.

Now I'd missed it on Sunday, but then remembered there;s a BBC Radio iPlayer app that you can download onto your phone, and thought "Aha" . As well as music and podcasts I can listen to radio shows on demand on my phone.

So that was my listening for my walk to work this morning. He opened with Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Up Around The Bend" a song I loved since I first heard that razor sharp opening riff, although the lead guitar parts seem remarkably muted compared to the main riff.

He played a lot of great music including Television's "See No Evil" which I tried to emulate in my song "Communication" for The Bok  (and failed totally), and actually pointed out a very dark concept of Middle of The Road's "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" that I hadn't countenanced before about losing your mother as a child.

He also talked about and played a song from The Wishing Tree, the band he was a member of in his early twenties who, from the song he played, well worth a listen.

Basically this has given me another option for listening on my walks, which is all very good.

And Now Blue Sky

After the rain of yesterday, and the cloudy start to today we are now starting to see blue skies with fluffy white clouds. So that obviously opens the door for The Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds" which is probably thirty years old now. It is amazing how time has flown but that is th enature of the beast.

I also think about how, when I started this blog I would sometimes post two or three lines maybe fifty words. I do a few more these days.

One of the good things is that technology does improve over time, although it does allow us to waste more time using it.  This blofg for instance, a lot of people will see as a waste of time.

We can now wastch TV and read books on our mobile devices, as well as playing games, though I've yet to find Quake or Doom for Mobile, all the games are far to sophisticated for my capabilities.

Anyway this is just a short post towards my #August50 project target, so enjoy the rest of your day.

Clouds and Total Football

Looking out of the window and there is an amazing cloud formation overhead. Here's my nstagram post.

Well it looks like the site visits have taken another dive, c'estla vie. The last two nights I have gone to bed early and this morning I was wide awake at 2:30.

I had woken from a dream but the dream was very influenced by the book I'm reading Matt Haig's "How To Stop Time" which is certainly a page turner but the main protagonist is possibly the most depressing since Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant. Both characters have a heavy burden but it does become wearing in the way it's presented., although other charaters do provide the hope and lighter sections.

The rain has taken a break so I may be able to walk into work to day and listen to some good music.

Today is the first round of the Carabao Cup and Preston North End are playing Morecambe, and on 6Music Chris Hawkins has just played "Total Football" by Parquet Courts so it has to be that doesn't it.

Have a good day everyone.

Sheets

Probably a good description of the rain I've woken up to thi smorning. Not quite biblical but if it keeps up like this I won't be doing much walking, I didn't do much yesterday either but luckily Friday and Saturday I walked quite a long way. so still ok for August.

It is the 13th, it is Monday, it is raining the sort of day when everything doesn't seem exactly good or inspiring but it has given me something to at least start off this post.

One of the things with these blog posts is that it does allow me to share music that I either like or have eard and found interesting. One of the problems is that I only have a finite capacity to listen, but still manage to fit in quite a lot. I still haven't read and listened to Mike Nesmith's "The Garden" yet even though I had planned to this weekend. That is a record from my yeenage years that I completely missed. I knew about "The Prison" because it was the big box with a book, but at the time it didn't hold any pull for me, but having read and listened to it that has now changed., and I do want to do "The Garden"

This morning on 6Music John Hilcock played "Patience" by Gorgeous Bully which is rather excellent and you can find them here. Too often we always keep going to the past but we should always be open to new things., or life would be very boring, I think you should take a listen you may enjoy it too. Gorgeous Bully have been going for at least four years so it's another band who have past me (and a lot of others by).

It looks to be brightening up now, which is good, but now it's time for a shower. Have a good Monday everybody.

Visits and Numbers

Since I restarted this #August50 the average number of vists, reads or hits per post has probably increased by about 50%. I still don't get that many visitors, no one is going to ask me for an endorsement or product placement, and it may be just robots reacting to the increase in activity on the blog, but it's an interesting phenomenon for me.

The skies are still greay so I suppose summer may be taking a break, but I think that weather is just a very complex process. No doubt people will be telling us that we haven't had a summer again, even though we are in the midst of a drought.

Anyway this is an exuse to share "Goldrush" by Death Cab For Cutie from the album "Thank YOur For Today" which reminds me so much of something else but I can't remember what. I love this video which takes the Bob Dylan "SubteraneanHomesick Blues" lyric sheet format. So I thought I'd include that video as well.


Death Cab For Cutie was a song by The Bonzo Dog Band and I just found some out takes from the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour" film of them performing it. So I've gone off on lots of tangents and provided you with three videos for you to enjoy.

Hope your Sunday is going well.

Precipitate

It's been raining during the night, which is a good thing. Still too heavy to walk in, but not threat of biblical floods here in Fenham. I'vewoken up fairly demotivated, and not even had a shower but think a shower will wake me up an dmakeme a little less lethargic .

ven if I stopped writing now this still counts towards my #August50, but I don't feel that I am going to make that at this moment in time.

I had some weird dreams including my friend Juli getting a bubble perm and suiting in it a large school hall where I was trying to take a photograph of an amazing sight through the windows of the moon and the eather next to each other shaded in blue, but I couldn't get a decent shot sho went into the field outside to get a less restricted shot and they had disappeared and all there was was a big blue IKEA like cube.

That is roughly all I can remember of it but I am sure it would provide some psychiatrist or analyst a bit to go one, but as Half Man Half Biscuit stated in "San Antonio Foam Party" which appeared on their excellent "Cammell Laird Social Club" album from 2002:

"Your weird dreams

Don’t impress in any way

In dreams

Weird things are mundane and everyday

Strange to me would be

Buying a loaf

And coming straight home"

Such is the nature of dreams. So that's provided a song for this post though there is quite a lot more music that I do want to share with you, maybe I will take a chance to do that later. Now it's shower time, the maybe get a paper, do a crossword, write a song

Enjoy the rainy Sunday my friends.

Going Mobile

It's a hell of a long time since my daughter Juliet palmed off her old mobile to me introducing me to having a mobile phone. Since then they have metamophosed from handsets with the hus plus of being able to text people, and if you were lucky actually send a picture to the hand held computers that we have now.

You still see the odd person with the old Nokias (thatill work)  or the Doro's (but even they have a smart version now) but I am still waiting for my phaser / teleporter Star Trek one to turn up.

It used to be that if you were meeting up with someone you would specify a time and place and you would all meet up  and all will be fine. No it's texting ,Google Calendars , messaging and the like. We often don't even use our phones and phones prefering to use some form of messaging, and there is an absolute deluge of them.

It's another glorious morning so I will get off, feeling very good although my left shoulder is still painful, but that should be rectified when I go through the physiotherapy.

This is an excuse to play The Who's "Going Mobile" from one of my favourite of their albums, "Who's Next".

Have a brilliant Saturday everyone.

Moonfall

I was watching an episode of Stan Lee's "Lucky Man" and saw a speeded up timelapse sequenceeof the moon falling towards a river, and thought "Moonfall" sounds quite lovely.

It is Friday and it has been an interesting day, and despite feeling tired and getting some aches in my right side I've still nearly clocked up 20K steps and expect to do something similar next weekend too, with a walk to Wylam with Fiona, Mark, Molly and Kirsty, and an opportunity to give Juliet her blue vinyl copy of "A Life Less Ordinary" by Ash.

I am quite tired, but thought Iwould leave a note  to potentially get a little nearer #August50. This means I am averaging 2 a day so far in August, and incidentally the last post was post number 1666 in a pointer towards the Great Fire of London. It was just a small coincidence that I thought I would mention which makes this post 1667.

So we are now in 2018 steaming towards 2019 and it's 22:28 and maybe it is time for my bed.

I just been flicking through a pile of CDs and there is stuff in there I didn't know i had, I mean my taste is impeccable, but it's a bit worrying when you have stuff you didn't know you had. I am slowly putting things for sale on Discogs but that's the merest scratch on the surface.

Still I will leave you with something that I know I have before I go to bed, the wonderful "Pleasure" by Baxter Dury.

A Million Bright Ambassadors of Morning

It's Friday Morning and the Transfer Window is shut. It's cloudy but the sun is fighting through. I really don't think the #August50 is a goer. while I've walked a long way today I've got an ache in my side and think th eweather is draining me again.

Yesterday I was hoping for a decent amount of posting but couldn't get the inspiration to write, and that's what I feel with this post, and if  I keep hitting a brick wall like this then I can't really do it.

I could possibly post a video or a link but I do like to write around 250 words to ensure that I am actually saying something. However there is not much I have to say.

Over the last couple days on my walks I have revisited my favourite ever album, "Future Games" by Spirit, and while it doesn't contain any of my favourite songs, even by Spirit, overall it is a brilliantly complete album, a veritable film for the ears.

That was followed by possibly my favourite Pink Floyd album, "Meddle" which does contain my favorite Pink Floyd song "Echoes" which takes up side two of the vinyl incarnation of the record. This was also used for a great part of the soundtrack to the 1973 Australian surf movie "Crystal Voyager". The title of the post is a line from "Echoes".

So I did manage to find something to write about, and the weekend is a little bit closer so things are now looking good.

Enjoy yoursef.

AM

Another beautiful day and I am actually on course to make #August50. There's still a long way to go and it may all crash and burn but I am keeping pace and hopefully can find something interesting to share with you , roughly on average twice a day  during th emonth of August.

So far today I have been to the post office, played a couple of moves on Facebook Scrabble, got off a couple of business related emails (mainly to get myself out of doing work) and the garden is looking OK after last nights mow.

I decided to try a MeatStack (in the Grainger Market) burger for lunch and though I am not  a burger person it was absolutely excellent. While I was in the Grainger Market I got a battery replaced in my watch and one of the problems with having a lot of esoteric watches is that batteries do run out (if they are battery operated). I probably have about ten watches , three of which are running , two may now not be working and the rest need a new battery.

So this has been the first half of my day.

It's Sixty Minutes After Midnight Therefore 1 AM

Maybe the temporal nature needs a temporal song and what better than Clocks by The Buena Vista Social Club with Coldplay from the first "Rhythms Del Mundo" album.

A Garden

It's strange how sometimes you find the time and energy to do things, in adverse circumstances. Due to a couple of unexpected events at work I ended up missing lunch, and after rising at 4:30 am I thought tonight I would be very tired.

While I am tired, I got home and looked at my back lawn that was more like a lush field and decided that it was time  to mow it. Four lawnmower bags later it was done then I came it and caught up on the latest episode of the excellent Gotham. I cut a fish finger sandwich for tea after taking drugs so it wasn't too musch of a surprise that I had a hypo, but that 's what you get with a lot of physical effort and not musch sustenance.

The problem is, in this weather you don't really feel like eating too much.

I've just watched the clouds turn red as the sun goes down in 'Nam so I am not sure if we will get rain anytime soon.

Anyway although I am a little tired I think I am improving, and as I have been talking garden things I will share The Levellers "This Garden" with you, though I could have shared Mike Nesmith's "The Garden" , his follow to "The Prison" the former of which I have still to read and tell you about.

Sleep well my friends.

Your Password

There is so much idiocy about security. Banks tell us to hide our PIN, enter it under a cover so you can't see what you are typing, treat everyone as a potential thief and then make your cards contactless, no ID required (apart from odd random PIN requests).

I've always believed that much more than four passwords becomes a security risk, because people start writing them down. The only secure place for a password is in your head, and it has to be something that you can remember, maybe a phrase with a smattering of numbers and other characters.

When I worked for Littlewoods on their IT systems, the backspace was considered a valid character for a password, so if you made a mistake, you had to completely start again with your log in.

There are systems that won't allow sequences, repetitions, numbers, special characters and these again generate security risks because people end up writing down passwords.

There are even software packages that remember your passwords for you. Think about that. You are entrusting all your logins to a piece of software, that is the digital equivalent of your notebook that you give to someone else for safekeeping. I was also amazed to see the number of password notebooks for sale on Amazon, it's like people want to give away their information, although if you think of your Tesco and Boots clubcards that track all your purchases, and Facebook, where you publicly share so much personal information.

Facebook, Google and PayPal always ask me if I want to stay logged in, now how insecure is that? You enter a system securely, and when you are finished, you log out. The really annoying thing is that they use cookies to remember your preferences. Cookies are by their nature transient, and I always clear my web cache because I do web work and want a clean browser cache, which means all the particular site starts asking me for all sorts of things. To log into Facebook or this blog, I am asked three times if I want to save my password.

Though again, this blog is me sharing my thoughts with you.

I have had many arguments about IT security over the years, and it seems to me, often people do things because they can or it gives them control, rather than because it's a good idea.

Fingerprints, Face Recognition and Retina scanning are more security options, but my friend Nic managed to lock himself out of his iPhone when he accidentally sanded off his fingerprints.

So what else to play but "Security" by The Saints.

I Wonder

After yesterday going on about Roman Numerals I thought what is the Roman Numeral for Zero? It turns out there isn't one, but medieval scholars used the word "nulla" to signify zero. In IT we used to be familiar with the concept of "null" (and those who know what they are talking about still are).

Zero is the numeric representation of no items, as in "I have zero pounds in my bank account", but it is a numeric value, it is one less than one or one more than minus one, though this summation could be done with any numbers. The formula:

x - x = 0

is always true, though mayb Stephen Hawking, Andrew Wiles or someone else could possibly dispute that successfully with me.

Null on the other hand is a complese absence, it cannot be used in computation whereas zero can, and will often cause systems to crash if returned as an answer. Null is the bane of any programmer's life, in that it is often valid but you can't actually do anything with it, and no doubt I will come across it in some calculation today.

I'm still feeling absolutely shattered and  despite have nine hours in bed last night after watching Black Sails and Nightcrawler, I didn't feel up to walking into work, so though this would be the first time in a long time that I walked into work having done less that a thousand steps.

Then I decided to get off the bus at the BBC and walk down Barrack Road from there thus giving me a couple of thousand steps.

I thought I'd include "Countdown" by Lindsey Buckingham from his album "Out of the Cradle" as I love the song and it's vaguely numerically themed.

The sun is shining so it should be a good day.

III II

Well this is my second attempt of trying to do three posts in a day, and today I have at least started, so that means that I am probably on course for #August50. I could stop writing here, but I thought using Roman Numerals for the title was and interesting departure.

I am so glad that we didn't stay with Roman Numeration and went for the decimal Arabic number system, although you do become used to whatever you grow up with. I someone want was brought up with Octal or Hexadecimal instead of Decimal that would be a fine number system for them.

Talking all this Roman stuff (and I watched four hours of  documentaries by Mary Beard on the genesis of Rome last Friday) reminds me of the WH Auden poem "Soldier on the Wall" that was turned into a song by Alex Harvey,  which I used as a soundtrack for some film I took of Vindolanda so I will share that with you.

Tonight I am feeling absolutely drained again, so there won't be any more writing today. I'm not even up to mowing the lawn, but maybe that's a good thing given the lack of rain.

Sleep well my friends.

I Am Not A Cyclepath

Coming off Nunsmoor Park this porning I was nearly hit by two #twikers (Tw@ Bikers) riding two abreast on the footpath despite their being a widish cycly path are on the road. I could have walked out in front of them but didn't fancy being hit myself and they road past oblivious to me.

The thing about being a cyclist is theat you should be aware of your surroundings or that that latest thing you are oblivious to may be a ten ton lorry. All cyclists I know are sensible and responsible but there are a hell of a lot who think that road based laws don't apply to them.

The humid weather is still draining on me, and I was reading an article on signs of mental exhaustion and these include getting irritated my minor things (twikers) , not sleeping (the ach in my left shoulder is keeping me awake), and a few other things.

I do feel I need some time away from everything, including work, but  the more you don't do things the more it just adds to the pile of things to be done. Rightly or wrongly there are no people who could pick up everything I can do at work, which on the one hand should make you more valuable but the reality is that people gloss over things and don't see you as part of the system, until you don't do what you do.

So the song that comes to mind is Spandau Ballet's gay anthem "Muscle Bound" which was always one of my favourites.

Three

This was going to be the third post I posted yesterday for #August50 ,which I think I've decided will probably be impossible without resorting to one line posts, which plenty of bloggers do. The other alternative is Vlogging but I doubt anyone would want to see me, and hear me talk, it's bad enough me actually rambling on in single words.

Today I don't want to walk into work, I don't want to mow my lawn, and lots of other things but they have to be done so I will attempt all of them. Obviously the black cloud is still floating aroundbut I don't have to let it cast it's shadow over everything.

I also need to change the music on my phone, although there's probably a lot more on there than most people have in their music collection because they now subscribe to Deezer or Spotify or Apple Music or Amazon Unlimited or YoutubeMusic and it plays exactly what the want to hear. Think about that for a second. Why not get a radio?

Music like BBC4 is a sort of bane of my life because you put them on and then you're happy to stay watching or listening until you are forced to switch off. 6Music has provided me with todays music, "Pool Hall Richard" by The Faces.

Enjoy your Tuesday.

#August50 #2

This is my second attempt at this and I've realised that we're six days into August an dthis is only my ninth post. I can see that I may have to do three or four posts some days as I don't want to be trying to do ten on the 31st of August. Even for that scenario to be realistic I will have had to do four posts every three days, and really I need to do five posts every three days to hit the target, so that is possible. If I actually actually do three today I will actually be on track, but I am not sure that that will happen.

One of the things is that I want tio have something to write about and some days, some weeks that just doesn't happen. There's only so many times you can write about the weather or walking or you physical wins and loses, and though I have managed to force myself to write about nothing a few times that doesn't usually work out.

I shouldn't have to delve into the minutiae of my day because I don't want to and I doubt many prople would find it interesting.

I had been looking to include "Infinity" by Guru Josh as it has a saxophone riff to rival Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" in my opinion, so why not now as it is a truly great piece of music.

Answers on a Postcard

Remember that for competitions and requests? This morning I emailed John Hilcock standing in for Chris Hawkins on 6Music and got a positive response withing five minutes. There are some ways we have progressed. John was asking about songs about Dallas and I immediately thought of  Dallas by Steely Dan, one of their finest songs, but they rated so lowly that it's never had a digital release.

The Matt Haig Book is a little weird with the main protagonist thinking about ending his life but finding a reason to continue. I saw a meme about suicide that it doesn't stop the pain it just passes it on to others, and that is something that I am sure would stop me were I ever in that black a place. The number of good things in, and peripheral to my life of worth looking forward to. Enjoyin TV and holiday s with Fiona and friends, seeing Juliet's amazing fodcreations when as a small child pizza was a base with cheese and ham, no tomato, going to gigs and meeting up with Kirsty and Juliet and Molly, Mark's music and car perfection talks and his continual excellent taste in music, phone calls to my dad who can still be a curmudgeon, and then all my friends in Newcastle and Preston.

If we sit down and started writing a list of what we have to look forward to most of us would only stop when our arm started to ache.

So it's back to work today, and I am even looking forward to that, there's a lot aI could complain about but far more positive things.

So I am  sure I was going to write about about more things and a couple of years back I started an #August50 target to hit 50 posts in a month. When I first tried I hit  30, though the most I've done in a month is 43, but I could probably hit 50 this August so I'm going to set myself that target to do it. It's still less thatn two posts a day. I once saw a blog which had hundreds of posts each day, but each post was just a link to anther site. Very strange.

It's grey out but there's lots to look forward to, including mowing the lawn one evening this week, the football season has started, Preston won their first match despite missing two key players, and  my friend Krista is back from Finland so it is going to be a great week.

Have a good one everyone.

Trop

Well I was worried about keeping up my steps for August after the op on Thursday and the recuperation over the weekend. I didn't mow the lawn but ended up walking 20K steps yesterday and 15K today putting me 5K ahead of schedule which is good. I wasn't expecting to be this far ahead at this point although I know it's a possibily.

I don't know if I've overdone it, or it's just the hot weather, but I have not been feeling good at all today. Just under a very black cloud, although I know I will come out from under it.

I have listened to some good music and saw an excellent film "Jackpot" tonight and am reading Matt Haig's "How To Stop Time" which is not the most cheerful book, although it's extremely readable.

I have made a decision to turf out all my CDs that are in boxes, music should be at your fingertips, so I will reduce my collection to my box sets and stuff that I like to play, and of course I have it all backedup digitally (although I didn't realise I hadn't ripped my Dire Straits albums until last week). The other thing is that a lot of music is available on demand but I still won't subscribe to any streaming services and they do more for the service that the musicians.

I was just thinking about Ed Sheeran's "Divide" , which I have never knowingly heard, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are people who have never heard anything but that album.

So I am still recovering, still not in the best of spirits and it's work tomorrow. I could stay off but that would give me more to catch up on, and being at work will focus my mind.

I know I've maybe overdone things so Tom Petty's "Too Much Ain't Enough" seems appropriate.