Thousand Yard Stare - #ALifeInNumbers #45

This morning I got another follower on twitter, someone called Kelly. I thought the name was familiar and I think she is a great girl I worked with at EE, I am not 100% certain but may be right or wrong. I was Facebook friends but dropped her when I started getting some spiteful harassment from other people and decided it was not a good idea to be Facebook friends with management at the place where you work. The good thing about social media is you can connect with people who are worth your time and effort and I do look to try and be friends with positive people and Kelly is definitely one of those. Who knows we may reconnect on Facebook.

Today is fairly grey and this morning was spent dodging cattle and sheep on the road between Orton and Shap on the way to Tebay services via the back roads. Today was meant to be total relaxation, with no driving, but needs must and I took the car out again. This means that I will have driven on every day of the holiday, which has still been very relaxing and enjoyable.

It is so nice to not have to get up and go to work. As I write this I am sitting in the warm listening to Tom Ravenscroft on 6Music, with the likes of Leonard Cohen, Yak, Prince and Grandaddy flowing through the airwaves.

Anyway we’re up to number 45 in #ALifeInNumbers and it was always going to be “God’s P45” by Thousand Yard Stare. Thousand Yard Stare are a band I always loved but didn’t get the success they deserved. I think their sound and attitude is in the same universe as Half Man Half Biscuit and The Wedding Present, and loved the titles of their songs such as “Happenstance”, “Buttermouth” and “0-0 After Extra Time” (that could have been Half Man Half Biscuit. I was delighted to hear they had got back together and produced a new digital album, which still have to buy, but it’s here.

 "God's P45" is the first song that I can't find on Youtube and it's not even available digitally. I have a copy at  home, so I will create a slideshow and put it up at the weekend and include it here. Anyway enjoy “Version of Me” , and enjoy your Thursday my friends, the weekend is nearly here.

Howling - #ALifeinNumbers #44

Well we are two days into November and although there was frost this morning it has been a pleasant day. The rest of the week is not meant to be as good, but this week I have visited Kirkby Lonsdale, Kendal and Ambleside as well as using Orton to walk and relax.

I have done catch up TV, finishing series one of Fortitude and continuing with Better Call Saul which is most entertaining.

While in Ambleside I noticed front pages from the racist Daily Mail and idiotic Daily Express and I am seriously sad that people I know still defend the red tops, because the like the crossword or the horoscope or the sport coverage. But I will try and not let that bother me, you cannot argue with these people, because they are too stupid to understand what you are telling them.

Anyway that’s enough of a rant and we can continue with #ALifeInNumbers #44. I was racking my brains for this one and was sure there must be some kind of firearm or motor vehicle or motorbike with that number in its name or description, and sure enough there is a Howlin’ Wolf number called “Forty Four” which is about his gun, which he has to pawn.

I love Howlin’ Wolf and always thought “Smokestack Lightnin’” was an amazing title with a monstrous loping riff. A couple of years ago I found that he used to watch steam locomotives go past his residence at night with the funnels shooting out smoke and sparks and fire, the funnels are also called smokestacks and fire was Howlin’ Wolf’s Lightning.

So enjoy you Wednesday evening my frienda and enjoy this classic slab of Howlin’ Wolf.

Nothing About Samhain and All Hallows - #ALifeInNumbers #43

I’m obviously a bit on my guard after the data drain caused by the Windows 10 update. The main “enhancements” see to be trying to make me log into OneDrive every time I connect to the internet and telling me I need to upgrade my copy of Microsoft Office (I’m on 10 but obviously I need their rented version) . I still like having some control Microsoft.

Similarly Apple did an update that forced me to add a credit card so I could use Apple Pay. I don’t think I will ever have an iPhone, and I won’t use my iPad to pay for anything, but it was a dead end, give us your credit card details or you can’t use your device. Very nice Apple you have really gone up in my estimation.

Anyway it lookslike yesterday I used about .7 Gb of data. My usual use is maybe 1 Gb a week, but that is in environments where wifi is often available, and this week I am in an area where wifi and phone signals are seen as a form of magic only practiced by “outsiders”.

Anyway we are up to number 43 of #ALifeInNumbers on this beautiful sunny 1st of November. I thought it was unusual that 39,40,41 and 42 could have been represented by those numbers as the song titles. I didn’t use 42 for reasons explained in my last post.

Number 43 I have no such qualms about , and I am going for “Made-Up Love Song 43” by The Guillemots, one of those bands I haven’t really followed but always enjoy hearing, they are just a casualty of there being so much great music to listen to in my musical universe.

Anyway enjoy your first day of November,Today is either All Hallows Day or Samhain depending on your belief system. Enjoy and and celebrate.

Author Author and No Coldplay - #ALifeInNumbers #42

Number 42. This is a really difficult one for me. I can think of a song called “42”, but it’s by Coldplay and I listened to it and it's Coldplay in limp chinned student mode. Having said that there are probably not all that many Coldplay songs I would countenance so really I don’t want to include it.

Because it’s 42 I want to include something related to The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, because Douglas Adams told us that the answer to the Ultimate Question was 42 , that answer was of course 42, provide by the mega computer Deep Thought. The quest for the ultimate question… well read the books and you’ll find the answer.

A similar scenario occurs in another of my favourite books “Venus On The Half Shell” by Kilgore Trout.

Kilgore Trout is an author who is a figment of the imagination of the wonderful but sadly missed Kurt Vonnegut.

However this pseudonym was taken up by Philip Jose Farmer to write the book. All three authors are incredibly intelligent, have a healthy attitude to life and humanity, as well as a wicked sense of humour.

The premise is the search by the hero to find the answer to the ultimate question, “Why are we born to suffer and die?”. At the end of the book the hero gets to meet God and asks God the question. God’s reply: “Why Not?” One of my favourite las lines in a book.

Anyway I have decided, for number 42, to go with The Eagles “Journey of the Sorcerer”, because it is awesome and the theme to “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” which has as the answer to the ultimate question the number 42. And that is good enough for me.

Enjoy Halloween my Pagan and Wiccan friends.

When You Take You Eye Off The Ball - #ALifeInNumbers #41

Today something happened that shouldn’t have happened to me. I’m in a low connectivity area so I’ve been using my phone for tethering to give me internet access. I have a contract that gives me 4Gb a month which is usually plenty of data.

This morning I was doing a couple of blog posts and the laptop required what I thought was a routine update. Then all of a sudden web sites were not available. I looked at my phone and there were messages saying I’d used 80% of my data then all of my data. I thought my phone company have screwed up again, then I checked and saw that according to the phone it had used up all the data in background tethering.

So it wasn’t my phone company, but I noticed the iPad had connected, so that was the next thing to blame because Apple products are always downloading stuff in the background. So I bit the bullet and bought 10 Gb of data, and the download had finished then it said it was 50% complete.

I disconnected the tethering but the laptop continued to update itself, for the next two hours. It was that massive Windows 10 Update that happened on my desktop a couple of months back.

The thing is that I have experience of IT and mobile phones so I should have realised what was happening. But that is a lesson learned and it won’t happen again to me … I hope.

Though we cannot foresee everything no matter how much information we have at our disposal.

Anyway we hit number 41 in #ALifeinNumbers and the song I’ve chosen in #41 by Dave Matthews, an artist who doesn’t get enough exposure.

Here is some excellent guitar playing for you to enjoy, and for me to enjoy too. There are another 18 songs to go, in the sequence so we will hit the end probably in mid November.

Last month over 3,000 people visited my blog, that’s 100 people a day. It’s not a great number in the scheme of thing but given the number of visits I got for my first posts it’s nice to know that people return to look at what I have to say. So enjoy Dave Matthews and enjoy your Sunday evening.

The next one is 41 which everyone knows, because Douglas Adams told them, is the meaning of life.

U2 CAN BE "40" - #ALifeInNumbers #40

This is sort of a cheat to hit number 40 in #ALifeInNumbers, I’m writing in the same session as “39” and will post these two consecutively. Again for was peened in early, and it’s another song from a massive band, one of the few that could be considered bigger than Queen, that band is U2.

  In the mid-eighties I was working and Hygena near Goole. I remember Jasper Carrot posed the question on what inhabitants of Goole were called, but told a story of how he’d been and found that all the restaurants and eating places shut in the lunch hour. I couldn’t believe it, so thought I would investigate, and it was absolutely true. It may have changed, but you drove into Goole and the main road in ended in a roundabout that sent you back the way you came in.

 Anyway I went into Woolworths and got a sandwich and saw the new U2 album, the live “Under A Blood Red Sky” a budget mini album with a striking red cover. I got it home; side one was good but side two was amazing, culminating in the absolutely gorgeous “40”.

So that’s what you get here. Enjoy this my friends.

Getting Regal - #ALifeInNumbers #39

It’s quite amusing when you are suddenly in a place where the internet is a thing of mystery that people shun and pretend to never of heard of. The mobile phone is viewed with suspicion and a signal is a total Will O’ The Wisp. Still that’s a minor price to pay for staying somewhere quiet and relaxing.  The thing is that when you come away from home you tend to forget the odd thing although nothing essential. One thing was the spreadsheet with my list of songs for #ALifeInNumbers so I will be relying on memory this week although 39 and 40 were pencilled in very early.

Anyway I wondered if I would be able to hit forty posts this month, and this is number forty. I thought I would reach it easily but reckoned without being disconnected for the World Wide Web. I find it’s odd that the phone signal is no unreliable but the television signal is very reliable, and surely the travel through the same atmospheric ether.

Anyway we hit number 39 and again this was one song that I decided on and didn’t bother looking any further. In the mid-seventies a friend of my mums told her that a certain album was the greatest record ever made, and that ended up as one of my Christmas presents. The album was very good and every one was raving about a particular over the top piece which the band promoted with a suitably over top video on Top of the Pops taking it to Number One when the singles charts actually mattered. The song was “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the album was “A Night at the Opera” and the band was Queen. The thing I really liked about Queen is their total disdain for fashion and criticism and how they did just what they wanted. Generally I wasn’t a fan of Brian May’s guitar sound unless it got heavy.

But the song that hit me most from the album is the acoustic “’39”, standing out because of its beautiful simplicity in a very over the top setting of the album. So enjoy this under rated, under played Queen beauty. Enjoy your Sunday my friends.