Always Crashing

Tried the drone again tonight. Crashed it several times . Doesn't want to fly when linked to my phone but it takes photos and videos when it has crashed. It is resilient I'll say that.  You can see it in action below but I am along way off that at the moment.

I've passed 100K in the Million Step Challenge after nine days so I am just slightly ahead of schedule, but I do need to keep ahead of the game because I don't think I will hit 11K every day. Rainy days make it difficult , and we are supposed to be getting rain at the weekend , plus I have a wedding of two great friends to attend, so walking won't be at the top of my list.

Another slightly worrying thing is that my knee is giving me a lot of pain tonight. My joints are generally ok (though I am no athlete), but hopefully it is just an extreme twinge. Pain however is a way of telling you that maybe something is wrong. Though I remeber true pain being my burning hands when I received the ferula at school (I was an annoyance to authority then too, and it never stopped throughout my life).

Anyway that scenario has just brought to mind Malcolm Mclaren's take on  Puccini's "Boy's Chorus" from the wonderful album "Fans" , a heavenly choir juxtaposed  with Mclaren's cocky cockney artful dodger figure. I loved it when first heard it and I love it. If you don't have the album get it, a culture and rebellion cocktail, and it'll do for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence,

Sleep well my lovely friends

Doctor Who?

I wasn't going to write anything this morning, but I have a friend, Richard, who does a lot of walking and running and it's his birthday today, so I thought I'd post The Proclaimers' "500 Miles", a bit obvious I know, but  you know.

Then I saw this Doctor Who Cast version and it is brilliant, it's soundtracked by The Proclaimers version but it it a truly brilliant video, watch it and have your spirits lifted.

Also listening to 6Music I heard a great song by The RPMs called "Oh My God" which you can listen to here , and that led to "Satellite" by  Bouncing Souls (listen here) . The RPMs feature among their number Jack Valero , Billy Bragg's son.

Anyway it's time for work now, so have a great Tuesday everyone.

Too Many Things

I'm male.. so I can only do one thing at a time. Sometimes if I am well prepared I can start things off and let them run on their own while I get on with something else, but often that means I forget that I have kicked things off and then usually I'm pleasantly suprised when that task is done.

This morning I was feeling under pressure because I needed to print a CD with my new Canon printer but the software included is atrocious and and only has pre prepared templates that you can use. I also knew the lawn needed mowing and some of the  surrounding jungle needed cutting back. But it looked like rain.

Add to that that I wanted to fly my new drone , and also needed to do my 11K steps for the Million Step Challenge , I sort of feel that everything needs to be done at once.

The thing is , it doesn't. I sorted the lawn out, had a wander out and then had some unfruitful searches to sort out the printer. I tried the old Epson CD Printing software but that only works with an Epson printer. I eventually found some free software from NCH. and it does the job perfectly, I've been trying it with these vinyl style CDs here. 

I didn't get to fly the drone, but did get my steps in for my Million Step Challenge .

The thing is you need to schedule things, which means sometimes putting things off to the next day. Also when you get something new it takes time to learn it. I'm still getting the hang of my Sony Xperia, but I know things will come good.


So another for the #ATuneaDayinMay,  sequence Imelda May and Jeff Beck's cover of the Shangri-La's "Remember, Walking in The Stand" from the Les Paul Tribute Concert. 

Sleep well my friends.

Sunday Morning

And it hardly looks like summer, the ground is wet and the clouds are grey and it's cold out at the moment. Yesterday the five o' clock EFL League Two program was very exciting , if heartbreaking for Hartlepool fans, and their most famous one Jeff Stelling. Sky have cruelly put it up on their web site here , am I evil for sharing. The thing is they will be winning next season and that will put a smile on his face. The coverage was far more animated that the Premier League coverage early in the day.

Anyway it's Sunday morning and I have some much to do today I can't begin the think about it. I have a more reliable step counter (I think, for my Million Step Challenge, I'd hit 68K steps in the first six days and this was missing, I reckon about 10K steps from Thursday and Friday). I'm using Google Fitness and manually recording my daily steps on Google Sheets.

Anyway I will leave to with John Martyn's "May You Never" for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence. I have a feeling I won't keep this going, but this is a week so far and I have had only one deviation with David Bowie's "All The Madmen" , but I did have to include that.

So have a brilliant Sunday my friends, either relax or do something really fun and positive.

Sometimes The Dream is ... Well ... Weird

I had a dream last night. The bit I remembered was looking out of my window on to may neighbours' garage / extension (they don't have one) to see their big cat sitting on the roof. Then I something and said something along the lines of "Bugger .. look at that..." A rather large snake appeared and made short work of the cat ... my neighbours' cat world never get bested by a snake. Just a totally weird dream.

I have found a solution to my Step Counter problem, I installed Google Fitness and then found a "Track Workouts" button in Samsung Health, switching it on seems to have let it capture the steps I'm making, I will be able to certify that tomorrow.

Anyway today I got my drone and crashed it three times, also got a few photos out of it. My new Canon printer has been set up and used to print a couple of duplex sheets. I also want to print a couple of CDs so am going to try that tomorrow, as well as mowing the lawn and watching the Championship season come to an end.

I also want to look at printing a copy of The Hawkwind Log from the album "XIN Search of Space". I got a vinyl copy of the album to add to my collection for the wonderful Barney Bubbles cover and packages , but the Log would complete it but an original copy would set be back about fifty quid. I managed to acquire a PDF version of it, so that is a challenge for me as well.

It's time for bed so I'll leave with "Hair Like Brian May Blues" by Half Man Half Biscuit for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence, sleep well my friends.

Sometimes The Plan Just Falls Apart

It's that thing called life. On Monday I started my Million Step Challenge, but my phone started playing up , which I was using as my tracker. My printer failed so I bought a new "small footprint" one, and I bough a new phone. The new phone had a major flaw so I got another one, which seemed to be doing the business, but yesterday I took a walk down to Denton Burn and I thought my phone wasn't tracking my steps, well the S-Health app on my Sony Xperia XA phone wasn't.

A walk to the Post Office depot this morning proved it wasn't tracking correctly last night, and today it stopped again (it's more that 200 steps from Wildflower Cafe back to work, even if it is downhill, and it recorded 800 steps to get there, though with my old phone it recorded closer to 1500 steps. So my step recorder doesn't seem to be working, so I will have to choose another pedometer app. For the first time in two months I haven't hit 10K steps in a day according to the app. Still it's another challenge to get that sorted.

Then my printer, and it is very good, but obviously some new previously unknown definition of the word small, but I have managed to deal with it and fit it in with all the other stuff on my desk.

That's life , if stuff were guaranteed it might become very boring. My life is certainly not that (although it may seem that way to you).

Anyway it is late for me, although I will probably wake up in a few hours, but one of my #ATuneaDayinMay, is Kevin Ayers' "May I" (in English this time, I let you have the French one on Monday) , but if I remember rightly this features a young Mike Oldfield on guitar.

Sleep well my lovely friends.

How Mad Must I Be?

One of the the problems with anything new is that you have to learn how to use it. One of the benefits of the Sony Xperia XA is that I can use my bluetooth headphones but I hadn't sorted random play so I went for "The Man Who Sold The World " album by David Bowie.

"Width of A Circle" has that ace opening riff and goes on for eight minutes or so then next.....

.... next .....

    .......next .....

Black and White Madman Sells The World

"All The Madmen". I had forgotten how awesomely alien and scary this song is, and it is truly wonderful. Like when I first heard it 45 or so years ago , it still sound as fresh and threatening as ever. The dark malevolent spirit of Bedlam and abandoned Victorian asylums when the inmates have been left behind to fend for themselves.

The cover of the album was the two colour black and white Bowie not the original dress cover, and the song cuts your mind in black and white slices veering from rock to creepy children's song with some disconcerting woodwind sections.









I know this song has nothing to do with theme of May but it ii a song that hit me as hard this morning as when I first heard hit. It's frightening but you don't want it to finish... like fraying rope on your sanity .. you become more and more frightened that it's going to break .. and after five minutes ... wel did my mind break?

You know what I'm like , would I have been different had I not heard this?  Probably


For better or worse?

We'll never know

Listen and Experience

Tomorrow is Friday.