The Joy Of Rubik

A friend shared a video of an animated (possessed?) Rubik Cube, and it is quite lovely, giving it the charateristics of a small puppy, whating to be friends and make lonely people feel better. The film is called "Scrambled" and is by Polder Animation who have their own Youtube channel.

I remember getting a Rubik Cube in the early eighties and being amused, frustrated, confused, fascinated and obsessed with this simple puzzle device that had so many permutations, most of them being wrong. You see people who can solve them in next to no time but they are great training device for dealing with impact analysis, ie "If I do this, then it's going to affect that, which in turn will affect the other thing".

It is an excellent way of training your mind as well as being a potential time waster, but it is still an amazing small device which can actually discipline you to remember and evaluate the impact of what you are doing.

Actually writing this has made me decide to get another one to see if I can still crack it, and I know it should actually sharpen my minds, although we shall see about that. I am quite amazed at the number of variations on th eoriginal 3x3x3 cube. having seen a 5x5x5 one as well as pyramids and objects with far more tha 6 faces, I'm afraid they would just fry my brain.

Facebucked

It looks like Facebook is blocking by blog posts. There's only a handful of hits now, which I assume is from friends, and given that the blog has only three followers I'm hardly headline news.  Last month there were hundreds of visits via Facebook, but now you can count them on two hands. The thing is they've done the same to Spoongig which normally gets a decent amount of hits.

As I mainly write it as a diary it's not a problems, but if I was trying to monetise it or run a business then it could be quite annoying. You should never rely on just one source for anything you do, because if that source dries up then you are fairly screwed.

As I write this I'm attempting to make my own take on an Aloo Chole curry, which Rajanagar do so brilliantly. I was thinking that I'd go for a takeaway, but decided to try my hand at it myself with extra greens and a few olives.

After a busy couple of days, looking forward to a relaxing night maybe even watch some TV, but I will leave you with "Judy Get Down" by Anthony Moore for no other reason than it's an absolutely brilliant song.

Enjoy your Tuesday night.

Do It Again

I am currently working my way through Michael Moorcock's "History of The Runestaff" section of his "Eternal Champion" serious and thoroughly enjoying it. I was worried it might turn out to be like when you revisit old films, music and TV and you think "What was I thinking?" but while the writing style might be a bit clunky and it's full of magical allies popping up when the hero is done fore, it contains some brilliant lasting imagery and sequences, and I like the post apocalyptic implication of Britain as the bad guys though that is just a reflection of the whole British Empire thing.

When I finish this I have a few more books including the Corum sequence which is based on Irish mythology, and I will appraise you of how that goes though I have sure that they are better than The Runestaff sequence as a lot more of the images are still with me, whereas The Runsestaff sequence is almost like reading it for the first time.

When I've finished this set of books I am going to revisit a lot of Clive Barker, "Imajica" is my favourite book ever still, and "Weaveworld" is the book that first introduced  me to him with it's story of a magic carpet in Liverpool. From then I read the "Books of Blood" which contained some excellent stories, but I will see how far I go down that path.

So basically this is just about doing it again, something you have already done or a place you have been, and the reason why you do it is because of the enjoyment and happiness it brings you, so I will leave you with the appropriately titled "Do It Again" by The Beach Boys. Enjoy your Sunday.

Helium Echo

This morning I bougght some water from Tesco and for once used one of the auto checkouts. For weeks the echoey voice on many of them has disconcerted me and I've dicussed this while chatting with the real staff and had a laugh about it. This morning it sounded like it was on helium as well as echoing, sounding weirder than ever.

This comes on top of the Poundland ones that great uyou using the voice of Elvis, which  is also very offputting, wondering if next they're going to have some hologram greeter to freak you out even further.

This reminded me of The King, an Irish Elvis impersonator who had an album out called "Gravelands" featuring covers of songs by artists who have since deprated this mortal plain such as Freddie Mercury of Queen, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, (apologies for spelling errors) and it is a more than listenable album, so I'll share his take on "Whiskey in the Jar".

Have a disconcerting helium filled Thursday.

Grey Day To Grey Week

The sky is a uniform grey still, and now the rain has turned up. This is not the most inspiring of weeks, although the fact that in the USA the Democrats have retaken the House of Representatives giving Donald Trump a metaphorical bloody nose (I wonder if he bleeds orange) is a definited bright spot although the Republicans still hold the Senate, just. There's info here thought not sure if it will stay.

I watched this weekes episode of The Walking Dead and there was a major event which should have been a shocking surprise but the Fox announcers kept telling us about it in the ad breaks. It loses it's impact if you tell people about it, but I'm not done with the series yet and am still working through Black Sails and Constantine, and maybe I will watch the film at some point but cant see Keanu Reeves providing as much entertainment as Matt Ryan.

Tonight I am going to see Thousand Yard Stare supporting House of Love at The Boilershop, so it's not exactly a quiet week for me, things are happening and keeping me on my feet.

So hopefuly the clouds will disperse so I will share Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting".

Fadely Grayley

Well today is another totally grey day, there's fog on the Tyne and the sky is just a uniform singularity of non colour. There's moisture in the air and thi sis the sort of day where SAD kicks in and there seems to be nothing to inspire you. You don't want t walk, because that's all you are doing, it's unlikely that you will see anything worth taking a picture or video of, and the weather seems to vreate that uniform winter silence.

CHAT Trust Phoenix

I did submit an image of the CHAT Trust Phoenix to MyTownPhotography  just because of the general positive vibes it creats in everyone, although taking a photo today would not have been good, so I'll include an earlier one to your right.

I've also got my House of Love / Thousand Yard Stare ticket so tomorrow night will be the first time that I have been to a gig at the Boiler Shop in Newcastle.

Yesterday I did manage my first #cookamealinaminute video which you can see here. It's for Jack Monroe's Chickpea and Peach Curry which will appear in her next book I believe.

I'm not sure which song to share with you, I was thinking something by Pearls Before Swine but couldn't find the song I wanted so we will go with "Grey Day" by Madness., which suits the weather.

Black Turns To Grey

Just looking at the sky out side it was black when I rose and now it's fading out to grey. It's Monday and looks like just another week coming up.

I'm surprised at the amount of walking I have done so far this month, but I am sure that that will drop off soon although I still expect to hit my monthly target, though not sure I will hit the 400K (that's about 200 miles) I hit last month.

The problem is on days like this I have nothing much to say, it's just one of those days, although I am sure something good will happen today. The grey weather is not exactly inspiring, I will start to walk but chances are I am going to get the bus most of the way into work.

I may cook the Jack Monroe Peach and Chickpea Curry tonight and may try to record it on an instagram video. I only have a minute to do that so that could be interesting, maybe hashtag it with #cookamealinaminute which is slightly misleading but you get the idea.

So the obvious music accompaniment to this post is "Fade To Grey" by Visage, which I have for sale on my Discogs store.

Have a great day everyone.