Blue Jam

Well, I now have the first book and DVD from David Barrett's Harmonica Masterclass series and, after a week of blowing, sucking and making $DEITYawful noises, I have just about got the hang of "12 Bar Jam #1", which is a simple 12 bar blues progression played on a C-harp. There are 30 of these jams in the book/CD, so it may take me a little while to get through them all.

<3 is going away for a few days at the weekend. She says it is to give some support to her family while her father goes in for surgery (many good wishes are going his way for that), but I have the sneaking suspicion that this is a convenient excuse to get away from the incessantly squeaking harmonica. (No, I didn't mean that! Well, I did mean the bit about the squeaking, but not the bit about the motivation to travel.)

On Strangling Cats

For years now I have been saying to myself that I really should learn a musical instrument, but I've never really decided what to learn. Well, last week it came to me in a flash of light: the harmonica! It's small, portable, cheap, doesn't require batteries, annoys the hell out of people, and besides, with my surname it's too good to miss (if you didn't know, the harmonica is often referred to as the blues harp, or just harp — apparently a nod to the aeolian harp, which has some similarities).

So I poked around on the internet, placed an order, and on Friday my Lee Oskar Major Diatonic harmonica in the key of C arrived. I am still awaiting the arrival of the tuition book I ordered, but in the meantime I found some info and advice on the web to give me something to practice. <3 has been very calm and understanding in the face of repeated, inexpert playing of the first two bars of "Love Me Do" and the first couple of lines of "Three Blind Mice". It ain't exactly the blues, but the book should get here within the next couple of days...

Pentigone

Over the last couple of days there has been assorted discussion about how Intel have chosen to abandon the 10 year old Pentium brand name for its mainstream processors. Is this a good thing? A nutso move by a company willing to try anything to maintain its market position now it is under threat from rival AMD?

Actually, I think it makes sense. Now that the megahertz myth has been busted wide open and even Intel have stopped cranking their clock speeds ever higher (perhaps in fear of an inevitable China Syndrome when they hit ~6GHz), everyone wants to market their processors without relying on clock speed. A couple of years ago, Intel introduced a new naming scheme for its processors, playing down the clock speed, but still people ask for a 3GHz Pentium, or whatever. So here we are, moving away from the word Pentium and hopefully getting the punters used to the fact that not all chips need to be sold by how many mega-, or nowadays, gigahertz it clocks at.

Of course, supposedly one of the main reasons that Intel started using the name Pentium was so that they could trademark the name — in the olden days their competitors would build compatible chips with the same numbering scheme because numbers cannot be trademarked. Now the product name is back to a bunch of numbers, we have gone full circle...

Anarchy in the... no, sorry, I can't bring myself to type it

On Friday, <3 and meself went off to Newbury to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain for an evening of culture and sophistication. From the "real classical music like what this is" (the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy) to the "Yorkshire folk song" (Wuthering Heights, sung swing-style) I had a great time. Seven ukuleles (we are faithfully assured that the one on the right was a bass uke, not a guitar) played well by some people with good vocal skills (a couple of them are really good singers) and a serious sense of fun — what more could you ask for? Of course, being uke players they had to do a George Formby song and, with typical lack of respect for expectations, they performed Leaning on a Lampost in Russian folk style (think Kalinka). Too many highlights to mention.

Technical

As a bit of a diversion to the norm, I thought I'd flag up some humour. Who can resist a good blonde joke? And this is one of the best I've heard in a long while.

Happy New Year!

Well, after a couple of weeks offline, I'm back up and running. Xmas and new year were good (and thanks are due to loads of people for nice prezzies), though marred by some 2.5 hours of delay on the way back at Dublin airport and the demise of our car on the way to Devon for the new year. Thanks to our rescue company we were provided with a loan car for the weekend, which meant we could actually go ahead with our new year plans

...Which were to be in Bideford, my home ancestral, which has long been the scene of some great revelry but over the last few years (since I moved away!) it seems to have become one of the top spots to celebrate new year, with a massive party on the quay — a town with an adult population around 30,000 (half of whom are over 50) was home to a free outdoor party with an estimated 15,000 attendees. And fun it was too — great kudos to Jude, the DJ lady who spent much of the night prancing around on the stage whipping up the atmosphere.

Bideford at new year (image nicked from the BBC)

Last year I had one resolution: to eat some stinging nettles. I succeeded (they are a lot like spinach when cooked). I think I will stick with these achievable, expand experiences in a small (edible) way type resolutions. So this year I will expand into two resolutions: eat tripe and smoke my own bacon (and probably other stuff too). Both eminently doable, but easy to not get around to. Watch this space...