Friday, February 27, 2009

Did you know...

that if you google "steve coogan being attacked by a crocodile" this blog comes up as the first entry? (A handy hint if you can't remember "Boycat's Dad".)

that I am listening to "Crescent" by Bitch Magnet right now?

that Boycat wants to be fed?

that Symo appears to have deleted his twitter profile?

that I'm now listening to "Soda Jerk" by Buffalo Tom.

that my broadband is getting flakier by the day?

that the song on my random windows media player is now "Blue Line" by Let's Active?

that I'm about to hit "Publish Post"?

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Recent Tweets 2

wondering why I can't copy and paste recent entries from twitter...

# Thinking about the archway of aerodynamics,2:53 AM Feb 20th from web

# @peeboo Need more than that.2:52 AM Feb 20th from web

# In my drunken state; wondering if "Here Comes the Sun" isn't the best song ever written.2:23 AM Feb 20th from web

# ...arrest me for sedition for "Loudmouth Hothead", they're welcome to try.1:21 AM Feb 20th from web

# Realising that with a Twitter, Google, Blogspot, etc., account that it's hard to remain anonymous. Oh well, if the government wants to... 1:20 AM Feb 20th from web
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Friday, February 20, 2009

Matthew Coley

Here's the recent story about Matthew Coley.

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Under the iron bridge we kissed

yes, that was an 'omage.

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More music more music more music

Here's something else I did last year. This has actual live guitar in it, rather than samples played on Hydrogen, although it has a lot of them, too. It's mostly another drum machine programming exercise.

102 bpm song


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Recent Tweets

Jimbo is...

(Read in reverse order)

  1. In my drunken state; wondering if "Won't Get Fooled Again" isn't the best song ever written.
  2. Wondering why Victor J Kennedy is interested in me. I just watched the doco; I'm not bi-polar. Boycat's Mum ( my wife) is, though.
  3. Realising Rugby Union is not the same game that I played in high school 20 years ago.
  4. Wondering if anyone in Aus twitters from their phone. If so, how, and what does it cost as far as the phone company is concerned.
  5. wondering what @peeboo is working on at the moment.
  6. About to drive Boycat's Mum to the airport for her trip to Melbourne.
  7. Wondering if anyone else read the story on Matthew Coley in last Saturday's Courier Mail magazine.
  8. Watching the Stephen Fry Bipolar disorder doco.
  9. Watching American Idol.
  10. Reading Tony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential".
  11. crying at the death toll
  12. suppressing the urge to write "typing at the computer"
  13. eating baskin robbins ice cream
  14. watching series 2 of "intelligence"

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Twittering

So, have we abandoned our blogs in favour of twitter?

https://twitter.com/jmspdly

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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Stuff

I'm on day 10 of 35 days long service leave.

Boycat's Mum's Mum has cancer.

We almost lost the dog a few months ago; he snapped his ACL and was quite miserable for a while. But he's lost a bit of weight now so his quality of life is better.

BobSpeaking gave me the latest (Early 2008) Bob Mould CD for Christmas, so I've been listening to Bob Mould for 40 days now. Gee, the drum machine on the hubcap album annoys me.

I saw Dirt and Carl and Frank and Lorenzo at Id's funeral a few weeks ago.

I'm watching the end of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica on theSci Fi channel, so my mate Dave from work doesn't have to download it for me.

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Monday, February 09, 2009

Holy crap, I've joined twitter

I only did it to follow Charlie Brooker and Stephen Fry, but that "What are you doing now?" box at the top is so tempting.

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Thursday, February 05, 2009

Vale Iain Clacher

For those who knew him, It is my sad duty to report that Id died last month.

I will never forget playing Interstellar Overdrive when he sat in with Slaughterhouse Joe. And who could forget the infamous "You're sacked" gig with Dirt and the Rebels?

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American "Life on Mars"

He's not Sam Tyler. She's not Annie.

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Friday, December 05, 2008

I want you back...

I got the CDs, thanks PeeBoo.

Of course that makes me a music pirate (as if Symo's DVD of eels and Beatles didn't already make me so), something I've been against; since I know what it costs to pay for a recording session. BobSpeaking is an inveterate pirate.

Hmmm. Do you ever listen to a song and think "I've ripped that off" ? Possibly you have to have written a song.

Anyway, I'm sure I have a song that has the lyric "I want you back" repeated randomly throughout. It seems I ripped that off from "Man O'Sand to Girl O'Sea".

I remember once realising that I'd ripped off a song from the Undertones' "Sin of Pride" album. I can't remember the song or the bit I ripped off now, but when I listened to that album again, I thought "Hmmm..." I think it was a guitar line that went "da-dah da-dah da-dah-de-dah-dah".

By the way, my neighbour two doors down is an Irish woman and one of her dogs is named "Feargal".

Oops the boss is home, better go now. One final thing - "People Say" ? I always liked the B-side "Don't Let Him Come Back". My sister Annie had the original single. Or was that the B-side to "Lee Remick" ?

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Friday, November 28, 2008

Hi Y'all

Thanks Paul, I got the CDs. You know that I had all of the Husker Du except the Zen Arcade outtakes, right?

And I've got REM Accelerate. My review: Meh. It's better than recent stuff, but it's pretty much REM by numbers. A lot of the songs sound like faster, rockier versions of old REM songs. There's one that you can sing "Losing My Religion" to, etc. For the record, BobSpeaking thinks much the same.

You know what I'd really like - the non-bonus-disc of "Don't Try This At Home". I listened to about three hours of the Billy Bragg podcast when I drove to Sydney in August, and I couldn't get the crappy "Sexuality" demo out of my head. I had to use YouTube to listen to the Johnny Marr version. Also "Workers' Playtime".

Also, you could send me that Go-Betweens best of. I've got a couple of tracks, but I'd like the whole thing.

Hi Symo. Welcome back to the unreal world.

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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Also I...

...downloaded the Hydrogen drum machine, and the Kristal and Audacity audio programs and I started creating music again. I won't say writing, because mostly what I've done is create some stuff while learning to program the drum machine and use the other two audio programs.

These are the first things I did. These are just Hydrogen and Audacity, I didn't get onto Kristal until later. All of these sounds are various free samples from around the net programmed in and sequenced in Hydrogen; there's nothing live here at all. I actually prefer "test 2" to "test 3" because of the piano (a sample from the end of "Leave the Biker" from Fountains of Wayne)...

test2_110bpm

test3_110bpm

I'm pretty sure this gives the game away about who I am. Oh well, if they want to arrest me for the sedition on my previous blog, "loudmouth, hothead", they can go ahead.

More stuff when I transfer it from a Wave to an MP3...

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Recently I...

...read some Kurt Vonnegut short stories that I printed off on 7 March 1998. (EPICAC and Long Walk to Forever). See, when I say "I'll get to it" I do mean it.

...watched "Pump Up the Volume" again. It may be an indicator of my age -- did I mention I'm now 39 (!?!?!) -- but I really like this movie. I just worry the the next 4 years in the US will be like this.

...wagged work twice in the past fortnight.

...watched "WarGames" again. What a cool movie.

...I can't think of any more. I'll post again soon, I promise.

And of course, I posted again to my blog for the first time in 4 months. Kung-fu S, where are you? No one can do this without you.

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Thursday, May 08, 2008

Stuff I did since I last posted anything substantial...

I watched the movie eXistenZ... It's like Videodrome but with videogames. It was interesting, but in the end it came down to the standard problem with 'fully-immersive' video games. It may as well have been called "Better than Life".

I watched an interesting "Air Crash Investigations" about DC-10 accidents in the '70s. The reason I was interested is that, growing up, I always knew there were problems with DC-10s, but I never knew why precisely*. I knew their cargo doors fell off - funny thing is, there appears to have only been one incident in 1972 and a crash in 1974, that's all, so I'm not sure why I was aware of it. Maybe the investigations took up the rest of the '70s and that where it entered my consciousness. (I was aged between a half and ten-and-a-half in the '70s.)

It's that weird thing where there's stuff you 'always' 'knew', but it's a lot of years before you learn the real story. And this is such an esoteric thing to know, I guess it's because my parents like to travel a lot.

I watched R.E.M. on the Colbert Report. The song was okay. I guess I should probably buy the record.

I watched the final episodes of a couple of great shows - Life on Mars (Yes, torrent fans, I waited until the ABC showed it, given that trying to download it - even if I knew how - the torrent would use up my monthly bandwidth allocation) and Intelligence, a great Canadian show about spies and drug dealers in Vancouver where everyone was informing on someone else and lying and double-crossing the rest. There's a conspiracy theory going around that the Canadian government got it cancelled because Stephen Harper (the PM) is a U.S. Arselicker and the show was perceived as being anti-American.

I learned why so many people think Dane Cook isn't funny. Dane Cook, Vicious Circle was on the Comedy Channel. But I acknowledge that I am not his audience, not being a drunk white guy from the south side of Boston.

I watched Flushed Away, another CGI animated film; this one about rats, mice and frogs in the London sewer system. I don't think it made much money in America. It's very frenetic and it's very British - Americans usually like their jokes to be telegraphed. It's an Aardman film, so it's weird to see Nick Park-like designs being computer animated.

I watched some Indian Premier League cricket. I don't know who I support yet, but what is interesting to me is how in the Knight Riders vs. Chargers match, Australian captain Ricky Ponting was telling Indian bowlers how to bowl to Andrew Symonds. If this continues, International cricket will get very interesting because players from all countries will be privy to these typoes of team secrets. Except for the English.

I bought the R.E.M album and Fountains of Wayne's back catalogue from Amazon. (I used to own the first FoW album, but it got nicked from the car, or the cafe or somewhere.) They should arrive next month.

I received all of my Fountains of Wayne albums and the R.E.M. one, except the FoW b-sides compilation; because I've been writing this for weeks. I haven't listened to them all yet.

I bought a $2000 treadmill. I'm hoping to teach the dog to walk himself. Jane get me offa this crazy thing!

I watched more Indian Premier League cricket. I think I like Kings XI Punjab. I don't know why, I just found myself hoping they'd win. I thought I'd support teams that had my favourite Australian players in them, except it seems that for every Michael Hussey, James Hopes or Adam Gilchrist each team also has a Picky Ponting, Andrew Symonds or Matthew Hayden. I also discovered that I don't really dislike Warney as much as I thought.

Australia's Next Top Model and Project Runway have started, So You Think You Can Dance has ended and can someone please kill David Archuleta on American Idol?

This wasn't supposed to be anywhere near as long as this. It was supposed to be a simple "This week I watched TV and ate a lot of crap", like at the end of Charlie Brooker columns. But I forgot to send it home from work three weeks running.

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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Jury Duty

Day One. No one was called.

Day Two. Called Up. We sat around for 20 minutes, then watched a video telling us about the system, then we sat around for an hour and then they came in and told us that the defendant had pled guilty, so we weren't needed.

Day Three. No one was called.

Day Four. No one was called.

Day Five. Public Holiday

Day Six. Jurors 65 to 130 were called. That's not me.

Day Seven (Today). Called Up. We sat around for 20 minutes. They played us the video again. They told us that the matters dealt with before the trial were taking longer than usual, so it would be a little while. That was at 10. They told us that again at 10.30. At 11.05, they said it would be 5 minutes. Around 11.30 they took us into the courtroom. After the formalities -- it was a stolen car case -- they started calling jurors. They'd done 6 with no challenges and then they called me. I was almost up to the bailiff to take the affirmation and I got challenged. By the time we got out, it was around midday. Buggered if I was going back to work, since I'm on Miscellaneous Leave with Pay, and only two of my six team members are at work (the rest are on training). So here I am.

Today's trial was due to take 3 days, so I assume that means no one will be called for the next few days (because there's only one court that tries cases at Beenleigh). That would leave Friday, and I doubt they'll call people in for one day before a long weekend (next Monday is Labour Day) so that would be it until next week, my last week on call.

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Sunday, April 20, 2008

April 20. The Fourth Set

4.50pm. Watching TV. Yes, I'm 16 months behind.

5.50pm. The cat gets two photos but I don't get any? That's better.


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April 20. The Third Set

1.50pm. Boycat's parents say hi to the mud at Manly.

2.50pm. Just something for the afternoon.

3.50pm. My chilli plant.


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April 20. The Second Set

8.50am. Outside at home.

9.50am. What time do you call this? I've been waiting for FOUR hours!

10.50am. At the Chandler markets.

11.50am. Going to get some lunch at the Manly Hotel.

12.50pm. At lunch (we "shared" mine first).


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