Squeaky Drawers

My children don’t have the patience to battle with a chest of drawers. They just pull harder until the drawers break. I solved this by putting shoe polish on the wooden runners. The drawers glide open and shut and now I can get on with the next thing on the DIY list. Hooray for shoe polish!

Getting a bit better at blogging

My written thoughts are scattered all over the place. Here are my user
stories:

As I blogger I want to
– keep ideas/thoughts in the cloud, i.e. distributed
– have a single process/store for Work, Family and Music
– continue to use Vim as the editor
– have the blog running on my own domain at fnarg.net

By blog I mean something that is text and written by me.
This diagram shows the activities that go into making a me blog.

blog activity diagram

*Putting it into practise*

So I found this plugin for Vim called Blogit that doesn’t quite fit all my use-cases but it does look good.
I tried to install Blogit:

http://www.lamolabs.org/blog/2083/managing-wordpress-posts-with-vim/
but the Mac Vim doesn’t come with Python.
Ok so I’ll use the Linux Vim but that has this bug:


Error detected while processing .vim/plugin/blogit.vim:
line 1781:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 9, in ?
ImportError: cannot import name CalledProcessError
Press ENTER or type command to continue

So I think I should upgrade Vim 7.0 to Vim 7.2

Download the Vim 7.2 source and now I have this other error. And like the poster to Vim support I have a term library ):


# locate libterm
/lib/libtermcap.so.2
/lib/libtermcap.so.2.0.8

So I went back to the use-case and started looking at the XMLRPC part.
This did the trick. She’s a good ‘ol Perl!

And now I’m going to try and use it for the first time. If you can read this
then it probably worked (:

Well it did, but the activity diagram got mangled, hmm ..

I still find WordPress a complete pain to use as an editor, but at least this helped.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/code/posting-source-code/

Repertoire for a non-existent Brazilian band in South Wales

I want to be in a band that plays these <sigh>

Isaac Hayes – Walk on by

Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine

George Benson – This Masquerade

Jorge Ben – Oba la vem ela

Seu Jorge – Tive Razao
http://youtu.be/V20SZtLXBK4

Morena Veloso – Deusa do amour

Jorge Ben – Mas Que Nada

Evinha – Olha eu Aqui

Brazil 66 – Night and Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UuAx5oMpGY

Astrud Gilberto – Aqua de Beber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT2BloTgw7k

The Past, The Future, Omnipotence and Playstation Network

Introducing The Actors

The Past has plentiful experience but lacks resource (time) to participate. Makes a king of logic.

The Future has abundant time and energy but lacks control, easily led by emotion. Makes a prince of appearance.

Omnipotence is the collective corporate brain that lacks a concept of family. Makes a queen of process.

Synopsis

Throughout Omnipotence remains passive. Without the intervention of Omnipotence, The Past and The Future become locked in endless battle. Everyone aboard the Mother ship is plunged into conflict. There are no survivors.

Photo of a PS3

My Dad bought a PS3 for my thirteen-year old this Christmas. One of the features of the Sony package over Xbox was that Playstation Network (PSN) is free. So you pay more for the hardware, but the running costs are cheaper.

Depite a warning from the The Past (me), The Future created a Playstation Network Account without supervision (it was 7am on Boxing Day morning). This was the opening shot, a declaration of war. Omnipotence (Sony) rely on self-certification to govern access to it’s services. The Future had (accidentally, yeah yeah) certified himself as the-same-age-as-his-mates. They apparently are all allowed to play COD (Call Of Duty) on Playstation Network.

The accident involved typing a 97 not a 93. Although it wasn’t clear to ThePast until many weeks later this digit difference was going to become the axis of the conflict. Omnipotence disallow it’s subjects to change some key pieces of information about themselves (a) date of birth and (b) email address. Accounts may not be deleted.

Omnipotence doesn’t advertise these policies. In fact in the case of email addresses it looks as if you can change your email address but in reality you can only ever add new addresses. Once added an email is locked into the vault of Omnipotence’s blacklist. The old addresses are still remembered, so you can’t re-use them from any other account.

Despite Sony’s leaving all these trap doors everywhere I was determined not to give in. I did not want my son to pose as an adult whilst online. Here’s what happened.

The Chapters

  • The Future declares the PS3 is faulty
  • The Past investigates and concludes that the TV has an intermittent fault
  • The Past and The Future have serious dispute over where to put the PS3 in the bedroom
  • The Past locks the console in a cupboard as The Future has said too much

-- time passes --

  • The Past repents and use magic to install the PS3 in bedroom
  • The Future gets up the next morning and makes the Master (Adult) account
  • The Past finds out and makes himself a Master account
  • The Past changes the password of The Future’s Master account
  • The Past creates a Sub account as a replacement for The Future
  • But The Future failed to enter the realm of Omnipotence because the Sub account IS BROKEN (email addresses cannot be re-used Dad)
  • The Past locked the console away again as The Future has said too much
  • The Past procures a “Mains Conditioner” to fix the TV but it is a complete waste of money
  • The Future tells The Past he can shove the PS3

-- time passes --

  • The Past changed the Sub account (then hit date of birth rule, silly Dad)
  • The Future again failed to enter the realm of Omnipotence
  • The Past locked the console in a cupboard once again unalble to tolerate offence from TheFuture
  • The Past takes TheFuture shopping and buys him 2 new PS3 games
  • The Past meets an Angel who bears the gift of a working TV
  • The Future is bright
  • But The Future still cannot enter the realm of Omnipotence
  • The Past begged Omnipotence for mercy
  • Omnipotence remained impassive

A review of a Michael Blake album

This is about the fifth Michael Blake album I’ve heard. I’m not saying it’s the best, but I’ve never written anything about the others so that says something doesn’t it? The album I’m all excited about is called

The World Awakes: Tribute to Eli Lucky Thompson

I have to say straight away that I’d never heard of Lucky Thompson, but that kind of makes it interesting doesn’t it? A bit like enjoying an actor’s impersonation of someone that you’ve never seen. You don’t have to get hung up on whether it’s a good impersonation or not. Even without the reference you still get something of the style, the musical dynsasty. As you might expect from a tribute album it’s not really breaking new ground. It is great music, but the intention isn’t to shock or create the next Shape Of Things To Come. What makes it so good is that the more you listen to it the more it unpeels, like an onion. Each layer you strip away is clean and fresh. It’s really quite amazing how diverse the influences and styles that are represented here really are. When you first listen to it, you don’t think “oh there is klezmer and south african” as well as some be-bop, hip-hop etc.. . It’s so deep in the mix you don’t see it at first. Everything is so coherent that the influences seem secondary. Like soup boiled down to make new flavours. This is really compelling music. Actually it may even be new music that is emerging after all. Sure, there is replication (and you can feel the concern for authenticity) but it’s never lazy emotionally. Whether it’s explicit and uncensored or ephemeral mixtures of bitter and sweet it just feels vivid and sparkly throughout. This is a great album. Thank you Michael.

Forties jazz music

The siren sisters got me interested in old stuff from the forties. Here are my top five from this era:

1. This is the swing era and no-one swings better than basie.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNz1_xJ4Ur8&fs=1&hl=en_US]

2. Here’s Carmen it’s show time
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DBA5tnAJDk&fs=1&hl=en_US]

3. Mr Sandman has been with me as long as I can remember

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDXT7wC9jrc&fs=1&hl=en_US]

4. The best dance music is from Cuba

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp6khgW2tn8&fs=1&hl=en_US]

5. Why is this song sad and uplifting at the same time?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREpVzEQ1T8&fs=1&hl=en_US]