No singing in this one. It was mainly around a loop and I was excited by funkyness of the drum sample I used. Then I layered it with stuff, including some trumpet samples.
It goes on a bit, but that’s because I was having a Mike Oldfield moment -> this is especially apparent towards the end where there’s a fast little bit of bass reminiscent of the recurring theme (and my favorite bit) in tubular bells. But I think I tried to keep it interesting by changing the layers of things that were playing on it.
You’ve Lost Your Faith (unfinished)
Another unfinished track, made up of only two verses and a bit of a chorus which I never liked, but the verse I liked a lot.
I think it was mainly the grungyness of the guitars that I liked and the drums coming in and lifting them.
Lyrics for what of them there are:
You’ve lost your faith, with the land your living in
You could disappear, because it’s only sometimes you see
A little peace of mind. Is it so hard to find?
But you would smile and say, it’s only you’re own way.
Back on the road, do you know what song you’re singing?
You could lighten your load, it’s always someone elses smile
All along the way, its only for one day
But you would stare and say, it’s only your own way
High Society….. repeat
So Close
I wrote and recorded this song at my mate Mike Bradys house on a 4 track tascam over 20 years ago, both of us are singing. I liked it because it was the first song I’d recorded with major 7th chords and the words are nice.
The lyrics are:
In some uncertain way you live in my shoes
It’s like I want it to be.
And when we’re Dancing, You’re near in spite of stormy skies
Something bout you brings you so…. So Close, So Close
The longer we’re together, the more I feel.
We watched the seasons change inside of our room
Pillows in the moonlight and you
laugh at the stories, we made to keep the covers warm
All these things that bring you so… So Close, So Close
The longer we’re together, the more I feel
Posting code examples on WordPress
WordPress includes a neat feature allowing you to paste code into your posts – and allows it to retain its formatting.
An example below – and more details can be found here http://en.support.wordpress.com/code/posting-source-code/
// Hello1.cs
public class Hello1
{
public static void Main()
{
System.Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
}
}
Excorcist Convention
Apparently the Catholic Church has a shortage of Exorcists and has a sort of 2 day seminar for priests to learn how to do it.
According to Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, the signs of possession include:
“The person has some knowledge of hidden things that they’re telling you things about yourself or about the future that nobody else could possibly know,” he said.
Among other signs, he said, is a person having an aversion to things that are holy.
“So saying prayers over them or sprinkling them with holy water and getting a very violent reaction,” Paprocki said.
The first bit seems to be describing Catholic Priests and the last bit sounds like me.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/exorcist-convention-priests-learn-fight-devil/story?id=12146069
Whitby Abbey
Minstrels
Originally uploaded by Blods uk
Finally got round to taking some photos off the camera from our Whitby wedding planning trip. There was a reenactment group up at the Abbey, including this minstrel and minstrel wife.
He took it very seriously and got very upset that another ‘Robin Hood’ “expert” was telling unsubstantiated Robin Hood stories to the kids in the next tent.
Lucky climbs down
Lucky coming down a tree in the garden stops to play with something. I dont know how he does this……. I’ve seen him fall off the sofa and yet up a tree he’s like a wild thing
Sam Harris
We went to see Sam Harris lecturing in Berkley recently on his new book – “The Moral Landscape (How Science can Determine Human Values)”. He also wrote “End of Faith” and is called one of the 3 Horsemen or New atheists along with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins.
Some interesting snippets from the lecture – were that people surveyed are charitable when shown a picture of a starving girl, are equally charitable when shown a picture of a starving boy – but are less charitable if you show them together. The degree of empathy or charitableness decreases as you increase the number of people in the picture. He explained how this coincides with Rwanda genocide getting less and less media coverage while a girl stuck down a well can be constant wall to wall news for 3 days.
Another interesting moral dilemma he put forward to think about – was if a train is coming down a track and about to hit and kill a dozen people, and you’re stood by the lever which can divert the train down a siding where it will only kill one person then would you do it. Most people agreed that they would. However if instead of a siding you were sat on a bridge further up the track beside a large man who if you pushed onto the path of the oncoming train would also stop it, then would you do that. That’s a harder moral question I guess.
Some Sam Harris quotes below:
“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God.
If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency.
I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”
“Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery.
The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.”
“Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family.
All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?”
“In fact, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a “non-astrologer” or a “non-alchemist.” We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.”
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”
“In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise.”
“It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself. ”
“Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that
certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him.
Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other
over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything —
anything — be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous
than the world we are living in. “
Next time, I’ll spend the money on drugs instead.
Dear Jane, I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead. I value the drawing at $233.95 so trust that this settles the matter. Regards, David.
via Next time, I’ll spend the money on drugs instead..
Everyone should read David Thorne. As a graphic artist he tried to pay an overdue bill with a drawing of a spider – he then posted the battle of wills that ensued.
Blods.com 