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Ten Years After
Rummaging around in here I discovered I still had a YouTube account, from the days before it became the quagmire of advertising and tracking it has become, which lead me to this old post from a decade ago:
The iPad was a mere one year old at the time but was already showing signs of its potential for making interesting noises. I suspect the missing video was for an, alas short lived and no longer available, app called Konkreet Performer which was an early attempt at new ways to interact with sounds on iPads:
Things have evolved over the years and today you have AudioBus to pump sound between apps, AUM to connect and mix instruments and effects and countless apps like TouchScaper and SoundScaper and even some that are not called somethingScaper. Although Smule still have some apps available their MadPad has also vanished; as has the Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra.
The other video in that old post was a young Frank Zappa performing on a bicycle during the Steve Allen TV show in March 1963. Many years ago I read about this but who could imagine that decades later and thousands of miles away you can sit on a sofa with an iPad watching the video and also learn how, in late 1962, the young Zappa would hang out in Don Preston‘s garage improvising soundtracks to various film clips. Preston had a range of junk percussion ‘instruments’ he used including a bicycle.
An Autumnal Stroll
Not having left home (apart from popping out to Unicorn) for some time (7th October seems to have been the last time) and it being a relatively nice day I ventured out to Marple with my bus pass on the train. From Marple I followed the Peak Forest Canal towpath before dropping down into New Mills and then looping back towards Strines where I caught the train back.
According to the myTracks app it was 7.81 miles and took 2 hours 25 minutes. The elevation map makes for interesting viewing:
The canal sits high up on the side of the valley as it heads out towards the Peaks. As the other end is much lower there are 16 locks at Marple to lift the canal over 200 feet.
There is a steep drop down to the floor of the valley to follow the river Goyt into New Mills.
There is a long climb up the other side of the valley and then another drop down to Strines station.
Summer in the city: 2
Summer in the city: 1
Retirementversary
One year ago today I retired into the first lockdown so most of the past year has looked like this:
and has sounded like this:
Long men with old hair
There has been some kerfuffle in the press lately about Tony Blair and his slightly longer than usual hair.
But Tony Blair has always been a bit of a lightweight. Jordan Rudess removed his quarantine hair and returned to his usual impressively bearded self.
Me? Who knows?
Remembering Melanie
The name Melanie cropped up on the radio today and for some reason I found myself thinking about Melanie French who, as a member of the cabin crew, died on a plane that crashed in Tenerife in 1980. Looking at the details it happened, weirdly, on April 25th – today.
Her mum ran a small hotel/bed & breakfast place in Llandudno and Melanie would sometimes come to the Cash & Carry warehouse where I was working to pick up supplies. Such visits always caused a ripple of excitement amongst the young male staff – “Melanie’s in!†– such was her beauty, elegant poise and patient politeness with us salivating halfwits.
Her parents feature in this news report by a young Jeremy Paxman – whatever happened to him?
The Reset
Over the years the old Mac had become such a tangled mess (the oldest file dates back to 2009) and iCloud Drive had become inaccessible from the Finder which insisted I needed to log in although everywhere else insisted I was logged in, and everything was working normally, but System Preferences refused to let me log out. Having tried killing birds and all manner of Terminal artfulness which failed to change anything I decided to just set up a new account and move into that. Alas this meant finding all the Serial numbers/licences for a lot of apps etc. Most seem to working now but I am sure something will turn up and refuse to work. Have made a fresh Time Machine and will try and keeps things better organised until the new iMac’s arrive.
Have reduced the web site to a minimalist HTML site because that is all it needs to be. Yes you could make a case for a little CSS design but we will live with it for a while. Have removed the Indie Web stuff from this blog as I was not using it and had no real interest in doing so; similarly the link to micro.blog is gone as I do not do the social/interaction thing so derived nothing from it – as excellent as these projects are and worth supporting if that is your thing. At some point I will develop my own theme for this blog.
Onwards.
High and fast
The River Mersey swollen with the recent rains.