Giorgio Sancristoforo makes some wonderful noise toys. The latest is Full Blotter – very large grains psychedelic machine which takes your jolly little ditty and mangles it in to something other worldly…
I always appreciate a DMORAN button 
Video
Summer in the city: 1
Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012)
A 1964 video of Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello performing Take Five (written by Desmond) which had been a recent visitor to the “pop hit parade” as presented by Steve Race in those distant black and white days when presenters, performers and audience wore shirts and ties.
Video Player
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The 1971 fight (or is it sex?) between the piano and drums at the Newport Jazz Festival from The Last Set At Newport is a favourite version…
Reinstalling Lion
On Saturday the [wikipop]MacBook[/wikipop] was getting a bit clunky and on investigation the hard disc was found to be damaged and needed wiping/formatting. Just what those girls do to the poor thing, having previously destroyed the old [wikipop search=”iBook G4″]iBook[/wikipop]’s disc, remains a mystery.
After backing up to the [wikipop search=”Time Machine (Mac OS)”]Time Machine[/wikipop], downloading the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant and installing that on an old USB hard disc we were ready to boot from the external disc and wipe the internal disc. The wiping did not affect the recovery partition that [wikipop search=”Mac OS X Lion”]Lion[/wikipop] creates and so that was used for the reinstallation.
The process seemed to go without a hitch until the point when the computer should have restarted which it failed to do:
It repeatedly downloaded the installer but then hung showing either 5+ Hours remaining or Around 0 seconds to go. The download was restarted half a dozen times each with the same inconclusive result. Fortunately [wikipop]Tim Minchin[/wikipop] was hosting the Comedy Prom on TV and his Lullaby helped to relieve the frustrations:
Having shut down the MacBook for the night I tried it one more time on Sunday morning. It seemed to stall yet again but while I perused the support forums for any advice there was a reassuring [wikipop]startup chime[/wikipop] and it leapt into life and started the installation process. Once installed Martine sat in bed retrieving the backed up stuff which, to her alarm, reinstalled thousands of old emails.
But in the end, albeit with a little frustration, the whole disc-less wire-less installation did not fail us.
Flooping on a sunny Sunday afternoon
The Fallowfield Loop (or Floop) follows the old rail route round the south of Manchester. It is mostly traffic free (apart from a road crossing at Fallowfield) and is much used… particularly on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
I went down to the far end of the Gorton Reservoirs and then back to Chorlton which produced enough video to make a movie (book your tickets now!):
Any suggestions to remove more of the narcissistic credits?
Naming of Parts
In the continuing quest for A Hedge, Backwards, one of Henry Reed‘s Hilda Tablet plays, I came across a film from 1971 by Robert Bloomberg of Reed’s Naming of Parts:
(not quite) The End of the World
Phew! We seem to have run out of time…
(if you think it is all going to end why bother with a copyright notice?)
…but we are (surprise! surprise!) still here. It must be a miracle.
Twinkle Twinkle Magic Trackpad
The Trackpad Magic app lets you play various instruments with the Magic Trackpad or MacBook’s Trackpad. It also features a variety of graphical effects and several [wikipop]musical scales[/wikipop]. Pressing the T key shows a grid to aid note finding. Pressing the I key cycles through the scales. The Doe Ray Me scale puts the G in the middle of the trackpad. With the C on the left edge you can pick your way through [wikipop]Twinkle Twinkle Little Star[/wikipop]. Turning off the grid and doing it blindfolded in the dark earns extra points 
From Sale to Chorlton in under 4 minutes
When cycling in the [wikipop]Cotswolds[/wikipop] you could not go more than a mile without hitting a hill. Here you can cycle all day without hitting a hill. Although people do seem to buy bikes with lots of gears or, even stranger, mountain bikes. So without any hill climbing challenges one has to resort to speed. Starting from the bridge over the [wikipop]M60 Motorway[/wikipop] round the [wikipop]Sale Water Park[/wikipop], across the bridge over the [wikipop]River Mersey[/wikipop] and along the riverbank to Chorlton Water Park in under 4 minutes The recent snow has left everywhere wet and muddy 
I turned the camera upwards while crossing the motorway bridge thinking it might make a neat kaleidoscopic movie…
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