Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
01 2008
...appear to add in a load of extra cruft, which Blosxom merrily renders into HTML. Sorry! :( I should know by now that WYSIWYG is a fallacy.
posted at: 11:02 | path: /technical | permanent link to this entry
Every now and again, I forget quite how much I Ienjoy listening to music - and every now and again, I get a reminder. On the way into work for a change at 7am this morning, I plugged in my MP3 player, which had lain dormant in my bag for too long. Thirty minutes later I had listened to a chunk of Gordon by the Barenaked Ladies, Futures by Jimmy Eat World and a couple of tracks from Minstrel Party by Ensemble Craft, a CD largely created by a good friend of mine, Nik Harrison. So much great music - it certainly softened the blow of having to get up in the wee small hours...
Music is hugely important to me, and I've been making a concious decision to play more of it - but sometimes I forget quite how much enjoyment I get out of listening to other people's music. I've been listening to the Steve Tilston box set recently, and it's the first time I've heard his version of Slipjigs and Reels, a song I've recorded in the past, though from the version by North Cregg rather than the original Steve Tilston one.
Perhaps me rediscovering my MP3 player is akin to someone else discovering a long lost CD, wiping the dust off, and having a listen after a long absence. Only instead of one artist's work I rediscovered many - and instead of 74 minutes, I found lots more. While writing this article and listening to Futures I contemplates making a musicology joke encompassing songwriting about junk bonds, stocks and shares... but that just seems crass now :-)
posted at: 16:11 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
...they are the way forward...
posted at: 15:00 | path: /observations | permanent link to this entry
In yet another leap of competence, Irish Rail managed to signal the Dublin-Limerick train to leave Heuston Station with a single passenger on board. This train would normally be packed to beyond capacity - and in fact over 300 passengers were left on the platform, wondering why theire train was leaving without them being allowed to board.
According to the Irish Examiner's story the station controller signalled to the guard after assisting a visually impaired passenger on-board - and a mix-up resulted in the guard interpreting the signal as the last passenger having been boarded, rather than the first.
If this was a one-off failure, it would be worthy of a laugh and a joke, but screwing things up appears to be the norm for an under-capacity, woefully mismanaged, incompetent rail 'service' that Irish commuters are forced to put up with. I also think the less than generous 50% discount allegedly offered is poor compensation for yet more inconvenience thrust on the Irish public. You can be sure that the Germans, the Swiss or the Finns would not stand for such inadequacies in their train service.
posted at: 10:35 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry
I've started heading along to a slow session in the Seamus Ennis Centre, in Naul. The idea is that I play tin-whistle there, instead of guitar, thus forcing me to learn and practice the melody instrument.
The idea of a 'slow session' is that tunes are played at a slower and rather more stately pace, often repeating the secions more often as well, such that musicians get a chance to learn and practice, rather than perform. Since I tend to learn music by ear anyway, this suits me perfectly - and any notes that I can't manage to decipher after three runs through a tune can be researched on thesession.org, a tremendously useful resource for Irish traditional sheet music.
I've taken the liberty of installing lilypond on the new laptop as well, so I've no excuse not to get back in the habit of writing up my own arrangements of traditional pieces as well.
posted at: 00:34 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I've splashed out on a siny new laptop, and after much deliberation, went with a Dell D430 ultraportable. The screen is 12.1" but boasts an impressive 1280x800 resolution, and it appears to support Linux (Ubuntu) reasonably well. Sound, video, trackpad, 802.11g wireless and bluetooth all appear to work without problems, though strangely enough, the 'Wifi' LED on the front panel doesn't light under Linux to tell me it's enabled.
The only issue I've hit thus far has been the 3G/HSDPA modem installed, which appears to be a 'Novotel' rather than the well supported Hauwei E220. Hopefully I'll have some time to poke at this in the coming weeks and see if I can make it work. Updates (if any) will be posted here.
posted at: 00:27 | path: /technical | permanent link to this entry
Not even a week ago, every hourly radio news bulletin detailed the anger felt by the country that train fares, along with other public transport fares, were going up by an average of 5%. One of the reasons given, along with the rising price of fuel, is that Iarnród Éireann are now offering an "improved level of service" to its passengers. Fare increases were implemented as of yesterday morning.
Last night, about 11pm, I received a call to collect two friends from the train station in Rush and Lusk where their train had unexpectedly halted. A goods train derailed in Skerries rendering them unable to get further. I dropped them to their houses over an hour later than they should have been home. I left many other stranded passengers at the station waiting for some kind of replacement bus service to bring them the remainder of the way to Skerries, Balbriggan, and further North to Dundalk.
"Thousands of commuters face severe disruption this morning after Iarnród Éireann cancelled all of this morning's Northern Line services into Dublin." -- The Irish Times
It looks like the affected trains will not be running normally until the weekend at the earliest, and that in the standard fashion, no compensation or detailed explanation of what went wrong and who is responsible will be offered to commuters. As a friend of mine commented recently, "Public transport is great. Ireland should really consider getting some."
</rant>
posted at: 15:34 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry
