What shall I do in March?

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
now that February is nearly over...

The cat of Christmas' past

There's a new Simon's cat out (but you've probably alredy seen it!)

You too can be the 303rd viewer of this film....! (you won't understand this unless you go to the youtube page - and won't then if youtube fix the problem!)

Mutterings 27 February

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Leaning :: Tower of Pisa
2. Projects :: Overhangs
3. 404 :: Page not found
4. Page :: Boy
5. Twiiter :: typo! I see the plain text has the correct spelling, so:- Identi.ca
6. Renaissance :: Man
7. Webinar :: Seminar
8. Community :: Values
9. Illustrate :: Page
10. Clean slate :: Chalk

Smashing a violin

Having put a link to this elsewhere, I though I ought to put it here too:

(you might be too righteous to read it where I posted!)
This is the climax of Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King, a piece about George III's madness and death - the youtube page claims that this is the comedic climax but I think it's far too dark. I saw this piece with the Fires of London back in the 70's where the instrumentalists were all in huge bird cages and the singer reaches in through the bars and grabs the instrument. It is difficult for me to listen to Handels 'Comfort Ye' without it summoning up Maxwell-Davies' swung version - but that's not in the bit above so you're safe!
You probably don't want to invite this singer to this years Royal wedding!
I do love the comedic touch with the 'cello at the end of the extract though...!

Teaser Tuesday -22 February

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

I'm still reading Michael Arditti's Easter, so here's anoter teaser from his novel about the Church of England:

'Tradition or not, it's a bit bloody much to expect me to ponce down the nave with that bunch of flowers as if I were Rudolph Valentino'
'I think you mean Nureyev.'
'Same thing. They were both wooftahs.'

Extending the teaser slightly...and if I say that the first speaker is Philip I'll let you guess who the other one is!

Mutterings - 20 February

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Maroon :: Purple
2. Save :: his people Israel (1662 deeply embedded there)
3. Smithereens :: Smash
4. Conversation :: Chat
5. Visual :: effect/Studio (arrgh Microsoft)
6. Experience :: Life
7. Steady :: as she goes...
8. Wives :: Merry ... of Windsor
9. Glass :: of sherry (thanks!)
10. String :: theory

The White Ribbon

Last night's film at the Silk Screen was Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon as the linked review puts it:

..a ghost story without a ghost, a whodunnit without a denouement, a historical parable without a lesson..

A tale of Germany just before the First World War where everyone (almost) knew their place, a peaceful rural cummunity where the unsettling and nightmarish is only just below the surface. 143 minutes - but it gripped and carried you along with the narration of one looking back from a perspective of one looking back across even more nightmarish events. It will unsettle you - but do see it! I was reminded of last seasons El Orfanato (the Orphanage) another film placing innocence and threat of the young alongside each other.
Here's the trailer to the White Ribbon:

Maybe you'll feel frustrated at the end of the film but the images and story will live with you!

Attention Manchester (and area) bloggers!

There will be another Manchester bloggers meeting on Tuesday March 8th 6:30 to 8:30 at Common on Edge Street. Even if you're slightly out of the area - as I am! - you'll be made very welcome. I've only been to one previous meeting but it was well worth the trip into town to put some faces to names (and pseudonyms!). Full details are on Manchizzle - I've no idea, yet, whether I'll be there but it's tentatively in the diary!

Teaser Tuesday - 15 February

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Having just finished Manzoni's The Betrothed, I can't resist a far from random quote from the last few pages, not really a spoiler I think:

That's not the sort of Latin I'm afraid of. That's an honest, holy sort of Latin like you get at Mass; and besides, you clerical gentlemen have to read what's written in the book in those cases. No, no; I was talking about that blackguardly out-of-church Latin which creeps up behind a man in the middle of a conversation.

Three sentences too!

Jeunes filles au jardin

Stephen Hough playing Federico Mompou's Jeunes filles au jardin:
I'm currently learning this piece, I see that Jordi Masó repeats the 'big tune' (a wonderful marking of 'chantez avec la fraîcheur de l'herbe humide) as does Hough - but in my edition (Salabert) there's no repeat mark - is this repeat common practice or is my edition faulty? To add confusion Masó plays the repeat 2 bars before the final 'Calme', Hough one bar before that tempo change - it could be a memory slip by Hough in view of the live performance. Does anyone have another edition of this work with real repeat marks? If so where are the markings? - it seems a pity to let that tune go without the repeat!
[Later]Thanks to a tweet from Stephen Hough - the composer plays the repeat in his own recording - there is only the Salabert edition of the work.

Mutterings - 13 February

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Excitedly :: Agog
2. Rolls :: Sandwiches
3. Owls :: Wise
4. Cover :: ones feet (an interesting Biblical euphemism)
5. Jubilee :: Line (London Underground)
6. Heartthrob :: Fan
7. Pizza :: Marinara
8. Constipation :: too much of the above?
9. Weightless :: 2001 (the film )
10. Truck :: Have no ... with

fluxbox and ubuntu screen size issues?

kdeapp-menus
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

I use fluxbox and on both my ubuntu installations it appears that there is a problem with that window manager - when I try to maximize a window it expands to cover just the lower half of the screen. In addition some applications (those using Qt) popup menus in unexpected places! If you look at the screen shot of amarok - I've just clicked on Settings but the menu appears half way down the window - at the place where maximise thinks is the top of the physical screen. If I 'maximize' the application - or move the window down to that point - then the popup menu appears at the correct point. Is anyone else using fluxbox with ubuntu - are you also seeing this issue?
I also use fluxbox with the mandriva Linux distribution and there maximise etc works correctly, so either they#ve applied a fix to fluxbox or something at a lower level is not signalling screen size correctly.

Teaser Tuesday - 8 February

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Yes, I'm still working my way through Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, only 200 pages to go!

And while in certain parts those who were totally abandoned and reduced to extremity were raised up from the ground, brought back to life and given food and lodging for a time, there were a hundred other places where their brothers fell, languished and died without any help or comfort.
All day long a confused murmur of imploring voices could be heard in the streets.

The Thirty Years war and then, the plague, hits Milan!

Samantha oups ! - Samantha au salon de coiffure

Here's an opportunity to keep your French up to scratch.

Not had one of these (a «Samantha», not a coiffure!!) for over a year and I've just found their facebook page. Just slightly camp but beautifully judged!

Snowdrops

Snowdrops
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

The flowers have started to appear after the winter. As I've just listened to Ivor Gurney's wonderful setting of these lines of Edward Thomas, this picture seemed appropriate.

Snow

In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying, 'Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast!'
And still it fell through the dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

Mutterings 6 February

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Trash :: Taking out
2. Abs :: Absolute - Abs is a c++ function returning the absolute value of a number - there isn't this informative!
3. Dating :: Speed
4. Hooked :: caught
5. Face :: moon
6. Algebra :: symbols
7. Reading :: age
8. Horrendous :: situation
9. Looks :: Losing ones (am I starting to worry - a bit late!)
10. Python :: Idle - that's a reference to the python computer language where tools are based on the Monty Python programme (IDLE is the/a python IDE - editor test environment) as well as being a reference to Eric Idle.

Cloud detail

Cloud detail
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

The spectacular dawn view from outside our house a few days ago. There's a higher foot bridge just a short distance away but there the view gets obstructed by the local council car-park! If you go to the photo's flick page - you'll see next to it in the photostream some pictures taken from the bridge.

Teaser Tuesday - 1 February

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Following our recent trip to see Jesica Hausner's Lourdes, I see that the latest Michael Arditti novel - Jubilate is also about Lourdes - this second link describes an Arditti visit to Lourdes a few years ago, and from the first link I nick this quote from the book about the place:

Love. The place may be crass and exploitative, but the pilgrims who come here do so in good faith. Like everywhere else, that’s been invested with a sense of the sacred. It has an aura. It’s that aura that inspires people to keep coming. But it’s also us, or rather they, who’ve given it that aura: their hopes, their faith and above all, their love. It’s not something that’s beamed down from above.

Here's the Guardian review which alerted me to the publication.
But enough about the book I'm not reading, the Arditti review made me want to go and re-read his earlier book about sex, death, lies and the Church of England 'Easter' - written in 2000 - which seems aeons ago now:

The world has changed so much so fast that the modesty of her life no longer seems a virtue but a sign of its insignificance. As she gazes at the battlefield banners and the war heroes plaques, all she can think is how little her life has been and how little difference it has made.

(she's sitting in St George's chapel Westminster Abbey). That's a splendid random quotation but I'll hope to see how well the book stands the test of what's happened over the last 10 years. This is what Stephen Bates wrote about it all those years ago. And I'll keep an eye out in the local library for Jubilate!