graham’s blog

Chaud-froid

This is a short post to test blue text, to remark on the arrival of Spring, to worry about my bank and to be astonished that people are willing to pay now for a gig that won’t occur before autumn next year!

Enfin en français! Il a fait froid ce matin attendant le bus à 7h00 devant chez moi. A midi je suis allé chercher à manger et il faisait nettement plus chaud. Le printemps se fait attendre mais va surement arriver d’ici quelques jours voir semaines.

Les déboires de notre Banque (l’UBS) me perturbent. Comment est-il possible de perdre autant d’argent? Je persiste à penser que nous devrions reformer les pratiques dans les banques.

Troisième sujet est les billets de spectacle. Si je vous proposais de me payer 100 francs Suisses aujourd’hui pour un service que je vous rendrerai dans 18 mois, seriez-vous d’accord? Pourquoi alors sont vous d’accord de payer chers vos billets aujourd’hui pour voir une artiste l’année prochaine?

Voici les gens attendant l’ouverture de la FNAC à Genève, vendredi passé, pour acheter des billets pour voir Mylène Farmer le 4 septembre 2009!!

J’ai de la peine à comprendre. J’espère que l’argent récolté sera placé intelligemment et que les organisateurs vont bien choisir leur banque!

Tags: News

Shiny objects

Since I was a kid I’ve always been on the lookout for shiny new objects.

When I was a kid it was new Matchbox Cars, or a new Lego Box or some Meccano.

When I was a teenager it had a lot to do with Music, new singles or LP’s. I was thirsty for music and spents hours listening to it.

I continued and indeed still continue with my passion for music of most kinds in my life today.

In addition, however, with the advent of the Internet I am still on the lookout for shinies and it becomes almost unhealthy at times.

I collect sites as I collected music but unlike my music a lot of these sites lose their shine rapidly or are replaced by even shinier ones.

Life was simpler before the Internet. For a fiftysomething geek, if the genre really exists, it can become an ongoing struggle.

I don’t dare expose the number of apps I had when I was using Windows XP and know I am using my iMac (I love my iMac) my applications folder is overflowing with stuff I pick up and in reality use only from time to time.

I can’t afford (or justify using) Photoshop and I try to be ethical so I have Photoshop Elements and Pixelmator and the Gimp and strive to use them properly. I mention these apps because inevitably I tried out Photoshop Express earlier as well.

In every category it’s more or less the same combat.

It would be nice to be able to simulate an application environment by hiding or concealing applications on the fly. That way I could dip into the Lucky Bag (a childhood memory) and draw out a new toy only when I really needed it. I should be able to have categiries of applications such as -Often Used- or -Not yet mastered-. Perhaps in the Apps folder they could be sorted into categories (Graphics, Words, Games, Music etc etc).

Maybe this is possible or partly possible. I haven’t tried working with them yet.

I’ll let you know how I get on. Is this a problem for you?

Tags: apps, shinies

It’s (almost) the weekend

Rounding off the week it’s been busy at work with some nice projects on the go, mostly to do with records management and document handling. I’m still intrigued more than satisfied with my Logitech Digital Pen and appalled at my bad handwriting.

This is probably where mobile computing comes to the rescue of hidden social handicaps like bad handwriting and uncomprehensable speech. Fistly you have to write decently to increase the succes rate in transcribing handwritten text and lastly it is preferrable to have good speaking skills in order to use speech recognition correctly.

I try to have a social life and not spend more than 50% of my leisure time in front of a computer which is not as easy as it sounds - what’s your percentage?

So at home I watch some TV (mostly the BBC channels) and some shows on DVD. After reading Kathy Reich’s book “Cross Bones” I obtained the first season of Bones and my wife and I are currenlty watching it. It’s not bad. Not excellent but still very watchable. I like the characters and geta few laughs. The quality of the French subtitles leaves a bit to be desired but at least I don’t have to watch it dubbed in French. Quel horreur!

When I’m “working” at the computer I like listening to music but if my wife is watching TV at the same time I sometimes try listening with headphones and I’m getting quite a collection. The last ones I bought are a Logitech USB headset with mike but although I can dictate with them, too much ambient sound from the TV comes through and I have to push up the volume and it all turns into a sound-fight in the end (the TV almost always wins). I have some cordless headphones for use with my iPod or other MP3 players but these are not comfortable for more than a half-hour or so.

I’m contemplating getting some “real” headphones with noise cancelling  and ear covering features. What can you recommend? You will have to be quick as once I have something in mind I usually rapidly pass to a purchased solution!

Tags: shows

Apple Premium Reseller Blues

I don’t want to start a personal vendetta but I’m extremely disappointed with one of our local Mac stores here in Geneva. For this reason I won’t divulge the name.

Those following me on twitter know that I’ve been looking into solutions for speech transcription software professionally and have ordered and obtained several copies of Dragon Naturally Speaking Mobile and ascertained that it can’t (without a lot of training) cope with my somewhat pronounced English accent when speaking French. Those who know me also know what I mean. It’s been quoted as being cute, even charming but it’s too thick for Dragon.

I did have a lot of success with speaking English though, even from a dictating machine (Philips) and recognition was well over 95%.

Unfortunately it wasn’t working too well here on my iMac at home using Parallels. I couldn’t figure out whether it was the headset (a Logitech USB) or other problems.

I decided to make a visit to a local Reseller and decided on a specialist rather than just a chain store that sells Macs.

I waited in line and then asked about headsets with microphones and was promptly recommended one of only two headsets they had in store. It is precisely the Logitech headset I am trying to use. Either I made a really good choice, which I doubt, or they don’t know what headsets are really adapted to transcription against those that are better suited to Skyping or IM. Either way I must admit that the choice of USB headsets is very limited in the stores I visited.

Moving on I asked about CD and DVD burning software for OSX as I have several large FLAC files with corresponding .cue files enabling them to be burnt onto CD thus reproducing the original CD. It used to be my favourite way of archiving CDs while retaining a lossless format. I haven’t yet found a Mac app that will read the cue file and burn the CD.

You may not believe this but neither of the two shop assistants had heard of FLAC files and had absolutely no idea of what I was talking about!!!

Sometimes I wonder why I ask for advice in stores. A lot of the time I have more knowledge than those that I am asking.

I won’t be going back to that store again. I’ll just muddle on or contact support I guess.

Tags: data

The Bliss

J’ai découvert “The Bliss” en 2001 et j’ai passé une excellente soirée dans une salle à Carouge à les écouter live. Leur premier disque fait parti des disques dans ma collection, signés par les artistes. Plutôt qu’un longue discours vous pouvez écouter un morceau de leur dernier disque et écouter davantage sur leur site.

I came across “The Bliss” on the web in mid-2001 and had a really great email exchange with them over a short period of time. I was also lucky to have seen them in concert in the basement of a restaurant here in Geneva (Carouge) just after the WTC tragedy. I lost track of them shortly afterwards but their music lives on in my collection and serves to remind me of that great concert.

I googled them today and discovered that they are still making music and have two new disks so I have ordered them and written asking if they will be playing locally soon. If so I’m definately going to the concert and hopefully taking a few pics. Hopefully you will be able to listen to them here if the embedded player works.

Tags: local

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

I’ve always been a Beatles fan rather than a Stones fan. I have most of the Beatles CDs and I only own one Stones CD (Their Satanic Majesties…) which I quite like incidentally.

Our national supermarket chain “Le Migros” is running a competition where the prize is two tickets to a concert they are giving in Lausanne on the 11th of August. It’s one of these getting stickers and sending them in sort of competition.

My wife and I sent in a few cards worth of stickers and were waiting to be disappointed as usual. Like most people we are one of those that never win anything. Wrong! We won two tickets.

I’m looking forward to it because in the end it’s more of a social event than anything else and I’m happy to be part of that. I’m not too optimistic about the concert itself but who knows?

Tags: competition

The weekend!

I can’t think of a better way to get you into shape for the weekend than to show you this video. There are so many things I could say about it but in the end I think it speaks for itself.

I was made aware of it by an article on the BBC’s news website.

Tags: old age

Two anecdotes

Two relatively trivial events stick in my mind this morning, probably as some form of relief from yesterdays post.

Firstly I use Pandora when I can’t decide what music to play or when I am looking for something new. It’s a great service and in it’s simplest form you give it the name of an artist you like listening to and it makes a play list of similar music that you approve or disapprove and the software learns from that. That in itself is cool and I heartily recommend that you try it out.

So the other day I keyed in Deva Premal, a wonderfully inspiring, soothing and relaxing artist and Pandora did it’s magic. I discovered two artists that I had never heard, Moya (Maire) Brennan and Laura Powers. Between my eMusic (non DRM) and iTunes (definately DRM) accounts I was able to purchase a few CDs worth of music and added them to my iPod.

Stick with me here as I’m almost finished and it gets even more interesting.

I am also a member of Last.fm which acquired scrobbler some time back. Whenever I play music on my PC my account on Last.fm is updated in real time and this gives an idea of what artists and songs I am listening to with some really cool statistics. Basically anybody can see what I am listening to.

A few days ago I got an email from Laura Powers thanking me for listening to her music, she had noticed from aggregation of listeners to her music that I was listening, hence the email. Now I am sometimes thankfully a little naive so this might well have been an automated response of some kind but it was, all the same, a nicer than usual email.

The other event was an email I got through YouTube yesterday. I put up a videoclip I had edited of a visit to my hometown 15 odd years ago and a guy wrote to me to compliment me on the video but also to ask me when it was shot as he found one of the children accidentally filmed in the video looked a lot like him and he lived in the neighbourhood around that time. I paraphrase his own word here “scary”. Scary indeed. Talk about global village!

Tags: countries

Rachmaninov 1 - Scriabin 0

It is a little disrespectful perhaps but that’s how I was looking at it earlier. I went with my wife to a concert this evening given by the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and on the program was Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano Concerto which was sublime and I enjoyed every chord. Eric Carmen’s hit in the seventies “All by myself” leaned heavily on the second movement of this Rachmaninov Concerto.

Also on the program was Scriabin’s Poem of Extasy and I’m afraid it was difficult to listen to. The interpretation and power of the Orchestra was excellent I’m sure but I have never found it easy to listen to Scriabin.

Nice guitar playing

I’ve done it before and I’m doing it again. Here is a nice clip I stumbled upon over on YouTube of a guy who really knows how to pluck those strings!

His name is Erik Mongrain by the way.