Quote from: Slim on April 02, 2024, 01:53:11 PMBought tickets to see Mica Paris later in the year. Not having seen her sing for decades, I'm starting to think it might have been a mistake unfortunately.

This was last night at the Jam House in Birmingham. We'd been there once before to see Mamas Gun but it was packed out last night. Despite my expectations she was really good. Lots of geeing up the audience, she's a natural frontperson and she really belted them out.

She has a lot of original material to choose from; despite this her set was at least 50% covers. Fantastic versions of Tom Browne's Funkin' For Jamaica and Jacko's Remember The Time especially.

Her band is good, not great. Talented guitar player but more a heavy blues player than jazz or soul. A bit more restraint and subtlety would have gone a long way, probably true for Mica's vocals as well but there's no doubt it was a hugely spirited performance.

Soon you'll be  able to talk to a business DB in natural language, do searches based on content, etc. Larry Ellison, the man being interviewed here, will be 80 in August.

Wordle 1,049 3/6*

⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟩🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

A minute, I think.

My vinyl copy of Grace Under Pressure has the same label stuck to both sides.

I don't even recall a liner with lyrics in my copy of Permanent Waves. I'll go and have a look in a minute.

Wordle 1,048 3/6*

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
🟩⬛🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

40 seconds.

I haven't seen one of his "wrong" cycling posts so far and I do follow him on Twitter. Will keep an eye out for one of those.

I'm in a small room, possibly my old bedroom in Hartlepool. The bloke from the Classic Rock Review channel on YouTube is there, sitting next to Mark Knopfler. Both of them have acoustic guitars.

Classic Rock Review bloke hands me his guitar. Oh no. I've got to play in front of Mark Knopfler. But wait .. I pick a couple of notes and it's obvious the guitar is in a weird folky tuning. I have an excuse. Phew.

I mention to Knopfler that I enjoyed an interview he did a few weeks ago, in which he mentioned that he used to window-shop guitars at JG Windows in Newcastle (this happened in real life, it was the Patrick Kielty show on 5 Live). I tell him that I bought a guitar myself there in 1983, a second-hand Les Paul (that happened in real life as well).

Mark hands me his guitar, it's a Takamine. OK I'll play a few bars of Blackbird (McCartney's tune from the white album). That'll be easy enough. But my fingers won't obey my brain! I make a total dog's breakfast of it. In front of Mark Knopfler.

Nice day here as well yesterday, apart from the wind. Raining again now.

Quote from: Fishy on April 30, 2024, 10:00:40 PMMoved my local music streaming stuff from a windows 11 box running subsonic to a Debian vm running subsonic.. much smaller footprint and working well.. thank god for  AI cos I'm shit at Linux stuff..

I need to find some domestic Linux projects to do to keep my hand in once I leave my job at the end of June. I've been typing ls, du, df, mv, tar etc for a living since January 1990.

Wordle 1,047 4/6*

🟨⬛🟩⬛⬛
⬛🟨🟩⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟩🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

4 mins.

Wordle 1,046 3/6*

🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Nine seconds, lucky second word.

I booked today off work on Friday, after seeing a favourable weather forecast. In fact the forecast changed over the weekend with a likelihood of showers in the afternoon, but I intended to go south where I'd most likely avoid them.

The idea was to do either a fondo or a 100 miler, depending on the time I got up. And I got up at about 0715, so 100 miles it was! I thought I'd go down to Northampton and back. I set off at about 0805.

I had a change of plan after 36 miles and took a left to Naseby. I've been to Northampton a couple of times in recent months so I thought I'd give it a miss and do something different.



I'd been to Naseby before but this time I kept going, through places called Haselbech and Maidwell. About half a mile after Maidwell I found myself at the top of a long steep descent that I didn't fancy coming back up, so I turned back. I'd only done 43 miles so I'd have to improvise a bit on the way back. I did. I took a turn to a place called Cold Ashby and just followed my nose. Really, really nice cycling territory over the next ten miles or so through places called Stanford on Avon and Swinford. I rejoined the usual route at North Kilworth (after a bit of reassurance from Google Maps), but still needed to make up some distance. I went exploring again, through Ashby Parva and Frolesworth - basically a detour around Broughton Astley.

I was still a couple of miles short though (having distance landmarks memorised is handy for gauging this) so after Kirkby Mallory, I kept on to Cadeby, then Bosworth then back the usual way from there, or one of them. Made up the last bit of distance by coming back a long way through the village.

Terrific day out on the bike. Had two very pleasant stops at the village shop at Gilmorton. Nice weather, no showers. Very mild. And I listened to another few hours of the Reacher novel.

Back on 100.42 miles and that's a pleasing 479 done this month. Would have got the total over 400 even if I hadn't taken the day off, which is nice to know.

1850 done this year and 45,011 since January 2015.

https://www.strava.com/activities/11292403905

Wordle 1,045 3/6*

🟨⬛🟩⬛🟩
🟩⬛🟩🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

15 seconds.

3:4

Another three weeks have passed somehow. Must get into the habit of doing these at least once a week.

Anyway another absolutely brilliant one, just inspired from start to finish. Hilarious. One of the best 30 minutes of telly ever. The sketches thematically segue into each other cleverly. There's a nice running joke. There's an extended animation which is gobsmackingly inventive and utterly hilarious. I laughed out loud several times. There just isn't a weak moment.

I remembered the scene with Cleese as a merchant banker and Jones as a charity worker, but didn't remember that it morphs into a genius sketch involving pantomime horses in the same office.

Richard Baker, the newsreader whom older readers may remember has a cameo in one sketch (as himself) and keeps a completely straight face. Legend.

 

Heard this on Huey Morgan's R6 show, downloaded the album from Bandcamp. Right up my street. The album is a concept album (albeit instrumental) about legal difficulties.