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Improvisation

10 Oct 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

This post is the first time I’ve ever tried to embed an audio file directly into a blog post, so in that sense it’s an experiment.

I like to improvise, but recording it is tricky because the equipment tends to get in the way and also knowing it’s there makes it hard to relax. But just now I recorded a few minutes of improvised music that I think is good enough to share. It’s simple, gentle background music, perhaps suitable for a TV documentary of some sort, but you should tell me what you think it’s suitable for. (If it inspires other art, please share.)

Actually, I get a lot of horrible distortion when I play this back, unless I play it very softly. But I’m pretty sure it will be OK for you, and that it’s just my speakers that need replacing.

As improvised music goes, what do you think? Would you like me to post more recordings like this in the future?

Posted in Creativity, Music. Leave a Comment »

Interesting Stuff: Early October 2010

7 Oct 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

After skipping the Late September edition of Interesting Stuff, I’ll now make up for it by bringing you an extra large collection of links for Early October.

Let’s start with some visual stuff.

And now everything else.

Posted in Interesting Stuff. Leave a Comment »

Online video player rant

3 Oct 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

I want to get this off my chest, and it’s too long for Twitter, so:

The short version:

Online video players suck.

The long version:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Computer. Leave a Comment »

Making faces

26 Sep 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

Recently, @RichardWiseman tweeted about a website where you can create your own human faces, police identification style. It’s fun to play with, but very buggy (the fact that it’s a beta version goes part way to excusing this). I’ll list some specific bugs further down, partly because it makes me feel better and partly because it forewarns others, but first I want to share the faces I made myself.

  1. This is my second attempt at the first face I created (on my first attempt I didn’t realise that you could drag facial features directly). My goal was to create a face that looked reasonably attractive, because that seemed like an interesting challenge. This face is saved as apm2. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Computer, Recommendations. Leave a Comment »

Gifts from China

24 Sep 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

An update on my parents’ Silk Route holiday. I have had some contact, mostly through SMS messaging. For example, Mum texted on September 20 to say: “Enamel work factory where we had lunch. Bought a lovely red dragon. Great wall fantastic. Glad 2 sit on bus 4 next 2 hrs though. Very, very steep.“

Today I received a parcel. It contained the aforementioned red dragon, a pair of lions, and some photographic books (the one about the Great Wall has the best pictures). I have incorporated the ornaments into my collection underneath the TV, and here is a photograph. As always, click to enlarge.

BERJAYA

Posted in Events, Family, Ornaments. Leave a Comment »

The Ghost of September Past

23 Sep 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

I’m not going to do an Interesting Stuff for late September. Sometimes I’m just not in the mood to collect links. But I encourage you to check out Richard Wiseman’s posting of a video you can interpret in many different ways, Mark Rosenfelder’s take on Adam Smith [update: here's a blog post with additional comments], and a Universe Today story on the formation of Phobos.

Interesting stuff that I linked to twelve months ago:

Posted in Interesting Stuff, Meta. Leave a Comment »

Parents to visit China, Russia, etc

18 Sep 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

Super-short blog post to report some important family news.

My parents leave today on a two-month holiday, consisting firstly of a package tour along the Beijing-Moscow Silk Route (visiting China, Kazakhistan, Uzbekistan and Russia by train), and secondly of a private journey in Europe (catching up with friends in Germany and Britain). I will have only intermittent email and SMS contact, and will certainly miss the daily phone conversations I’m used to.

The train journey is with The Captain’s Choice Tour, and you can read all about here.

We spent yesterday together as a family, enjoying each other’s company for the last time before they return. Among other things we discussed ideas for souvineer gifts they might send/bring back, such as items of archaeological / palaeontological significance, or traditional items including musical instruments, board/tile/card games, and art. The choice they make will be – as it should – a surprise.

Posted in Events, Family. 2 Comments »

Spelling systems and codes

13 Sep 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

In a comment on Stan Carey’s blog, I mentioned a regular spelling system that I once invented for my dialect of English.

This was never intended as a cure for the irregularities of English spelling. I’ve always been happier inventing things that are pointless but fun over anything of practical use, so I made it in many ways the opposite of what you’d want from a workable spelling reform. It’s very specific to my own dialect, contains complicated and sometimes ambiguous rules, and has the look of a completely alien language. These qualities give it a certain aesthetic appeal, but certainly not a practical one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Creativity, Language, Memories. 4 Comments »

Interesting stuff: Early September 2010

7 Sep 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

Here are the most interesting things I’ve found online recently.

There are many metaphorical train maps out there, but Crispian Jago’s modern science map is one of the best of its kind. I asked on Twitter which node should be used as the destination in a Mornington Crescent variation, to which @john_s_wilkins suggested Claude Bernard, adding: “The archetypal experimentalist and error theorist. But you have to get there without a mistake!“

That works for me. In a first for this blog, I hereby invite you to play in the comments section of this post. Some ground rules:

  • I strongly encourage you to look up the people played by your competitors. Also, feel free to write a sentence or two about your own choices. Bonus points for highlighting interesting connections between your move and those of others. (This is not compulsory but might make it more fun and educational.)
  • Here’s how turn-taking will work. If it has been at least six hours since your last move, and at least one person has played in the meantime, then you may make another move.

I’ll start you off with the first move: Jan Oort. (Who is most famous for speculations regarding icy space rocks at the outer edge of the solar system, giving us a connection of sorts with the Pluto article I link to below, which also speculates about distant icy space rocks.)

More interesting stuff:

Posted in Games, Interesting Stuff. 3 Comments »

Video collection

2 Sep 2010 — Flesh-eating Dragon

Under the heading “random facts about me”, here is a list of DVD and VHS videos that I currently own copies of. This list is not complete.

  • Various Doctor Who videos. Tom Baker stories: Pyramids of Mars, The Face of Evil, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Sun Makers. Earlier stories: The Romans (Hartnell), The War Games (Troughton), The Monster of Peladon, Planet of the Spiders (Pertwee). Collectables: The Curse of Fatal Death, The Tom Baker Years, More than 30 Years in the TARDIS.
  • All Stargate-SG1 episodes up to and including season five so far.
  • The Goodies DVDs: 8 Delicious Episodes and A Tasty Second Helping. Episodes I would want on a hypothetical new DVD: Rome Antics and The Stone Age.
  • Miscellaneous comedy: How to Irritate People (John Cleese, 1968), Blackadder: Back and Forth (2000), The Life of Python (Monty Python 30th anniversary documentary, 1999).
  • Movies and similar: The Man Who Sued God (2001), The Illusionist (2006), Hogfather (2006), Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (2009).
  • Documentaries etc: The Human Face (John Cleese, 2001), The Adventure of English (Melvyn Bragg, 2003), Voyage to the Planets (Richard Roxburgh, 2010). Under “etc”, The Devil’s Picturebook (Derren Brown). Note that for some documentaries I opted to buy the book instead of the video, e.g. I have books for Walking with Dinosaurs, The History of Britain (vol 1 only), and Seven Wonders of the Industrial World.

Question: If you were a guest at my place, which of the above would you most like to watch with me?

P.S. My DVD player is annoying, but I got it for a bargain price, so hey. The reason it’s annoying is that if you leave it paused for more than about five minutes (which I often want to do because sometimes you just need a break), it won’t resume play properly. Instead it freezes, then eventually starts playing again from a random point.

Posted in Miscellaneous. 2 Comments »
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