Welcome to the future!

Thanks to Murphy for reminding me of this xkcd.com gem:
Roy

This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult

This gem comes courtesy of Erika. Thanks Erika! (Therika)

Roy

Hair Of The Dog

I've been helping Jonnie with his installation coming up this weekend, involving 8 Niftymitters.. Do come along, it is going to have to be good.



A full length album of material from Jonnie Common’s debut 'Master Of None' remixed by a talented bunch of his personal favourites. Available as a limited screen print with download. Featuring:

GEESE : DEMS : FOUND : BEN BUTLER & MOUSEPAD : ONTHEFLY : RIVER OF SLIME : GRNR : A LA FU : MIAOUX MIAOUX : THE JAPANESE WAR EFFORT : CAUGHT IN THE WAKE FOREVER


Nov 25 - 27 : Jonnie Common Sound Installation

Jonnie Common has worked with Zero Waste Design to produce an interactive sound installation at MONO that lets users mix the elements of his debut album with the added potential for lo-fi surround sound to be achieved.

If that’s not all, an exhibition by illustrator David Galletly will also be shown over the weekend featuring drawings and murals related to ‘Master Of None’.


Nov 27 : Exhibition Closing Party

live sets from: BEN BUTLER & MOUSEPAD + DEMS + GRNR
special guest DJ sets from: FOUND + THE JAPANESE WAR EFFORT

7.30pm : £4 : MONO : 12 Kings Court, Glasgow, G1 5RB


INFO + TICKETS: WWW.JONNIECOMMON.COM

Flux Pinning in Jazz

This video is great for two reasons:

1. It demonstrates the faintly unbelievable
2. The soundtrack

Thanks to Carlo!
Roy

A Song of One Hundred Years, Adam Beattie

A Song of One Hundred Years by adambeattie

I played as a consultant of Adam Beattie regularly for a couple of years after graduating, and have very fond memories of the experience. Indeed without Adam there would be no three headed Inspector Tapehead, seeing as Chris too was a consultant at that time, and Jonnie was unashamedly in thrall to Adam's croonings. It is fairly damning for us then that since he parted our close proximity, Adam has continued to improve without pause, revelling amongst a host of excellent London consultants. Of course we still meet occasionally and the meetings are all the more delightful for their scarcity. In a good way.

My favourite of his songs that we played together was Man Running, a track realised in boldly different colours on his second album We'll Wave From the Shore. When we played Man Running it was something of a heartfelt, rich, tearjerker, almost rubbery in its rubato (as was oft the way in that lineup, much to Adam's delight). It got me in the same way that pretty much any brass band playing Nimrod or Danny Boy does - when we played it at the Abu Bozy album launch in the Tron, I got pretty carried away with the old deep-sighing of the harmonium!

Anyway the point of this essay is that a couple of years ago Adam nonchalantly whipped out a song that has come to replace Man Running in my top spot of Beattie tunes, in the form of A Song of One Hundred Years. An astonishing bit of song writing, he has now put it into zeroes and ones and uploaded it to Soundcloud as a preview of his third album. In Adam's words, it is "A song I wrote for my grandfather George Craigie, who died last April 2010, at the age of one hundred years old." Listen to it above, and enjoy.

PS. As you can see, the effect of any dose of Beattie is acute sentimentality such as this!

Roy

The Cinematic Orchestra - 'Entr'acte'

Kate Hartman on TED

This excellent Ted talk by Kate Hartman, has almost all the things theSlog is interested in: design, glaciers, funnies..

JWC at the DBL

One of two videos from a recent outing with Jonnie Common to the Diving Bell Lounge:

L@tDBL - Jonnie Common - Shogun from Precious Productions on Vimeo.


Jonnie's excellent recent album is listenable and buyable here.
I cemented a rock solid professional reputation by fucking up two takes royally before getting this, still ropey performance, improved endlessly by some delightful cinematography by Extreme Man, Richard. Eg. here is Richard filming himself kitesurfing.

Enjoy, Roy

PS.

I've just read the caption for this video on vimeo, presumably written by Richard or Jolene, with much amusement! If it is Richard, we are clearly regarding each other with similar suspicion, me of him being some kind of superman, and he of me being a potential architect and assassin. One of those accusations is true, and the other is sort of true, see if you can work out which.

Enez live video

Stu put up this film recently from the Enez gig at St. Andrew's in the Square in May. For those that missed it, enjoy!
Roy


Jag tänker så titt from Stuart Macpherson on Vimeo.

Ph.D.

Here's my thesis in a nutshell as provided by the lovely wordle.
Dr. g

Ian Shearer in Other Lives

Unfold

May I recommend the Tru Thoughts Unfold podcast, such as this one? Why, Thanks.
Roy

Receipts from 1976

Receipts from 1976, a photo by Spherical Roy on Flickr.

My dad kept receipts from seemingly the most significant purchases since around 1970. I've uploaded some of the ones that are most interesting to me, seeing as they document things that I have seen or used all my life.
The full set is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/royshearer/sets/72157627348481212/

Roy

Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world

Another great TED talk, this time about algorithms, man/machine interaction, terraforming.. It's got it all! Thanks to Carlo. from Roy.

Cumbrian Cake Criminals Cautioned!

Via Pa Johnson.

Geordie Bees on the web

Ahoy! My mate and loyal Slogger, Dave, is a paid up bee fanatic, and, having persuaded Culturelab at Newcastle Uni to get him some bees and a hive, now has webcams online! Brilliant. I've added the live feed from the front door of the hive to the sidebar of theSlog. Thanks Dave!
Honeybees are of course in danger of dying out, so as well as being an interesting things to do, keeping bees is actually a very socially responsible thing to be doing. There are a few campaigns to save bees, such as this one.

Roybee

Flickr update

Massive photo dump over at flickr from one half of your listeners. December 2010-June 2011.

Inspector Tapehead Duress Code Tour Video, BOSH.

Back in September, just after Duress Code's release I went on tour with Inspector Tapehead, and the tour video is now online, in not one, nor two, but three acts. Count em.

Now, Youtube stats show that for every 30 people that view act 1, 1 switches off after that, and a further 7 don't make it to act 3. So you better buck up folks, as I know readers of theSlog have approximately 50 percent more time on their hands than blogs with better employed readerships..

Duress Code is out on Song, By Toad and available here. We are playing at the Caves, Edinburgh on Friday evening and Brel, Glasgow on Sunday afternoon.

Roy Tapehead, enjoy... we did.

Lack of Entropy

I am listening to Radio Magnetic's alleged jazz show, Entropy, notable in its absence from the feed for about a year. It is good though, so I wish it was on more! Well worth a listen if you're interested in a variety of jazz beyond the limited one which is generally meted out in Glasgow. As myself and I dare say my dBassian colleagues are.
What exactly would it take to get more jazz on Radio Magnetic, beyond the annual excitement of the jazz fest? [NYK would have had this sorted, but we won't go into that].

One of the many enjoyable features of Entropy of course is Andy Watt's rather forgetful/shambolic delivery/technical operation which I'm sure is down to merely the infrequency of his shows!

I can see I've sold this really well, so am going to stop before you change your mind. Entropy is a podcast downloadable here or subscribable here.
Roy

Grampian Mountains

Grampian Mountains: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Tasty new site from Craig..

Roy