Monday 19 March 2012

2 new tunes: CASIOM.T.B and WIlliam Gerard

William Gerard & CAS10 MTB: Its nice to have you home again at last .mp3
and
 Cas10 MTB & William Gerard: Oh My Dear God She.mp3

for more info read this:
http://www.floppyrecords.co.uk/cas10-mtb-oh-my-dear-god-she-mp3/
and
http://www.floppyrecords.co.uk/william-gerard-cas10-mtb-its-nice-to-have-you-home-again-at-last-mp3/

Monday 12 March 2012

120312 Spotified or Radio 6'd, not sure

Continuing  the debate as to whether to stop paying  for Spotify, I just can't decide. This weekend is a very good example of why it is difficult.

On  Friday evening  we were listening to the unbelievably good Tom Ravenscroft show, which has a couple more days before its taken off line. The thing  is that its difficult to keep up  with what you  are listening  too, often the radio can't be bothered to say, now the website, and if he does speak it can easily be a series of vowels and consonants that often make little sense: Inigo Ugarteburu Aeraberan being  a particularly good case in  point. Even now i am not sure if i am correct, bu this may have been a brilliant tune.

So, on  saturday night i found the track lise for the show and decided that the closest thing  i could find to what i had written down the night before (i had written 'beringi el berengar' about 3 minutes after he had said it as by then a  second or even third track had been played and i had no idea what he was referring  to.

Yes, i do sit there with a note pad to write down things we listen to and talk about.

Anyway, staring  at the set list  of fridays show i decided that Casiokids Kaskaden, Ben Butler & Mousepad was what i had liked, and tried to find it in  Spotify - and couldn't. Though i did find Casiokids by Kaskaden but thats a different thing. (And who knew Bernard BUtler was doing  interesting  things with Mousepad, AND as a big big fan of my casio and what can be got out of it i liked the idea of the tune Casiokids. But it wasn't that. So i wondered down through the set list, thinking  that was where i had been listening.


And thats when i found Sugar Minott Ghetto Youths. But i dodn't play that. What caught my eye was Sugar Minott Exit Music. Surely no?! But yes, digging  deeper into Spotify it turns out that there is an album called Radiodread, what a fantastic name. And what a fantastic album, well mainly anyway. According  to wiki Radiodread 'is a 2006 album by the Easy Star All-Stars (on  backing it seems), a collaboration of reggae and ska artists', so its not as varied as i had originally hoped (i had hoped it was completely different artists playing  any Radiohead song, when actually it turns out its OK Computer). But still worth getting  and listening  too. Actually, its just brilliant.

And they have an earler album called Dub  side of the Moon! Just makes me laugh even saying  that. Got to hear that too.

Anyway, i have to go back and continue relistening  to Tom Ravenscroft's show, i am beginning  to think the songs i am after are:
Inigo Ugarteburu — Aeraberan
A Giant Dog — Trash Can USA
Kromestar — Wooo
Groundislava — Creeper Shit
Trans Upper Egypt — Cleopatra
or maybe it was the The Haxan Cloak — Untitled - which i think is a 20 minute mix.
i dont know. More work needed.

So, the result is i need radio 6 and spotify. I need spotify to find the bands i hear on  radio 6, and to branch out to find more.


Whoops, sorry forgot another song that got played: The Beach Boys — Feel Flows. Reading  about that on  wiki too. Its surprising  late, 1971, but a lovely tune. I dont like like the Beach Boys, i bought Brian Wilson's Smile, and liked it a lot, yet somehow it feels wrong. But maybe Surfs up  is the album to actually listen too. Just a surprise i suppose.

DOSBox on Ubuntu ( and then Android!)

My son wants to play more computer games on  my computer. We have been talking  about getting  him a Raspberry Pi, i guess because there is nothing  like torturing  a child  by getting  them sort of what they want but making  them work for it - like programing their own games. What am i thinking  of? Its just cruel. We'll see.

In  the meantime, as Wine seems to be massive problems with Steam/Half Life 1 & 2,  in  a no sound and or no game sot of a way. I thougth that at least i should be able to get Doom 2 running.

Which considering  the Half Life failure of the last few weeks, went OK. I installed DOSBox (via Ubuntu program installer, so no problem there.)

Then i wandered the internet trying  to work out what to do next. Until i found this: OK lost the address. But the gist was.
  1. Make a folder in your home/username folder called dos, and inside that a folder called c 
  2. move the Doom2 files (from my old pc installation files circa 1998!) into the c folder:   home/username/dos/c/doom2
  3. Unhide your hidden Files in  your File Browser and look for .dosbox, and the file inside called something  like dosbox-0.73.conf, and open it.
  4. Then at the bottom, last line add::
[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.

mount c /home/USERNAME/dos/c
c:
# cd Doom2
# DOOM2.EXE
#exit
# cd Genesys
# GENECYST.EXE

If you  un-comment out:

cd Doom2
DOOM2.EXE
exit

Then when you  start DOSBox, not only will it mount your fake c drive, but it will also start doom and, when you  close doom, exit dosbox.

Or, as i did, open  Menu Editor, add a new Item, say DOSBox Doom, with these properties: dosbox -c "cd Doom2" -c "DOOM2.EXE" -c "exit" i now have a item in  my Games menu that starts Doom.

Now i just have to persuade him that Doom 2 is great.

Sort of Update: i got so excited by this that i downloaded the free app aDosBox for my phone, having  copied the Doom2 fodler onto my phone - and it worked! Well almost, cant actually seem to work out how to control the game, but both doom and genecyst load.

So, back to Sour Dough and starting your own starter

I stopped making  sour dough bread a couple of years ago. Whcih i felt bad about, i dont like to kill things that are struggling  with life, that being  my sour dough starter that i got from a friend in  the Borders and who had, it turn, got his from France and could easily have been hundreds of years old. And i let it die, or worse threw it down the sink. Maybe it still lives somewhere in  the sewage pipes of Olde Edinburgh.

But, i was the only one who ate it, the kids were not impressed by it even though it makes wonderful toast. And bread and butter are not great for anyones waistline. Sadly, bread and butter ( and cheese and wine and salami and grapes) pretty well cover my favourite foods. I do love a picnic

But i decided a few weeks ago to start making  bread again - sour dough at that.

But i had no started so i read up  about making  my own here over at SoughDourHome. And generally by halfing  the measurements and kind of following  the instructions, and then really not botering  to follow the instructions - i made asour dough starter! And it works!

I have learnt to put in  less water, as it separates and smells rancid. I have learnt to feed it with teaspoons of whatever flour i can get my hands on - rye is especially good, but so is wholemeal.

And i do cold whatchamacallit - leaving  the bread to rise - overnight. It does make for very sour sour dough bread. (which i don't mind but is proving  even more unpopular. Oh, is the word 'proving' not rise?

So, now i am experimenting  with feeding  the sour dough with less water, to make it thicker, putting  more into the flour, but going  for a shorter rise, in  the hopes that this makes it less sour.

We shall see.

Update: Stopped Proving (first )rise after 8 hours and put in  cold oven set to 180 (fan oven) with a dish of water in  the bottom  of the oven. It hadn't risen a lot - maybe doubled in  size, but it held it together in  the oven and 25 minutes later i pulled it out and it looked lovely. This evening  both children asked for some, and then, miracle of miracles, aske for more. It is slightly less sour than my overnight risers. I probably should have cooked it longer.