Earlier today...

As I write this, it is once again overcast and trying to rain, but earlier today, it looked like this. 

The U.S. political circus....

I'm surprised it took this long for people to get wise to this pompous ass. He has been making a fool of himself for much too long already. And as I keep trying to point out, the whole world is watching this disgusting performance and wondering why.

It is a very unusual selection of candidates competing for their party's choice to run for President, especially among the Republicans. Very few seem to have what it takes to be President, and some of them are pitiful. On the other side, Democrats have a choice between two more experienced candidates, but both of them are old enough to be pensioners. It's an unusual situation.

Spending too much time on Facebook....

Weather like this is my excuse. It's not very nice outside today. It's 46 F and raining.

Speaking of Facebook, I can hardly believe some of the things people say on there. It's like their brains are out to lunch, or closed for the weekend, or something. And hardly anyone seems to be thinking of the fact that it is being seen all over the world. It is like telling the world "I'm a babbling idiot, and I am actually proud of it." Einstein may or may not have said this, but it is worth repeating anyway: "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." 

Something I was reading the other day said we should not sit for long periods because it doesn't let our major muscles in our legs or butt get enough exercise, and so we should stand more and sit less. I have an extra keyboard and mouse so I stacked up a couple of short stools, to get enough height, then placed a board on top, large enough for that extra keyboard and mouse, and tried standing up for a while, as I worked on the computer. It works alright, but it isn't as relaxing as sitting down, of course. Maybe standing at his typewriter worked for Hemingway, but I'm no Hemingway. And I'm already 21 years older than he was when he died. So I will probably continue sitting for most of my writing chores. But it is nice to have a choice.

The following is from  http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/ernest-hemingway-standing-desk.html

In 1954, George Plimpton interviewed Hemingway for the literary journal he co-founded the year before, The Paris Review. The interview came prefaced with a description of the novelist’s writing studio in Cuba:

Ernest Hemingway writes in the bedroom of his house in the Havana suburb of San Francisco de Paula. He has a special workroom prepared for him in a square tower at the southwest corner of the house, but prefers to work in his bedroom, climbing to the tower room only when “characters” drive him up there…
The room is divided into two alcoves by a pair of chest-high bookcases that stand out into the room at right angles from opposite walls….
It is on the top of one of these cluttered bookcases—the one against the wall by the east window and three feet or so from his bed—that Hemingway has his “work desk”—a square foot of cramped area hemmed in by books on one side and on the other by a newspaper-covered heap of papers, manuscripts, and pamphlets. There is just enough space left on top of the bookcase for a typewriter, surmounted by a wooden reading board, five or six pencils, and a chunk of copper ore to weight down papers when the wind blows in from the east window.
A working habit he has had from the beginning, Hemingway stands when he writes. He stands in a pair of his oversized loafers on the worn skin of a lesser kudu—the typewriter and the reading board chest-high opposite him.

Popular Science, a magazine with roots much older than the Paris Review, first began writing about the virtues of standing desks for writers back in 1883. By 1967, they were explaining how to fashion a desk with simple supplies instead of forking over $800 for a commercial model — a hefty sum in the 60s, let alone now. Plywood, saw, hammer, nails, glue, varnish — that’s all you need to build a DIY stand-up desk. Or, as Papa Hemingway did, you could simply  throw your writing machine on the nearest bookcase and get going. As for how to write the great American novel, I’m not sure that Popular Science offers much help. But maybe some advice from Hemingway himself will steer you in the right direction. See Seven Tips From Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction.
For more on the benefits of the standing desk, see this post from the Harvard Business Review.

Signs of Winter, Signs of Spring

First, a sign of Winter, still with us on the hills nearby...

And now for a couple of signs of Spring on its way.....

Flowers sprouting in a neighbor's garden over in the next block...

And a tree beside a neighbor's home across the street, showing signs of Spring.

These were taken with a Fuji SL-1000 at 50X zoom.

 

Linux Mint

I have not used this for a few days, so I'm making sure it is updated and all is well. And speaking of that, updating Linux Mint is a lot faster than Windows. You will be pleasantly surprised, I'm sure. And the history of its ancestors goes back to the first release of Unix on November 3, 1971 by AT&T, so this is not some "fly-by-night" system. It has been around longer than Windows. You should try it.

Image Composite Editor - Doing the impossible....

In a previous blog's comments, we were mentioning Spring, so I stuck the camera out the window, and took two almost-unrelated shots showing the local lawns and greenery here today.

Then, I decided to see if Microsoft Research's Image Composite Editor could put them together...... and surprise, surprise,  - it did! Here's what it looks like.....

 

And here's what that would have looked like, if I had taken ten exposures instead of only the two.....

 

Tonight's sunset

My New Year greetings from Havana....

The greeting card shown above is larger than the original, which is postcard size. To read the radio schedule, please click or tap to enlarge these, or copy and save them.

Xavier Cugat and his orchestra

Marty Gold and his orchestra

Five planets aligned....

Please click to enlarge. This image is the result of two screenshots from Stellarium, spliced into a panorama using Image Composite Editor from Microsoft Research, and there are differences from the original projection, in order to fit everything into one frame, to show all five planets in relation to our Milky Way galaxy.

Today's Desktop Background "Winter Moon"

Tonight's Moon

Views of Mars from its moons Deimos and Phobos

From Deimos

From Phobos

Here's why we call this "The Wet Coast"

It's also why, when I look out the window, I see mostly coastal rainforest. But would I rather live somewhere else in Canada? Not a chance! This is home.

Emco's MoveOnBoot now works in Win-10, 64-bit

Yesterday, on Facebook, Charles Koch complained....

He complained that his money wasn't buying the kind of influence he expected.

I suggested perhaps he ought to be more discriminating in his choices of butt-smoochers. Obviously he and his brother David know how to make money with their money, but they seem lacking in the requisite skills for choosing subservient two-faced lying bastards, of the kind usually found inhabiting the inner sanctums and outer fringes of the Republican party.

But Charles' crocodile tears are falling on unfriendly ground, and his complaints on deaf ears, because we've done our 'homework' and we know just how extensive the network of the Koch brothers' think-tanks and lobbying organizations is, and how anxious they are not to advertise the fact that those reach internationally and into spheres of influence far beyond the core industries which provide their sources of wealth. They don't have enough to do, and too much money to do it with, so they'd like to buy the U.S. Government, just for the hell of it. Does anyone recall seeing any "For Sale" sign for that? 

One of my favorites from David Bowie

His 1973 album Pin Ups consists of covers of other people's work that he admired and it gives us a glimpse of an era.

 

Playboy Mansion: For Sale.....

LOS ANGELES - The Playboy Mansion is up for sale but longtime resident Hugh Heffner wants to stay put.
The West Los Angeles estate, the backdrop of many film shoots and wild parties, was listed on Monday for $200 million.
Playboy Enterprises says the 5-acre property features 29 rooms, a home theatre, wine cellar and a swimming pool with a cave-like grotto where Playboy bunnies partied with celebrities. The mansion also comes with a rare zoo license.

As a condition of the sale, Playboy founder Hefner would get to continue living there as he has since the company bought the mansion 45 years ago for just over $1 million.

Playboy CEO Scott Flanders says the sale would help the company "reinvest in the transformation of our business" while allowing Hefner to continue living there.
______________________________________________________________

The above is the press release about this, and I have to say it's different. Not often do we see someone trying to sell the old homestead while insisting on continuing to live in it themselves afterward.

Playboy and Hugh Hefner its founder have been responsible for a lot of changes in social behavior since the autumn of 1953 when it all began. They've brought us the famous centerfold, and then full frontal nudity, and sparked the porn industry and its videos rather than just stills in a magazine. And now, going full circle, Playboy has announced the end of full nudity in its pages.

The stated purpose of the sale, "to reinvest in the transformation of our business" prompts the question "Into what?" because they've already run the gamut in sex, from if you'll pardon the pun, soup to nuts. I remember the serious looking pipe-smoking younger Hefner doing his multiple instalments of The Playboy Philosophy of Sex, and it wasn't long until the Flower Power Era brought us a whole new set of attitudes about that, with the "Make Love Not War" crowd, and as Will Rogers said of an earlier time, "I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do today." 

I have to wonder if Vivid Entertainment, those masters of the porn video, will be interested in buying a place that's famous for its passionate parties and its celebrity sexcapades and for practically inspiring an industry. And I also have to wonder what Playboy Enterprises could possibly transform itself into, after all it has been already.

Rest in Peace, Ziggy

Are you as distressed by American politics as I am?

I can hardly believe some of the things I'm reading on Facebook lately about what's going on next door in the U.S.A. these days.

As I said on FB recently, if Americans took their religious beliefs as seriously as they take their politics, they would be the most moral, most God-fearing, most saintly people on earth. Instead, they're being misled into misunderstanding their own Constitution's Second Amendment, and more than 30,000 people are being killed each year by firearms. 

I find it difficult to understand why this is allowed to continue, when it seems so obvious that this is not a wise, responsible or sensible course to follow. There are plenty of statistics and plenty of examples of how other nations have solved this issue. And allowing armed goon squads to roam around disturbing the peace and complaining about their legitimate government seems quite stupid.

New release: Stellarium

The planetarium program for our computers has been updated again today.

So let's take it on a test flight to Phobos for a look at Mars, Deimos, and parts of the main galaxy, shall we?

Electronic Music: The Psychedelic Era

Back when, a "good trip" almost always involved "the right music" and the only problem was in defining that term "the right music". One person's meat was another's poison, but generally speaking the range of available audio centered around stuff we all considered to be "really spacey", or "far out" or "twenty feet off the ground and rising", or just "Wow! am I back already?" Usually assisted, of course, with certain "medicinal herbs" and sometimes spices. And before you get into the music, please put on your headphones, so that you can enjoy the full stereo experience. Examples: - 

This last by Isao Tomita starts off with a Children's Corner piece, then a Reverie, and he does Debussy like you've possibly never heard it, but should. And I hope you enjoy these samples of electronic music.

Today's free background wallpaper.....

My thanks to Sherrie on Facebook for this image and the idea for a background. It was inspired by the current American election campaigning Republicans.

French robotic space rock 1976: The Droids

I've still got this record around here somewhere, but I've never seen this video until today.... and maybe that's just as well.....

Here's another from this same album....

 

Electronic, 1977 = Space Art: Ode to Clavius

The Best of Sarah Vaughan

Morning weather....

Dixieland from 1958......

1942 Revisited: Dixieland

Please Note:
These in the 1940s were all on 78 rpm records, one song per side, and these albums consisted of four records in a common cover. The quality of these is very good, and for the "liner notes" you should go onto the Youtube versions, where you can find play lists and other relevant interesting information. These may be old, but they are real "goodies", and I hope you enjoy them.

More from 1941 with Dina Shore and friends

Birth of The Blues with Lena Horne

Another of my favorites....

A music break....

Windows 10: Permanently delete files...

When we use Recycle Bin and "delete" something, it really isn't gone. All that happens is that the location codes for it are removed, but the file itself is still on the drive. To actually remove that file, you need something more. The something more is a program like Eraser, which integrates with Windows, and will render those "deleted" files useless, by your choice of several methods.

Here's what the Settings window looks like....

"How does it work?" you ask. It adds an item to the context menu, so that when there is something in Recycle Bin that you want to make sure will not be recoverable by any of the usual recovery methods for deleted files, you can choose to have it overwritten and made useless, using a choice of several methods. You should read the "How To Geek's" notes about this one...  or you can go to their website for the user's manual.

The previous reminded me of Peter Appleyard......

Marimba ! - Seriously...

This is different. I wish there had been some amplification for the strings, because they seem overpowered at times by the Marimba, but it's nicely done.

Get up and Dance!

Stereo: The early days: Demos

Carmen Cavallaro - his piano and orchestra...

I love George Gershwin's "Summertime". It's a song that haunts me, especially in winter, when I'm feeling "blue", and I find myself trying to whistle it at unexpected moments around here, and trying variations on it. But my favorite pianist is Carmen Cavallaro. He didn't make a habit of pounding on things. He tenderly caressed the keyboard and coaxed wonderful music from it.

Marty Gold and a Moog doing Beatles

Ah, Memory Lane! The recording industry and music went through a transitional stage in the fifties and sixties with the advent of stereo and then electronic music and those were exciting times....

Marty Gold and his Orchestra

Back in the very early days of Stereo, ( yes, I'm that old!) this was one of the LPs we used to test our systems for true stereo separation and range, and that's why Marty made it with such an unlikely combination of instrumentation. It was intended to show what your system could and could not do. And it did. It also annoyed the hell out of the neighbors if you cranked it up.

Here's another of his, after we all got used to our Stereo, and began playing it straight, more or less....

Here's yet another of Marty's magical musical arrangements from back when, and I wish I could find the complete albums....

 

Percy Faith - The Music of Brazil

This is Frank Pourcel.....

Tangos - Frank Pourcel and his Orchestra

Classic Cole Porter

Windows 10: Cleanup

If you have recently re-installed the operating system, as some of us often do while testing Windows, and if you've now got a huge "Windows.old" folder sitting around with a lot of stuff in it that you really aren't going to use, and you'd like to get rid of it, but you're getting the old "Access Denied" when you try to simply delete it, here's a trick..... Just right-click that folder name and choose to Rename it. Give it the name $Recycle.Bin and then you will be able to delete it.

The Sun Also Rises

This one looks a little strange, because it was shot through a fog which gave it a "white-out" look, and so it has been heavily edited to try to compensate for that. It shows the first sunshine on these peaks this morning, at a few minutes after eight a.m.

Weather this morning....

Where my milk comes from - a story you should see.

Some things are worth protecting, and our food supply is one of those, as this story makes clear. I like Avalon Dairy milk because it's certified organic, comes from our last remaining family-owned dairy, and is in real glass bottles - but there's more to it than that. A lot more. So please watch the video.

And now that you know where my milk comes from, let's have a look at where my eggs come from, shall we?

And why am I telling you all this? Just in case you live in the Vancouver area, and want the best milk and eggs you can find. And what could you do with the best milk and eggs you could find? Why, make a world-class eggnog, of course!

In your blender, add the following:-

Half a teaspoon or so of real vanilla extract
Half a handful of extra-fine granulated white sugar (about two tablespoons)
Two extra-large eggs
Two cups homo milk
Add a few sprinkles of nutmeg

Blend at a medium-high speed for about half a minute, pour into a large glass and enjoy! This makes a great breakfast, and it's even good for you.  

Today, It's my Christmas Present.....

And if, after clicking/tapping this image to enlarge it, you should happen to decide that it doesn't look quite "up to par" I have a handy excuse: this is my first attempt at adding text to an image in Linux Mint using the Gimp image-editing program. As you have probably already concluded, I've still got a lot to learn, and I do hope to learn it eventually, so your patience is appreciated.

Some time ago, while we were beginning our testing of Windows 10, and Mighty Microsoft told us we could now "write on the screen" I thought "How Nice!". So today, I'm fumbling around trying to see if I can do anything like that here in Linux Mint. So this, dear reader, is a work in progress. And that's my excuse!

Are we maturing in our New Year revelry ?

If the audible and visible celebrating on New Year's Eve was any indication, then Yes, we are. 

For the first time in years, it didn't sound and look like a war zone around here as midnight approached. And yet, I'm still surprised that a bunch of drunks can put on such a fine display of fireworks, without burning anything down. Obviously, our people are not taking lessons from anyone in Dubai.