things

things are bad...

mad men is right now on bbc4, but in the 1st 11 minutes it froze up about 5 times, each time lasting a couple or perhaps 3 seconds... tiny bits of dialogue lost that in a lesser program i might not mind, but in mad men?

i had to turn it off...

also my internet has been a bit odd recently, i put it down to the cheap wireless router i bought, and it still could be that, but it's still a bit rubbish even when i plug in directly, still plugged to the router, so it could just be that...

(still using that still word)

but if my TV is being weird too then maybe it's virgin?

anyway, i'll catch mad men tomorrow on catchup whilst i'm not working over @ hammersmith - it being halfterm...

and in other news, the mobile phone money came through, and the RAM has been bought and installed and i can see no clear evidence that anything's improved...

it's always the way, when i installed the new ROM in my phone i wanted to see an immediate improvement but it just seemed the same...

i trust in both cases that it is better...

my studio is coming on... slowly but surely... A from the SJP's (bass player) is coming round next week to have a look at my rhodes... possibly fix it... another lovely man in the tradition of MM who's been round several times to look at the rhodes... the moog.. etc.

and i'm developing a longing for a Tetra, a small box of heaven... like my mopho but 4 notes at once... chords possible...

& i love my cat

clock again

ok, so it's a little noisy...

i'm not sure i'll be able to sleep with it in here, (being the living room) being as the doors have to be open for balthazara to move freely between the outside world... her food... & my bed...

not that she has to have access to my bed, but i do find it comforting, if sometimes a pain... a warm, cat shaped presence curled against me on the other side of the duvet, an excited cat waking me up when she comes in from the outside...

hmm...?

of course emivore is allergic to her, so nights when she's here balthazara is kept out of the bedroom anyway...

but that's not the issue right now...

anyway, tonight i'm going to try it out, leave it on all night... we'll see how it goes... or we'll hear how...

i do love the thing... it has a certain grace, when, every minute, it's arm does one rotation, picking up a ball at the bottom and putting it at the top, also opening a gate to let some balls go through to the bottom, regulating the balls for a reason i don't yet know...

i currently love looking at it, and i love the different way it presents the time to me...

it's possible the novelty will wear off, it's possible i'll get into the habit of taking out the batteries @ night and forgetting to put them back in in the morning...

anything's possible... but i love it right now...

finsihed BSG season 3 tonight, an orgy of viewing which was partly inspired by the marking i need to get on with... a perverse nod towards getting those episodes out of my way, so i can concentrate on the marking...

i think the novel i'm thinking of is also partly to do with not marking...

anyway, BSG season 3 was great, although it ended with a dodgy version of all along the watch tower, but nobody's perfect...

ok bed x

back, but sick - a chapter ends

ok...

so it's been awhile since i last posted...

i'm currently coasting over the top of an illness, E had it, i now have it...

did i tell you about E?

well, she's mine, we're together these days...

i know that we're gonna be together you & me,
for more than a rhyme or two you're time belongs to me...

as john martyn says it...

my more recent computer has died, it's the on switch, it's gone, i'm going to have to open her up and look inside and trigger the on in a different way i suppose...

so i'm back to this computer, which has spent a month of so under my dining table...

it was busy downloading something and must have been writing to the disk at the moment when there was a power cut...

so that drive is dead, i'm running this from my dual-boot ubuntu...

the 1st time i've tried it since that day (at least a month, maybe 2... 3?)

i twitter these days, i can be found here: http://twitter.com/robbielongcat

i can tweet from my phone, for that matter i can blog from my phone also.. my phone which only came with one lead, USB to it... that one lead which you need to connect the charger to the phone and which you need to connect the phone to a computer...

great, only one crucial lead, and i've lost that lead... so my phone gradually dying until i can get another lead (or find that one - i was connecting the phone to E's computer on sunday and when i got home i didn't have the lead...)

sunday, yes sunday,

so if you look at my twitter page you'll see the 2nd last, (at the moment of writing) tweet being about eating lamb... in fact - i'm going to copy the whole tweet - hang on:

"Finally had the roast lamb i've wanted... the holy grail... almost as though it's the end of one chapter & the start of another x with her x"

it was several months ago (august 15th), i was in brighton, on DMT & meow, and i saw some lamb being prepared, or maybe just waiting to be prepared...

i think that that was the event that triggered this current trip down carnivorous lane, and it was specifically lamb that i wanted...

i passed through salmon, (with pregnant K-wo, spski, and EQ wierdly enough)
chicken (with felinity, her G & dad)
pork with ham over it, (with felinity & dad)
chicken (with E)
chicken (with E)

before having roast lamb with E in a pub in east finchley on sunday...

so in a way i'm choosing to see this eating of lamb as closing the period that began with the brighton DMT/meow time, just over 3 months...

also - i just heard through felinities twitter that honey is not long from this world, dad rang her, she may not make it to christmas, i don't know the full story...

very sad, & it makes me all the more glad to have balthazara...

anyway, there you go, long splooge of a post...

youtube with uncle colin

once more i'm the last one up, about 3 glasses of sherry in me this time, chatting to uncle colin with his wealth of music memories...

after awhile i picked up the laptop and we started watching youtube video's of the artists he was talking about, and you know how long that can take, one minute you're watching del shannon, then it's the everly brothers, sammy davis juniour, neil diamond, hank williams, gillian welch (that was from me)...

uncle colin being of a generation who don't understand computers and the internet... but with his love of music from a certain period i think the internet would suit him down to the ground...

if he could get used to it...

of course it's quite possible he won't ever get into the internet...

but then maybe by next christmas he'll be commenting on the facebook fan page of my cat balthazara...

maybe...

x

Yr3wk24 longcat with m

just to record waking up today...

dinah up and getting ready to leave @ 8:30am... she brings me a tea and wakes me with kisses at exactly the moment it's ready to drink...

then more kisses a little later just before she leaves...

drifting in and out of sleep now... balthazara wakes me up around 9:50am and we commune for awhile, i find something on the back of her neck, some thing like a tiny scab, just in that place where mum's pick up kittens, the place cats are programmed to accept...

so for awhile i'm stroking her trying to find this small patch of skin there and she's purring really loudly, she settles into the valley of the duvet between my spooning legs and my torso...

pretty much awake now my final alarm goes off @ 10:20am and i clamber out bed...

Yr3wk24 longcat with marco
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

this being sunday's improvisation, i'm going over to SLP in south london to meet uncle T and plan out tomorrow's recording shortly x

home again

a little while ago, dinah changed the sheets on the bed as she does each week, and balthazara chose those freshly cleaned sheets on the bed to vomit on...

so she's been banned from the bedroom, except at night when we're in there...

and it's been breaking my heart...

that bedroom and that cat belong together...

then yesterday dinah agreed that if i was to deal with all aspects of a possible future balthazara vomit in the bedroom scenario then she could go back to unaccompanied access to the bedroom...

contented cat x

bites

woke up kind of blue and at some point in the day balthazara came to see me and we had a love-in, always just the ticket...

a little later than this i was lying on the bed with my hand outstretched, reading the new scientist, balthazara was near my hand...

she was in a slightly different mood from the lovely, purring, stroking balthazara, for a little while she was lying half on and half off my hand and she took to licking my hand, then her own fur, then my hand,

i knew what was coming, i smooshed her, (dinah's word) meaning i touched her belly, and she continued to lick me, but suddenly her back legs kicked in and she was kicking at my hand, then biting my hand, then biting and kicking at once, i left the hand there and we did this a few times, drifting from one state to the other...

she bit really hard, not breaking the skin (that fleshy part of the hand between the thumb and the wrist) but stinging quite a bit...

i love that cat x

spring indeed!

adverts, indian food, horror, poo

i don't know, adverts, as if i get enough people looking at this blog to make any money out of it... i may well change my mind because it may just irritate me no end seeing the google ads at the top of these posts, this being my home page... but it's there for now, public service ads until they judge what kind of blog this is and assess what kind of ads to put there...

if it makes you sick please put a note in the comments before you leave me forever...

in other news i woke up today (saturday) with a hangover from the small amount of cheap white wine bought in a bar last night and i had no dinah to look after me and make me tea, she being away for the weekend, so i went back to bed, rising around 18:30, feeling more human...

went over to jai krishna around 10ish to eat of their delicious fair, dinah not a fan of indian food and it's not so close anymore so i hardly go at all these days, i was phoning them to make sure they were still open and i ordered my food over the phone to speed it up because they were close to closing...

"masala dosa with no peas" and once i said "no peas" she knew who i was and sounded pleased... always nice...

i just saw 30 days of night and it was pretty great, fantastic turn from danny huston as head vampire and josh hartnet wasn't half bad...

improvising tomorrow - untless i can't sleep in which case i'll do it tonight on headphones, yawning though now @ 1:30 am which is a good sign...

and i'm making a bid for balthazara shitting outside, the litter tray has been outside the backdoor since yesterday and although there were light showers today i changed the litter and hopefully it won't rain until tomorrow now, i don't really have a solution to the litter tray being outside in the rain, but i'm determined to leave it out there for a few days and certainly not to bring it back in...

we were trying this when she went missing a few weeks ago, and when she was back we relented and brought it in the flat again, but not this time, some kind of shelter out there, not that she's used it in the 36 hours or so it's been out there, she's probably already using the garden... either that or she's shitting in the corner of my room i can't get too because it's stuff mountain again, i'll probably find it all in a few days once the smell alerts me to it...

anyway, bed x

kat flap

on sunday floopy was round with his tools and he put in a cat flap for us....

balthazara has been very wary of it...

day by day since then she's got closer to it, sniffing it... and this morning just after the dawn project i saw her pushing it open with her nose, just a bit, but enough to show she could easily push it all the way..

then tonight dinah brought my attention to the sound of the catflap and whether balthazara had just gone out... we had a look and it became clear she really was outside and she'd used the cat flap...

(this makes me very happy)

(her poos have been getting much bigger)

and then over on the other side of the river, my sister felinity has moved in the last few days into a new flat with her G, i'm popping over there next wednesday to check it out...

all this while our own flat is gradually nearing completion...

and week 53 of the dawn project this morning looked just like week 1 had, beams of refracted sunlight searing across the screen...

stupid early mornings abound but life is good x

7777 almost WOWIEZOWIE

yesterday i had a look and it said 7776... so i excitedly went to see who it could be and by the time i got to where it tells me it said 7777!

wowy zowy

(more on that phrase later)

but it seems that since i was clever and sorted out our little network in this flat the counter had been counting me...

so my 7777th visitor was in fact... MYSELF...

how dull, so i'm going back and counting how many me's it's seen and the 7777th person will look like the 7777+however many me's person...

but being as it was me i will give you a little info on our little residence right now:

i have unpacked the vinyl...

we have a sofa, in fact those 2 statements should be reversed because having a sofa is a huge thing for us, and unpacking the vinyl, whilst big, isn't that big,

also balthazara loves the sofa, she lies on the back bit, on the arms, curls on her favourite cushion on a seat of it...

it's near to our dining table (at the moment) and whilst we were eating last night she leapt up to sit upright on one of the arms and she was right there at our level, while we ate...

but the vinyl, 3 things:

it was in several boxes, and now my room has a little more space free... which is wierd and great... immensely boxy as it has been in here,

listening to old music is such a joy - i put on seal's 1st album yesterday while unpacking the vinyl and it brings all kinds of warm/dusty emotions to the fore...

wowie zowie... which is one particular album i found in amongst my vinyl that i've never listened to, it's full title is:

THE WORLD OF PROGRESSIVE MUSIC - 42 MINUTES 32 SECONDS OF WOWIE ZOWIE

i'm going to listen to it at some point in the next few days i'll tell you that for nothing x

cats & reading

we now have a dining table, that went up with floopy's help on tuesday, me & dinah have been making the chairs... 2 out of 4 being all we need for now... ikea...

no sofa yet but i think we're near to sealing the deal on a nice 2-seater in crouchend...

so the dining table implied changes and we obeyed the changes... being a shifting of a book case... and then i found myself moving a part of box mountain... but why am i telling you this? -

i think i can find a way to set up our computers in this flat with the network switch (not a router) so that they can all have internet... i think... -

and i dawn projected this morning and it was very cold... i regretted not having my battery powered gloves with me it was that cold, afterwards i took the same route i would normally have taken even though floopy and T aren't there today (i borrowed landlordE's camera) to feed cleo, and then i sat for half an hour or so with her on my lap reading...

then home and straight back to bed, waking around 1 with dinah bringing me tea & toast, then a little bit more reading, this time with balthazara,

oh that's right, that's why i was telling you about the boxes... they are mostly boxes of books and moving them around i managed to pick out a few i could read now, being in a bookdesert as i was... and the book i'm now reading (from the bowels of box mountain) is called the lowlife and it's great...

off to E's shortly to do this week's improvisation, i've traded the landlord who had a beautiful grand piano for a landlord who has many, many interesting keyboard instruments... happy days x

marbles

well, 2nd night back in the smoke and i can't sleep, probably the smoking...

since i posted that marble run video i've taken an interest in these 2 videos that this character has posted of his marble machines, also this marble adding machine...

i'm slightly obsessed with filming again since my folks got me a new camera for christmas, the dawn project videoblog below was shot on it and it's very groovy, it has this thing called stitch assist which shows you the last picture you took just to the left of the picture you're about to take, then a bit of software that will take this series of pictures and turn it into a panarama:



this being where i took some of the 2nd shots this morning (well, yesterday morning) for the dawn project...

given a tripod and a good high place, i could get great results...

balthazara is being lovely, i haven't yet told the story of her coming to this flat but i will, i think she's close to being settled enough to let her outside every now and again, but that could be wishful thinking... it's only been a week and my intention was to leave it 3 weeks, i'm used to dealing with her poo now...

& i've got my eye on a new soundcard fairly soon, a small windfall is allowing that to happen, or will allow it to happen, but my room is the furthest from being ready, the ceiling has yet to be painted let alone the whole room being papered and painted so i'm reluctant to set stuff up, although i can't stop, the weekly improvisation must push on (saturday now for this week's, when i wake up)...

oh well, i think i can feel sleepyness... i'll call this a night, oh but just to say, at some point in the next week my numbers will be @ 7777 and i'll be doing my customary thing with the location of my 7777th visitor x

irrepressible

i don't know why, although i have an idea...

i am in a very happy mood... slightly nervy happy... we just had the cat meeting, ending in deadlock, 3 of us thinking she should come with me & dinah and 3 (all of whom were there) thinking she should stay,

in retrospect the 2 who are the negative reason for leaving were never going to change their minds but possibly T, she might... and it's just possible i might...

unlikely but i could wake up one day and say - you know what, it's better for balthazara that she stays...

however if it stays as it is, the fact that i've largely paid for her up to now could (and some would say should) give our side more weight,

G who the other day told me i could take her said today that he'd abstain...

anyway, we'll be meeting again about it and who knows what will happen...

i spoke to our future landlord yesterday at last and he confirmed that we can move in on the 1st and that the rent is the figure we thought it was and this alone is enough to make me dance up and down, i think i've been delaying it because of this scary meeting and now that's done, even though the matter is still in the balance, it's showing it's face,

it's dancing about with joy face...

but as i'm happy because i can move my lovely sister felinity has to move out of her home for a few days while they sort out something... and balthazara... what will become of her?

oh, strange days x

yr2wk22 rhodes & guitar with P + DawnProjectVideoblog

i so cannot wait to get out of this house...

currently there's a custody battle for my balthazara going on, certain people in this house - one of whom does love balthazara very much - but the other 2 are the 2 who form the negative reason we're leaving - they don't think i should take balthazara with me, essentially, of the 7 people that live here, 4 of us agree that she should come come with me & dinah but there's a meeting tomorrow night with the others... around 9 o'clock, do send me love for balthazara at that time (GMT) if you can x

in other news though it looks like googlevideo have resolved their issues, they've been rubbish for a couple of weeks and T's improvisation with me last week has never worked on googlevideo which is why i posted it from youtube instead,

basically D's improvisation with me a couple of weeks ago started off alright but stopped working after a few days, it's almost 25 minutes long so way too long for youtube and i didn't know what to do but it started working again about a week later, by which time i'd uploaded T's improvisation with me, which as i say never worked, but at under 9 minutes youtube could deal with it,

so it was with some trepidation that i uploaded P's improvisation with me on friday, coming in @ over 15 minutes so beyond youtube & even facebook, i was more than a little relieved just now when it finally worked... and there it sits at the top of this post...

he came round on friday and he's a lovely player, we had a couple of go's at the improvisation, the 1st one never quite worked, a very real risk when playing with someone for the 1st time, but this 2nd one worked out really well i think...

i've also posted another dawnproject videoblog, this one encompassing the last 3 weeks, ever since the clocks changed..:

bitten

our sleep cycle is way behind these days, and tomorrow is going to be a little hard because of that... but no more hard than it's been for awhile...

but once again this morning i woke after midday and i'd really intended to be out and cycling by that time...

i made it out the house with a cheese sandwich and a miniroll in me to go see T and work on his string arrangements, the sky was grey so i wore jeans and a black T-shirt, by the time i got down there the sun had come out and it was a glorious day, me in my all black outfit, with my various different bites chafing away at me...

bites... i hate them...

the other night i was hard at work marking when i should have been over @ T & W(floopy)shaman's i heard the tell-tale sound of a mosquito in here so i covered up my skin with all sorts of clothes on that hot night and got back to work... stopping after awhile to trap it in a glass and take it out... but not before it had bitten me a few times...

then i became aware that balthazara was entertaining a few visitors (hence the deflea last night) and every time i touch her i get bitten on my hand (i have 4 flea bites on my fingers so far)...

anyway, that's behind me now i hope, i'm just baring the marks and trying not to itch...

so i settled down to work on T's strings and it was productive, i'm really looking forward to the string session which'll be fairly soon, so much an area i want to grow in, string arranging, brass arranging... all that..

it all took longer than planned but it always does, i came home, still only a few chocolate biscuits in me in addition to when i'd set off...

popped over to W(floopy)shaman's to pick up the camera for the dawn project and chatted awhile with him then returned to find dinah had prepared the most delicious meal - her version of someone else's leak crumble... oh it is truly wonderful...

just about shaking off the ill-humour that i was under when i got in, hunger i guess it was...

and i've just realised something odd about my dawn project, i'm almost half way through the tape that i thought would last me the whole year and i've just found that the early weeks i was only filming for 30 seconds, somehow i slipped into filming whole minutes a month or so back... which is pointless if the early bits are only half that, so it's back to 30 second filming tomorrow morning... sorry, i guess it's a bit boring to talk about this technicality but what goes on inside my brain is what i write about...

x

deflea

2nd time this summer,

she's looking at me now with suspicion but she is letting me stroke her...

tomorrow she'll love me again...

x

comparison between youtube & googlevideo

the audio and the video not matching in the youtube version does irritate me... so i uploaded exactly the same file to googlevideo and it works perfectly...

?

me & balthazara playing piano + dawn project 7

the middle 4 minutes of this weeks improvisation... the audio and the video not sitting together right... which is irritating, not my end i don't think, youtube being typically rubbish, but that's where the audience is...

oh to have this vain notion that i want to be popular on youtube and for youtube to be so shaky...

oh well,

watched a program about robyn hitchcock last night on BBC4 and i was delighted to see Gillian Welch & David Rawlings being interviewed... robyn hitchcock was interesting but not always to my taste... anyway the program finished and i'd finished my wine by now, dinah asleep curled up against me and to my surprise there was a BBC4 session featuring gillian welch & david rawlings straight after...

i was in heaven, they did a song i'd never heard before - title something like "what you made" - and a killer version of revelator...

heaven on a stick x

week 45 longcat piano, voice & cat improvisation

from yesterday morning, with balthazara joining me x