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

Yr3wk28 moog, rhodes, voice

so, black christmas has just finished on channel 4 + 1, i haven't been up before 1:30 pm for 4 days and i'm now in the family homestead in blewbury,

everyone else went to bed at least 2 hours ago...

sleep cycle mayhem tomorrow...

i recorded this improvisation before i came down today (well, yesterday now),

i was expecting to edit the video once me & dinah return to london on sunday but it was just too tempting, an itch i had to scratch, so i did a very straightforward edit and left it rendering, with dinah uploading it to dailymotion from my computer later on...

i'm sipping sherry and about to go to bed... enjoy, happy christmas...

Yr3wk28 moog, rhodes, voice
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

x

Yr3wk27 piano, guitar & 2 voices

Yr3wk27 piano, guitar & 2 voices
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

from thursday, my last day of work in 2008, also me & dinah's 3rd boobaversary,

playing with the wonderful gareth mitchell x

the beatles

i was in the post office today, queueing, and a post office employee came up to me to suggest i open a cash ISA...

i declined,

about 3 minutes later the man in front of me, scottish, smelling a little of alcohol & in his 60's, started talking to me about how they all want your money... how he's never trusted banks... how he's glad he's single and hasn't got a mortgage...

this carries on for awhile, until he's almost at the front of the queue, whereupon he says goodbye to me and wishes me a happy christmas...

after a short pause he turns back to me and turns back his coat to reveal a beatles badge on his jacket lapel...

"the beatles forever" he says... tells me he saw them perform in glasgow on the 3rd of december 1965, it was the opening gig of their last world tour, it cost him 50p, (10 bob) and he went with "a bird" called "nancy fairy", and as soon as the curtains started to open, as soon as that big ludwig bass drum came into view all the women started screaming and ran to the front of the crowd...

at this, he was called away to perform whatever task he needed to do in the post office x

Yr3wk26 hammond, bass & drums improvisation

Yr3wk26 hammond, bass & drums improvisation
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

nothing but improvisations huh?

no posts other than the weekly video for the last 3 weeks...

what's going on?

AND - i recently timed how long this blog takes to load and it's daft... 45 seconds or so...

i really need a bit of house keeping going on... i wander if it's slower now than before i shifted to blogger new way...?

this improvisation i recorded on wednesday night @ a recording for T's tunes x

Yr3wk25 just piano

Yr3wk25 just piano
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

recorded on saturday 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

rendering

so at 3 pm i start rendering the improvisation,

this is yesterday and the improvisation was recorded the day before - sunday - with M on the bass...

uncle T is coming round later and i quickly realise that the render is going to take too long...

T due @ 7 and the render claiming to take 6 hours,

i can't run cubase whilst i'm rendering from vegas...

so i decide to set it up and render it on my old computer, a little slower but it can just be chugging along in the background while me & T work...

so i transfer over the 10 Gb reqcuired, then remember that i need to install these 2 things, then remember that the video from my new camera needs a different codec, than remember that the logo isn't in the folder for this week so i have to find it, then i have to get a new version of divx...

anyway, what with all this toing and froing i don't start rendering until 5pm...

i pop out to see floopy & T and then come back for uncle T, we don't use cubase in the end, just talking primarily about our recording on thursday night...

dinah gets home around 9, T goes by 11ish...

dinah is in bed by midnight, i stay up for another couple of hours...

the render over on the other computer is saying it needs 9 & a half hours, which means it's going to finish @ 2:30 am... almost 12 hours since i started it on the other computer...

i go to bed @ 2 having done some work on speak&spell which i'll tell you all about later...

the improvisation is now uploading x