Music

On one of my days off I decided to re-organise our lounge; I had a pair of Sony TL-140 speakers which are... inconvenient. They’re big, they make lots of noise, and they don’t sound horrible, which is fine, so far as it goes, but at the better part of a metre and a half tall they require a chunk of floor space to stand up, and that floor space is at a premium; moreover, since we don’t really crank music up especially loud in there (unless Maire is having other musos around) it seems a bit of a waste, really.

So away they went, and I rolled in a pair of nice wee bookshelf speakers from downstairs that were both criminally underused, and, frankly, way too small for the room they were in. They fit, on the other hand, perfectly in the dining room.

The most interesting thing about the whole shuffle, though, is not the way the room is now infinitely more pleasant and usable, but in order to see that the speakers were OK for the room I sat down and listened to a few albums the whole way through, which is something I haven’t done for a while, for the most part; in the era of mix-and-matching piles of FLACs, and listening to music while working or playing games or whatnot, it’s been a long time since I’ve just sat in a room, queued up a CD, and listened the whole way through, and man it was nice. Really, really nice.

“Shall we if there’s good music on the radio?”

“No. I want Nightwish.”

“I see. Which Nightwish song do you want?”

“The one where he is running away because they think he has done something wrong.”

Daddy’s little metalhead.

Also, Up. Ada likes it. I found it verging on the harrowing. Good, you understand, but, my, that’s a pile of emotive in a kid’s movie.

Donuts, Espressoholic Style

Friday night was The Veils at the stupidly-named San Francisco Bathhouse, but more of that later; first I come to praise the re-opened Espressoholic and their delicious parcels of deep-fried dough.

Many moons ago I used to spend plenty of evenings in the old Espressoholic, and then I started visiting it again; shortly thereafter, it closed in a rather public fashion after the landlord refused to renew their lease. The appearance of a new cafe with the same menu and some of the same kitchen staff was NOT AT ALL SUSPICIOUS, of course; I have been waiting to see the new ‘holic re-open in Cuba Street for some time, and finally got a chance to swing by. It is largely the same place; the food is mostly the same, the prices are the same. It’s all pretty good, really. There are even some improvements: the toilets are a great deal less terrifying, for example.

There’s one delicious addition: the donuts. They’re done kind of like churros; chunks of dough deep-fried and coated with deliciousness, and served with maple syrup and marscapone. The first time I tried them I got four small ones, and on Friday I got a pair that were, as I later estimated for the folks at the Southern Cross on Saturday, about a handful each.

...how much I love Joan Jett?

No, really.

(Not your everyday 50 year old)

The oh-so-awesome HTFU:

On a more serious note (and Relevant to my Interests):

“The more it rains the more fucking Kiwis show up!”

…it’s quite good, in a muzaky kind of way.

What is it? People have been mucking about with Microsoft’s SongSmith, mostly in a mocking kind of way, to see what it does with real songs; most of them are indeed abominations, but Eye of the Tiger is king of neat as a lounge track.

If the videos available on YouTube are any kind of guide, SongSmith has only two main modes, though: lounge ballads and techno remixes of the sort that end up being played in aerobics classes, with the odd bluegrass reinterpretation, Hayseed Dixie style.

(Actually, that’s not entirely fair; I could almost believe this was an original.)

Anyone for Satan’s Awkward Gropings?

…the future!

On the one hand Hotel California was one of the great bits of 70s rock. On the other hand, “twin-neck guitar instrumental” must surely sum up so many vices of an era.