Music is the message- part 1

I experienced two extremes of music yesterday, Rap and Gospel. To read this with a backing track, shift/click here.

The Rap writing was with a class of year 6 children and two great guys called Philip and Marcus (otherwise known as PhillieBusta and MaXximu$, as I found out later). The kids were at the stage of honing their lyrics & recording their Raps. In between sessions, I briefly engaged with them about what it was all about, what it achieved and how they engaged with the participants with "issues". Philip was recording them in small Groups, he had already laid down the backing music and done rough cuts for them to take home and practice with (some had, a lot hadn't.) He mentioned that at ages 10-11 the lyrics were not particularly insightful in most cases but getting them to think of something to say was not the biggest challenge. Meanwhile, upstairs in the Library, Marcus was preparing them to speak to the rhythm of the beat, helping them refine their phrasing so that it flowed and they didn't garble their words. Meanwhile, the rest of the class was being supervised by a world-weary supply teacher, Mr. Chalk.

Eventually, the 90 minutes was up and the group got together for a debrief. After not much cajoling, both Philip and Marcus gave a brief performance. Marcus then turned to The Greyster to see if I had one, but fortunately, we had ran out of time!

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity but came away surprised that what little I thought I knew about Rapping was essentially all there is to it- in your face urban poetry to a funky beat, onamatapaeic, rhythm & phrasing, some great, some less so. The guys were brilliant with the children and even Mr. Chalk said what a great change this made for him.

What about all the hand movements? visual emphasis, looking cool, ritualistic. I also noticed that the pair of them spoke refined Yorkshire in conversation and something urban gangsta when performing. It sounded better though!

The second post-industrial age

This is an interesting graph. The link between now (far right) and the late Carboniferous period is interesting. It tends to make me think that the great mankind guilt trip on climate change is both spherical and plural.

Hat tip YogSothoth in the GGPG comments.

Intermission...

Why not visit our refreshment counter in the foyer?

This song always reminds me of working in Abingdon in 1979. It must have been on the Wireless then.

Bright sparks

It is good to work for a Company with a social conscience. Staff are given the opportunity to get involved with local community projects, large and small. In recent years we have renovated community centres, enhanced school playgrounds, been patient listeners to young readers and freely given our time & money to many worthy causes. I’m currently involved with a scheme known as SPARK* which brings the Arts to primary age children in interesting ways. Here is how the Corporate Website puts it…

“Spark is our flagship art education programme in the UK and Republic of Ireland. This exciting and innovative three-year programme will link theatres with local schools and encourage children to take part in and succeed through stimulating arts activities.

Working together with West Yorkshire Playhouse arts development team which will co-ordinate the programme, we want to raise the aspirations of children from disadvantaged communities and give them new opportunities to enjoy the arts and broaden their horizons.

Spark embraces a wide range of visual and performing art forms from street dance to gospel singing and batik to sculpture.

The programme is aimed at key stage two (KS2) school children and will involve around 50 schools and 6,000 children a year. Seven regional theatres will each work with six schools in its local area where there is traditionally little access to the arts. Local freelance artists will be employed to work with four classes in each school to undertake the art sessions.

We hope that the relationships formed between theatres, schools and artists will last beyond the life of the Spark so school children nationwide can continue to benefit from these valuable art opportunities.”

As members of staff, we have been encouraged to take the opportunity to get involved, see how it all works and hopefully contribute in a meaningful way. The events are professionally run so we aren’t thrown in the deep end. After looking at a extensive timetable of what was on, I decided to pick three events, one from each of the three schools taking part locally. When I looked at the range of events, I also decided to choose things out of my comfort zone somewhat, namely- Music (unspecified), Jazz Dance and…Rap Writing. Today is week four of a five week course so the kids should be getting good at it. I don’t expect myself to be any good, but you never know!

So, in the words of the Fast Show Country Bumpkin, “Today I mostly be writin’ rap…”

Gosh, a posting milestone...

Blogger told me that I had reached 366 posts yesterday, a milestone for a leap year. For one a day, that is excellent. the trouble is that I've been blogging for two and a half years!

this has helped my impetus recently though...

Personality Disorders

Your Personality Cluster is Extraverted Thinking

You are: Organized and logical - a master at puzzles Competitive in almost any arena of life Objective when necessary, but passionate about what you truly love Intolerant of excuses and incompetence

What's Your Personality Cluster?

Wow, four questions, and wallop! They could have spelt extroverted properly though.

I'm a Myers/Briggs ESTP but I'm not massively competitive.

Hat tip to longrider

Stress Down Day

Today is Stress Down Day, a chance to bring your slippers to work.

I've got my Homers on, much cooler than this twonk is wearng.

We must be doing the Yorkshire version. The national Samaritans site suggests £2 but we were only mugged for a pound.

(Short arms, deep pockets).

Me and Mrs Jones...

It is funny how a sight, a sound or a smell can trigger a flood of old memories. I had one of these moments recently and will reflect on it.

When I was a nipper (probably aged 7-9 or so), I used to be looked after by a child minder called Mrs. Jones. She was a lovely old lady, a Widow, presumably in her 60s. She loved children and was also a keen church-goer.

She lived in a terraced house in a run-down part of Newcastle known as Elswick. Her street was called Mill Lane and the houses didn't have front gardens, notional or otherwise. I can't particularly remember starting or finishing with Mrs. Jones, I imagine it started as occasional Saturdays then grew to after-school minding.

She lived about the same distance away from our house as my school (a 2d bus ride) but in the opposite direction so I would pay 3d on the bus and get off on the Westgate Road and then cross over to knock on her door. In those days, children were able to catch buses and have enough sense to cross the road properly. (They probably do have now as well, but we wrap them up in too much cotton wool for that...)

Mrs. Jones was a friendly, no nonsense woman who looked like Viz's Mrs. Brady but certainly had all her marbles. She always wore a hat when she went out and never dressed down. She may have had a few whiskers on her chin but she shone with an inner happiness. Her house was typical old lady fare- she had a front room that was never used, lots of lovely old furniture and a large upright piano which may have had integral candlesticks. The house had a distinctive smell- not unpleasant but a slightly odd mixture of camphor, lavender and lemon curd. She also had lots of interesting things for children to play with, some toys, others just old nick-nacks. Occasionally, she dug out a box that had a musical treasure of hers, something called a Melodica which was a cross between a harmonica and a piano-accordion. It was two tone green and cream bakelite with a mouthpiece to blow into and two octaves of keyboard-style buttons to play. I think it was meant to be pronounced as a Mel1-lod-icah but Mrs. Jones called it a Mello-diikah. She would play hymns on her piano, singing along, whilst I would try to pick out the melody on the melodica, or occasionally play the tamborine.

Whilst she was religious, she didn't try to preach or judge, preferring to let us choose whether we wanted to look at her scripture books or do something else. I don't specifically recall what religion she was, so it was probably C of E. She occasionally went to church meetings and I tagged along, sometimes joining in with youth activities, other times just playing in the nearby streets with other kids.

I recall developing an adverse reaction to ecclesiastical architecture along the way, intensely disliking Norman arched doors. It wasn't the shape I disliked, it was the association of them with the overly-religious happy-clappies. Whilst Mrs. Jones was very balanced about not pushing God in your face, other in her congregation were particularly annoying. Indeed, I recall going to one evening session wher a board had a number of Toffee allsorts attached to it which were given out as prizes to children for answering bible questions. However, by the third question, I realised that I didn't have much of a chance, because whilst I knew that it had been Joshua at the battle of Jherico, I had no idea who Isiah begat, or the names of Joseph's obscure brothers... (I had a flashback to this one day when watching the Simpsons when Ned Flanders did something similar to his Sons Rod and Tod).

I also committed my first sin with Mrs. Jones- she had a number of metal coin tubes (the sort with springs in) and I used to enjoy counting the money. One day, greed got the better of me and I rumbled a few. I was quickly found out by my Mum of course and she took me back to apologise on the doorstep in Mill Lane. I was expecting her to be very cross but she was very relaxed about it and pleased that I had leaned a lesson. Being a good christian, she had no trouble forgiving me and she never mentioned it again.

Many years later, I was passing Mill Lane on the Bus and I noticed that most of the street had been demolished, apart from one house- hers. However, it was boarded up so she no longer lived there. I enquired at the housing department in the Civic Centre in an effort to track her downbut they told me that they could not reveal personal details.

Another year or two later, I received a phone call out of the blue from Mrs. Jones. I arranged to go and visit her in her nice new flat further down the hill and she looked exactly the same to me despite the decade that had passed. The other thing that was the same was the smell- immediately reminiscent of her original house. She still made her own lemon curd- and still used mothballs!

Whilst I immediately recognised all of her furniture, One loss had been the piano, it was just too big. Instead, she had a Bontempi reed organ. Unfortunately, she played it like a piano and it sounded a bit rough as all of the expression was wasted, just making it sound disjointed.

I had been delighted to see her again and was surprised that my Mum and Dad were somewhat indifferent about the whole business. On reflection I realised that whilst she was a special person in my childhood, to them she had just been a babysitter.

And what was it that triggered these recollections recently? I can't remember!!!

Springtime for Hitler...

We've been watching The Producers over several evenings with timeslip on the Sky+ box post-BBT (boy bed time). We'd thought about going to see it on tour but hadn't quite got our finger out. Anyway, I checked availability at Manchester Palace online and was pleased to see there were still dates available with Peter Kay playing the part of the inept Director.

Anyway, I suggested a date, and Karen checked the calendar. "No good, we are going to see Five Gays named Moe that day".

A bit of a Freudian slip, although the 2005 Producers is much more Gay than the 1968 version...

Five Guys is touring again, by the way. Karen got into Jive via Joe Jackson and it is a cracking, if somewhat contrived show. (Although I find the original Louis Jordan songs a bit blander on the old recordings). Is you is or is you aint my baby sang slowly in tight close harmony is a showstopper song and gives me goosebumps!

A word with God...

I recently renewed my MOT at a local garage in Bradford. It was run by Pakistanis and looked like any other small Garage I have ever been in apart from one thing. (Two, if you count that all the mechanics had beards!)

In the place of girlie calendars, there was a large chart on the wall, listing Muslim adherance to Dua.

Dua are supplications, personal prayers said to suit particular situations, something also common in many other religions. The chart was mostly concerned with ritual related to prayer time and ablution but despite having spent a year in Saudi Arabia I can't recall which prayer is which from the Arabic names. However, there were a couple that struck me as amusing. I haven't found any direct copies of the chart online (the one I saw had been printed in Mumbai), I may be remembering them wrongly (I only had a couple of minutes to look at it) and some of it may have been down to translation (the chart was also in Arabic and Hindi) but there was one related to entering a bus (thanking god for not being able to control the vehicle without his help) and another about barking dogs (and being protected from the foul devils).

All religion troubles me somewhat. I'm something of an Agnosic; I'm happy to accept a grand architect of the universe but I'm pretty sure s/he doesn't give a tinkers cuss about supplication and it is a conceit of humanity to think that the supreme being pays any attention to the goings on here on earth in Rome, Jerusalem or Mecca, regarding us with anything higher than polite indifference.

By all means, believe in your own invisible friend but please don't force-feed it to the gullible.

Bye Bye Watermelon, hello Blinky?

Via a comment on Guido, news that Colin Challen MP will be standing down in order to save the planet is delighting the Grey household. (Well me, Karen & David are indifferent...) A Labour insider confided to me last week that the constituency party were not at all happy with the Ed Balls imposition but now Colin will not have to face the humiliation of being de-selected.

Blinky is the cruel but suitably amusing nickname for Ed Balls, our prospective parliamentary candidate, after being throughly mauled by Andrew (Brillo Pad) Neil on the Telly.

With Lord Levy getting arrested again, we'll be opening the Port tonight but we'll save the Champagne for when the Mr. Bigs get their collars well and truly felt.

Downtown Morley...

Queen Street yesterday teatime. It is quiet. Too quiet...

View from a window...

This is the view from the top floor of where I work on the outskirts of Bradford.

Not my view- I'm on the Ground Floor!

Hole in the ground...

Bernard Cribbins would be proud.

Personal space

I've been at work this morning, moving user PC network connections from older wiring onto new stuff. It is fairly straight-forward to do and we get into a bit of a routine. It goes like this:

-Power up the PC
-Log in via an administrator account and check/adjust the network settings
-Connect the PC to the new outlets using a suitable length pre-cut cable
-Log on again with a normal account and make sure network OK
-Power down PC

(Much of the older wiring only supported 10 Mbps (10 Meg) and now they can get 100 Meg or a Gig but as the network hasn't changed it doesn't make too much difference yet.)

Of course, as PCs take a while to boot up & log in, we will generally do a desk cluster at a time, moving between PCs to maximise efficiency. However, when it comes to running cables under desks, every crawl under is a voyage of discovery. In amongst the mess of cables can be found all sorts of trinkets that have fallen from above or simply been moved out of the way, along with empty plastic cups, crisp wrappers and the odd penny.

Now I'm very aware that a work desk is a very personal space and that people generally like it they way they have left it so I am careful to minimise disturbance. However, that doesn't stop me having a good gander at the stuff on view whilst waiting as it says a lot about the person. Photos of loved ones, awards, nick-nacks, cartoons and headlines are revealing, as is the style of desktop stuff, from minimalist squared off pad to piled up teenage shit-pit.

The other thing that constantly surprises me is how many desktops with PC mice that don't work properly, generally due to having a mucky ball. Are they experts at keyboard shortcuts, I wonder? Many older PCs take ridiculous lengths of time to boot up, do they go and have a cup of tea whilst the technology struggles slowly towards the logon screen?

Often specialised departments will have trade magazines lying around, such as Brand Aware or Accountancy Age. It is interesting to see what gets marketeers or accountants het up in these mags- generally the same sort of things that the IT and Communications Mags complain about, i.e. excessive and poorly thought out regulation.

At least at the weekend there is plenty of room in the car park...

Listmania

Twelve irrational personal dislikes (or are they?) In no particular order...

• Pointy shoes- (really pointy ones, cockroach killers)
• Slacks with straps that go under the feet to hold them down
• White socks on men, or any socks with sandals on men
• Body disfigurement- tattoos, nose rings etc (Earrings OK though)
• shoulder straps for bras showing beside shoulder straps for tops
• Exposed midriff pot bellies
• Trainers with tongues bigger than £5 notes
• Dancing styles that involve pointing one foot then another forwards and inwards repeatedly ad nauseum
• People who want to convince me that their invisible friend is the only righteous one
• Shops that drop their shutters eight minutes before their advertised closing time
• Enforced Sunday observance
• Royal Mail Sorting offices that aren't open when it is convenient to visit them

Regarding the Royal Mail, they tracked down my missing lamps and I managed to collect them this morning. They were suitably apologetic but joked that it was partially my fault for having such a common name! (There are quite a lot of Grays in Morley, but not spelt like me).

Mistaken identity...

I went to pick up a parcel from the Post Office today. (I've been expecting my energy efficient light bulbs- oops- lamps). However, they couldn't find it. After some thought, they reckoned that they had accidentally given it to the other Ian Grey who had been in the day before.

My first reaction was that "I'm the only Grey in this village". Then I remembered that I knew an Iain Gray who had been on the radio last Summer. There again, the names Ian and Grey aren't by any means unique.

I'm back at the Post office tomorrow. Will they have sorted it out?

Ice Cubes and sore bums

David had a school trip to the Ice Cube today, held in Leeds Millennium Square, otherwise known as the world's most expensive patio, to quote a well known local politician. (You can see it here via webcam).

He had been once a couple of years ago and hated it so we didn't really know what today's outcome would be.

As it turned out, he loved it, although he fell down a fair bit and now knows what a Coccyx is.

"Dad, can we go to that ice rink in Bradford...?"

Wall of sound

No, nothing to do with Phil Spector, but an interesting experience at work yesterday.

I have a fascination with large scale engineering. You can tell I'm a bit sad because I took a photo of the Leeds Grand Theatre Mains Intake which I noticed was 3 phase 2000 Amps, a somewhat substantial 1.4 Megawatts.

Our building has a large standby generator that cuts in if the mains fails. However, last November, it didn't start during a night-time failure and 30 minutes or so later the batteries were pancaked on the Computer Room power supplies. Needless to say, total power loss in a data centre is a long-winded process to recover from.

(Apparently, if the National grid shut down for some reason, it would take a week to get it all back online which is a rather un-nerving prospect).

After the incident, we had a couple of generator tests but they were somewhat contrived as they were manual transfers onto partial load. Since then, I have been waiting for a real power cut to get confidence in the system.

Anyway, yesterday the mains dipped then went out. Our IT department held its collective breath and five seconds later, the lights came back on again. A quick look out of the window and we could see that the Generator was running- a large cloud of white smoke was billowing out of the exhaust, the new Pope had been chosen. The white smoke then turned into black soot and it eventually cleared once the engine warmed up. Indeed, someone from IT was walking across the car park as it started and had been engulfed in fug...

However, the mains appeared to have come on again in surrounding buildings but our generator was still running. I asked our maintenance people what load it was pulling but they said they couldn't make any sense of the readings. I persuaded them to let me have a look so armed with torch and ear defenders, we ventured into the generator house. The Genny is containerised and wasn't particularly noisy- until they opened the inspection door. That was when the wall of sound hit me, the roar of a large diesel running the building power.

I could see why they were confused as the voltmeter showed 0 volts. However, the Ammeter showed 700 Amps. There were various knobs to read different settings of voltage and current but I didn't really want to tinker with it as a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I pronounced that it was certainly running the building and they alerted the maintainer to check out whether there was a problem.

Later that day, the power flicked again and then the generator turned itself off a couple of minutes later. The maintainers offered the opinion that when the power recovered the first time, it was out of specification (probably by being supplied from another zone) but when it was switched back again the system correctly went back to normal.

I was interested to know what load the system was actually providing but it appeared to be a two phase generator (the ammeter controls were only labelled L1 and L2) and with a reading of zero volts it was hard to speculate. I made a token attempt to look at the rating plate on the alternator but the cacophany of noise kept me away. I am relieved, though, that the system can switch full load as we have a UPS test coming up next month.

Finally, as a treat to technophiles, I attach photos of the Leeds Grand mains intake panel and their emergency sprinkler system pump. Because I can!

I've seen the light!

A few weeks ago, I saw an article on Energy Saving lamps by Seth Godin, a Marketing Guru who is a prolific writer and presenter. In the blog, he questioned why so few American households had even one compact fluorescent lamp in their house.

(Notice that I call them Lamps rather than light bulbs. At a very early age, I had it drummed into me by older and wiser theatre electricians that bulbs were things you planted in the garden).

Read the article, then return if the whimsy takes you and read on... (shift + click keeps this window open whilst you are gone)

The humble light bulb (oops, lamp) works by the heating effect of a current. The filament reaches a high enough temperature to glow but not high enough to melt. Lamps have one main purpose in life- to emit visible light. Your average 100 Watt lamp is surprisingly Cak at this, converting the power used to roughly 97.5% heat, 2.5% light. The efficacy of a lamp is expressed in a rating known as lumens per watt and a typical figure for a domestic lamp is about 15. (A lumen is a standardised unit of measurement that replaces the more quaint candle-based measurements in the sam e way that car engine ratings are in DIN kW rather than horse-power). Without getting bogged down in maths, it can be seen that the better the lumens per watt rating, the more efficient the lamp.

Conventional lamps with tungsten filaments can get up to roughly 25 lumens per watt, particularly if they use Tungsten-Halogen technology. Some specialised lamps such as photo-floods can emit much more than this, but at the expense of lamp life.

Standard fluorescent tubes are much more efficient than regular lamps because they work in a different way. A mercury vapour arc is struck down the length of the tube in the same way as a neon tube, however the arc emits invisible ultra-violet light and the coatings on the inside of the tube fluoresce, i.e. convert the UV light to visible light. Florry tubes are typically 80 lumens/watt. So why don't we fill our houses with them?

Well, the simple answer is that we hate them outside of the kitchen or workshop, because their light is somewhat contradictory- whilst suitably soft regarding shadows, the colour rendering has traditionally been hideous and they make a cozy living room look bleak and institutional.

So, Seth Godin, this is one very big reason why the Merkins don't stampede towards compact fluorescents- for the same reason that they wouldn't put a twin 5' tube in their lounge, it ain't nice.

Compact fluorescents are the same principle as their big brother tubes but with electronics to regulate them rather than a simple choke/starter circuit that most florry fittings have included.

Another nuisance with florrys is that they can't be dimmed in the conventional sense. It isn't impossible- indeed the Newcastle City Hall had dimmable tubes in the ceiling laylights with a sophisticated push-button Thorn control. You had to use a special tube which was basically the same but it also had a metallic strip that linked the two end caps in order to earth it better. With ordinary tubes fitted, the arc would spiral around the electrodes inside the tube giving a visible swirly effect with the lamps on check. It also needed special control gear which kept the electrode heaters on at all brightness levels. The dimmer was somewhat of a "partial success" as when it reached about 40% it would chatter the relays and make the lights flicker to full somewhat alarmingly, an effect familiar to thousands of Geordie Concert-goers during the 70s.

The other downer with a compact florry is the length of time it takes to reach full brightness- particularly awkward on hall stairs where you can end up going upstairs in gloom and it isn't a decent level until after you actually need it any more.

The other downer with the lamps is that they are somewhat longer than a regular lamp, so their optical centres are generally not aligned properly in many light fittings, making them look a bit silly.

Sometimes you want a soft light source, sometimes a sharp one, compact florrys don't do sharp, sorry. Morley Town Hall suffers from this.with the large impressive electroliers which have lost their sparkle by having been relamped with inferior units. When Newcastle Odeon was open, the Chief would rather relamp the foyer fittings with long life clear regular lamps than succomb to energy efficiency because with florrys in, they lost their sparkle and looked extremely lacklustre.

Having condemned them, now let me praise them. All of our lamps at home are compact ones, with the exception of two bedroom pendant fittings and a large lounge uplighter (which are all on dimmers). Their colour rendering and warm-up times have improved dramatically in recent years and the range is much wider, although some brands are better than others. However, the comparable brightness figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt and I am yet to be convinced that a 23W compact is really equivalent to a 150W general lighting service filament lamp and domestically, 23W is as bit as it gets in B&Q.

However, I have found a source of 30W spiral lamps (in both daylight and warm white) which will be great for the kitchen table (jigsaws anyone?). There is even an 80W version available that will be great for the Garage. A couple of our home lamps are slow or have a very odd pinkish-tinge whilst warming up and one of them even turns itself off randomly so it is time to buy a few more.