Sunday 31 October 2010

A bit messed up right now I suppose.

I recently did one of those online tests. Answer a few questions and get your score.

This particular test was "How autistic are you?". The average score is 15 for Women, and 17 for Men. Or was that 13 for Women and 15 for Men. Aspergers would be about 31. High functioning autism about 35.

I scored 27, which doesn't surprise me at all. I've never been particularly comfortable in social situations.  I tend to be obsessive about things - Like collecting the letters of the alphabet from photographs of the earth's surface for example! - And although I'm clever, I find it difficult to articulate my ideas.

So I'm happy to apply the label, "A bit autistic" to myself. That's not why this post is about being messed up.

I think I'm also rather depressed at the moment. Just generally got a bit of a black cloud over my thoughts. Nothing major. Just a constant dark filter that's affecting the way I think and feel.

The reasons for this, if there are any, are too complex to go into right now as it's very late and  I have to work in a few hours. But just thought I'd share, y'know.

Monday 25 October 2010

Meme alert! - My life as a soundtrack...

This came to me via a musical bloke I've not seen for a while.

They're going to make a film of my life, and I have to provide the music.

Here's how it works...

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc) 2. Put it on shuffle 3. Press play 4. For every question, type the song that's playing 5.When you go to a new question, press the next button 6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool... just type it in. It's oddly satisfying when you get a good match purely at random.
The categories are (in chronological order)

Opening Credits, Birth, Waking Up, First Day At School, Falling In Love, Losing Virginity, Fight Song, Prom, Last Day of School, First Day at Work, Beginning of Adult Life, Mental Breakdown, Obligatory Flashback, Getting Back Together, Wedding, Birth of Child, Final Battle, Death Scene, Funeral Song, End Credits.

So here goes nothing...

Opening Credits: She's got medals - David Bowie
Birth: Walking with Jesus - Spiritualised (Ratcliffe sessions)
Waking Up: Lure of the Space Goddess - Delia Derbyshire
First Day At School: Living in a boom time - Tom Robinson
Falling In Love: I saw her standing there - The Beatles
Losing Virginity: A Sheltered life - Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
Fight Song: Chaper 4. Why there is almost certainly no God - The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
Prom: Numbers 1 to 4 - Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Last Day of School: Head (Remix) - Julian Cope
First Day at Work: Black Star - Radiohead
Beginning of Adult Life: Take me, I'm yours - Squeeze
Mental Breakdown: Strangers when we meet - The Smithereens
Obligatory Flashback: Havana - Bongwater
Getting Back Together: Sarah - Ween
Wedding: Prelude and Yodel - Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Birth of Child: Pow R Toc H - Pink Floyd
Final Battle: Wrecking Ball - Gillian Welch
Death Scene: I am a man of constant sorrow - The Soggy Bottom Boys
Funeral Song: Furious - Throwing Muses
End Credits: Toast and Marmalade for tea - Tin Tin

Some of it seems almost apt.

Saturday 23 October 2010

Croeso Y Cymru

Been to Wales. Stayed in a cottage. Went to a cove. Visited an island and collected shells. Drove home. Went to bed.

My Mum and Dad have been staying in this particular cottage for years and years. I've been there quite a few times myself. Finding it on Google Earth was surprisingly difficult, but I managed in the end.

They'd been there for a good few days, but I had work, as did Bren, and in the end we could only get away for the one night. In the afternoon, we went to a place called Borth-Y-Gest, which was gorgeous.




You know what? I cant' be arsed with doing this right now. Will post as is and finish it later. Night night.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Better give you some answers then...

First of all, the quiz...


People obviously found this hard. 
One second was long enough to give people a good idea of what they were hearing, without it being long enough to nail it. I think 2 second clips would have been a doddle. Half second clips would be almost impossible. One second tantalized and teased in a way that no other time could.

Congratulations to Peter, who out of the billions of people on this planet, was unique in correctly identifying any of these.



#
Artist
Title
Identified by




1
Julian Cope
Soul Desert

2
The Sundays
A certain Someone

3
Throwing Muses
Dizzy

4
Blancmange
The Day before you came

5
Cornershop
Brimful of asha

6
Stranglers
Strange Little Girl
Peter
7
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Perpetuum Mobile

8
The Fall
Victoria

9
Talking heads
Flowers (nothing but)

10
Billy Bragg
Levi Stubbs' Tears
Peter
11
The La's
There she goes

12
REM
Be mine

13
Stone Roses
I am the resurrection

14
Wedding Present
California

15
XTC
Senses working overtime
Peter
16
Bonzo Dog Band
Jollity Farm

17
Portishead
Glory Box
Peter
18
Half Man Half Biscuit
Bad losers on yahoo chess

19
The Beatles
Fixing a hole

20
House of Love
The Beatles and the Stones

21
Radiohead
Fake plastic trees

22
Pixies
Here comes your man
Peter
23
Leonard Cohen
Lady Midnight

24
Waterboys
December

25
The Doors
When the music's over

26
Pink Floyd
Time

27
Hawkwind
Assault and Battery

28
Kate Bush
King of the mountain

29
Elvis Costello
Watching the Detectives

30
David Bowie
Memory of a free festival


Some of these are a bit obscure. Some are not well chosen samples, but some I think you'll wonder how you didn't recognise them.

Hope you enjoyed it anyway.

Thursday 7 October 2010

Moel Famau



(click for bigger size. same applies for all the images below too)

Let's start at the beginning shall we? A week or two ago, seeing the dawn from the top of Moel Famau was mentioned in conversation, along with "How cool would that be?"

I wanted to go a week or so ago, but Bren had other committments, so we settled on this morning instead.

As the day approached I anxiously checked the weather forecast, and yesterday evening, the forecast for Mold reckoned the night would be clear, and the day would be sunny.

Good omens!

And so we got up at 4.30 4.40 this morning with a struggle, intending to leave the house at around 5am.

And so it was that at 5.30 am, we set off for Flintshire.

Moel Famau is the tallest of the Clywyd hills. It stands at around 1,800 feet tall, and offers a fine view in all directions. You can see it from most of wirral, where it looks like a sort of volcano with a pimple on the top. Here's how it looks from Google Earth.



A late start and a wrong turn meant that by the time we arrived at around 6.20, the sky was starting to lighten in the East. We parked in the car park, put our boots on, and started walking.

Moel Famau is a popular and straightforward climb. There is a well defined path running up to the summit from the car park, and the strengthening light meant we were able to find our way without trouble. Driving in the dark for the previous hour had sharpened our night vision, so the first few photos I took were far darker than what we could see with our eyes.



As we got towards the top, we met a man coming down with a camera and tripod. And here's me thinking we were the only ones! I wonder what kind of pictures he managed to take? As you can see, the sky is much lighter. We'd missed the dawn by maybe half an hour.



But we didn't really go up to see the dawn at all. The dawn is just the sky gradually turning from black to blue to red. It's like the bit after sunset where the sky gets duller, only backwards.

No, we weren't there to see the dawn. We were there to see the sunrise!

The view was amazing. Thick mists were rolling across the fields below. At first the summit was clear, but we found ourselves surrounded by thin cloud that fogged up Brenda's lens, and softened our view of the surrounding countryside. And as this happened, the sun rose above the horizon.

We drank cocoa and I smoked a cigarette. But mainly, we took photographs. Lots of photographs.

Sun and mist gave rise to something called a brocken spectre. Something I've never seen with my own eyes before. The good thing about them is that everyone gets one for themselves.

The Brocken Spectre appears when a low sun is behind a climber who is looking downwards into mist from a ridge or peak. The "spectre" is the shadowy figure - the glow and rings are of course a glory centered directly opposite the sun at the antisolar point. But how is the ghostly figure produced? It is no more than the shadow of the climber projected forward through the mist. All shadows converge towards the antisolar point where the glory also shines.






But enough words.



















This is just a brief selection of the better ones I took at the top.

Here are some more from on the way down.











Today was a day I will remember for the rest of my life.

For the photographically minded, the photographs above were taken using a Sony Cybershot 7.2 Mp camera, using either "Easy" or "Auto-adjustment" settings. With the exception of the letterbox format picture at the top of this post, which is a composite created using autostitch, and cropped using gimp, the photographs have not been modified or processed in any way.

Up and away...

We're off up a mountain to see the dawn in.

Watch this space...

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Up and away!

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

30 second music quiz, take 2!

Bit of an exercise in cognition, this.

Presumably other people apart from the knowledgeable "Peter" took the time to listen to the quiz, but I got no responses.

I don't suppose people that come here because they've stumbled upon my alphabet page are going to be into the same music as me. I should bleeding well hope not anyway!

But what I've done is insert a 1000 milisecond silence between each fragment. I reckon that because they're not all running into each other, it should be a bit easier.

At the moment, the last couple of tracks aren't showing up, and I've managed to mess up the formatting on the table below. It's now very late, and I will sort it out later.

Edit: Now the last couple of tracks are showing up, all by themselves.




#

Artist

Title

Identified by

1




2




3




4




5




6

The Stranglers

Strange Little Girl

Peter

7




8




9




10

Billy Bragg

Levi Stubbs' Tears

Peter

11




12




13




14


15

XTC

Senses Working Overtime

Peter

16




17

Portishead

Glory Box

Peter

18




19




20




21




22

The Pixies

Here Comes your Man

Peter

23




24




25




26




27




28




29