Guilt removal by Direct Debit

I donate to a couple of charities via Direct Debit, mainly for the reasons mentioned here: it allows me to assuage my guilt without breaking a sweat or, in the case of most months, actually thinking about it.  (And let me tell you that thatnks to my Catholic upbringing I have a highly developed sense of guilt.)  It does annoy me that Oxfam send the majority of my donation back to me in the form of marketing bumpf, and the discovery that they are now phoning people up makes it even worse.  Should I receive such a call they are nearly guaranteed an increase in my donation, mainly with the vain hope that it will cover the cost of hiring a telemarketing company.  I think Adrian has blogged about Oxfam’s marketing habits before, ending with the question, is there an amount of money you can give above which they stop asking for more?  I’m wondering if Gordon Brown reached it.

Lightbox JS

Not sure how I managed to miss this, but Lightbox JS looks like a nice way of integrating photos into a site. If most of the photos I show weren’t hosted on flickr, I’d probably use it here.

Rebecca Heyne

I went out last night.  I know, on a school night as well.  Town was surprisingly busy: Kyla and I couldn’t work out whether this was a reaction to having to do Mother’s Day things on the weekend so people thought they were owed a few drinks, or whether everyone put off celebrating Mother’s Day until the Monday, hence avoiding the rush.  Anyway, we went to the Bun Shop, where there was an evening of acoustic singer-songwriter type stuff, though with a jazzy theme.  The first couple of acts were nothing special, but the third, Rebecca Heyne, was very impressive.  Backed by a couple of guitarists (one of whom happens to live down my street), she had a belter of a voice and some well-written, melodic songs.  That link is to her myspace page, where you can check out some of her music.

DIFRWEAR

RFID-blocking wallets from DIFRWEAR (d’you see what they did there?) I don’t think this is really necessary; the RFID enabled ski-passes that are now being used in the Alps were blocked by having pretty much any electronic equipment (phone, mp3 player etc.) in the same pocket. In fact with the explosion in personal mp3 player ownership I wonder how many of these RFID chips will ever signal correctly.

Skiing in Les Menuires

No updates for a few days because I’ve been falling on my arse in the French Alps for a week. (I used the “post-to-the-future” option in WordPress to give y’all a few morsels while I was away.) I’m getting better at this whole “dicks on sticks” malarkey, though I still have an urge to try being a “gay on a tray”; I gave one of the guys a hand carrying his board, and he looked at me and said, “You know, holding that, you look ever-so-slightly cooler.”

Most of this holiday was spent trying to hold the umpteen different facets of a parallel turn in my head without falling over during the actual execution of one. One the way there were a couple of impressive sites; firstly the Couloirs of Courchevel, a series of black runs accessible from Saulire. Here’s a photo looking down the spine of rock one must traverse to reach the runs themselves; there was no chance I was getting any closer than this.

Secondly, here’s the panorama from the Sommet des Pistes in Val Thorens (well, strictly it’s in the unofficial fourth valley of the Three Valleys resort):

Breath-taking stuff, particularly the un-bashed red run it was necessary to take to get down from there!

Chili beer

This was a misguided pre-Christmas purchase. After a friend once bought me some chilli-flavoured cordial, this year I thought I’d return the favour and give him Chili Beer when we met up for New Year’s Eve, after I had spotted it for sale in the ever-wonderful Bacchanalia down on Mill Road.

Of course, I forgot it. And now I’m stuck with it. Not that I’m not tempted to try it. I like chilli and I like beer, so maybe their vectors add up in this bottle to bring me that much closer to happiness. Alternatively, it might well be fucking rank. This could be Schrodinger’s beer, its taste an unknown, locked unobservable in a cage of clear glass and worryingly cheaply printed label.

Don’t invite me to a party at your house, I will bring this and I will leave it there (and probably drink all your nice stuff). This could be Casting The Runes for boozehounds.

Stevie videos

Bit of a video round-up post, kick started by this post over on Music Thing. Tom then went on to spot a few Stevie Wonder videos over on You Tube, kicking off with Superstition, and moving onto As (apparently the keen of eye can spot Herbie Hancock on a Fender Rhodes right at the end, but you’ve got to be quick!) and then moving onto quite a few more, including Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing. I’ve always wondered what the backing singers are singing at the end, I’ve always sung “Don’t be ashamed of it,” but in the video that is obviously wrong. A quick google says that the answer is apparently “chevere,” variously meaning “cool” or “groovy/great.”

Success for the Alex Harris Band

I joked about the fifth Beatle effect when I left the AHB, but I just heard from Russ that they’ve made it through to the final of the Cambridge Band Competition!  Just reading that site, I’m pretty fucked off to note that the final is on the same night as a Casa gig, so it’s unlikely I’ll get to go.  Damn it, that would have rocked!  Good luck guys, I’m sure you’ll kick a lot of arse.

Bruichladdich

Pongy whisky rocks. How many other food stuffs include a pronounciation guide in the packaging? Bruichladdich (brook-laddy) is non chill-filtered (a process I was unaware of prior to reading Complicity) and bloody lovely. I’m hardly a whisky connoisseur though, I can’t do a blind taste test and tell you what was what, or even from which region. However I find it’s difficult to learn as I buy a bottle and it usually lasts for about six months, so by the time I get a replacement it is difficult to compare the taste to my memory of the previous bottle. The one good chance I had was in my college bar, which carried about four different malts plus three different sorts of Glenmorangie, but as I was a poor student at the time I couldn’t afford to conduct the experiment. To be brutally honest, half the time I’m not even certain how to pronounce the name of the whiskies I see in bars; my favourite whisky is either OH-ban or o-BAHn, and one day I’ll check which is correct. Until then, I’m sticking to Jura.

The mentality of trumpeters

An excerpt from the Casa email list:

Diccon: I just bought a steel guitar. Finally an instrument that does more damage to doors than doors do to it.
Joe (perc.): see timps. way ahead of you…
Andy (trumpet): Well, ever since I heard about Joshua I’ve been working on trying to demolish walls with my trumpeting… If only I could play louder and higher…

That’ll explain that ringing in the ears I always get after standing near Andy in gigs.