Quoth the Raven

I had heard of Sons and Daughters from my mates and had Love the Cup on my hard drive but hadn't given it its proper attention. Then today I was doing the vacuuming and put S&D on on the iPod and had a rocking time. For some reason it made me think of dave, knowing that he has a penchant for British alternative music. So dave, I had a look through your last.fm and saw no sign of S&D in your charts so I thought I would upload some for your enjoyment introduce you to them. Maybe you won't dig it, but just maybe you will. Give it a go and see what you think. I love it!

They're a Scottish band, from Glasgow.

The shows are in town so I took Freya along last Sunday while Hamish was having his nap and Lorraine was busy trying to meet her deadline. It was a lot of fun but very expensive. Here's a nice shot I got of Freya coming out of the bouncy place.

I ordered my new kilt 6 weeks ago it it arrived today. I got it from Geoffrey Tailors in Glasgow. As I already have a Campbell kilt, I didn't really want to get another derivative of that tartan, but what does one do? I couldn't really get another clan tartan so I was looking at some of the weird and wonderful 21st Century kilts that Geoffrey Tailor does; I actually liked some of the tweed style ones, but in the end I decided that a tartan would be better. I wear my kilt every day to work and now that the tourist season has started I'm getting a lot of comments from the visitors about how great it is to see a Scotsman wearing the kilt to work every day. I think the effect wouldn't have been quite the same had I not decided on a tartan kilt. But which one?

The brochure I'd picked up in January had a nice brown-looking tartan that both I and Lorraine liked. So I called them about it and it turns out that it isn't brown at all, but grey. Seemingly the large, well-known kilt makers in the country all have their own design of tartan. The grey one is part of Geoffrey Tailors own design called Thistle. They do a grey one, a claret one, midnight blue one or two others. They were all nice, but we decided that the grey would be the most versatile and I wouldn't have to add several shirts and hose to the order. If I'd gone for the claret, which was the one I liked best after the grey, I'm not sure I'd have gotten away with all the green and blue shirts and hose that I have to go with my Campbell kilt.

It's not actually completely greyscale tones. There is a subtle line of green through it which you can make out in the photos and it makes all the difference. They did them also with a line of pink, and it actually looked really nice, but it certainly wouldn't have gone with my other clobber.

I decided to be a little bit different though and get the hipster version. This is a casual style and differs from the traditional style kilt in that it sits on the hips, where trousers would normally sit. The traditional kilt goes around the ribcage and in summer it gets really hot, so the hipster is now my summer kilt. But as it has less support than a traditional kilt would have, I had to go for a lighter weight (i.e. less material). So this one is made from 7 yards of material rather than the typical 9 yards so it probably won't have quite the same swing to it. Maybe it will though; I've only had it on around the house for 10 minutes and out into the garden for some photos. I'll wear it to work on Monday and see how I get on.

All in all, I think I made the right choice and it's thanks largely to Lorraine's good eye.

I was born in 1971 so a lot of my formative years were spent under Maggie Thatcher's premiership. At the time I cared little about it, other than through the wonderful Spitting Image, which was food for playground banter.

Having recently moved back to the UK after a long spell abroad, I find myself becoming interested to learn about the period that I lived through but knew so little about. Though I cared little about politics until, well, until now really, Maggie stands firm in my mind like an icon.

John Sergeant's book is engaging and entertaining. It is interesting to hear the point of view of one who was so close to the action with the luxury of hindsight. For the layman (and I consider myself such), the book is easy to follow, although I did benefit from a few visits to Wikipedia and YouTube to learn more about the workings of British politics and see news reel footage from the time.

I have no other benchmarks against which to gauge John Sergeant's opinion of the events, but when he does give his opinion, it is always well backed up well. He does a great job of relating the key events, not only of Maggie's time as PM, but of her rise to become leader of the Conservative Party and her influence on her successors and her party; in a word, her legacy.

For those who do have a strong opinion of Margaret Thatcher, and I know that there are a lot of you out there, I think that this book will help to show the other side of the story, whatever side you happen to be on. But for those such as I without much of an opinion, you'll find this a highly informative book that gives a broad overview of Margaret Thatcher but it may leave you still wondering what to think. That's where I am anyway. I'm contemplating reading her memoirs, although I do like John Sergeant's book for its apparent lack of idealogical bias and I could really use some more books like this one.

In short, I enjoyed this a lot and could listen to it again quite easily.

I've created a video slideshow of Hamish's second year starting from his first birthday when we were at Disneyland Paris. I used Lightroom to select the images -- it's great for that kind of thing as you can select all photos between two dates and then filter down to specific tags, in this case Hamish. Then use colours or flags to narrow down the selection and finally export out to jpg.

Once that was done, I imported into iPhoto 08 and did a slideshow that way, but it really doesn't give you very much control. So I tried it in iMovie and that worked a lot better. I'm used to the more traditional non-linear editors, specifially Premiere Pro, so iMovie looked a little weird at first. I did some of the online tutorials on Apple's site and it was then really easy to get the music imported, adjust the duration etc. I think the iApps are really great for creating media like this and the suite of apps goes together really very well. It's a shame that Lorraine hasn't the time to learn how to do this as I'm sure that she would enjoy it, particularly as she's got the 24-inch iMac; I'm doing it on a Macbook!

The hardest part of the project was picking out the music. Lorraine did help with that.

And finally I got it uploaded to the web. I tried Vimeo this time rather than YouTube as I'm not keen on how YT compresses video. Although Vimeo seems to have done the same sort of thing. I'll perhaps try different export settings from iMovie and see if that makes a difference.

The next thing to do is the same thing for Freya's third year. For each of them their birthday spans the move from Lux to Scotland so it's an important year for us all. Once it's all done, we're going to put it all on DVD for sending to friends and family.

It's really great having all this digital media and I could see my photography improving through the year as I picked out the photos. And Lightroom really does rock, seriously.

So, without any further ado, here are the fruits of my labour. Enjoy!

A friend of mine died today. I met Chris at the first UK gathering of RMMGA that I attended back in 2005. He was large as life and a wonderful and talented musician. He was the driving force behind the UK gatherings and did a lot for acoustic music in his local area. He was playing right up until the very end and played a great gig just two weeks ago and he was in great spirits right up until the last couple of days.

He was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and was given a year by the doctors. He had planned on marrying his long-term sweetheart this coming July but it wasn't to be.

Here is how I remember Chris. This is a video I shot the last time I saw him at the UK gathering in 2007. I sadly couldn't make it this year because of my new business and I'm now really sad about that. Oh well.

Gan canny, Chris.

I just completed this for the second time and enjoyed it more than I did the first time around. This is the first of a trilogy, although it was never meant to be a trilogy, just that Mervyn Peake died too soon.

The imagery that this novel conjures up is simply wonderful. The descriptive writing is some of the best I have read and Peake's use of the English language is a joy to behold.

The story is about the 77th Earl of Groan, Lord Titus. He is born in Gormenghast, a place of strange rituals whose origins seem to have been forgotten, but which are rigorously adhered to nonetheless.

The calculating and devious Steerpike manages to escape from the kitchens and the abhorrent chef, Swelter and beings manipulating the characters of Gormenghast for his own personal gain. He throws the castle into turmoil with his antics and therein lies the tale.

I 'read' the audiobook, downloaded from Audible, and it was very well read indeed. I highly recommend this book.

My mum and dad came to visit today and it was wonderful to see them.
My mum has had MS for many years and is more or less completely
immobile now. My dad also is not in great shape and is constantly
hooked up to an oxygen bottle. One of my mum's carers and her husband
brought them over in their black cab. It's big enough to get my mum
into in her wheelchair and my dad had his folded up. It's about 40
minutes to the ferry from where they live and then an hour's crossing
so it really was a big day out for them.

Freya was excited about them coming so we set off to meet them from the
ferry around 11 this morning. We went straight to the Post Office and I
showed them round my little shop and it was really nice that they were
able to see it. Bear in mind that my parents have not visited my home ever
because I've pretty much lived abroad for the last 10 years since I
finished university. In fact, the thought came to me as I waved them
goodbye that it is the first time ever that I've waved goodbye to them
from my own home. It's always been the other way round right up
until today!

After the PO we came back to the house and had some lunch and then
retired to the living room to watch Freya painting her my little pony
and having a blether.

It's always inspiring to see my folks and how they cope but
particularly when they show that they can still make trips like today.
Thanks for coming mum and dad!

So our wee boy is now 2! I managed to get out of work at five and get round the supermarket to get some shopping and bits and pieces for a birthday tea. Freya and Rachel tried making a cake this afternoon but it didn't work out very well. Hamish didn't mind though. He had fun blowing out the candle and even managed to do it all on his own and then give himself a round of applause. Well done our little man!

Here's the card I got this morning from Freya and Hamish for father's day. I almost sprayed my tea over the dining table! Nice choice, kids!

:)