Eleven cover versions September 17, 2007

In response to Andrew’s list of twenty.

In no particular order:

• Cat Power – Wonderwall *(Oasis)
• Kid Koala – Moon River (Andy Williams)
  
• Tortoise and Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Pancho (Don Williams)
• Coldcut/Irresistible Force – Autumn Leaves * (Nat King Cole)
• Barry Adamson – A fantasy bond theme (MontyNorman) **
• This Mortal Coil – Song to the Siren (Tim Buckley)
• In the Country – In my time of need (Ryan Adams)
• TV on the Radio – Mr Grieves (The Pixies)
• The Pixies – Winterlong (Neil Young)
• Nirvana – The Man who Sold the World (David Bowie)
• The Fall – Lost in Music (Sister Sledge)

Any more than eleven and I would be scraping the barrel.

*These two were pretty hard to find on the web, so this is the best I can do. The Cat Power track was from a stunning Peel session in 2000, and isn’t available to buy.

**I can’t find this one anywhere, which is a real shame. It’s a ska version of the Bond theme, and is well worth hearing if you ever get the chance.

Oh squirrels, where art thou? September 13, 2007

It’s oh-so-quiet in the loft this evening.  This is a good sign; but they are cunning and deceptive, and we cannot assume the battle is over.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned in a Bexley-related post that I would be evicting some squirrels from my loft.  At the time, I suspected that I might have a prolonged battle on my hands, and I was very, very right.

Some things that I now know about squirrels:

• they are not cute and amusing when you live in the same house as them
• electronic squirrel deterrents don’t really bother them all that much
• they have the capacity to turn you obsessive and slightly insane
• they will stop at nothing to return to ‘their’ territory, especially when they have left their babies there.

I have tried a fair range of anti-squirrel measures: some effective, and some not so.

Pest control was right out: this is always fatal to squirrels, and that’s not my bag (or my cage).  It is their world as much as mine.

Cutting the top off a large fir tree, next to our house, was fairly effective. This did, however, seem to delay the babies in leaving the nest, since it was their escape route.

What didn’t work was stuffing the hole in our fascia board with chicken wire, and then putting an electronic “Dalek” device in the middle of it.  This contraption was supposed to alert me to furry burglars, so that I could chase them off.  As it happened, the little sods were already inside the fascia board when I stuffed the hole up, and they made a right old racket trying to get out.  So, I had to remove the wire myself, losing the “Dalek” device in the process.

For the whole of the next week, we were woken at 6.15am  by the sound of squirrel-in-fascia board (a kind of “scratta-scratta-scratta-scrat” noise) followed by several shouts of “Exterminate!”. Funny, but not at that time in the morning.

However, it now looks like all three babies have left the nest. I saw them in the leylandii tree down the bottom of the road yesterday, taunting a cat. They looked at me as if to say “There’s that potty-mouthed bloke from downstairs – got out on the wrong side of bed again, by the looks of things”.

So, if anyone wants any squirrel advice, I’m your man.

More CSS menus September 13, 2007

CSS menus are more tricky, and much more time consuming than they look.

My aim tonight was to get add some nice effects to the menu on my online cv (formerly known as my website). I wanted to add a ‘hover’ effect, so that the menu buttons change colour, and text is highlighted when a user points their mouse at them.

That’s going to need a little more work, as I’ll need to create some new images for this purpose next week. (And that means going up in the loft to find my copy of Photoshop, which needs reinstallation after a recent Windows reload).

For this evening, what I managed to do was to create a basic hover effect – the link text changes colour. I’ve also added some navigational items to the menu, so that users know where they are on the site – not that it’s all that difficult to get lost with only 6 pages, but it’s the principal I’m concerned about.

Time management and getting things done September 13, 2007

There have been some interesting discussions on Web Worker Daily recently on GTD.

This week, I started implementing my own policy, at home and at work, to tackle the frequent email crises that I have. It still needs a little work, but so far I have found it an absolute joy to have an empty inbox by 9.30am. I’ve also been able to start reducing the size of my task list (and that is akin to sorting out stuff in the loft).

My policy focuses on emails and tasks, as my work is largely dictated by email. It consists of processing my inbox twice a day, first thing in the morning, and again during the last hour of the day. I do any tasks that take 10 minutes or less immediately, and create tasks for any that will take longer or can’t be done immediately.

During the rest of the day, I work on tasks. (I’m looking at some system of categorizing and prioritizing my tasks at the moment).

I haven’t fully implemented the 5-sentence email policy, but I use it as a rule of thumb. I’ve found that other busy people appreciate this, and I’m not aware of anyone having taken offence at my brief emails yet. (Though I am careful about that).

The proof of the pudding, for my spare-time management system (similar to my work one) will be a higher post-per-month ratio on Tall Tales. We’ll see.

Boycotting Amy Winehouse September 3, 2007

…says her father. And I couldn’t agree more.

Unlike Mr Fielder-Civil , I’m not advocating boycotting the ‘troubled’ Ms Winehouse for the good of her health. (I’m not advocating it at all – this is just my opinion, which you are free to read, agree with, disagree with or ignore) The reason that I’m boycotting her is because I am really not interested in her personal life and I have a deep distrust of people who want to be constantly in the media glare.

Mrs H-to-be does not agree with me, and feels sorry for Ms Winehouse, and thinks that I should be concerned about her.  I’m a cynical sod and think it’s all  a ruse, hatched by some dark master of PR to line the nests of a few oily types, and to continue doing so by prolonging a fairly mediocre career way past its sell-by date.  Of course, it’s not the first time that this plan has been put into action – you could probably trace all this back to P.T. Barnum and beyond.

So, being stubborn as well as cynical, I do my bit to fight all of this, in my own particular way. When I say boycott I mean that I don’t buy her records, I don’t buy or read papers that have articles about her, when she comes on TV I turn it off…. you get the picture.  This of course limits my choice of newspaper and the amount of TV I watch, but I’ve got better things to do with my time anyway, haven’t you?

And it’s not just her, there’s plenty of them at it: Britney (bless her cotton socks – oops, she isn’t wearing any!), Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton, Pete Doherty… just check out today’s Metro and you can probably find a good dozen or so other examples.

So, if like me, you are pretty fed up at seeing people making a living by ‘accidentally’ forgetting their underwear; hitting the skids very publicly (again); losing too much weight; putting on too much weight; having a few too many ales; getting arrested and sticking the Vs up to the cameras outside of court; leaving a club in the small hours looking a bit wide-eyed; then I have some words for you. Turn over, turn off, don’t read it, don’t buy it. That’ll show ‘em.