Track list:

1. Disappearing Boy
2. Talk
3. Build One for Me
4. Soul Sister
5. Serotonin
6. Be There Anyway
7. Mary Anne
8. Broken
9. History Repeating
10. Into the World
11. Roadhouse

Now, normally the idea of a fair, replete with wicker cutlery and forced vegetables is not my idea of heaven, but factor in the fact that there will also be a multiple spit roast featuring goat, lamb and pig and you may begin to see the attraction. This is not just food: this is organic, free range, spit roasted meat, cooked by one of the countries best chefs, on a summers day, washed down with local scrumpy, and probably some local strawbs for dessert. What could be better?

River Cottage gigs often sell out fast, so this is well worth an early look! [Update: SOLD OUT!]

Tuesday saw TVH return to the Edge, so we were looking forward to seeing them in the same small venue, to properly assess if we were just deliriously happy the first time we saw them, of if they really, really are that good, that well rehearsed, and that entertaining.

They did not disappoint, with now familiar songs from their debut EP and some new ones, along with a great version of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison. Their hour long set was studded with the same tangential harmonic gems and compelling grooves that had previously caused us to sit up and take note. Subtle variations in pace and style on couple of tracks (compared to their debut EP) illustrated just how hard working the band is, and how many gigs they must be rattling through to be so comfortable with their experimentation.

They seem to have all the right ingredients, musical talent, songwriting talent, an engaing stage presence, a charismatic front man, and possibly most importantly, the ability to have fun whilst creating something really special – which will hopefully keep them going long after a lucky record company exec stumbles onto them and gives them an opportunity to meet a larger audience.

The only problem with “making it big” is that, like a tiny restaurant that builds a loyal business based on word of mouth, there is always a risk that the magic could be spoiled and the undeserving may influence the menu and hog the dessert trolley. Ok, it’s a strange and selfish analogy, but TVH are producing an audio gourmet feast and most who see them are immediately rebooking the largest tables in the restaurant, so that their friends can try the menu.

If any record execs are about to offer these guys a contract and happen to read this, please give us prior notice of any deals so we can book our table in advance. If (and hopefully, probably, when) it happens, it couldn’t be to a nicer, more talented or harder working bunch of people.

Catch them live at one of their upcoming gigs.

When we arrived, a dimly lit bloke was quietly and confidently accompanying himself on guitar. We caught the last two songs and he was really very good. Good enough that we’d happily have stayed in the pub all night if he’d kept playing. He really set up a good atmosphere and his songs were engaging, which can be difficult with just a voice and a guitar, it’s easy to get the balances wrong. After the set we’d have bought him a beer, if he’d been old enough… so we got him a a Coke instead. Definitely a talented lad and with his studio début soon, he’s someone we’ll be looking out for. His website has a few songs, but the current quality is not a patch on how good he sounds live [Update: see below]. Thanks Luke Ferre, pleasure to meet you .

The second band on stage (it’s not a stage, it’s the in the corner of the small room) gave us one of those moments that happens rarely in a lifetime – I think we saw a band that’s going to be very successful, in a tiny venue, before they get big. A six piece called The Velvet Hearts, and they blew the pub away. It was an electric performance. From the opening harmony of Heart is Breaking through to the end of the set, the performance was exquisitely polished. At times the vocal work was so good that punters were looking around the pub at each other for validation that the this really was happening. The sound was dynamic and seemed to constantly shift in startling and beguiling directions. Like I said, not a common thing. Their first EP is released next week.

The good news, for anyone Portsmouth based is that Luke Ferre will be back at the edge on 17th July, and before that, The Velvet Hearts will return to Portsmouth on 17th June, playing at the bandstand. If it’s a sunny day, it may turn into the most perfect afternoon in history.

PhD-level research is very specialised but (as my esteemed supervisor pointed out) most of the content should be comprehensible to anyone capable of reading a daily newspaper, because the more accessible the writing, the more useful it will be to other people (who may not speak English as a first language) and that’s the whole point of the PhD, it’s not just personal advancement, it’s another small step for the research topic, for scientific method and human kind. The thesis is marked and reviewed by respected academics, but the average person is the target audience, so they shouldn’t need to keep a dictionary handy to grasp the majority of the content. Obviously some parts of any field will require specialised knowledge in order to interpret plots or equations, but the majority should be accessible to all. When discussing the work, there are no plots and equations, there are only words. This is why the viva voce is such a powerful tool for final examination.

On numerous occasions however, I’ve observed an odd response from the average person when they learn that my research is about “building models that help us understand what happened when very large computer systems go wrong”. It’s the natural evolution of the “I can’t work the video” discussion: once computers are mentioned then within 3 sentences I’m told about how their child/grandchild/neice/nephew etc (usually aged between aged 2 and 6) can use a mouse already, and how this is in contrast with everyone else in their family. There are probably similar variations on this discussion for every non-computing field, and this is why the viva, in reality, is really enjoyable. It’s great to be able to talk to people who’ve read the thesis, understood it, and want to talk about the details. This is something that my old buddy Gethin (who got his PhD long ago) predicted for me beforehand, and he was spot on.

My viva voce was this Tuesday, and (for the benefit of anyone with a viva approaching) the whole thing was enjoyable (and not just the bit at the end where the examiner said “we’re going to award you the PhD” which was very tingly).

T’was an evening in the company of Feckless who played at The Contented Pig. Its a fairly small pub that’s far enough away from any dwellings that there’s no problem with gigs that push on to the midnight hour, as this one did. We arrived at about 9pm and band were already playing. They took only two short breaks throughout the whole night, which helped the atmosphere to build. In fact they took a break minutes after we arrived so Tony (with the drum and the voice) who we know from elsewhere immediately came over for a quick chat as he relieved his vocal chords with a glass of something. Then is was back to the entertaining, and what started out as a band and an audience ended up merging in to one jigging, clapping, stomping, singing throng of revelers, it was fascinating to behold how a roomful of strangers suddenly became acquainted.

Musically the night ranged from nautically influenced traditional numbers such as Portsmouth and The Trumpet Hornpipe (the Captain Pugwash theme), through traditional celtic songs that we’d not heard before, right up to more “modern” tracks like The Irish Rover and Korobeiniki (the um… Tetris theme… you have to be there, but it really works). Feckless next gig is on Fri 22nd Jun 2007, at The Tap in North End. Not to be missed. In the mean time there’s a rudimentary jukebox in their website: fecklessmusic.com.

However, when I do return to the kitchen a recurring question bounces around my head: how much sugar is absorbed by the teabag before it is removed from the pot? i.e. exactly how much is the taste affected and how much energy is lost?

I recall from GCSE science that one way to test this would be to take sample teabags that have been percolating themselves in teapots with differing amounts of sugar, then once dried, burn them in a controlled environment and measure the energy given off.

Perhaps different teas have different absorption qualities too. Perhaps different bag shapes and materials also affect absorption. Who knows…

Anyhow, it strikes me that:

1. there are probably better ways to do it than I can think of, so what are they? and
2. someone’s possibly already done the experiments, so are any results published?

So I’ll let the web do it’s thing, no doubt the answer will one day arrive with a knowledgeable reader (hello you), and in the mean time, I can stop wondering because I know the answer is on it’s way.

The “ozone thing” is something I’ve heard many times, and it’s discussed all over the web, including this article by Dr. H. Rzepa of Imperial College London’s Chemistry Dept.

However, according to the University of East Anglia it’s not the ozone that’s smelly, it’s dimethyl sulphate.

Somehow I don’t think the ozone story will go away, it’s a far easier name to remember than di-sulpher-thingy.

So everybody near and dear to us will be wondering where the hell our card has got to. Well, ok, we admit it, things have been too hectic and we’ve run out of time.

Well actually that’s not the only reason. When the Christmas TV advertising started in late October our hearts sank with the thought of 8 more weeks of jangly advertising and ‘this is not just Christmas, this is M&S Christmas’.

It feels like Christmas has become a commercialised, guilt-ridden, manic rush, to send cards and to buy presents that might somehow convey the importance of a friend or relative, and the consequent stress of ‘will they like it’, ‘will they already have it’, ‘is it enough?’, ‘have I missed anyone?’.

I can earn money with each load of water that my donkey carries into town. Without my donkey, I would have no work or income.
Adam Isa, Sudan

We opted out this year; Emma’s side of the family has decided to do away with presents altogether, choosing a family day out instead. The two of us are simply spending Christmas day together with some good food and some good films, appreciating a pause in the hectic schedules of PhD and full time work to actually spend some time together.

The good side of Christmas, the non-commercial side, is about giving and goodwill, and we buy into that in a big way, so we wanted to find a present we could get for all our friends and family, in lieu of cards and presents, that would be relevant and appropriately non-commercial.

So we decided to donate to charity, and we couldn’t help but be swayed by the option to buy a donkey. So that is what we’ve done through Oxfam.

Friends and family, you are now the proud co-owner of a little donkey.

Merry Christmas!

So I made a mental note of their location and then kept looking. Then I saw what could be a face. So, cracking open the line drawing tool (back then, this was a feature that you had to pay for and was, in fact, the reason I’d upgraded from the free version of Google Earth) I started to expand from the face, sketching an outline of Santa, working out which mountains and valleys I could use to suggest a shape.

It looked pretty good, then I realised the scale was right and I could incorporate the antlers on a much larger scale, so I sketched a (very simplistic) reindeer, enough to guide an adult so they could point it out to a child. Then I came up with a simple story about Santa leaving clues of his whereabouts.

Someone in the Google Earth community had asked if there were any good Santa sightings, so I added it to the forum. I expected that the imagery of that area would have changed enough by now that it would no longer be visible, but happily, coverage of some areas is still fairly slow to update, so it can still be seen this year.

Yesterday it was covered by GEarthBlog and the number of downloads has thus increased rather rapidly – I suppose one year on there are many thousands of new Google Earth users out there, and many new sets of small sparkly eyes to look and wonder.

If you have Google Earth, you can download this file to see it, you can also visit my original post on the subject. If you can’t run Google Earth, you can view the overlay in Google Maps (it’s a bit messy, but it still works).

My apologies in advance if you end up with excited little finger marks all over your monitor

Happy Christmas!

The typical geek has carefully selected and purchased their gadgets of choice, has a computer that’s tuned to perfection and needs no software purchased (because their entire suite is open-source) – so aside from comedy tee shirts with clever slogans that can only be understood by other geeks, buying for geeks is difficult, especially if you’re not a geek, because you can’t even understand if the tee is funny or not.

Novelty Gifts

Giving up and buying a novelty-gift is not a good solution, it has negative connotations. Novelty gifts are often made of plastics and are immediately discarded because they tend to look twee and lame next to the 30inch LCD monitor, so if you didn’t have environmental guilt about naff presents before, you will have in future.

Novelties get made, bought, wrapped, presented and then discarded by January 1st. A whole lot of carbons belched into the atmosphere and gallons of oil used for no reason, and they’re often not recyclable because they’re made in a sweatshop backwater that uses chemicals that are banned by most governments. There, guilt, it must be Christmas.

So don’t do it, don’t go naff.

The geek in your life has bigger fish to fry and your gift can help.

Good Gifts

Donating to a geek charity will show that you care, and that, even though you can’t comprehend the strange words they use, you do at least appreciate that what they do is changing the world.

Several worthwhile charitable causes with a technological skew immediately spring to mind…

1. The Wikimedia Foundation – the people who run Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (etc!) as a global services (free to use and free of advertising). The Wikimedia foundation have rejected lucrative corporate partnerships in order to preserve their independence and need the financial help of the community to continue to grow.
2. The Electronic Frontier Foundation – who protect the the individual when large firms threaten to trample their rights with with legal bravado, and protect everyone by challenging companies and governments that enforce new laws that restrict rights previously granted to the individual.
3. The Free Software Foundation have a worldwide mission to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of all free software users. If you’ve not heard of the FSF, you might have heard of GNU/Linux, which is part of the free software stable.

I’m sure the geek in your life would appreciate a personalized donation far more than a novelty mouse warmer. If you can think of worthy causes to add to the list (or if you represent a worthy cause that’s not mentioned and happen to have dropped by), respond below.

One of the surprises when I converted my grandparents cine films to digital format was almost four minutes of footage from the 1968 Killay House Garden Party; here it is in it’s entirity.

It was a surprise because it was a film I’d never, ever seen, but I suppose there are some films that will bore a four year old that thirty years later he’ll watch repeatedly, so I can understand why it was never considered of interest to me.

The Fields That Became Killay

Killay House was one of the first buildings in the modern (i.e. non-farming) Killay, and when new it was by far, one of the most grand. Almost all the old buildings are now gone, victims of the weather, and a lack of foresight. Over the hill to the north Llanerch Farm (what we called “The Old Farm”) was still standing when I was a kid, both stables and farmhouse, but I recall it deteriorating to just a shell before it was eventually demolished to make way for the Hendrefoilan housing estate. The Llanerch Fach farmhouse was also still a fairly looming structure on the north side of Derlwyn until sometime in the 80′s. The farms that gave Goetre Fawr and Goetre Fach their names were long gone, as was Wimmerfield House, which stood on the corner of Dylan Road and Landore Avenue.

If you grew up in Wimmerfield, or attended Hendrefoilan School, you’ll probably find this photo a bit of an eye opener. It’s Killay House, circa 1900, when all around was just fields.

The small light coloured field in the top left still enjoys the same boundaries today, but it’s now the site of Hendrefoilan School. I wasn’t sure if the photo really is of Killay House at first, so using Google Earth I created an overlay of the old field boundaries from the 1884 Ordnance Survey map and used that to help me get my barings.

The field-boundaries are a perfect match and the overlay may be of general interest to anyone tracing the growth of Killay, because it shows how house construction was grouped according to the land that was available at different times. See it in Google Maps, or download it to view it in Google Earth.

My memories of Killay House

We (my friends and I) were very fortunate that our mate Martin’s dad used to look after the place, with the biggest bunch of keys in the world, so when we went round Martin’s house, he had a bigger back garden than any child could wish for, and what’s more, it was a remarkably well tended garden thanks to Mr. Cunningham. The grass was always cut, so we could play ball games, or ride our bikes around like nutters.

Incidentally, the year of the video (1968) was the year that Mr. Cunningham became the gardner.

Many hours were spent around the small pond at the source of the killay spring (susprisingly few residents know it exists, but it’s on maps) just outside the grassed area, where the slope of the woods falls away. Over that pond, which was often no more than a muddy bog, some of the older boys had somehow made a rope swing. This was a proper rope swing, one made of several misatched pieces of rope and attached to the tree by magic, because it was inconceivable to us that someone could have climbed the tree due to it’s height and lack of branches anywhere but in the canopy.

The other thing we found you could do very effectively with several acres, is have a really good game of hide and seek, or mob, or any other game that is normally limited by people complaining that you’re hiding in their garden. I must have picked up more grass and mud stains in the gardens of Killay House than any other single place.

Killay house was also one of the only places that had it’s own racetrack. Admittedly it was supposed to be a one-way drive for visiting vehicles (so as to maximise safety), but it formed a complete loop, an oval, laid with smooth tarmac – how could we resist? The laps we did on bikes and skateboards must number in the thousands.

Indoors

Most of the time we spent outside, but there were occasions when the buildings were used. Attached to the main building by a covered walkway was what I remember as a brown, probably wood-built hall where I recall the whole class gathering for Rachels birthday party (8th I think). This event was cetainly a disco, possibly a “roller disco”.

A few years after these more youthful pursuits I fondly remember Diane Shaw (official courtesy title “Martins Mum”) opening the house up on Tuesdays during the long wet winter nights, I definitely rememeber playing table tennis, and on reflection the rooms and hallways seemed huge; their spendour when first built must have been quite imposing when Morgan Bransby Williams built the place in the late 1800′s.

2006 and beyond

It’s a tiny bit sad that the view from Hendrefoilan School will be forever missing one of it’s foreground gemstones, as the picture from circa 1900 has today been inverted: instead of Killay House, surrounded by fields, there’s a housing estate abutting an empty space. I rather hope the next generation of inhabitants will have similar enjoyment to our own; I know any kids growing up there are going to love the woods.

Hopefully the building will stop soon; the thing that made Killay special was all the fields, and they’re nearly all full of houses these days.

It’s one of my earliest distinct memories. My best friend from the Bryn Nursery, James Morris (Mozz), was the bearer of the news whilst we sat in the back of my mums car, and it caused me some confusion.

We were travelling on a dual carriageway over a bridge or flyover when, off to the left and below, maybe 200 yards away, we saw a car on fire. This was the first time I’d seen anything on fire other than things that had been set alight in my grandfather’s garden incinerator, so it was memorable enough to see the flames engulfing the engine and encroaching on the passenger compartment, however, James took this opportunity to say “Elvis Presley’s dead isn’t he”.

Not knowing Elvis Presley, I put two and two together and wondered if it was his car.

Thus, even though I was only four years old, I can remember exactly where I was when I heard Elvis had left the building for good.

I havent’ a clue what James is up to these days, but coincidentally, yesterday I published the cine of my fifth birthday party, filmed just three months after this memory, and James features in several shots. So, as proved by my recent comunications with Dave Winer, everyone googles themself eventually, so I hope you’re well when you find this James, drop us a line.

In order of appearance, the partygoers (comprised as they are from Hendrefoilan School classmates and other friends) include: Kathryn Gray, Andrea Anderson (I think), Rachel Jones, Ceri Chaplin, James Morris, Tom O’Kane, Darren Chetty, Alex Fergusom, Michael Fuller, James Breeze, Ros Breeze.

To put it all in context, it was only a few months after this video was shot that I saw Star Wars in the cinema, the first time it was released.

I’m guessing it’s between these dates because (a) I look quite young (b) I think I can see Kath Williams before she went to Australia [confirmed, thanks Kath!] and (c) there was a distinct turnover in teachers around the time I went into J1 (September 1980 If my memory serves me well) and I can see several of the old-guard who I remember being teachers but who never taught me. If you can help nail down the year then any clues or categorical claims will be most gratefully received.

Organisation

The school was (originally) divided into four groups (Red, Yellow, Blue and Green) each with around fifty members of various equally distributed ages. When I was very little, I seem to recall Blue being dominant, but those of us in Green never gave up and I think I recall that either we won “the cup” (or the smart money was on us winning the cup) when, due to dwindling school attendance green house was disbanded and it’s members were redistributed, so I joined Blue house. Either way I remember taking whole lap of honour running around the big field, miles away from our parents, passing the cup around and holding it aloft.

The Cast (Help please!)

As I recognize people, or as others identify them, I’ll add names here. If you spot people who are not on the list please leave a comment below containing their name, the time when they are visible (there’s a little clock in the video player), and what they are doing/wearing that will help others distinguish them.

Teachers

Mr. Lewis (officiating the turn-around point at 1:01)
Mr. Smith (at the start line, facing away from the camera at 1:10)
Mrs.Davies (at the start line, facing the camera in the background at 1:10)

Children

Richard Boakes (in many shots due to grandparent camera holding)
Paul Brooks
Christopher Cone (right hand line, infront of Nathalie at 1:21)
Darren Chetty (looking surprisingly tall in red shorts)
Anthony Evans
Alex Ferguson
Tom O’Kane
Jarrod Rees (with handy name-bearing T-Shirt and winning the eggand spoon race at 2:00)
Steven Sole (right hand line, behind of Nathalie at 1:21) – unsure of name spelling.
Mark Withy (very brief appearance bottom left at 1:46 – maybe?)

Nathalie Carter (blue stripey top)
Lisa Barrett (tall, tanned, dark pigtails)
Kathryn Gray
Fiona Thompson (bright blonde hair in bunches with red tracksuit top at 1:23 – maybe?)
Kathryn Williams (Bouncing irrepressably)

Parents / Grandparents / Guardians

Lesley Gowen (my mum)
Sarah O’Kane
Maureen Horsman
Elaine Williams (KathW to confirm)
Edna Breeze
Dai Vaughan (maybe? He’s sits down at 0:06 looking away from the camera; it seems likely because I don’t remember there being a big dark haired teacher, but I do recall that “Vauhan Sound Systems” did the tannoys for sports day every year).

In 1977 Elizabeth II had reigned for 25 years, and to celebrate this Silver Jubilee, street parties were organised for children throughout the UK (and probably elsewhere in the Commonwealth too).

This video of the events before the party is shot at my grandparents house on Wimmerfield Crescent and features several local mums and grandmothers attending just one of many coffee mornings, bring-and-buy sales and raffles that were held to raise funds for the party.

I was just a little over 4 1/2 years old on party day, and a couple of months later entered the Reception class in Hendrefoilan School (where many of the other kids also attended). Hendrefoilan School had opened 8 months previously, so before then, many of the kids attended Dunvant Junior School.

If you see yourself, or your kids, or parents, or grandparents, let me know, it would be great to get everybody identified for posterity.

A Garden Party (or maybe it’s a tea party, or a coffee morning); I can’t say I’m sure of the precise definition, but there’s definitely sunshine, drinks, cake and several of the “old ladies” that I remember living in Wimmerfield Crescent when I was young (and I was born several years after this footage was ‘in the can’).

I’m assuming for now that this was filmed in the late 1960′s but it might be a bit earlier than that, maybe early 60′s, if so, the kids playing in the garden are probably in their mid 40′s by now (though probably not looking a day over 21 due to the forgiving seaside air). I’m sure mum will be able to identify things that put a fairly exact date on it.

View the location in Google Maps or Google Earth

If you recognize anyone, drop us a line!

Surprisingly telecoms companies have been quick to comment on unusual call patterns since the announcement, revealing that convents throughout the UK have been telephoning builders, construction companies and materials suppliers.

Some analysts believe this is a sign that Mothers Superior countrywide are getting the standard “three different estimates” on the massive extensions they’re going to need in approximately 16 years.

They’re obviously aware that the combined forces of the B-Man’s legendary musculo-skeletal perfection and Claire’s lovely English rose charm will result in young Henry breaking a combined total of hearts similar to the population of the home counties, so they want to be prepared.

The other call-pattern that has been causing mild astonishment is the volume of calls between #1 The Mall and Whitehall. Which has led several newspaper editors to lead tomorrows papers with the as-yet-unsubstantiated rumour of an impending abdication by HRH, in favour of King Henry, as he is already becoming known.

OK, I made most of that up, but I’m all happy and one sentence just wasn’t enough.

Credentially speaking, Rick’s amply bedecked with two wheeled experience. To say he’s not one of your 30-minutes-a-week cyclists is an understatement, given that his prior record includes journeys such as “San Francisco to Los Angeles”.

Rick’s blog is was published by the Petaluma Argus Courier.
Rick’s blog is now published by Petaluma360.