Author: 6000

Musical offerings

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‘Diverse, eclectic and actually rather good’ was one review of my recent musical purchases. They included (but were not limited to), DJ Shadow, Chemical Brothers, Grandaddy, The Duke Spirit, Haley Bonar, Primal Scream and Kate Tempest.

And they’re all good, but those last two have been taking most of my attention. And there’s a chaotic link, with the Primal Scream album being Chaosmosis and Kate Tempest’s Let Them Eat Chaos. Some message for us all there, perhaps? Two different sounds though, with a real old skool 80’s electronic feel to the Primal Scream offering. There’s Depeche Mode, some OMD and there’s even Zebra & Giraffe (I know, right?), all mixed with a hefty does of Britpop. It is, brilliant. Standout tracks include Private Wars, the gorgeous Autumn in Paradise and the wonderfully quirky Where the Light Gets In:

It’s unapologetic electronic fun. Positive, bouncy pop for the most part, but then those moments which take you back to the late 90s and wonder if you’re listening to James or Dodgy. It’s a really good, easy to listen to album. Try it.

Oh – and if you’re wondering about Kate Tempest, that’s amazing too, but deeper, harder to formulate opinions: it’s taking a whole lot more time to digest. So watch this space for more on that one.

Plug

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I found myself rewiring a UK plug this morning. Not a difficult task, but certainly an unusual one.

plug2It was while I was staring at the thing that I noted just how photogenic its simple functionality was. And so I played around a bit with Prisma and came up with the sketch above.

What? That’s it.

Hacker breaks Norwegian internet

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‘Hacker’ in this case being a humpback whale and the Norwegian internet being that of the village of Skulsfjord, near Tromsø in northern Norway.

Luckily for Hacker, its plight was spotted by wildlife photographer Audun Rikardsen, who was out in his boat searching for new picture opportunities during the polar winter in the Kaldfjorden, a whale-rich fjord near Tromsø in northern Norway.

Audun got lucky. Here’s his image of the local coastguard trying to free the whale:

knolkval-fast-i-kabel-4-800x533

And yes, the yellow cord that they thought was fishing gear, wasn’t:

In the morning, they summoned a diver from the fire and rescue team, who went down and investigated. The cord was wrapped round the whale’s head, disappearing into its mouth at the bottom of the picture, before reappearing on the other side, winding round a fin and tangling up the tail. Eventually, after some difficulty, the whale was freed.

Only then did the rescuers realise that the cord was a subsea internet cable that should have been 170 metres down on the bed of the fjord.

Fjords are deep, hey? That’s over three times the depth of the deepest point in False Bay.
And while Audun may have got his picture (and it’s incredible), he then had to wait a while to actually share it, as all communications to Skulsfjord – where he lives – were knocked out for a fortnight by his new-found cetacean chum.

This question…

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I love this. That whiney, age-old “Why didn’t they teach us anything useful at school?” question, answered in cartoon form.

algebra

Indeed, honesty can often hurt. I never asked this sort of question, but then maybe I was just one of the smart kids.

I suck at all the practical stuff we could have been taught instead though.
There’s a lesson there somewhere (and it’s not a maths lesson).

The good, the bad and…

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… and actually that’s it. What on earth were you expecting?

It’s been a busy weekend, Chez 6000. Loads of little niggly jobs got done, which was great, but niggly.

What’s left of the garden (remember those water restrictions?) got a bit of much-needed attention. It’s looking good (ish) all things considered.

We planted a lemon tree, because when life gives you a lemon tree, you… plant it. Especially as it’s not very water wise, so there will be nothing to make lemonade out of anyway.

United scraped home against a 9-man Shrewsbury Town. Eish.

We braai’ed and, as is usual when we braai, I drank ever so slightly too much red wine.

I’m going to order a drone tomorrow. I think the pain of Lily needs to be exorcised.