Wulf's Webden

The Webden on WordPress

12 June 2026
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Nobody Fell In

Yesterday’s WiFi weirdness was definitely weirdness – everything was back to working this morning but I did establish that a wired connection is a little faster (although not by much) so I’ll stick with that for now.

Meanwhile, the title refers to tonight’s rehearsal with AVAST, the Astonishingly Versatile Assortment of Sailing Troubadours, a subset of players from the various Charnwood Concert Bands, who will be raising money for charity on Saturday week by sailing down the River Soar / Grand Union Canal and busking at various riverside pubs. We have been preparing for some time but this was our first rehearsal on the boats we will be using. I get to sit inside the covered area which not only gives me extra shelter but also provides a nice sounding board so I was getting very pleasing tones out of my tuba.

On Saturday 20th June we are due at The Waterside Inn (Mountsorrel) at 12:15pm, The Navigation Inn (Barrow Upon Soar) at 2pm and The Moorings (also Barrow) at 3:30pm. We’re collecting money for the Midnight Music Library (disclosure: for which I am a trustee), a community interest project that is setting up an affordable library where people can hire instruments, accessories and sheet music. Relatively early days yet but Dee, the chair and driving force, already has quite a substantial number of instruments so the next steps (which need some funding) are to find somewhere suitable for them to live so the lending can begin.

11 June 2026
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WiFi Weirdness

I took a break from my paid work for a chunk of today in order to finish off the first draft of my sermon for Sunday. I wanted to keep working on MS Word while I relocated to the kitchen so I could keep on going while finishing off cooking some bread rolls so, for the first time in a long while, I booted my laptop into Windows rather than Linux. Later on, I sat down to get on with some work and discovered that, back in Linux, the WiFi wasn’t working. Normally I sit at my (Windows) desktop machine and connect across to the Linux-running laptop which acts as my dev server so not having WiFi was a bit of a pain (and time waster).

In the end, I managed to dig out an old network switch and convert my set up to wired networking. That works fine but it did mean I didn’t get the little dev tasks I had planned knocked off the list. Ah well… I’ll get onto that tomorrow and did manage to get Cursor installed on the Linux box so I can run it directly on my dev repositories.

Weirder still, I’ve rebooted back into Windows as I’ll be using the laptop to take minutes at a meeting tonight and I don’t want the Linux hard drive hanging off the back… and WiFi is working there. Hmmnn…

Something to puzzle on tomorrow but at least I’ve got the wired option and it also be interesting to know if wired networking through old gear is faster than WiFi or if the wireless option has caught it up.

10 June 2026
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The Rugby Prophet?

I was leading the Bible study at home group tonight and hadn’t forewarned people about the exact topic. That allowed me to start with cryptic question: which biblical prophet is often sung about at England rugby games, what is the song and how is it connected to them?

Here is a copyright free picture from Flickr that may give you a clue … and also give you a chance to answer the question before scrolling down to find the answer:

Medes - Chariot

The answer is Elijah who features regularly from 1 Kings 17 until 2 Kings 2. The song is Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and the connection is found in 2 Kings 2. Yes, that is when the story of his life ends because God sends a “chariot of fire” (cue another well-known song) to sweep him up to heaven. Along with Enoch (who, as mentioned in Hebrews 11, was the focus of last Sunday’s sermon at Hathern Baptist Church), he is one of two people in the Bible who doesn’t experience death.

What about Jesus? He is alive (hallelujah!) but it would be heresy to suggest he didn’t die. To quote the Nicene Creed:

For our sake he [Jesus] was crucified under Pontius Pilate; 
he suffered death and was buried. 
On the third day he rose again 
in accordance with the Scriptures; 

So that’s the answer to my cryptic question, a snippet about Elijah and a bit of Christology thrown in for good measure.

9 June 2026
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Into the Reading Pit

I decided to throw caution to the wind tonight and take along the new bass to tonight’s concert band rehearsal. I did make a couple of fumbles because of the extra string but by and large it went pretty smoothly including the new piece we had to sight read. I’ll probably go back to my regular four string next week but that’s because I don’t need the notes below E for anything notated and I don’t need all the tonal options I get from two pickups and five control knobs (one pickup, volume and tone is enough for that context).

What I did observe was how light and comfortable the Ibanez bass was – that’s definitely a win for new one.

8 June 2026
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Volunteer Plants

“Volunteer Plants” is a term for ones that come up of their own accord. Some are commonly known as weeds although occasionally you can find a way of redefining these ones as something useful, like the chamomile that comes up every year at my allotment and give me a harvest of flowers I can dry for chamomile tea.

Another category are the ones that come up in homemade compost. It can be hard to get the heap to run hot enough to destroy seeds and even a hot heap will have cooler edges. Tomatoes are one example of a plant that is remarkably resilient – apparently they often pop up at sewage treatment works, having been digested, flushed and washed along the sewers! At the moment, I’ve got several seedlings that are recognisably members of the cucurbitaceae popping up in my polytunnel in a patch that I topped up with some of my garden compost a few weeks ago.

The trouble with volunteers is that they don’t come with labels. Those plants springing up could be from discarded pots that seemed not to germinate (three varieties of squash and courgette this year and not all came up), they could be from the squash I grew last year or they could even be from an earlier batch including cucumbers (that particular lot of compost had sat for a while). It is going to be hard to tell them apart until they get a lot larger and, in some cases, even fruiting won’t be enough for a definite ID.

I’ve potted one up today and I’ll probably do more later this week. I don’t know exactly what they are and I’ll have to guess how to look after them but perhaps I’ll get some pleasant surprises. Even if not, it will still be more fuel for the heap!

7 June 2026
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Out in Public

My new bass got its first public outing today for the morning service at Hathern Baptist. It is music I can feel my way through and the bass did pretty well. I’ve found myself adapting to the five string pretty easily. I pretty much set myself with one sound for all the songs rather than messing with all the knobs but I tend to do that even when I’m playing my six string Sei bass and I was able to pull the sounds I needed out by how I played (well, that and the multiFX board at my feet!).

I decided not to take it to the CSWO rehearsal in the evening, which was probably just as well as it was quite a sight-reading heavy session tonight, trying out several new pieces as we think about what might be added to the set for forthcoming concerts. I’ll probably wait until the summer season gigs are past before bringing it along there or to the concert band but I am keen to give it a try in those settings.

I’m keen to give the bass quite a lot of play – partly to get fully familiar with it but also so I start to wear the strings and can feel justified in replacing them with something more experimental. I’m thinking lighter strings so I can have an instrument going from a low D (up to F in this case) and probably a brand, material or finish I’ve not tried before.

6 June 2026
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Last Night of the (week in the park) Proms

More park music tonight but this time I was on the audience side. To close out the Hathern Big Week, the Hathern Band led a concert that closed out with the pieces that typically come up on the last night of the Proms.

I’m much more used to the concert band sound, which includes flutes, clarinets, saxes and more along with various brass instruments (and drums and “string” bass). Hathern Band is a full on brass outfit (well – some percussion as well). If I wanted to join them, I’d have to learn how to read a transposed treble clef part. Treble clef is fine but it would also mean a different set of valve combinations.

Oh, and I’d probably have to up my playing game – the group is a “First Section” band which means they compete in band competitions to a very high standard (sections are similar to football leagues and the only one higher than “First” is “Championship”).

Anyway, a very enjoyable way to spend the evening and the rain held off for at least two minutes after the final notes were played!

5 June 2026
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Weathered Black

It has been a while since I bought a new bass – almost five years in fact (Squier Affinity Jaguar in August 2021). For various reasons, I’ve been thinking about getting myself a five string and today I decided to take a trip to The Music Inn in Nottingham. They have a pretty decent selection for an independent UK retailer but only 3 right-handed five strings so I had a go on all three.

The least expensive was an Ibanez GSR205 – not a bad instrument but not quite as many frets as I wanted and in a shiny, black finish that would quickly pick up fingerprints. At the other end of the scale was a beautiful sounding Yamaha BB 435 but not only was it more than I was ready to pay but it also had not enough frets and a shiny, black finish, albeit with white pickguard. That left an Ibanez SR305EB, also black but with a matt effect called “weathered black” that lets some of the wood grain be seen.

That was actually the instrument I was most interested to try after my researches. Other finishes may have swayed me if they had been in stock but it was a decent sound at a reasonable price and so that is the one I came away with:

Ibanez SR305EB

I’ll be spending some time playing it over the next few days and plan to give it a first outing as soon as possible.

4 June 2026
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Honeyberry Harvest

At the end of the summer in 2023 I purchased a couple of Honeyberry plants (variety ‘Aurora) – or Lonicera caerulea edulis if you want the horticultural Latin. Over the next couple of years I had a grand harvest of about 30g of the dark blue berries in total, which was a bit disappointing. I’m not sure if birds took a fancy or the fruit dropped of its own accord in periods I wasn’t paying enough attention. However, I’ve had about 300g off it this year – not the most abundant fruit bushes on my plot but enough to do something with.

Some sites describe it as having sweet berries with a honey aftertaste. Perhaps that is from a different variety? Mine are quite sour although, after something sour, the brain often creates an illusion of sweetness. I think the RHS is more correct, describing it as having ‘edible’ berries. I’ve largely been washing them and then freezing them in batches on a baking sheet – individually frozen fruits don’t clump together like a tub frozen together would. I think I’ll probably aim to make a jar of jam out of these – if I can balance the tartness with sugar, I think it should be delicious. Perhaps I’ll reserve a few to steep in gin or vodka though to make an experimental liqueur. Next year, assuming the yield goes up as the bushes increase in size (one is still smaller and lower yielding than the one that has come into its own), I should be able to do both.

3 June 2026
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Park Part II

I’m playing in a park (again) this evening. I’ll be back in Hathern for the “Praise in the Park” event happening as part of the villages “Big Week”. This comes out of a monthly event hosted by the parish church and normally that clashes with other events and rehearsals I have on. However, I know some of the people involved and, when the regular bassist realised they couldn’t make it, I got an invitation to join in.

There won’t be a lot of rehearsal time for this one but I’ve had the full set of music for a few days and most of them are songs I know very well so it should be (for want of a better phrase) a walk in the park!