26 November 2023
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Let’s Reboot The Matrix

The Matrix (1999) was an amazing film, pushing the edge of visual effects and telling an intriguing story in a way that got a lot of people thinking about philosophical concepts that might otherwise have passed them by. I went to see it at the cinema, not really knowing what to expect; when I came out, I was a fan and, like many other people at the time, it was the movie that persuaded me to invest in a DVD drive for my computer, not least to watch all the included extras multiple times. I also quite enjoyed the second film in the trilogy. By the third, I felt that, although the visual game was even further up, it failed to come anywhere close in terms of intellectual interest.

I’d heard that a much more recent film had come out but, until I spotted on Amazon Prime Video (I’m briefly a member again to facilitate some of my Christmas shopping), The Matrix Resurrections (2021) had pretty much passed me by.

Was it worth watching? It generally got bad reviews but I rather enjoyed it. There was a lot of rehashing of old ground, including numerous clips from the earlier films, but it was an entertaining way to revisit the franchise. To my mind, it still falls far short of the original although I’d personally rate it some way above #3 and I quite enjoyed seeing how they coped with the challenge of having the two original lead actors back and working in the fact that they are twenty years older than in the original. However, I don’t think we really need a Matrix 5 or beyond. I hope nobody else thinks it is a bright idea to breathe the words “Let’s reboot the Matrix… again” in a producer’s ear!

25 November 2023
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Harder Than it Needed to Be

I was finding one of the pieces we’re playing with the Training Band, a medley called “Christmas Swings”, harder than it ought to have been and, yesterday, I discovered why. Jane suggested I practise with a version published on YouTube that shows the music scrolling by and I immediately spotted something that raised a question mark. You see, the tuba part starts off in Bb major, beginning on a low F but my music had started in C major, beginning on a low G.

I think that what I’d been doing was playing the fingering for notes in the wrong key and then, by ear, trying to approximate the key being played by the rest of the band. No wonder it was hard work and I felt like it just wasn’t coming together (and also that it never seemed that hard practising on my own but only in the context of playing with others). It turns out the Bb tuba part I had been given was a part transposed for a Bb instrument. That’s odd because any of the tubas normally play at concert pitch in a concert band or transposed and written in treble clef for a brass band but this was transposed and written in bass clef.

I’d already done my own engraving of the music because it also appeared an octave too high so it was a quick job to drop it down a tone. I’m looking forward to trying this at our next rehearsal on Tuesday and I think it will be so much easier than before!

24 November 2023
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Ruby Return Bottled

I think my Ruby Return beer was probably ready to bottle a few days ago but I only found time to sort it out today. I got 14 bottles (approximately 7l), which is a decent return and the calculated final gravity was about 1.011, suggesting that the ABV is just over 6% or a fairly strong beer, certainly for one without additional sugar additions at the start of the fermentation process.

I went for a fairly relaxed approach to the bottling. I don’t want to ruin the beer by giving unwanted bacteria or oxygen exposure a wide open opportunity to get in but I also don’t want hours of work and cleaning added to the process. Firstly I used the spout on my fermenting vessel to run the beer into my plastic jerry can, trying to minimise splashing by letting it flow down the inside of the can. That gets rid of most of the trub (brewing waste), which is loosely bound together by the Irish Moss dropped in towards the end of the boil. The jerry can also has markers I wrote on the side so I was able to estimate the volume of beer (about 7.8l) and dissolve an appropriate about of carbonation sugar with the sample I drew a few days ago (and have kept covered). That went back into the washed fermentation vessel followed by the beer from the jerry can, poured in carefully but with enough movement to mix the sugar solution around.

Bottling was then a process of filling each of my prepared bottles from the spout, resting a cap on top and then sealing them all up once the process was done. I’ve done it this way before and it seems a pragmatic balance of cleanliness and efficiency. It doesn’t get every last bit of the brewed beer in the bottles (almost a litre of “waste”) but it also means the bottles have very little sediment and much less chance of gushing when opened. That will now need a few weeks to condition and by Christmas it should be drinkable. Meanwhile, time to start thinking what I will brew next.

23 November 2023
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Charnwood Concert Band at Thorpe Acre (Christmas 2023)

Christmas gig season continues this weekend with the last two outings of the year for Charnwood Concert Band. Tomorrow night we are at All Saints Church Thorpe Acre with Dishley (7:30pm – doors open 7pm, £7 on the door with concessions and including raffle ticket and refreshments). As it is quite early for a Christmas concert, the first half draws from a wider repertoire while we launch into a range of songs for the coming season in the second half.

If you miss that, then we’ll also be at the Christmas Lights switch on in East Leake on Saturday afternoon.

21 November 2023
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Samson for Small Ones

How do you write the story of Samson (Judges 13-16) for toddlers? That’s what I’ve been trying to do this afternoon for tomorrow morning’s group. Hopefully I’ve found a decent balance to introduce the children to this very flawed character honestly but without getting too dark. With many Biblical characters there needs to be a good degree of simplification but this one, who was really more wicked than the ‘naughty’ I have used, is particularly challenging.

20 November 2023
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Last Tomatoes Cooked

I should have remembered that the final tomato harvest tends not to last too long. I spotted that one or two were developing furry mould so quick action was needed – ditching the affected ones, washing the rest and getting them cooked up. My last tomatoes of 2023 are now gone (except those in the leftovers for tomorrows dinner). It won’t be that long through before I need to get 2024’s batch going.

19 November 2023
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Reading Practise

Today was a busy day – leading worship at church in the morning, a gig with the concert band in the afternoon and, because there are more gigs looming, a CSWO rehearsal this evening.

I was quite pleased with how the CCB gig went. I’m getting that percentage of wrong notes lower and lower and it feels like my fingers know where to go when they see the dots on the page. That is reading music but it isn’t quite sight-reading because there is a lot of practise behind that. Again most of the CSWO stuff is feeling relatively easy or at least manageable but part of the evening was blasting through ‘the red books’ which helped avoid me getting too complacent.

The red books are called New Carol Praise and they are published by the Salvation Army in a small format that would fit on the kind of stand that can be fitted directly to many brass instruments. In order to pack a lot in, the arrangements are very condensed so you have to watch carefully for unexpected repeats and other details which help pack them in. The other notable feature of the NCP books is that they often use less familiar keys, with a good number of the tunes we looked at being in Db and Gb. All good practise but also extra reason to stay alert.

18 November 2023
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Twelve Good Men Performed

I had to skip off early from today’s singaround session at The Plough Inn in Loughborough today as I had an extra rehearsal at church from tomorrow’s service. However, since I needed my electric guitar for that, I decided to take it too the pub as well, presenting an opportunity to perform the Twelve Good Men song that came back to mind the other day.

The song is mainly built around a standard blues guitar shuffle with an extra drop to the minor third at the end of each bar. That takes you through the first 8 bars and then there is an opportunity to play some partial chords up the neck before coming back round again. It also turns out to be a lot higher to sing when projecting my voice in a crowded pub compared to working it up at home but I just about made it.

And, yes, I did wear my black leather jacket, even through it wasn’t the one I had through all my youth!

17 November 2023
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Brief Illustration

For several years – perhaps a decade or more – we’ve turned to moo.com to print our designs as Christmas cards and greeting cards. Approaching Christmas, we typically wait for an offer to arrive in the inbox and enjoy 10-15% off the cost. This year though, I realised that we’d missed the early November offer and, with a batch of cards likely to cost approaching £90, decided to see what other options there were.

After some pricing up, we settled on digitalprinting.co.uk. A batch of very similar cards looked to cost about a third of the price and, even after exploring more and discovering that VAT and delivery needed to be added on, it was going to be less than half the cost of moo.com, even if we’d snagged a discount.

Speaking of snags though, there was one other significant one. While moo.com just require the artwork be uploaded as image files at a certain number of pixels wide and high, digitalprinting.co.uk required print-ready CMYK artwork. Most graphics software, including everything I had installed, works with RGB colours (Red / Green / Blue) and the results of sending an RGB file through a CMYK print process (Cyan / Magenta / Yellow / Black) can be unpredictable.

After some research, it looked like the best option was to install a free trial of Adobe Illustrator, produce the required file from the artwork I had scanned in, and then uninstall Illustrator. It worked – very well in fact – but that was with some previous experience of Illustrator and lots of hours put into other graphics packages. All in all, I’d give digitalprinting.co.uk a cautious recommendation: much cheaper and an excellent result but you’ve got to have the technical skills to produce the right kind of source file.

16 November 2023
by wpAdmin
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Christmas comes early on the Helix

Christmas, in the colloquial sense of bountiful gifts, has come early for myself and other users of the Line6 Helix range with firmware 3.7 being released today. I think if the Helix I bought about five and a half years ago was exactly the same today, it would still be an excellent bit of kit but the fact they keep on releasing free updates makes it remarkable. I don’t think there is anything absolutely essential in the new release so I’ll wait a week or two before connecting to their download servers but there are several things I’m keen to have a closer look at when I do, including one or two of the new guitar amp models, a couple of reverb effects and a feedback generator so I can unleash my inner Hendrix at easy listening volumes (and does that work on bass too?).

Here is the promotional video for the release:

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