Pete Gray's Weblog » Uncategorized

A “Classic Rock” song that really snuck up on me

Pete — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:39:53 +0000

Mostly, I listen to a jazz radio station. From time to time, particularily in the car, I listen to Q107, my favourite “Classic Rock” station, by a long way. All the other classic rock stations are all caught up on wierd stuff like Foreigner, Journey, Boston, Toto, Styx, all this stuff I never really listened to. Q107 tends to play more Zeppelin and Sabbath, but also more CanCon like Trooper, April Wine, Streetheart, Prism, Loverboy, and I like the cheesy stuff too. Not part of the LA corporate playlist, I guess.

Anyway, I heard this song on there the other day, and it got stuck in my head something fierce. I mean, really bad. It gave me all these flashbacks to camping with my parents when I was wee, shag carpets, globe cedars, yup, it really really took me back. And this video is a hoot – Kinda livish, and man, I have not seen a mullet nearly so wonderous as the one on that keyboardist for quite some time…

You may notice I didn’t mention the name of the song. I figger there’s a good chance you wouldn’t even try. But you should. It’s very short, and even more enchanting…

Billy Bragg on the CBC

Pete — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:31:24 +0000

On the CBC kids’ morning show, they often have “famous” musicians doing a number while one of the puppets politely listens and bobs it’s head. Usually I’m not terribly impressed by what I see, but this morning I was stopped in my tracks by an amazing performance by Billy Bragg. He did a tune called “Way over yonder in a minor key”, and I was pulled in completely. Stuck in my head all morning. I was glad to find it on the YouTube, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNonCwUEuD0

Say “Hi!” to Captian Claw for me.

IKEA with serifs?

Pete — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 02:44:56 +0000

Whoa, I saw this odd thing on the web. So I thought I’d mention it here. Ikea adding serifs to the font in their logo. Looks more like something I’d expect to seeon “The Onion”, but shore enough, it’s on Time.com. If there is one company that couldn’t add serifs to their logo…

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1919127,00.html

Twitter and Tweeting

Pete — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:40:23 +0000

Well, I do twitter. I began to twitter about the time I started to blog. Which is about right about now. I certainly seem to have more familiarity with blogging, you write something, it goes on a web page, and people can read it should they ever wind up on the same page. Twittering just goes into the now, it doesn’t project through time the way a blog (or a normal web page) does.

So far for me, twittering is mostly an exercise in listening. Of course I have very few followers, so if I do tweet something, it’s not like the whole world will hear it. See, on a web page, like this blog, it may take zillions of years for everyone to see it, but as a tweet – it just vanishes into the ether. Sure, the tweets are there for ever more, but unlike a blog, that’s not what they’re about. They’re about right now. And that’s really the only moment they have in their heyday. I have 12-year-old web pages that are visited numerous times daily. Tweets just ain’t like that.

Cindy uses tweets to “see the web”, as it were. She follows links tweeted by people who scour for cool stuff, or follow other people who follow other people who scour for cool stuff. That’s about all I can use it for so far, myself.

Oh, and I’ve learned how to tweet about a new post in my blog.

I can post videos on this thing?

Pete — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:18:19 +0000

Wow, I had no idea I could put a video up on a stock installation of WordPress. Lemme try this…ruby_fall_05a 002 Hm, I’m not at all sure that worked, but let’s try… Nope that didn’t seem to work. Too bad, nice movie.ruby_fall_05a 002

My First WordPress Post

Pete — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:09:38 +0000

Well, wowee. My new WordPress installation. I won’t carry on and on here, but I will say a thing or two. Oh! And I’ll try uploading a picture. Here goes…

Me as a cowboy

Well, that went very well, I must say. No muss, no fuss, got to add a caption, could even have linked it somewhere if I’d'a liked. Cool. That’s the pic I sent to my twitter account yesterday, now that I’ve decided to be a bit less, shall we say, anonymous….

Hello world!

Pete — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:26:42 +0000

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!