a different tune

“Created some time ago in 2005, The Spooky Men of the West is Stephen Taberner’s twisted vision for the western chapter of the The Spooky Men’s Chorale.

This now rogue chapter has expanded its repertoire with their own musical masterpieces, drawing on personal feelings and other things.

The Spooky men of the West seems to have been formed with no end in mind - luckily, cos there’s no sign of stopping them now…”

“We never meant to come here” is the brand new EP from The Spooky Men of the West. A sixteen voice male acapella choir, the Spooky Men of the West explore (or should that be “subjugate”?) a range of musical styles from traditional Georgian table singing to contemporary and original works. Their sound has been said to be “gentle and sad, even sweet, but also sexy, powerful and unmistakably male”. One newspaper report aptly describes them as “a group of wierdos who sing”.

“We Never Meant to Come Here” includes six new songs that depart from Stephen Taberner’s Spooky repertoire. “Navigation” is an original song by the Spooks, with music by Spookmeister Ryan Morrison. “Delilah” (Mason & Reed) and “When You Sleep” (CAKE) are surprisingly recognisable after being given a Spooky makeover. “Varjele” was written by Digby Hill, loosely based on a Finnish folk song, and “Mirangula” is a traditional Georgian lament. The “Norwegian Sailors Chorus” is Wagner as you have never heard him before, and possibly never want to hear him again.

Rather than trying to explain what this is about, check this out:

“When You Sleep” is Simon Nield’s beautiful interpretation of the song by CAKE. To call it a cover is almost unfair because this version actually has a melody, something that is missing from the catchy but rather tuneless original. I guess this song appeals to my sense of strange, which makes it a personal favourite. Another stand-out track for me is Digby Hill’s rousing arrangment of “Varjele”, which perfectly sets the mood for marauding. And who else but the Spooks could turn a Wagnerian drinking chorus into a treatise on the demise of bathtime. I hope they’re not suggesting we drink the bathwater…

I have just two tiny criticisms of this album. Firstly, the opening track “Navigation” is too short. Just as the song gathers momentum its finished - perhaps that’s the point the song is making, but I felt I wanted more of the wonderful “home is where I hang my hat” motif. Secondly, while the CD sounds great it lacks some of the energy of the live performances, but I guess this is always the trade-off with studio recordings.

My advice is to get this CD but go see them live if you can, because part of the Spooky experience is that dissonance between the warm, wonderful evocative sound and their strange understated deadpan humour. If you’re in Western Australia you can catch them at the upcoming Denmark Festival of Voice, and at the odd gig around Perth. For details and CDs, check their web site.

Cheap office chairs really aren’t built to last.

Here’s what usually goes wrong:

• The arm rests are screwed into the plywood base of the seat. Any sort of load on the arm rests tends to split the whole side off the seat. Not good when you have kids about - they love to swing on these things which really hastens their demise.
• The gas-lift stops working. These are not really repairable, although they can sometimes be replaced if you can find the right part.
• The back adjustment works using a clutch-like mechanism. The clutch is made of thin steel plates which are welded to the base of the chair. These plates can snap off, and once they’ve all gone the back of the chair is completely floppy. In our chair, all of the plates have snapped of just before the weld with the base. Unfortunately, the mechanism is not replacable.

Rather than chucking it out, I tried to think of something I could do with the parts, most of which were still OK. The result looks something like this, and we’ll come to what exactly it does later:

The conversion is pretty simple, though obviously it depends a bit on the chair and how its made. The first step is to remove the seat post and mechanism. On my chair, the seat post is a light steel tube which is press-fitted into the plastic caster base. Once you remove a locking bolt the post can be removed with a few belts of a mallet.

The seat and back are just bolted on to the main mechanism. Once these are removed you can check them for usability. To mount onto the caster base you want whichever one has the flattest back. On my chair this was the back rather than the seat, though this may vary between chairs.

To fix the seat/back onto the base, juggle the spacing until its right and then drill some holes through the caster base. I just used some large-gague self-tappers to hold the seat in position. If its curved you might need to add some spacers between the base and the seat (eg. using washers or cutting short lengths of tubing).

I thought this would be fun for the kids to play with, and indeed it was for a short while. Since then, I’ve found several other uses.

• Moving potplants, or other heavy objects. Once you’ve lifted it on its pretty stable, though you may have to hold your load in place top stop it falling off.
• Moving furniture. For items that are large but not too heavy (eg. sofas), you can lift one end onto the device, and then carry the other end yourself.
• A foot-rest. My wife claims that this is the best foot-rest she has ever had, which given her initial skepticism is saying something. An added benefit is that she keeps it under her desk, so I don’t have to find somewhere else to store it.
• A cat throne. (suggested by Kathryn) Providing your cat somewhere to sit may stop it trying to sit in inconvenient places. If you’re lucky, it may even scratch here rather than destroying the sofa.

Its pretty easy to get raw materials for these things. If you can’t scavenge some broken chairs from a workplace, you can usually find them in kerb-side junk collections.

Perhaps you too have an unused exercise bike languishing in a dark corner. Lets face it, its pretty boring exercising on one of these things. How to get motivated? Make it fun using WiiFit!

Here’s what to do:

1. Stick your bike in front of the TV.
2. Fire up WiiFit, and select Jogging (under Training -> Aerobic Exercises -> Jogging).
3. Attach the Wiimote to the lower part of your leg. Its normally meant to go in your hand or pocket so its pretty insensitive to orientation but does need a good amount of movement. If you’re wearing socks, you can just slide the Wiimote in - remember to face the buttons away from your leg so you can press “A” through your sock. It also works to put it the cuff of track pants, though it tends to flop about too much for my liking.
4. Press “A” and start riding. It can take a couple of seconds for the Wii to learn the motion pattern.

Wiifit gives you some nice visual feedback that helps you keep a constant cadence. As you ride, your avatar runs along a path, following your training guide. The landscape is quite pleasant, and you can see other runners and dogs exercising too. If you slow down, your avatar starts to lag behind your guide and it will prompt you to keep a steady pace. You can select your desired activity level as you start the game. If your bike has a variable load, you can adjust this if you find the jogging pace too easy.

Have fun!

Notice some activity in my RSS feed? No, don’t get too excited - I’m not actually blogging. However, I did move my blog from Wordpress to Wordpress MU. Here are some thoughts on why and how to do this.

Wordpress MU is the multi-user version of Wordpress which is used for sites like wordpress.com and edublogs.org. A single Wordpress MU site can host many blogs at once. If you have more than one blog this simplifies the process of maintaining, updating, and backup because you can handle all your blogs in one hit. According to the official docs, a single box running both web server and MySQL will get you about 10-20 thousand blogs. Wordpress.com currently has over 3 million blogs.

Continue reading ‘Migrating to Wordpress MU’ »