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My name is Joe Wass. I live on a boat in Oxford. I run folktunefinder.com and have a collection of instruments, some of which you haven't heard of. I use exclamation marks in correspondance more perhaps than I should.
This blog is about living on a boat, a bit about coding, occasionally about folktunefinder.
By day I am a developer at torchbox.com. This blog contains my own personal opinions and not those of my employer.
Follow @joewass on twitter.
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Monthly Archives: January 2012
A polecat comes to visit.
I put my rubbish out on the deck last night. Today I heard a rustling and looked out to see a polecat had come aboard, unbidden, and nicked some pasty packaging. For those unsure what a polecat is, wikipedia defines it … Continue reading
Posted in Boat, Life, Mucking around
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From La Mantovana to the Moldau. Musical similarity in the absence of rhythm and what it means to FolkTuneFinder
Má Vlast is a set of pieces written by the composer Smetana in the late 1800s about his homeland, Czechoslovakia. One of the pieces in the set, The Moldau (Vltava in Czech) is one of my favourite symphonies of all time … Continue reading
Posted in Arts, Computers, FolkTuneFinder, Music
1 Comment
Old sailor’s trick: Turning safety matches into strike anywhere matches.
There’s an old sailor’s trick that comes in useful when on the high seas, when stuck with safety matches and no box to strike them on. They can be turned into strike-anywhere matches with the use of a hot stove. … Continue reading
Posted in Boat, Crazy Ideas
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The Rime of the Housemate
This was a facebook comment that got out of hand. If this isn’t the kind of pointless string of words that belongs in a blog, I don’t know what is. The first part follows the Rime of the Ancient Mariner … Continue reading
Posted in Arts, Crazy Ideas
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Opening a can on a boat
The thing about living on a boat is that there is more than likely a hatchet to hand. Which means that if you come home from the shops with a can and realise that you have no can opener, you … Continue reading
Posted in Boat, Mucking around
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FolkTuneFinder version 4 out now
On Monday 9th January 2011, version 4 of FolkTuneFinder.com went public. It was a bit of a journey getting to this point. I run FolkTuneFinder in my spare time. Mostly it runs itself without intervention. I keep an eye on … Continue reading
Posted in FolkTuneFinder
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FolkTuneFinder: Why are the search results so different to what I typed?
When searching FolkTuneFinder, you may find search results that you don’t agree with or can’t understand. You may think tune has nothing to do with your query, or the highlighted notes bear no relevance to what you typed. Here’s why. … Continue reading
Posted in Arts, FolkTuneFinder, Music
3 Comments
FolkTuneFinder index building used to be expensive…
The first version of FolkTuneFinder was written in a combination of Java and PHP. I was still working out the best way to do melodic indexing, and the index build process was parallelised. The job ran across 14 Apple Xserves, … Continue reading
Posted in Computers, FolkTuneFinder
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