Arts

The Rime of the Housemate

21 Jan, 2012

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 reasonably closely. The rest correlates with the worst excesses of Roald Dahl at his most metrically depraved. It is an ancient housemate, And he washeth one of three.

FolkTuneFinder: Why are the search results so different to what I typed?

5 Jan, 2012

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. The thing about folk tunes is that they’ve survived in the aural tradition, in many cases for quite a long time. A good tune spreads because people like it, and different parts of a tune may appeal to different people.

Recent downtime on FolkTuneFinder.com

22 Nov, 2011

I started FolkTuneFinder as a student project back in 2008. I’d done websites for a few years before, but this was the first serious one with any kind of heavy lifting or interesting behaviour. Over the years I added features that allowed people to interact, such as the commenting and FolkTuneFinder blogs, which has been surprisingly popular. I have always had a very small problem with spam: I received perhaps a small handful of blog posts a month, which was fine to deal with.

Day of the Dead

2 Nov, 2011

Today is Day of the Dead. The Hurly-Burly-Bright-And-Early Band was out in force this evening celebrating. Or rather, mourning the passing of the Summer. Exactly six months to the day (give or take) since May Day. My pipe is at a worrying angle.

The Gribbin

27 Oct, 2011

There’s no hiding musicianship. Lock it up, put it in a box, or — crucially — ply it with significant quantities of drink … still it will shine through. There’s something immutable about musicianship that means that a bottle of Pimms and and half a bottle of whiskey later, it still keeps on playing. It was in circumstances such as these that The Gribbin came together for the first — and last — time.

The Stage Hand: The Flyerer

27 Oct, 2011

Back in the day I used to do a lot of sound and lighting for student theatre. I did a lot in Oxford, and went up to Edinburgh a number of times to do the Edinburgh Fringe. I did not go to Oxford University, but I did hang around with a lot of people who did. Once or twice I contributed to a theatre column in a student paper. It’s a bit thespy because it’s okay to experiment with language when you’re young.

Stage Whispers: The Techie

27 Oct, 2011

Stage Whispers: The Stage Hand

27 Oct, 2011

Theatre Shows I Have Teched For

1 Apr, 2010

During my time as a student (and during my time as a human) I’ve done a fair bit of lighting design and teching for student theatre. Here is a list of shows I have worked on. 2010 **Bent **(Lighting Designer; O’Reilly, Oxford) **Paradise Lost **(Lighting Designer; O’Reilly, Oxford) **The Blue Room **(Lighting Designer; O’Reilly, Oxford) 2009 **Captain Improv **ICE **Much Ado About Nothing **(Lighting Designer; O’Reilly, Oxford) **The Tempest **(Lighting Designer; Moser, Oxford)

My Instrument Zoo

1 Mar, 2010

I like instruments and have somewhat of a menagerie. Here are some of the less embarrassing inmates. Squeezeboxes Here is a Castagnari Lilly. It’s a small, single-voice D/G melodeon. Because of its size and the fact it has one reed per note, the reeds are mounted directly on the board rather than in a reed-block. It sounds a bit like a concertina. The buttons are much smaller than a normal melodeon so it’s easier to play fiddly things.