...and the Boswells led to this (sort of)

Angel with an attitude~The Ditty Bops

Check them out at Google Video - lots more there. Not the same, but you'll like them.

And yet another for Bron...

...before the Andrew Sisters were the Boswells

Another one just for Bron...

It's not the instrument, it's the attitude

WoW

Latest information - this is actually paper art! See artist's link here

Hand Written Clock

Handwritten Clock
Neat flash clock.

This flash file is available as a screensaver from here.

Oh well, another link gone. Can be seen at the author's site here.

Darwin Day

Sorry, I missed Darwin Day - hope this contribution makes up for it

Pastafarians

www.pi?

This one is so bad, I just have to pass it along:

http://3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097.org

Oh well, that one's gone. It was fun while it lasted.

Mathematically "Precise" Explanation of Group Theory

In high school, I messed around a lot with Non-Euclidean Geometry. I liked it so much, that I embarked on a university career with specializations in Math & Philosophy. However, in math, I couldn't get my head around Group Theory. I knew it wasn't all that difficult, but I just couldn't grasp it. It was, in part, responsible for my abandoning that career and taking the more prosaic route of joining the work force.

Now, 35+ years later, I find myself reading two biographical books that are heavily into both Group Theory and non-Euclidean Geometry. In addition, a friend just forwarded me three articles on interactions between art and the sciences, the third of which was about Non-Euclidean Geometry and Art (any M. C. Escher fans out there?).

After all these years, my appetite has again been whetted to delve into these esoteric subjects. But will I be able to get my head around them this time? Who knows? But the fun will be in trying.

I am already encouraged by a quotation from "The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved", one of the books I am reading. The author (Mario Livio) quotes James R. Newman from his monumental compilation "The World of Mathematics":

"The Theory of Groups is a branch of mathematics in which one does something to something and then compares the result with the result obtained from doing the same thing to something else, or something else to the same thing."

This whole entry was just to share that gem of mathematical precision!!

It really sounds like an explanation by Douglas Adams, doesn't it? The funny thing is, I think I understand it now!

A Musical Ramble...

Oh god, this one's going to ramble! I've been writing an O&M manual for a facility in the NWT, roaming back and forth through drawings, specifications, old emails and shop drawings. I've been scouring the web for equipment documentation, and just plain scratching my head. The music in the background keeps me sane.

Yeah, I have our entire music collection (well almost, still working on old LPs and cassettes) on disk as mp3s. It was huge to begin with, and then I started a musical odyssey last year that has consumed an awful lot of time, not to mention disk space. I guess that's what this is all about.

I've always loved my music, but I get stuck in ruts. I was listening to CBC in the car last year and they played "My Ukulele Helps Me Beat the Blues" by the Highwater Jug Band. Never heard of them, but I chased them down when I got home. Googled them and discovered Myspace Music (Highwater Jug Band). Immediately ordered the CD (hey they're a local Calgary band - gotta support them). But... now I have to investigate both Myspace Music and Jug Band Music.

MySpace Music has links to "Friends", often similar music, sometimes so different that it opens new directions to go chasing down. Most pages have streaming music samples. Some remain static, others rotate music samples. And yes, they're full songs, not just 30 second clips. Some are so good that all you can do is email the artists and demand that they release a CD as soon as possible, if not sooner. Yeah, many of them are just local bar bands or groups just starting out. My god, the talent out there!

To reduce the frustration level, I acquired a copy of Replay Music, a great program that will record anything running through your sound card and save it as an mp3. It even tries to identify it and tag it correctly. It hasn't tagged so well on non-released music, obviously! However, I now have a selection of "MySpace" music tucked into my music collection. Some of my favourites are Sausage Grinder, Gallus Brothers, Howling Brothers, Hunger Mountain Boys, Two Man Gentleman Band, Pea Ridge Ramblers and Matt Kinman, (a little strange, but I really do like him). The list goes on and on. Some, like The Two Man Gentleman Band and The Hunger Mountain Boys, have commercial CDs out, others, like the Gallus brothers, will sell you CDs that they produce on their own computer.

In short, DO waste some time following links on MySpace, I promise you'll be pleasantly surprised if you persist.

Another music source, that unfortunately is no longer available to me, is Pandora. Because a few record companies won't grant them unlimited licences, this site is now restricted to computers physically located in the good old US of A. I've bought a lot of music based on finds at this site before they shut Canadians out, but they don't get my business any more because they won't let me discover it! Fools!

Pandora is an amazing site that developed out of a project that categorizes music according to hundreds of "qualities". When you join (free) you start your own radio station(s) by selecting artists or songs you like. It will then start streaming similar music, based on the "qualities" of your examples. Choose "like" or "dislike" for any song it plays and it fine-tunes your preferences. It introduced me to many artists I'd never heard of, who are now among my favorites. Damn, I miss it.

I said this was going to ramble...

I discovered Old Crow Medicine Show on Pandora. That introduced me to Old Time Music again, something I've been peripherally interested in, but never really collected. "Wait a minute - didn't Doc do that?" Get out all of the old Doc Watson and start listening to it again. Hey that's pretty bluesy. But then, he plays lots of Mississippi John Hurt.

Pandora turned me on to a little known group called Cumberland Gap out of St. Louis. Mostly country, but I really liked a ballad called Louis Collins. Checking it out, I found it was another old Mississippi John Hurt song. (This link from the Internet Archives, check it out too). Now I haven't listened to him for years - always thought he was a little too bluesy for me. How our tastes change! I LOVE his stuff now. I started listening to him again and found out how many songs I've liked other people singing that were taken from his repertoire.

Jorma Kaukonen was another Pandora discovery. "Blue Country Heart" - yes, kinda country , but quite bluesy. I'm starting to think I've really been a blues fan all along and just didn't realize it..

Back to the web. I start chasing back in history. Who wrote it and when? Most of this stuff is OLD. "I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now", off Blue Country Heart - yeah, an old Johnny Cash song, and most websites credit him with it. But it goes way back before that. Lou Hersher & Saul Klein wrote it a long time ago and Jimmy Rodgers recorded it in the early thirties.

I go back and look at other songs by these same artists and find common origins for many songs in the mid 20's to mid 30's. This was a prolific time for music. Jazz, Blues and Country seem to have developed out of what was happening on the streets at the time. We don't usually think of blues being "white man's music". Check out White Country Blues. By the way, this is another site I like. Amazon doesn't have everything I look for, but there is a lot of music you can sample.

Out in the street, improvised instruments were used out of necessity - there simply wasn't the money to buy instruments, but the urge to create music was unstoppable. Music was usually played with guitars, fiddles, tubas etc. The harmonica was the poor man's fiddle, the jug was the poor man's tuba. Washboards and washtub basses added to the mix, and the kazoo was thrown in for fun.

And in a rambling roundabout way, this brings me back to what started this entry. This was the height of the popularity of Jug Bands. While I was discovering music origins in this way, I was also backtracking from the Highwater Jug Band.

I had discovered the Jug Band Revival of the 60's. For the most part, it wasn't that well known, although Jim Kweskin had a large following. Many well known artists (Dave Van Ronk, Country Joe MacDonald, John Sebastian, Maria Muldaur etc.) had their roots in jug band music. Elektra "put together" the Even Dozen Jug Band as their answer to Jim Kweskin. They didn't last long - only 1 LP - with Muldaur joining Kweskin (for you Maria Muldaur fans, check this out! Don't laugh too hard!) and Sebastian going on to form the Loving Spoonful.

Although they were primarily a pop group, we all (at least those of old enough) remember the Loving Spoonful's "Jug Band Music", not jug music - too much electric guitar - but a marvelous tribute. Look a little deeper and you find Fishin' Blues and My Gal are from the early part of the century. The lyrics for Younger Girl were written by John Sebastian, but the melody is pure Gus Cannon (from Prison Wall Blues - I discovered it here sung by the Gallus Brothers).

Although Sebastian concentrated on pop music, his jug band roots stayed with him. He has now formed a group called the J-Band, and has sometimes been joined by Fritz Richmond and Geoff Muldar of the Kweskin Band, as well as Yank Rachel, an original jug band leader. They and others participated in a documentary called Chasin' Gus' Ghost, written and directed by independent filmmaker Todd Kwait, that grew out of his desire to learn more about jug music. See the trailer here.

The J-Band's CD Chasin' Gus' Ghost CD has become one of my current favourite listens.

In the meantime, my collection has grown considerably (and I've probably bored friends and family silly with this obsession). I've barely scratched the surface of my research here. Jug band music is far more deeply engrained in our music than we have any idea of. The most facinating link that I found was with Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. They were a small local jug band in Palo Alto, CA in the 60's. They were told that to make it, they'd have to go electric. They resurfaced the next year as the Warlocks, but as another group was already using that name, they had to find another. Jerry Garcia picked Grateful Dead out of a dictionary (defined as "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial.") and the rest is history.

Jug band music pervades the Grateful Dead repertoire, and both Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir continued their association with it outside the band as well. I'm not a Grateful Dead fan, the electrics just turn me off, but I've become a dedicated Jerry Garcia follower. His early career, pre-Mother McCree was heavily into bluegrass, one of my favourite styles of music. He continued to produce music outside of his Grateful Dead association throughout his life. Some of his earliest works, including coffee house duets with his first wife Sara Ruppenthal, recordings with the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers, the Wildwood Boys and the Black Mountain Boys are available as bootleg recordings on the internet. He has done extensive work with David Grisman (once of the Even Dozen Jug Band) including the Old & In The Way CDs with fiddle great Vassar Clements.

I guess I really should wind this up. This is probably as organized as my ramble through the music has been over the last year or so, but if you've enjoyed it, fine. If not, so what - I didn't twist your arm to read this far!

The entry below is a nod to my daughter Bronwyn's newest musical discovery - the 40's. In helping her out, I've started to discover and rediscover more gems. I'll probably bore you silly with them if you come back!

Freddy Martin Show with Merv Griffin (1951)

For Bronwyn - bet you didn't think I'd find these!

No Turns?

Just found a picture I took one day in Calgary. What would you do here?

Full Java Integration

Our Alphabet

I was wondering once about the development of our alphabet, and specifically why the letters are in what we all know as "alphabetical order". It's such an integral part of our lives, where did it come from? Never really answered the question, just found that it was rooted in the depths of antiquity. However, I found this neat little snippet and had to save it, so now I'll share it with you. Informative and so nicely put together as a simple animated gif! I wish I could remember where I found it to give credit where it is due.

[Note:] This entry was modified Feb 20. I never got the gif to work properly, but I did find the source. It's from a marvelous page by Prof. Robert Fradkin at University of Maryland called Evolution of Alphabets. The link to the gif is here.

I've noticed that his does not repeat or refresh either. Maybe it's just something in the way I have my computer set up.

Cribbed from James S. Huggins Refrigerator Door

Guidelines for Cats

Doors
Do not allow closed doors in any room. To get door opened, stand on hind legs and hammer with forepaws. Once door is opened, it is not necessary to use it. After you have ordered an "outside" door opened, stand halfway in and out and think about several things. This is particularly important during very cold weather, rain, snow, or mosquito season. Swinging doors are to be avoided at all costs.

Chairs and Rugs
If you have to throw up, get to a chair quickly. If you cannot manage in time, get to an Oriental rug. If there is no Oriental rug, shag is good. When throwing up on the carpet, make sure you back up so that it is as long as the human's bare foot.

Bathrooms
Always accompany guests to the bathroom. It is not necessary to do anything . . . just sit and stare.

Hampering
If one of your humans is engaged in some close activity and the other is idle, stay with the busy one. This is called "helping", otherwise known as "hampering." Following are the rules for "hampering":

• When supervising cooking, sit just behind the left heel of the cook. You cannot be seen and thereby stand a better chance of being stepped on and then picked up and comforted.
  
• For book readers, get in close under the chin, between eyes and book, unless you can lie across the book itself.
  
• For knitting projects or paperwork, lie on the work in the most appropriate manner so as to obscure as much of the work or at least the most important part. Pretend to doze, but every so often reach out and slap the pencil or knitting needles. The worker may try to distract you; ignore it. Remember, the aim is to hamper work. Embroidery and needlepoint projects make great hammocks in spite of what the humans may tell you.
  
• For people paying bills (monthly activity) or working on income taxes or Christmas cards (annual activity), keep in mind the aim-to hamper! First, sit on the paper being worked on. When dislodged, watch sadly from the side of the table. When activity proceeds nicely, roll around on the papers, scattering them to the best of your ability. After being removed for the second time, push pens, pencils, and erasers off the table, one at a time. When a human is holding the newspaper in front of him/her, be sure to jump on the back of the paper. They love to jump.

Walkin
As often as possible, dart quickly and as close as possible in front of the human, especially on stairs, when they have something in their arms, in the dark, and when they first get up in the morning. This will help their coordination skills.

Bedtim
Always sleep on the human at night so s/he cannot move around.

Play
This is an important part of your life. Get enough sleep in the daytime so you are fresh for your nocturnal games. Below are listed several favorite cat games that you can play. It is important, though, to maintain one's dignity at all times. If you should have an accident during play, such as falling off a chair, immediately wash a part of your body as if to say "I meant to do that!" It fools those humans every time.

Cat Games

• Catch Mouse
  The humans would have you believe that those lumps under the covers are their feet and hands. They are lying. They are actually Bed Mice, rumored to be the most delicious of all the mice in the world, though no cat has ever been able to catch one. Rumor also has it that only the most ferocious attack can stun them long enough for you to dive under the covers to get them. Maybe YOU can be the first to taste the Bed Mouse!
  
• King of the Hill
  This game must be played with at least one other cat. The more, the merrier! One or both of the sleeping humans is Hill 303 which must be defended at all costs from the other cat(s). Anything goes. This game allows for the development of unusual tactics as one must take the unstable playing theater into account.

Warning: Playing either of these games to excess will result in expulsion from the bed and possibly from the bedroom. Should the humans grow restless, immediately begin purring and cuddle up to them. This should buy you some time until they fall asleep again. If one happens to be on a human when this occurs, this cat wins the round of King of the Hill.

Toys
Any small item is a potential toy. If a human tries to confiscate it, this means that it is a good toy. Run with it under the bed. Look suitably outraged when the human grabs you and takes it away. Always watch where it is put so you can steal it later. Two reliable sources of toys are dresser tops and wastebaskets. There are several types of cat toys.

• Bright shiny things like keys, brooches, or coins should be hidden so that the other cat(s) or humans can't play with them. They are generally good for playing hockey with on uncarpeted floors.
  
• Dangly and/or string-like things such as shoelaces, cords, gold chains, and dental floss (& Q-tips) also make excellent toys. They are favorites of humans who like to drag them across the floor for us to pounce on.
  
• When a string is dragged under a newspaper or throw rug, it magically becomes the Paper/Rug Mouse and should be killed at all costs. Take care, though. Humans are sneaky and will try to make you lose your dignity.

Paper Bags
Within paper bags dwell the bag mice. They are small and camouflaged to be the same color as the bag, so they are hard to see. But you can easily hear the crinkling noises they make as they scurry around the bag. Anything, up to and including shredding the bag, can be done to kill them. Note: any other cat you may find in a bag hunting for bag mice is fair game for a sneak attack, which will usually result in a great Tagmatch.

Food
In order to get the energy to sleep, play, and hamper, a cat must eat. Eating, however, is only half the fun. The other half is getting the food. Cats have two ways to obtain food: convincing a human you are starving to death and must be fed now; and hunting for it oneself. The following are guidelines for getting fed.

• When the humans are eating, make sure you leave the tip of your tail in their dishes when they are not looking.
  
• Never eat food from your own bowl if you can steal some from the table. Never drink from your own water bowl if a human's glass is full enough to drink from.
  
• Should you catch something of your own outside, it is only polite to attempt to get to know it. Be insistent. Your food will usually not be so polite and try to leave.
  
• Table scraps are delicacies with which the humans are unfortunately unwilling to readily part. It is beneath the dignity of a cat to beg outright for food as lower forms of life such as dogs will, but several techniques exist for ensuring that the humans don't forget you exist. These include, but are not limited to: jumping onto the lap of the "softest" human and purring loudly; lying down in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, the "direct stare", and twining around people's legs as they sit and eat while meowing plaintively.

Sleeping
As mentioned above, in order to have enough energy for playing, a cat must get plenty of sleep. It is generally not difficult to find a comfortable place to curl up. Any place a human likes to sit is good, especially if it contrasts with your fur color. If it's in a sunbeam or near a heating duct or radiator, so much the better. Of course, good places also exist outdoors, but have the disadvantages of being seasonal and dependent on current and previous weather conditions such as rain. Open windows are a good compromise.

Scratching Posts
It is advised that cats use any scratching post the humans may provide. They are very protective of what they think is their property and will object strongly if they catch you sharpening your claws on it. Being sneaky and doing it when they aren't around won't help, as they are very observant. If you are an outdoor kitty, trees are good. Sharpening your claws on a human is not recommended.

Humans
Humans have three primary functions: to feed us, to play with and give attention to us, and to clean the litter box. It is important to maintain one's Dignity when around humans so that they will not forget who is the master of the house. Humans need to know basic rules. They can be taught if you start early and are consistent.

Cats as Humanitarians
Humans have a very tenuous hold on reality and it is up to the cats to help them maintain their grasp on said reality. For instance, humans often speak to imaginary friends while holding a small object up to their ear, with no other humans in sight, obviously losing touch with the real world! A cat must put a stop to this as quickly as possible! Climb on the human and get your face right up in theirs and meow very loudly until the human acknowledges you, therefore bringing them back to reality. If that fails, you can use the top of your head to try and knock the small object out of their hand/away from their ear, which almost always succeeds in stopping their talking to thin air.

Human Inconsistency
Humans spend many hours sitting in front of a box with moving pictures, tapping tiny squares on a board with their fingertips...it is rumored that this is actually how humans sharpen their claws! Considering how sanctimonious they are when they catch cats sharpening their claws, humans obviously need a lesson in consistency. One of the best ways to do this is to walk on the board with the tiny squares...that will always get a huge reaction from the human, a good indication that you're actually teaching them something! If that doesn't work, lay on the board or throw up a furball on it! There's no good reason why humans should be allowed to sharpen their claws while forbidding cats to do so!

Cat Speak
Humans will sometimes try to speak in cat language, attempting to 'meow' at you while having no real idea what they're saying! Cats can either meow back and try and fool the human into thinking that there is a real connection going on, or they can stare at the human with a puzzled look on their face...after all, the human just told you that your mother was the whore of every tomcat in town! Did they mean that or did they simply not understand the implications of their attempting to meow? It's hard to say, as the level of human advancement in this area is very limited...about the only 'catspeak' they actually understand is "I'm starving" and "Let me out...NOW!" If they have truly insulted you or your family, feel free to either tell them how stupid they are in cat language or walk away indignantly.

The Eternal Question
When faced with the age-old question, "Is it love, or is it Fancy east?", we all know that it is Fancy Feast, of course. However, it is absolutely crucial that cats not let the humans know this, or the humans might stop sharing this treat with us! Always convince the human that your sudden, intense attention showered on them is LOVE! You can go back to normal behavior after the treat has been consumed!

James S. Huggins Home Page

Just cut, tape and play with it!

This guy is pretty amazing. He has dozens of similar videos on Metacafe. You can visit his page with the link below

golic's page at Metacafe -

My First Entry

Note added on Feb 8, 2009:

I only set up this blog to figure out how to serve up pdf files on a blog. I needed one to play with. My friends Jacquie and Tim Tokaryk were trying to use a blog to publish their newsletter The Eastend Edge and enlisted my help to solve the problem. The result is below, but I seem to have got carried away. We'll see where it goes...

How to Secure Your Windows PC and Your Privacy

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