The iPad has now been in the news for a couple of days, so it’s time I made a few observations. My first sight of it was when I got an email from Apple  introducing the iPad.  The following image was at the top of the email, and it gave me concerns about the [...]

The Brownlow Medal awards were held last night, and the winner by a large margin was the favourite, Gary Ablett Jr.  His win got good coverage on the TV news tonight, but more coverage was given on TV to one of the partners and her dress.  The dress and its wearer even got a segment [...]

Today was a very quiet day for me.  I stayed at home and did my usual Saturday weekend wash and computer housekeeping chores.  But the day didn’t go quite as planned when I got up.  When I checked my emails, I found the second one from Cakewalk this week announcing the release of Sonar 8.5 [...]

The audio test was a success with Reno, so here are two more songs for him.

The first is a tribute to Susan Boyle. It’s a studio recording of her singing the song that made her famous -I Dreamed a Dream.

The Scottish sensation of “Britain’s Got Talent” will make her U.S. TV debut on the season finale of “America’s Got Talent,” according to a person close to the series.  The two-part finale of “America’s Got Talent” airs Sept. 14 and Sept. 16 on NBC, both at 8 p.m. EDT.

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The second song is Roberta Flack singing The Impossible Dream.  It’s one of most loved songs, but there are only a few recordings of it that I really like.  This is one of them.

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Here’s a video promotion on YouTube for a 2-DVD course in piano improvision presented by Dr Robert Keane.  The DVD production was filmed and edited, including the promotion below, by a friend of mine in Brisbane.  I think it’s very well done, and quite entertaining too.

A Canon XH A1 HDV video camera was used for the production, Adobe Premiere Pro for editing, Adobe After Effects for motion graphics, and Adobe Encore for the DVD master. It’s a beautiful looking camera.

I understand that an HP Windows quad-core PC was used for the production.

I was thrilled to get a reply today from Sonny Watson in California regarding the Dancing With The Stars argument about what constitutes West Coast Swing.

Sonny wrote that he was unable to watch the video links because he got a Yahoo!7 message “The content you are trying to view is only available in certain areas.”

I’ve sent him new material today which I hope overcomes that problem.

But goodness gracious me, as Peter Sellers would say (as an Indian doctor), when singing to Sophia Loren – why on earth would Yahoo!7 block the video to viewers in the USA.

And now for something completely different:

This evening I created my first WordPress design, called a “theme” in WordPress language.  Until now I’ve been using free themes that someone else has created.  You are now looking at a design I created.

I didn’t create the design in Dreamweaver, but in a program called Artisteer that’s very easy to use, and is great for whipping up a design very quickly.  Or it can create a far more individual design if I give more attention to each aspect of the design.  It doesn’t give total freedom in design (as Dreamweaver does), but it allowed me to the create the design of this page as it appears at the time of posting, in an hour of trying this and that, in every aspect of the design.

When I wrote a post last night with the heading of I’m gonna get a chainsaw, da da da da da I had a tune in mind that I couldn’t remember.  But today it came to me, and I’ve attached the tune to yesterday’s post.  Give it a play (by clicking on the link to the Joshua Rich song).

Joshua Rich  -  Gonna Get a Haircut

The title is a musical introduction.  Try singing it, and make something of it.

Try it to Joshua Rich-Gonna Get a Haircut.

I’m fairly sure that those who know me would never think of me as a person to buy a chainsaw.

But I’m gonna get a chainsaw

Earlier this year I saw an advert in my letterbox junk mail for a battery powered chainsaw sold by a local harware store, and it seemed to me as a way of dealing with the large branches from a dead shrub that have been in my garage for several years.  I’ve tried sawing them in to small pieces to put in my garbage bin, but it’s too hard and slow.

The chainsaw idea appealed to me, but seemed silly, and overkill and perhaps wildly extravagant.

On Monday I had an overdue haircut, and the conversation with my barber eventually got into his gardening over the weekend.  After that I mentioned my garden problem, and he suggested “Get a chainsaw.”

That made my day.  Here was a very down to earth barber of Greek descent suggesting that I ought to get a chainsaw to deal with my problem.  This was thrilling advice for me.  It confirmed that I was not an idiot in thinking that a chainsaw would be the easiest way to gradually fix my garden problem.

And so, a chainsaw is on my shopping list this week.