Possible feed weirdness
Inputting in old posts that didn’t get transferred so you may find posts from years ago in your feeds.
Fun day in Sunderland
Had a day off of work today. Took the train to Sunderland to meet Richard. We started off going to Sunderland library home of the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art. There were a couple of exhibitions on. Giuseppe Davies: Vie is an interactive installation on until the 3rd of April. It is a screen that responds to touch with lights and sound. It’s very pretty. The larger exhibition on is Think Tank: A marketplace of ideas ending 13th of Feb so we are lucky we caught it. A bunch of ideas to reflect and improve society…Richard liked the We Not Me poster. I liked the Institute of Economic Affairs map, simple, pretty and interesting – reminiscent of the Information Aesthetics Blog.
Then we went to Angelo’s Ristorante for excellent Italian food which Richard got to order with a silly Italian accent – good fun. For appetizers we had Formaggio di Capra e Rosti di Patate Croccante and Camembert. The main event was Ravioli alla Pizzaiola and Tagliatelle con Vedura e Zafferano.
For desert we went to Stardust which has a cute and crafty gift shop downstairs and a pretty cafe upstairs. Picked up the ring at left from the gift shop. Under £4 and a bit of fun. Upstairs, it’s a shame there weren’t more people there – the couches are the kind you sink into and the coffee and lemon cake were yummy. It seems like a perfect spot for students to camp out in with laptops and to just hang out. 
I then attempted to recreate the artwork on the wall of Stardust, a photograph of a sculpture just outside. It is a 2008 sculpture called Seachange by Laura Johnston. It is meant to recall the hull of a ship and the shipbuilding heritage of the area as it transforms into something new. [Part of the Sunderland City Centre Public Art Trail]
Unfortunately it was raining so we didn’t want to spend too much time attempting to get the shot. You can see my few attempts on flickr.
I got distracted from the original mission of recreating the photo in the cafe because I loved the trees being reflected in the steel:
Seachange sculpture in Sunderland
To get out of the rain we headed into Primark and picked up some cheap and cheerful shiny, pretty things – a sparkly bracelet for £2 and some pillar candles for £1.75 each. The little charge you get from picking something up for £2 and £10 is really the same and lasts about the same amount of time (and £100 doesn’t really last ten times as long) – it’s a good thing to remember. We then stopped off at Richard’s to pick up the cute and stinky Florence and set off for Hartlepool.
I am a terrible navigator. Hopefully this will change when I learn how to drive. After a number of phone calls to Kev to set us back in the right direction we had a nice relaxed evening with some gewurztraminer from Chile via Morrisons and a quick sweet and sour chickeny bits with rice dish a la Kev.
Mostly it’s just the two of us but it was nice to have company too. It’s easy to forget when you get into you routine.
Gregory Liszt’s Deadly Gentlemen at the Cluny2 in Newcastle
Went to see the Deadly Gentlemen at the Cluny 2 in Newcastle this past Wednesday. It was a Jumpin’ Hot Club gig – they put on lots of folk, alt-rock good stuff on in the area.
Serious Sam Barrett opened. A guy from Leeds singing country…I had an amusing misheard lyric moment on one of his songs. ”She’s as pretty as the hair on the mossad? what?!!…spoke to him between sets to ask him what he was singing…She’s as pretty as the heather on the moorside - makes a lot more sense. : )
Gregory Liszt is the banjo player from Crooked Still. We saw them at the Cluny 2 also. They are amazing and the venue was packed that night. Greg Liszt was very entertaining and as soon as I saw this new project he was doing was coming I immediately bought tickets. I was stunned that there weren’t more people at the gig, maybe people were scared of winter weather.
Happy to document a very fun gig (their first ever in England). First off they are really talented musicians – Mike Barnett on fiddle, Stash Wyslouch on guitar, Sam Grisman on bass, and Greg Liszt on vocals and banjo. They bring to mind a cross between Chris Thile and Mike Ford from Moxy Früvous bluegrass mixed with speed, the ability to communicate lyrics that are super-quick and clever. See for yourself.
Love Hobo Rockstar cause it reminds me of Kitteh and Pip.
Kitteh and Pip the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats
Shot videos while my battery lasted with Greg’s blessing (I asked before they went on stage). Shot it with my new Kodak Zi8 with the internal microphone. The neat thing about the Zi8 is that it can also take an external mic (though I didn’t bring one).
I was pretty close (2nd row) and there was an empty seat in front of me that I could lean the camera on as a makeshift stabilizer. The Zi8 is pocketsize and many people mistake it for a largish smartphone. Nope, just a decent pocket video camera that shoots HD. Should have also brought another recent purchase a portable, rechargeable power supply for when your battery runs out…oh well.
Shot the videos up until the battery went dead which to be fair I didn’t charge it before I left the house so it was on half strength from shooting random stuff.
Wish it would have lasted to the end. The encore was especially great. The small but enthusiastic crowd cheered them on to get back on the stage. They agreed to play another song but did it unplugged, off the stage – near the door with the crowd on their feet. I was not even 2 feet away from them. It was in the dark and awesome.
It would be great to see them in a festival setting like the Cambridge Folk Festival; they’d be loads of fun in one of the tents. The next night they were going to be at Celtic Connections in Glasgow. Check out their myspace page for upcoming gigs.
Random extra info: At one point during the gig, Greg asked if anyone in the crowd or the band plays a banjo. He thinks they’re cool and that people should pick it up. Just don’t give one to a beautiful woman anonymously according to this ask.mefi thread. The consensus is it’s creepy.
Eurasian Woodcock in our garden
The video is shot by Kev from our living room window. I looked out the window and asked him what it was, he had no idea. Turns out the woodcock is a shy, nocturnal bird so it is rare to see one. We used the excellent RSPB bird identifier to figure out what it was.
One of the things I have enjoyed about living in Hartlepool and having a garden is learning the names of birds. Our garden gets visits from starlings and blackbirds, woodpigeons, robins and sparrows. We get loads of seagulls too. This past year we had a bunch of baby seagulls on the roof. Growing up in Brooklyn and reading a lot I could tell you that robins and sparrows are small birds…I couldn’t pick them out of a birdy line-up.
We have a friend who is really into birds. When we go out with him and his wife we look to him to help identify birds. He asks us questions like what did it look like and what did it sound like…we respond (like Mrs. Swan on Mad TV’s “he looka like a man”) it looked like a bird, it sounded like a bird.
We’re getting a bit better. I bought a great book for kids about identifying birds in your garden. It’s meant for kids to keep a log of the birds they see and includes stickers. : ) And, it seems like I am enjoying part of a trend. A comedian we love Bill Bailey (from the brilliant Black Books and his own standup) now has a show about Bird Watching.
Other birds from our garden:
Video Games Live at the Sage – 25 Nov 2009
Kev and I went to see Video Games Live at the Sage – Northern Sinfonia performing music from video games.
Possibly the only time we will see Northern Sinfonia at the Sage decked out in Threadless Gaming T-shirts.
Kev was wearing:
I was wearing:
Would have been just as happy wearing:
Some photos from the evening:
The show was good fun. Multi-generational audience. Our only lament was that we weren’t seeing it in the US or Japan where it would have been sure to sell out and more people would have been dressed up.
Jack Wall was the conductor, Tommy Tallarico was the MC. It turns out he composed the music to one of the games I used to play Earthworm Jim (also loved the cartoon). Martin Leung the video game pianist also performed including a rendition of Super Mario blindfolded. There was also a skype video chat with Marty O’Donnell.
You can watch a good chunk of it with the youtube playlist below.