Dusk Puppy

Thermodynamic foam miracle

2010-08-21T22:44:00.000+02:00

I'm not sure if this falls in the same category as seeing shapes in clouds or reading tea-leaves, but it has me thinking. (Click to view:)

When coffee gets bored

What sort of odds are we looking at for this kind of thing to show up? My immediate thought was "pretty near impossible", but consider if you will the number of cups of coffee that get made every single day... The calculation starts to resemble the Drake equation, with astronomically large numbers multiplied by really tiny numbers multiplied by complete unknowns.

Low odds or not, I haven't been able to look at my morning coffee the same way since.

New reading material

2009-01-11T23:24:00.002+02:00

He writes, he's published a book and he wants you to buy one. Get one now!

G.B. Barlow - http://www.gbbarlow.co.za

Yes, it's a shameless plug. No, it isn't me. Yes, you should click the link above. Go. Now.

The Double-Slit Experiment

2008-06-15T21:51:00.002+02:00

I am in the disastrous position of having a theory and being unable to test it. Therefore I shall just write it up here and hope someone else finds it interesting. If I’m repeating something someone else has already suggested or thoroughly debunked, let me know. Be warned: a healthy interest in physics is mandatory.

One of the simplest experimental demonstrations in physics is also one of the most bizarre. The double-slit experiment has been used to show off the inexplicable dual nature of light since the beginning of the 19^th century. Only at the beginning of the 20^th century, however, was its connection to the even weirder world of quantum physics solidly proven: single photons fired discretely through the apparatus still behave as if they are intefering with a steady stream of other photons, or themselves, and build an interference pattern which by all common sense just shouldn’t be there.

I won’t explain the single-photon experiment in depth, as there are many, many descriptions of this available. (You could start with the Wikipedia link above.) What I would like to present is my own crazy hypothesis on why this experiment does what it does. Simply put:

Conjecture: Photons passing through the double-split apparatus are being interfered with by the paths of photons that have already passed through the apparatus.

Let’s back that one up a bit. Various theories like those dealing with relativity tell us that space and time are inextricably linked. We may have a lot more control over the former than the latter, but until someone manages to dissect time somehow, I’ll bet my car that the “dimension” of time is even more like a dimension of space than we give it credit for, or can yet observe. (If we ever can observe it. I’m skeptical that we’ll ever really manage to see what makes time tick – but I won’t bet on that one too.)

Let’s assume for now that the dimension of time as we know it has a very similar set of spatial laws to the three spatial dimensions we directly experience. In other words, two events that occur in rapid succession could be considered spatially “close together” in our dimension of time. Let’s also assume that, even though we perceive time in a completely different way to how we perceive space, the laws governing the principals of quantum physics are less restricted – more specifically, if a wavefunction (or the particle it describes) extends probabilities into a definable region of space around it, that same wavefunction should also extend some effect a definable distance forwards and backwards through time.

If this extension of wavefunction occurs as described above, one can picture each photon that passes through the experiment leaving a wordline which somehow has an interfering effect on any subsequent photons being fired through, even though they do not coincide in time. It would be as if the photon leaves an afterimage in its path which fades out, but not before another photon passes by to be affected by it.

My conjecture may be nuts, but then, so is the rest of quantum physics.

So how would one test this theory? Well, I have one suggestion. It requires having a single-photon generator handy, so I don’t think I’ll be trying it anytime soon – but regardless:

Experiment: Keep shifting the frame of reference
This theory assumes that the paths of previous occurences of photons somehow stick around. If we remove the effects of the previous photons, we would, in theory, also remove the effects of interference and change the results of the experiment – in short, there would be no evidence of the wave-nature of light anymore and the interference bands would disappear.

How do we do this? Simple. Every time we fire off a photon, we change the apparatus frame of reference – rotate it a few degrees, move it 3 inches to the left, whatever takes your fancy. However it is done, the change should happen every time and should never line up with a previous reference (otherwise we’re back where we started).

Another thought experiment: The flight of the initial photon
If all of the above were true, another interesting result comes from all of this: The very first photon fired would not fly by the same probable paths as its subsequent twins. It would simply strike the detecting paper with no interference to its path whatsoever. Naturally this would be more difficult to prove: You’d have to set up many, many individual double-slits, fire a single photon in each of them, and collate the results. Enough results to determine whether interference bands are being formed. That’s probably a lot of results… and I’ll leave it to someone else to try.

"Outer Space" must be a bar in the Large Magellanic Cloud

2007-10-03T10:37:00.000+02:00

There are laws in most countries that make false advertising illegal. My belief is that similar penalties should be placed on people who write "educational" material on subjects they clearly know exactly nothing about. Consider this last line, found on the back of a box of Astro's:

The sun's surface is so dense it takes light (photons) 175,000 years to travel from the surface into outer space in the form of light, heat and energy.

There are so many things wrong with this sentence, I don't think the English language has words to describe its utter wrong-ness. I actually re-read it in disbelief about 15 times just to make sure I hadn't missed half the words somehow.

I mean, it sounds plausible... if you know nothing about physics whatsoever. I suppose the moral is that you shouldn't be learning about complex subjects by reading the back of Astro's boxes.

Bright spark

2007-09-07T10:24:00.000+02:00

We've moved now, and naturally I don't want to be paying the next tenant's electricity bill. Thus did I go merrily wend down to the electricity department, fill out a form and hand it in to have my old account terminated.

Me: "I'd like to terminate my electricity supply."
E.D.: "Ok..." [enters account number into PC] "You don't live at 8 P. now."
Me: "Correct. That's why I'm terminating the supply."
E.D.: "I mean, you didn't live here."
Me: "Hey?"
E.D.: "Says here you live at 15 K."
Me: "I haven't lived there for over a year. My account was transferred to 8 P. a year ago."
E.D.: "So you've given me the wrong address to terminate?"
Me: "Um... no. 8 P. is the right address - you have the wrong address on your system."
E.D.: "So you'd like me to transfer your account from 15 K. to 8 P.?"
Me: "No! I don't live there anymore."
E.D.: "Then how can I terminate the account?"

This is not particle physics. Patiently, however, I try it from a different angle.

Me: "I would like my account terminated, no matter where I am. It doesn't actually matter."
E.D.: "In that case, you'll have to tell me which address you'd like terminated."
Me: "Whichever one is active? Either one. Both of them! You choose."
E.D.: "I don't know which one is active unless you tell me."
Me: "You've just told me it's 15 K."
E.D.: "But you said you transferred your account a year ago."

It's turning into the sort of conversation where you thought you knew what was going on, but now you're not so sure.

Me: "Can you not just clear me off the system, no matter what address you have for me?"
E.D.: "Fine. Your address on our system is not the same as where you say you were living -"
Me: "That's what I've been trying to explain to you."
E.D.: "- so could you please change the address on this form to what we have here?"

Please note that the address she is asking me for is currently on her computer screen, and she needs me to write it down in order to enter it into her computer. In other words, it is already filled in. But now I'm so tired of explaining my situation that I carefully write the address onto the form. And yes, she actually deletes the text from her computer in order to type exactly the same details into the same fields.

I thought I was all set once she clicked "Accept", but there was one last detail on my form we hadn't chatted about yet: the forwarding address.

E.D.: "So what is the third address on this form, then?"
Me: "That's where I live now."
E.D.: "So you don't actually live at either 8 P. or 15 K.?"

We've just gone full circle. I give up.

My bad news for today

2007-08-21T00:05:00.000+02:00

At the end of this month we will be moving again. That is by no means the bad news, but I'm going to explain one of the many reasons why.

For the past 8 months we have been dealing with the worst rental agency ever to be created. (Spawned? Thought up by committee? I can't see this thing being run out of love for fellow humankind.) All rental agencies get a bad name from their tenants, but having dealt with a few, this one makes the rest sound as uninviting as Santa Claus with a bag of presents. From neverending rudeness to a list of problems that have never been looked at so much as attended to - we'll never allow anyone we know to deal with these people for love, money or free chocolate for life.

Our contract, like most rental contracts, requires us to let our agency into the place to make changes or upgrades from time to time. This is bad enough when the agency clearly has no respect for your personal commitments, nor any interest in making arrangements that actually suit you as a tenant - but the final straw for me is having your personal affairs and belongings treated with no respect once you have actually agreed to let them do what they want to do.

Today I am posting the results of our last little affair as a warning to anyone else who is thinking about renting, or at least renting with our progressive little agency that tries to make rental housing an investment. (Also, I haven't posted pictures much, and it's time I caught up.) We were asked to allow a contracting company to come in for the day and put in built-in cupboards. They started an hour late, which is not uncommon, and ended up leaving much later than we'd like.

But that's not the worst part. Let me introduce our bedroom as it normally looks:

Once our friends had knocked off and hurriedly disappeared off into the sunset, we return to our bedroom now looking like this:

Awesome. All our furniture is left in one corner, our bed is left to die on its side, and all our clothes and bedding are left piled on the table.

This is still not the worst part, though. Look at these groovy pics:

It's a nice, sunny day outside, but these geniuses do all their sawing and cutting in the bedroom.

This is the only item in the room I played with before taking a picture. The left side is how we found it; the right side I wiped with my finger. This is how everything in the whole room looks. I think they must have shredded an adult oak tree in here.

This is a black leather jacket. Or it was.

I know I heard the guy using a broom for a little bit after they'd stopped drilling. Now I know where he was sweeping it.

Ok, so we had to vacuum the room, and everything in it, for about an hour just to clean up the sawdust. Then we discovered another amusing remnant of their visit:

Our resident clever people had drilled right through the bedroom wall into the bathroom. I can appreciate that mistakes like this happen - but why did they subsequently use the loo a couple of times and a) not say a thing about it nor b) even pick up the empty loo roll they discarded on the floor? Do they somehow think we won't notice? "Gawsh, looks like our house got worms."

I shall be showing all of this to our loving rental agency. I will, of course, post any results or lack thereof.

My good news for today

2007-08-20T11:57:00.000+02:00

It's been a while since I've put finger to keyboard here, so I will reintroduce myself to my blog with a good post and a bad post. That way I will not upset my blog too much, nor the delicate constitutions of my readers. (Who have probably given up on me now and are having a great time somewhere else.)

Anyone who reads this probably already knows the good news. Big deal - you've read this far, you can't stop now. So: We're engaged! Woo! As of last Monday I can scratch out 'boyfriend' and write in 'fiancé' instead. Well, if any sort of form actually asked for that sort of thing...

Chocolates they should make

2007-05-09T08:06:00.000+02:00

I have it on excellent authority that these would sell very well...

Car pics

2007-04-15T06:16:00.000+02:00

Took longer than I expected to get round to posting these. Well so what - here they are.

I think it is stylish, no?

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.......

Gotta have a cute bum. Well, a bum. Ok, a large bum. A bum with an important label on it, really. Seems lots of guys in little white golfs don't know that "2.0T" beats "1.4i" every time. Silly.

And it also has a cupholder. Complete!

Vroom vroom

2007-03-28T08:56:00.000+02:00

Yay!! My new car is here! Drove it around last night for a bit... so much fun.

I'll post some pics later.

Qui e ora

2007-01-25T08:11:00.000+02:00

So much has changed since my last post here that I'm probably going to forget half of it before typing it all out. Isn't it fun to have so much excitement in such a short period? Well... maybe. I've certainly had more than enough to keep me busy around here, and if I don't start getting it out of my head and into a blog really soon, my poor readers will start to feel left out. (Won't they? Hello?... Anyone there...? Pfft.)

We moved. H and I are now staying together in a fairly large flat close to where I was staying previously. The place looks like it's been around since the wheel was invented and will probably be the last thing still standing if the sun explodes. It's also bright pink, but thankfully only on the outside. This place doesn't appear to be infested with drug dealers - we just have to weed out the occasional audacious cockroach. I have a parking bay well removed from other cars (think: less errant door-dings) and we actually have neighbours who say hello every now and then. So far so good.

We installed ADSL with very little hassle. After the intense ragging our little telephone monopoly has gotten over recent years, I'd expected to have to fight to the death to get our line installed (or at least until ADSL was suddenly made obselete by another yet-to-appear technology). We applied, they pitched up 3 weeks later, and here I am using it right now. One point to them. I shall withhold further praise, however, until I have received my very first phonebill. This is an experience I haven't, uh, experienced yet. I look forward to the small things, you know... I just hope it is a small thing, otherwise I'm gonna cap our phone usage at 3 minutes per month. We'll see.

My new car arrives in March! Yay! Ok, moving on.

(March! only 6 weeks more to wait! Come oooooooOOONNNnnnnUGH!)

Let's rewind a bit. We got the keys to the new flat two weeks early, so I had a somewhat leisurely move. I also managed to throw away so much useless stuff before I moved that the combined weight of G's Things probably halved. Feels great. I am definitely not a hoarder, though I do still manage to find things and wonder e.g. where the hell I ever got that from or how it ended up inside a cardboard box under 6 copies of Car and an unused pair of computer speakers. It is a mystery.

Christmas was awesome. We had a big lunch at my parents' place (with my gran down from Jhb), then a big lunch the following day at H's mom's place.

Our new years party was an experiment in getting my friends and H's friends in the same house for a few hours and seeing how they got on. It worked rather well, so we conducted a second interview (if you will) and invited the double-lot around to our new place for a flat-warming. That worked even better: There was much chip-eating and merriment, we now own lots more plants, and two of our friends have become more-than-just-friendly-interested in each other. That's what I call a successful evening!

(March! I'm waaaaaaiiiiiiiting...)

My attempts at teaching myself Italian have finally started paying off. It's so cool when you can suddenly start understanding a page of foreign text. Apprendimento è gran divertimento, and don't you forget it. I can highly recommend the following method of practising a written language: Go to the language of your choice on a site like Wikipedia (in this case, http://it.wikipedia.org) and hit "Random page" ("Una voce a caso"). See how much you can understand (with dictionary help as necessary), then move on. It works wonders if you have learned the very basics first. Parlo attualmente un po' d'italiano, though my pronunciation probably sucks. Anyone out there wishing to help me out?

I feel like everything in my life is starting to move forward a bit. I don't really know how to quantify that, but I don't have to, do I. I am all too aware that analysis is often the death of simply enjoying a situation.

So I shall simply enjoy the situation. Bye for now.

The holiday with the tree 'n' lights 'n' stuff

2006-12-24T10:47:00.000+02:00

To any strange soul who may be reading blogs at a time like this -

Merry Christmas, have a lovely week and I hope you all gave someone something nice.

2006: Anno d'Amore

2006-12-10T08:48:00.000+02:00

Counting only the people I know personally, this year has seen:

4 couples getting engaged;
2 couples getting married;
1 couple getting pregnant;
a whole bunch of uncoupled-people becoming couples.

These past 12 months have been like dexedrine for romance. I wonder if astrologists have anything to say on the matter... not that I'd believe them anyway.

And hey, there's still 21 days left in the year. Is anyone else going to hook up within the next 3 weeks and bugger up my carefully counted totals above? I rather hope so - I want to see just how outrageous this year can really get.

The rude awakening

2006-11-28T00:11:00.000+02:00

This morning at about 5:15, we were woken up by the sound of a car hooter being irritably bumped outside in the parking lot. Over about 30 seconds it went from light "we're waiting for you" beeps, quickly changed to long hoots then finally stayed on permanently as if the driver had fallen asleep on their steering wheel. H groggily got up, peered past the curtain and said: "Omigod it's on fire."

Sure enough, out in the parking area near the balcony, what was once a Jeep Wrangler had turned into a flaming orange ball the size of a set of rugby posts. It was quite a shocking sight. We don't know how long it had been burning, but the eventual short-circuiting of the hooter woke up everyone else as well, and after a couple of minutes there was a lot of shouting and a collection of rather ineffectual hosepipes being aimed at the flaring car. One silly chap walked up to the car and tossed a bucket of water on it - not too bright, standing right next to a car that is furiously popping, banging and flaring in every direction, enough to shatter the window of the car next to it. Moments later the flames were explosively doubled in strength as the fuel tank lit, causing a 10-foot diagonal flare that lasted maybe 20 seconds. That car was going to burn and burn well, no matter what.

30 minutes later the flames had subdued enough for a lone fireman to erase the rest of the flames with a garden hose. What was left of the car was pitiful: A stripped metal carcass with one perfectly preserved licence plate. It was like looking at a skeleton wearing a brand new pair of shoes. I can't imagine what the owner must have felt like, looking at that - seeing something so familiar turn into something so strange.

I will not surmise whether this was arson or not. I will however refresh the happiness I have knowing I shall be moving away from this block of flats in the very near future. And I would not give up my locked garage for all the open parking in the world.

Automotive change of heart

2006-11-26T07:32:00.000+02:00

My faithful followers are all too aware of my interest in the impending purchase of a new car. I've had this on the cards (road) since January. That's a long time to wait for anything. After placing an order for said car, which was destined to arrive here in August, I was barely containing myself as the months inched by. I was really excited. Gareth was soon to be zipping about in a cool new car, no doubt.

So naturally the car dealership* thoroughly messed it up for me.

First I find out that the arrival of the car in SA has been delayed by three months. Fine... but why did I read this on a local news site and not hear it directly from the dealership? A trip to the dealership and a strained conversation with a rather snotty salesman tells me that the saleslady I'd been dealing with went on maternity leave. Does she not have someone handling her clients for her? Wouldn't you expect some kind of notification that the large sum of money you were going to pay the dealership won't be needed for a further three months? Oh and by the way, the car has now been delayed indefinitely and might possibly arrive here in May.

No worries. I decide I'll look at some alternatives in the meantime. However, to be fair, I decide I'm also going to look at an alternative car produced by the same company which is currently available in SA. And I will also do this through a different dealer, since the snottiness of salesdork above rather made my teeth grind all by themselves.

I pay them a visit. They say: "Sure, we'll find one for you and let you know as soon as you can come and testdrive it." (These are extremely popular cars.) A week later, my friendly salesman phones and tells me: "Any time you'd like to come in. We've got it here ready for you."

So I pitched up at the dealership at the organised time. He, on the other hand, didn't. At that point I decided I'd never deal with this car company again.

Thankfully for my sanity I was exploring other cars too, and I have since placed an order for another car. It's a lovely car, it's available, I've testdriven it, my order will arrive in March, and the saleslady I've been dealing with has been almost too attentive by contrast. (Having clients who feel that they are being looked after is a good thing. Isn't that obvious?!?)

I even have a moral to my story, folks... Just the teeniest tiniest bit of extra effort on a salesperson's part can mean the difference between making a big sale the following week, and pissing off the client so much that they never deal with the entire company ever again. That's a big difference.

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* No names mentioned, but it ends with W and starts with V.

Just call me "Client Server"

2006-11-18T09:26:00.000+02:00

When I first created this blog, my intention was not to create yet another personal-"what I did all day"-diary which no-one else finds interesting and is read maybe 3 times a month by random strangers who have stumbled upon the page accidentally while searching for gay porn or a better recipe for crepe suzette.

For now, however, I would just like to rant. Consider this entry a diarised catharsis.

As the head software developer for my company, I generally get to delegate or deal with every technical issue that comes the way of our company and its minions. That is as it should be. What I can not believe is the incredible and ever-growing ability our clients have to translate every problem they ever have into a technical issue which ends up in my Inbox. This week seems to have been the pinnacle of idiocy, so here are some highlights from the past five days.

Client #1. They have their website on their own web server. We made the web site for them, which in their minds means we can do all their jobs for them. They hired someone there whose only task is to make sure that their site data is backed up; I have received five e-mails from said individual asking me how data backups are done.

Client #2. They send an e-mail asking why we haven't processed a document yet. The next day they send us the relevant document. Along with another snotty note asking why we still haven't processed it.

Client #3. They send us a list of serious issues they've had using their mission-critical installation of our software. We reply stating politely that the issues in question do not in fact have anything to do with our software, they are caused by another application installed on their system. They reply asking why this makes any difference, and can we please just fix the problems?

Just a sample. Ok, I feel better now. Thanks.

The Yin and Yang of mental stability

2006-11-12T11:10:00.000+02:00

Why is it that one can experience such blissful happiness in the face of utter danger, and such unsettling sensations of insecurity when everything is going perfectly well?

Is there something built into the human brain that insists on balancing our day-to-day emotion on a set of psychological scales? If we don't get equal amounts of good and bad, do things start to go wrong?

Personally I'm usually more interested to hear the layman's answer to this sort of question then that of a trained psychologist.

Jack

2006-10-31T10:43:00.000+02:00

My yoghurt carton has the following printed on it:

Best before: JACK

Who the hell is Jack? Why is Jack only good after my yoghurt has expired? Why can't I just have a yoghurt with a normal expiry date printed on it? Is Jack going to appear a few days from now and tell me I can't have this yoghurt now that he's arrived? Does Jack, in fact, even know that I am eating this yoghurt? How does he know? Are other yoghurt flavours watched over by other people? Is there a Jim allocated to peach and a George spying on the strawberries?

What if Jack has already been and gone? Should I even eat this yoghurt? Will Jack return someday and tell me I shouldn't have eaten the yoghurt? Is there a penalty for eating yoghurt-after-Jack?

So many questions. I'd better go look for Jack.

You have picked up: The Scroll of Service

2006-10-29T07:43:00.000+02:00

Customer service story, Part the Next.

When presented with such weirdness as I described in my previous post, one has a choice: Deal with it, or go somewhere else. (Or both.) Never ones to insult anyone unduly, we of course compromised and ended up at the same restaurant, just a different branch.

This time for a quick bite for supper. It's a Friday night in a very popular mall, and the entire restaurant of about 30 tables - almost all of them occupied - is being waited on by two people. Minimalism aside, we were actually attended to fairly soon, though I'm not sure the waiter in question was all there. Vis:

Gareth: I'd like a coffee.
Waiter: You mean you want to order one?

Eventually we got it understood what we'd be interested in eating that evening, and waited hungrily for the goods. Our goods arrived - mine a rather lukewarm chicken pie, and H's a sandwich with mould on it. Naturally we sent the mould back, attached to the sandwich, and asked for another. (I was too hungry - I braved the lukewarm chicken pie.)

"Another" sandwich arrives... but here's the thing: If you want to make a sandwich look like it's just been made, don't just take the egg and bacon from an old one and transfer onto newly toasted bread. It doesn't work. The eggs have already run, the bacon is already looking grim, and reheating the whole lot just dries it out completely.

We left without finishing the sandwich.

You have gained 1 Service Level points!

2006-10-22T23:40:00.000+02:00

One experiences a strange delight in finding fault with customer service. It is with no small joy that the phrase “you won’t believe what happened to me the other day” is uttered, followed by a minutely-detailed sketch of what it is, exactly, that seemed out of place to the narrator. A moment of forgetfulness on the part of the cashier (who may, for example, have rung up your loaf of bread twice by mistake) is spun into a tale of woe and heartache so dire that soap-opera scriptwriters start taking notes.

On some occasions, however, dramatic expansion is thankfully unnecessary. Some levels of customer relation go so far beyond unusual that the customers in question start wondering nervously which episode of Candid Camera they have unwittingly starred in.

I’ll admit that my stories classify as a portion of both candid and dramatic. You get the best of both worlds, and besides it’s more fun to write about.

And so we move on to the classy event of the day that got me blogging: a visit to our friendly local restaurant* for a late lunch. H and I had done a bit of grocery shopping and decided to stop off for a bite before heading home. The waiter who graced us with his unshaven presence seemed mildly unwilling to study his employer’s menu: upon being asked whether a drink with the title “caramel” in it did, in fact, contain caramel, his response was a wide-eyed stare and a shrug. Ok. Good start.

Never fear – intrepid lunch-eaters that we are, we forged on regardless. We both ordered sandwiches, one of which (ok, mine) contained banana. Twenty minutes after finishing said caramel-flavoured drink, our waiter returns to tell us that we’ve been waiting a bit because they’ve run out of banana. Most days I’d have asked why it takes twenty minutes to figure that one out, but today I was really feeling leniant. So, says our waiter, they’re just organising some more.

At this point I am haunted by images of restaurant staff searching for ingredients that might possibly taste enough like banana to fool an unwary customer… but hark! What do we see coming round the corner, not five minutes later? A waitress, sent on a quick mission to the shop we’ve only just come from, carrying a plastic grocery-store packet containing eight bananas. Special delivery, these! My sandwich will now be complete.

What would they have done if we’d then proceeded to order two banana milkshakes, a banana split and a fruit salad with extra banana?

Our waiter was full of good cheer. “Don’t burn yourself on the plate,” he says, “because then I’ll be fired… I really need this job.” After hearing gems like this, I’d suggest the manager starts organising better incentives for his staff.

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* No names mentioned, but it starts with an M and ends in Bean.

Incredible!

2006-10-05T10:37:00.000+02:00

We recently stumbled upon what I think is the craziest coincidence. Quite unreal. Let me set the scene: I've said a lot about perfect pitch recently, and blogged about it earlier. Read that if you haven't already. Go. Read it now.

Read it? Good. Now, I've only ever met one other person with perfect pitch, who was in the same music class as I was during high school. Like true geeks we would pounce random noises on each other and ask "So what note was that?" and deal with such mature replies as "F# but you knew that already." We spent our time so wisely during high school... *wipes nostalgic tear*

Anyway. H and I were nattering about various unrelated things a little while ago, and she happened to hum 4 or 5 notes from the song we'd just mentioned. (I think it was Crash Test Dummies.) I laughed and told her she'd unknowingly hit exactly the right key without even trying. She looked at me funny and said: "So?... Why wouldn't I?"

Um. I quickly threw a few more song names at her, and she hit precisely the right starting note for every one of them.

She has perfect pitch and she didn't even know it. She assumed everyone could do that! I should have twigged when she commented that I hadn't finished tuning her guitar (I'd left it half a step down). She still thinks I'm pulling her leg telling her how unusual this all is.

Crazy. Ok, so they say active absolute pitch is found in 1 in 10,000 people - that makes us, well, 1 in 100,000,000, doesn't it? And now I can get someone else to tune my guitar for me...

The best thing about sunburn is...

2006-09-27T12:48:00.000+02:00

(Anyone care to complete the post title? I certainly can't think of anything.)

Headed off for a lovely long weekend on Friday afternoon. H and I drove up to Lambert's Bay and stayed in a self-catering place about 40m from the beach. (Actually, everything in Lambert's Bay is about 40m from the beach. Metropolis this ain't.) We scouted out every house and shop the town has - which took maybe an hour - then headed the opposite way and walked way the heck up the beach to see what that was like. And it was very nice, too. The entire afternoon we were passed by four blokes with a rugby ball, a posse of surfers and a guy hurrying up the beach carrying what looked like a shawl; I think this makes the beach more populated than the rest of Lambert's Bay.

We also decided to make the most of the drive there and back. Rather than take the direct (probably most boring) route, we zigzagged all the way up and down, stopping off and passing through a whole bunch of places along the West Coast. As a dude with huge interest in driving, I was greatly enjoying the varied terrain... The trip over Middelberg Pass was 10km of rocky, ridged, soaking-wet-slippery clay-dirt mountain road, which we traversed in heavy drizzle and mist so thick we couldn't see a car's length in front of us. Combined with the fact that I'm driving a humble Polo and not a car designed for decent ground-clearance and mud-holding, this was both hair-raising and the most amount of fun I've ever had driving that car. At least until we came up behind a guy in a Merc travelling at a maximum of almost 3kph on the straight bits.

Other news. I now have yet more incentive to move at the end of the year. And an extra special note to the dingbat who broke into my garage: I hope the amp you stole electrocutes you. Then I hope you are attacked in the middle of the night by a freak swarm of angry roadies armed with mic stands, old guitar strings and not enough sleep.

Jedi Music Master mutterings

2006-09-18T17:50:00.000+02:00

An update on life, the universe and a few things.

H and I have had many chats about how time passes. People usually moan that things disappear far too quickly... the day, the month, the year, their whole life - whatever they're unconsciously tapping out in their heads. We, on the other hand, both feel as if the past year has extended far off into the distant past. This morning feels like last week. January feels like 500 B.C. My theory is that lots of great stuff has happened for both of us recently - along with some bad stuff, of course, but that's life and after all you really do have the freedom to choose what you think about all day. (I choose to think about H all day, but that's just me.) The best part is that the rest of the year feels like it will be relaxed rather than dragged out. Are we unusually unstressed? Who knows. Who cares. Gift horse, mouth, etc.

Half our band members are still elsewhere and unavailable. The frustrating part is not so much that they aren't here but that I suddenly have all my best ideas when these folks aren't around to try them out. Perhaps I should train some understudies. The Dusk Puppy Minions... It can be a side-project when I'm rich, famous and senile.

X has decided he would be somewhat interested in guitar lessons. It's been a while since I've imparted The Knowledge in a teacher-student fashion, but I am most excited to perform the rituals again. He says he is not the sort to give up easily on anything. I hope that's true - anyone who sticks out the initial frustrations of learning a musical instrument from scratch will be eternally grateful that they did so. His girlfriend might disagree after hearing an A major scale picked out with great care for the 38th time in a row, but, well... sometimes you have to suffer for other people's art, not only your own.

And finally! Did I mention how many weddings I've been to and are going to this year? Well guess what. No, don't bother, I'll tell you. Another engagement has just been announced - one of the guys I work with - and the wedding will be this year. What a romantic year 2006 has been. Is it something in the water? I'd better watch out or I'll be married myself by November. And perhaps this won't be so bad - at the rate this year is going, it'll still feel like 1500 years from now... that's long enough to be a bachelor...

Unrelated

2006-09-03T17:59:00.000+02:00

No news is good news. Very true! I have been rather busy not-blogging because most of my free time has recently become time spent with a significant other. This means, of course, that I am no longer single and wish to mention just how awesome, wonderful, beautiful and fantastic the lass in question really is. So, uh... yes - she is all those things and more. I am happy. All is good. Green, and lots of it.

As the title suggests, something unrelated is to follow. We had a really groovy band practice this week. All members except myself and singer are away, so the two of us got together and just jammed. Armed with a laptop recording anything inspired that may pop out, we really just started bashing out chords, sequences and (until further notice) apparently nonsense lyrics... and it just worked. Really well. We have at least two great ideas for songs now after what amounted to a 30-minute session of unplanned blues-iness. Another great aspect of this is that we could probably make it really big in improvised music as long as no-one really wants to know what the lyrics are truly about. Actually, they can ask if they don't mind getting an answer phrased in the same meter.

Faraway marriage

2006-08-15T18:04:00.000+02:00

So we're all back from our excursion up the East Coast to witness the double-decker marriage. (No, there weren't two marriages. If you don't get it, you won't get it.) Another couple becomes lawfully joined at the hip. Congratulations, folks!

Knysna was great. The weather held for us, thankfully - it only decided to start pouring with rain once we'd gotten the braai going. The drive up and down was completely without incident (see previous pig-post) so not to worry, there are no extra bacon bits to avoid on the N2. And if you ever stay in a place called Little Mazot, I can highly recommend the couch for the purposes of sleeping, especially if the guy sharing your allotted room makes noises like a boerbull while sleeping off booze. Those cushions are comfy. And the door is very soundproof.

New hotness

2006-08-04T20:05:00.000+02:00

Yay! I'm going on leave for a week, and wow do I need it. I will also be attending yet another wedding (sorry J - not meant to sound dismissive). It is evidently that age when half the people I know get married and everyone else starts asking all sorts of annoying questions like "When are you getting married?" and "Do you not want to get married?" and "Why are you glaring at me like that?" Look, if it happens, it happens. Can we move on now? Thanks.

Time for a story. Yesterday evening I discovered I had left my #@$!ing umbrella at home and had to walk home through more falling water than can possibly be healthy. After 30 seconds I looked like I'd been dunked in a swimming pool head-first. I was also not carrying the most approachable facial expression: picture scrunchy-face combined with intense snarl. I was practising being miserable and it wasn't too difficult. Do you have a good mental picture now? Keep this in mind and continue reading.

Halfway home I saw one of the restaurants along the road was having some sort of function. Lots of security guards guiding people into the building, that sort of thing. I hunched a little more and tried to think about dodging not only raindrops but a stream of half-blinded drivers as well. As I am walking past the entrance, a guy in usher's uniform speaks.

"This way, sir."
"No, I'm just walking past."
"Are you not here for the fashion show?"
"No."
"Oh, sorry - I thought you were one of the models."

*cough* *splutter* WHAT?!?

I mean, sure... I, uh... would love to think I have the striking appearance of one of these preened individuals...

But come on.

Working late

2006-07-31T23:31:00.000+02:00

Deadlines get their name from the way you feel once you've missed them.

Stupercharged

2006-07-29T17:51:00.000+02:00

If you want to modify your car, you have a choice:

You can make it perform better;
You can try and fool everyone into thinking it can perform better.

In case you've never seen a car before, option 2 does not work. I would, though, like to demonstrate how many people in Cape Town alone don't understand this.

Spotted: Old (box-shaped) yellow Toyota Corolla
Mod: The addition of a grey Porsche 911 Turbo wing, attached with rivets.
Never mind the shocking aesthetics - the shape of these Corollas means the wing would have been ten times as effective if it had been mounted like a roof-rack. And that's still not worth it.

Spotted: Rusting 323 Mazda
Mod: Replaced 13" wheels with what looked like 19" low-profile mags.
I saw this guy revving his beast at a robot. The change of wheels stressed its engine so much I could have pulled away from him with a bicycle. And if you want to mount your car 6" higher just by changing wheels, you really should widen the wheelarches and not just remove the internal metal lining - this car is going to fall apart in a few months, and I would like to be there when it happens.

Spotted: BMW 316i
Mod: Twin exhausts, and an "M" attached - skew - in front of the "316".
Perhaps the owner is hoping for a higher trade-in value.

Spotted: Ancient 1.3 CitiGolf
Mod: The addition of red duct tape stuck to the front grill to look like the new GTi.
I actually thought this guy's grill was coming off and he'd done some emergency servicing... but no-one attaches a grill with duct tape and does it that neatly. Especially when they've already tinted their windows and carefully drilled a hole in their exhaust.

These, ladies and gents, were all seen during the past week. Did I miss the announcement of some sort of Posers Convention 2006?

A veritable smorgasbord

2006-07-20T11:05:00.000+02:00

Anyone who has ever tried regular blogging will, at some point, think "WTF? No-one is reading this rubbish!" and give up in a fume of despair. Then the itch to complain about your job / neighbour / plants / arch-rival becomes too much to bear and you can't stand it any longer and just have to write something.

That's not why I'm writing this post. However, I should start off by admitting that today I am procrastinating because my current projects are driving me up the drywall with boredom - and I am certainly not the type to solve that by doing some ironing. Hem hem. You know who are you are. So instead I shall diatribe, because that's way more fun and doesn't risk making burn marks on delicate articles of clothing.

We still don't have a drummer, but some guy (I have the worst memory for names) that Neil knows said he would come in and play with us for the time being. How nice. We've yet to meet him. Isn't it funny, though, how something that seems fantastic when you first get it can very quickly become either boring or too little or too small or not powerful enough or whatever? I'm not talking about the drummer, fools - I'm talking about our practice space. It's wonderful having the thing for use, but we figure the addition of a drummer is obviously going to raise our practice volume by some substantial, tree-shaking, squirrel-scaring level. Oh well. If the neighbours have a problem with that we can just cover a few of their favourite songs to keep them happy. And if they request something like Whitney Houston or the theme tune to Dallas, we'll do them a great service by refusing.

Otherwise things seem to be going well. I'm rather chuffed with our recent musical inventions and would gladly play them in front of real people as soon as we're done with them. It is clear that the easiest way to guage my mood during a song is by how much I'm enjoying the obligatory guitar solo. I've managed some real finger-twisters lately, I'll tell you.

On less heart-warming news, our dithering R exchange and interest rate is causing me some dissatisfaction, to put it very mildly. I want to buy my car! I don't want it to arrive here in December and be twice the price! Out, damn interest rate! Arrr!! I'm watching car prices like some people watch rugby.

For similar reasons I shall definitely be searching out a new place to rent at the end of the year. Living in a larger place is nice but rather unnecessary. Also I suspect the rental agency will have lots of fun with rate hikes shortly and start turning my monthly rent payments into mini lottery jackpots. The price I pay for... well... a set of rooms I don't even see during the day. What an odd perspective. Maybe I should just rent one of those long-term storage rooms for all my stuff, and a prefab next door big enough for my bed and a lightbulb.

Collated results

2006-07-10T13:10:00.000+02:00

To prove to all the dedicated readers out there that I really do read comments made on my blog, I have decided to provide for you an in-depth statistical analysis of all the comments made on my previous post.

Results: 1
Samples: 1 (100%)
Average: 1
Std dev.: 0
Full range: 0-3
Best fit line matches results: 100%

And I worked that all out in my head, too.

Wax ethical

2006-06-29T15:27:00.000+02:00

Someone says they've been told something in confidence... but they'll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else. Do you feel more happy to know the news, or more annoyed that they broke their trust?

Someone donates you a significant amount of money... but an hour later you discover the money was stolen. Would you still spend it?

A cat, evidently a pet from a neighbouring home, dies (or is killed by your dog) on your front lawn. Do you try to find the owner?

I knew it

2006-06-27T17:48:00.000+02:00

The origins of English words teach us some interesting things.

The word compassion has the same Latin roots as the word compatible. The Latin participle compat means to sympathise, which makes sense for both English derivatives.

Not so obvious is that compat, in turn, comes from Latin com, essentially meaning "together" or "along with", and pat, which means "to suffer".

From this we can draw the wonderfully Zen conclusion that being compatible with someone literally means to suffer together. Language is so honest.

An acceptable state of completion

2006-06-27T14:46:00.000+02:00

"Complete" is not a word easily attached to anything creative. There is no alarm clock, egg-timer or atom bomb that goes off when you've put in enough work - the definition of "enough" being the hard bit. An artist in the final brushstrokes of a watercolour masterpiece is always going to dither a bit before deciding that things are now the way they should remain. (And anyone who knows watercolours knows you'd better decide pretty darn quick.)

Of course, music is no different. What makes it more complicated in a band is the simple fact that it can be hellishly painful getting a group of assorted people to agree on the state of a song, especially while placating varying opinions as to which way the song should have gone in the first place. Frankly, I'm thankful we don't all play the same instrument or we'd be unable to get past the first three measures before someone Townsend's his guitar in disgust.

Not that we don't work together. My point is that creativity in this kind of environment needs a mixture of genius and compromise. Even if your band bows down unquestionably to the music-writing skills of one sole member, that member had better be ready to accept some nose-wrinkling at a few of their perfected riffs, and deal with it gracefully. That's just the way it is.

And another thing: Always remember that you as the Artist see your work very, very differently to how your audience sees it. You have the whole process of creation to compare it to; what they see is the finished product. You're there to create and perform; they're there to enjoy and appreciate. I won't explain the implications of all that - you can think about it for yourself - but I will point out that sometimes even the most embarrasingly misplaced note in that awesome solo of yours may very well go completely unnoticed by everyone but you.

Puppy's New Spot

2006-05-29T17:30:00.000+02:00

Woohoo!

We have finally acquired a proper venue for regular practice, i.e. large enough to hold living people and some instruments too. Some folks nearby have kindly allowed us to use their hall whenever we want to. (Though perhaps not when they want to.) I can't wait to start drowning out the sounds of traffic rather than the other way around. The best part is we don't even have to pay for it. It seems there really are some nice people out there. Thank you, nice people. We'll reserve some complimentaries and a couple of backstage passes for them.

I must be bored

2006-05-22T17:16:00.000+02:00

I just saw a cloud formation that looked exactly like the Mandelbrott set.

I don't know what amuses me more - the formation, or the fact that I see complex mathematical constructs in clouds when other people see things like ducks. I need more sleep.

I'm dithering on this one

2006-05-12T17:32:00.000+02:00

Perhaps my blog should be titled "Dusk Puppy plus a bunch of stories about dense people".

I'm planning on buying a brand new car at the end of the year, which means I've had quite a few phone conversations with the sales lady at the dealership over various important bits and pieces.

What colour it should be, for starters. Most sales specs include a colour-swatch sheet that shows you a list of colour names, plus a square-inch of the actual colour in case you don't know what "Archaic Rust" or "Volcanic Chartreuse" or "Red #422R" really looks like. So anyway, I get to choose my particular preferred hue - but naturally I can't do this over the phone, so she says she'll send the sheet to me. Awesome. I wait with happy anticipation for an e-mail.

She faxes it to me.

When she phoned me back, I asked her for the slightly blotchier, more streaked grey colour on the right because it seemed more... me. I think I made a good choice, no? I look forward to receiving my entirely desaturated car, though I do feel they should offer more colours in the future. Or! Learn how to use e-mail.

Still here

2006-05-12T17:15:00.000+02:00

I know, yes, I know. It's been ages since I last posted. Nothing has changed, never fear - just a tad more busy than usual... (Read: I need to get some proper sleep soon, or I may just start talking to myself uncontrollably and tripping over things that aren't there and stuff.)

It's a good topic for a post about day-to-day band organisation, really, because, well... there hasn't been any. Lately we've been doing OK just getting together by SMS-ing "Busy tomorrow?" or suchlike and hoping for the best. We're also waiting for word on a possible practice location. This will make all the difference, as right now we're having to make do with various band members' flats, hoping not to disturb the neighbours too much while belting out the riffs for a song that is supposed to be loud. My amp was not designed to be quiet. It's like driving a Porsche and being stuck behind a guy on a tricycle. I don't even want to think what we'd do with a real drummer.

Oh, did I mention we still need a real drummer? My guitar FX pedal has this "rhythm" function which does a variety of drumbeats we can use in the meantime, and I have fondly nicknamed him "Ultra-Boring" - very precise, but lacking the sort of variety one really needs in a drummer. Tick, tock, tick-a-tock, cymbal crash - tick, tock, tick-a-tock, cymbal crash. He's the rhythm equivalent of Guitar Hero. At least he knows what I mean when I ask for "140bpm".

And in that order

2006-04-19T13:01:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it's difficult to understand instructions when they're not broken up into enough steps.

Client on phone: How do I print this document? I can't find a "print" button.
Gareth: You need to click on the "File" menu, then select "Print".
Client: File... File... I can't find a "File" menu.
Gareth: It's at the top-left of your screen. Just click the word with your mouse.
Client: No, I don't see it.
Gareth: At the top-left? There should be a set of menu names there.
Client: No. It's not there.
Gareth: Are you looking at the top-left part of the screen?
Client: Yes.
Gareth: Look at the top of your screen.
Client: Yes?
Gareth: Now look left.
Client: Oh, there it is.

Fly me to the moon

2006-04-13T10:17:00.000+02:00

So the good folk at NASA want to bash a rocket into the moon to create a man-made crater. This is a nice, easy way of digging a small lump out of the moon's surface without actually being there, and (I assume) allows them to examine the constituents of the ground below the surface more easily.

I learned this from a spot on the news last night... which really means I had to infer a lot of the details, because they picked possibly the least clued-up person to act as reporter. Her last words of the report went something like this:

"NASA are refusing to comment on the impact this will have on Earth's atmosphere."

Of course they are - they're probably doubled up with laughter. When they're done with that, I think they should explain to our worried reporter just how far away 385,000kms really is.

Driving music

2006-04-10T10:38:00.000+02:00

I've been driving all over the place this last week, and have used the opportunity to play our growing collection of demo recordings in the car to myself over and over again. It all passes the first test - I don't get sick of it after hearing it for the tenth time. Or even the twentieth. We'll see about the thirtieth.

The verdict so far is that it's definitely music to drive by. I consider that a Good Thing - all my favourite bands fall in the same category...

Collaberation

2006-03-31T18:07:00.000+02:00

One of the joys of any job is dealing with people who can't possibly have all their braincells in a row. As I essentially field the tech-support questions around here, I have newer, more wonderful stories to tell every single day.

Other IT department: We sent through some changes to the design.
Gareth: Yes, I got them.
ITD: Did you receive the changes.
Gareth: Yes... I got them.
ITD: Do you understand the changes?
Gareth: I do.
ITD: Will you be able to implement these changes?
Gareth: Pretty straightforward. Yes.
ITD: Are you sure?
Gareth: Yes.
ITD: Any questions?
Gareth: No.
ITD: You're happy with the changes?
Gareth: Yes.
ITD: Ok... Anyway, we probably won't be using the changes.

"Too mellow"

2006-03-29T14:18:00.000+02:00

Wow, people. Wow. Saw Metallica live on Saturday evening - what a wicked concert that was. I've never been happier to jump around and yell like I did then.

Naturally it was inspirational. This week has seen us put together our first complete demo song. Badly mixed, rough-edged and missing all kinds of bits and pieces we still have to change... but it still sounds good to me. I'm just happy we've got the material down so we can listen to it and make appreciative or derogatory noises in all the right places, then go back and change stuff.

Perfect pitch

2006-03-24T12:33:00.000+02:00

I'm going to describe what it is like having perfect pitch, because I get asked so often. People have a way of taking things they don't understand, then blowing them hugely out of proportion - so this is partly inspired by some of the crazy questions I've gotten in the past.

Technical stuff: Perfect pitch, also called absolute pitch, is the ability to hear a particular note (or chord) and know, without a reference, which note it is. Compare this to relative pitch, which simply put is the ability to hear the difference in pitch between a note and a given reference (known as the musical interval). Most people have relative pitch to some degree - those who don't are tone-deaf and are normally found at concerts screaming the only note that doesn't fit the current song.

Perfect pitch is apparently much more rare, and is attributed to about 1 in 10,000 people. And apparently I'm that 1 in 10,000. Here's how it works - wake me up at 4am, sing a completely random note, and I'll tell you without hesitation that you sang the F above middle C, only you sang it slightly sharp, and please let me go back to sleep now. That's it. That's what I can do that 99.99% of you can't do.

Now some questions for the panel. These are a general munge of the things I've ever been asked.

"Do you see notes as colours?" Um, gosh, no. There is a very good analogy to perfect pitch - that it is like seeing in colour instead of being colourblind - but it is still just an analogy. When you look at a picture and see a colour such as pink, can you tell me how you know it is pink and not, say, bright orange? No, you can't. You just know. Similarly, I hear G and I hear that it has all the qualities of G-ness. That's all. It doesn't cause bright purple spots to float around that tell me it is a G.

"Can it be learned? Is it genetic? Do you get it by performing a secret ritual?" I don't know. I've always had it. Whether perfect pitch can be intentionally acquired is a debate that has been going on forever and will probably only end when scientists comes up with an implant, rendering the whole argument entirely obselete.

"Is it annoying hearing things that are out of tune?" Sometimes. Bear in mind that what bothers me the most also bothers everyone else: when an instrument is played out of tune, or not tuned correctly to match the instruments playing with it. While I will notice if an entire band have tuned their instruments a half-step down, it won't bug me. It's just how it is. It's like watching a TV with strange colour-balance... after a while you adjust to it and it doesn't matter anymore.

"Is it useful?" For composing, transposing, tabbing and playing... very useful. For anything else... no, not really. When I hum a tune, I'm always in the right key - but I'm not sure if that's particularly useful.

"Will you help me figure out how to play X?" Fine - but please, knowing all the right notes doesn't make you a good guitarist / pianist / whatever. Practising on the thing makes you good.

Why pigs everywhere hate me

2006-03-23T16:51:00.000+02:00

Last year I was driving the infamous N2 from Durban back down to Cape Town. I'd never done this drive before, so I was actually rather enjoying the experience, long as it is. Given the state of most of that road, it's either a pain or a lot of fun depending on how much you feel like concentrating on your driving. There are hazards galore - trucks that pass other trucks round blind corners at 120km/h, slow-moving people that walk in the middle of road, and so on. A lovely venture.

So it's now 9:00 in the evening and pitch black. (Street lights? Please - some of these areas don't even have asphalt.) I'm slowly coming up behind maybe the 1,389th truck on my journey so far, and am about to execute a standard indicate-check-accelerate pass manouvre. I look to see if this guy notices me coming. Sure enough, he starts to move over a little.

The truck swerves ever so slightly. A split second later, my car slams at full speed into something big. I yelp. The road tilts. My car rides on two wheels for a moment, I skid sideways for about 10 car lengths, I frantically aim my car out of the way of an oncoming 18-wheeler... and finally end up on the curb on the wrong side of the road.

I notice Led Zeppelin is still playing, and calmly press stop on the CD player.

Upon inspecting my vehicle, the whole front of the car has not in fact come off. I amble back down the road to see who or what I just flattened. It turns out to be a hog.

A hog! This thing is about the size of a Mini. It is precisely the same colour as the tar - and about as alive. I wrinkle my nose. Footsteps behind me. "Het jou motor seer gekry?" No shit. The truck driver was nice enough to give me a lift to the nearest petrol station and buy me a cup of coffee. (I wish I'd gotten his name - after all that, I didn't even think to ask him. Sorry, man.)

My Polo? Replaced: waterpump; a whole bunch of belts including powersteering; a few external bits that fell off; all four tyres (no ABS, folks, means serious baldspotting when you lock'n'skid). And what do you know... the insurance company thought this didn't count as an accident, so I had to pay for everything. What a bunch of wankers.

I had to endure many weeks of ridiculous puns. Yes, I believe I've heard everything... "You roadhog, you." "Brought home the bacon, I see." "Your car couldn't have been too kosher." "You weren't concentrating because you were boar'd." Anyone want to try for something fresh?

Why I don't sing

2006-03-22T09:52:00.000+02:00

Actually I did sing briefly during the first years of high school. I was a (high-ish) tenor at that stage...

... Then my voice deepened. Most guys at this stage gain a lovely richness to their singing voice. Not me. I gained a complex. I sound like I'm trying to sing through a foam mattress.

I can hold a note - heck, I have perfect pitch. (Yes, I really do.) Unfortunately that doesn't help the distinctly strangled sound I manage to emit.

Oh well. Perhaps a brave singing teacher will release my inner Daltrey one of these days.

Working together

2006-03-21T11:22:00.000+02:00

The little things always add up. A butterfly flaps its wings and a tornado starts three countries away - you know the drill.

Chaos maths aside, I think anyone who has been in a failed relationship of any kind, whether romantic, friendly or entirely business, can think of seemingly small details which in retrospect just really got up their nostril. Doesn't matter if it's justified or not - once the whole thing falls over, you'll start faulting every tiny detail. Admit it.

So for amusement, here are some entirely single-minded views on why previous bands never worked for me.

Attempt #1: Played with some guys while at school. Had a singer who had a lovely, large garage to practise in. We probably stopped due to pesky things called exams - but a few eyebrows were raised at the singer's ability to scream "FUCK!" whenever anything wasn't going precisely as she wanted it.

Attempt #2: Was introduced to a few people who were looking for a guitarist. Played with them once. Never heard from them again. I don't think they even knew what they wanted. (Or was it something I said? Or did I forget to change to F#m7 at the right time?)

Attempts #3-#6: Tried working with individual people that came and went, generally with the intent of recording tracks with some singing. (I shall explain later why I do not sing.) This never seems to work unless you actually have proper material to work with before you start. Pretty obvious? I didn't have anything. Neither did they.

Attempt #7: Let's hope it really is a lucky number.

A sockful of suckers

2006-03-20T09:55:00.000+02:00

"There's a sucker born every minute." We know it - but what if this was a proven fact?

This phrase was incorrectly attributed to P.T. Barnum in 1969. (The date was right - it's the source that's in question.) Some quick searching and a bit of extrapolation tells us that the world population at that stage was about 1,7 billion, or roughly 57% of what it is now. (Wow.)

Our current birth rate is about 249 births per minute. Work backwards and we get 142 births per minute in 1969 - which gives us Result #1: 1 in 142 people are suckers.

Work forwards again. If that statement had been uttered today, it would rightly be amended to 1.76 suckers every minute... but the population total alone allows us to reach Result #2: There are 45,774,648 suckers alive in the world right now.

I can see why so many hoaxes are successful. What an audience!

How do you manage?

2006-03-19T12:15:00.000+02:00

From an interview with Big Brother and the Holding Company:

Interviewer: Who came up with and decided on the name Big Brother and the Holding Company?
Stan Andrews: We had a whole list of possible names. [...] We liked The Holding Company. Then our band manager decided to go with Big Brother and the Holding Company. We fired our manager.

Most 9-5 employees have things they'd much rather be doing. Management is seldom one of them.

Whether you're coordinating 3 people or 30,000 people, the same principle applies: you need direction. It doesn't matter what you're trying to achieve - collaberative software development, building a house, playing hide'n'seek - people in a group are like chickens without heads. Everyone will head off in some direction, until they are all pointed in roughly the same direction.

What makes this difficult in a band is the inherent irony in any art: essentially you are scheduling your creativity for a specific time on a specific day. This feels all wrong, doesn't it... you may as well expect an epiphany next Tuesday morning. I will even go as far as to say this is the single biggest reason startup bands fail within two or three practice sessions. If you've ever tried, you'll recognise the phrase "Fine... but what shall we actually do now?" uttered in exasperation every three minutes. It's not easy taking on the task of driving something that is meant to be enjoyable.

It is a necessity. So here's my advice for anyone who wants it: Appoint a manager. Pick someone you trust and roll with it. If you're lucky enough to have lots of free time, friends and possibly money, consider designating someone who is not one of the musicians - this will go a long way to helping them stay objective.

Sounds like work, right? Get used to it. It is well worth the effort.

Our band? Well, the conversation went something like this:

Gareth: Guys, we need a m-...
Rest of band: [instantly dropping to their knees] Lead us, master, lead us!

We should all be so lucky.

Psych 101

2006-03-18T13:38:00.000+02:00

Most people's first impression of me:

"How does one man eat so much and yet stay so disastrously thin?"

It's a nack, I guess.

Intro

2006-03-17T15:58:00.000+02:00

A little more about us - just to set the scene.

We are currently:

Myself, a software developer... who plays lead (and attempts to coordinate things);
Wes, a geophysicist... who sings;
Neil, a naval hydrographer... who plays bass;
Ross, a, um... I forget... who plays rhythm.

... which kinda proves the whole "judging a book by its cover" thing, doesn't it. You will notice the apparent lack of drummer, and you would be right - we sort of had one, then didn't again. I'll get to that later, I think. (But if anyone knows anyone who can play like Keith Moon, let me know now.)

We are an original band. By this I mean we write our own stuff. We spend our time playing lots of rock music and anything else that we fancy. Like many rock-orientated folk, we run away screaming from things like Your Favourite Panpipe Covers and Dans Treffers #37. Between us our musical tastes are rather varied, which makes for a unique sound.

Our biggest audience to date has been 3 people. This is a reflection on the time we've had to practise, and not our apparent skill. Frankly I'm all for playing to at least one (1) total stranger within the next couple of months. Total strangers are the best sounding boards, because they can be constructive, insult you, steal your instruments, etc. and you know how they really feel.

That's the basics. Everything else to come soon.

Tuning up

2006-03-16T19:24:00.000+02:00

Well here we are, then... Hello.

Who or what is Dusk Puppy? Ok, straight to the point.

A few months ago, some friends of mine and I started a band by the name of Dusk Puppy. As of right now, technically speaking, we're hardly a band - more like a collection of guys with day jobs who'd rather be doing other things - so you won't have heard of us. We're brand new, and we've got a long way to go.

So why the blog? Well... Like a lot of would-be young musicians, I've tried and failed to start bands a number of times in the past. This time it looks different. This time, it may just work. This time, I don't have an urge to thump the bass guitarist after a two-hour session. (That's good.) And this time, I'm going to share the entire painful experience of getting a band off the ground, from start to finish, with anyone who cares to know.

If we become mind-bogglingly famous one day, consider yourself One Of The First To Know.

If we disappear before anyone even hears us (or I really do thump the bass guitarist - an unlikely event given that he is bigger than I am), then at least consider this a first-person story which will entertain you with its soap-opera-like drama. Or something. Or just look for my subsequent blog on attempting a solo career.

Enjoy.