Stuff

The last few posts have really just been pointless little rants about things that I certainly can't change but it's still worthwhile for the momentary dose of self soothing therapy that follows. By way of an alternative this post is almost about nothing in particular just odd photos that I took recently and my observation on AI use: 

In the past I was leaning into AI for picture creation but I've gradually evolved away from that. Funny how recognizable and mildly irritating AI artwork has become. A year ago I was thumping out videos, little animations and "artwork" based around the mostly free, image generating platforms that are out there. It was cheap fun and it filled the spaces but looking back it's all a bit hollow and unsubstantial. It dates surprisingly quickly too, like some experimental fad that you go through that leaves an awkward stain on your life. 

I'm not saying I'll never use it again but for the moment I'm on a break, perhaps I'll catch up later. I think that when I heard a few AI generated music recordings, full band and vocals etc. I decided that taking a step back might be a good idea. Also there's been a lot written about what is basically the ongoing learning plagiarism unrestricted AI carries out and I can see how it may have a detrimental influence on real human creativity. Anyway ... for every action there's always a reaction and the AI Pandora's box is certainly wide open now. By the way this isn't rant, AI (when not aping artwork etc.) has loads of other worthwhile applications.

But what about all the extra electricity needed to keep the hungry processing machines going?

The Balsamic Vinegar People

 "My people were fair and had sky in their hair but now they're content to wear stars on their brows." Simpler times according to Marc Bolan eh? Hard to think of Glastonbury and not reflect on times past when festivals were a muddier, dirty mess where you bought your ticket from a farmer at the gate whilst carrying a ragged tent and six cans of pre-ring pull beer.  From then on things just got more messy and disorganized but you'd eventually hear, perhaps even see Hawkwind, Gentle Giant or Thin Lizzy before passing out behind the burger van. Then the Thames Valley Police Force turned angry for no obvious reason.

Your mum and dad had no idea if you were alive or dead or even where you might be cos' you didn't tell them you were going. Eventually you'd hitch hike home, penniless and bruised but happy. Apparently now Glastonbury is full of shiny, privileged "Balsamic Vinegar" people waving flags at a stage a mile away, hoping for a glimpse of a legend and enjoying beans and pulses served in sustainably sourced containers but nonetheless having a good time despite the prospect of all the terrible traffic there and back again. 

The BBC screenshot above is from their main news page. Even in a crazy world like this there's something annoying about finding Glastonbury's "so called" news full and frontal everywhere at this time of year. Nothing else important must be happening on the planet. The narrative that's pushed of the over-egged social significance of various performances, statements and behaviours, is odd and to my mind totally misplaced. I say this as a pro-Palestine, pro-justice, pro-human rights, pro-whatever the fuck, old fogey. I just don't think Rod Stewart's remarks, Paloma Faith's views, Kneecap's stance or fan criticism about singers lip syncing or auto-tune use, warrant headlines and exhaustive coverage. 

I will forever dislike the jabbering positivity and "in a bubble" antics of the well manicured presenters - we need a break from this. Just let the festival(s) be without all this exhaustive curation and analysis. It's obviously going to be good and bad in places and artists will act like dickheads but there's a least 60 million people on this scabby island who are not there and maybe not at all bothered that you missed Wet Leg or Billy Bragg because you were stuck in the queue for some hot stone, colonic meditation. 

Yes, it's all pretty predictable stuff at this time of year but perhaps we'll get Glasto tickets from the festival fairy in 2026 and maybe discover what really goes on.

South Queensferry Daily Photo

 

Plaster built and emulsion coloured cones advertise one of the two ice cream shops perched on opposite sides of the High Street. Forty flavours they say, who am I to argue?

South Queensferry, some thoughts: The former council and registry offices now house the town museum. It's a dull and unloved old local authority building that I suspect Edinburgh Council isn't all that interested in. The museum is actually good to visit and holds a lot of artifacts and records capturing the area's history but it's typical of our times, run on a shoestring and I presume always on the brink of being closed or mothballed. Whilst the town prides itself on the older buildings, with their historical charm, connected by cobbled streets and lanes, there's little joined up effort to make the best of anything. Things look tired out, some closed up shops seem unloved and likely to be abandoned, all thanks to nearly twenty years of the austerity revolution. 

On the outskirts of town smart new battery chicken apartments form a grey, steely and silent wall between the village and the motorway. Starter homes set up in military lines with hints of green growth and possibilities, their black topped roads still fresh and evenly surfaced. A new generation of younger residents move in, happy and unaware having already been failed by our statistically challenged and meaningless education systems, most with no clear idea of how finances or houses work or how to do the tedious but necessary things. They will learn the hard way as we all do. There's just a hint of "rat trap" about the place. Hopefully it won't come to pass.

Most traffic/housing schemes and road repairs are a cost compromise that just look like a shoddy, half hearted effort to appease internal pressure groups, but visitors still come because of the big red bridge that remains a UNESCO treasure and design icon. So if you can endure the myriad of bumps and potholes along the unloved A90 and all the unfit for purpose connecting roads it's probably worth a visit. I happily live here, it's not a bad place but I try to be careful about the roads and routes that I choose to drive on to come and go. Beware, they spent a shed load of money on a cross city tram system that works well enough but it was so badly managed as a project, along with outdated and grand delusions of civic pride, that it left little or no money for the wider infrastructure ... not all that unusual a story really.

Canis Lupus / Felis Catus

Good luck to all of you out there, it's a tough life, every gig is a sweat-box and every lesson is a spinal cracker and not everyone learns what to do first time. We're in a holy war that's wholly misunderstood. Forget the press and glossy media, ignore the weather, dunk your toast and eat your chips and be a good person as far as you can. Be kind to the wolves too, they have your back and you'll need their help one day because as sure as eggs they know what they know so don't try to fool them. In other words, if you know what you should know I'll certainly be giving this T shirt a solid 4 out of 5 stars, we'll see how it performs in the spirals and H2O gyros that form the home style chemical laundry routine.

Meanwhile in the universe of actual non-wolf based content, somethings that we are all familiar with:

Summer of Sting

 

After a lifetime of not encountering Sting (other than hearing music or watching films) I've now had two encounters in as many weeks. The first was a "tribute" singer who pretty much nailed Sting's material in a half hour set at a party in Edinburgh and then, in the distant flesh, the real deal, way out in the fabled, cloud covered city of Glesga. Working as a three piece, Chris Mass on drums, Dominic Millar or guitar and Sting on bass obviously - they sounded tight, almost perfect, even to my aged ears. 

Millar is an exceptional player and pulled off that rare live thing (in my opinion) of using just the one guitar for the whole set*. Players who change guitars for each new song really irritate me, they may well be pretentious twats, or so some might say. In two hours of solidly playing the same guitar I don't think he had to re-tune at all. The power, tonal range and stability of his either old or well reliced Strat was superb to experience live; a masterclass in working within a three piece band. He created so much space and colour albeit full credit to Andy Summers who did it all first. 

Obviously my rooted to the spot photos are a bit rubbish but we decided to stick with our space and not wander about, though the crowd, all mostly of a certain age, wasn't densely packed or badly behaved. A fine rain began to fall about 10ish and that quietly wrapped things up and we trudged off to rescue the car from an Ibrox car park. Many thanks to the ever present God's of Cornucopia for the free tickets, now I can safely delete all those waggy finger Ticketmaster emails.

*On the final tune he used an acoustic to record a loop and then played over it using the Strat. 

So Many Pictures

So many pictures, a song by Dave Christopher: South Queensferry based musician and pal Norman Lamont has lovingly resurrected and rebuilt some of the material written by his old friend and band mate, Dave Christopher. Sadly Dave died a few years ago without properly recording many of his songs. In the video Norman performs his own carefully put together version of "So many pictures". There's more about Dave and Norman's music here.

Wasn't Born To Follow

Jangle pop with added envelope phasing: When I was about sixteen this short musical piece by the *Notorious Byrd Brothers was, for quite a few months, my favourite song in the whole world. I still retain a soft spot for it as I particularly liked the phaser driven guitar break, a studio effect that was all the rage in those days. The lyrics are mostly just a mystical 60s word salad thing that was common at the time. The song wasn't even written by the Byrds but by the mighty Goffin/King partnership, presumably for a hard cash and a few laughs. 

I don't know how it ended up on the somewhat eclectic Easy Rider soundtrack other than it fits the "bright but on a bit of a downer" hippie vibe. I'm still stuck in that by the way, a sort of unplanned lifestyle choice that never quite burned out. It's also a fairly easy three chorder to try to hammer out on your cheap, bedroom use only, completely out of tune £10 acoustic guitar. Bandparts (music shop), formerly of Leith Street, Edinburgh have quite a lot to answer for.

*This is one of a series of badly written articles that you can file under the heading of  "What I may have done then but I'm not so sure about now."

Snail Collage and North Korea

"It's been a bumper year for snails!" said nobody ever other than the many snail farmers across in France and possibly elsewhere too. So in Scotland the snail community doesn't seem to be doing so badly in our garden and as we've not got any actual proper fruit and veg to worry about I've declared peace and prosperity across the small green place and the snails can pretty much do what they like and go where they please. Peace has broken out. Let that be a lesson to the warmongering elite that make their miserable choices to destroy any alternative ideology that they can't tolerate. A simplistic view I know but too much situational analysis numbs my brain ...  so back to happy snails and onwards to South Korea.

Ho hum, here's North Korea, off in the distance, as seen from South Korea. We move in a turbulent world. Photo by Liv.

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Stomp Boxes

Free parking and unfinished business: Chinese built mini pedals, a Build Your Dream (BYD) production and presentation at almost bargain prices and relatively free of tariffs. I thought I'd be a super smart arse and take a photo of these experimental settings as they seem to produce a nice tone with a workable level of sustain. "What were the amp settings?" I hear you say. Err... 

Gandalf Snacks

By the light of Treebeard's ghost: Here in Queensferryshire we enjoy bountiful supplies of Hobbit inspired snacks, mainly gleaned from Gandalf's Big Book of Recipes. Ingredients from nearby farms and fields are often used or completely ignored. It's all a matter of taste, time wasting and trickery. Despite Gandalf being a wizard and not a hobbit, all his Zoe based recipes seem to hit the spot with smaller framed people. It's a big deal in Fifeshire. 

Even his mysterious Chi-blob cat snacks for dogs and humans work out well (as below). Please see local press for details and shop opening times (by moonlight only) and news of special occult eating events. Also please note that this simple culinary venture is nothing at all to do with any Amazon "turd based" Middle Earth adaptations or film versions.

Edinburgh Daily Photo

An impressive midnight view from the heart of Edinburgh Castle looking down onto Princes Street and across the Forth to the distant lights of the Kingdom of Fife. As you might expect this inferior night time photo kind of misses out the visual splendour of actually being there.

The fabled Camera Obscura is lit up at night for some reason. You need to actually go inside during the day, preferably on a bright sunny one to see the optical magic happen.

After a lifetime of working with all manner of heavy lifting equipment I'm a sucker for watching a decent mobile crane in action. This impressive beast of a tower crane has been busy installing the seating for whatever events are happening here on the Castle Esplanade over the summer. I'm unlikely to be at any of these shows but a big shout out to the crane driver and teams of labourers I watched working up on the terracing putting this whole heavy metal puzzle together.

All The Peaceful Oilfields

 

Ambient: the dull mechanical, blurry hum of machinery and industry somewhere further away, out of sight but audible.

Cruel, rogue and clearly religiously unhinged, the state of Israel carries out missile and drone strikes against Iran, a pretty dangerous and religiously unhinged state in itself. Unsurprisingly Iran retaliates. Within minutes the price of oil shoots up ... while more innocent people are killed or injured. The markets and war machines still have the upper hand.

Friday Thirteenth

It's Friday the 13th and I'm not superstitious but at an even looser end than usual so here's some random, unrelated photos, not all taken by me but they are "to do" with the past few days. I'm also keeping the text (or a stream of "childish drivel" as it's commonly known) to the minimum. No explanations required, perhaps there are some vague connections but nothing deeper.

Experimental Whisky

I'm quite poor at being Scottish. I'm an underachiever. Golf,  Rabbie Burns, bagpipes ... not really for me. I do like whisky however but I know nothing technical or historically interesting about it. I just enjoy a dram. That made this kindly gifted, oddly named bottle of Experimental Series #4 a new discovery: so they try things out in the distilleries? Didn't think of that. Then again you might argue that every cask and blend of whisky is a bit of an experiment. That actually applies to all distillery work or brewing, wine making, cheese, coffee etc. 

Life is just wandering across the world in clothes without an occasional experiment to stimulate and spice things up. Experience a fresh taste or take a hit. I'm looking forward to cracking this open for a nip, maybe I'll just sit back and learn something in that golden glow of the amber nectar and a small set of revelations will emerge through the murky darkness of my mind. Could it be that we're just another of God's experiments stuck on a dusty shelf in a forgotten petri dish in the corner of the lab? - but we can still create good whisky. 

Brown Socks Don't Make It

Some might say that brown socks really don't make it. I can understand that sentiment. This particular colour is simply a rather pedestrian shade of brown, that simple. Not to everyone's taste but if they're comfortable then I'm OK. So if you're geeky enough or simply interested in other vague or obtuse Frank Zappa references then I suggest you check across the five and a half thousand plus posts and twenty one years that make up this blog's peculiar landscape. They're in there somewhere for your perusal but don't ask me, I've certainly not kept any records.

Cat Shit Safari

 

Part of our cat facilities management duties or cat janitorial work as it is often described, are of course carrying out regular sweeps of the garden to collect and remove clumps of cat poo from wherever they may be buried. Naturally not everything is buried nor does it always stay buried. Activity is unpredictable. So it's sort of like an archaeological dig involving research and chance but in the end there's no real treasure to discover,  just the mild sense of smugness that comes with having done some bit of insignificant environmental cleansing. 

Today's impromptu rummage yielded about half of an asda bag of material, so that's not too bad though we've not developed actual KPIs yet. What's left will slowly rot away over time, so I tell myself, but with three active cats out in the garden and surrounding areas everyday, growing herbs and vegetables has become a thing of the past. It's just too complicated to police and the thought of actually eating the produce isn't a pleasant one for me. So ends another dream, silently but with, as you'd expect, an earthy and pungent odour.

Edinburgh Daily Photo

Following a French breakfast fix we found ourselves in the gardens and interior of the Scottish Gallery, Dundas Street, Edinburgh. The rain kindly gave itself up for a few minutes as we looked around it. Here's a large piece of stone that I know nothing about.

Works (indoors) on display by Pascale Rentsch, some of which were inspired or about the gallery garden. Delicate, strangely beautiful and sort of skittish (not Scottish), but in a good way.

Ironmongery sculpted metal shapes and fragments are attached to the outside wall in the garden, not sure who to credit. Being a bit of a construction and fastener geek I spent some time trying to identify the key fixings and how the pieces had been attached to the wall. This is how I amuse myself, seeing and understanding the way other people do the things that I'm unlikely to ever do.

Seventeen Years Ago

I found this old photo the other day. I had completely forgotten about it. That happens a lot, but then again it was taken in May 2008. Here are two adorable (yes, I know) cats we had back then, both fixed onto some passing birds flying off into the blue, I imagine. Clint is on the left, he died in 2023 and Smudge, his sister, is on the right. Smudge died not long after this pic was taken in 2008 after being hit by a vehicle. Shortly after that their mum, Missie, came to stay with us. At the time we lived elsewhere in a green and pleasant land filled with things for cats to kill - unfortunately. Seems like a lifetime ago but it isn't, unless you're a cat.