Anyone for Tea?

Now we're into it, innit!

I'm away this week at HI! Team kids camp. Currently it's raining outside, so you intercessors out there, I hope you're praying for Good Weather!! Time to go now, or at least to drink my tea. See you when I get back.

richie

.... where is my tea?!

posted by RichB @ Monday, August 22, 2005 0 comments

I've had a haircut...

OK, so it's not that exciting, but I got the pictures...

posted by RichB @ Wednesday, August 17, 2005 0 comments

Record of the week!

Mostly, it's a result of wanting to buy something new, fairly original and cool from iTunes which I've (about two years after the rest of the world) finally got around to installing here and at work and to see how easy it actually is to get protected AAC onto my iRiver MP3 player! (I'll tell more tommorrow if my little plan works...)

I can't claim to have "discovered it" - as it did make its way onto the iTunes Music Store front page in a tiny box, enough to catch my eye and give it a preview. But, anyway! Enough about things you already know about - and onto things you don't know. A brief google reveals a few things about this album and it's author:

It's the fourth album by Sufjan, but only the second in an anticipated series of fifty. He intends to try and produce an album about each state of the US! The first was about his home-state of Michigan. He doesn't expect to finish all fifty, but a man can dream can't he!?!

The style is very hard to describe. Musically, the closest band I can think of in style is 'The Polyphonic Spree', in the use of orchestral, choral and brass tones and wide expansive arrangements and in slightly absent minded rambling through passages of music.

However, it thankfully lacks what I always feel is the flowery and bombastic nature of "The Spree", and replaces it with a careful crafting of each song in its own right and as part of the prog-rock style album flow. Thick, layered harmonies and odd-time signatures are de-rigur, and Sufjan's voice as the holding commentry is smooth and non-intrusive.

It also appears from interviews that he's a Christian, which to be fair came as a surprise to me - as it's very much the antithesis of almost everything "CCM".... and some of the songs (eg. "Casimir Pulaski Day") have some lovely exposition of the occasional struggles that those of us of a more 'rational' persuasion have with things like Faith, Hope and Love which are essentially 'irrational' things that we just know!!

Only annoying thing about all this is that, after purchasing it for £7.99 on iTunes - I find that Amazon UK have it for £8.99 or Amazon US for $12.99 - which is a shame because it looks like the sleeve notes might have been quite interesting.

[Final Thought: Hows about someone sets up an online business adjunct to iTunes/Napster/MyCokemusic/etc... selling just the sleeve notes for music purchased online? Surely there's a market - they'd have at least one customer here!]

Time for bed.
richie

posted by RichB @ Tuesday, August 09, 2005 1 comments

To busy not to pray!

I'm busy. Really busy....

At work I'm in the critical phases of my current project, so I've got less than an hour to get a build out of the door tonight - and our source-code server is being slow. Admittedly, it's only an interim version so that other guys in the company can see what I'm up to and test it out with their sections of code and current projects, but still it's very much a deadline... of sorts.

Of course, work is also actually where I'm coming to relax a bit at the moment. My work outside of the office is far in excess of what I've got lined up inside. Biggest priority this week is getting a version of "Songbase" finished.

"Songbase" for those of you who havn't heard of it before is the lyrics projection software used by our church originally written by the veritable genius that is Mr. Wes Hinsley but then bludgeoned into the 21st century by me (through adding dual-screen support and generally tightening the whole thing up). Thing is, my re-invented version just isn't ready yet - and with my time ticking away, it's become a major priority to get it finished, and out the door to the few people who I've got interested in using it in their churches!

We also can't actually release it whilst calling it Songbase anyway, as that's apparently the name used by Vineyard USA for their package. So if anyone out there has a good suggestion for a name, please submit it here (in return for unending gratitude and a mention in the README)!!


After Songbase, I've also got Wes's album to mix which will take a while to get right, and I don't expect to get any where near finishing it before I'm off on 'Summer Camp' with the kids. On return from that I've got the camp video to make, and then a friends wedding to video the week after (and then I have to edit it afterwards...)

So hopefully sometime in september I'll have five minutes for you all.

However, in the midst of all this symetrical candle-burning - for some reason - I'm feeling pretty solid, renewed, refreshed at present. Why? "submit your way to the Lord and He will make your paths straight"

richie

posted by RichB @ Friday, August 05, 2005 4 comments

You REALLY like me!!

How!

Exciting!

I've been selected from billions of others around the world as Joshua Clayton's hero of the week. If you havn't heard of Josh, you clearly havn't been listening. I'm reliably informed that he is both the current Governer of Louisiana state, five-times superbowl champion and the first man to finish Mario Brothers 3, simultaneously, in all five time-zones of the continental United States.

He's also another person that I've never met in the real-world, who seems to think I'm pretty great...
hmm... I see a pattern emerging ;-)

Anyway, thank you very much Josh - it is a supreme honour to realise that this blog is actually read by people, and that it provides some with some amusement, life-affirment and a fresh outlook on the world. Or something like that anyway!

rich

posted by RichB @ Wednesday, August 03, 2005 4 comments