BBQ

I have just had the stupid thought when will the weather be good enough to have a BBQ?

I would like to put my prediction that late April will be about right.

It will be interesting to see how accurate this prediction will be, knowing the UKs weather it will either be too early or too late.


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Blogs

I see from looking at how many blogs that I posted this month that it's going to be the least amount posted so far this year, not by much it must be said.

But taking in to account that I have had a week away and did not blog during that time.

I find it amazing that I have found so much to talk about or make notes on.


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Websites

Looking at the website logs from a few days ago, I wonder sometimes just how folks find my webpages, the things is that as my websites are very specialist the search terms used tend also to be very specific, so in a way I have not really found out how the site is found.


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Mixing music

I compose music, which for some reason or other tends to happen in phases, with it sometimes being months between tracks that I write.

So I have a track that has been work in progress know for more than a year, the problem that I have with it is that the track has five drum tracks.

What is the best way to mix these tracks in the overall mix?

At this time I have one track on the left and one on the right and then the rest in the centre, I don't know if this is the best arrangement for the drum tracks I think I should also add here that all five drum tracks are live at the same time so it's not a case of turning each drum track on and off as the track progresses.

The track itself is about six minutes long and runs at about 140 beats per minute.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to leave the track to rest and then come back to it, and then compare the old mix with the new and on that hearing choose which track to use.

I suppose that this is a case where only time will tell.


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Stuff on the go

Just a note to me.

I have the following projects on the go at this time

1. Dirk Maggs Semantic Website
2. Music tracks for new album
3. Book train and terrain
4. Website update Dirk Maggs Productions Website
5. Website update James Follett Website


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Bishopswood

Donna and me for reasons that now quite escape us decided to go for a walk that included at the end of it a walk through Bishopswood in hind sight this may have been a mistake as the assent up Bishopswood is not only long but comes with rather a large incline.

To say that we were rather exhausted by the end of it.


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1002

So I have just noticed that some how or other I have just written 1001 blogs, this being my 1002

I am also very surprised on just how many blogs I have written this year, it I suppose has something to do with the fact that I now have an iPad and also some good software on it that allows me to blog when I want, and to upload them when I have a wifi connection.

It also helps that the software that I use to do the blogging has a spell checker, and that is something that I really do need!

So this year I have written a lot of blogs so far I don't know and I don't care if I beat any of my previous years blogging as this a site that I use as a notebook for myself so there are no targets as such only that I should record anything that takes my fancy.


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Weather

So last week I was on holiday and the weather was such that I could sit in a tee shirt on a patio drinking wine and very nice it was to.

This week?

Yep

Looks like it's going to be a bit wet, blue sky has become very rare.

Such is the weather in the UK


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Wiki

The Dirk Maggs Wiki has because of my holiday stopped, I did not carry out any work on it or even had any thoughts about it.

But never fear it is something that I will pick up again and start work on.


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Castles

Went to Chepstow castle while away and was very lucky that we had a blue sky day with it also being warm, which is always nice.

Anyway the thing that amazed me was kist how big a castle it is.

And it was great to see some young kids running around it and wanting to see what was in the next room or in the next bit of the castle, I don't think at a young age castles are anything but a really good playground that is absolutely huge and fun to be in.

Donna and me must have spent some 2 or 3 hours just walking around it with time to just enjoy what was there and the views that you get from the castle over the River Seven.

A place well worth a visit, even better if a blue sky day can also be arranged at the time of your visit.


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River Seven

So the River Seven is a big river here in the UK, and it has the second largest tidal range in the world, some 46 feet is what I have been told.

It is only when you actually see it with your own eyes that it strikes home just how big that range is.

Seeing bridges that have been designed to take the tidal range into account is also eye opening.

I wonder what it would be like to see the River Seven in full flood, safely not on any bridge!


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Weatherspoons

Over the last few days I have had the chance to be in several different Weatherspoon pubs, one in Wales and one in Guildford.

Both were very good, all were clean, service was good and the food and the beer that we had was also very good.

I was lucky that there are doing a real ale week, so I had the chance to try some real ales that I have never had before.

The one thing that did catch us out was that weatherspoons have regional menus, which when you stop and think about it does make sense, but when you come up against it for the first time it does make you stop and think.

But at the end of the day, you know what you are going to get when you go to a weatherspoons and that's all I want if I am visiting a part of the UK that I have not been to that has a Weatherspoons.


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Reading yet again

What happens when you are ten pages into a new book only to discover that you have already read the book two years ago!

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Another read

Another book that I have just read while on holiday is called Private and it's written by James Patterson and with Maxine Paetro who wrote what I don't know and really I don't care, all I want is to have a book that tells a good story and this book does that apart from one observation that I want to make.

This book is very very American and as a european I had in places difficulty in understanding the distances that some of the places that the characters visit in the course of the story.

But apart from that the story is good and the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good but with some rough edges.

The book is the first in a new series and I suspect that I will look out for the second book when it comes out.


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Reading

Just finished reading another book, this one while on holiday, in the resting times between walks ect.

Anyway back to the book it's called The Silent Sea and it's by Clive Cussler and it's in one of the various series of books that he appears to write these days, or should I say the person who just gets the with credit on these books.

Have you noticed that there appear to be many more books with more than one author these days?

The book is a good read, it's not making it's self to be anything but an entertaining thriller and that's what it is, some of the action scenes I suspect are just not possible in real life but in the book they work, and as I have said before the bad guys get what they deserve and I loved they way that the books authors stage the big set scenes.

Well worth several hours of your time if you want to get away from life.


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Real ale

Just trying a new real ale that I have never had before called hopping hare by the badger brewery, it's only a 4% but so far the taste has been great, now all I want is a nice hot summers da and a steam chair to sit on in the sunshine with this beer in my hand.


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Holiday weather

One thing that I always start to look at is the weather and what is going to be like when I am on holiday.

So one thing that I have been very surprised at is how quickly in hours it seems to change.

So as it is I still do not know for certain if I am going to get wet, sunburned or fog bound on my holiday.




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Red nose day

So here in the uk it's red nose day, wonder how much response we will get,at work or around the place


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Wiki tables

Not too sure if my wiki should be all tables or a mixture of both, either one has an advantage but also disadvantages.

At this time I am not sure which way to go or if the way to go is to have a mixture of the two.




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Time off

Did I say that I having some time off soon?

Well only two days to go!


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Holiday

Going on holiday only for a week but I am sure that the break will do me good.


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Dirk Maggs Wiki

So the wiki has gone a bit slow, I have got distracted and have spent time on learning how to do tables in the wiki, and I must admit that the results are far better than I thought that they would be.

I also managed to get from the mediawiki site the help pages and with help form the mediawiki site installed the public domain help pages into my wiki!

Which is really neat.

It all works well.

So when back from holiday, I will have another look at the semantic side of things, I am sure that in the end I will work out what I want and also work out how to get it all working the way that I want it to work.

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Cold

A bit of a shock again this morning as it's really rather colder than I expected it to be.

I am not sure but should I still be removing ice from the window screen in mid March?


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Mercury

Last night just after sunset I was luck to see both Jupiter and Mercury in the sky together with out any clouds in the way, if I am luck I shall have another go tonight to see them, it's really a rather nice sight.

But knowing how fickle the weather can be here in the UK it will either be raining about to rain or foggy!



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Reading

I have finally finished reading The Wrecker by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott, now for some reason I felt a bit disappointed with the book, as to me parts of it where very formulaic which is something that I don't like in a book.

In the story the main characters seemed to sped an awful lot of their time catching trains, sometimes just because they can.

Finding out who the wrecker was so early in the story was a bit of a letdown and then to find out that his behaviour changed after we found out who he was, was to me also a bit of a letdown.

Did the book entertain me?

Yes but if I was to treat this book as a movie, then I would say it was a feature that was realised straight to DVD with no cinematic release.

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Bumble bee

So my first bumble bee today.


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Bread

Baking some bread only 2 hours to go


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GarageBand iPad

So I found myself buying this app for my iPad.

So far it's been real fun playing with it, no I want to start importing my vocal parts into it, as mp3's and it does not work for me.

I wonder what I am doing wrong, I have read on the Apple forms for GarageBand iPad that you can,t do this?

Why?

I would have thought that importing and exporting would be one of the major items that this type of software should be capable of doing.

So at the moment until apple see fit to release an update it will remain a toy, which is a shame because it is a nice app to use.


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Ill

Starting to feel a bit run down and the old throat is also starting to hurt, I have a feeling I may have a cold coming on.

Let's hope that I am wrong.


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Ipad2

Just read some more reviews on the ipad2 and as the owner of the iPad 1 there does not appear to be that much different from the unit that I have.

Two things stop me from updating and they are the cameras fitted to the iPad are not that good if I am going to spend all that money on a new iPad I want the cameras to be of good quality as I am going to be using the iPad for some time, I mean the iPad is expensive and I will have to use it for some time.

Why did they put such low quality cameras in?

Perhaps they had some very good reasons why

But asan end user I am sorry to say that for me the decision sucks

The other reason for stopping me upgrading is that the screen needs to be better than the existing unit, don't get me wrong the screen on the iPad is good but when you have seen the display on the iphone4 you have to ask yourself why can't the iPad have the same?

I suspect that one reason for the ipad2 not to have the display was that units where not available in the numbers needed so the ipad3 will have this better screen, will apple wait a whole year before releasing the ipad3?

The other minor point is that the memory in the machine does not appear to have been increased ?

Because of cost?

I don't know, all I do know is that I will be looking at the ipad3 and not the ipad2 when I update.

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Plotters

How is that never mind how many times you have used a plotter it's always fun to watch them at work.

Why?

Not a clue....


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Pancakes 2

Just a post note to myself, always cook pancakes slow.

Maple syrup and butter make a nice topping.


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Stress

Stress can do strange things to people and how they react to the world and the other people in their lives.


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Butterfly

So this morning my very first butterfly!

Not sure if that is the earliest that I have ever seen one, in fact there were two and they were I think yellow.


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Bright

So today has been I think one of the brighter days of the year so far.

Because it's still early March that means that tonight is going to be a hard frost, did I tell you that I hate having to deuce the car before setting off to work.

That's of course if I can afford to continue putting fuel into the car it's at £1.33 a litre.



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Dirk Maggs semantic wiki

So I did do some work on the wiki, but for reasons that I yet to work out I got carried away with finding information on some contributors from an early Dirk Maggs production and ended up creating pages for them, instead of making my mega semantic form, if I did not know better I would say that I am doing displacement activities.

I must admit that I do know now just what I need to do, all I now have to do is do it.


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Cold

So it's spring very soon or so I am told, so why was it -3 this morning and had to scrape the Car for ages?

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Dirk Maggs semantic wiki part something 2

I have to admit that I have not done much work on the wiki this week, I just have not felt that well and really not that interested in anything especially anything on the web or anything to do with the web.

So the wiki has not therefore progressed.

But I have made the decision that a semantic form is the way to go as that's the best way of making sure all the properties that I require are used in a proper way.

Hopefully if the semantic forms are used in they way i hope they should be I will be able to store the information on the wiki in the way that will allow me to do the searches I need and also perhaps has information that has been so far hidden in the detail and also hidden in the 100's of pages on the existing website in a format that you can't search for.

So hopefully this weekend I hope to get the main semantic form setup and running.

I will report back in this blog what happens.


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Dull

So you what it's like when the day is just dull,dull and dull?

I just wish that it would be a bit brighter you know some actual sunshine and even a blue sky.

But as I am in the UK there is not much chance of that!

Oh well I can hope I suppose.


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Spring

So is spring really just a few weeks away?
I hope so as I want it to at least be a just a bit warmer than it has been.

I know that the days are now getting longer in fact you can see it as you go about your daily activities, it's nice.

It's even better if you get a day that has sunshine, but I suppose you can't have every thing can you?


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Ipad2

So the ipad2 has been announced the question for me is it worth upgrading?

I know that my current iPad will go to the wife and by how often she uses mine so that's not a problem.

Will having a faster iPad make much difference to how I use it now?

I don't know the answers to these questions at this time, I do know that I do need more storage and that 32 gig is looking to small and that 64 would be better, I was very surprised that there was not an increase to 128, but I suppose there must be a good reason or reasons why

Perhaps the reason might be cost or they can't get hold of the parts I suppose that we will never know the reason.

One thing I did notice is that there is yet another new version of iTunes to install and that there is an update of the OS that powers the I devices, thing is will I notice any difference with the new OS.

I shall report back, but note that the OS does not get updated until the 11 march so that over a week into the future, but the iTunes update is now available all I have to do is download it and install it.

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Casual

Can you be too casual while having lunch at work?

It's a good question and I am afraid that I just don't know the answer to it.

Is reading a book something that could be considered too casual?

I don't have an answer.


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Reading

Just started to read yet another book, I know that's the 2nd or even 3rd book this year!

So I am only some 29 pages into so far and I can't say if the book is good or bad yet it's still too early into the book.

The book is called The Wreckers and it's by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott, although I think most of it was written by Scott with perhaps Clive providing the brief and doing some editing, I just don't know how the writing collaboration thing is set up between these two but it's possible that that is the set up, not that it matters.

As all that I am interested in at the end of the day is am I going to be entertained by this book.

As I said I can't say yes or no.

Will report back when I have something to say about it later

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Sleep

I need more sleep or having a sleep is making me tied, I am not sure which it is.

I woke this morning feeling more tied than when I went to bed!

Why?

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Dirk Maggs Semantic wiki pt something

I know that I have talked a lot about my Dirk Maggs semantic wiki, which as it's a large task is naturally something that you would expect me to talk about, and as this is my blog I can do whatever I want in this blog.

So I found that I have a choice to make I can either make a form which can collect almost all the information that I need and create the page for me or I can go the other way and code each bit of a page with the semantic properties that I need.

The second choice gives total control but at the cost of a lot more work, the first choice allows for a lot of the work to be carried out automatically which means I suppose that in the long run less errors.

The problem is that it means that there will be lots of templates that need to be created and I have to admit that I have not found yet an easy way of editing them correctly so that I don't break them.

Which sadly is something that I have managed to do now on more than one occasion, but in the end I did find out what I had done and managed to sort out the problem.

So I think that an automatic solution is they way to go forward as I have some 500 pages that I think are needed in the wiki, as I will list every production that Dirk has done, and he has done just a few since 1987.

I also want to provide a page for every actor, writer, producer and mixer that has also been involved in Dirk's productions, it's a tall order but as it's going to be the only website or wiki dedicated to a audio producer, director I think that it should be the best I can do, I don't think the wiki will ever get huge hits to it, as it's a very specialised site but I do think that I will learn a lot about databases and semantics, well I must admit that on the later I already have and the learning curve so far has been straight up!




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