I have, many times. And nothing has ever gone wrong.
Until this time.
I went and re-installed over the old partition and lost everything that
wasn't backed up. (Fortunately not too much).
Doh!!!!
On
the plus side the PC involved runs a lot faster now.
Thursday
July 18th 2002:
The Sound of Silence.
Oh
dear!
Apparently naughty old Wombling Tory Mike Batt has composed a little
bit of silence and is positively raking in the readies. Now some cruel
souls may declare that if only Mike had started making silent records
a few decades ago we might all have spared some pretty terrible experiences.
But not me. Oh, no. ... Neither is my angle that of the tabloid
"They call this rubbish art" brigade. Oh, no once
again. My interest is the reported claim that has been been
placed by John Cage's publishers that Batt's piece is a blatant copy
of Cage's seminal silent piece 4'33". Now, like everyone else
(whether involved or not in the saga) I haven't actually heard either
piece. Furthermore, I haven't experienced either piece in a non-aural
experience either.
Until now.....
I can't find the Batt piece on line anywhere but I have managed to
trace Cage's opus. It seems to load pretty quickly so you won't need
much more than the 4'33" to listen to it in its entirety.
If I was a complete troglodyte I could suggest you could press the
stop button after a minute and get the Batt experience but that would
be too obvious.
Even for me.
Of more interest to me is the question as to just how much silence
does there have to be before you can copyright it? There's an old
adage that if you've ripped off more than three notes of someone else's
tune they can sue. But does this apply equally to rests?
And who really did it first? Which was the seminal silence,
as it were? Was it even in a song? Surely there were gaps between
the songs before John Cage came along and wrote his piece. If
not then I think he needs to go getting his publisher's to place a
few more writs, I've got loads of CDs with short silent tracks in-between
the other songs.
On the way home
without the toobs, Z witnessed a DLR train derailed at Stratford as everyone
moved to get off at once. You wouldn't believe it possible if it
happened in a sitcom would you?
The rest
of the world has self-tilting trains but we go one better and have self-derailing
ones. Yet another example of British ingenuity, much of which also
appears in a list of the "Top Fifty Inventions of the Last 50 years"
that will itself be a part of "Think
Tank" at Brumingham's Museum of Science and Technology, when
it opens on Saturday. Now, I love "Best of.." charts
as much as the next man but hate the insistence of all and sundried to
include something from last week (Iris Scanners at airports) put against,
for example, an obvious classic like the pocket calculator (1972 apparently).
Its the "Best Album of All Time" thing all over again (Radiohead's
"OK Computer" wins top spot despite only being released three
seconds before the voting finished). Or, and this may be an even
better example, Robbie (diamond geezer natch) wins best Male in Rock ever.
I mean, come on. Lets try and put a little perspective on these
things. Alternatively let's just have a "Best of Best of Chart".
Which is going to be? Robbie
or the humble old
calculator?
Tuesday
July 16th 2002
The fact that the
end of the school year is rushing up on us means it's time for every parent's
favourite night, the school play.
So that everyone can get a part
of some description Dee & Kay's school (along with many others I'm
sure) split the children into several groups. Thus tonight we have
five vignettes. The girls' piece was a fifteen minute run through
of "Oliver". Kay was a flower seller whilst Dee was two
of the narrators. And, parental pride aside, by far the best.
Whilst she didn't actually come on and shout "You lot shut up and
listen or it'll be detention for all." She may as well have
done, very scary! The other highlight was during the first piece,
a slapstick routine piece based on silent films. For no apparent
reason the action was twice interrupted by one of the youngsters clearly
in the role of Mrs Overall (Acorn Antiques) offering them all tea from
her shaky tray. I can't believe the kids got the joke but half the
audience thought it absolutely brilliant. So a good evening overall.