You nice folk have put up with my sawing and chopping on assorted tunes and even said nice things about them. Thank you very much for that, but here is something that just blows the socks right offa me. Hope your house is warm because you're going to be missing your socks real soon now too.

This is the legendary John King playing John Phillip Sousa's The Washington Post March on an Earnest Instruments (Joel Eckhaus) ukulele.

John usually tears it up on classical pieces and, while I enjoy them, this tune is just amazing. There are times where he does arpeggios that sound like six or more strings being use instead of the ukulele's traditional four.

If the embedded video doesn't work for you check it out here.

I may have to give up ukulele and go back to cowbell or something. Wowsa.

meretricious

I've spent quite a lot of time over the past two days recoding assorted parts of my web site so that they used pjjTextBase, which is very nice PHP-driven, flat textfile relational database code written by Przemysław Jerzy Jackowski, instead of my own home-rolled version of the same idea.

Oh, mine worked well enough but his is a lot cleaner and, better yet, you can do more complex queries on the data. I could have probably massaged mine into much the same functionality, but why? Jerzy's works great, has good documentation and is free.

Hello! What more could you want?

I did add one small bit of functionality to his code. I sent the function in to him and he sent me back a nice email. I don't know if he'll want to use my function in his next release, but I told him he could if he wanted. 

In any event, the only major piece that I have left to translate over is my maillist stuff. It also has a bug in it that keeps adding empty records to the database as well as sending me empty (or at least, data free) emails announcing this.

Feh!

I figure doing the work on it to translate it over will also give me a chance for a bit of redesign and I can get rid of that little problem.

Then I can get started on using my mailing list to send out personalized mailings as well has sending out gig reminders to folks who're at least in the same state (hell, sometimes country) as the gig instead of to everybody on the list.

I figure I've got at least three or four more days of coding to get all that done. When I'm finished I'll undoubtedly tire myself out by doing the the Happy Hobbit Dance™ all over the dang house. The bug in the maillist code has been a source of grief and extra handwork for way too long.

No, I spelled that right.

Sunday night Rob D'Arc brought over his friend, Max Espinoza. Max was up visiting from the Los Angeles area where he and a friend have a caricature (and other artwork) business. After dinner he said how he liked my music and while I played a couple tunes on my ukulele he took the Fallen Angel's sketchbook and some of her (immense) collection of colored pencils and drew the caricature you see here.

Click on it and you'll get the full view.

Weirdly enough, I've been thinking over the last month or so about getting a caricature done for my business card and other PR. I even went so far as to put together a couple things on this online "logo" maker that... ehhh... vaguely resembled me. I hadn't done anything with them and then, out of the blue, I not only get a good caricature done but Max told me to feel free to scan it in and use it for whatever.

What is he, a mind reader too?

So today the FA took it over to Rob's and scanned it, and the other caricatures that Max did while he was here, into jpg files. I'm going to carefully trim the paper one about the same way that the full sized scanned one is trimmed and get it matted and framed for hanging on the wall.

If you're in SoCal you can hire him and/or his friend to come to your party and draw for you. They also work from photos, so even if you're not in that area you can get in touch and see what they can do for you.  

I think mine is way cool. Thanks, Max!

Here's The Genuine Jug Band out of Langley, BC, Canada. They get it (i.e. they got the jug band thing down).

I highly recommend you mosey over to their MySpace page and give 'em a listen. Jug band music is fun time music. Danceable, funny, sometimes even silly, but always fun. And Doug even strums a ukulele now and then. What more could you ask? 

I'm hoping they decide to meander down I-5 and grace Seattle town with their presence.

According to Dane Carlson at business-opportunities.biz... 

Who knew?

Dane says he was "Inspired by Tristan Louis's research into the value of each link to Weblogs Inc, I've created this little applet using Technorati's API which computes and displays your blog's worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal."

I haven't been contacted by AOL yet but I'm standing by the phone.

William Preston Robertson, co-director of Rock That Uke, has an article in the Guardian this week called In Praise of the Ukulele that contains this wonderful quote:

"Yes, there are other instruments with greater range, but none that can exist so innocently, so vulnerably, so fearlessly and precisely in that duality of time and space that is both joy and sorrow as can the ukulele."

senescence

senescence \sih-NEH-suhn(t)s\, noun:

The state of being old; the process of growing old; aging.

Senescence is from Latin senescere, "to grow old," from senex, "old." It is related to senile. The adjective form is senescent.

Dictionary.com 

Last night me and the rest of the boys in Snake Suspenderz played a gig right around the corner from my house -- about 4 blocks total -- at a place called Smokin' Pete's BBQ.

This is what we'd call an "enhanced tips & treats" gig. A tips & treats gig is one where the restaurant/coffeehouse/whatever gives you food and drink and lets you collect tips. This one was enhanced because they also paid us some. Not as much as we'd usually charge for such a gig, but we were happy with the results.

And they want us back. Which is way cool. 

Best of all was the Fallen Angel came down and did quite a bit of video recording. You can see the first of the results after the break.

I took my little ukulele in my hand and turned out another video tonight. This one is the Duke Ellington and Bob Russell classic, Don't Get Around Much Anymore.

As usual, if the embedded vid isn't working you can check it out on its YouTube page.

This is about take 10 (out of 16 or so... I had a number of false starts) and though it only has one mistake in it I was going to trash it and try some more. Then I listened a couple more times and decided it was what I call a "jazz mistake." A jazz mistake is one that sounds pretty cool, even if it wasn't exactly what the musician was aiming at.

Now I'm trying to repeat it on purpose and, of course, I can't seem to make it sound quite the same. Oh well. 

You'll note that I tried out the video ideas I mentioned in this post. So whaddaya think? Is that a good standin until I can finally get a machine together that allows me to edit the vids, insert titles, etc.? 

My arrangement is heavily based on the Curt Sheller tabs of the tune. If you want to learn the song, go check 'em out! (And tell Curt that Hobbit sez hi!)

Sometimes paying attention to the freaking deluge of MySpace bulletins pays off. For instance, just yesterday I found out that Mad Tea Party has signed a contract with Nine Mile Records, an indie label out of Massachusetts. Nine Mile Records features such fine acts as Stephanie's Id, Patrick Sweany, and the Zydepunks.

Mad Tea Party's next CD, Found a Reason, will be hitting stores this summer under the Nine Mile Records imprimatur. If you haven't checked out the Mad Tea Party yet, better get busy. They're a terrific uke-centric act and I think you'll really enjoy their tunes.

I've posted on how difficult video editing is in Linux and I had finally decided to "steal" Brian Hefferan's idea about starting with the ukulele right up in the camera's face, drawing it back, recording the video, putting the uke back in the camera's face and shutting things down.

I've had two great ideas about it since then. First, Brian himself left a comment at the above linked post saying "go ahead and steal it if you want" but also suggesting using a postcard (or cards) with the title(s) on them and starting/ending with those. Thanks, Brian. Great idea!

BTW... After reading Brian's comment I go into the kitchen to tell my Fallen Angel about it and, before I can get to the point, she suggests the same thing.

Sheesh.

Either she's got to start reading my blog more regularly or I've got to start bouncing these ideas off of her first. Or both. 

But, of course, the postcard idea leaves me wondering just where I pause for readability (in both directions) and various other conundrums. So my second idea was, "can I set my camera's self-timer for movies as well as still photos?" After a search of the manual and a bit of playing about the answer is... YES!

I can set it for either a 10 or a 2 second countdown. It tweets happily while counting down and then gives a different sounding bleep for when it starts. Thus ends the "open your video with a shot of your arm reaching out of the frame and then footage of you getting settled in" problem right from the get go.

So, I'm going to have a nice little shower and get into some "video clothing" here and then I'm going to try a mix of both ideas. Start with the countdown timer and end with a little sign plugging my web site.

I'll let you know how this turns out.

ma·quil·lage  /ˌmækiˈɑʒ; Fr. makiˈyaʒ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mak-ee-ahzh; Fr. ma-kee-yazh]

[Origin: 1890–95; < F, equiv. to maquill(er) to apply makeup (orig. theater argot, perh. to be identified with OF masquillier blacken, smear, akin to mascurer, mascherer, v. deriv. of VL *mascar-; see masquerade) + -age -age]

Whoops! A word whose definition sends us to another word's definition. OK. And I'll even highlight the appropriate definitions.

makeup 

make·up  /ˈmeɪkˌʌp/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciati[meyk-uhp]

–noun

1.	facial cosmetics, as eye shadow or lipstick.

2.	cosmetics used on other parts of the body, as to cover birthmarks.

3.	the application of cosmetics.

4.	the ensemble or effect created by such application: Her makeup was subtle but very effective.

5.	the total ensemble of cosmetics, wigs, costumes, etc., used by an actor or other performer.

6.	the manner of being made up or put together; composition: the makeup of a team; the makeup of a situation.

7.	physical or mental constitution: the makeup of a criminal.

8.	the art, technique, or process of arranging or laying out, as pages in a publication.

9.	the appearance of a page, book, newspaper, or the like, resulting from the arrangement and the variation in size and style of the printed elements: The makeup would be helped by a picture in this corner.

10.	Printing. the arrangement of set type, cuts, etc., into columns or pages.

11.	an examination, assignment, or the like, given to offset a student's previous absence or failure.

12.	an amount owed; balance.

Also, make-up.

[Origin: 1805–15; n. use of v. phrase make up]

If I can extrapolate a trend from such few data points, out of the people who watch my ukulele videos on YouTube there's about 10 (and subsets of them) who bother to rate them at all. And they must be fans because my lowest rating is 4 out of 5 stars and, not to put too fine a point on it, I wouldn't give that rating to most of them even if I was blind drunk.

But I am getting a bit better at it as I go along.

So, if any of you rater types are reading this. Thanks! Egoboo is always welcome.

I'll be adding more to my YouTube channel this weekend (maybe even as soon as later tonight). I'm starting to enjoy this vid thing.

I've posted another YouTube video, this one of Ain't Misbehavin' by Thomas "Fats" Waller, Andy Razaf and Harry Brooks. It's from their hit Broadway musical of 1929, Hot Chocolates.

I loves me some Fats Waller! 

It's another solo uke and vocal featuring my Glyph soprano. I'm starting to get the hang of this video thing and, other than a bit of extra sunshine coming through the window and an unwelcome small plane, I think it's pretty good.

Note that the plane isn't coming through the window, just a little sound from it, and briefly at that.

As usual you can watch it here:

...or check it out on its YouTube page.

Feel free to let me know what you think of it.

I rarely do this sort of post and it is rather a minor thing, but I finally got around to going into the stylesheet and adjusting things so that the images in my blog that you click on to popup a larger version now have a little space around them (i.e. the text doesn't butt right up against them).

Dunno if it makes any difference to y'all but it was bugging the hell out of me. I think the change makes things look lots better and more readable.

You should check out the fabulous drawings of Juan Francisco Casas, all done with ballpoint pen. Some are up to 10 feet wide. In a Daily Mail article he explains that it all started out as a joke. Now he's selling them at shows -- 60 pieces at a recent one -- for €1000 to €5000 a piece. According to my favorite online currency converter that's about $1450 to $7280!

Quick word of warning. Some of the pics in the gallery are probably not terribly work safe.

(Hat tip to The J-Walk Blog)

Late Friday night I finally said, "hell with it, I'm tired of messing around with geek issues" and recorded a video of All Of Me, the jazz standard by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons.

The next day Woodshed put it in his Saturday UkeTube feature (bless his heart) and the darn thing has shot up in two days to more views than my last two additions have done in over a week. And I've had four or five new subscribers in the last week or so as well.

Who knew?

You can check out the video here:

Or go to the YouTube page for it.

My YouTube Channel has all the vids I've posted (so far).

Yeah, yeah... I missed the last one. Again. But here's this one and it's a goodie! Much favored by our founding fathers (read The Federalist Papers).

nugatory 

When I ok a friend request on MySpace I always leave a comment. Since I get a lot from countries other than the USA I've put together several translations -- French, Italian, Spanish, German and Portuguese so far -- of "Thank you for finding my space!" to leave where appropriate.

I recently got a friend request from a group called trioraro who hail from Roma, Italia. So I left my usual comment, "Grazie per l'individuazione del mio spazio!" and they've just posted a comment back. It says...

"sei un mito, se vieni dalle nostre parti ci facciamo una suonata insieme! i abbracciamo e speriamo di incontrarci"

WTF?

On to Babelfish I go. It happily translated that block of Italian into:

"a six myth, if you come from ours you leave we make one played entirety! we embrace and we hope to you to meet to us"

WTF?

I can pretty much make sense of the second sentence but the first one leaves my head spinning.

I sure hope Babelfish did a better job on my comment than on theirs.

I've spent an awful lot of time over the past week trying to get to the point where I could turn out videos for YouTube all by myself. I'd love to be able to just sit down in front of my digital camera, whip out a tune, clip the bits off the front and back that show me turning the camera on and off, settling into position, etc. and get it online.

I've enjoyed some success. I found something called Mediacoder -- a Windows program but it works under WINE on Linux -- that successfully shrinks the extremely large AVI files my camera makes down into the mp4 files that YouTube likes best. But no matter what I try I can't find anything to do the simplistic editing I need.

Either the program(s) don't work whatsoever or they manage to do what I ask only to completely destroy the video and/or audio quality and un-sync them to boot.

YouTube's online editor doesn't let you just "edit" your video, it lets you "remix" it. This means it gets saved as a whole new video. This would be ok if only:

1. they'd let you edit a private video or...
2. it actually saved successfully 

If #1, you could do all the editing, titling, etc. without it showing to the general public until you were ready. You could then delete the private (i.e. unedited one) and Bob's yer uncle.

But, of course, #2 would have to work as well. I got one to supposedly save but it wouldn't let me view it at all. Just showed a regular YouTube page with a big blank square where the video is supposed to be. 

This leaves me with two choices. Either I can prevail on the Fallen Angel to turn the camera on and off or I can try the thing that Brian Hefferan does by starting out with the ukulele right up in the camera's face and then putting it back like that when I turn the thing off.

The FA would be fine with "running the camera" but that means she needs to be here anytime I get a wild hair and decide to try a video. Brian's idea is pretty cool but it's like stealing someone else's style.

Bah!

This shouldn't be so difficult.

For those of you who read my rants about the nanny state and think that I'm just some sort of loony tunes, black helicopter paranoid I'd like to point out a recent bill I heard about from The Agitator.

Introduced in the Mississippi House of Representatives, House Bill No. 282 would "prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state department of health."

Thinking that it might be a tongue in cheek attempt to point out the ridiculous nature of some of the recent nanny state laws, Sandy Szwarc from Junkfood Science called W.T. Mayhall, Jr. -- the bill's main sponsor -- and asked.

Nope. He's serious.

Gee, I hope those of you who smugly voted for draconian and unconstitutional smoking bans aren't too chubby.

It would sure be a shame if your right to live your life as you please was curtailed by the those who "know what's good for you" and are all too happy to force their views on you.