Lee Jordan .org.uk

A recent flalsh of energy from a distant star has lasted 700 seconds. Why do I write about this, well because of some strange coincidences recently. The sun hasn’t been very active recently, nothing higher than C-Class flares, but the geomagnetic field around the planet has been at unstable to stormy, with the KP index going red just a few days ago ….. so these events I wish to relate to the recent Gamma Burst.

• Tornado : Melborne
• Tornado : South Africa
• Quakes including 7.7 near Indonesia, lasted 2 minutes
• Europes freeze deepening : Roof collapse in Poland, Italy hit by heavy snow, cold weather on the move.
• Asia also freezing in parts
• Train derailments

Gives you a different perspective on the news all this kind of stuff does.

Band formed in the musical hive that is Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield no less than 30 minutes up the road from me …. Jazzy group, please do it, please go to overplay and listen to these guys, they have only had 5 plays on overplay.co.uk. One of the best groups I’ve heard on overplay in a very long time. Winter blues, heck no chance …. bring a bit of Summer to your ears now!

Butterfly Catchers | Band Website

“Their refreshing sound is a cool blend of acoustic ballads and jazzy urban soul reminiscent of the MTV unplugged series”

Also since when has there been a Birmingham Music Awards show? Last year apprently!

Pleased to say that the MRI results came back as scar tissue. Cause for much relief and I’m now even more hopefull that things are gonna be ok The cause of the fatiuge I get in my leg is still a mystery, there’s nothing to worry about.

Been swiming tonight and I’m looking to get a new mountain bike.

Ok this reminds me partly of the plot of Frequency. I’m getting interference on all surround sound speakers of some kind of foreign speech programme, it sounds European, I guess shortwave radio. Fading in and out, this is not uncommon at all and is a well known effect of the ionosphere. Want to know something else? This morning in this area we had troubles with radio recpetion, it was mentioned and affected areas were marked out by very local motorway junction numbers during a traffic report, so all the way to work I had radio problems.

So going back to the ionosphere, there must be something happening there, extra energy at that level of some kind. We are just getting over a recent gemomagnetic storm, which didn’t come from the sun, waoooooh, there was a recent burst of energy from a distant sector of the milky way, I guess someone elses sun blowing up … I kid you not! I know it sounds geeky but it seems very interesting.

Read as a sign of a shift of energy, precursor to a natural event … welcome to the Jordy zone!

I gotta say, I’m not really one for covers of classics unless they really are better than the original. Ryan Adams’ version of Wonderwall is simply amazing and much more in line with my own music tastes. There is a point to this post, because I found the track through a blog. I wanted to highlight the growth of “MP3 blogs” and how the Web really has provided the best promotional platform for music, without it we would be lost, locked to what the commerical companies would like us to hear.

• Definition on Wikipedia : MP3 Blog
• Examples of MP3 blogs : 3Hive.com | Hype Machine

There’s a big lesson here in how record companies should treat music fans, ie with a bit of respect and trust. Some very clever artists have seen the light and released tracks for free on their sites as promotion material, some from their own CD’s. If you like what you hear buy the CD direct from the artist, thus giving the artist a better deal. MP3 blogs pick up this music and advertise it, yes they actually provide one central place that you can go to to discover music that might not have made it to your ears with reviews ordered into genres so you can find music you know you will like. It’s all good stuff.

I often get comments now like “You sure listen to music I’ve never heard of before”. So be eclectic, be your own John Peel, explore your own music tastes, find the music raw and follow its development, instead of having the music come to you pre-packaged in the same perfectly formed sterile way, and tell people once you’ve struck gold.

So after getting the new PC way back towards the end of last year and having it have a surround sound card, I thought why not buy some speakers for it eh? After agonising over which set to buy I went for the Logitech X530 set at about £40 it was a bargin. Normal stereo or mono sound is transfered to all speakers, DVD’s sound top, but I guess DVD-Audio simply won’t replace the CD.

Click the title of this post to read more details …

A view of my desktop, showing the right front speaker and the centre channel speaker in the distance. With the penguins in view obviously.

Wireless audio on the go

The transmitter is smaller than my mobile and sits under one of the surround sound speakers.

It gets even more interesting when I add the wireless headphones to the mix, because now I have access to all my live internet radio stations, music, TV output, DVD sound and external MP3 players … on the go with no wires.

So I’m all set now, too much technology? Perhaps but very fun to maximse potential, and it’ll be nice in the summer to listen to Internet radio, Podcasts or DAB radio in the shade or just inside from the patio, without dragging around anything other than the headphones! I could leave a microphone on up here to keep an ear out for Taylor from downstairs. Imagine washing the car at 5pm too without blasting the neighbours with the new acoustic movement

Having brought the new PC and having it have Windows XP on it isn’t too bad I guess. There are some things that I miss from KDE though, one of which was a funky tool that lets you run small desktop toys and information applications and integrate them to the desktop. I need a TV tuner so I can record TV shows on the PC. Oh I do use the computer for web development too you know

A view of my desktop, with the Yahoo! Widgets in action. The winamp skin is highly cool the speakers on the interface vibrate with the music. Click for a closer look.

So I found Yahoo! Widgets which are very closely aligned to the MacOS X look and feel. What I have is a functional desktop that rather than be cluttered with icons, is filled with a value added experience.

These little applications are brillient, I have a picture frame that loops round a directory showing my digital photos, there are weather reports that closely match what’s actually happening outside. Resource watchers, RSS readers, funky clocks, calendars, radio streamers, and a niffy plugin that after 5 minutes of inactivity darkens the screen before the screen saver gets chance to kick in, handy at night for falling asleep to wireless music with.

Aside from the recent spread of Avian Flu, there are a big number of significant Earth Changes occuring around the world. Put your global warming hat away for a sec, aside from the strange weather events there are signs to be read. La Nina may be building up for example and that appears to be a natural swing of energy, as is the magnetic pole shift from the core of the planet and/or the sun. The last memerable quake for me reading on the web was very deep into the planet, things are happening.

The 10th of Jan could have been a trigger day for some world events, building tensions with iRan as well as H5N1 in Turkey and H5N2 in Japan. The End Times folks are having a feild day right now, but it sure is interesting to follow some freaky deaky thinking. Something is in the air, some kind of change or some significant thing will grab our attention.

The Mayan elders are talking about this year, but that could be a natural process of new year or similar period of time and their up coming day of “lord of esquipulas”. Interesting times perhaps time to change or adapt.

Don’t know about you but I’m watching this one closely and highlighting this as it will most likely not end up being reported in our media, if it does it’ll be a passing mention. I suspect a double standard to be the undertow in all this If it is about proliferation why are we still allowing ourselves to get more nukes, more worryingly why are we closing our eyes to India/Pakistan in this respect. Regime change in iRan may follow, allowing tighter flow control of a resource we need.

How does the world look without fossil fuels? We my friends are perhaps unlucky enough to be alive to see it unfolding.

“The removal [of] the UN’s nuclear watchdog’s seals at Iranian nuclear facilities is not a violation of international law … ‘The seals were removed in the presence of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who must accept an invitation from a country to be present at such operations,’ Sergei Lavrov told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.” Source

I suspect the demonisation to continue untill a strike is pretty much on the cards, I never understood how that kind of thing would be safe, that’s like a terror strike on Sellafield don’t you think? Anyway in the build up to stage three in the axis of evil you may hear much about Iran’s human rights record and may hear in the pub people claiming we should bomb them based on the fact that the guy in charge is a nasty man …… undertones of iRaq, don’t ya think?

A “Coalition” if you look at it this way is being formed, Britiain is part of a European meeting on the issue next week, Canada have become the latest voice to pop up. Syira also figures in this somewhere.

I have an appointment coming up to discuss the results of the MRI scan I had on my left calf. I was advised to get the results sooner rather than later as a consultant had said there was something showing on the scan that needed looking at, I just checked and the scan results are ready. It certainly beats waiting until the end of March to get them!

Apart from that I have some new music to ring in the new year, I want to build a really nice singer songwriter playlist for the summer months. I should also change the strings on my acoustic guitar and dust off the chord books

• Laura Veirs : Year of Meteors | Listen
• Jeff Hanson : Son | Listen

Plus a set of surround sound speakers and Bluetooth headphones for my PC are on the way as I feel I need to upgrade my listening expereince in here, way too flat and urm conventional at the moment. I’d also like to go to Summer Sundae this year in Leicester. Yes one of my new years resoultions, to enjoy the summer once again.