roland juno x

 

roland update a classic. too retro for my taste but lovely, and there's always a pleasure in listening to music nerds enthusing!

if eras were logos - micke

if eras were logos - love these by micke via spoon and tamago

theo jansen

 

more here

laura knight

 

this is laura knight, who i came across via an old picture of boxers that she'd done. her pictures aren't really to my taste but there's lots of them to look at and a real range of subjects. what an interesting life she led! the wiki entry is worth checking out for more detail but here's a summary - 

Laura Johnson was born in Long Eaton in Derbyshire to Charles and Charlotte Johnson. Her father died not long after her birth, and Laura grew up in a family that struggled with financial problems. In 1889 (at the age of 12), she was sent to France with the intention that she would eventually study art at a Parisian atelier.

After a short time in French schools, she returned to England. There, at the age of 23, she entered the Nottingham School of Art, one of the youngest students ever to join the school.

At school, Laura met one of the most promising students, Harold Knight (1874–1961), aged 27, and determined that the best method of learning was to copy Harold's technique. They became friends, and married in 1903.

In 1907, the Knights moved to the artists' colony in Newlyn, Cornwall, alongside Lamorna Birch, Alfred Munnings and Aleister Crowley, where she painted in an Impressionist style. The Beach (1908), widely admired both by other artists and the public, is an example of this style. Another interesting work is The Green Feather, which was painted in one day. In 1913, she made a painting that was a first for a woman artist, Self Portrait with Nude, showing herself with a nude model, fellow artist Ella Naper.

After the First World War, the Knights moved to London, where Laura met some of the most famous ballet dancers of the day, such as Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with Lydia Lopokova and Enrico Cecchetti, and Anna Pavlova. Her most famous work dates from this period.

At the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, Laura Knight won the Silver Medal in Painting with the painting Boxer (1917).

In 1929, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and in 1936 she became the first woman elected to the Royal Academy.

From 1933, Dame Laura and her husband became regular visitors to Malvern. They found much inspiration for their work in the Malvern Hills and in the surrounding Worcestershire countryside. A blue plaque at the Mount Pleasant Hotel on Belle Vue Terrace, Great Malvern, commemorates the time they spent in the area.

Second World War Artist's Studio in a Bomber Factory: Charge hand Wilfred Powell helps Dame Laura Knight to set out her paints on a work bench in readiness for the day's work.

During the Second World War, Knight was an official war artist.[3] She worked on several commissions for the Ministry of Information's War Artists Advisory Committee, and she was one of only three British women war artists who travelled abroad.

After the war, she was the official artist at the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi war criminals. One result was The Dock, Nuremberg (1946).

Source: The Swan Gallery

eddie marsan

 

eddie marsan's one of the very few male actors i'd make an effort to watch these days. i like the fact you can never tell what sort of role he's going to pop up in (tho i haven't watched him in the likes of tyrannosaur because those films are too full on for me now) and i admire the way, like any great character actor, he lets himself get swallowed up by the role, so you can really watch the craft of acting.

so i was happy to read this interview in the observer (i'm not sure i've ever read/seen him interviewed before). of course he's an actor so it could all be total nonsense but i like his commitment to decency, the need for working class actors and his cinnection to the people he grew up with.

get some yoga

after recent illness i've been very limited in what i can do with exercise. that, coupled with general laziness,  means i've not been good with my mobility drills and i'm really feeling it! this is the yoga routine i'm trying to get back to on a daily basis 

now it may be there are some people biased against bendy yoga girls (and i'm not going to lie, there are many times when i wonder if i'm even the same species as kassandra when i'm trying to get my wreck of a body to do what she does! lol) so if you like your routine bloke based, here's this one. it doesn't mention the yoga word altho it'll be very familiar to anyone who does yoga, and it throws in a few extra moves.

it's only ten minutes a day - you're worth it!

the sea mother

 

here's a lovely story from back in the day. i'm not convinced by the explanations (pre- norse - a stretch!) but, while it's not the full shetlandic, it's nice to hear the accent. for an orcadian version listen here.

it's odd to here it now as supernatural women who live in the sea are not uncommon in my fiction and even a brief google reveals the likes of sedna and yemanja. i can't find anything where someone has looked at this but surely there's room for study of female sea deities and supernatural creatures. ask any island person!

mitochondria and zone 2 training

 

it's true that even after many, many years, despite a steadily decreasing knowledge, i retain (and why wouldn't you!) a deep affection and interest for cell biology and energy metabolism generally.

last year i finally decided to accept that i wanted to change the way i was training on the bike, partly due to a training injury, but mostly because i'm getting older, my body is responding differently and, while i might do the odd race, i really just want to be fit enough to have a decent day out whenever i want to.

initially i was doing a fair amount of zone 3 sessions interspersed with a couple of more intense sessions a week coupled with gym work. then, just as the restrictions were eased and after two years of everyday exposure, along comes covid. naturally it hasn't come alone and i've had some lasting cardiac effects since.

as a result i've eased way back on training (nothing for a month!) with a timely, and immensely fortunate for him, example in sonny colbrelli who, it appears his doctors are now thinking irritated his heart post viral infection. as such it's been zone 2 all the way with one longer ride outside which, although lovely, was a great example of why i should continue to take it easy and train inside.

that said, although zone 2 training at first was astonishingly boring i've found i've got quite into it. i saw great gains with the zone 3 training, a strange degree of remodelling in my legs, but, likely down to incoming covid, i was very tired. with zone 2 i'm able to better listen to a podcast, focus on how my body feels in order to cycle to heart rate and know my power, look at my pedaling technique.

and then i discover that zone 2 training is a thing. not only that tadej pogacar is doing it. this here then is a very long and rambling podcast ostensibly about zone 2 training but which grounds itself thoroughly in cell biology, mentions all manner of energy production processes, and is very interesting re diabetes. it's true that peter attia could've made it shorter by reining in his need to talk about himself and his numbers but, while this can be grating, i think it's just his enthusiasm showing. and inigo san millan is just a wizard!

i'm not going to lie, it goes on. but, for me, this is one of the most interesting podcasts i've ever heard, particularly if you've an interest in the metabolic component of training and specifically if you're a wee bit older and you're loking at some theory upon which to base your practice

corncrakes and language

 

the first time i heard a corncrake i thought there was something wrong with the electrics outside. i was living on the western isles at the time and i'd never, and haven't since, heard one on the mainland. not that it was always so. as i see numbers of creatures dwindle even in the short time i've been doing surveying, here's caught by the river with a nice wee essay about the relationship between the natural world and language.

werner's nomenclature of colours

the public domain review hits the mark with the wonderful, sublime werner's nomenclature of colours.  there's a very browsable version here - i make no apologies for any time lost!

on seaweeds

 

this rather lovely public domain review essay on seaweed collecting in the 19th century and the lost world of algology. anna atkins appears, of course, but a rather nice piece of george eliot trivia also.

helen keller

 

an interesting podcast re helen keller that takes as its starting point the recent conspiracy theory shenanigans re helen keller. keller comes across as a much more complex and even tragic figure than was previously suspected even as the narrators are truning themselves in knots with their modern day morality.

this complexity is perhaps better addressed here which, for obvious reasons, places keller's politics much more to the forefront.

what is also a shame is that the conspiracy theory balloonery isn't really addressed. tho maybe that's ample material for a different podcast!

the moby dick map

 

the map i didn't know i needed!

peaky blinders

 the main thing i've done (or been able to do!) while i've been sick is watch peaky blinders. which is something a lot of people have done but, for me, it's just about the only english language tv i've watched in the last ten years. and, just about all the way into series five, i have to say i enjoyed it. 

in order to do so one has to accept that, while actual people and events populate the narrative, they should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt. also, while the clothes look lovely, there are parts of the styling that can raise an eyebrow. and, as with all characters on tv, they are immune to any long term injury damage and recover substantially faster than regular humans! that said, it's good fun to have a bit of a google and to have a check on the real life equivalents of the characters on the show.

i did find it a bit repetitive towards the end but i kept going because i really did enjoy the characterisations. the actors were fabulous. cillian murphy obvs, in the lead role, the sadly late helen mcrory stole almost every scene she was in, and natasha o'keeffe looked like she was born to be a character in anything from this period. here's cillian murphy talking about it all in his regular voice. 

*did i finish it? i did not. i finished at s5 ep4 and discovered i could read again. tv just isn't for me! lol

language listening

in my very brief english teaching life one of the things i was fortunate enough to be able to do was change my accent so that learners could compare and contrast the same sentences. not quite the same but most of the way there appears you.glish. i got in initially as an english teaching aid but it does all manner of other languages. useful. check it out.