Calculator games (Mar 8, 2013)
Factorial 70 (that is, 70 x 69 x 68 x ... x 3 x 2 x 1) is

a) Over a million

b) Over a trillion trillion trillion

c) Over a googol
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(8 replies, Latest reply: Apr 2, 2013)

How do you prepare for the end of the world? (Dec 20, 2012)
That is the stupidest question I can think of.
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(6 replies, Latest reply: Dec 22, 2012)

NaJoPoMo 2012 (Oct 31, 2012)
I'll try to keep up an Entry a day for the month of November. I'll put them here A87775942
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(1 reply, Latest reply: Nov 19, 2012)

Never love anyone who misquotes Oscar (Sep 27, 2012)
Someone posted a quote attributed to Oscar Wilde in the 'h2g2 Motto' thread:

"Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary."

My antennae jangled. Would Oscar have made such a use of the word 'like'?

Quick google: plenty of pages give this quote as one of Oscar's, none citing a specific source.

Googled again, for a quotation site, and found this wonderful engine: http://www.online-literature.com/quotes/quotations.php

Sure enough, the phrase "love anyone who treats" came up with no matches in the works of Oscar Wilde, or any other of their 267 covered authors for that matter.

Just to see that the thing worked, I entered the phrase "never love" and from Oscar Wilde's works it returned six uses:

The Importance of Being Earnest - Act 1
My own one, I have never loved any one in the world but you

The Duchess of Padua - Act III
You never loved me.
(~returned twice)

Lady Windermere's Fan - Act I
Don't say that, Margaret. I never loved any one in the whole world but you.

Vera, or the Nihilists - Prologue
She'll never love you unless you are always at her heels

A Woman of No Importance - Act II
swore to me positively on his knees that he had never loved any one before in the whole course

Panthea
pine to pine the eagle flies. Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows if yonder

(I have restored capitals and cleaned up these results a little.)

Wow. Got to love the technology
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(2 replies, Latest reply: Sep 29, 2012)

Ukulele Festival of Great Britain (Jun 5, 2012)
Got back from the festival in Cheltenham last night. A lovely festival, specially the pub sessions with the Winin' Boys, Gerald Ross, Manitoba Hal, Remco (Ukulelezaza), Paul Moore, Lorenzo (Ukulollo) and our pals Helena & Nora, as well as the organisers, Ally, Jude, Phil and Tony, and various other enthusiasts.

http://www.ukulelefestival.co.uk/TheLineUp.aspx

The looked after us wonderfully and the organisation was preternaturally good. Bravos!

Here's my trio on stage http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=EKvKgpcDUmg

We're called 'Aisling Out Walking' -- James Quah, Aisling Walsh and me.
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Happy Towel Day (May 25, 2012)

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Cycling in parallel (May 11, 2012)
I did something today that I haven't done before in all my 64 years on this planet. Cycled a bike while leading another empty one by the handlebars. Borrowed my wife's and my daughter's because I didn't fancy doing the trick from a recumbent. Picking my grandson up from a supermarket bag-packing job in aid of his soccer team.

A few wobbly moments, no crashes.
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Overheard on feckaboo (Apr 11, 2012)
Posted by a friend of mine, Richard Bannister:

'If Tetris has taught me anything, it is that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.'
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My Personal Space (Feb 9, 2012)
I just tried out my links below (or perhaps above) and found that I had enshrined a misdirection. The link supposed to take you to 'my blog' took you instead to my own home page http://www.andrew.robinson.net/

Corrected now.

This is my blog: http://recumbentman.wordpress.com/
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(1 reply, Latest reply: Feb 11, 2012)

OEDILF (Jan 27, 2012)
I occasionally write limericks for the project http://www.oedilf.com

We are writing a dictionary in limericks. So far I have had 162 approved. http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?searchstart=Search&searchauthor=787

Yesterday I felt inspired to set one (on the word 'aviate') to music. It was written by one Alan Meyer, and it was languishing in the Workshop. I wanted to commend it to other Workshop Editors.

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR6eYyGjhjU

That's all, folks.
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The observed life (Nov 30, 2011)
It's a very curious thing, keeping a journal. Essentially you are talking to yourself, or presenting the version of yourself that you would like others to see. But which others? Before you can start writing, you have to visualise the person you are addressing: your muse.
When he was in his seventies, one of my brothers persuaded my father to write his memoirs. He resisted for a while, but at last gave in, and wrote a hundred and six short chapters about his life. It was a surprise to him how much he came to enjoy his daily writing, and we could all see a new brightness in him as he did it.
He called the book 'Memoirs of a Peripatetic' and addressed it to his grandchildren. He had sixty copies printed, and gave it to his family and a few friends for Christmas in 1990.
It is wonderful to have that book, if only to check up on details when retelling some of his stories. Not all the details are reliable, and several of his childhood and adolescent stories were severely corrected by his elder sister; a pencilled alternative account has gone into the margin. My father foresaw as much in his preface.
History is a story, a rationalising after the event, without which the event would only survive in the behaviour it affected. It would be traumatic. Stories are digestible versions of how we got this way.
In its small way, this journal, along with all the others here, is a bit of an autoblography.
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(5 replies, Latest reply: Jan 19, 2012)

Marsh's Library (Nov 30, 2011)
When you come to Dublin, visit one of our few Queen Anne buildings, Marsh's Library. Founded and built at his own expense by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh in the early eighteenth century, it was the first public library in these islands, and still functions as a public library, with a new bindery downstairs constantly restoring the books that still occupy the places assigned to them by Marsh and his librarian Bouhéreau.

Last night we attended a reception to mark the retirement of the Keeper, Muriel McCarthy. She began working there in 1967, and I must have been one of the first crop of visitors she had to deal with. I was nineteen that year, and had been to my first Viola da Gamba Society summer school. There I had been welcomed into the viol-playing community by Nathalie Dolmetsch and others including Layton Ring and Gordon Dodd.

Commander Gordon Dodd, a naval officer, was working on the thematic index to the entire body of viol music, since completed, and after his death published online here http://www.vdgs.org.uk/files/thematicIndex/01-Prefatory.pdf

He asked me to check some incipits--the first theme in each piece--in the viol partbooks in Marsh's Library, so, armed with the shelf numbers of Narcissus Marsh's own collection of music manuscripts, I rang the bell and Muriel answered the door. I stated my business, and she took a speedy but no doubt comprehensive look at the spotty youth before her, led me to the cupboard where the books were kept, sat me down at her table and let me get on with it.

In the intervening years I have edited and played various bits of music from the collection, most specially a few years ago for a reception in the library to celebrate its tercentenary. I wrote a chapter on Narcissus Marsh for the book 'Music, Ireland, and the seventeenth century' http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/contents.php?intProductID=819

Muriel has done wonderful work promoting and preserving the library. Last night the provost of Trinity College and the Archbishop of Dublin loaded her with heartfelt praise, and she replied with deep gratitude for the support she has had from the Governors and Guardians of Marsh's Library. It was a moving, but not soppy, occasion; she still has all her wit and sparkle.
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Crash Ensemble (Nov 28, 2011)
On Friday evening I went to Liberty Hall to hear a concert of new American music played by The Crash Ensemble http://www.crashensemble.com/

My son plays bass in the group, which is flexible in size but this time included flute, clarinet, trombone, violin, viola, cello, bass, electric guitar, piano and percussion, with a conductor for the bigger pieces. They have been together now for fourteen years; they hit the ground running in 1997 and have been improving ever since.

They played pieces by five composers I had never heard of: Sean Friar, Ken Ueno, Timothy Andres, Missy Mazzoli and Nico Muhly. They did three pieces by Muhly, including a world premiere of a piece called 'Drones, Variations, Ornaments' which they (The Crash Ensemble) had commissioned. It was much more engaging than the title would lead you to expect, and was the only piece to use the entire cast.

The audience took to it, particularly after an onstage interview between the composer and Donncha Dennehy, the director of the Crash. They both just hit a funnybone, refusing to be pompous; they ended up like a comedy act and the audience responded with hoots of laughter. But despite the light touch, the group is a model of mutual respect, and a strange consequence of that is that the audience are mesmerised into profound attention even while the stage engineer is setting up their mikes. Everything is amplified; that is an essential element of the performance, and the engineer, Jimmy Eadie, got a beautifully balanced and unified sound. My son's bass had both a contact mike attached and a large condenser mike out in front. Sometimes the sound is big, but often it is gentle; one composer wrote in his programme note "I sought to create delicate textures that played against the incipient power of amplification and distortion."

Warm applause at the end of the last piece, the premiere; the entire group was clapped back on stage not once but twice.
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(1 reply, Latest reply: Nov 29, 2011)

Song list (Nov 27, 2011)
Aisling Out Walking (see the journal for 16 November) have been booked for a 60th birthday party next week. We have a 45-minute slot, and our current repertoire is

Real Love (Ruby Murray, 1958)
Do You Love an Apple (trad)
Island of Dreams (Springfields, 1962)
Stupid Cupid (Connie Francis, 1958)
Abilene (George Hamilton IV, 1963)
Dream a Little Dream of Me (written 1931; Mamas & Papas 1968)
Dream Lover (Bobby Darin, 1959)
All I have to Do is Dream (Everly Brothers, 1958)
Memories Are Made of This (Dean Martin, 1955)
Try a Little Tenderness (1932; Bing Crosby 1933)
Alley Oop (1957; The Hollywood Argyles 1960)
Walkin' After Midnight (Patsy Cline, 1957)
Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go? (trad)
Return to Sender (Elvis Presley 1962)
I'll Fly Away (1929; sung in O Brother, Where Art Thou? 2000)

How's that for retro? The latest song dates from 1963.

The lyrics and chords for three of these songs can currently be found on the Uke Ireland website http://ukeireland.com/chords-tabs/

Alley Oop was the sole hit of The Hollywood Argyles; according to Wikipedia, their lead singer Norm Davis is currently a poet and poetry teacher in Rochester, New York. Look at that caveman go!

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(11 replies, Latest reply: Apr 10, 2012)

A satisfying weekend (Nov 27, 2011)
We had our three children and their children, our four grandchildren, in the house to celebrate our younger son's thirty-seventh birthday.

We also had a visit from two sisters-in-law and three nieces and my stepmotherinlaw. She is giving the address (sermon) in the unitarian church tomorrow, on 'Principles and Practice'. So I told her the one that goes:

What's the difference between theory and practice?

In theory there's no difference, but in practice there is.
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(1 reply, Latest reply: Nov 27, 2011)

Mountjoy days concluded (Nov 25, 2011)
I began my sixth year as a maths scholarship candidate. There were four of us, Bruce, Fred, Robin and myself. The school's reputation rested on the maths teacher, Jack Campbell; the only other brilliant teacher was Micheál Franklin, but he scored no dazzling successes as his job was to ensure that every pupil without exception passed the Irish exam, as without a pass in Irish no certificate was awarded.

In fifth year Jack Campbell would give all his attention to the promising pupils, leaving the rest to work away at exam problems. Micheál Franklin on the other hand terrorised the entire class into constant attention, with an all-seeing eye and a scathing tongue. Everybody passed their exam.

I didn't exert myself. At the end of the Christmas term something was said to my father and I found myself in a different class in January. I was to sit instead the TCD Matriculation exam, and I was in a class of one. This suited me fine. In fact I had been forewarned, and I read 'Pride and Prejudice' over the Christmas holidays. The horrible revelation that brought me was the vandalism our English teacher was wreaking on literature; when I read it it was interesting enough, when he barged through it it was reduced to rubble.

The opposite revelation was Micheál Franklin. From a scary tyrant he became, in one-to-one classes, a real tutor. He brought me through the seventeenth-century poets and gave me idiomatic phrases to say about them. I could tell from his emphasis which phrases to take note of, and I reproduced them in the exam. As a result, Micheál was rewarded with a rare accolade in his career as a teacher: Trinity College gave me an exhibition (a small prize:£10 a year) in Irish.
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(2 replies, Latest reply: Nov 28, 2011)

The Beatroots (Nov 25, 2011)
Fred was one of my best friends in school, though we only were in school together for two years. He came from Kilkenny College, which only went as far as fourth year at that time, sending those boys who could afford it to go on to sixth year in Mountjoy.

Mountjoy School had about a hundred boarders and a hundred and fifty daydogs, as we called them. I was a weekly boarder, meaning I could go home for weekends. That helped keep the cabin fever down; most boarders only got home for half-term and holidays.

In 1963-64, when Fred and I were through the Leaving Cert and into the Maths Scholarship class, two new teachers decided to put on a school concert. Plays were cast and directed, and I was approached to form a band. Within the Christmas term I taught Fred to play the guitar, from scratch, and together with the supercool Jos Power we performed

I Saw Her Standing There
Maria Elena (instrumental)
All My Loving

We attached a pickup to my arch-top guitar, and I can't remember whether Jos had a pickup on his guitar or played into a mike, but the big excitement was that we got permission to hire a bass guitar and amp. I played bass on I Saw Her Standing There, the full whack as done by Paul MacCartney, and Fred played bass for the others.

We had to practise on acoustic guitars, though, because we only had the use of the bass for forty-eight hours. The day before the concert we had our first go on it.

All went to plan. We sang our harmonies and played our bits. Nobody fainted or screamed, but we got off alive and exhilarated. We packed away our equipment and took our parts in the plays.

I've been teaching ever since, on and off, and I have had pleasing successes, but I have never since had the experience of bringing someone from beginner to gigster in twelve weeks, or played in public an instrument I had first handled the day before. Climaxes are followed by anticlimaxes.
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(4 replies, Latest reply: Nov 26, 2011)

Richard Sweeney (Nov 23, 2011)
Richard is my nephew on my wife's side.

The son of two musicians, he played the cello from a young age, and when at ten he was given a guitar for Christmas he learned his way round it very quickly. The following summer he spent a few weeks with us and learnt just about all I could teach him; my first job had been teaching classical guitar in the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

On leaving school he began a diploma course in classical guitar and after a year changed to lute. He is now a professional lute player, and lives in Sweden. He also works as a website designer: http://richardsweeney.com/

He recorded as a guest artist on the CD 'Flow my tears' that I mentioned yesterday F103872?thread=8285913

Here is a solo track by Richard from that CD http://arrow.dit.ie/aaconmusaud/9/ (free download).
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(3 replies, Latest reply: Mar 11, 2012)

Laoise O'Brien (Nov 22, 2011)
Mrs Recumbent (an upright person) is a recorder teacher, and her star pupil is Laoise O'Brien. Laoise learned recorder and then flute from her as a little girl, before going to study the flute in the DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology) College of Music. There she won all the prizes that were going, the crowning achievement being the Open Wind category in the major national music competition, the Feis Ceoil. She led the wind section in various orchestras, including a Dublin Youth Orchestra that I conducted in the late eighties and early nineties, and later the National Youth Orchestra.

She then startled her flute teacher by announcing that she was going back to the recorder. She studied in Amsterdam with Paul Leenhouts, and came back to Ireland to become the country's leading recorder player and teacher.

I have played in many concerts with Laoise, and have taken a small part with her on a couple of CDs: one for the DIT (where we both teach) and a truly delightful one this year, of her own conception: How Happy for the Little Birds http://www.laoiseobrien.com/#/cd/4553539190

The Feis Ceoil is a venerable institution; James Joyce won a bronze medal for Tenor Solo in 1904, the year of Bloomsday, and John McCormack won the gold the previous year. In her own time, Mrs Recumbent also won the Open Wind, on flute. My own highest accolade was a silver medal in the Madrigal competition, conducting the Woolfgang Singers in 1968.

The DIT CD 'Flow My Tears: musical journeys with the Flight of the Earls' (performed by the Irish Traditional Music Ensemble and the Early Music Ensemble of the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama) never made it to the shops, due to the arcana of the DIT accounting system: the music department was not permitted to issue invoices. However, all the tracks can be downloaded free here http://arrow.dit.ie/aaconmusaud/ (they are the first 17 'Submissions from 2006').

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(4 replies, Latest reply: Nov 28, 2011)

The most fascinating thing in the world (Nov 21, 2011)
Watching an eleven-month-old learning to climb stairs, and to slither down. Early tumbles (buffered two steps down by attendant grandparents) soon leading to careful shifting into reverse, well in advance. Done and dusted in a few tries.
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Ah-choo (Nov 20, 2011)
Every time I sneeze I remind myself of my father. I have exactly the same high-pitched sneeze, and I'm secretly pleased to hear it now and again.

My father had a light tenor voice, and a pleasant vocal quality whenever he warbled a few notes, but he had been told in early childhood that he was tone-deaf, and never expected that he could learn to sing in tune. As a result, whenever he sang,

It was wild--it was fitfull--as wild as the breeze--
It wandered about into several keys*

Mostly he would hum a few bars of an old song, but he preferred to hear us boys singing; his favourite was 'Brian O'Linn". A group of his grandchildren played it at his funeral ten years ago.

He surprised me in his last year, at the age of 85, by singing a whole song through. It was

O Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends
Worked hard all my life, Lord, no help from my friends
O Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz


*google 'Clonglocketty' for the full poem, or hit this http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/bab_ballads/html/ellen.html
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(3 replies, Latest reply: Nov 22, 2011)

T J McElligott (Nov 19, 2011)
In school I was the annoyingly bright boy. By an accident of timing I was two years younger than most of my class, but I discovered a knack of getting straight into a new topic. Observing the discomfort of others, I managed to get a tiny hook into whatever problem was being presented, and the slightest of purchase allowed me to produce answers quickly.

In my fifth year in Mountjoy School (now Mount Temple) we had a French teacher who took a dislike to me. For several weeks, his first words on coming into the classroom were "Robinson, out." He was tall, with a long face and a good head of grey hair, and slightly superior to the other teachers: he was an educationalist, and had written books on the subject. Rotten teacher though, that is to say no better than the rest.

At the end of fifth year we were to sit the Leaving Cert exam, the Irish state exam that gave most students their final diploma, and a few their university entrance. It was meant to be taken in sixth year, but our headmaster had discovered a wheeze whereby we could take a special cert in fifth year and spend sixth year on those subjects that needed improvement. My friend Fred said to me one afternoon "I've been looking at the syllabus, and to do honours French you only have to read two extra books--would you be on for it?"

So we read the Racine and whatever the other one was, and a few articles about them, and when the exam came we put up our hands for the honours paper. Nobody had done honours French in our school before, but this was the state exam and nobody could stop us. When the results came out, both Fred and I had scored exactly 60%, the honours mark.

Tom McElligott never mentioned it, our headmaster never mentioned it, we never mentioned it. This was 1963, and our attitude to school was not the collaborative effort it seems to be now.
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Tidy (Nov 18, 2011)
I keep my computer very tidy. I can find anything I want, pretty much; the documents I have most of are scores, sorted into:

Andrew (mine)
Backup scores (automatic)
Beethoven (current project, a new edition of Beethoven's Irish songs; the paper edition I am finished with, but the online extras are still in production)
Graphics files
Others (i.e. scores for other people)
Sibelius Example scores (came with the program)

Of these the most scores are in 'Andrew', which subdivides into:

Academic (lecture materials)
Aravon (summer school stuff)
Bach
Barbershop quartets
canons
Choice Psalmes (a long-term (i.e. stalled) project to publish an edition of Henry and William Lawes's psalm settings of 1648)
Choral
Guitar
Lute
Recorders
Twangling Consorts (music for lute, treble and bass viols, recorder, cittern and bandora)
Uke
Variety Collection
Viols
Zeralda's Ogre (a piece I wrote for Dublin Youth Orchestras when I conducted one of them between 1985 and 1992)

And of these folders the fullest is 'Viols' which has over 1300 items sorted into nine folders, the biggest of those being 'English', with 29 sub-folders.

All in apple pie order; even better order now than a few minutes ago, since I sorted some of the folders just now while writing this.

My room on the other hand . . .

It used to be said, 'show me a person with a tidy car and I'll show you a litter lout'. Smokers were the worst for throwing empty packets as well as butts and wrappings out their windows. (Said as though there were no smokers any more. True, I only know a few.)

Tidiness is not a simple habit. Tidiness and slovenliness reside together in a single personality.
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Chaiwallah (Nov 18, 2011)
My old friend Anto, known here as Chaiwallah, is staying the night with us. He and I started out in hootoo back in the early noughties. I can't just now find that helpful page that shows you how long you've been here, calculated from your researcher number; I just remember that I collaborated in the Marx Brothers entry and the entry Gnomon wrote on the Millennium Spire in Dublin . . . . . . and those were published in early 2003, so I am here about nine years.

Chaiwallah was a member of St Sepulchres in the seventies, then in the eighties he worked with me making musical instruments, before going back to his previous craft of pottery. He is one of Ireland's leading potters (not that I'm biased). He likes to make dishes and cups for use, more than purely visual items http://www.anthonyobrienart.com/

Shortly after joining me in hootoo, he launched into the epic project of Grimley Moer F19585?thread=283765 which can probably claim to be the longest nonsense ballad in the language.

He also joined me in http://www.oedilf.com and contributed over 200 limericks to that project.

He has since got sense, moved away from Dublin to the West of Ireland, and given up vain literary dabbling. He recently made a trip to Nigeria, filming village potters for a documentary. The cameraman on the project became ill and couldn't go, so Chaiwallah made the entire film on a pocket Flip camera. The result is amazing, and it will become public soon. if it gets posted on the web, I'll add a link here.
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(3 replies, Latest reply: Nov 30, 2011)

Aisling Out Walking (Nov 16, 2011)
I have another band on the go: a sweet singer called Aisling Walsh with the talented James Quah on ukulele and myself on u-bass. We did a spot in the Ukulele Hooley By the Sea in August, and the girls from Cheltenham have invited us to perform at the third Ukulele Festival of Great Britain, taking place on the first weekend of June 2012.

We're expanding our repertoire, and we've already booked our flights.

http://www.ukulelehooley.com/pages/acts.html
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(5 replies, Latest reply: Mar 11, 2012)


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