2024
March 16
Welcome to the beautiful and stunning church of St Mary and St Melor in Amesbury.
How to make an out of tune organ sound awesome
Amesbury - Episode 24 - 14:29
March 10
You join me, viewers, from the southern facade of one of Wiltshire's most haunting buildings.
Is this church still cursed?
Odstock - Episode 23 - 29:33
March 4
Reflective and emotional music from a beautiful village church
Organists, unlike almost every other kind of musician, rarely own their own instrument.
Nunton - Episode 22 - 29:26
February 25
Wedding music from England's most romantic village
Welcome, my friends, to the world of the Salisbury organist.
Lover - Episode 21 - 18:00
February 21
Lent music from a stunning ancient village church
This is the closest I've come to giving up on an organ road trip.
Damerham - Episode 20 - 21:03
February 11
Playing the organ at one of England's prettiest villages
You've probably tuned in because, like me, you love the English countryside.
Bowerchalke - Episode 19 - 23:42
February 4
Famous organ hidden on a suburban street
No grand introduction; no majestic theme music; no countryside driving.
Salisbury - Episode 18 - 12:12
January 27
My first electronic organ: investigating a historic military village church
What have got today? Ham and cheese.
Bulford - Episode 17 - 20:20
January 19
Every organist's worst nightmare
The frostiest day of winter so far.
Wilton - Episode 16 - 10:45
January 16
Cold and sunny. Big old house for sale. Large property. Good view.
Lots of trees. High on a hill. Overlooking bay. Good price.
January 14
Wading through floods to play at one of England's oldest churches
Ah, the life of an organist in winter.
Britford - Episode 15 - 18:51
January 9
If you can read this I have capsized.
Enford meditations: living, dying and the English country church
Enford - Episode 14 - 31:22
2023
December 31
Happy new year, viewers, and welcome to the world of the Salisbury organist.
This hidden church has a fantastic pipe organ
Wilsford - Episode 13 - 22:33
December 24
Give me a moment?
The Christmas special: foot pumping in a disused church
Stratford Tony - Episode 12 - 19:55
December 16
Hey viewers, how's it going? Had a long week?
Playing carols and old English music at a beautiful country church
Milston - Episode 11 - 18:42
December 10
December: surely the most magical time of the year.
Heartwarming Christmas music from an English village church
Whiteparish - Episode 10 - 20:14
December 3
Viewers, I make no apology for the fact that is it just too cold for an indepth discussion of this organ.
Playing beautiful Advent music at an ancient village church
Great Durnford - Episode 9 - 18:55
November 15
Playing great English music at a little village church
Say I've got an afternoon to escape from the stresses and strains of modern life.
Rockbourne - Episode 8 - 14:14
October 7
Behind me stands Barford St. Martin's 200-year-old Bishop and Son pipe organ.
How to make a village pipe organ sound epic
Barford St Martin - Episode 5 - 9:22
September 30
This church used to mark the center of the village of Bishopstone.
Bach from Bishopstone: hymns and histories at St. John's
Bishopstone - Episode 4 - 11:04
September 19
The composer, Hans Zimmer, famous for his Interstellar and Pirates of the Caribbean scores,
declared that the pipe organ is like a human being: it needs air to breathe.
REEDiscovery: Secrets of the Harmonium
Netherhampton - Episode 3 - 13:26
September 5
An overcast day, not very warm. Summer is winding down.
September 2
If you watch organists on YouTube, chances are you'll be listening to Cathedral organs.
Bach to basics: England's forgotten organs
Martin - Episode 2 - 12:02
August 26
If you've never watched my videos before, I'm about to embark on my very first English village organ road trip.
A very British organ roadtrip
Alvediston - Episode 1 - 5:10
2022
December 16
Beethoven was born today in 1770.
He is 252 years old.
December 15
Many of Messiaen's early works were unpublished
or lost. At age 19, he published The Celestial Banquet,
a short piece for organ. Here are two videos:
1. In this video you can see the score:
https://youtu.be/s3KEKwRHLoc
2. In this video you can watch Daniel Ficarri
perform in a very large church. Included are brief
inserts of religious art and architecture.
https://youtu.be/lfTH-VTBgQE
December 14
When he was 17 Messiaen entered a contest.
He composed a fugue based on a subject by Henri
Rabaud. He won first prize. Here it is played
on the organ and animated:
https://youtu.be/8bbEwFqAvFw
December 13
Messiaen's Opus 1 for piano tells the
story of the lady of Shalott. Messiaen was
born in 1908 and composed the piece in 1917.
He was nine years old. You can watch the
notation while listening on youtube.com
https://youtu.be/IxRLRDe-vmY
December 12
Frigid today, moderate tomorrow. Dress warmly,
or stay in with a hot drink.
September 30
It is autumn and the leaves are changing
colour. Green to yellow.
August 8
The summer passes by. The month's birthdays
come and go.
June 12
It's someone's birthday. Happy birthday!
We look forward to attending your Century Party.
Wait a few thousand days before sending out the
'Save That Date' notices.
May 26
Collected five bags of sand from the lawn.
In winter they spread sand on the streets, then
they plow the streets. Then they snowblow the
snowbanks onto the lawns. Then we collect bags
of sand in May. Annual routine.
April 9
Looks like the snow stopped. Not as much
came down as expected. I'd prefer a sunny day
with a temperature of 5 C. Then the driveway
would clean itself and widen a little.
2021
December 28
It will be more convenient this week
to have temperatures consistently below the
freezing point. The sun is unexpectedly
shining today.
December 23
Snow.
December 16
Beethoven is 251 years old today.
November 17
Snowblower action today.
Widened the driveway a little
on each side. Colder tonight.
October 30
15 C today and sunny. No sign of the geomagnetic storm.
Perhaps we will see the northern lights tomorrow evening.
October 14
Last sunny day for a while. Rain in the forecast.
If the temperature dips any further, we'll have snow.
People change to snow tires November 1.
October 12
Train 9135 passed by today. It was a long one, but not overly so.
Some of the cars were of an unpleasant orange colour. New one tomorrow.
October 9
Last day of single digit dates for a while.
Also a quick return to the 'pre' tag. I like
the look of plain text on a webpage. It stands
in contrast with the glitzy webpages of today's
internet.
October 7
The sun appeared for an hour around noon.
It was chilly and overcast in the morning.
July 13
Sunny. High 27 C. Apricots, mango, figs.
Tasty. PO routine. Sunrise still early, though
days shorten. Already 3 weeks since solstice.
July 3
Another month. Summer now. Warmer weather.
Mowing the lawn and watering plants. Four months
until winter and short days.
June 6
Core is useful. We are running a 12 MB CD and editing
a simple webpage with Gnu nano 5.4 on a terminal. After
saving, anyone can read it. Small resources allow easy
communication, free of complexity.
May 1
A few snowflakes today at suppertime. Chilly wind. Dull skies.
Gray days all week. The last patch of snow melted on the deck
yesterday. Some of the lawn is showing. Waiting for some sun.
April 8
Spring slightly apparent. Snow evaporating day by day.
Sky overcast, gloomy. Driveway mostly bare now. Dreams of
green grass and hot days.
Mar 18
There is an app that allows one to practice Morse Code
as if on a straight key or paddle. One can set the pitch,
words-per-minute, and volume. Very nice. Fun. I practice
single words over and over to learn the rhythm. I understand a few
without thinking about them. Now I need to extend the vocabulary.
When words are understood by their rhythm, Morse code comes alive.
Communication is immediate.
Feb 15
Normal temperatures here, sunny.
Three months from now most of the snow
will be gone. Today is a holiday for some.
Let them enjoy their day, despite the cold
weather.
Jan 31
We are looking forward to seeing the
end of winter and green grass. Deep snow.
Cold.
Jan 18
Jane is working hard these days. Rhythm creates emotion. A view of
the future is the engine of economics. Everyone feels happy while moving
towards a goal. Horace enjoyed wine under the trellis. When he writes
of Soracte, it is his white hairy head he is refering to, not the mountain.
Jan 15
Dull day. We assume the new moon is on the go but it cannot be seen
for all the clouds. We like to see the new crescent. Maybe next month.
Jan 10
Snowblower activites today. Bought 6 l gasoline yesterday. Good for
several weeks. Quite a bit of snow already this year. Exercise and fresh
air. I prefer sunny days and no wind.
Jan 3
Today I will write a simple entry using the PRE tag.
Seeing that I am composing HTML by hand using NANO, the PRE
will likely be easier to manage and less time consuming.
The entry may not look so pretty, but here it is. Existent,
at least. I suppose I could always add a bold to the date.
For today, though, I will leave it in plain text.
It was -22 C today, sunny. Tonight is already warmer:
-9 C. Tomorrow will be another day altogether.
Jan 2
Only 363 days left in this year. Days pass so quickly, one by one, that soon another year is over.
Time passes. That's all it does. From another point of view, time does not exist at all. Everything just IS. The universe simply sits there twiddling its thumbs, forever.
Dec 10
Not too cold this week. Cloudy and dismal. Looking forward to the sun appearing on Dec 13. That will complete one year on this page. Time passes.
Nov 6
Sunny in the morning and in the afternoon. Collected two parcels at the PO. Purchased fuel for the snowblower. Might need it soon.
Ben had an interesting interview with the Polish reporters. Steve had some corroborating information. In dramatic theory, the 'discovery' is an important part of a play. People enjoy finding out the truth about some things.
Nov 5
Sunny in the morning. Overcast in the afternoon. Snow expected overnight.
Nov 1
I read aloud some original poetry, and in translation. Some recite every day, I occasionally.
Oct 15
Overcast. Sunny skies forecast for tomorrow. Nephew sent pic of handwritten note. Old and new tech working together.
Oct 6
Parcel arrived from quite a distance. One bottle broken. Refund requested. Granted.
Dec 14
Six days since Sibelius' birthday. 'The Swan of Tuonela'.
Dec 15
Tomorrow is Beethoven's birthday. He will be 249 years old.
Dec 16
Beethoven was born in 1770. He spent his life composing music. He died in 1827.
Dec 17
Wind: 17 knots. Snow drifting. Snowblower coming out today.
Dec 18
Most gopher pages have directories and files. Mine consists of a single file.
Dec 19
If this link does not work, it is for a technical reason.
Dec 20
I still don't know how to display directories in gopher. I tried creating directories, and putting files in them, by going directly to the gopher directory and doing that. Nothing showed up on the gopherboard however.
Dec 21
Late tonight the solstice will occur. Winter in the north, summer in the south, begins. The weather seems colder than usual. Actual records show it was just as cold a few years ago.
Dec 22
Testing headings and colors.
Dec 23
This short video shows 4 trumpets and 4 trombones being played from memory by 8 high school students. Remarkable.
Dec 24
Usually friends arrive around supper with presents but this year they didn't.
Dec 25
In the olden days we waited until Dad came home and then we had breakfast. Then we went to the living room and sister passed out presents. We took turns opening them and Mom made notes who got what from whom so she could send thank-you notes to the aunts and uncles. One year I got a chess set and played every day for a week.
Jan 20
So many days have passed and I added nothing to my page. I have been busy with TinyCore, trying to figure out how to make use of such a small distribution. At the moment I am editing this webpage on a black screen with big white letters. We are running TinyCore from the command line and, without a mouse, html is not so easy to edit. Nano is adequate and ancient, and the trivial difficulties are mildly amusing.
Feb 7
Time passes. Things happen. Then they stop and are forgotten. An interesting website is random.org You can play with numbers and series.
Feb 8
What would be the effect of creating web pages disguised as gopher
pages? This paragraph is being written under the 'pre' tag which
allows me to forego the html formatting and manually to create my
own.
In some ways
it gives some flexibility
in page layout.
However, I am mainly concerned about writing blocks of text on the
page with short lines. Even though these line are relatively short,
they might look bad and distorted on tiny screens such as smartphones
have.
The temperature today is minus 21 degrees Celcius. I went out at 10 AM and found it windy too, extremely cold. I enjoy fresh air, but not for too long.
Feb 9
Full moon last night. Very bright at 4:30 AM. Wind-chill was -39C then, not so cold now that the sun is up.
I was reading about OpenBSD. What is it? An OS. That's as much as I know.
Feb 10
Day 41 of the year. Wittgenstein wrote 'There are no pre-eminent numbers'. A number is one of a set. 41 is a prime number. 41 is an odd number. There are many sets.
I read page 41 of 'Molloy'. A page in the middle of a multi-page monologue. He mutters of thunder, the moon, his window, muck, a butterfly, a mountain. Typical Beckett.
Feb 11
On page 42, Molloy continues, on and on, about
1. his mother
2. the moon
3. a house
4. smoke
5. his eyes
6. the sky
7. the earth
8. his clothes
9. the valet
10. his room
11. the window
12. boughs
13. the chandelier
14. his crutches
15. his chair
The shortest sentence: 'The valet went to find out.'
The paragraph runs another 49 pages: to March 31.
Feb 12
On page 43, Molloy speaks of an open door, a big window, the valet, Molloy's clothes, the dyers, his crutches, furniture, the room, tables, chairs, a feather duster, the valet's hand, Molloy's stiff leg, his raised arms, the tail of his nightdress, his bicycle, the sun, white trousers, a white shirt and a yellow waistcoat. Just in case you were wondering.
Feb 13
I wanted to see the Andromeda Galaxy after supper. I found a webpage that shows how to find it. Something to do with the Big Dipper, Polaris, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, Mirach and Mu Andromedae.
Feb 14
No luck seeing Andromeda. The sky was cloudy. The physical world stood in the way of a mental construct.
Feb 15
Fresh air today. Minus 39 degrees wind chill. The actual temperature is minus 24. Sunny. Looking forward to hearing a live piano recital on YouTube.
Feb 16
If you stand at the North Pole, any direction you face is south. If you take a step to the right, are you facing East or West?
April 2
This month is dedicated to plain text. As far as webpages go, it
means simplicity of format, similar to gopher pages. Plain text can
be read by anyone who can read and all browsers can present it
correctly. By typing this in a terminal window I must remember
to keep the lines relatively short. I really am typing in an
HTML file but the effect will be a simple text in short lines.
If one is not careful the lines of text would extend far to the
right, past the margin. This is not the effect I want. I am
hoping that the added simplicity in formatting will inspire me
to add to the page more frequently. I had intended to do more
HTML experiments but these days I do not feel like doing that.
Adding text might be enough for the time being.
Perhaps the habit of adding text easily will whet my
appetite for writing more fluently on gopher. I seem to be
hesitant to say anything. I wonder why. I am more familiar
with webpages. We'll see how it goes.
April 4
The day is partly sunny. We had some snow last night but not
much.
I will not bother to shovel the driveway because the
warmer temperatures will take care of it.
TinyCore command line is challenging because the websites accessible by the lynx browser are few. They are not designed for a text-only browser. I was surprised to find some Gary North articles in plain text after some exploration. Certainly THIS page is easily readible.
After lunch I will do some more exploring. Once I find websites that are suitable I might be able to pass the time quite well completely on the full-screen terminal.
Today's entries are simply p and /p tags. The first paragraph today had two br tags within it.
It would be supremely easy to write a pre and /pre and write for the
rest of the month without format beyond the short lines such as these.
The moon tonight is a waxing gibbous. The full moon will occur in a
few days. This will be the first full moon in Spring. The Sunday
after that occurs is called Easter. For supper we had rotini. With
brocoli and cauliflower and a hot yellow pepper. At lunch we had
mushrooms, potatoes and salt cod.
Funny how the pre paragraphs have no margins unless I put them
in myself, such as in this paragraph. After a few days of this
I might come to an aesthetic conclusion about the matter.
Apr 5
The date April 5th reminds me of something but I cannot remember
what it is. Someone's birthday? A historical event? Hmmm. If I
think of it, I'll add it here. Then every year I will be reminded.
May 24
A sunny day and a little warmer. A patch of snow near the back fence remains. With higher temperatures tomorrow it will be gone. Perhaps no more snow here until late autumn. Buds are coming out on the trees. A robin appeared a few days ago. More birds can be heard in the mornings.
August 2
It was 31 C today. Unusually hot. Normals are ten degrees cooler. We got out the fans and set them going where required. I sent a link to a video of a tuba quartet playing 'I vow to thee my country' by Holst by email to two recipients. No reply from either yet. These were Miraphone tubas.
August 22
The code here is easy to input and the results are suitable. As entries add up, the file is completed adequately and presentable. Remember to check every few months for correct code. The page may be quite simple and correct and that will be enough of a success to be satisfied. No one seems to be reading this page. No one has written to me commenting on its delights.
September 23
Chesnokov composed some very pretty choral pieces. I do not understand the words. The choirs that sing such material are professional. Lucky that YouTube allows a variety of music to be presented so easily accessible. We had nothing like it when I was little.
When I reach December 14 this year I will begin to turn my entries upside down, so that December 15 will be above December 14. The most recent entries will be at the top. This first year is more of an experiment than anything else.