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Back from England

02 October 2011
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Personal reminisence
Spent the past two weeks in and around London, England, on my first vacation to that country. Visited a lot of fascinating places, mostly historical, others more contemporary: museums, historic homes and castles, great parks. And a few pubs.

First impression: Britons have manners. Everyone still says please and thanks. Even people leaving the...

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Tags: England, vacation, Collingwood 0 Comments


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Myth, storytelling and modern writing

25 July 2011
Posted by Ian Chadwick in What I'm reading now, art, culture and reviews, Book & film reviews, Personal reminisence, Language use and abuse, Social values
Back in 1949, Joseph Campbell, a follower of Carl Jung, wrote a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It traced the story of the 'hero's journey' through the world's mythology, showing how every major tale, regardless of culture, shared common elements and archetypes. It detailled 17 quintessential steps along the mythic...

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Tags: literature, novel, writing, mythology 1 Comments


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Relearning the bass and other follies

06 July 2011
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Personal reminisence, Music and ukuleles, Social values
The past few weeks I've been a bit pre-occupied with several tasks and pursuits, so I haven't been blogging much, although I have been busy. About a month ago, I bought an Epiphone Viola bass from Blue Mountain Music. It was the culmination of several months' exploration and investigation of bass instruments that began with an electric...

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Tags: ukulele, guitar, bass, music 0 Comments


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The clattering keys grow silent as the curtain falls

27 April 2011
Posted by Ian Chadwick in technology, Personal reminisence
The typewriter is dead. That news didn't surprise me, but it certainly saddened me.

The clatter of typewriter keys was sweet music to my ears, when I was much younger. I remember banging out stories and poems on my grandfather's ancient Underwood, watching the mechanical arms rise and fall, the letters not quite aligned on the paper. That...

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Tags: writing, reporting, typewriter 0 Comments


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Music and demographics

26 January 2011
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Personal reminisence, Music and ukuleles, art, culture and reviews
ACCORDING TO THE 2006 CENSUS, the average age in Collingwood is 46. Almost 30% of residents are between 45 and 64, and just over 22% are 65 and over. More than half the local population in Simcoe County is older than 45.* That means we are locally, on average, a greying population.

So why do some local radio stations play music aimed at the...

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Bass, electric bass and EUB (or EDB)?

25 December 2010
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Personal reminisence, Music and ukuleles
Been thinking a lot about bass lately. Not the fish, but rather the musical instrument. I want to play one, at least a lot better than I can now.

Back in the mid-60s, I was in a garage band. They already had two guitarists, so I sort-of played bass, but I played it on the low strings of my six-string electric guitar (a Kent, as I recall). I went...

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Tags: music, bass, ukulele 3 Comments


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Why are the endings of some TV series so bad?

19 December 2010
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Personal reminisence, Book & film reviews, art, culture and reviews
The Sopranos was a great TV series, but the ending was, at best quixotic, at worst unfulfilling and frustrating. Lost was also a great TV series, but the ending was flaccid and annoyingly religious.

We just watched Flashforward (on DVD) and while we loved the series through 21 episodes, the ending episode was, like with so many other American TV...

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Saying goodbye to Ollie

01 December 2010
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Personal reminisence, Animals
Ollie showed up at our door in the summer of 1997. He was an adult cat then, maybe two years old, but possibly older. And he was a big cat, bigger than any other we'd ever had, his short fur all black except in the sunlight when you could see he had a dark, chocolate brown undercoat that suggested a Burmese heritage. A tiny brush of white was...

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Grrr! Excel 2007 can't save DBF format!

19 November 2010
Posted by Ian Chadwick in technology, Personal reminisence
Okay, so that's hardly news, since MS Office 2010 is already out, but I discovered this significant flaw in MS Office 2007 (what I have installed at home) today when I tried to save an Excel spreadsheet as a Database (DBF) format file. I used to do this at the store all the time, but this was the first time I needed to do it at home.

All...

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Tags: Microsoft, Excel, DBF 3 Comments


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New baritone arrived yesterday

11 November 2010
Posted by Ian Chadwick in Music and ukuleles, Personal reminisence
New uke arrived yesterday - three business days from Nova Scotia, which is pretty good for Canada Post. Hadn't expected it until Friday, and the Canada Post site even said it wouldn't arrive until the 16th, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Only had a couple of hours with it, but I posted some preliminary comments on my ukulele review site....

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Tags: ukuleles, baritone uke, luthiery 1 Comments



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