Umberto Eco - Quotations
Archive for October, 2005
Redundancy in Bob Dylan lyrics?
I was taught to always avoid and eschew pleonastic redundancy in writing. Redundancy is, however, acceptable in the writing of songs. Bob Dylan has written about 89 of my all time top 100 favourite songs. He has written hundreds of songs with various types of lyrics: surreal, silly, wounded, hallucinatory, political, historical, bitter, sad, happy, and so on. I love the lyrics he writes, but more importantly I love how he performs the songs - both in the recording studio and in concert. So here are a few Dylan lines that may contain redundant words or phrases:
He unleashed His power at an unknown hour that no one knew
Come over here from over there, girl
I’m here to create the new imperial empire
I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot
In a basement down the stairs (I suppose a basement could be down the escalator or the elevator)
Talking to myself in a monologue (I think this is ok because you could talk to yourself in a dialogue. Are you sure? Yeah, I reckon so.)
The Falls and The ‘High Sign’
This morning I was leaving Tesco, having bought a newspaper. I was approached by a man.
“What paper you got there?” he asked.
“Independent; why?” I said.
“Thank goodness, that’s the only one that cares.”
“About what?”
“About the big issues - you ever see another paper carry articles about the VUE?”
“VUE?”
“Yes, you know, the Violent Unknown Event.”
“What, are you for real? That is not real - that was never in a paper.”
“Shh!” This was when he greeted me with the sign from the Blinking Buzzards.
So here I am, approached by a stranger, who appears to know two of my favourite films. The VUE, as far as I know, is only referred to in Peter Greenaway’s The Falls; I have not seen the Blinking Buzzards sign anywhere apart from Buster Keaton’s The ‘High Sign’. So I begin to wonder who this stranger is: Is he a madman, struck lucky by his choice of victim? Is he an angel? Is he from the future? Is he Kirk? Is he me? Has he access to my television or DVD player or internet history?
Dugpa.com - A David Lynch and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - Resource Site
Dugpa.com - A David Lynch and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - Resource Site
Listening to Music
When I first started buying music with my hard-earned paper-round money, I bought vinyl: singles and LPs. Now I almost exclusively buy CDs.
A few years ago my lovingly put-together hi-fi system was relegated to the bedroom and my computer became my main music system. Music is heard via NVIDIA Soundstorm and the consistently great Videologic Sirocco speakers.
I use a 250GB external harddive to store my CDs in MP3 format. These are the tools I use to organise my music collection on the computer.
1. First I use CDex to convert the CDs to MP3 format. I have set CDex to convert at a variable bitrate (minimum 128 kbps, maximum 320 kbps) using the LAME encoder.
2. I then run the MP3 tracks through Musicbrainz - this changes the tags so that they fit in with a huge database that is maintained by music-lovers from all around the world. This process is useful because it ensures that all my MP3 files are named and catalogued consistently using ‘Artist\Album\Artist-Album-TrackNumber-TrackName.mp3‘, e.g. Bob Dylan\Saved\Bob Dylan-Saved-05-Solid Rock.mp3.
3. I currently play music using Winamp. It automatically scans any new MP3 files and adds them to its media library.
4. I have recently (Sep 05) signed up to Last.fm. This site tracks what music I have been listening to and provides information on my top artists, top tracks and various other bits and pieces.
I have just listenened to my 1000th track and my current top artists are:
1 Bob Dylan (67 tracks)
2 The Decemberists (45)
3 The Kinks (43)
4 The Fiery Furnaces (39)
5 Neil Young (36)
6 Neutral Milk Hotel (35)
7 Bob Dylan and The Band (30)
8 The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (25)
9 Tindersticks (22)
9 Happy Mondays (22)
9 The Mountain Goats (22)
Escape!
Click and drag the red block, avoiding all the blue blocks as long as you can. I only lasted 20.424 seconds.
Typetester ? Compare fonts for the screen
Typetester ? Compare fonts for the screen
The Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen. Its? primary role is to make web designer?s life easier. As the new fonts are bundled into operating systems, the list of the common fonts will be updated.
