Can't sleep?

Listen to Bertrand Russels's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy.

You probably still won't fall asleep, but it's more productive and it beats counting sheep...

Everyone is mad about Mad Max

Me, I staying @ home, writing a new (small) project  in python and to chill out, I listen to a proper real life account of real life 'Mad Max' guys --- truly gory stories written in old fashioned, elegantly worded plain English; read beautifully by a man with a most sonorous and peaceful voice.

Download the book here.

And, if you liked that, Mr. Roger Melin has read lots more Librivox books.  This book is next on my list. And this too.

How to grab every mp3 from a Feedburner page

My little Apple finally died[1] and the major loss was my collection of the entire History of Rome podcast, by Mike Duncan.  Oh noes!

Sadly, Feedburner doesn't provide a big zip file of all the episodes, which is understandable, since it would be huge.

I could hunt around for a browser extension that does a mass download, but this is quicker, safer and way more fun:

Save the above file to your 'history_of_rome' directory as 'hist.xml'

Preferably overnight(if your 'broadband' comes via the phone line...), in the bash shell do this:

$ grep -e "enclosure url=" hist.xml | sed -e 's/[^"]*"//' -e 's/".*//' | xargs wget

And hopefully, if all goes well, in the morning you'll have this:

FINISHED --2015-05-05 02:06:31--
Total wall clock time: 2h 26m 38s
Downloaded: 191 files, 2.0G in 2h 24m 49s (240 KB/s)

~/history_of_rome>

You say that this podcast is a little bit short for such a long story?  Well, there's lots more out there, but this is my second favourite series:

All 12 episodes of 'I, Claudius' as a handy playlist.

[1] And, after all this, I found that the Apple actually wasn't broken, but the USB port I plugged in for a recharge was.  ;-D

Shellicious!

Shell Style Guide -- how to code bash scripts in style.

How to scramble eggs inside their shell, for a neat pocket omelette, now with industrial trick:

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools. 

          Confucius

The Raven Dinner Party Recipe

A friend sent me this wonderful 'The Raven' Video.  (gzip and poetry! Oh My!)

It would make a great overlay for Alan Parsons' The Raven song video on the Tales of Mystery and Imagination album.

"The Raven" features actor Leonard Whiting on lead vocals, with Alan Parsons performing vocals through an EMI vocoder. According to the album's liner notes, "The Raven" was the first rock song to feature a digital vocoder."

The entire album is probably one of the finest ever made.  Well worth getting the original Vinyl and a proper old school stereo with serious speakers for.   Everything about it is perfect!

Each song is about one of Poe's stories, here is a sample:                                  
                                        
                      

The Cask of Amontillado: Story mp3, Story html,  Song Video
                                                     
The Tell-tale Heart :  Story mp3, Story html,  Song Video

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether :  Story mp3,  Story html,  Song Video 
                                                                                                           
I adore all three of them, ...just don't listen to them before bed time.  They all are a little bit darrrrk...

Candle light, ale (and/or Amontillado, plus Champagne) and fine dining are optional (but highly recommended, for a great themed dinner party experience).

Note that all of the stories are lovely to read aloud and just the right length for the necessary breaks in a 3 course meal.

Bon Appetite!

Your Money Or Your Life

Life and Adventures of Frank and Jesse James

Great bedtime stories --- beautifully phrased English, perfectly read.

Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn

Two of my favorite books, read by my favorite Librivox reader:

Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn

 

If you only have time for a short read, then you should read chapter II.  It's also a very good recipe for setting up Open Source projects... ;-D

Why I don't use a smart phone

Of course I own a smartphone.  Just that it's not a phone (I have an (ancient)(lightweight) Nokia for this task) but my Apple only does 3 things that are useful to me:

1) work as a timer and reminder
2) enable me to take cooking recipes I find on the web into my kitchen
3) play the odd mp3 over the small speaker as a bedtime story

Other than that, the screen is too small to comfortably read or do anything on, and whilst I could get a bigger model, the small one I have is already too heavy to lug about as is, and, a larger screen would still be too small.

Don't you get bored just sitting around, say, waiting for Godot or on other occasions?

Nope, because my brain is a far more useful and interesting device than a smartphone, and if I really am in idle input mode, I have a tiny little Samsung U5 so I can listen to audio books.  This little toy weighs 28 grams and I can tuck it anywhere into my clothes.

Also, I quite like just sitting somewhere and looking at the world pass by, giving my mind the free run of my brain to grep for interesting things in my thoughts I've been unaware of so far.

If you do not have idle time for your brain to run riot in, it kills your creativity -- 'boredom' is the best inspiration because your mind hates a void and will find a way of entertaining you with ideas, the moment you give your mind time and space to talk to you.

It's a different kind of apple... :)

The Story of Alchemy

You can draw many parallels between this book and the state of modern science; how individuals think and explain what they think they know to others(..or not!), and what the collective believes it knows.

Moreover, it's beautifully read by Peter Yearsley!

Download it from Librivox for free!

Sleep!

Sleep can be a bit difficult to catch when there is so much going on in your mind whilst learning so many new things.

Here is my trick:  I listen to an audio book I know quite well (so that I don't feel I miss anything if I drift off).

My two favorites are:

The World's Lumber Room, which is beautifully written and read by a lady with a lovely voice.  All you ever needed to know about what happens to the world's decaying matter!

The History of Rome Podcast, gripping stories about long dead Romans and their wars, 20-30 mins in length, and there are 179 of them, so you will not run out of soap opera material anytime soon.