Gerard Doyle - GerBot

Is it just me or is everyone injured in England?

• Drogba
• Wilkinson
• Viduka
• Rooney
• Scholes

oh well, I guess

Music and other ramblings

The last couple of weeks have been busy, a little stressful but at the same time really productive and enjoyable - it is surprisingly good to be getting back into work and finally getting back on top of things after our recent holiday.

Last weekend we went to watch the Lions (AFL) at the Gabba.  I like mentioning sport on the blog because in reality, I don’t follow any sport, but simply by mentioning that I went to the football gives the impression that I’m a die-hard fan.  To be completely honest with you, I struggle to understand what’s going on half the time, but always ensure that I “woo”, “ahh”, “ooh” and “boo” when everyone else in the crowd does, so as to get the most out of the live sporting experience.

Something that I am a lot more interested in (and I like to think I understand some of the rules of… or at least more rules than I know about any sport) is music.  As a child I learnt how to play the keyboard / organ and in my teenage years learnt the basics of the guitar… but I haven’t played either in years and to be honest I didn’t really learn how to read music properly as I’d often cheat by playing by ear and memorising the keystrokes that my teachers would do.

Ok… so my music abilities are fairly crap, but that has never dampened my interest.  While on holidays Kristy saw a book called “This is your brain on music” by Daniel Levitin and suggested I have a look at it.  Now I don’t read books very often.  I read a lot of blogs and other online articles, but I very very very rarely read books.  When I do read a book, it usually is a reference book of some description and of late, most of the books I’ve read have either been about business development or marketing.

The thing that attracted me to this particular book was that 1. it was about music and the brain… (two things I find fascinating) and 2. it was written like a reference book as Daniel Levitin has worked as a recording engineer and producer turned neuroscientist.  So he’s got the hands-on experience but also an incredibly comprehensive understanding of the brain.

So I bought the book and it was fantastic.

I’ve learnt a lot about how the brain stores and interprets information in general and a lot of specific examples pertaining to how it handles music… what makes us like the songs we like, what makes us dislike other types of music and many other things far too detailed (and most likely boring to anyone who isn’t me) about the brain and music.

To demonstrate various types of music and the cognitive impact they have, Levitin referred back to a broad cross-section of music (ranging from classical, rock, jazz, pop and the list goes on) along with specific tracks by certain artists which make fine examples of these.

This made me realise that although I love music, my listening has been fairly limited and there are a lot of ‘great’ musicians and groups that I’ve never really listened to (other than what I’ve heard on the radio etc.)

So I’ve just started downloading a lot of new (to me) music and I’m going to be working my way through it… so far I’ve recently been listening to The Carpenters, The Stranglers, Phil Collins, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Lead Zeppelin etc. etc.

Some of these probably seem like a strange selection… but then again, I’m a little strange, so it’s a good fit for me - plus the broader you cast your net, the more likely you’ll catch something you like.

I’d encourage comments on other artists you think I should expose my eager ears to.

What happened to the other eight?

I thought that cats were supposed to have nine lives, but sadly, ours only had one.

We only had Tiger for a few months, but in that short time, he managed to change my whole opinion of cats (previously I was never a fan). He showed me that amidst their seemingly snobby exterior, a cat can still offer a lot of love and affection, they can be fun to play with and be a constant source of entertainment with some of their seemingly crazy idiosyncrasies.

Last Friday night Tiger vomited a couple of times and we thought that it was probably caused by him eating some grass or something else outside that didn’t quite agree with him. We kept an eye on him over Saturday and Sunday and when his condition hadn’t improved we took him to the vet first thing on Monday morning.

It turned-out that he had contracted a urinary tract infection - something the vet explained was quite common in male cats, especially those that had been neutered and effectively the infection had caused a blockage, preventing him from being able to urinate properly.

If we had of known more about cats and their behaviours we might have been able to detect some of the early warning signs like how Tiger would often do a few small wees over a period of time instead of doing one big one, or that he spent more time licking his private parts than usual (and how much is ‘usual’? If I were a cat… or any animal that could do that… I’d spend a considerable amount of time down there as well). But as we’ve never had a cat before and had no idea about cats toiletry habits… we didn’t think anything of it.

By the time he had started vomiting, it was the first signs that his liver had pretty-much shut down and he already would have had toxins going through his body from the build-up of urine and other fluids, so even if we had of gotten him to the vet on the Friday evening, it most likely would have still been too late to reverse the damage.

The only option was to put him out of the pain he was going through and let him go.

We’ll miss you Tiger!

Old iPhones selling at crazy prices

Ok so I have my iPhone 3G working fine now (ignore monileme). So I put my iPhone 2G onto eBay. I had a few extra bits for it, but only enough to compensation the the Australia day scratch I put in the silver edge. I put the phone on ebay at 12:00 without doing much research, ��1 start with ��200 buy it now & ��5 postage. I went to lunch and came back to see that I had sold. ��200 in 5 minutes for an old iPhone. I mean I only paid ��99 for this new one. So anyone who has not upgraded should get in now as you can basically turn a profit on the upgrade!