The Cheerful Insanity of Me

...well now all your search is over thanks to bzzzpeek.

The site presents a selection of onomatopoeia from native speakers of 9 languages worldwide.

Now, when I hear a bee going zum zum, I won't think it's a motorcycle in disguise, I'll just know it's German.

Finally, just what the world always needed. Shoes with toes...


Five Finger Shoes from Globe

This is an interesting idea:


The c))motion screen

Basically it's ventilation covered by a plastic material that behaves in a similar way to bi-metalic strips. i.e. When it gets warm they bend and the ventilation opens.

And here it is in action:

Direct link

Sunday morning... must be time for some contemporary Danish folk music. Luckily I recently got hold of a copy of Analogik's 2008 album "Søens Folk".

For those that aren't familiar with Analogik they play traditional music (particularly Balkan) with an electronic twist and clear hip-hop influences. It's generally the sort of music you should really do a Cossack break dance to.

Hard to get bored here, each track is radically different from the next and highly eccentric.

The album starts off sounding fairly traditional with Russisk Vuggevise (Russian Lullaby according to Google Translate), with minimal electronics, but complete with all the necessary "Hey Hey"s. They then launch the electronics at you in force in God Russisk (Good Russian) with it's wonderful oom-pa baseline, before slowing it down with Forbudt Sprut (Forbidden Booze) where the hip-hop influences start to really come to the fore giving a sound something like you might expect if you crossed the old style ballroom with the kia-ora advert. So it goes on for track after track, with each sounding almost like an entirely different band.

Other highlights include Ond Mand March (Evil Man March) which sounds exactly like the name implies, Godmorgen (Good morning) which capture that mechanic "I'm not really awake yet feeling" with added breakfast sound effects and Farligt Monster (Dangerous Monster) which for a few moments at the beginning sounds like it's going to launch into the theme from the littlest hobo, but then you're suddenly rescued by the other instruments and it starts to morphs into a blend of traditional folk and record scratching.

The whole album is available on bandcamp, but here's a couple of samples:

God Russik -

(Direct link)

Farligt Monster -

(Direct link)

Like everyone else in the world, I've recently been captivated by the amazing vocals of Janice Whaley, so much so that I absolutely had to get a copy of her version of Meat is Murder.

For those that have missed what she's up to, Janice is the artist behind The Smiths Project. Not only is she trying to create a cover of every Smiths song by the end of the year, she's doing it entirely a capella with just her own voice layered several times over to produce the harmonies.

I dread to think how long it must take to produce each song, let alone the entire catalogue, but the result is absolutely haunting.

The Smith's 1985 album Meat is Murder was there only UK number one, but it didn't sound quite like this. With each track Whaley manages to retain much of the original character of the songs whilst giving them a completely new life of their own.

Every track brings something different from her voice. However, the real highlights have to be "How Soon is Now?" (not actually on the UK version of the original) and "Barbarism Begins at Home" which really show off the range of sounds she can achieve, and "Meat is Murder" which shows her at her most haunting.

All the tracks in the project are being made available for a limited number of free downloads and after that are available via the Smiths Project page on bandcamp. As a taste, here's her version of How Soon is Now:

(Direct Link)

and for comparison here's the original.

Books are marvelous things. You read them once, you read them again, and if they're really good again and again and again, always knowing deep down that what you really want to do is grow mushrooms in them...



...and now you can thanks to this little kit.

So spirits can basically be made from any fermentable material, and as a result you can find them made from all sorts of weird and wonderful things. However, this one is a new one on me:

Gilpin Family Whisky (via inhabitat) a spirit produced from the finest diabetic's urine.

Alas, I suspect I shall not be able to make the show that this is being presented at.

It's not quite home, but it's a lot closer than I am now.

The current weather in Trinity Grove, Greenwich (via @pekingspring)

It seems a fairly straightforward setup using a usb weather station from maplin

hmmm_tea does not need a weather station
hmmm_tea does not need a weather station
hmmm_tea needs a weather station...

Here's an old one:

[Poll #1612571]

( Thoughts )