Peter Reavy
Force Explorer To Open Full Screen In Windows 7

To force Windows Explorer to always open maximised, add

"MaximizeApps"=dword:00000001

to

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]

I got this from Phantom010 here but putting it here for my own reference.

Tunes Of The Day

Sometimes you have a good day with music.

This morning I listened to Gergiev’s version of the Rite of Spring.

Later on I came across an amazing song by Flipper - Ever - which I must have heard before, but today it sounded absolutely amazing.

Finally, I’m still working my way through a Harmonia Mundi box set I bought in 2007. And on CD 27 of 29, there’s an amazing piece for piano and cello by Liszt called La Lugubre Gondola.

Evaluate The Active Region In Emacs Using Powershell

Write some PowerShell code in any Emacs buffer.

Select it, then M-x eval-region-powershell to evaluate as a PowerShell script block. The output goes into *Shell Command Output*.

Update: Much improved thanks to a comment by TarMil

(defun eval-region-powershell ()
  (interactive)
  (shell-command
   (concat "powershell -noprofile -encodedcommand "
           (base64-encode-string
            (encode-coding-string (buffer-substring (mark) (point)) 'utf-16le)))))
(defun eval-region-powershell () "Pass the active region to PowerShell for evalution. The output goes to Shell Command Output buffer." (interactive) (let (value) ; Get the region as a string, then make it into a list of integers spaced out by zeroes ; essentially to mock it up as utf-16. (dolist (element (string-to-list (buffer-substring (mark) (point))) value) (setq value (append value (list element 0)))) ; Make it back into a string, encode as base 64 and send to PowerShell. (shell-command (concat "powershell -noprofile -encodedcommand " (base64-encode-string (concat value))))))
Stuff I Looked Up After A Talk By Dan North

Links to some stuff I looked up after Dan North’s Bash talk ‘Build your own Heroku’. Some I knew about, some I didn’t.

Ravenscroft 22 Feb 2013

Personal highlights… for further looking into.

Parisian
Still In Love With
push and run

The Woolen Men
Submission
Woodsist

Letherette
D&T (Clark Remix)
ninja Tune

Colin Stetson
The Bed of Shattered Bone

Madvillain
Money Folder (Four Tet Remix)
Stones Throw

Snakadaktal
Air

Deptford Goth
Lions

Daniel Avery
Drone Logic (Factory Floor/Gabe Gurnsey remix)

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds
Conjure Man
In the Red

Purling Hiss
The Harrowing Wind
drag city

Talk Normal
Shot this Time
joyful noise

Mondkopf
33.000 Bells
Perc trax

Wen
Road
keysound

Chester Lewis
Precious Lord
numero group
Tr 15th Feb 
Toxie
T.I.E.S
Goner

This is enough like the Pixies to be great, without being too much like them to be really annoying.

Wolf People
All Returns
Jagjaguwar

Here are some other ones that caught my ear.

Jacco Gardner
The One Eyed King
Troubles in Mind

Oh No
The Magmas
Stones throw leaving records

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds
Conjure Man
In the Red

Lapalux
Without You (feat Kerry Leatham)
Without You, Brainfeeder

Mondkopf
33.000 Bells
Perc trax

Wild Belle
Keep You
CD SINGLE, Sony Music, 1

Letherette
D&T (Clark Remix)
ninja Tune

Manateees
Treehouse
goner

And
Lost Without G
Repitch
Tr 1st Feb 2013

Notes from Tom Ravenscroft prog 1st Feb 2013.

These are excellent:

Sparrow and the Workshop 
Shock Shock
no label

Pascal Pinon 
Fierney (one thing)
morr music

Wild Belle 
Keep You
Sony Music Entertainment UK

Bomba Estéreo 
Pajores
Soundway

Really enjoying hearing after all this time:

Sebadoh 
Homemade
bubble and scrape, Domino

This is the best thing I’ve heard in ages:

Marnie Stern 
For Ash
no label

This track sounded much better last week than it did last week.

trance farmers 
Purple hay
stones throw

I didn’t get the Tom Capsule right. I didn’t know The Sleepy Jackson’s Good Dancers or spot Chicks on Speed.

This SK cover of MBV is nearly the business.

Shonen Knife 
When you Sleep
Yellow loveless, High fader

Gut (goot) vocal:

Happy Jawbone Family Band 
Fistful of Butter
mexican summer

It’s a monster:

Coco Bryce 
Polaroid Sunset
Fremdtunes

Must learn more about this label:

Def Dee & Zar 
Zar
Zulu Delta, Mello Music

This is an interesting chap:

Larry Achiampong 
Onipa
more mogya, look mamure

Harmonies on this are growing on me:

Lower Plenty 
strange beast
Fire records

Julian Cope likes them.

Hookworms 
In Our Time
Pearl Mystic, Gringo Records, 4
Ravenscroft 8th Feb

Notes on Tom Ravenscroft show, 6 Music, 8th Feb.

Marnie Stern
East Side Glory
Kill Rock Stars

-> at the top of my ‘further investigations’.

Dark Star

-> like to hear it again. Was not listed on BBC.

Wild Belle
Keep You
CD SINGLE, Sony Music, 1

-> this is excellent.

Letherette
D&T (Clark Remix)
ninja Tune

-> ‘brilliant stuff’ – Tom. ‘Correct’ – me.

Larry Achiampong
Akos
Look Mamare

-> best one off this LP so far.

Everything Everything - Arc Remix (by James Rutledge)

-> iiiinteresting.

Sparrow and the Workshop
Shock Shock

-> unstoppable…

Bones & Money
Black Diamond (Chrissy Murderbot Remix)
white label

-> great.

Raisa K
Feeder
Technicolor recordings

-> enjoyed this.

Minnie Riperton
Inside My Love
The Minnie Riperton Anthology, Stateside

-> whistle register.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw
Horses of Fire Rachenitsa
LM Duplication

-> really, really have to hear more of their stuff.

Happy Jawbone Family Band
Fistful of Butter
mexican summer

-> still really like the way the lead vocals are mixed together.

trance farmers
Purple Hay
Stones Throw

-> underwater-ish.

Entre Chien Et Loup

Joel Meyerowitz says in this slideshow clip, “Photography is brilliant at describing and yet not letting you know”.

Then at 5:02 in the clip, he introduces the French expression “Entre chien et loup”, “between the dog and wolf”, meaning “hour of dusk” or “between the known and the unknown”.

According to about.com, “entre chien et loup” is when it is dark enough not to be able to figure out whether you’re looking at a dog or a wolf.

In the slideshow, his comment accompanies a photo of a pool in Floria by the sea, which looks more like it was taken during golden or magic hour.

Now I’m happy at learning a great figure of speech and anxious about the confusion between of magic hour and when it’s nearly dark.

Wikipedia talks about twilight and blue hour.

But this page separates between golden hour and blue hour and I think I’ll settle for that. And for “entre chien et loup” as corresponding to blue hour: l’heure bleu.

Things That Annoy Me About Org Mode

Annoying things about navigation and reorganising in org-mode.

Essentially I want to be about to get around quickly; to clip bits of subtree off and stick them back in somewhere better.

Probably need some new keybindings.

I will revise this post as I find solutions.

T Ravenscroft Notes

Listened to the whole of Tom Ravenscroft’s programs for the last 2 weeks. Making some notes for myself about them here.

These were the standouts for me on Fri 18 Jan 2013.

The Black Keys
I'll Be Your Man
The Big Come UP, Alive

Wave Machines
Ill Fit (Three Trapped Tigers Remix)
Ill Fit EP, neapolitan

Serafina Steer
Night Before Mutiny (French)

Lomovolokno
Cutout
project mooncircle

Clouds
Four Hands
USB Islands, Ramp Recordings

This stood out in the guest mix by Kwes.

Solange
Losing You
Terrible Records

This is particularly good but I cannot find the version that Tom played anywhere online.

Bomba Estéreo
El Alma y El Cuerpo
Soundway

The opening tracks were all standouts for me on Fri 27 Jan 2013.

Valerie June
You Can't Be Told
Pushin' Against A Stone

Ducktails
Planet Phrom
domino

Wave Machines
Ill Fit
Neapolitan

Good to hear again. And sounding better than ever:

Babes in Toyland
Catatonic
To Mother, Southern Records

This wasn’t so bad and didn’t really sound like a-ha.

The Strokes
One Way Trigger

Haven’t heard this in years and sounded absolutely great.

Sonic Youth
Kissability

These must be investigated further:

Moon Duo
Ich Werde Sehen
Moon Duo

A Hawk and a Hacksaw
Wedding Theme (ukraine)
you have already gone to the other world, LM Duplication

And this:

Black Pus
1000 years
all of my relations, Thrill jockey
Music Links

Must explore all these further.

Ivan Hewett’s Classic 50. He’s just starting this. Tom Service’s contemporary guides. Radio 3’s Fifty Modern Classics. Series finished now. Only heard the first few.

Elisp To Create A New Blog Post In Jekyll

Here’s some cheap and cheerful elisp to start a new blog post in Jekyll.

(defun new-post (title)
  "Start a new blog post"
  (setq path "~/path/to/_posts/")
  (interactive "sTitle: ")
  (find-file (concat path (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d")
    "-" (replace-regexp-in-string " " "-" title) ".md"))
  (insert "---
layout: post
category : nil
tags : []
---
")
)

Just prompts you for a post title. Replaces spaces with hyphens, opens the file and inserts the YAML front matter.

Photo Test

20090330_1083_DSC_6146

I thought I’d test whether I was able to post a photo from Flickr here.

Larry Forsyth

An hour and a half later, I was beginning to feel definite effects.

Renaming A Post

I’m subscribed to the New York Review of Books blog in Google Reader.

Tim Parks writes posts for it. This evening the same post by him appeared in Reader, with 3 progressively softer titles.

Funny.

Here’s the article anyway - a good read.

Ssh Config

Every time I edit ~/.ssh/config I get an error afterwards

Bad owner or permissions on .ssh/config

I never remember, but the error message is exactly right. You just need to set the owner and permissions.

How I Made This Blog

I followed the Jekyll Bootstrap instructions.

I already had a GitHub account (barely used).

I checked out the basic repository into a folder in my Dropbox. That way I will have a backup of the whole blog and can tinker with it whether in work (Windows) or at home (Mac).

I would like to be able to blog using Emacs.

I’ve got this initial blog post up from a Windows machine and without installing Ruby on it since the page processing is all done server-side.