Showing posts with label Tom Speight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Speight. Show all posts

Monday, 7 March 2016

You have [1] new message ......

...... oh the joy of seeing that pop-up ...... when waiting for a note that makes your heart dance .....

 ...... or worse still more bloody work email nonsense from someone who can't wait for the reply to the email they sent you only 1 or so hour ago ......

But Ray Tomlinson has passed away, the man who is widely credited as the father of email as we have come to love hate it .....

Lifted from the BBC report of his passing:
I am frequently asked why I chose the at sign, but the at sign just makes sense.
The purpose of the at sign (in English) was to indicate a unit price (for example, 10 items @ $1.95). I used the at sign to indicate that the user was "at" some other host rather than being local.
The first message was sent between two machines that were literally side by side. The only physical connection they had (aside from the floor they sat on) was through the Arpanet.
I sent a number of test messages to myself from one machine to the other. The test messages were entirely forgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them.

Life before email seems almost unimaginable but funny enough this appeared in my inbox today .....
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's,40's, 50's, and 60's 

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank Sherry while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos...

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers and Bubble Gum.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter,milk from the cow,and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......  WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O..K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY , no video/dvd films, or colour TV, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time....

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!


Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn't need to keep up with the Jones's!

Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren't concentrating .

We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations because of a good, solid three R's education.

Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL !


That's my kind of life ......
 so for today's SoD as he's flavour of the month
here's Tom Speight .... again ....

Times when ... you have [1] new message 
made my heart dance .....









Friday, 4 March 2016

I had planned to declare today as ......

 Turin Brakes day ....... for sure they were very very entertaining and I must admit that their first album, the optimist is a particular favourite ....

So last night there I was, me and a couple of hundred others and Turin Brakes in a re-assigned church in Colchester and boy the pews were rockin ..... albeit the pews had been removed and non of us were sitting down .....



But as great as Turin Brakes were, what came as a complete surprise was the support act ..... generally support acts fall into 2 categories ..... shite and ok ..... but last night a third category was created ..... namely  .... fuck me this lad is good ...... Tom Speight ..... no I'd never heard of him either ....... I have now ....... he was supported on stage with Eliza Shaddad and another Tom but can't remember his name ....

Tom Speight has a touch of Ben Howard about him but for sure he is his own man ..... but his set was a real treat and then half way ..... well ...... it sort of goes like this ..... when Paul Daniels used to declare on telly .... iiiiiit's majic ...... you knew it wasn't magic really, it was just a trick .....

But half way during the set , Tom Speight and gang stepped down from the stage and stood in the middle of the audience to do an acoustic number .... So there we all stood in this church ..... worshiping wonderful music .....



Take my word for it ...... magical .... pure magic ......

So rather than today being Turin brakes day .....

this is Tom Speight Day .......

A couple of wonderful tracks 
from his set last night






[Sort of emphasizes my last post .... music, in the right location, at the right time is not just fab.... it's fabbo ]