2011 – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

A booth was very pleased by its plasticity and practicality

There is a vague reek of sulphur in the English version of Hoteles Servigroup’s website (fingers say “webstie”: begone swine, and Satan), but the angel with the bottomless pit really lets fly in a puff-piece at a site invented for that purpose, which, because that is what the author, Ms Sauron, would surely want, we…

MIDI versions of player piano rolls

I just found Terry Smythe’s tremendous player piano site, which roughly 5782 MIDI files converted from scanned rolls. The relevance to street organ repertoire development is obvious – an hour’s tweaking and you’ve got something perfectly adequate for purpose. I hope someone, somewhere is writing a PhD answering such questions as: did piano rolls influence…

Unesco: some mother languages are more equal than others

Which is why Davidson L Hepburn will be welcomed to Barcelona next week.

Goethe, responsible for Victorian pteridomania?

The disastrous horticultural consequences of fucked literary translation.

Google Translate output depends on your default browser language?

If your browser language is Polish, “Grób PaÅ„ski” translates into English as “tomb of the lord”, while if it’s English the result is “Holy Sepulchre”. How does it work? English speakers know what a sepulchre is, but there’s no cognate in Polish so GT looks for a simpler alternative for Polish English speakers? They’ve got…

Death/transfiguration of Vallcarca

An excellent piece by Israel Punzano presents a more balanced view than my La Clota rant of the destruction and–according to some–the rebirth of a decaying neighbourhood.

The secret life of Judge Garzón

Some doubts re the alleged assassination attempts.

I am multi-gender, says Isabel Coixet

From Miss Wasabi, her production company: Isabel Coixet started making films when he was given a 8mm camera for her first communion. After graduating in history from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the University of Barcelona, was devoted to advertising and writing ads. He won many awards for his commercials and eventually founded his…

Preview of organ grinder repertoire suggested by you folks

Re this post: the form is still here. I still need to get someone to fix the texts etc etc before ElOrganillero.com is broadcast to the world, but we’ve got a few provisional bookings starting July. Now, how’s organ construction coming on?!

Preview of organ grinder repertoire suggested by you folks

Re this post: the form is still here. (There’s more elsewhere, but it’s not as interesting.) I still need to get someone to fix the texts etc etc before ElOrganillero.com is broadcast to the world, but we’ve got a few provisional bookings starting July. Now, how’s organ construction coming on?!