MOOG SYNTHESIZER WORKS ON MAC

This Google Doodle appeared this morning when I opened up my Mac.  I use Safari as browser and thought I would have a go at seeing what this GOOGLE logo is about.  Usually they are fun and funky.  This is all that and much, much more!

Reading comments on other sites it would appear a lot of people can't get it to work for one reason or another.

For the record I am making a post out of this as a form of FEEDBACK.  This  DOODLE works! 

It is a synthesizer (and the doodle has been created to celebrate the man, Bob Moog, an engineer, who invented the Moog synthesizer.  (Today he would have been 78 years old.)

Using the mouse for positioning, the white keys sound, the black keys sound; all the oscillator knobs do things; the on/off toggle switch works, the roller volume works, and it is possible to make a short (very) recording by clicking on the red button on the reel-to-reel recorder on the right. The dial lights up and the pause button also works!

What a tricky bit of technology!  Full marks to the Google people!  (Who writes this stuff?!!)

ARDCHATTAN LAMENTS

Yesterday we attended the funeral of a family friend, Alastair Cousins, in North Connell, Argyllshire.  The service was held in Ardchattan Church on the shore of Loch Etive, Argyll.

Iain played for the 1 pm arrival of family and friends. After the church service, Alastair's sister's youngest son played his pipes for the procession from the church to the graveyard behind the church. Around 40 people moved in a line up the slope to where the burial took place. Iain then played again for everyone departing. (That is him above.)

While some people find bagpipes a bit hard going (usually because they are being played indoors) it is on occasions such as this that they have a special role and which people find quite moving. It comes about from a combination of things: the beautiful outdoor setting on the side of Loch Etive in the Scottish highlands (along with the lovely weather), the many colours of tartan in the kilts ... all taking place in a very old churchyard .... Combine this with the overall sad occasion ... and finally add the piper playing a  lament .... stirring stuff.

MOUNTAINEER IN THE MAKING

Alastair was with me all day; we had a few laughs!  He is keen to do tidying jobs so it was out with the big industrial size vacuum cleaner that sits in the garage.  First things first, we cleaned the inside of the car.  (Remember we now have a functioning garage which means on wet days, like today, we can do this work under cover.) 

 I know for certain that we have a mountaineer in the making! The electrical cord wasn't quite long enough for the job in hand ... I heard the time-honoured shout which took me back to those times when I was gripped on some mountain ledge in the past ... "More rope!"

Cleaning can have its moments of levitation! This is him sooking up the plastic Croc shoe (clog type) that we keep in the porch for trailing in and out of the garden.

After Ishie came back from school they sat at the table and were colouring pictures from a colouring book.  In Scotland children talk about "colouring in" as opposed to "colouring".

I was impressed with Ishie: in a very hushed voice, spoken in a measured and gentle way, she suggested, diplomatically, "See if you can stay within the lines."  And he did (for 2 whole minutes) but then went back to his rather broad-brush colouring technique!

THE RAILWAY MAN

This book has been in the news recently because Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth are here in Scotland to make the film based on the book.  The story is about one soldier’s battle to overcome his torture while a Japanese prisoner of war in World War II.

It is a book that had to be written; it is a book that should be read by everyone particularly people involved in conflict resolution, counseling, also people of all religions or none.  After five decades he pulls his life together.   As he says in the very last line: "Sometime the hating has to stop." I would go so far to say that founders of all the great religions must have reached this point, i.e. figures emerged at time propitious for ordinary people (of whatever culture) looking for a new way of thinking about how to get along together.

It is very well written ... yes, very traumatic ... but the way it resolves at the end (when he goes to Japan and Burma after 50 years to meet one of the Japanese men involved in his torture) helps to square the bigger picture in the drama of man's inhumanity to man.

The Telegraph (April 27, 2012) states:

"[They] will shortly start filming ... the true story of how Eric Lomax’s wife helped him overcome the trauma he suffered in Burma during the Second World War. Mrs Lomax set up a mission back to the Bridge on the River Kwai, where her husband confronted Nagase Takashi, the interpreter at his interrogations."

* * * * *

Lomax mentions (page 236) Helen Bamber, Director of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.  He states "Helen entered Bergen-Belsen with the Allies at the age of nineteen in 1945, and stayed for two and half years." I am aware of this story of going into Bergen-Belsen at the end of the war.  I played the fiddle with a gentleman who arrived there in the back of an army lorry at around that time.  He was a shorthand writer and his job was to be in the room where the Camp Commandants were being interviewed.  These interrogations were the job of the  Judge Advocate General (the legal advisor for the Armed Forces).