Playing Music in Santa Rosa
Not! …at least not without a permit!
Last December, when a friend and I went downtown to play Christmas Carols on our fiddles, we were stopped by police on bicycles before we could even get our instruments out of their cases and asked for our permit. The local music store was kind enough to let us play in their private area off the public side walk.
It appears that this is not an isolated incidence and that in fact there is a “noise ordinance” that prohibits playing of musical instruments “…for the purpose of attracting attention by the creation of noise within the City.” How sad. Hi Aaron, I’d like to sign your petition to overturn the ordinance!
A New Anat Baniel Methodsm Practitioner!
Yes, this week I graduated from the Anat Baniel Methodsm Professional Training. There have been many changes over the past two and a half years and my life is so much better and richer because of the time I spent in this training. I’ve made lasting friendships with wonderful people. I can sit at my computer without pain. I can help other people.
As I move into life as an Anat Baniel Methodsm Practitioner, I’m also able to stretch my design skills by helping create websites for my new colleagues. I’m looking forward to developing an online presence for us and bringing this work to the world powerfully. (Anat had so many good ideas it’s going to take me a few days to sort out the best way to proceed. I’ll email everyone when I have the next step and more information. First opportunities will go to those who signed up at the last training).
Thank you all for enriching my life!
Kittens for Valentines
Your Valentine needs a kitten…we can help!
Editor’s note: Okay…so it’s not really a good idea to pick up a pet for your Valentine. Pets take time and attention and need to be carefully considered. If you’ve been thinking adopting and are willing to spend the time needed to give one of these lovable fur-balls a home, contact us. We’ll see if any of our charges are a good fit for your family.
Two for one
Tonight we got two kittens in one trap. Hope the vet can take an extra kitty tomorrow.
Both kitties in one trap
When I picked up this trap, I thought I had the large white kitten, then I thought, no I’ve got the small one…later found that there were both.
Our current mascot is unimpressed with this entire project. But since she gets to stay in the house, hasn’t given us any trouble with the extras.
Our mascot
Val got mama kitty to move out of the cage yesterday. She’s doing well. Climbing trees, reminding us to feed her. She had to be removed from one of the traps tonight. I guess tuna really is that good.
No. 1 is enjoying the cage all to himself. Both No. 1 & No. 2 played string with me tonight. Looking for places to adopt out these cute little critters. Don’t have your own mascot yet? Send me an email and I’ll see if we can help you.
No. 1 trying to get some rest
Thus ends today’s feline adventures. Good night.
No. 2 Stays…
Even moving No. 2 to a different larger container didn’t helped her stop crying. Decided to let her go back to the wild. I opened the container and the garage door and slowly she crept out and went directly to the large cage, then under the water heater. sigh…
No. 2, No. 1, and Mama
Garage doors open, feeding her wild brother and sister cats outside, and still No. 2 has decided to stay in the garage and sit next to the cage with the other two cats. (You can see the glowing eyes in the shadow on top of the box at the left side of the picture). She’s still too shy to actually get close enough to move her into the cage. I left the door open on a couple occations to let mama cat out, and she too has decided to stay.
I thought releasing the cats would be the easy part…
Kitties recuperating
Note: Since the kitties won’t tell us their names we’ve numbered them. (Yes, this is a feeble attempt to resist feline slavery and to avoid falling under their command).
Number 1 is joined by mama cat.. Both are recovering from “fixing”. Number 2, number 1’s sister is also back from the vet in a separate carrier.
mama and number 1
Number 1 shows real signs of being adoptable.
Number 1...he's so cute!
Mama was added to the cage with number 1 and besides throwing cat litter everywhere, seems to be doing well. Number 2, is crying and there is a chorus of little soon to be fixed kitties caroling outside the garage door. Maybe some eggnog will get them to stop… hmmm.
Bob Barker would be proud…
It’s feral cat rescue season for us this year. We have a neighborhood cat family living close by, and since we started feeding the Mama cat, and then her kittens, we’ve taken on the role of Cat Fixer.
Here’s a photo of the group eating dinner:
Kitties in the wild
After looking for pre-made cages, I searched online for building instructions and found some that worked out really well at How to Build a Cat Cage. (Thanks Isaac for taking the time to post step by step instructions). This is what our cage looks like:
Our feral cat cage
Another view of the cat cage with added door
This week we started trapping and having the kitties spayed and neutered. It’s going better than we expected.
Check back for updates…this looks like what we’ll be doing for Christmas and maybe into the new year.
*For those of you who never saw or have forgotten The Price is Right, Bob Barker always ended the show with “…and remember, please have your pets spayed and neutered…or something along those lines…it’s been a long time since I saw the show.
Moose-chief and Moose-ik in Berkeley
I had a really moose-tastic time at the Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers house concert in Santa Rosa last week. They’re playing one more concert here in the bay area Tuesday, August 19th, at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley. Here’s the latest Moose-ive from BMUZ…
Hello from your favorite Swedish, Old Time, Groove Monster Moose band, Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers! The west coast has treated us magnificently and we have one more show for you before we head on back to Boston.
For those in the area, we are happy to invite everybody and anybody out to our show tomorrow at the Freight and Salvage in Berkley, CA. We’ll be playing a mixture of groovy world fiddle tunes and our favorite original and traditional songs in the way that only Blue Moose and the UBZ does!
The Freight and Salvage is located at
1111 Addison St. (off of University)
Berkley, CA
Maybe I’ll see you there…
One Butt Playing
While Benjamin Zander is speaking of classical music, the principles he discusses have applications for just about everything I do in life. Beautiful and inspiring. Great primer for learning to listen to and appreciate music too!
Updated site coming soon…
I found that, yes, you can use WordPress to create a web site, but maybe for us it’s not so great. Since this has become Barry’s blog and Barry isn’t even posting very regularly, the site will be updated to have more relevant information and this blog will continue as Barry’s eclectic and not so regularly updated place on the web.
New site coming soon…or at least soon after I finish up just this one more project….
Force PDF to download from web server
How to Force a PDF to download using Apache
Simple solution. Thanks for the help.
Music practice software
I recently joined the San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers and was looking for software to slow down music so I could learn it more easily. I found an open source project called BestPractice. Initial test looks really good!
Two Loose Pegs
Two guys, two fiddles, too much fun! This is our band. It one of the things I do when I’m not sitting at the computer. Celtic, Scandinavian, and just plain fun Fiddle music. Blog format site with music samples.
Changing the date on digital photos
Does your camera sometimes tag your images with the wrong date? Once in while, my digital camera will decide to go back in time and after taking a series of photos, I’ll notice that the date in the EXIF data is all set for 1999, the date the camera was released. (I know my camera is aging, but it’s been a good friend and I really like it).
I started using Picasa for storing and sharing images online. One of the features of the desktop software was the ability to sort images by album and by date, which caused those incorrectly tagged images to show up chronologically delayed and made them difficult to locate. I searched for ways to change the date in batches since I didn’t want to have to edit each photo individually. I found a few scripts that could help, but it all seemed way to difficult.
Turned out the solution was right there in Picasa. I noticed this weekend when I was posting some very out of date photos that there is an option to change the date of the album by double clicking the album folder and choosing the correct date from the drop down calendar provided. It was so simple.
Happy date correcting!
