What the FL is this?

Following on from yesterday's gnomic announcement, it turns out that the Drake underwater effect is a thing not the product of my imagination.

It is a Lo-Pass Filter Sweep and here is how you do it in FL Studio 12. (FL Studio 11 is on the machine I am typing on at the moment. Ben introduced me to it in 2013, see Icons passim, awwwww).

The New Aphorisms Part 1

Myself:

Underwater everything sounds like a cut from a Drake album.

I've no clear idea what I am implying, but I think the profundity will gradually reveal itself.

bite me

I am going to the dentist tomorrow morning to start the process of fitting a guard that will stop me grinding my teeth and biting the insides of my cheeks when I am asleep.

Thus proving I am not under any stress whatsoever.

sushi life

Greetings from Penylan, where I am down checking in with mum and dad.

Wales online says that the obscure Cardiff restaurant voted the best in the city on TripAdvisor is little-known sushi place in the Globe Centre on Wellfield Road; only a skip and jump away from the family home.

Sushi Life leaps onto the to-do list for next time I am down.

Triple Tipple

These spindrift pages have been following Gareth Evans' career since 2009. Judging by the trailer for his latest, I will be watching it scared witless through my fingers when in debuts on Netflix later this month.

Filmed in Wales and featuring Michael Sheen. To save time let's anoint the movie, Sheen and Evans simultaneously to Welsh Born Iconhood.

Matthew Rhys

Mathhew Rhys (born Matthew Rhys Evans in Cardiff in 1974) broke out his Welsh accent after collecting the best leading actor in a drama series trophy at the 70th Emmy Awards. You can see it one minute and fifty seconds into the video above.

We have a new Icon.

Just for completeness, please note that when we saw him in New Theatre on tour with Peter Gill's National Theatre touring production of Cardiff East 1997, it was his debut professional stage engagement. Mum and dad saw that as well. There is no getting away from them lately.

The Meyerowitz Stories

John thinks that we should take the old man out for a drink when I am back this weekend. It was good for him to get out of the home on Sunday, and also means a collective-noun of Brownes aren't crowding into his room or infesting communal spaces to the bemusement of others.

Candidate establishments as far as I can see are

• The Four Elms (the nearest)
• The Royal Oak (not much further away while featuring Peerless Jim Driscoll and Joe Erskine boxing anecdotes and memorabilia)
• The Claude (reachable and where I have been meeting up with Tim and Phil for the last year of a Friday when I am back)

I have watched Kodachrome (Icons passim) on Netflix now. Given Dustin Hoffman's appalling ("Dad, what the fugg!) public booze-snatching behaviour in the trailer I think that the Ageing-Curmudgeon-Confronts-Mortality movie baton can be safely passed on to The Meyerowitz Stories.

Babette's Feast

Dad's been in to see mum in hospital. He didn't recognise her. What more is there to say?

Cooking at Bronwydd Avenue on Saturday night (Icons passim) worked as therapy for me and John last weekend; good for us, and for breathing a little life back into a house that had been empty for a week.

We'll do the same this weekend with Anthony Bourdain's Boeuf Bourguignon. Still from the book Ma got me for my birthday thirteen years ago, and also I noticed inscribed. Once again there is a legit copy of the recipe online here in the Washington Post for my brother to peruse. (Amazon and Knorr will have to take the strain with the demi glace however. "Had we but world enough and time.")

Russell Wilson Asks Seahawks To Modify Play Where He’s Immediately Tackled By Six Players

The Onion

SEATTLE—Expressing some reservations about allowing the defense instant, unfettered access to the backfield, Russell Wilson asked the Seahawks Tuesday to modify a read-pass-option play where he’s immediately tackled by six players after receiving the snap. “I’m happy to run whatever the coaching staff draws up, but I think we can adjust this play a little so I can take more than three steps without getting pounded into the turf,” said Wilson, explaining to his coaches that perhaps one of the Seahawks’ offensive lineman could attempt to stand in the way of the oncoming pass rushers. “There is a lot to like about this play, but we could try working in some play-action or a quick slant pass before the pocket dissolves and I’m hit from three different angles. At the very least, we should only call the plays where I get sacked before I can start my progression reads a few times per game.” At press time Pete Carroll had heeded his quarterback’s advice and drawn up a new play where Wilson scrambles left and right multiple times and then throws the ball out of bounds.

Everything is going to hell in a hand basket for my beloved Seahawks. They are away at the Chicago Bears in the early hours of tomorrow morning. An important game as it gives either Spike or me bragging rights for the year.

On a brighter note, my DNA test having revealed that I am overwhelmingly descended from emigrants from Munster, I was please to see them beat the Ospreys in the Pro14 rugby on the weekend. Last year I would have been supporting Swansea.

Russell Swords Cardiff Academy

I went along to Hotpod yoga in Cardiff yesterday. The venue was the old Virgin Active club that I used to sneak off to on Saturday mornings when I was back visiting mum and dad.

Another tenant of the building is Russell Swords Cardiff Academy of Fencing. ‘What is fencing?... It is a violence refined into beauty; combat curbed to sweet art and crystal science.’ And, which is more, I have always fancied having a crack at it.

I wonder if I could book it for a day for a family session; me with my brothers and sisters, plus Ben and his cousins. Maybe in half term? Watch this space.

Schopenhauer's poodles

Second driveway on the left
See Sign for "Splash Central"
Enter main doors
Go upstairs turn right
Hotpod Yoga entrance is in the corner

There is no yoga at Elite Fitness this morning so I will be trying out Hotpod Yoga at Cardiff Central instead.

Did you know that the philosopher Schopenhauer owned a series of poodles throughout the later part of his life, naming them all “Atma”, the Hindu word for the supreme universal soul from which all other souls arise?

I shall be sure to meditate on this during class.

Total Eclipse of Descartes

At John's recommendation, I listened to the first BBC Radio episode of Rob Newman's Total Eclipse of Descartes last night in the gaff as I was pottering around getting ready for today's jaunt to Cardiff via Portishead. Good stuff; I will try and catch episode 2 next Wednesday.

Progress for both Newman R and me, as when I went to see him in a previous show in 2004 I didn't seem to like it much at all (Icons passim).

Ageing Curmudgeon Confronts Mortality

John was in London last night so we watched The Last Movie Star (Icons passim) on Amazon. It is a wonderful film.

It turns out that there are plenty more options in the Ageing Curmudgeon Confronts Mortality genre.

In cinemas now:



On Netflix:



Fingers crossed they both end with A Last Shot At Redemption and we get a chance to work through them while the experience is visceral rather than elegiac.

Whitton Punks

As I approached London on the way back from Warwickshire earlier today, I tuned in to Robert Elms on BBC Radio London.

In his Notes & Queries section he was asking for information about "Whitton Punks." Living in Whitton as long as I did I am interested in them too. I wonder why they are remembered or still going, and if anyone I know is in the frame.

I couldn't listen to the end of the show once I got back to the office but it will be available soon at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06hpzcm

Perhaps I can out it on this evening as I am pottering about.

I came on board between Elms playing The Band's Acadian Driftwood and George Benson's This Masquerade.