I wish that I could go back in time and find the person who invented wallpaper and beat him/her with a crowbar.

I rented a wallpaper steamer and I was thought that, “I’ll get there when they open so I’ll have nearly all day to steam and scrape” and of course Murphy’s Law decided to show itself. Apparently someone thought it’d be a good idea to crimp the hose shut. I thought that the pan (the big thing with holes that you hold against the wall) was blocked and I drove back to Watertown to get a new pan, but when I returned and the same lack of steam was occurring I realized that it was in fact something wrong with the steamer. So I drove back to Watertown again and the guy at the rental place fixed the hose and I could come home again and start steaming. All in all, four hours wasted. I didn’t finally get around to getting something started until about 2:30-3:00 and I didn’t have a whole lot of time since my friend’s birthday gathering is taking place later tonight. So, I’ve managed to get about an 18 inch strip of bare wall. That took the better part of an hour to do. This is definitely an all day project, so hopefully I’m not hung over tomorrow and I can get up fairly early and have it done. If not, then I’ll just have to try and finish it the weekend after Thanksgiving.

The upsetting thing about this is that the underlying wall isn’t in the best shape. It’s an old plaster wall and it’s quite pockmarked with divots and holes and what not. I feel that the only way that I could paint over it and not see all the holes would be to basically cover the entire wall in a layer of plaster. I am not enthused about doing that, so that leaves me with…putting…up…more…wallpaper. It will be on a bare wall, though, instead of on probably 50 years worth of old not-well-adhered wallpaper.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: The Pot - Tool

Oi. So after two years and a few months I’ve finally decided to do something with the walls in my apartment. My bedroom is covered in ugly pink flowery wallpaper. It’s not particularly appropriate for an up and coming twenty something male. I have taken on the task of removing the wallpaper and a crappy task it is. There are 4 layers of paper, three of which are flowery pink, over what appears to be a plaster wall. I’ve only just started about 3 hours ago from this post and my progress thus far is minimal. This is easily a several day all-day task. I’ll probably end up working on this till next weekend. Hopefully, I’ll be able to asses whether making repairs and painting or whether I should just repaper the walls (properly) this time. Whoever papered over the wall previously definitely did a half-assed job. Hopefully this gets easier as it goes on.

I’m very tempted to just rent a steamer.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: Nantes - Beirut

So, 39 Steps is an awesome play.

The premise is that a guy who is a bit bored with life as not much interesting happens meets a strange woman one night. She tells him that men are after her and that she knows information that could save Britain. She is later murdered that night and the main character is blamed for her death. He goes on the lam, pursued by the police and some strange men. He makes his way to Ireland where he meets up with a professor who is actually the villain of the play. All in all, it’s a sight to behold and if you ever get a chance to check it out. Do so.

It’s based on the movie The 39 Steps by Alfred Hitchcock which was released in 1939. The movie is based on the novel The 39 Steps by John Buchanan.

One of these days I’ll rent the movie and tell you about it.

So, I joined Boston Cares some months ago. They are a volunteering organization where you can pick and choose the projects that you do. I’ve been volunteering about twice a month for the Friday Night Supper program at the Arlington St. church at the corner of Boylston St. & Arlington St. in Boston. It’s a lot of fun and the people are really nice. In addition to traditional volunteering things there are also projects that are not quite as humanitarian. Last Sunday I volunteered by helping register participants in Hub On Wheels. And tomorrow I’m going to be ushering at the Huntington Theater Company’s production of 39 Steps.

In addition I’ve gotten an idea for a new project that I’m going to work on for a bit involving Ruby and Ruby On Rails. I’ll provide more info about that later.

I’ve also started reading the book to one of my favorite movies: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: Stop Me - Mark Ronson ft. Daniel Merriweather

So, stumbling around on youtube the other day and I came across a video of a band’s 1989 BBC performance. This band you ask? It was the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and let me tell you… they are quite awesome. I suggest you head over to youtube and search for “Music for a Found Harmonium”. Harmoniums are awesome too.

So, I was watching a little TV here in my room in England and a show on BBC2 featured a performance by The Arcade Fire. The Arcade Fire is a fairly awesome band and they are definitely worth checking out. They are reminiscent of The Decemberists. Anyway, one member of the band was playing this fairly bizarre instrument. It had a crank, a couple of strings, and a keyboard. And after a little bit of cyber sleuthing I found out that the instrument is called the “hurdy gurdy”. The hurdy gurdy consists of a rosin wheel which drags across several strings. The keyboard presses on the strings which causes changes in pitch. It’s a medieval and renaissance era instrument that has a reasonable following over parts of Europe and there has been a increasing interest in it in the US. There are hurdy gurdy festivals on the west coast. There are a few videos of hurdy gurdy players on youtube such as here and here. There have been a handful of other mainstream artists who have used the hurdy gurdy in their music such as Sting and Led Zepplin. Check out wont you?

I know I’ve been quite quiet the last few weeks. Since the last time that I wrote anything here I’ve gotten a new job and have been doing my thing for the last few weeks. I’m currently in the UK at a customer site attempting to work on some software that they sort of have requested of us but unfortunately they didn’t appear to be quite ready for us so it seems that there is the possibility that we are going to call this trip a bit of a wash and head back stateside early. Tis the nature of business I guess. Well it’s quite late where I am. It’s only about a quarter to 9 on the east coast and I should have gone to bed hours ago. I’ll try and keep this more up to date. We’ll see though.

Cheers!

So, I was curious to see what would happen if I ran my name through Google. I’m sure a lot of people do this from time to time. It is kind of fun to see all the people who exist in the world with your name. There’s a famous soccer player in the U.K. named Stephen Caldwell. There are a number of other various people, such as doctors and company directors. This time however  I stumbled upon a video on YouTube that featured a documentary on a group called The Orlons. They were an R&B group out of Philadelphia. It was a quartet featuring three women and one man. His name…Stephen Caldwell. Admittedly the pronunciation is different, but it’s still interesting (at least for me it is).

I’m sure you are all floored by this. Don’t clamor too loudly.

This is just a little script that I banged together at the suggestion of some people in ##php on Freenode. The XKCD is a clever little geeky comic that I enjoy. It’s usual themes are math and science related with a few other things tossed in. Well an important part of the punchline of each comic is often placed in the title attribute of the comic’s <img> tag. This GreaseMonkey script displays the title directly under the image. It’s a lot better than trying to view source all the time (in Firefox anyway since it doesn’t show the entire contents of the title attribute in the tootip).

You can download it here: xkcdtitleunhider.user.js

• Awesome Song of the Moment: Psapp - Cosy in the Rocket

So, I watched Reign Over Me this past weekend. It’s quite an awesome movie. I suggest that everyone go out and watch the movie. It once again reaffirms how awesome Don Cheadle is and it shows that Adam Sandler can play a decent semi-serious character. Though, what I didn’t understand was how Cheadle’s character could have been written so as to not like Quadrophenia… I mean, it’s The Who. I don’t understand how anyone could not like The Who. It just doesn’t really make any sense to me.

Anyway, go and see Reign Over Me.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: The Who - Love Reign O'er Me