Tai Mingshen

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I’ve just tried out the My Video WordPress plugin developed by Levi Putna at OzBlog.com.au. This allows you to display YouTube, Google and Metacafe videos in your blog with a minimum of fuss, and also lets you control the size of the videos. It worked without any problems - nice work, Levi!

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Here you go – authentic and raw one-man blues! Seasick Steve is playing at Bergenfest in April. Hopefully, I’ll be there…

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As I mentioned in an earlier posting, it was a pleasant surprise to discover Haale’s music. I was browsing the listings in the local newspaper, “Persian, psychodelic music” sounded interesting, and a decision was made – seafood dinner at Desire on Bourbon Street followed by Haale at Preservation Hall. Actually, I’d intended to see Sondre Lerche and Thomas Dybdahl, two  Norwegian musicians playing at The Parish on the same evening, but they drew the short straw this time. I’ll catch up with them back at home.

As coincidence would have it, Haale’s gig reminded me of another Norwegian musician – Annbjørg Lien. I came across Annbjørg’s music whilst browsing the CD collection in my local library. Annbjørg plays the Hardanger fiddle – extremely well. She has produced a couple of interesting works by combining traditional Norwegian folk music with more modern musical instruments and arrangements. Check out Baba Yaga and Aliens Alive, two of my favourite albums by this talented artist.

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The Snug Harbor concert listing had a ”blues troubadour” on the bill last Sunday. It was the first time I’d heard of the artist Spencer Bohren but since Snug Harbor has a reputation for quality music, and I had one of those “gut-feelings”, I bought a ticket. This was certainly an intimate concert - ”a secret society meeting,” as Spencer said to the 20 or so people gathered in the small jazz club – which suited Spencer’s music perfectly.

This guy is one of the best folk/country/blues singer/story-tellers I’ve had the pleasure to see in concert. His impressive lap steel, acoustic guitar and banjo playing provided a cool Sunday evening’s entertainment. I stayed for both sets…

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It’s been a good week for concerts in New Orleans. Last night I was fortunate to experience a musical collaboration that was totally unexpected. Preservation Hall is regarded as a premier venue for traditional New Orleans jazz, however their evening concert yesterday featured an artist from a totally different musical genre.

Haale sings in Persian and English. Her band has a musical style that’s a cross between Sufi music and hypnotic trance, combining a tight percussion foundation with traditional stringed instuments and psychedelic electric guitar.

After a  great first set, including songs from her two EPs, “Paratrooper” and “Morning”, the band was joined onstage by members of the New Birth Brass Band together with Ben Jaffe, the Creative Director of Preservation Hall, on tuba. What followed was a remarkable jam session that had the entire audience dancing to an amazing fusion of Haale and traditional jazz!

You can hear Haale’s music on MySpace.

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I had the pleasure of attending a concert this weekend sponsored by the New Orleans Jazz Historical Park and featuring Anais St. John. What a voice! What a stage presence! What a performance! Yes, I do recommend that you see Anais if you get a chance and I’m certainly looking forward to the release of her first CD.

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Richard Panek wrote a very interesting article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend entitled, “Out There”.

Only 4 percent of the universe is made of the kind of matter that makes up you and me and all the planets and stars and galaxies. The rest – 96 percent – is… who knows?

This unknown, mystery mass is known as “dark matter”.

In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe appeared to be expanding and astronomers had for many years assumed that gravity would be slowing down this expansion. Two rival teams of cosmologists attempted to prove this theory in the 1990s, but instead had to conclude that the speed of expansion of the universe was actually speeding up. In 1998, Michael Turner produced a paper in which he called this antigravitational force “dark energy”.

Cosmologists and particle physicists agree that a new physics is required to reconcile the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. This is where string theory may be able to provide a language which allows understanding and use of both those theories at the same time through the use of numerous non-traditional dimensions (11) and parallel universes (10 to the power of 500).

The Large Hadron Collider, which goes online later this year at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), may provide evidence of these additional dimensions and, perhaps, provide some answers to the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter.

If dark matter really does exist, then it’s time to rethink the fundamental assumption that when we look up at the night sky, we’re seeing the universe. Just think, all life as we know it and all planets and stars in the estimated 125 billion galaxies in our known universe is nothing more than just a few percent of everything out there. We’re just a drop of pollution in the sea of dark matter…

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I’ve started to use meebo.com as my one-stop application for instant messaging. Meebo is a web-based tool, which allows you to connect with several instant messaging services, including Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, Jabber and ICQ. If you sign up as a user (free) and enter the login details for your accounts, you have access to all of your buddies from a single, grouped list.

This is similar to Gaim and Trillian, but has the advantage of not requiring any downloads or installation. Login passwords are encrypted and there’s also an SSL site if you wish to sacrifice AJAX application speed for more secure messaging.

Now if only they could integrate Skype, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger voice and video conferencing in a single web-based application…

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