When worlds collide

Last weekend I managed to get away from GV (the oil & gas platform) earlier than expected, so I went to the Guildford Banjo Jamboree. One amazing highlight was Noriko Tadano on the Shamisen (the instrument I didn't see when I was in Japan). They called it a "traditional Japanese 3 string fretless Banjo".

Here's a sample of her playing:



Other Highlights :
Greg Deering from the Deering Banjo Co in the US talks at length about banjos and the construction and adjustment of them:


Street band with guy playing the saw.


All in all, a pretty good weekend, with lots of banjos (and other instruments) being played in the concert hall and in the street.

Sony Reader

While I was in Japan I ordered a Sony Reader from the US (they don't have them in Japan or anywhere else except for the US, Canada and just recently the UK) and it arrived today. And it's great.

Just a couple of problems (more annoyances really):

• It doesn't strip line breaks from text files, so things can look a little screwed up sometimes. I had to write a little exe file that strips them out. This adds an extra step to the upload process but it looks ok now.
• It came with a program called "ebook library" which is supposed to manage ebooks and upload them to the reader, in an itunes sort of way. Problem is: it's a bit buggy. Strips out and ignores any meta data from the text files and thinks that all word files are still open. So it will copy text files over but leaves out the Author details. Found an XML file on the reader where this information is kept, and have to edit that after uploading with file manager.

Anyway this device is great for anyone with a short attention span. You can read 5 books at once (time multiplexed in 10 minute bites) this seems such a natural thing to do, I bet that once these things become popular enough someone will come up with a special word for it.