Me Archives - Page 7 of 9 - The Urban Crows Blog

A Handel on Something Baroque

A Musical Interlude

If you asked me to list my Top 10 “go to” classical music pieces, I’d start by opening up iTunes and taking a gander at what I’ve listened to the most. High up the list you’ll see Bach (Chaconne), Tallis (anything), Pärt (Magnificat), the incredibly romantic middle movement from Chopin’s piano concerto #1, and Beethoven’s violin concerto –in short, a real mix from across the centuries and all stuff that I go back to time and time again.

One genre that’s under-represented is Baroque, a style probably most closely associated with German (Bach) and Italian (Vivaldi) composers. Bach’s the best known and the most accomplished composer of the Baroque era, rightfully revered as an astonishing musical innovator. Whilst I love much of his music, particularly the solo violin and cello works, I couldn’t listen to the entirety of the Goldberg piano variations in one sitting; there’s a bit too much mathematical twiddling around for me to maintain focus for more than 20 or so minutes.

Infamy, Infamy

The Northern Miner’s Got It In For me*.

Despite my lonely role as the solitary occupant of the urbancrows e-rookery, from time to time I do get to celebrate a small win; some minor success that I can share with regular readers. And so it is, I’m happy to report that the esteemed mining newspaper, The Northern Miner, recently published 2 of my stories about Pakistan. They appear in the Odds and Sods column and are linked below.

A shout-out and big thank you to John Cumming, the dashingly handsome and discerning Editor-in Chief of the Northern Miner -a fellow geologist and deep thinker- who spotted my obvious story-telling talents. Or, more likely, he needed a few hundred words to fill up page 4 and was clutching at straws for content when my desperate-for-any-attention e-mails arrived.

Tour Guides Gone Bad

A Thames Odyssey

Billy Beefeater. He’s funny and he knows it.

A good tour guide who can educate, amuse and engage all at once is a rare beast. Take Billy Beefeater, for example, a former combat medic with the Royal Army Medical Corp. who insults large groups of tourists at various scenic spots around the Tower of London. The man is a comic genius. He knows his audience; he knows his subject inside out -lopped off heads and disembowelled traitors- and his delivery is split-second. He’s so good, I’m guessing he could make a useful living as an in-demand after-dinner speaker if he ever decided that professional tourist-abuse was losing its lustre. If you ever decide to visit the Tower, find out what time his tour starts. You won’t regret it.

*Serves you right for being pro-Brexit.*

A bad tour guide can turn any tourist attraction into 30 minutes of living hell. Fascinating history can be rendered anemically dull, and amazing architecture becomes mere detail, lost in the background as you’re herded from one boring stop to another, learning nothing in the process. But every so often, I’ve come across guides who are so spectacularly bad, so completely uninformed, you can’t help but admire them for trying, even though you know full well it’s going to go hideously wrong at some point.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The 80s

Hands up if you’ve ever hitch hiked anywhere? You know, the old-fashioned thumb up, side-of-the-road-have-back-pack-will-travel way? We’ve all thumbed a last-minute ride into town to go drinking, but that’s not what I mean. No, I mean long distance stuff, going hundreds of miles, at the mercy of truck drivers, motorway service stations, and dodgy slip roads.

In the early eighties, I was hard up geology student in Portsmouth and I hitch hiked regularly. It was a rite of passage for a lot of fellow students who were strapped for cash. Train ticket, or beer and food?

The Things Geologists Do.

Last week, a regular Urbancrows reader emailed me to suggest I write about what minerals geologists actually do. Not a bad idea thinks I, from up high on my perch in the Urbancrows e-rookery. So I’ve decided to take him up on the idea with an informal series of blog posts, starting soon, loosely themed “The Things Geologists Do”. It’ll be based largely on my own experiences since I graduated in 1984, but I’d welcome suggestions or questions from non-geologists who might find themselves puzzled by the activities of their rock-hound cousins.

*Hi tech geology style. My well-worn Estwing. And a rock.*

Enchanted April.

Stock picking club update.

What follows is an edited version of my monthly junior mining update to the members of the steak-eating-red-wine-drinking stock picking club informally known as the “Get Rich Short Our Picks Club”. All names of members have been removed and some of my more abusive comments have been diplomatically edited out too. Which is a shame really. I’d love to leave them in so you can all see how bad this motley collection of mining experts is at choosing winners. Anyhoo, here’s the table, dateline end of April.

*The “Get Rich Short Our Stocks” portfolio in gory smell-o-vision.*

When Turkey Meets Italy.

I’m a wannabe classical guitar player. The trouble is, I’m too bloody old to practice enough to get to the standard I’d like to reach. So, I lied. I’m not really a guitar player. But I do listen to a lot of classical guitar and have, over time, convinced myself that I’m a talented-albeit-vicarious musician. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, I know.

What is a Geologist?

Last Sunday was the first Sunday in April, known as Geologists’ Day, and rightly celebrated around the world by millions of people. It was originally designated a holiday by the Soviet Union under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, a notoriously jolly chap with unbelievably big eye brows. I hope, wherever you live, you tracked down your closest geologist, and gave them a big hug and a giant sloppy kiss. We deserve it because we add so much to your lives, if only you knew.

*Brezhnev once said:*
*Да, я люблю геологов*

I Signed A Tortoise.

Actually I autographed more than one.

See, if you thrash around in the bush in the warmer parts of Turkey and Iran for long enough, you’ll eventually find wild tortoises. Shy creatures, they mind their own business -as you’d expect- crawling languidly around, looking like rocks with legs, although rocks move a bit faster going downhill. They can’t exactly run away quickly, so once you spot one, you’ll definitely catch it. I found them all the time, particularly in Iran.

They don’t much like people, but their only active defence mechanism, other than retreating in to their shell and making some unbelievably non-terrifying hissing sounds, is to wee all over anything that tries to pick them up. Which for a while was me, until I learned my lesson.

Impressions of PDAC, Part 2

The presence or absence of PDAC crowds is something of a bell-weather for the state of our industry. It correlates, in part, to how much money we’ve collectively raised in the last 12 months, and also how the coming year of global mineral exploration activity is going to look. Attendance matches the global exploration financing figures quite closely, albeit with about a one year lag. Which doesn’t bode well for the business of discovery in 2019. PDAC compile convention attendance figures on their website, which I’ve graphed below for 2010 to 2019, alongside the global exploration financing stats from 2011 to 2017.

Category: Me

A Handel on Something Baroque

A Musical Interlude

Like this:

Infamy, Infamy

The Northern Miner’s Got It In For me*.

Like this:

Tour Guides Gone Bad

A Thames Odyssey

Like this:

A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The 80s

Like this:

The Things Geologists Do.

Like this:

Enchanted April.

Stock picking club update.

Like this:

When Turkey Meets Italy.

Like this:

What is a Geologist?

Like this:

I Signed A Tortoise.

Like this:

Impressions of PDAC, Part 2

Like this:

A Musical Interlude

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

The Northern Miner’s Got It In For me*.

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

A Thames Odyssey

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

Stock picking club update.

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this:

Like this post? Please share it:

Like this: