This album was created entirely using samples of my voice, or other speech sounds. Each track represents a vision of paradise, heaven or the after-life, as seen by different cultures through time.

By clicking on the thumbnails, you can see the full album art. The art is also embedded in the MP3s.
Press the little play icon listen to a song. If you like what you hear, download the whole release in a .zip file below.

Songs:

1. Avalon
2. Jannah
3. Tír na nÓg
4. Gan Eden
5. Shangri-La
6. Aaru
7. Mag Mell
8. Valhalla

Download release as a .zip

Back Cover:

My cinnamon rolls reclining in glory, delicious with coffee or vanilla custard

By popular demand, I am putting up the rather gisted recipe I used for baking these lovely little sweet breads.

The dough

• 250 ml warmed milk
• 1 tsp yeast
• 150 g white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 100 g butter diced and softened
• 800 g strong flour

Mix the above in a bowl, adding a little more flour if the consistency is not right. It shouldn't be sticky, but not dry either. Knead the dough for ten minutes  and then put it back into a greased bowl to let it rise until it has doubled, under clingfilm.

Take the dough out, punch it down and then roll it out flat. You want a big rectangle, longer than it is wide, less than half a centimetre thick.

The filling

• 20 g butter (softened)
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp cinnamon

Spread the butter evenly and thinly on the dough, then sprinkle on the brown sugar and cinnamon (preferably mixed). The quantities are to-taste, but you don't want to overpower the flavour of the dough itself.

Now roll the dough up, long side first. Roll it as tight as you can. Pinch it together a bit at the top, and now it's time to cut. Cut alternating diagonals so that you get triangles. Don't make them too big. Squeeze them down a bit from the top, and then lay them out on a tray, sitting on baking parchment. Leave them to sit for about two hours, under cling-film or plastic bag, giving them time to double in size again. I put them beside the fire, which helped them along.

The coating

• 1 egg
• pearl sugar

Give each one a good coating of egg-wash, and then sprinkle pearl sugar on top. Pearl sugar is that expensive-looking white sugar like hailstones which you get on brioche and challah and Swedish patisserie. I didn't have any, so I made some by sprinkling water onto a plate of caster sugar, and then let it dry by the fire.

Put them in an oven pre-heated to 225°C for 10 to 12 minutes (until they are golden-brown). Take them out and set on a cool rack with paper towel on top.

Enjoy hot or cold with coffee, vanilla cream from IKEA or even tea.

"Gimme that Christian side-hug, that Christian side-hug, I'm a rough rider, filled up with Christ's love, gimme that Christian side-hug..."

Cultural appropriation by evangelical Christian fundamentalists has gone too far, again.

YouTube quotes include:

DangerCampbell: FO SHO!!!!!!!!!! lol Chris and Tim TOTALLY pull off this look!
kaysee: I was siting with my youth group in the back. lol Friday really was a great night. but hard! I started crying and went to the front!
BlueGreen540494: omigosh sooo true! haha whenever me and my christian friends see eachother we do the side hug!!!

"When I hug people, I leave room for the Holy Spirit"

The world's largest side-hug?

You know, suddenly rappers talking about "big-screen TVs, blunts, 40s and bitches" don't seem so bad. I think I'm going to listen to Biggie's "Nasty Girl" now.

ICU64 in action, watching the memory map

This is one of the most impressive emulation-related releases I've seen in quite some time. ICU64 is a hacking tool which lets you visualize the various memory banks of the Commodore 64 in real-time, as the emulator (VICE or Frodo) runs the game, demo or other program.

You can even interact directly with the memory, changing values with immediate effect. The demonstration video below shows the user editing the level of the game he's playing, or changing the number of lives left. For me, the most impressive part is the zoomed-out view of the C64's memory, watching the dancing pixels which show the memory actually changing.

Here's the link to the site:
First public release of ICU64 and Frodo Redpill

And the video:

My Father's Kodachrome and B&W Contributions

This Wikipedia user has scanned and uploaded some of his father's old photographs, from America and Europe, seemingly from the 1960s. What strikes me is the difference that still existed between places, a far cry from the homogenous urban and suburban landscapes of today.

What attracted me most was the comparison I could draw between London and Chicago at the time.

Click to enlarge.

Ask yourself why we hear so much about a disease with such a relatively small death-toll.

Ask yourself why we don't hear about all the other much more important diseases.

Ask yourself why we countenance motor vehicles but not war.

Ask yourself why we're so bad at judging risk.

Ask your local pharmacist how much money he's made in the last 300 days on face-masks, hand-wash, Tamiflu and so on.

Making comparisons between modern-day Britain and 1984 or Brave New world is becoming rather trite at this stage, so I won't bother.

BoingBoing posts about Council bans parents from play areas. Watford Borough Council is banning parents from public playgrounds, since they cannot be trusted around other children, perhaps even their own children.

Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.

What is "today's climate"?
Is the ambient air temperature particularly conducive to the creation of paedophiles?

Edit: Here's the source, thanks to Inky!

A tank trundles past and into the trees -
And disappears quickly out of sight,
And there's no-one round who sees
The tiny and flickering prick of light.
Some soldiers pass, running at a trot
And yet still no notice is shown
The soldier lying on the ground is no longer hot
And from his lips escapes a moan.

He has what every poet hates, in spite
Of all the loneliness and devastation.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the night
And the dark and cold and no circulation.
Lying at a tank track, but no-one sees the ring
His broken body and every bleeding thing.

John Lunney
2003


This poem is a parody, of sorts, of a very famous Patrick Kavanagh poem, Inniskeen Road : July Evening, which can be read here.

Re-posted from the old johnl.org

Video made in Grenoble, France. I had never made a video before, and I was waiting for my clothes to finish washing in the laundrette, and I happened to have my camera, so I took some footage. I edited this out of it afterwards.

Hit the HQ button for marginally better video and much better sound.