Philip Goddard
www.philipgoddard.com
Do you live in or near Exeter, UK, and want a real quality computer system built for you, with a seemingly unbeatable level of knowledge and understanding of computer issues displayed in the guidance, advice and support that you get?
Then Brian Fowler is the man for you! He is a true expert, not only in his extensive knowledge but his deep understanding of what he is dealing with. I had my computer system built by him in late 2003, and I naturally returned to him for the full upgrade / rebuild now (March 2008), for he has been the one computer seller who I know of with whom I could have a really useful and fruitful discussion about my requirements and feel that we were talking and thinking at the same level.
If you just want the cheapest computer possible (i.e. built down to
a price for mass selling), go to Curry's or any old computer store and
enjoy your computer's run-of-the-mill performance and your mediocre (at
best) technical support service, but if you want a real quality system
with every component chosen for performance and reliability and
avoidance of known problems and compatibility issues, and with really
brilliant support and troubleshooting, then Brian is your man, and my
own experience so far has been that for what I get he charges
remarkably low prices.
N.B. This is a completely unsolicited 'plug' for Brian's excellent service, and I make no financial gain from it.
David is a painter of considerable originality and integrity. Clarity, luminosity and simplicity are features of his surrealistic paintings. In his case surrealism does not denote the freakishness of much surrealist art, but works in which a luminous and precise economy of means and often seemingly realistic depictions point to the metaphysical and spiritual.
David actually troubled to put an entry in this site's Visitors' Book, upon which an e-mail correspondence started between us. (Great friendships can arise thus, you know - give it a try yourself!) His music is very different from mine, and, on the basis of souped-up versions of his MIDI files played on my enhanced non-GM playback system, I get a great deal of pleasure and uplift from it.
Another kindred spirit who actually bothered to put an entry in this site's Visitors' Book.
Yet another kindred spirit who actually bothered to put an entry in this site's Visitors' Book. He and I have turned out to have a lot of empathy over matters of spirituality as well as the music.
Jim is a warm-hearted and very active and supportive fellow member of Classical Music Makers (CMM), a major Internet group and webring of classical artists with online music. Like me, he has had commissions for organ music from Carson Cooman, and it was this that prompted the initial e-mail communication almost immediately I joined CMM, which led to a good friendship quickly developing. He and I have much in common in addition to the music - including clapped-out spines!
Swelk is not his real surname but the one by which he is known most of the time. He is currently one of the administrators of Classical Music Makers (mentioned above), and my correspondence and growing friendship with him started through his responding to a request I'd posted in CMM's forum for a timpanist to check through the timpani part of a score of mine. He is an inveterate hive of activity, with a day job which takes him travelling around quite a bit, and yet he somehow finds time to take part in many musical collaborations, being able to play a variety of instruments, and to give much attention to CMM's forum. He's always being rude about himself, but I and many others see through that, and I feel privileged to be able to count him as a friend of mine.
If those of you who get uptight at the mention of such things had any idea of the torture inflicted upon people graced with the abovementioned condition, you would surely drop your taboo about the subject forthwith and seek to be supportive (surely, wouldn't you?...). How would you like almost every body movement of yours to seem to be sinking another razor blade into the delicate tissue of your beleaguered back passage? And for you to be passing "red-hot cannonballs wrapped in barbed wire" (one lucky sufferer's description) when you 'go'?
I know about all this first hand, and there's no good reason for shame or embarrassment in saying so. The A.F. Self Help Page is a godsend for anyone with this devilish and often chronic affliction, which far too many medics still know remarkably little about. The site gives a wide range of helpful information compiled from various sources, and an invaluable collection of first-hand personal case histories which all help you weigh up the various healing options (both surgical and non-surgical) which are open to you. Knowledge and understanding, and knowing you're not alone with this little hell, greatly help take the sting of fear out of A.F. Take charge of your healing and don't let the medics' ignorance do you a mischief!
One extremely important thing which you will probably not find mentioned on that page is that the vast majority of cases of very troublesome anal fissures or aggravated haemorrhoids are caused or greatly aggravated by astral entities, which are largely responsible for the clenching and spasms of the anus. Therefore it is worth reading my page Troublesome Astral ('Dark') Entities - Managing and Removing Them. Also, I give descriptions of some extremely helpful practices in Some Potent Self Realization Practices, including one specifically for progressively eliminating over-tightness, clenching and spasms of the anus.
International Paruresis Association
Shy bladder, bashful bladder, no-pee, shy pee, avoidant paruresis - These are among the names given to the anxiety state causing difficulty in peeing in particular circumstances - particularly when there are people around. Typically anyone with this problem feels completely alone with it - as though virtually nobody else has such a problem or would understand, but that is really far from the case. There's a hell of a lot of people (mostly men) who each is feeling that they're virtually the only one with it - and I've been one of them. Get supportive information from the above website. An additional tip from 'Phil the Widdle' - try the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or / and The Work on the condition. Even more fundamentally and usefully, use Power Walking and the Grounding Post procedure and a Clarity-Sphere™.
One extremely important thing which you will not find mentioned on that page is that virtually all cases of shy bladder are caused or greatly aggravated by astral entities, which are largely responsible for the clenching of the pee sphincter (where the urethra connects with the bladder), and this can even mimic prostate trouble. These entities will also attack with the relevant anxiety feelings to mimic 'shy bladder'. Therefore it is worth reading my page Troublesome Astral ('Dark') Entities - Managing and Removing Them. Also, I give descriptions of some extremely helpful practices in Some Potent Self Realization Practices.
Explore Gordon Ramel's extraordinary
award-winning Insect World
site!
(but bookmark this one first!)
Please let me know if you find that this site has disappeared.
My only (but very welcome) direct acquaintanceship with Gordon is through the good soul having picked me up and given me a lift when I was hitch-hiking out for one of my crazy long-day hikes on Dartmoor. His site is quite a mega-site.
There is a valuable and well laid out website that serves this function - http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk. Registration is free, but if you want to be able to contact anyone on their lists, or include photos of yourself in any personal details that you wish to display, then there is a small annual subscription. You can enter yourself in the listings for any schools, colleges and workplaces that you've been to, right from primary school onwards, and the site has an effective search function and system of message boards.
Are you a website owner or developer who has or wants to avoid a problem with spambots (e-mail address harvesters) getting e-mail addresses from hidden fields in forms on your site (e.g. guestbook or feedback forms)? I, for one, got wearily fed up with this happening and my visitors' book recipient address getting eventually spammed. A Javascript obfuscation of the hidden e-mail address can be used, but it's said that the smarter spambots can interpret the Javascript and reconstruct the supposedly hidden e-mail addresses out of the script. I even found that an e-mail address that I'd displayed only as a graphic eventually started receiving spam. So, what's the solution?
One much more secure configuration, which I've now implemented on this site, is to have the 'recipient' e-mail address(es) for any forms actually embedded in the script (in a protected cgi-bin folder separate from the web pages), and not to have one's e-mail address on one's site at all - either displayed or hidden.
Most formmail (form-to-e-mail) scripts do not provide for this, requiring you to have your 'recipient' e-mail address in the form(s) on your site. A much better formmail script that I can recommend can be obtained from the nms Project. There are many scripts calling themselves formmail.pl, but this one appears to be particularly secure and allows you to specify one or more recipient addresses in the script, so that the 'recipient' tag in the form on your site looks like this:
<input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="1">- where the value can be not just "1" but whatever alias you have specified in the script to represent the required e-mail address. Therefore it is useless to spammers.
My Contact page on this site now has a simple feedback form using the same nms formmail script which my visitors' book form uses, without any e-mail address of mine to be found anywhere on this site.
Fed up with spam? You can spend money on
programs to block your spam, but they still add to the load on your
system, and most don't do what most Net users really want - to get the
spammers' accounts closed down. The basic Spamcop service is free,
though you can subscribe to a fuller service. You just paste an
offending spam (with full header displayed) into a form provided by
Spamcop, and it will within a few seconds trace the source of the spam
and, with your approval, send a report to any appropriate source. I
myself have had a thank-you e-mail from one ISP for sending a Spamcop
report on a spam that was sent through them; they told me that they'd
just closed the account of the sender. Not all spam is traceable, but
through Spamcop we can all help to reduce this scourge.
Be
a responsible Netizen! Use Spamcop!
Really
effective spam management
with MailWasher Pro
MailWasher is an extremely handy program that I use for filtering my e-mail and dealing with spam before it can reach my own computer. It lists what is currently on my e-mail server, with recognised spam already marked for deleting and bouncing at the server end, and suspected spam and viruses appropriately indicated; presence of attachments is also shown and any full header or entire message can be safely previewed (no executable code is run). With two mouse clicks I can mark any sender as 'friend' or 'blacklisted', or indeed mark a whole domain as such, and items on the 'friends' list can be excluded from the listing, so keeping the battlefield clear and avoiding future inadvertent deletions. When I click 'Process mail', all the messages marked for deleting and/or bouncing are cleared, and then, if anything is left on the server, my regular e-mail program is automatically run so that I can then retrieve the messages that I do want.
If everyone were using this, or an equivalent, the Net could become a much less encouraging environment for would-be spammers.
If you purchase your copy through the above link you would be helping support this website because I would receive a portion of each such payment.Jean Sibelius >>Apart from his oft-performed works, try the wonderful Kullervo Symphony, which the composer even sought to suppress because of his subsequent developments away from composing large romantic works - and then towards the other end of the scale, the short choral piece The Origin of Fire. I rarely respond well to true romantic music, but Kullervo is an exception because of its invigorating elemental quality - something which was to be a key feature of so much of Sibelius' later work, though with less and eventually none of the romanticism.
Carl Nielsen >>His organ work Commotio, which is remarkably different from any of his orchestral work and clearly rooted in the work of old masters at the organ, such as Buxtehude and J.S. Bach. There is a rarefied and radiant spiritual quality of this music, transcending all ordinary emotions.
Jehan Alain >>Organ works - look beyond the commonly performed Litanies! Recommended recording (may have to be specially imported): 2 CDs on the Erato label, played by Marie Claire Alain -- head and shoulders above others I've heard.
Charles Tournemire >>Much as I admire some of his L'Orgue Mystique organ pieces, the work which has gripped and haunted me most of all is his Douze Préludes-Poèmes for piano - effectively a major piano suite of a powerful mystical quality unlike anything else I've heard on the piano. Some very memorable bell-like sonorities in some of the more dramatic movements.
Vagn Holmboe >>His oeuvre in general, but especially symphonies 6-10. Recommended introduction: BIS CDs of Symphonies 6 & 7, and 8 & 9. I regard his 8th Symphony as unsurpassed in stature, beauty and power by any other symphony, though some listeners have difficulty with the strange, haunting atmosphere and the sheer intensity of his music. (Note that I have worded that last sentence with care: it would take an ignorant person indeed to claim that any one particular symphony is the greatest, seeing that so many different types of vision and approaches to musical form are presented in different symphonies, and different people will inevitably have their particular musical resonances.)
Eduard Tubin >>His oeuvre in general; I found his symphonies 2, 4, 6, 8-10 especially powerful and beautiful. Recommended introduction: the BIS recording of the 4th & 9th Symphonies.
Olivier Messiaen >>His organ works, especially Messe de la Pentecôte and Livre d'Orgue. Recordings by the composer (historical quality, mono) and Jennifer Bate (with awesome reverberation in Beauvais Cathedral) especially recommended.
Igor Stravinsky >>Although much of his music is widely known and accepted, two wonderful works that are still largely ignored are Persephone and Canticum Sacrum.
Bohuslav Martinu >>His Symphonies 3-6, Double Concerto (for 2 string orchestras, piano & timpani), and the powerful and immensely moving choral work, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Ralph Vaughan Williams >>Apart from his better-known works such as Symphonies 1 - 7, Job and Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, I strongly recommend Sancta Civitas and Riders to the Sea.
Giacinto Scelsi >>Truly extraordinary visionary music - quite unlike anything else of any age. This is the 'good' face of seemingly way-out modernism, with an awesome radiant spiritual quality. Go especially for the orchestral works - several excellent CD recordings on the Accord label.
Iannis Xenakis >>Provocative and often abrasive music, and thus not for the faint-hearted! Many of his earlier works especially have a tremendous visionary quality. His apocalyptic and haunting Kraanerg was the work that forced me to recognise that even modernistic idioms could be beautiful, and full of colour and powerful vision. Other wonderful works include: Nomos Gamma, Terretektorh, Anaktoria,Metastaseis, Bohor, Persepolis. But those listeners attached to romanticism and melody, or who shy away from breathtaking visions of the far reaches of the Universe, will not be pleased!
Harry Partch >>There is nothing else like this ritualistic and almost primitive-sounding music written in microtonal scales for a whole orchestra of purpose-designed instruments. Go especially for Delusion of the Fury - a unique masterwork, dramatic, sometimes eerie, and powerfully moving but including a remarkable humorous element.
Havergal Brian >>This is truly amazing! In general I dismiss his music, which seems to me somehow to contain some fundamental unsoundness and leaves me cold. Yet the Marco Polo CD recording of his huge Gothic Symphony, despite the work's many rough edges, is the one commercial recording that I'd have wanted to be saved above all my others if an earthquake destroyed my abode today. A monumental celebration of the life (and ultimately death) experience.
Robert Simpson >>Although I find his idiom mostly too limited, so that for me many of his works sound too similar despite their great integrity, his 9th Symphony (recorded on Hyperion) is an awesome 'hit'.
Giles Swayne >>Cry is a truly unique visionary choral work - CD recording on NMC label.
Louis Andriessen >>De Tijd (Time) - a bewitching state of blissful peace, space and primal emptiness is evoked by this choral work. CD recording on Elektra label.
Eivind Groven >>Draumkvaedet. Typical of Groven's music, the idiom of this choral work has a bewitching modal sound, conveying an uplifting sense of purity and simplicity. The melodies derive with unusual directness from Norwegian folk song and dance. CD recording on Aurora label.
Einar Englund >>Symphony 2 (The Blackbird) - a compellingly atmospheric symphony with a strange combination of nature in the far north combined with a certain toughness and darkness of sound.
Rued Langgaard >>An enigmatic Danish composer of the first half of the 20th Century, much of whose music is of a rather undistinguished conservative Germanic neo-Romantic cast. Amongst such works, however, particularly in the middle part of his output, were a number of much more experimental and at times visionary works. Especially go for: Symphony 6 (Det Himmelrivende, which translates as 'The Rending Heavens') and the haunting Music of the Spheres. Also very powerful are the piano works Music (or Fantasia) of the Depths and The Fire Chambers. Symphonies 4 and 10 are also well worth hearing, even though less experimental in idiom.
Kaikhosru Sorabji >>The gigantic Organ Symphony 1 and even more gigantic Opus Clavicembalisticum, and other works. Most of his extraordinary oeuvre hasn't yet been recorded and thus most of his works I still haven't heard.
Toshiro Mayuzumi >>His short two-movement Mandala Symphony, despite the seemingly rather unpromising modernistic sound of its beginning, is an incandescent visionary work, which gathers a quite awesome power. I know no other works of his.
David Solomons >>I got to know David's music closely in 1999 when at his request I produced some MIDI realizations of his works. As yet not 'officially' recognised, his music has something in common with mine in that it is written by one who composes not for a career but because he has something wonderful and vital to communicate, so it's music with beauty, heart and spirit, and no grey intellectualism. But his music is very different from mine, and is mostly in the form of miniatures (well, more or less). The light-hearted and even frivolous titles he so often gives to his works usually belie the depth, uplifting quality and generosity of spirit of the pieces. I commend the following as an introduction. For serene uplifting beauty, go for his Suite for Recorder Orchestra (ignoring his funny titles for the 5 movements!). For a wonderful and memorable tune that you could well curse because you can't get it out of your head, go for Dawn in the Room for baritone & string orchestra. For particularly moving choral pieces, go for the very short unaccompanied motet Hoc est enim corpus meum and the similarly short Te Deum for girls' chorus, organ & harp. For something actually sombre (unusual for this composer) but with great nobility, go for his Prayer Before the Close of Day for two tubas & two euphoniums. But these suggestions are only the tip of a wonderful iceberg. Click here to visit his site (but bookmark my site first!).
***And a lamentably neglected earlier composer***
Mikolaj Zielenski >>A Polish contemporary of Giovanni Gabrieli. What little I've heard of his output has something of the sound of Gabrieli (similar cadences) but with a radiant deeply moving quality that I've not heard in other music of that period - Gabrieli with a bigger, deeper heart. Unfortunately the only recording I know of Zielenski's music (an old one on the Olympia label, OCD 321) is appalling both in recording and performance quality, with the choir often singing raggedly and dreadfully flat - not a good introduction to such wonderful and inspiring music!
Frank Perry >>A mystic and sound healer who produces extraordinary visionary music through a process of highly inspired* improvisation. His music uses a vast array of Tibetan singing bowls and other, related, instruments. This music is leagues beyond what is generally produced as healing / meditation music, with no hint of the 'commercial Kitsch' sound that characterizes almost all New Age music that I've heard.
* My current 'reading' about this, which is not to be taken as a categorical statement of fact, is that many elements in his music are sourced from another, probably concurrent, universe.
My recommendation comes with one caveat, however. To listen to the music in any sort of meditation state, or to 'enter into the sound', as the composer recommends, is seriously harmful in the long run. It is extremely important that this music be listened to only in very grounding situations and contexts - usually while you are getting on with something practical to keep your awareness well grounded. To follow his recommendations would help unground you and make you more open and vulnerable to the astral ('dark') forces, of which I have masses of hard experience and thus know what I'm talking about. The Composer's well meant but harmful recommendation stems from the almost universal perception of ungrounded awareness and astral (actually 'dark side') connections as 'spirituality' and also pointing themselves to that 'spirituality rather than the true self realization which is where they really need to be heading. I explain more about that in Exit Spirituality - Enter Clear-Mindedness on my Self Realization site.