Category: Journal

Cherlene’s New Album

Any fans of the TV series Archer will know that — while the rest of the ex-ISIS agents are figuring out what to do with a literal tonne of cocaine — Cheryl/Carol has renamed herself to Cherlene and is on her way to becoming the star of outlaw country music.

Archer is one of my favourite shows on TV at the moment. As well as this I have been getting into listening to more country music thanks to this post by Andrew Clarke. So imagine my surprise when I found out that a full album of both original and cover songs sung by Cherlene herself had been recently released for digital purchase. Woooohoooo!

But this isn’t just a novelty TV series album filled with parody songs. This is actually a genuinely good country album. The songs are actually sang by country artist Jessy Lynn Martens, who is also classically trained on violin, mandolin and guitar.

The album also features a duet with none other than Kenny Loggins on a country version of Danger Zone — yes, it’s that good.

Cherlene Track Listing

  1. Danger Zone feat. Kenny Loggins
  2. Swing Shift
  3. Midnight Blues
  4. 40 Miles of Mountain Road
  5. Baby Please Don’t Go
  6. Cherlene’s Broken Hearts and Auto Parts
  7. I’ll Burn It Down
  8. It’s All About Me
  9. Eastbound and Down
  10. Chattahoochee Coochie Man
  11. Gypsy Woman
  12. Straight To Hell

If you only listen to one song from this album, listen to Danger Zone. But I promise if you do, you’ll probably end up listening to the whole album.

The Dvorak Keyboard

When I took a trip to Paris a few years back, I had to pop into an internet cafe to find the location of a place I was after. Because – it seemed – I was hopelessly ill-prepared.

So I paid my money to the nice man in the corner; sat down; quickly typed my search and hit enter, only to find I had been presented with an empty results page. It seems Google didn’t recognise ‘me wenith’ as a Parisian Live Music Venue. This is how I was introduced to the French keyboard layout.

In telling this story today to a friend, he introduced me to another layout that I had never heard of –  The Dvorak Keyboard (also know as the Simplified Keyboard).

The Dvorak Keyboard was originally patented by Dr. August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Dealey. It was developed to be an improvement over the well-adopted ‘qwerty’ layout that we still use today. The design of the Dvorak layout was based on much research into how people typed as well as percentages of the time spent typing in varying areas of the keyboard. It was stated that the Dvorak Layout would make it easier to type common words with the minimal of movement and finger strain.

Despite the research and slight adoption of this layout, it never really made it into popular use and so the ‘qwerty’ layout is still the primary keyboard used on western computers / devices to this day.

Jumping the Shark

The term jumping the shark, I discovered today, is an idiom that is a way of describing when a television show’s quality begins to decline. It originated from the television show Happy Days in its season five premiere, where The Fonz literally jumped over a contained shark on a beach front.

This was quite a step away from its usual family and adolescent related story lines set against the nostalgia of the 1950s.

The usage of “jump the shark” has subsequently broadened beyond television, indicating the moment when a brand, design, or creative effort’s evolution declines.

Wikipedia, Jumping the shark

Hello Seagal WordPress Plugin

Every WordPress user knows that a fresh install of WordPress comes with a plugin called ‘Hello Dolly’.

Hello Dolly places a random lyric from the song of the same name at the top right of the admin area, changing with each new admin page load.

I like the idea but am not really a fan of the song. So I thought it would be cool to do my own variation. I have called it ‘Hello Seagal’.

Hello Seagal does exactly what Hello Dolly does — in fact it uses the original code from Hello Dolly — but altered for my needs. Hello Seagal will place a random line from various Steven Seagal Films in the top right of your admin area, changing with each page load.

With such classic lines as:

  • “I’m gonna take you to the bank, Senator Trent” from Hard to Kill
  • “Anybody know why Richie did Bobby Lupo?” from Above the Law AKA Out for Justice
  • “I’m just a cook” from Under Siege

Download Hello Seagal Zip or View the source code on Github.