After a long period of slow descent on the RN charts we have moved back up in the last couple of days. The top two pieces on the Widget - Snowhite Maya and Global Lowroad - were posted today. Snowhite Maya is a composite of two pieces created in the last couple of days. Today has gone past in a blur. I have missed big chunks of it but I have almost finished the aerospace article.

Yesterday I watched most of the concert at the Kennedy Centre in DC on 27 December. The KC honours achievement in the performing arts and the latest achievers to be honoured include Buddy Guy, Dustin Hoffman and Led Zeppelin. Jeff Beck and Bonnie Raitt performed to honour BG. Jeff Beck played an amazingly adventurous solo on I d Rather Go Blind just to prove the point that he never rests on his laurels. A lot of US stars performed Led Zep's greatest hits - mostly to a very high standard indeed. I really enjoyed the Foo Fighters' contribution. I have never been a big fan of LZ but I was impressed by the finale - an arrangement of Stairway to Heaven with a large scale choral dimesnsion.

I hadnt really understood where Buddy Guy fits into development of the art. He spans classic electric blues and rock gtr and is really quite a major influence on Jimi Hendrx. He also paves the way for some semi abstract jazz on guitar. I think my memory is correct when I say that BG has a song called Poor Boy. Once I d seen those connections it became much clearer why he deserved this substantial honour. The case for LZ remains much less clear to me especially in terms of contribution to American culture.

I have bought the Schoenberg album by Spooky Actions as a download from their website at a very reasonable rate and loaded onto the BB. SA's approach really does anticipate the GI-IC project and their work demands careful study. It seems that the Schoenberg album is more groove based. In the FB guitar forum the discussion of set-based improvisation is making progress and fortunately some of what I know about the philosophy of sets applies. I am wondering whether some of what Badiou does with set theory can be brought to play.