Month: December 2023

Replied to AI + Google Sheets: How To Use Them Together by Ben Ben (benlcollins.com)

See how AI tools work with Google Sheets to boost your productivity. Covers ChatGPT, Google Bard, and AI add-ons.

I really enjoyed how you broke down the different uses for AI in this post Ben. Personally, I have found myself using Co-Pilot to come up with formulas as this is what I currently have access to. For me, I often have an idea of what is possible, but do not always have the time or mental space to dig into the formulas to find the right solution. I have found it useful then to just ask Bing. I am now finding myself teaching colleagues how to use prompts to not only find a solution, but have it explained for them.
Listened Wisenheimer album by Custard by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Wisenheimer is the third studio album by the Australian band Custard. It was released November 6th 1995 and peaked at number 55 in September 1996. The album contains the song “Apartment” which reached #7 in the third Hottest 100.

I wonder how many people came to Wisenheimer, Custard’s third album, after hearing the opening single, Apartment, and were somewhat disappointed? This is the feeling that I get from Lachlan J’s review:

So, my verdict is that Custard’s Wisenheimer is a pretty good album. It’s not great and it doesn’t really capture my imagination in any significant way, but it is quite a bit of fun to let play while I’m driving about the town or doing the housework. It has some rather good tracks on it and it has quite a few rather average tracks, but it doesn’t really have any bad tracks, which is a nice upside. The song-writing is decent and the musicians are competent, but it’s really nothing to write home about, and the scope of music is comfortably broad, but nothing particularly challenging or intriguing. Really this album is just a nicely comfortable piece of work. It doesn’t break any boundaries, but it’s good enough.

Source: Wisenheimer – Custard by Lachlan J

This is something that the band’s manager, Dave Brown, touches on in Andrew Stafford’s Pig City, arguing that Apartment was released too early:

Custard had met keyboard player and producer Eric Feldman while touring in support of another of McCormack’s heroes, former Pixie Frank Black. Feldman had a long list of credits and contacts, and Frank Black himself had been impressed enough by Custard to loan McCormack three of his guitars for the recording of what was to become Wisenheimer. If the album lacked its predecessor’s rambling charm, it also contained some brilliant material (the woozy, beautiful art-rock of Columbus is perhaps Custard’s greatest moment).

The obvious standout, Apartment, was the first single. It was a disappointing choice for Dave Brown, who reasoned that by leading with their best punch, excellent follow-up singles such as Lucky Star and Sunset Strip were rendered anti-climactic after the album’s release in late 1995. Dave Brown:

It’s always my bitch that they released Apartment at the wrong time, and that was the difference between Wisenheimer being a successful album versus a really successful album. It was the first single and it was too good for that, without a doubt in the world. It should have been released second or third; I think that gets proven every time.

Source: Pig City by Andrew Stafford

Comparing the album with Wahooti Fandango, I kept on thinking that having one producer for the whole album, Eric Drew Feldman, made it more consistent, but I feel that is possibly in the ear of the beholder. Maybe, Wisenheimer is less contrasting than Wahooti Fandango, but each track still jumps around between genres, whether it be the angular rock guitar one minute with GooFinder, to leaning back into the country origins with Leisuremaster. There are also strange interludes and extras, such as the saxophone led jam of Cut Lunch or the the excerpt about gold at the end of I Love Television that reminded me of Jim Carey’s monologues on The Weeknd’s Dawn FM.

With the length of tracks, I feel that you never really get to settle as a listener. Even the slower tracks fly on by.  Or maybe like a box of Roses chocolates, this is an album for those who just like eating chocolates, no matter the flavour, but would possibly frustrate those who just like this flavour or that. I wonder this maybe what Damian Cowell was touching upon when he spoke about Custard and anchovies. All in all, it was one of those albums that really benefited from multiple plays.

On a side note, the one thing that I am left intrigued by is how they presented this tapestry of sounds live? The sound often contrasts between a wall of sound and more subtle sounds. When I saw McCormick live playing acoustically, it felt like the tracks were chosen because they fitted the bill, with the only track that felt like it did not fit was Girls, but nobody cared. However, thinking about it now, I wonder if McCormick / Custard could in fact play a number of different sets that would cater for different audiences? I have searched YouTube in the vain hope of finding an old concert, but all I can find is them performing Apartment.

Bookmarked How do I remove the same part of a file name for many files in Windows 7? (Super User)

get-childitem *.mp3
This lists all files whose names end with .mp3. They are then piped to the next command with the | operator.

foreach { rename-item $_ $_.Name.Replace(“Radiohead -“, “”) }
This replaces all instances of Radiohead – with nothing, denoted by “”, effectively wiping the word from all the files in the directory.

You could also modify get-childitem *.mp3 to get-childitem – that would rename all the files in the directory, not just files whose names end with .mp3.

I was cleaning up my phone and find some files that I wanted to update in bulk. I knew that it was doable, but had never properly delved into this world (or Googled it). I found this guide to using PowerShell to do it.

As I go further into the world of SQL and scripting, I can see how a lot of my processes are going to change.

Replied to How Britain’s taste for tea may have been a life saver by Veronique Greenwood (BBC)

Tea became one of the British Empire’s most prized resources in the 18th Century. But it may have also had an unintended effect on the British population – reducing mortality rates.

In a recent paper in the Review of Statistics and Economics, economist Francisca Antman of the University of Colorado, Boulder, makes a convincing case that the explosion of tea as an everyman’s drink in late 1700s England saved many lives. This would not have been because of any antioxidants or other substances inherent to the lauded leaf.

Instead, the simple practice of boiling water for tea, in an era before people understood that illness could be caused by water-borne pathogens, may have been enough to keep many from an early grave.

Source: How Britain’s taste for tea may have been a life saver
 by Veronique Greenwood

I was expecting the benefit of tea might be less drinking of beer, I guess boiling water does make a lot of sense.

Replied to How to Use Technology for Documentation in the Classroom (Zoe Porter-Children and Technology)

Technology has been integrated into the classroom over the past several years. Teachers use it to teach their students new concepts. What about documentation? Teachers also need to keep data about how the students in their class are developing. There are certain milestones administration expects children to reach throughout the school year. Keeping the data about these milestones is an important part of the work of educators. Teachers can do this in different ways. Some teachers may write informal notes about how children are doing when they see a specific behavior. Other teachers may use more formal methods, like keeping detailed observations in a file on their computer. Technology can be used to keep the data teachers collect on their students organized.

I am glad that you found my investigations into the use of technology to support documentation helpful. In case you are interested, I found Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison, a useful read and reference, as well as all the Project Zero resources. One of the things that I was always challenged by was the importance of ‘advancing learning’, not just capturing it.

The focus throughout is the development of understanding, rather than as some sort of by-product. Central to this is the notion of documentation. This can be split into four practices: observing, recording, interpreting and sharing. What is important about documentation is that it, “must serve to advance learning, not merely capture it. As such, documentation includes not only what is collected but also the discussions and reflections on those artifacts.” (Page 38)

Source: An Introduction to Making Thinking Visible – Read Write Respond by Aaron Davis

Another book that I have dived in and out of on the topic has been The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation, a book that brings together a number of voices on various topics, including Part III, which is on documentation.

Bookmarked How Big is YouTube? (ethanzuckerman.com)
Ethan Zuckerman shares some reflections on a recent article focused on measuring how big YouTube is.

YouTube is one of the largest, most important communication platforms in the world, but while there is a great deal of research about the site, many of its fundamental characteristics remain unknown. To better understand YouTube as a whole, we created a random sample of videos using a new method. Through a description of the sample’s metadata, we provide answers to many essential questions about, for example, the distribution of views, comments, likes, subscribers, and categories. Our method also allows us to estimate the total number of publicly visible videos on YouTube and its growth over time. To learn more about video content, we hand-coded a subsample to answer questions like how many are primarily music, video games, or still images. Finally, we processed the videos’ audio using language detection software to determine the distribution of spoken languages. In providing basic information about YouTube as a whole, we not only learn more about an influential platform, but also provide baseline context against which samples in more focused studies can be compared.

Source: Dialing for Videos: A Random Sample of YouTube by Ryan McGrady, Kevin Zheng, Rebecca Curran, Jason Baumgartner and Ethan Zuckerman

The information is captured in the site that created TubeStats and is updated regularly.

Separately, Ryan McGrady has summarised some key takeaways on the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure site:

  • There are about 10 13 billion publicly visible videos
  • YouTube is mostly not in English
  • Our current best estimate is that 32% of videos where we can detect the language are in English, with 10.5% in Hindi, 8% in Spanish, slightly fewer in Portuguese, and just over 6% in Arabic.
  • Most of YouTube doesn’t get many views

  • Not everyone is participating in the “creator economy”

  • There are an awful lot of video games

Source: 5 Main Takeaways from Randomly Sampling YouTube by Ryan McGrady

What is just as interesting as the statistics, but how they managed to capture the data through ‘drunk dialing’:

That bit after “watch?v=” is an 11 digit string. The first ten digits can be a-z,A-Z,0-9 and _-. The last digit is special, and can only be one of 16 values. Turns out there are 2^64 possible YouTube addresses, an enormous number: 18.4 quintillion. There are lots of YouTube videos, but not that many. Let’s guess for a moment that there are 1 billion YouTube videos – if you picked URLs at random, you’d only get a valid address roughly once every 18.4 billion tries.

We refer to this method as “drunk dialing”, as it’s basically as sophisticated as taking swigs from a bottle of bourbon and mashing digits on a telephone, hoping to find a human being to speak to. Jason found a couple of cheats that makes the method roughly 32,000 times as efficient, meaning our “phone call” connects lots more often. Kevin Zheng wrote a whole bunch of scripts to do the dialing, and over the course of several months, we collected more than 10,000 truly random YouTube videos.

Source: How Big is YouTube? by Ethan Zuckerman

After reading Jim Groom’s post about an AI Dr Oblivion, I am left wondering about what the numbers really mean.

Replied to What is the purpose of educational technology? (blog.edtechie.net)

I don’t mean that title as a rhetorical, smartass, question, but rather a more fundamental one. It’s probably not one we ask ourselves very often, we tend to be caught up in the application of a particular technology, or trying to solve a specific problem. But at the more abstract level, what do you think educational technology is for? When we adopt it, what is the purpose we are intending it to fulfil? I expect the answer will vary depending on technology or context, and not be limited to one function overall. But of you had to answer the question “what is the main purpose of educational technology?” at a cocktail party, what would you answer (apart from asking yourself how did you get invited to a party where this is the conversation).

Here are some potential responses I think:

  • Improve learning performance
  • Making learning more accessible/flexible
  • Financial benefits
  • Student experience and choice
  • Improved pedagogy
  • Reflection on practice
  • Administration and monitoring

Source: What is the purpose of educational technology? by Martin Weller

Martin, this has me thinking about a post I wrote too many years ago about my ‘vision for eLearning‘:

Is Transformative: More than just redefined, learning is purposeful and involves wider implications.

Is More Doable: Makes things like critical thinking and collaboration more possible.

Enables Student Voice: Technology provides a voice for students to take ownership over their work and ideas.

Involves Modelling Digital Citizenship: More than a sole lesson, eLearning should be about foster competencies throughout the curriculum.

Source: Vision for eLearning by Aaron Davis

The thing that struck me then was that vision is a collective enterprise and so often is contested, no matter how much work is done. For example, this week, I got caught talking with a colleague who argued that there are three facets to the technology project that we are a part of: finance, student/community and pedagogy. The problem that we face is that there is nobody who is properly invested in all the areas, therefore any decisions made are always made based on the priorities of the group in question. When I started too many years ago now, my focus was all about the students, as outlined in my vision, and although this is still the case and will always be something of a north star, my day-to-day focus these days is on administration and finance. Sadly, I have come to learn the reality that when it comes to technology at scale (financial benefit, you might say), the focus becomes the quality of data you are working with and improving the steps to producing such data more efficient. Many prefer to call this ‘magic‘, but to me it is the foundation that allows the house to be built. Invisible to most, until a massive crack appears in the wall and you need to go digging.

I was also left thinking about Ewan McIntosh’s post about the various purposes alongside Ewan McIntosh’s discussion of a school’s ‘value proposition‘. He posited that beyond two values, teams get lost:

A value proposition, even if you are a state school, is a vital value to hone down, not just so that kids aren’t ripped out of your school but so that everyone, including the leaders, can be held to account when kinks in the system appear. If you state that excellence in education is your value proposition, then you’d better get that nailed, all the time, every time, or perceptions will change and take a long time to bring back.

And defining a value proposition is easy – you can really only choose one top value you pursue, and a close-place second one. Beyond two core value propositions, your team will be lost and not know what they are chasing

Source: Working out a school’s competitive position even when it’s not competing #28daysofwriting by Ewan McIntosh

All in all, your post has me intrigued to think about what has changed and what remains the same regarding education technology.

Bookmarked The Linkfest (buttondown.email)

The opposite of doomscrolling: Every week (roughly) I send you a collection of the best Internet reading I’ve found — links to culture, technology, art and science that fascinated me.

Linkfest is Clive Thompson’s newsletter of interesting tidbits from the World Wide Web. I can only imagine the time and effort that goes into something that seems so fleeting. I also like his recognition that ‘it takes a village’:

I read hundreds of blogs and news sites every week to find this stuff. Shoutout to one I relied on particularly this week — Charles Arthur’s The Overspill. Go check it out!

Source: Linkfest #15: Altruistic pigs, the “Truetown Discharge”, and the CIA’s guide to wrecking meetings by Clive Thompson

Stephen, thank you for the reminder of what I have missed this year after taking a step back from things. I felt that so much of my online life had become stale, repeatable and templated, I wondered if it ‘sparked joy‘ anymore. I had wondered if I was doing things out of habit, rather than with purpose. Sporadically, diving back into my feed, I added a few posts to my site, one on the AI bubble and the other on educational communities, only to discover your responses:

Let’s allow that AI is a bubble (this saves us an exercise in semantics). Is it true that all bubbles pop? Yes, we can name many bubbles that have popped, but let’s consider some other technologies that experienced rapid growth, so much so that any ‘pop’ of the bubble was merely a rounding error. Like, say, the telephone. Cars. Aircraft. Microwave ovens. Computers. I could go on, but you get the idea. We tend to forget the bubbles that didn’t pop, because they became fixtures of everyday life.

Source: Pluralistic: What kind of bubble is AI? by Stephen Downes

And …

Twitter was only ever a subset of the larger educational community, and it always felt to me a bit like a high school clique. It was pretty easy to find yourself on the outside or the subject of Twitter disapprobation; I experienced it a few times (but to nowhere near the extent of some others). If Twitter was the best we could hope for, we weren’t hoping for much.

Source: Communities and Conversations of the Past by Stephen Downes

They were like seeds sprouting in the garden. As always, you added perspective that spurred me to think more, a reminder of the interactions I had missed diving into the world of books.

Liked Pluralistic: What kind of bubble is AI? (19 Dec 2023) by Cory DoctorowCory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they’re almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren’t, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn’t matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn’t matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn’t even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites

Source: What kind of bubble is AI? by Cory Doctorow

Liked Google’s True Moonshot (Stratechery by Ben Thompson)

Google could do more than just win the chatbot war: it is the one company that could make a universal assistant. The question is if the company is willing to risk it all.

What, though, if the mission statement were the moonshot all along? What if “I’m Feeling Lucky” were not a whimsical button on a spartan home page, but the default way of interacting with all of the world’s information? What if an AI Assistant were so good, and so natural, that anyone with seamless access to it simply used it all the time, without thought?

Source: Google’s True Moonshot by @stratechery

Replied to TB872: Differences between project management and systemic inquiry by Doug Belshaw (dougbelshaw.com)

Using Agile software development as a touchstone for linking systemic inquiry and project management.

Doug, I have really enjoyed your current learning out loud with your Masters in Systems Thinking. This piece really stuck with me. I have been grappling a bit with project management and the agile methodology since been asked to complete a course as a part of my change of roles where I work. I think I had thought that I was being agile (maybe little a agile), but was left struck by the rigidity required in actually sticking to the process. (I am guess this is where your focus on being deliberate fits in?) The thing that has struck me is the conflicted nature of the push and pull. I agree with the intent, but unless everyone is onboard and clear about expectations, it all becomes a bit of agile-washing.

The other thing that has really struct me is the world of project management and the lived reality. It feels like a lot of people want to do project management, without actually doing the hard work.  Lines are drawn, positions set, but when the game starts and chaos ensues, they are lost at sea. I have been left wondering if project management really exists and if so, what does it look like? I hear the successes and achievements, this pie chart and that bar graph, but the reality feels like something different. I am therefore intrigued by your discussion of system inquiry. It reminded me of Dave Cormier’s discussion of ‘complex’ versus ‘complicated’:

We are confronted by the complicated/complex division everyday in education. Do I want to know if a medical students has remembered the nine steps of a process of inquiry to work with a patient or do I want to know if they built a good raport? How often do we choose the thing that is easier to measure… simply because we can verify that our grading is ‘fair’. How often do we get caught in conversations around how ‘rigourous’ an assessment is when what we really mean is ‘how easy is it to defend to a parent who’s going to complain about a child’s grade’.

Source: Making Change in Education II – Complexity vs. Lean Six Sigma (learning isn’t like money)

Might be something I need to dive into further.

Liked Why Not To Buy My New Book On Generative AI (Julian Stodd’s Learning Blog)

My new book, ‘Engines of Engagement: a curious book about Generative AI’ is published tomorrow. Pre-orders are already open, and it’s been really lovely to hear from people who have kindly already …

My new book, ‘Engines of Engagement: a curious book about Generative AI’ is published tomorrow. Pre-orders are already open, and it’s been really lovely to hear from people who have kindly already done so. We’ve even made it onto an Amazon bestseller list. The hardback book is really beautiful, and i’m very proud of it, but there is a compelling reason not to buy it. Because tomorrow, when it launches, it will also be available to download, for free, as an eBook.

Source: Why Not To Buy My New Book On Generative AI by @julianstodd

ᔥ “Stephen Downes” in Downes.ca ~ Stephen’s Web ~ Why Not To Buy My New Book On Generative AI ()

Liked Pluralistic: “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” (08 Dec 2023) by Cory DoctorowCory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)

https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/08Dec2023.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 Today’s links “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”: When Big Content makes the paid version *worse* than the free one. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2018, 2022. Colophon: Recent pu…

Liked https://www.education.gov.au/schooling/resources/australian-framework-generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-schools (education.gov.au)

The Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools (the Framework) seeks to guide the responsible and ethical use of generative AI tools in ways that benefit students, schools, and society. The Framework supports all people connected with school education including school leaders, teachers, support staff, service providers, parents, guardians, students and policy makers.

Source: Australian Framework for Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Schools by Australian Government

ᔥ “Stephen Downes” in Downes.ca ~ Stephen’s Web ~ The Australian Framework for Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Schools ()

Replied to Communities and Conversations of the Past by David TrussDavid Truss (daily-ink.davidtruss.com)

Now Bill is off of Twitter and I may leave the site too before the end of the year. I’m left wondering the same things as Dean, “Maybe online communities are a white whale. What is the best we can hope for in terms of online engagement and community for educators?“

I read this post a few weeks ago David and have been left thinking. I like your point about the digital ecosystem of blogs, Twitter, video and podcasts, I wonder if that is often overlooked. It is never one thing, but I do miss those days. Not sure if or when I will ‘quit Twitter’, but in some ways I feel I already have. I cannot remember the last time I mindlessly scrolled through my feed. For so long I was consuming Tweets through my feed reader, until I discovered that someone took down the bridge, I then found another way via Inoreader, until that bridge was removed too. I was then faced with the choice and seemingly boarded up the house. I sometimes go there to search for something or post a reply to someone, but I never really stay.

The problem that you and Dean touch upon is where is the community space for education? I have never been a fan of LinkedIn, in part that it is not public, but also that it feels too performative. Maybe the work banal ‘magic‘ that encapsulates my days just does not fit there, but then again, maybe I am just naïve to how performative Twitter is/was. I fear I have become a recluse in the woods living in the small hut that is my own website, just talking to myself as the local habitat walks on past wondering what I am doing.

Bookmarked RTO in 2024: Fast Company’s 8-point guide for designing an office your workers actually want to return to (web.archive.org)

It’s not just the office floor plan that needs revision; it’s how those floor plans fit into a future where the typical Monday-to-Friday work week is no longer a given. 

Source: RTO%20in%202024%3A%20Fast%20Company%E2%80%99s%208-point%20guide%20for%20designing%20an%20office%20your%20workers%20actually%20want%20to%20return%20to by Liz Stinson

There is so much focus on creating the right spaces, but what remote working has highlighted for me is that there is no point in having the ‘right spaces’ if the way people work together is still fractured. We can create all the fluidity we like or creating different spaces, however if this does not have purpose to how people are actually working, then it seems fractured. Just because you have a collaborative space, it does not mean people magically collaborate, instead the focus on ‘collaborative space’ becomes about the space, ignoring the real challenge, collaboration and the way we work.

ᔥ “Laura Hilliger’s Generational Gripe” in FBT on EOY and Endurance – by Laura Hilliger ()

Bookmarked Hottest 100 of 2023 | Vote now (hottest100.abc.net.au)

Vote now in triple j’s Hottest 100 of 2023

I always find it interesting to scroll through the songs listed and reflect on what stood out to me this year. Other than Theia, which should really be in as Theia / The Silver Cord / Set, as this is how I first heard / saw it on Rage, the rest of the tracks I added manually.

With my focus on vulnerability this year, I kind of gave up on keeping abreast of new new music. I listened to plenty of new old music, but not so many albums hot off the press. (Although both Damian Cowell and High Pass Filter released new retrospectives, so I am not sure what those albums constitute as.) I also listened to a lot of music while exercising, so that probably influenced some of my choices too.

Here then is my attempt at the songs that grabbed me:

  • Theia — King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
  • Foolish Thinking — Kimbra
  • Blood and Butter — Caroline Polachek
  • Free Yourself — Jessie Ware
  • Moves to Make — Daði Freyr
  • Live Again (feat. Halo Maud) — Chemical Brothers
  • Will Anybody Ever Love Me? — Sufjan Stevens
  • Syreen — Lindstrøm
  • Night Is Not — L’Ecstasy
  • I’ve Gone Hillsong — TISM

There was an option to vote for your favourite track, which for me was Blood and Butter. Caroline Polachek’s album Desire, I Want to Turn Into You was an oddity for me, it was one that took a few listens to settle, but when my ears adjusted, I felt that everything sounded different afterwards. For me, there is something sonically slick about Blood and Butter that lulls the ears in like venus fly trap.

Listened CUSTARD WAHOOTI FANDANGO : CUSTARD : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive from Internet Archive

CUSTARDS 2ND ALBUM

Wahooti Fandango is Custard’s second album, excluding Brisbane 1990-1993. It was produced by Simon Holmes, Wayne Connolly and Bob Moore, and was released in 1994.

There is something joyfully chaotic about this album, where various ideas are pasted together to somehow find some semblance of coherence. Although drums, bass and guitar are always central, there are also a plethora of other instruments that fill out the sound, whether it be piano, keyboard, slide guitar and trumpet.

One of the things that stood out listening to the album is that it feels like each song is somehow in contrast with itself. For example, with Teensville, it is the country verse contrasted with pop-punk choruses. With Aloha Tambourinist it is the distorted guitars wanting to exploded contrasted with the pedal steel guitar. With Pack Yr Suitcases the odd time signature is contrasted with the wacky whistles and sounds. With Dix TV, the solid bass line driving the song is contrasted by the distorted wah wah guitar. With Alone, the uplifting music is contrasted by the celebration of being alone. With Looking for Someone the pop sentiment is contrasted with the noise in the interlude. With Say it the angular guitars are contrasted with the more acoustic sounds of the trumpet and piano, only to end with some strange mock announcement. With Melody the songs opening wall of sound soon gives way to country rock that has Tom Petty feel. With Fantastic Plastic, the song feels like it gets faster and faster, before abruptly finishing. With Singlette, a slick groove contrasted by the chorus. With If Yr Famous And You Know It, Sack Yr Band there is a contrast between the serious and light-hearted at the same time. With Universal Vibration the distorted guitar is again in contrast with the clean piano. With Badloving, the low chords contrast with high licks. This balance maybe the case with a lot of music, or somewhat contrived, but it feels more pronounced with Custard. I like how this is capture on Wikipedia:

Drawing on a vast array of influences (from the art-rock of Pere Ubu, Devo and Sonic Youth to country ballads and big band swing), Custard’s casual, whimsical approach to their own music often masks the degree of craft underlying songs.[2]

Source: Wahooti%20Fandango%20-%20Wikipedia by

I will leave the final comment to the only review I could find for this album:

These guys always seemed to be having a ball, but in a laidback, whacky uncle sort of way. The songs either rush at you smiling gleefully, or just sit around spinning slightly confusing tales that make you giggle (or shake your head in embarrassment). Imagine Pavement channeling Jonathan Richman.

Source: 198.%20Custard%20%E2%80%93%20%E2%80%9CWahooti%20Fandango%E2%80%9D by @DrSamma

—

Track list

  1. “Teensville” 1:27
  2. “Aloha Tambourinist” 2:25
  3. “Pack Yr Suitcases” 2:16
  4. “Dix TV” 4:10
  5. “Alone” 2:43
  6. “Looking For Someone” 2:22
  7. “Say It” 3:04
  8. “Melody” 2:19
  9. “Fantastic Plastic” 1:02
  10. “Singlette” 3:06
  11. “If Yr Famous And You Know It, Sack Yr Band” 2:38
  12. “Bye Bye Birdie” 2:21
  13. “Universal Vibration” 1:48
  14. “Badloving” 3:38
  15. “The Wahooti Fandango” 3:03